June 5


POLAND:

Auschwitz camp to get $5.9M restoration

The European Union is giving $5.9 million to help fund structural repairs
to the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, an official says.

Rafal Pioro, the conservation department head for Auschwitz, confirmed the
EU has agreed to provide funds to help preserve the World War II site that
has become a tourist destination, The Scotsman reported Friday.

The former Nazi death camp near Oswiecim, Poland, draws nearly 1 million
tourists annually.

The site consists of dark brick administrative buildings now housing
exhibits of hair, clothes and eyeglasses taken from prisoners, and the
main camp with remains of the gas chambers and crematoriums facing the
railroad tracks where prisoners were brought in. Officials say the camp
has fallen into disrepair since the war, while museum officials have
struggled with their preservation efforts, the Scotsman said.

Pioro warned the final costs for the entire preservation project for the
Auschwitz camp will far exceed the EU donation.

The Scotsman said structural repairs at the historic site will begin this
August.

(source: United Press International)












GERMANY:

VISIT TO BUCHENWALD----'Obama in the Historic Steps of His Family'


US President Barack Obama visits the former concentration camp Buchenwald
on Friday. Memorial site director Volkhard Knigge told SPIEGEL ONLINE that
the visit has symbolic importance far beyond the borders of Germany.


SPIEGEL ONLINE: In geo-political terms, Barack Obama's visit to Germany
seems to be little more than a stopover. What is the significance of the
US president's visit to Buchenwald?

Volkhard Knigge: One cannot see Barack Obama's speech in Cairo and his
visit to Buchenwald as two completely separate events. In Cairo, the
president attempted to initiate a new, real dialogue between the West and
the Muslim world. In this context, the visit to Buchenwald signifies that
this dialogue is meant very seriously, but that it should not be
misinterpreted as appeasement of anti-Semitism, racism and dictatorships.
With his visit, Obama is also acknowledging the self-critical culture of
remembrance in Germany. It underscores the fact that these sites of 20th
century crimes against humanity continue to convey an essential message.
This is especially true of Buchenwald, because it was also a center of
European resistance to the Nazis and to occupation.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Obama is also walking in the historic steps of his family.
His great-uncle Charles Payne, who was 20 at the time, was among the US
troops that reached Ohrdruf, one of the Buchenwald satellite camps. What
did Payne and the other soldiers find when they arrived here on April 6,
1945?


Knigge: Payne and the other soldiers saw a camp full of murdered people.
The parade ground was covered with bodies of inmates who had been shot and
stacks of corpses were still burning. There were bodies in many of the
camp's buildings, and there were also some open mass graves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The satellite camp had not been in existence for very long
at the time.

Knigge: Ohrdruf was established in November 1944, about 30 kilometers (19
miles) west of the main camp, with the sole purpose of building an
underground headquarters for Hitler and his government. There was
absolutely no consideration for human life. It was one of the most
horrific satellite camps in the Buchenwald system. In the short period
leading up to its liberation in April 1945, more than 10,000 of the camp's
30,000 inmates lost their lives.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ohrdruf was the very first camp reached by the Western
Allies. This must have made it all the more shocking for the liberators.

Knigge: Obama's great-uncle was one of the soldiers who, as a
representative of the Western world, first came into direct contact with
Nazi atrocities. They were certainly aware of the Nazi extermination
camps, since the Red Army had already liberated camps in the East. But
there is a big difference between hearing about such crimes and standing
in front of the bodies. The shock was so great that General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Western Allied forces, quickly
rushed to Ohrdruf. It was so great that politicians, church
representatives and other delegations traveled to Ohrdruf from everywhere
to witness the Nazi crimes firsthand.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this why Buchenwald played such an important role in
shaping the American view of Nazi Germany?

Knigge: Buchenwald made the horror visible. This place reawakened the
world's conscience. It also made it clear to American soldiers, once
again, why it was necessary to wage this war. Later on, the photos and
documentary films that were made here helped shape our historical memory,
particularly after 1990 when East Germany came to an end and the West
gained unrestricted access to Buchenwald once again. To this day, every
major historical exhibition in the United States begins with images from
Ohrdruf and Buchenwald.


SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did the Americans ever view Buchenwald as a sign of
triumph over the Nazis?

Knigge: No, never as a sign of triumph, but as irrefutable, material proof
of Nazi crimes, and of everything Nazism was -- a racist social system
with an extreme compulsion to conquer and exterminate.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will Barack Obama see in Buchenwald?

Knigge: The president finds it important to visit the key sites of crimes
and the places that represent all of Buchenwald's victims. We will go to
the parade ground, where the memorial to all groups of victims at
Buchenwald was built in 1995. It was there that every inmate had to begin
and end his day. From the parade ground, we will go to the Small Camp,
once the most hellish place at Buchenwald, where thousands were squeezed
into horrible barracks, and where 903 children were saved, hidden by the
resistance movement under the eyes of the SS. The US president will also
visit the former crematorium, but without the public. It is one of the
most extreme pieces of material proof of Nazi atrocities and the technical
efficiency with which these crimes were committed. And it is the
representative monument to all those who, as the prisoners would say, went
through the smoke.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Eli Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was
liberated from the Buchenwald Camp as an adolescent, will accompany Obama.
Holocaust survivors Bertrand Herz and Floral Barrier will likewise greet
the president. When they were liberated, the inmates swore an oath to
destroy Nazism and support the creation of a new world of peace. Will
Obama hear this oath?

Knigge: He knows about the oath. The Buchenwald survivors see Obama's
visit as a very special and unexpected acknowledgement. What counts for
them is his family history, which is directly related to the liberation
and the safeguarding of their survival after surviving Buchenwald. And
what counts for them is Obama the politician, who they see as being
closely tied to their legacy, the legacy that is articulated in this oath.
It is an oath that signifies a complete commitment to indivisible human
dignity and human rights as the basis of any civilization.


Interview conducted by Philip Wittrock.

(source: Spiegel Online)


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

At a Holocaust Site, Obama Calls Denial 'Hateful'


President Obama traveled to the former concentration camp of Buchenwald
Friday, laid a single white rose at a memorial to the dead and, returning
emotionally to a theme he addressed in a major speech in Cairo on
Thursday, criticized those who denied the Holocaust.

"To this day there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened,
a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful," the
President said, echoing his words in Cairo in an address that reached for
what he called a new beginning in the relationship between the United
States and the Muslim world.

By visiting Buchenwald on Friday, he also underscored what he termed in
Cairo America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel. Mr. Obama has been pushing
hard during this trip for a two-state solution in the Middle East, and the
administration has angered some in Israel by taking a tough stand against
Israel's expanding existing settlements.

In his visit to the former concentration camp, Mr. Obama said the site was
the "ultimate rebuke" to those who deny or seek to minimize the Holocaust.

"These sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time."

"More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what
happened have not diminished. I will not forget what I have seen here
today."

The camp where 56,000 people died also bears a particular significance for
Germans, embodying the contradiction of a civilized societys descent into
organized barbarism. The camp sits just a few miles outside the city of
Weimar, one of the country's leading cultural centers and home to the
great German writers Goethe and Schiller.

With his hands behind his back and a thoughtful expression on his face,
Mr. Obama walked through the former concentration camp, flanked by
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace prize winner,
writer and Holocaust survivor, who survived a death march from Auschwitz
to Buchenwald and was at the camp when it was liberated in April 1945.

Mr. Wiesel spoke movingly about the death of his father a few months
before the liberation of the camp, calling the visit "a way of coming and
visit my father's grave. But he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in
the sky, which has become in those years the largest cemetery of the
Jewish people."

Mr. Obama claims a personal connection to the concentration camp. His
great-uncle, Charles Payne, helped liberate a sub-camp of Buchenwald
called Ohrdruf.

Mrs. Merkel, who like Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Obama laid a long-stemmed white
rose in memory of the dead, spoke of the German responsibility "to do
everything possible that something like that never happens again."

She added, "I bow before all the victims."

Earlier the two leaders met for talks in Dresden, where President Obama
declared that "the moment is now" to press for a Middle East settlement.
He put Israelis and Palestinians on notice that it was up to them to make
difficult compromises.

President Obama said he was dispatching his top Middle East envoy, George
Mitchell, to the region next week to follow up on issues raised during the
Cairo speech. Time was of the essence, he said, for Israelis and the
Palestinians to step up their efforts.

"The moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth,
which is that each side is going to have to make some difficult
compromises," Mr. Obama said. "We have to reject violence. The
Palestinians have to get serious about creating a security environment
that is required for Israel to feel confident. Israelis are going to have
to take some difficult steps."

"Ultimately, the United States can't force peace upon the parties," he
added, "but what we've tried to do is to clear away some of the
misunderstandings so we can at least begin to have frank dialogue."

On other issues, the two leaders said they would work closely on trying to
persuade Iran to abandon what the West fears is a nuclear program to build
an atomic bomb but which Tehran says is for civilian purposes.

But there was no indication of major progress on Washingtons desire for
Europeans to accept prisoners from Guantnamo Bay as Mr. Obama moves to
redeem a pledge to close the detention center in Cuba.

"I don't anticipate its going to be resolved in the next two or three
months," Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama's one-day visit to Germany is laden with symbolism. Dresden, in
the former East Germany, is for many Germans, a symbol of the suffering of
civilians. Germans perished in large numbers when the British and American
air forces fire-bombed the city in February 1945, only months before the
end of World War II. Military experts still debate whether the onslaught
was necessary with the German Army already in retreat.

The bombing destroyed the baroque Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady,
which the president visited Friday. The church was not rebuilt until after
the fall of Communism. Some $218 million, more than half of it private
donations, was spent on reconstructing it, and the new church was
consecrated in 2005.

Mrs. Merkel suggested Friday that the city symbolized the progress Germany
has made since the collapse of the former East Germany.

The meeting between her and Mr. Obama renewed speculation about how
friendly they really were beyond the diplomatic smiles and handshakes.

But Mr. Obama dismissed the suggestion that his relationship with
Chancellor Merkel was strained. Asked by a German television reporter
about it, he playfully admonished the press.

"Stop it, all of you," Mr. Obama said. "We have more than enough problems
out there without manufacturing problems."

He smiled and looked over to his German counterpart, saying: "It is a
great pleasure to be with my friend once again, who I always seek out for
intelligent analysis and straight talk."

Indeed, Mr. Obama said on Friday: "Germany is a close friend and a
critical partner to the United States, and I believe that friendship is
going to be essential not only for our two countries but for the world if
we are to make progress on some of the critical issues that we face,
whether it's national security issues or economic issues or issues that
affect the globe like climate change."

Specifically, he alluded to the global financial crisis, which created
major differences between the United States and Germany. Mr. Obama said it
was "going to be very important to coordinate between Europe and the
United States as we move to strengthen our financial regulatory systems."

"We affirmed that we are not going to engage in protectionism. And, as all
of us do, we have to make sure we keep our borders open and that companies
can move back and forth between the United States and Europe in providing
goods and services to our respective countries."

(source: New York Times)

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




Seminary closed by Nazis graduates rabbis once again


Two Orthodox rabbis were ordained by the reestablished Hildesheimer
Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin this week, for the first time since the
seminary was closed by the Nazis in 1938.

At a ceremony broadcast live on German television, Zsolt Balla and Avraham
Radbil became the first rabbis to graduate from the seminary, which
historians consider the cradle of Modern Orthodoxy.

"Sixty years ago, who would have thought that we'd be standing here
today?" said Charlotte Knobloch, chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews
in Germany, at Tuesday's ordination ceremony, which took place in Munich's
Ohel Jacob synagogue. "I myself wouldn't have thought it would be possible
... It's a small miracle."

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble said it was a "moving" and
"magical" event. "In the very city where the Nazis' reign of terror
started, we are able to celebrate that Jewish life thrives again in
Germany," he said in his speech, which also surveyed the history of the
legendary seminary.

Rabbi Azaria Hildesheimer, whose great-grandfather founded the original
seminary in 1869, also addressed the new rabbis.

Balla, 28, was born in Budapest and came to the German capital in 2003 to
study at Yeshivas Beis Zion, which is sponsored by the Ronald Lauder
Foundation and a part of the new seminary. He will lead outreach programs
for the yeshiva in Berlin and serve as a "weekend rabbi" in Leipzig,
Germany, the same city where his fellow graduate lived after emigrating
from his native Ukraine at the age of 12. Radbil, 25, who later this year
will also conclude his psychology studies, will become Rabbi Yaron
Engelmayer's assistant in Cologne.

The new Hildesheimer seminary, founded in 2005 and supervised by Dean
Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu, the former head of London's Orthodox rabbinical
court, comprises three years of full-time study focusing on Talmud and
religious law. The seven students currently enrolled there are also tasked
with preparing Shabbat programming for small Jewish communities, writing
articles for Jewish newspapers and giving lectures.

While the seminary's ordination is recognized by the Conference of
European Rabbis and the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, critics
said it is absurd for the new program to compare itself with the original,
which was known for producing influential and erudite scholars.

Radbil and Balla are not the first rabbis to be ordained in post-Holocaust
Germany, however. The Abraham Geiger College, a Potsdam-based Reform
seminary, ordained three rabbis in 2006, and Chabad-Lubavitch says its
Yeshiva Gedola Berlin has ordained 16 students. Unlike Hildesheimer's
graduates, however, Chabad graduates are not specifically trained to serve
the German community.

(source: Ha'aretz)




ISRAEL:

Photos of French Holocaust victims added to Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority,
signed a cooperation agreement with Memorial de la Shoah in Paris
yesterday that provides the Israeli institution with photographs of many
of France's Holocaust victims.

The agreement will enable Yad Vashem and the French Shoah Memorial - the
largest research and information center in Europe dealing with the history
of the Jews' genocide - to gather documents jointly and exchange copies of
documents accumulated in each other's archives over the past 50 years. The
document exchanges will enable each institution to increase its
collection.

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev and Shoah Memorial director Jacques Fredj
signed the agreement.

Pursuant to the agreement, Yad Vashem has already received some 7,000
photographs of Jews who were murdered in Auschwitz. This doubles the
number of pictures of French Jewish Holocaust victims in the institution's
archives and will enable it to attach a photograph to many Holocaust
victims' Pages of Testimony.

The photographs have been scanned and are now available online in the
Holocaust victims' database on Yad Vashem's Internet site.

Yad Vashem's database contains 78,000 names of French Holocaust victims,
including many gathered by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, a member of the
committee that runs the Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah. Some 26,000
of the victims have had Pages of Testimony filled in by relatives.
However, the institution previously had photographs of only about 6,000 of
them.

(source: Ha'aretz)





SLOVENIA/AUSTRIA:

Slovenian, Austrian Presidents Mark Nazi Camp Anniversary

The presidents of Slovenia and Austria, Danilo Tuerk and Heinz Fischer,
laid wreaths on Friday at a memorial to internees from the Mauthausen
concentration camp who were brought to the Ljubelj mountain pass by the
Nazis to build a tunnel between Slovenia and Austria.

(source: STA - Slovenska Tiskovna Agencija)






ENGLAND:

Nazi souvenirs on sale in London ahead of D-Day anniversary


Nazi souvenirs glorifying an infamous Panzer commander who massacred
scores of British soldiers are being sold in London in time for the 65th
anniversary of D-Day.

They include a grossly offensive T-Shirt showing SS-Hauptsturmfhrer
Michael Wittmann climbing into his Tiger tank in June 1944.

At the time the ruthless Nazi had just destroyed as many as 15 British
tanks and 13 armoured personnel carriers in less than half an hour.

The PanzerAce fan club, based in north west London, is selling the 13.99
shirts along with a long list of other momentoes to a fighting force known
for committing some of the most heinous crimes in military history.

As well as Britain, all are being distributed across European countries
including Germany and France , with local police fearing neo-Nazis may try
to wear the T-shirts during the June 6th D-Day anniversary commemorations
on Saturday.

A spokesman for police in the French city of Caen - objective of British
troops on D-Day - said: "We consider such souvenirs to be grossly
inflammatory and will move to arrest anyone caught wearing them in
public."

The PanzerAce souvenirs also include CDs of Panzer and Waffen SS marching
songs, as well as pint glasses commemorating such barbarous divisions as
Das Reich ("The Empire") and Totenkopf ("Death's Head").

Das Reich atrocities included the murders of 642 French civilians in the
village of Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10th 1944.

Wittman was a member of the notorious Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, which
was also found guilty of numerous war crimes during the Nuremburg Trials
at the end of the Second World War.

Yet PanzerAce sales literature describes Wittman as a matchless warrior,
who like many others in the Waffen-SS has been posthumously tarred with
the sweeping brush wielded at the Nuremburg court.

The Fan Club is run by Rick Joshua, a self-styled amateur historian who
describes himself as The 'Panzerkommandant' (Panzer Commander).

He and his French girlfriend Caroline Godart live together in a suburban
house in West Drayton, greater London.

Joshua, who also collects stamps and likes watching rugby, is obsessed
with the Waffen SS, and Wittmann in particular.

As a student in the 1990s he frequently produced papers defending the
elite Nazi units, writing: "To simply cast them aside as criminals is as
much an insult to one's own intelligence as it is to the many brave men
who perished wearing the colours of the Waffen-SS."

"Many of those who joined had been members of a lost generation, young men
in a Germany that had been subjected to systematic humiliation by the
Allied powers."

In numerous recent web postings about Wittmann, Joshua pays particular
attention to Nazi victories against the British.

Wittman's record-breaking attack on Villers-Bocage, in Normandy, northern
France , decimated the ranks of the 4th County of London Yeomanry , part
of the 7th Armoured Division.

Glorying in the slaughter perpetrated by Wittmann, Joshua writes: "In what
was one of the most astonishing feats of arms during the war, he had more
or less single-handedly prevented the British advance."

It turned Wittmann into a national hero in Adolf Hitler's Germany , with
the Fuhrer summoning him to Berlin a few days later to personally present
him with the Swords to his Knights Cross medal.

Wittmann was finally killed on August 8th 1944 after being ambushed by a
British and Canadian force.

The Sherman tank shells which destroyed Wittmann's Panzer were fired by
20-year-old Joe Ekins, a gunner in the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry.

Now 85, Mr Ekins lives in Rushden, Northamptonshire.

Wittmann is buried in the Soldatenfriedhof (military cemetery) at La Cambe
in Normandy, near Bayeux.

Prince Charles, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, American President Barack
Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will all be in Normandy on
Saturday to commemorate the sacrifice of thousands of Allied troops who
poured into Nazi-occupied France on June 6th 1944, heralding final victory
in the Second World War.

Defending the Nazi souvenirs, Mr Joshua said: "They are of great
historical interest."

(source: Daily Mail)