June 20


USA//NEW YORK:

Judge Slams MoMA, Guggenheim on Secret Holocaust Art Agreement

A memo by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff lambasting a secret settlement
involving New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum has become the talk of the Holocaust restitution community.

The museum's announced a confidential pact with a German historian named
Julius H. Schoeps and his relatives on Feb. 2, the day a trial was to
begin to determine the ownership of two Picasso paintings. Seven weeks
later, in a six-page written judicial opinion tinged with sarcasm, Rakoff
questioned the motives of both sides.

The museums initiated the legal action "to clear their names (or so they
said)," Rakoff, 65, wrote.

As for Schoeps and family, "for reasons wholly unexplained and seemingly
no more compelling than concealing the amount of money going into their
pockets, they remain opposed to making the settlement public," he wrote.

Thaddeus Stauber, a Los Angeles-based lawyer with Nixon Peabody LLP, said
Rakoff's March 23 written opinion represents a rare public rebuke by a
judge to participants in a confidential art agreement. Stauber
successfully represented the Toledo Museum of Art and the Detroit
Institute of Arts in a 2006 restitution case.

"He's using the mechanism of a written order to take them out to the
backyard and browbeat them," Stauber said.

The judge said that "it baffles the mind and troubles the conscience that
Schoeps and his relatives would believe that it's in the public interest
to keep the settlement secret, given that they repeatedly sought to clothe
themselves as effectively representatives of victims of one of the most
criminal political regimes in history," he wrote.

Sparking Debate

Stauber said the judge's condemnation will spur discussion about
transparency at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague later this
month. The event is a forum for scholars, museum officials and
auction-house staffers to debate legal issues.

In a joint statement prepared for Bloomberg News, Glenn Lowry, MoMA's
director, and Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong said that the museums
take restitution issues extremely seriously.

"Our provenance research made clear from the beginning that the museums
are the proper owners of these works, and that the claims had no merit.
It was a prudent decision -- we settled simply to avoid the costs of
prolonged litigation, and to ensure the public continues to have access
to these important paintings."

John J. Byrne Jr., a lawyer for Schoeps, said in an interview that "we do
not believe we have shortchanged history."

Aid to Victims

Byrne said the case dramatically expands the potential opportunities of
Holocaust victims and their heirs to recover property wrongfully taken.

He cited a preliminary Jan. 27 ruling by Rakoff. According to Byrne, it
said that victims of Nazi persecution have a viable judicial remedy to
reclaim their property without establishing that Nazi authorities seized
it directly or ordered the sale.

In 2007, lawyers for Schoeps contacted MoMA and the Guggenheim to demand
the return of the Picassos. They said the works were sold before World War
II under duress from Nazi persecution according to court records.

The 1906 "Boy Leading a Horse," now at MoMA, and the Guggenheims 1900 "Le
Moulin de la Galette" had been in the private collection of Paul von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker who died in 1935. Schoeps's
grandmother was a sister of von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

Valued at $150 Million

Both paintings were later acquired by the museums and are highlights of
the collections. Dealers said MoMA's Picasso is valued at over $100
million and the Guggenheim's could command more than $50 million.

The museums jointly filed a complaint in federal court in 2007, asking
that the courts affirm their ownership. They argued that the paintings
were not sold on account of duress; instead they were given by von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to his wife and were sold by 1935 to Galerie
Thannhauser, which had branches in Berlin and Lucerne, Switzerland,
according to the museums' complaint.

Last year, in a motion to dismiss the complaint, Schoeps accused MoMA and
the Guggenheim of being "knowing possessors of art coerced from Jewish
victims in Nazi Germany." He said they employed "blitzkrieg tactics
against Holocaust victims and their heirs" calculated to "deflect
attention from the many serious breaches of fiduciary duty" that the
museums committed by keeping the paintings.

'Without Merit'

The museums originally insisted that Schoeps's claim was "without merit,"
and the museums were prepared to have all factual and legal issues
resolved by the court. The museums "are and remain committed to
transparency in their actions," their lead lawyer, Evan Davis, wrote in a
Jan. 15, 2009, letter to the judge, according to Rakoff.

After the settlement was announced, at Rakoff's urging, the museums said
they were prepared to make the provisions public, according to the memo.
Schoeps refused.

Rakoff wrote that the confidentiality is "against the public interest and
a troubling reversal of the parties' previously stated positions on this
issue."

"It is hard to see why institutions that proclaim their public status and
that seek to receive public support should view themselves as not owing a
similar obligation to New York City or state agencies that are accountable
to the public," he said.

Rakoff placed a sealed copy of the agreement in the court docket in the
hope, he wrote, that Schoeps "may yet move to unseal it."

The New York Times reported on Rakoff's memo the day it was filed.

'Harsh' Opinion

Stephen G. Crane, a retired New York judge and mediator, said the written
opinion is "harsh and seems somewhat unbalanced."

"He doesn't recognize that there is a public interest in settling civil
disputes and another public interest in enforcing confidentiality in the
mediation of disputes," he said.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said a press challenge to
the confidentiality of the settlement could take years and would likely
fail, based on precedent in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New
York.

"I think it's bad public policy to seal the settlement," she said. "You
can tell Judge Rakoff really, really wants to release this stuff."

(source: Bloomberg News)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust denial in Israel needs urgent attention


The last place one might expect to find Holocaust deniers is in Israel.
Yet a new University of Haifa survey shows that an astonishing 40.5
percent of Israeli Arabs say the Holocaust did not happen.

The finding is in the latest index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel, an
annual survey conducted by Prof. Sammy Smooha since 2003. When he first
posed the Holocaust question in 2006, 28 percent of Arab citizens doubted
its authenticity.

Holocaust denial is prevalent across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Irans
regime, especially President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made questioning the
Holocaust a centerpiece of its ideology, rarely missing an opportunity to
proclaim falsehoods about one of the most thoroughly documented periods in
history.

In Gaza and west bank schools administered by the Palestinian Authority,
the Nazi campaign to murder 6 million Jews still is not taught. Here, as
with the Iranian regime, truth is debunked to advance political goals.

Israeli Arabs, composing 20 percent of the population, do learn about the
Holocaust in school. They live in a country where the premier Holocaust
memorial and remembrance institution, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, is
frequented by school groups and dignitaries visiting from around the
world. And in Israel, anyone is likely to encounter in the public space
older Jews with numbers on their arms. So how can a significant percentage
of Israeli Arabs be so unaware?

"It is important that Arab students visit Yad Vashem to be exposed to the
scale of the tragedy," Ali Haider, co-director of Sikkuy, a leading
nonprofit advocating for greater equality between Israels Jewish and Arab
citizens, told me.

With all the resources readily available in Israel, why even three years
ago did more than a quarter of the countrys Arab citizens doubt the
Holocaust? What underlies the surge of 12 percent reflected in the new
survey? Further, according to Smooha, 37 percent of Arabs with higher
education are among the deniers.

Do they honestly believe the Holocaust is a fraud, or is the reaction
politically motivated?

"It can be seen that some of the frustration experienced by the Arab
citizens from the failure to achieve equality engenders a resistance to
recognizing the Holocaust," said Haider.

The observation has validity for Smooha, who says, "When they say there
was no Holocaust, they are protesting. They are saying 'I am not giving
legitimacy to the Jewish state.'"

The survey also found a significant drop in the percentage of Israeli
Arabs who recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent state, from
81.1 percent in 2003 to 53.7 percent in 2009.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have long been complicated. Arab citizens
enjoy the fruits of Israeli democracy, including the right to vote and
serve in the Knesset. But longstanding economic and social inequities,
notably unequal budgets allocated to Jewish and Arab communities, have
dampened their aspirations of becoming full participants in Israeli
society.

Frustrations are deepened by political developments, including the impasse
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the 2006 Lebanon War, the governments
failure to implement recommendations of the Orr Commission - created in
the wake of the police shootings of a dozen Arab citizens in 2000 - and,
most recently, Avigdor Liebermans Yisrael Beiteinu partys efforts to
introduce legislation aimed at the Arab minority.

Israeli Arabs understandably are unlikely to embrace Hatikvah and other
symbols as the Jewish majority does, but disputing a historical foundation
of the state is troubling.

Refuting Israel's legitimacy by denying the Holocaust must be emphatically
countered. Israels Arab citizens presumably could help. After all, Israeli
Arabs, especially the younger generations who grew up in Israel and are
fluent in Hebrew, are best positioned of any Arabs to understand the
Jewish psyche.

On the other hand, Israeli Arabs know which emotional buttons to press if
some choose to hurt the Jewish majority without using violence. Responding
to a survey questioner is one tactic and, in this instance, led to
headlines emphasizing the hurtful result of the questions on the
Holocaust.

None of this can fully explain or excuse the evidence of Holocaust denial
in Israel's Arab community. Can it be dismissed as a form of protest by a
minority seeking to improve its lot in Israeli society? Or is it more
ominous, a worrisome trend aimed at allying with forces seeking to
delegitimize - and ultimately eliminate - Israel?

The kernel of doubt, if nurtured, can grow into a mighty myth and expand.
What Smoohas survey has revealed needs urgent attention by Arabs and Jews,
working in their own communities as well as together.

(source: Opinion; Kenneth Bandler is director of communications for the
American Jewish Committee--The New Jersey Jewish Standard)






VATICAN CITY:

Vatican slams priest's comments on wartime pope


The Vatican has condemned as "unjustified and inopportune" a claim by a
church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the
beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't
do enough to stop the Holocaust.

The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit who is spearheading Pius' cause,
said at a conference in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI was "impressed" by
warnings that relations with Jews would be ruined if he put the World War
II pontiff on the road to sainthood.

Some historians and Jewish groups say Pius didn't do enough to prevent or
limit the scope of the Holocaust - the murder of 6 million Jews by the
Nazis and their collaborators. The Vatican insists Pius used quiet
diplomacy to try to help Jews.

The ANSA news agency quoted Gumpel as saying that in recent meetings
Jewish leaders had told Benedict that "relations between the Catholic
church and Jews would be definitively and permanently compromised" by
Pius' beatification.

The Vatican quickly issued a statement, saying that it is "exclusively" up
to the pope to decide on a beatification, which is the last step before
sainthood, and that Benedict "must be left completely free in his
considerations and decisions."

"If the pope thinks that the study and the reflection on Pius XII's cause
should still be prolonged, this position must be respected without
interfering with unjustified and inopportune statements," the Vatican
said.

A phone number for Gumpel rang busy Friday evening.

Jewish leaders also criticized the priest's comments, with Rome's Chief
Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni denying that Jews were responsible for any delay.

Pius' beatification "is first of all an internal problem of the church,"
Di Segni told ANSA. "It is clearly a complex matter that divides the
church itself."

Last year, Jewish leaders asked the pope to speed up the opening of the
Vatican's secret archives on Pius' papacy to settle the issue of what he
did or didn't do to save Jews.

According to participants in the October meeting, Benedict said he would
give "serious consideration" to their request to freeze the sainthood
process until the archives were opened.

The Vatican later rejected the request for quick access to the archive,
saying it would take another six years for experts to catalog the 16
million documents on Pius' 1939-1958 papacy.

(source: Associated Press)


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

Vatican promises inquiry on Jewish children adopted by Catholics to escape
Holocaust


The Vatican has responded to a demand by a Jewish group for information
about hundreds of the Jewish children-- mostly orphans-- who were taken
into Catholic families or institutions during World War II to protect them
from the Nazi Holocaust. Yad L'Achim, an organization that opposes any
effort to convert Jews, had asked the Vatican to identify the Jews who
were adopted during that era, and inform them of their Jewish origins.

Archbishop Antonio Franco, replying to the group's request, said that Pope
Benedict was aware of the "very delicate" issue and had already begun
looking into it. The archbishop, who is the apostolic nuncio in Jerusalem,
promised to "provide more precise information and see if an appeal like
the one you propose could be made.

(source: Catholic Culture)






GERMANY:

German prosecutors call for life in Nazi war crime trial


Josef Scheungraber has been on trial since September on charges of
ordering killings in a Tuscan village during World War II in retaliation
for an attack by Italian partisans that killed two German soldiers.
Related ArticlesGermany seeking twilight justice for Nazi criminals


German prosecutors called on Thursday for a 90-year-old to spend the rest
of his days in jail for atrocities committed in Italy in World War II, in
one of the last cases of its kind.

Josef Scheungraber has been on trial since September on charges of
ordering killings in the Tuscan village of Falzano on June 26, 1944 in
retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans that killed two German
soldiers.

The court in Munich, southern Germany, where he is being tried said in a
statement that Scheungraber has been charged with 14 counts of murder and
one of attempted murder.

Scheungraber, at the time the 26-year-old commander of mountain infantry
battalion, Gebirgspionierbataillon 818, was sentenced in absentia in
September 2006 to life imprisonment by an Italian military tribunal in La
Spezia.

A spokeswoman for the Munich court, Margerete Noetzel, told AFP that the
90-year-old, who lived as a free man in Bavaria after the war, was present
on Thursday as prosecution lawyers delivered their final arguments.

Christian Stuenkel, one of three lawyers representing Scheungraber, told
AFP that the defence team would make its final statement when the trial
resumes next Wednesday.

"It depends on what happens with the defence arguments, but assuming
everything runs to plan, there should be a verdict on July 3," the court
spokeswoman said.

Wearing a traditional Bavarian suit with his thick white hair brushed
back, Scheungraber pleaded innocent when the trial kicked off last
September.

Back then he appeared sprightly and alert as he walked with a cane into
the courtroom, although bad hearing meant he had to follow the proceedings
with headphones.

Scheungraber's men are alleged to have shot dead a 74-year-old woman and
three men in the street. They then crammed 11 males aged between 15 and 66
into the ground floor of a farmhouse which they then blew up.

Only the youngest, Gino Massetti, survived, but with serious injuries. Six
decades later and an old man himself, Massetti testified during the
Italian trial.

After the war, Scheungraber lived in Ottobrunn outside Munich, sitting on
the town council and running a furniture shop.

He regularly attended marches with fellow wartime veterans and recently
received an award for municipal service. He has not been in custody during
the trial.

The military tribunal at La Spezia has tried several former Nazis for
crimes committed in Italy during World War II but none of the defendants
have been brought to justice.

In 2005 it handed life sentences to 10 elderly former SS soldiers for the
massacre of 560 Italian civilians including 120 children in 1944 in the
Tuscan town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

At least two of the Germans have died since then.

Another two were handed life imprisonment in September 2006 for the
Falzano massacre and 10 others in January 2007 for a bloodbath in
Marzabotto in September 1944 that left 955 dead.

Germany as a rule does not extradite its citizens without their consent
and has not received a formal request from Italy to jail Scheungraber
here.

One other case pending is that of John Demjanjuk, a former Nazi death camp
guard deported in May from the United States to Germany for allegedly
herding over 29,000 Jews to their death.

The 89-year-old, born Ivan Demjanjuk in Ukraine in 1920, is currently in a
prison hospital in Munich where doctors are assessing whether he is fit to
stand trial.

(source: Agence France-Presse)

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

Nazi hunters appeal German prosecutors' decision


The Simon Wiesenthal Center is appealing a Berlin prosecutors' office
decision to drop an investigation into whether the family or attorneys of
Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim lied about whether he was dead, the
agency's top Nazi-hunter said Wednesday.

The SS concentration camp doctor's son, Ruediger Heim, claimed in a
February television interview that his father died in 1992 in Cairo. But
in 2001 Heim's attorneys told a court that they were still in regular
contact with him.

The Wiesenthal Center in March asked prosecutors in Berlin to investigate
the discrepancy, but in a June 5 letter to Efraim Zuroff, director of the
center in Jerusalem, the office said the case had been shelved. The
prosecutors' office said the court remarks from Heim's attorneys were not
witness statements, so there was no perjury case to be pursued, and that
there were "many statements" over the past decades including unconfirmed
sightings that indicate Heim could be alive.

The Wiesenthal Center filed an appeal Tuesday to Berlin's attorney
general, asking for the decision to be reconsidered, Zuroff told The AP in
a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

"We think the decision is really ludicrous, frankly," he said. "This is an
opportunity to provide some clarity on whether or not Heim actually died
in Cairo, or if he was still alive in 2001."

Heim, who will be 95 this month if he is still alive, was the Wiesenthal
Center's most-wanted Nazi war criminal for years before being placed into
a special category by Zuroff in April after the reports of his possible
death surfaced.

Heim was a doctor at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in
October and November 1941. Witnesses have said he was involved in gruesome
experiments, such as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners'
hearts to see which killed them the fastest.

In early February, the German television station ZDF and The New York
Times reported that they had found documents in a Cairo hotel, where Heim
allegedly lived out the final years of his life before dying of intestinal
cancer, indicating that the notorious doctor had died in the city in 1992.

The papers personal musings, official documents and other items that
allegedly belonged to Heim have been turned over to the Baden
Wuerttemberg state police office that has led the manhunt for the former
Nazi for decades.

The process of trying to determine their authenticity is still ongoing,
spokesman Ulrich Heffner said.

At the time ZDF reported on the documents, the television station quoted
Ruediger Heim as confirming the pseudonym Tarek Hussein Farid as his
father's assumed name and the documents as belonging to him. Heim said he
visited his father regularly in Cairo and had taken care of him after an
operation related to his cancer in 1990.

ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo,
where graves are reused after several years "so that the chance of finding
remains is unlikely."

Heffner's office has been trying to get permission to come to Egypt to
look for the body themselves, and also to help determine the authenticity
of the documents, but have not yet heard back from Egyptian authorities.

The 2001 statement by Heim's attorneys came in a tax case centered around
some euro1 million in a Berlin bank account that belongs to Heim.

Each year up until 1998, Heim was taxed on the interest made by the money,
but then German finance authorities returned the funds to his account
because he had been declared as living permanently abroad. In 1999, the
tax authorities questioned the repayments, saying they needed proof that
Heim was not living in Germany.

In a 2001 ruling, the judges wrote that "according to the testimony of the
attorney of Dr. Heim ... the holder of Heim's power of attorney Dr.
(Fritz) Steinacker has regular contact with Dr. Heim, who is abroad."

The attorney who argued the case, Berlin's Michael Hoepfner, has said he
never made such a claim in the court, while Steinacker told the AP that he
had not had been in contact with Heim for nearly four decades.

(source: Associated Press)





SERBIA:

Serbia set to prosecute former Gestapo member


Last year, prosecutors asked for a probe into Egner on the grounds that as
a member of the Gestapo during World War II, he had organised the
execution of Jews and other civilians at a camp in Belgrade and another in
a suburb of the city.

Serbia's prosecutor for war crimes said Monday that measures were in hand
to strip a former Gestapo member, Peter Egner, of US nationality so that
he could be prosecuted for Nazi war crimes.

"The procedure to deprive Peter Egner of his American citizenship is under
way," prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told journalists. "After that, we will
take steps to have him extradited."

The US Ambassador to Serbia, Cameron Munter, told a joint press
conference, "American authorities are working with Serb authorities in the
way mentioned by Mr Vukcevic."

At the end of last August, Vukcevic asked for a probe into Egner, 87, on
the grounds that as a member of the Gestapo during World War II, he had
organised the execution of Jews and other civilians at a camp in Belgrade
and another in a suburb of the city.

He is also suspected of participating in building several concentration
camps in Belgrade in 1941 and 1942.

According to the Serbian media, Egner is allegedly responsible for the
deaths of about 17,000 people.

More than 24,000 died in the Staro Samjiste concentration camp in Belgrade
during the Nazi occupation of the city, and almost 80,000 were executed at
Jajinci in the suburbs of the capital.

(source: Agence France-Presse)






EGYPT:

Nile Nazis: Egypt haven for German war criminals

Arab nationalists trying to break free from the yoke of British
colonialism found a natural backer in Nazi Germany, who gave the
nationalists money to fight British occupiers during the war.


Wanted German war criminal Aribert Heim, also known as Doctor Death, was
not the only Nazi to have found refuge in Egypt after the Second World
War.

Heim, reported to have died peacefully in Cairo in 1992 after 30 years on
the run, is one of many Nazis to have converted to Islam and settled in
Egypt.

Alliances between Egypt and Nazi officials were initially forged during
World War II.

Arab nationalists trying to break free from the yoke of British
colonialism found a natural backer in Nazi Germany. The Nazis invested
money in men such as future Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in order for
them to fight the British occupiers during the war.

And in the turbulent post-war atmosphere, many Nazis came to Egypt where
they benefited from "high ranking" friendships within the entourage of
British-backed King Farouk, according to historians.

Future Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat's predecessor, deposed
Farouk in 1956. He then employed several Nazis to generate propaganda
against Israel, which was established in 1948 following a war with several
Arab armies.

The ODESSA network, which was reportedly set up after World War II to help
wanted Nazis escape Germany and Austria, extended to Argentina, Syria and
Egypt.

Johann Von Leers, close to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, came to
Egypt in the 1950s, converted to Islam and became head of the
"anti-Zionist propaganda service" at the foreign ministry.

According to historian of the Nazi era, Kurt Tauber, Egypt's post-war
ministries of information and defense employed former SS and SA officers,
such as Louis Heiden, Walter Bollmann and Wilhelm Bocker.

A former Nazi's son who worked in Egypt as a financial manager told AFP on
condition of anonymity how his family traveled to Egypt having first
sought refuge in Switzerland.

"My father was a Nazi spy in the Balkans, a liaison agent with Serb
nationalists, he said. We came thanks to relations with Farouk's court.
Then he worked in the armaments industry under Nasser."

With the arrival of Russian engineers to construct the Aswan High Dam in
1960, Moscow insisted that Nazis be purged from Egypt's military apparatus
but tolerated their continued presence in ideological jobs, a Western
journalist who has lived in Egypt for more than 50 years told AFP.

It is unknown exactly how many Nazis came to Egypt, and Egyptian
authorities would rather not discuss the matter.

Heim "was unknown to us, it would have been too dangerous, said Germany's
ambassador to Cairo, Bernd Erbel. I don't think he was a German citizen
any more but became an Egyptian. They certainly weren't going to tell us
they were here, and I have no details on them. To know more, I sometimes
go to the Google search engine."

List of fugitive Nazi war crime suspects

Following claims that Aribert Heim, alias "the Butcher of Mauthausen,"
died in Egypt in 1992, here is a list of other wanted Nazi war crimes
fugitives, drawn up by Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Center:

-- John Demjanjuk, originally from Ukraine, fled to the United States
after World War II. He was sentenced to death in 1988 in Jerusalem for the
killing of Jews in concentration camps. While a guard at the Treblinka
camp in Poland, Demjanjuk was known as "Ivan the Terrible." In 1993, he
was acquitted on the benefit of doubt; the United States later withdrew
his citizenship. Demjanjuk was recently deported to Germany.

-- Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian police officer accused of killing more than
1,200 civilians in Serbia. He was convicted in 1944 and 1946 by a
Hungarian court, but never did time. Kepiro returned to Hungary in 1996
after decades in hiding in Argentina. He denies allegations made against
him, but an investigation has been reopened.

-- Milivoj Asner, former Croatian police chief, who actively participated
in the deportation of Serbs, Jews and Roma. He lives in Klagenfurt,
southern Austria, but authorities refuse to extradite him to Croatia based
on medical expert advice that he is unfit to be questioned or stand trial.

-- Soeren Kam, ex-member of the elite SS brigade, is accused of killing a
Danish journalist in 1943. Now living in Germany, the courts have refused
to extradite him to Denmark, citing a lack of evidence. Danish authorities
say they will reopen an investigation into Kam's role in deporting Danish
Jews.

-- Heinrich Boere, a former SS commando, was sentenced to death in
absentia in the Netherlands in 1949 for having killed three Dutch
civilians. Germany, where he lived in hiding, has refused to extradite
him, citing objections to the death penalty. Dortmund prosecutors launched
new charges in April 2008 for the same three murders.

-- Charles Zentai, a former Hungarian soldier alleged to have participated
in the persecution and killing of Jews in Budapest. Hungary is seeking his
extradition from Australia, where he now lives.

-- Mikhail Gorshkow, a former Gestapo interpreter, who is suspected in the
murder of Jews in Belarus. The United States stripped him of his American
citizenship, while Estonia, his country of birth, is investigating his
actions during the war.

-- Algimantas Dailide, former police officer from Lithuania, who took part
in the transport of Jews during the war who were then executed by the
Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. Extradited by the United States
to Germany in 2003. A Lithuanian court found him guilty but said he would
not need to serve his jail sentence.

-- Harry Mannil, a former Estonian police officer suspected of assisting
in handing over Estonian Jews to the Nazis. An investigation into his
conduct concluded in 2005 that he was not guilty of crimes against
humanity, citing a lack of proof. He now lives in Venezuela.

(source: Agence France-Presse)





USA//COLORADO:

Finding the history left behind in boxes


It was the sight of the swastika that caused Andrea Sears-Van Nest to
feel sick.

"It made me go cold. I immediately said, 'There is no way I am going to
bring this into my house,'" she said.

But she kept looking inside the boxes left behind in her mother's house
shortly after her mother passed away last year. There were papers and
pictures and letters.

"Everything was paper-clipped. There were mounds and mounds of
paperclips," she said.

At that moment, she says she knew she had stumbled upon something truly
remarkable.

"I realized I couldn't throw anything away," she said.

The boxes belonged to her father who died in 1964. Sears-Van Nest knew
quite a bit about her father, but the boxes proved that she didn't know
everything.

Edwin Sears, who was Jewish, escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. In 1943, he
became a law professor at the University of Denver. In 1946, he returned
to Germany to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

It turns out those boxes were filled with paperwork and pictures and
letters that gave a first-hand account of what Sears' life was like during
that tumultuous time.

There are a number of pictures of Sears at Nuremberg.

"There he is at the podium," Sears-Van Nest said, "interrogating, I would
think."

There are correspondences written by such infamous Nazi leaders as
Heinrich Himmler. His autograph is clearly visible on one. Documents
laying out Sears' case against Nazi business leaders are numerous.

There are also a few letters written by Albert Einstein. Sears had been a
secretary for Einstein in the 20s and had petitioned the famed scientist
for help to get to the United States in the late 30s.

The collection was officially turned over to the University of Denver's
Penrose Library on Friday.

"It is a unique window into the past," said Professor Jeanne Abrams.
"Sears said many times that he didn't go to Nuremberg to extract
vengeance, but really to carry out justice."

Sears-Van Nest says her mother might not have even known exactly what was
in all of those boxes.

"I have to say I wonder if mom ever went through any of this. I have a
feeling even looking at it was too painful," she said.

Vera Sears died last year at the age of 95.

"There are sometimes hidden treasures in our own homes that we are unaware
of," Abrams said.

She says she's glad this collection has been turned over to DU.

Sears-Van Nest says the collection has made her even more proud of her
father. He provided an important voice during a very difficult time, and
for that she says, he should be remembered.

(source: 9News)