June 3



ENGLAND:

Nazi-Looted Pissarro Painting Goes to Auction

A painting stolen by the Nazis was finally restored to its rightful owner
after almost 70 years, only to now hit auction block.

After claiming a Camille Pissarro painting stolen from her family in 1938,
Gisela Bermann-Fischer recovered Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903) in
2007. Curiously, she is now auctioning the painting at Christies
Impressionist and modern art sale in London on June 23. It is expected to
garner between 900,000 and 1.5 million ($1.452.46 million).

Bermann-Fischer says it cost her at least 500,000 Swiss francs ($466,000)
in lawyers fees to get the painting back.

(source: Artinfo)




GERMANY:

German court: Jewish forced workers due pensions

In Berlin, a German federal court ruled Wednesday that two Jews who were
forced by the Nazis to work in ghettos have a right to a pension for their
labor, setting the stage for thousands of others to receive payments.

The Federal Social Affairs Court in Kassel ruled that the two qualified
for pensions because, although they did not receive financial compensation
for their work, they received food and other items meaning the German
government was responsible for them.

The two plaintiffs, whose names were not released by the court, did
cleaning and washing in a ghetto in Poland.

The ruling sets a precedent for some 70,000 people forced by the Nazis to
work in ghettos, or their descendants, to make claims.

Most would be able to claim payments of euro150 ($213) per month,
backdated to July 1, 1997. The payments could add up to more than euro1
billion, according to estimates, which would come out of Germany's federal
pension program.

The Jewish Claims Conference, which administers compensation payments,
applauded the court's decision.

"The verdict of the Federal Social Affairs Court speaks to the spirit of
the law, and provides many Holocaust survivors whose claims for pensions
have been refused a little justice," said a spokesman for the conference
in Germany, Georg Heuberger.

(source: Associated Press)

********************


NAZI JET FIGHTER----The Story of Hitler's 'Miracle Weapon'


At the very end of World War II, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler still hoped
that state-of-the-art technology could turn the tide in his favor. One of
those projects, the Messerschmitt jet fighter, found a home in a remote
corner of eastern Germany. But it was too late.

It took four and a half years, but finally, on March 20, 1944, World War
II -- and more specifically, the armaments industry -- came to a remote
corner of eastern Germany called the Lausitz. As the Allies flew an
ever-increasing number of air raids over Germany's industrial and urban
centers, large weapons factories in Nazi Germany began an exhaustive
search for suitable places to relocate -- sites as inconspicuous and
isolated as possible. Indeed, by 1943, Hermann Gring, commander of the
Luftwaffe, had already forged plans to relocate the aviation industry to
areas the Allies were unlikely to bomb.

It took a year, but then Junkers, an airplane and engine manufacturer from
Dessau, moved into a factory belonging to the Moras Brothers textile
company in Zittau, which today is located near Germany's border with
Poland and the Czech Republic.

Disguised as a company called Zittwerke AG, it was far from
run-of-the-mill as far as armaments factories go. Zittau was to be where
the world's first production-ready jet engine would be completed, the same
engine that was to power Hitler's secret weapon, the Messerschmitt Me 262
jet fighter.

Jrgen Ulderup from Junkers' Dessau production site was tasked with taking
over as plant manager in Zittau. He immediately set up a network of
manufacturing plants throughout the region, all top secret. Key to getting
the project off the ground was his demand that 18 long-established textile
producers make space in their factories for armaments production. Some
companies had to turn over their factories in their entirety. It proved a
further blow for the region's textile industry, already largely crippled
and converted to the war economy.

Core of the Enterprise

But winning the war took priority, and the remote corner of Nazi Germany
now began producing components for the clandestine jet engine. Ulderup
hired over 2,500 employees and put them to work in the Zittwerke plants,
under the direction of aviation industry experts. They worked in the Moras
factory, the Haebler Brothers textile company in Zittau, the Rudolf Breuer
mechanical weaving mill in Reichenau, the Kreutziger & Henke company in
Leutersdorf, the Ebersbach spinning and weaving mill, and at 13 other
factories located in regional towns and villages.

But the core of the enterprise was to be found on the grounds of a former
World War I prisoner of war camp in the present-day Polish town of Porajw
-- a camp which had been converted for use by the German armed forces. The
factory, guarded by the 17th SS "Totenkopf" battalion, simply moved into
several half-finished barracks.

Deep in the heart of the compound, behind several rows of barbed wire,
was the administration building where a detachment from the Gross-Rosen
concentration camp was housed. Along with prisoners of war and the
so-called "Eastern workers" -- forced labor from countries such as the
Ukraine -- over 850 concentration camp prisoners did most of the work in
the Zittwerke factories.

Not long after Junkers had settled in, the sound of industry filled the
Neisse River Valley day and night. Rumors of a "miracle weapon" circulated
among the local population, but no one knew exactly what the factory
produced. It wasn't until final assembly that the object in question could
be recognized for what it was: a special turbojet engine for a new type of
jet fighter.

Shiny New Me 262s

Technicians had already tested the engines. A Messerschmitt plane, the Me
262-V 1, powered with a Junkers Jumo 004A-0 jet engine, took to the air as
early as March 2, 1943. The test proved successful. And before long, the
Zwittau factories mastered all aspects of the jet engine's production,
from pre-assembly to shipment.

The factories were well connected to the Third Reich's rail network, with
covered freight cars lugging the completed engines -- once they had passed
inspection -- to the south. There, in the forests surrounding the Bavarian
towns of Regensburg and Augsburg, workers installed the new engines into
the jets. A converted Autobahn nearby served as a runway from which the
shiny new Me 262s took off for their test flights. Only then would they be
loaded onto freight trains for delivery to the Luftwaffe.

The Nazis had high hopes for the new jets. By the beginning of 1945, with
the Russians closing from the east and the US and Britain marching in from
the west, it was clear that Germany faced a catastrophic defeat, but the
Nazi leadership refused to give up hope. On February 28, 1945, Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels announced to the nation that Germany's "miracle
weapon" would soon turn the tide of the war.

For Zittau, however, indications were mounting that it would be too late.
The day before the Goebbels speech, the city of Grlitz just north of
Zittau had been declared part of the front. Workers in the jet engine
factories could already hear the thunder of enemy guns.

Hectic Evacuation

It wasn't long before the hectic evacuation got underway. A Wehrmacht
counterattack near the present-day Polish town of Luba on March 7 and 8,
1945 managed to push back the Red Army. But after heavy losses on both
sides, the Soviets halted the German advance, such as it was, and the
factories ceased production.

Given the importance of the jet engine project, it didn't take long for
evacuation of both workers and factory machinery to get underway. In early
March, two special trains carrying the most vital elements of the
production chain made their way from Zittau to the west, one on the 6th
and another on the 10th. They ultimately ended up in the town of
Nordhausen, located in the state of Thuringia, some 100 kilometers west of
Leipzig.

Luftwaffe soldiers, who had guarded the Zittwerke's various factory
locations producing jet engines for the Me 262, also boarded the train in
Zittau. Two trains with over 500 people left directly from the factory
premises for Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt. A final train, belonging to the
Wehrmacht, left on April 30, just days before the end of the war,
presumably carrying the last of the military units.
everyday.

Mass Grave

But the Nazis didn't evacuate everything. Inside the remaining restricted
military area, the forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners
remained. Many of them died. A factory doctor issued 70 handwritten death
certificates in April and the beginning of May. The causes of death listed
were primarily "acute heart failure with asthenia," "pulmonary
tuberculosis," "pneumonia," or "scurvy."

The role Zittwerke plant manager Jrgen Ulderup played in the deaths
remains something of a mystery. According to his own reports, Ulderup fled
by bicycle from Zittau to Osnabrck in western Germany in the last days of
the war, with a backpack crammed full of copper bars. His driver, along
with his company car, had long since disappeared, according to the former
Nazi plant manager.

Today only a mass grave in Zittau's women's cemetery provides a reminder
that the so-called "miracle weapon" was produced locally. A well-kept lawn
covers the area behind the cemetery wall, where civilian victims of World
War II are buried. They include the prisoners and forced laborers who
sweated away in Nazi Germany's final attempt to turn the tide of onrushing
World War II destruction.

(source: Spiegel)



IRAN:

Iran's president: Holocaust still 'big deception'


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday once again called the
Holocaust a "big deception" in his latest denunciations of Israel and its
allies.

The comments come amid a fierce election campaign in which his firebrand
style, including regular denunciations of Israel and the West, has come
under attack from his challengers.

Ahmadinejad's main pro-reform rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, said the
president's constant questioning of the Holocaust has undermined Iran's
international standing.

With just over a week until the June 12 elections, Ahmadinejad has
unabashedly kept up his rhetoric and told a gathering of international
scholars Wednesday that Israel uses the "big deception of the Holocaust"
to sway allies in the West.

In April at the U.N.'s conference against racism in Geneva, the Iranian
president accused the West of using the Holocaust as a "pretext" for
aggression against Palestinians, provoking walkouts by delegates including
every European Union country in attendance.

The United States and eight other Western countries had already boycotted
the event that started on the eve of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day,
because of concerns Muslim countries would drown out all other issues with
calls to denounce Israel and restrict free speech when it comes to
criticizing Islam.

The Iranian president repeated his previous anti-Israel comments in
September, calling the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II a
"fake" and saying that Israel is perpetrating a holocaust on the
Palestinian people.

Ahmadinejad, known for virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric, said in 2005 that
Israel should be "wiped off the map" and later called the Holocaust a
"myth." Most recently, he described the Jewish state as a "germ of
corruption."

(source: Associated Press)