June 12



GERMANY:

The day I held a sobbing WWII medic in my arms

Two-star general credits CNN's online reporting in preserving WWII legacy

CNN's Wayne Drash filed series of reports in recent months on slave camp
soldiers

350 U.S. soldiers were held at a Nazi slave labor camp in 1945

The Army had never recognized the men until last weekend


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents and
producers share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories
behind the events.


I'll never forget holding World War II medic Tony Acevedo in my arms. He
wept and convulsed for more than 10 minutes, his body constricting and
tightening in a way I'd never seen before. "I'm sorry," he said,
repeating, "I'm sorry. I want to say more, but I can't."

I held his hand and hugged him until he calmed. I had asked what I thought
was a simple question. "When I say the name Erwin Metz, what comes to your
mind?"

That's when the demons of 1945 took over.

Metz was one of the Nazi commanders who headed a slave labor camp known as
Berga an der Elster, where 350 U.S. soldiers -- 80 of whom had been
targeted for being Jewish -- were beaten, starved and forced to work in
tunnels at a secret V-2 rocket factory. They worked 10 to 12 hour days
with only 400 calories of food, mostly bread made from sawdust. More than
100 soldiers died at the camp or on a forced death march of more than 200
miles.

Other Berga survivors had described Metz: "A real bastard." "Butcher of
the Earth." They said he talked with a high-pitched lisp. Behind his back,
the soldiers called him Donald Duck.

But he wreaked hell on the men. He shot one soldier, Morton Goldstein,
through the head, execution-style, according to the survivors. Acevedo
described seeing Metz dump ice water on one emaciated soldier. The soldier
died of shock moments later.

Acevedo catalogued the atrocities in a diary he kept hidden in his pants,
using a Sheaffer fountain pen to record what he saw all around. When the
soldiers were on their forced death march, Acevedo asked to use his pen
for a tracheotomy to save a soldier named George Buddeski. Metz refused.
Flip through the pages of Acevedo's diary

"You're going to kill him then," Acevedo responded. Metz grabbed a rifle
from a guard and cracked the young medic across his face. Acevedo suffered
permanent nerve damage from the blow.

Buddeski died April 13, 1945, on the death march on what the soldiers call
Hell's Highway. The soldiers learned of another death that day: President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "Your Jew president has died," the Nazis said
mockingly.

There, in the middle of Germany, the American soldiers bowed their heads.
"We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul," Acevedo's diary
says. Amid the chaos and death all around them, these men -- these
soldiers who suffered so much -- took the time to stop and pray for their
president.

When CNN first reported Acevedo's story in November, I had no idea it
would lead to what I witnessed this weekend: The U.S. Army reversing
course on six decades of silence and recognizing the Berga soldiers for
what they went through.

Don't Miss
Army honors slave soldiers as 'national treasures'
In Depth: Scream Bloody Murder
Tony Acevedo's log (PDF)
Slave soldiers reunite after 64 years
It's always been a touchy subject for the Army. The U.S. government in
1948 commuted the death sentences of Metz and his superior, Hauptmann
Ludwig Merz. The men walked free in the 1950s, one of dozens of convicted
war criminals whose sentences were commuted as part of an effort to
bolster Germany, which was facing the threat of Soviet expansion.

In explaining its decision on the Berga commanders, the War Department
said, "Metz, though guilty of a generally cruel course of conduct toward
prisoners, was not directly responsible for the death of any prisoners
except one who was killed during the course of an attempt to escape."
Read the War Department's explanation for commuting their sentences

That prisoner was Goldstein, the one shot through the head.

When you read that document, it doesn't sit too easy. The government
excuses the killing of one soldier. Berga soldiers will tell you they were
never called to testify against Metz or Merz. They say they could've told
of many other atrocities.

When Metz and Merz were freed, the survivors felt the Army betrayed the
war ethos of "leave no soldier behind." They eventually got on with their
lives. Many went on to the top of their professions. They're all the most
patriotic Americans you'll ever meet.

As the survivors reached their 70s and 80s, many began wondering why the
government still refused to recognize them. It nagged them. It angered
some of them.

No ranking Pentagon official had described Berga as a "slave labor camp."

Heading into last weekend, the six Berga survivors present knew a two-star
general was being sent to meet with them. Many were skeptical: What can a
general do at this point to make us feel better? Surely, a two-star won't
call it a "slave labor camp" after all this time. Nah, he'll toe the
company line.

These were men who'd been disappointed before. They didn't want to set
expectations too high this time.

But there at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida, something magical
transpired.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles did a sit-down interview with me, while
six Berga survivors -- Samuel Fahrer, 86; Morton Brooks, 83; Sidney
Lipson, 85; Peter Iosso, 83; Wallace Carden, 84; and Edward Slotkin, 84 --
watched.

"It wasn't a prison camp. It was a slave labor camp," Boles said. Watch
the general set the record straight after six decades

I was stunned in that moment. I'll even admit I got choked up. I knew
history had just been made, the legacy of the Berga soldiers preserved for
all time. The men looked on stoically and I knew what they were thinking:
"Drash, pull yourself together! We got a two-star in our presence!"

I was thinking about all that transpired in the last eight months.

I thought about Bernard "Jack" Vogel and Izzy Cohen, who were forced to
stand without food and water for days, pushed to their deaths. Cohen was a
32-year-old father of two young children. I had met with his 90-year-old
wife, Florence, and their daughter, Nomi, months before.

Florence is a diminutive woman, the epitome of class and grace. She told
me a story I'll never forget. When Izzy left for war, he kissed his family
goodbye at a train station in California. He looked at her and said,
"Whatever happens happens." Those were the last words he ever spoke to
her.

When she was notified Izzy was a prisoner of war on March 16, 1945, one
relative shouted, "That's just like Izzy to take the easy way out of war."
Izzy Cohen died three weeks later, a victim of the Holocaust. Tears filled
Florence's eyes as she spoke. She changed the family name, so her son
would never be targeted as a Jew.

I thought about Martin Vogel, the brother of the man who died with Izzy.
Martin called one day in November, crying his eyes out. "Are you the one
who did the story on the medic, Tony Acevedo?" he said, struggling for
words. "My brother is the one who died in his arms."

Martin Vogel adored his older brother. They were best friends. He entered
the Army so he could be just like his brother. They were 19 and 17. He had
searched for decades for answers to Bernard's death. "A month doesn't go
by that it doesn't come up in the course of my own thoughts," he said.
"But to me, it's always there."

At the time his brother died such a horrific death, Martin Vogel was just
a few hundred miles away. He was guarding a POW camp inside Germany where
U.S. troops treated their Nazi captives under the Geneva Conventions. To
this day, Martin, now 82, can't speak about his brother without crying.

More than a dozen other families of Berga victims have reached out. I've
listened to each one and put them in touch with Acevedo for answers about
their loved ones.

I'm not the first to report on Berga. Authors Mitchell Geoffrey Bard,
Flint Whitlock and Roger Cohen have written books on it. The late Charles
Guggenheim made a documentary about Berga.

But what happened in recent months, I can only attribute to the power of
online media and the ease of access to communicate. You can scroll through
Acevedo's diary and read the War Department document explaining why Metz
and Merz were set free. Millions of you read the pieces, e-mailed them
around and rallied around these weathered war heroes. It took on a life of
its own.

Hundreds of you lobbied Rep. Joe Baca, D-California, and Rep. Spencer
Bachus, R-Alabama. The two congressmen then pressed Army Secretary Pete
Geren to recognize the soldiers.

It was humbling when Boles, the two-star general, told me that my
reporting and my colleagues on CNN television preserved the men's legacy,
culminating with the Army recognizing them. That feels mighty good.

It was even more humbling talking with the fellas. They all survived the
Battle of the Bulge, when a million young men went head-to-head on the
battlefield. It was an honor to see the six survivors present in Orlando
receive flags flown over the Pentagon in their honor; Samuel Fahrer was
awarded the Bronze Star, one of the nation's highest medals.

"Just as they never left their fallen comrades, we will never leave them,"
Boles said. "You were good soldiers and you were there for your nation."

I wished the other Berga survivors were there, especially Acevedo.


But Acevedo didn't make the trip. His wife is ill. If he was going to
leave her side, he felt the right thing would be to get honored in
Washington. A soldier with pride. A medic to the end.

My final message is to my generation and the next. Don't be so quick to
shove grandpa and grandma into a nursing home. Sit down with them. Listen
to them. Hear their stories. The greatest generation. They're cut from a
different cloth and we're losing them too fast.

(source: Wayne Drash, CNN)




THE NETHERLANDS:

Childhood friend recalls tragic diarist Anne Frank


Anne Frank would have celebrated her 80th birthday this week

Frank, 15, died at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland

Her diary is one of the world's mostly widely-read books

Like Frank, Eva Schloss and her family fled from Nazi persecution of the
Jews


She told stories, flirted outrageously with boys and was constantly
changing her hairstyle.

Anne Frank hid with her family in a secret room at her father Otto Frank's
office in Amsterdam.

It could be the description of almost any young girl growing up in
Europe. But this is how Eva Schloss remembers her childhood friend Anne
Frank, who had not died in a Nazi concentration camp, would have
celebrated her 80th birthday this week.

Schloss described Frank, whose account of hiding from Jewish persecution
in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is one of the world's mostly widely-read books,
as a spunky young schoolgirl with a passion for storytelling that often
got her into trouble.

"She got her diary in 1942, so obviously her father knew she was
interested in writing and I know she told stories," said Schloss.

"She talked a lot and she was called Mrs Quack Quack. Very often she used
to write hundreds of lines [at school] of 'I'm not going to talk so much,'
and so on -- but obviously she had a lot to tell."

In some ways the two friends lived parallel lives -- but tragically they
had very different outcomes. Watch more about Schloss' story

Schloss and Frank both came from Jewish families who fled to Holland to
escape the wave of anti-Semitism spreading across Europe as the Nazis rose
to power in Germany ahead of the Second World War.

But while Schloss was more of an introvert, Frank loved the limelight.
Schloss said: "I was actually quite shy and she was the center of
attention. We had steps where we sat, and she had a crowd of children
around her.

"She was a big flirt -- she loved boys. She was always showing us who was
her boyfriend at that particular time. She was always interested in her
clothes. Her style, she always changed it. Sometimes she had curls, then
she had straight hair."

Schloss says they were unaware of the full scale of what was going on
around them as war escalated across Europe, placing their lives in
increasing jeopardy.

"Our parents really protected us so there was no talk about the horrendous
things which happened.

"You couldn't go out anymore after 8 o'clock, but for a 11 to 12 year old
it didn't matter so much. Or not going to the cinema -- we were upset
about those little things which we couldn't do, but we really didn't
really take it seriously at that time."

Like Frank, Schloss was also forced into hiding when the Nazis took
control of Holland.

Frank hid with her family in a secret room at her father Otto Frank's
office. But Schloss and her family had to split up. Schloss stayed with
her mother while her father and brother hid elsewhere. She and her mother
moved around, staying in seven different hiding places over a two-year
period.

Eventually both families were betrayed and were sent to concentration
camps, where Frank died at the age of 15.

Schloss said: "My father and brother were betrayed by a Dutch nurse who
was a double agent, and all four of us were arrested and taken to the
headquarters to be interrogated.

"I didn't know anything, which was a good thing. So eventually they
realized this and they gave up torturing me. Within two days we were put
on a transport to Auschwitz."

Of her family, only Schloss and her mother survived Auschwitz, one of the
most notorious concentration camps, located in southern Poland.

Today Schloss, who has just celebrated her own 80th birthday, has a
husband, three daughters and five grandchildren.

Schloss says it took her decades to rebuild her life, with the help of
Frank's father Otto, who also survived incarceration in a concentration
camp.

She met Otto in August 1945, when he showed her Frank's diary.

Schloss said: "He read a few passages but he always burst into tears. It
took me 20 years. I was really unhappy, but it was Otto who came to our
apartment to talk to us, and he helped me a lot. He had lost everybody.

"Her book, she [Frank] made people aware of what happened. There are many
messages. She believed in the goodness of mankind.

"People always ask me, what she would have done. I guess we will never
know. But I guess she would have gone into politics -- she was a fighter.
It's a pity, but also -- maybe her diary would have never been published."

(source: CNN)


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


Holocaust museum slaying exposes the hate within


When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was being conceived and
built in the 1980s and 1990s, some critics questioned the need for such a
facility in this country. After all, there was no Holocaust here.

There are many reasons why that skepticism was misplaced. The museum in
Washington, D.C., was built so that new generations would learn of the
horrors of Nazi Germany, so that older ones would never forget them and so
that anti-Semites could not deny them. And it was built to honor the many
victims of the Holocaust and to research its causes.

Another answer was provided Wednesday when a deranged, 88-year-old
anti-Semitic gunman opened fire at the museum, killing a security guard
before being critically wounded himself, police said.

A burst of rage from a geriatric assassin hardly matches Adolf Hitler's
systematic slaughter of 11 million people, most of them Jews. But it is a
reminder of how pervasive hate remains in dark corners of America, where
the elections of the first African-American president and the first black
Republican Party chairman feed anger and paranoia on white supremacy
websites.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights law firm,
identified 926 hate groups in the USA in its most recent study this
spring.The numbers have been steadily edging up since 2000, when it
counted 602. The rise is driven, the group says, by the intense reaction
in some quarters to an influx of illegal immigrants.

The hate groups include neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan organizations and several
other categories. By the center's estimate, roughly 100,000 people
participate on a single Internet forum for white supremacists called
Stormfront.org.

This is, of course, a tiny fraction of the people involved in such groups
when bigotry was openly tolerated and segregation was imposed in Southern
states by force of law.

Even so, the shooting shows how bigotry continues to fester in the
shadows, only to emerge in a sudden act of violence. And it is reason to
be wary more so now that the Internet gives formerly isolated racists,
whether individuals or small groups, a means to stoke one another's
smoldering anger. With the ready availability of weapons, even a single
person can do enormous harm.

There is something terribly self-reinforcing about someone killing at a
place designed to honor those who have died. It is almost as if the
accused killer, a convicted criminal named James von Brunn, who has spent
decades writing and publishing racist and anti-Semitic material and whose
hatred burned late in life, wanted to make a point that people like him
need to commit violence to get noticed.

(source: Opinion, USA Today)





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


New York exhibit explores France under Nazi occupation


A landmark exhibition on Vichy France has opened at the New York Public
Library. Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life under
Nazi Occupation, guest-curated by award-winning historian Robert O.
Paxton, runs until July 25 at the library's headquarters at Fifth Avenue
and 42nd Street.

This rich and complex show explores one of the saddest chapters in the
history of France, the period between 1940 and 1944 when France succumbed
to the armies of the Third Reich.

Using rare journals, maps, letters and photos including the original
manuscript of Irene Nemirovsky's bestselling novel Suite Francaise - the
exhibition probes some of the same issues that Paxton examined in his
groundbreaking 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944.

Paxton, one of the first historians to broach the issue of French
collaboration with the Nazis, was awarded the French Legion dhonneur in
April.

Free public tours and a series of films made in France during the Nazi
occupation accompany the exhibition. Admission is free.

(source: Los Angeles Times)