Surkis Gets 45 Days In Jail For Child Porn

MONTREAL — Former Jewish community official Bill Surkis was sentenced last week to 45 days in prison for his conviction on child pornography charges.
Surkis, 71, must also perform 240 hours of community service and be on probation for three years, Judge Céline Lamontagne ruled.
Surkis, a onetime Quebec regional director of B’nai Brith Canada and, prior to that, executive director of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, avoided the Crown’s demand that he be put on the national sex-offender registry. He will also not have to provide a DNA sample for the criminal DNA bank, nor will he be subject to Criminal Code provisions that restrict such offenders from contact with minors, as the Crown had requested.
Crown prosecutor Cynthia Gyenizse and Surkis’ lawyer, Steven Slimovitch, agreed in October on the 45-day jail term – to be served on weekends – as well as community service and probation. That’s the minimum sentence for Surkis’ conviction on one count each of accessing and possessing child porn, downloaded from the Internet.
Surkis pleaded guilty to the charges last May. He was arrested in July 2009.
Although Surkis has been repeatedly identified by his past employment with B’nai Brith, the organization has disassociated itself from him. In a statement last week, it said that the “charges stem from a period in which Mr. Surkis had no connection to B’nai Brith Canada.”

Conference Call

OTTAWA — The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture is accepting applications for its North American mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, slated for March 27 to 29 in Ottawa. Organizers say it will offer an intensive experience in Jewish living, learning and leadership for men and women ages 25 to 40 who show serious interest in Jewish culture and a potential for individual growth and communal leadership. The foundation has organized 22 such meetings since 1987 in western and eastern Europe, as well as Australia, Southeast Asia, South Africa, South America and Israel. Titled Redefining and Reconfiguring Our Normative Connections, the Ottawa event is the first in North America and will feature University of Ottawa history professor Irving Abella and Columbia University professor Saul Berman. For more information, call 212-425-6606, or e-mail [email protected].

Teen To Meet Jews

CALGARY — Calgary Jewish leaders will meet with a teen who admitted to spray-painting antisemitic slogans on two shuls and a Jewish community centre in November 2009. The boy, now 18, was 17 at the time of the attacks and can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He pleaded guilty last July to wilfully promoting hatred and mischief causing damage to a place of worship. An official of the Calgary Jewish Community Council told reporters it’s important for the teen, a known neo-Nazi, to learn about the Holocaust and that he hopes survivors will attend the meeting, slated for February. The teen will be sentenced March 4, after he turns 19. He’s been free on bail since July and was to have been sentenced last week, after a meeting with Jewish leaders, but he couldn’t be found because he had moved, the Calgary Herald reported.