News Brief

A Finnish veterans’ group is selling silver rings engraved with a swastika as a fund-raiser.

The Finnish Veterans’ Association said the $86 ring is being sold to raise money for 80,000 World War II veterans. It said the swastika is not intended to have any relation to the Nazi emblem.

The swastika is a symbol in Finnish culture predating World War II and was used to represent the Finnish air force between 1918 and 1945.

Finns to date have purchased 16,000 rings, according to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel. The rings are available through Dec. 31 at R-Kioski supermarkets in Finland and online. The ring sale recalls the 1940 “Air Defense” ring, part of a wartime campaign to raise funds for the air force that was battling the Soviet Union. The Finns traded in gold wedding bands and other valuables for a ring made of iron.

A new Jewish community center in central Argentina held its opening ceremony. Local donors raised $1 million to build the new Macabi Noar Center in Cordoba. The project was in coordination with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which also provided logistical support The center’s previous site was threatened by highways that passed near its land and had not been renovated in some time. Members, concerned about its viability, did not invest any money in the center. The new JCC, which has 1,550 members, has been open for four months but held the official ceremony last weekend. It is located just across the street from the community’s Jewish school. “The 700 kids enrolled in kindergarten, elementary and high school only have to cross the street to spend afternoons at their club,” Alejandro Kladniew, director of the Latin American offiice of the JDC, told JTA. “It is certainly is a big advantage.” Some 8,000 Jews live among a population of nearly 1.3 million in Cordoba, making it the second largest Jewishly populated city in Argentina after Buenos Aires.