June 25





GERMANY:

CONCENTRATION CAMP BORDELLOS----'The Main Thing Was to Survive at All'


Concentration camp brothels remain a hushed-up chapter of the Nazi-era
horrors. Now a German researcher has probed the dark subject -- and has
revealed the meticulous cruelty of the so-called "special buildings."

Kicking them with his boots, the SS soldier drove Margarete W. and the
other women prisoners out of the train and onto a truck. "Move the
tarpaulin, put the flap down. Everyone get in," he yelled. Through the
plastic window in the truck's canvas side, she watched as they drove into
a men's camp and stopped in front of a barracks with a wooden fence.

The women were taken into a furnished room. The barracks were different
from the ones Margarete W., then 25, knew from her time at the Ravensbrck
women's concentration camp. There were tables, chairs, benches, windows,
and even curtains. The female overseer informed the new arrivals that they
were "now in a prisoners' brothel." They would live well there, the woman
said, with good food and drink, and if they did as they were told, nothing
would happen to them. Then each woman was assigned a room. Margarete W.
moved into No. 13.

The prisoners' brothel at the Buchenwald concentration camp opened on July
11, 1943. It was the fourth of a total of 10 so-called "special buildings"
erected in concentration camps between 1942 and 1945, according to the
instructions of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. He implemented a rewards
scheme in the camps, whereby prisoners' "particular achievements" earned
them smaller workloads, extra food or monetary bonuses.

Himmler also considered it beneficial to "provide the hard-working
prisoners with women in brothels," as he wrote on March 23, 1942, to
Oswald Pohl, the SS officer in charge of the concentration camps.
Himmler's cynical vision saw brothel visits increasing the forced
laborers' productivity in the quarries and munitions factories.

"Especially Perfidious"

It remains one of the lesser known aspects of Nazi terror that
Sachsenhausen, Dachau and even Auschwitz included brothels, and that
female concentration camp prisoners were forced into prostitution.
Berlin-based cultural studies scholar Robert Sommer, 34, has scoured
archives and concentration camp memorial sites around the world and
carried out numerous interviews with historical witnesses over the past
nine years. His study, which will be published this month, provides the
first comprehensive, scientific survey of this "especially perfidious form
of violence in the concentration camps." His research has largely informed
a traveling exhibition "Camp brothels -- forced sex work in Nazi
concentration camps," which will tour several memorial sites next year.

Sommer delivers plenty of evidence to counter the legend that the Nazis
forbade or resolutely fought prostitution. In fact, the regime enforced
total surveillance of prostitution, both in Germany and its occupied
territories -- especially after war broke out. A comprehensive network of
state-controlled brothels covered half of Europe during that period, which
Sommer says consisted of "civil and military brothels, as well as those
for forced laborers, and at the same time they were even part of the
concentration camps."

Austrian resistance fighter Antonia Bruha, who survived the Ravensbrck
camp, reported years ago that, "the most beautiful women went to the SS
brothel, the less beautiful ones to the soldiers' brothel."

And the rest ended up in the concentration camp brothel. In the Mauthausen
camp in Austria, in the 10 small rooms of "Barrack 1," the very first camp
brothel began operation behind barred windows in June 1942. At that point
there were around 5,500 prisoners in the Mauthausen work camp, hammering
out stone in granite quarries for Nazi buildings. By the end of 1944, over
70,000 forced laborers lived in the entire camp complex.

The SS had recruited 10 women for Mauthausen, following the government
security agency's guidelines for erecting brothels in forced labor camps.
This meant between 300 and 500 men per prostitute.

Altogether some 200 women shared the fate of the Mauthausen prisoners in
the camp brothels. In particular healthy and good-looking women prisoners
between the ages of 17 and 35 caught the eye of SS recruiters. More than
60 percent of them were of German nationality, but Polish women, those
from the Soviet Union and one Dutch woman were transferred into the
"special task forces." The Nazis didn't allow Jewish women for "racial
hygiene" reasons. First the women were sent to the camp hospital, where
they were given calcium injections, disinfection baths, better food and a
stint under a sunlamp.

Between 300 and 500 Men Per Prostitute

Just under 70 % of the female forced laborers who were coerced into
prostitution had originally been imprisoned for being "antisocial." In the
camps, the women were labeled with a black triangle symbol. They included
former prostitutes, whose presence was supposed to guarantee the
"professional" running of the camp brothels, especially at the start. It
was very easy for a woman to be judged as "antisocial," for example if she
failed to comply with instructions at work.

To what extent the women knowingly volunteered for these "special task
forces" is debated. Robert Sommer cites Spanish resistance fighter Lola
Casadell, who was brought to Ravensbrck in 1944. She said the head of her
female barracks threatened: "Whoever wants to go to a brothel should come
by my room. And I warn you, if there are no volunteers, we'll fetch you
with force."

Historical witness Antonia Bruha, who was made to work in the hospital
area of the concentration camp, remembers women "who came in voluntarily,
because they'd been told they would be set free afterwards." That promise
was rejected out of hand by Himmler, who complained that "some lunatic in
the women's concentration camp, while selecting prostitutes for the camp
brothels, told the female prisoners that whoever volunteered would be
released after half a year."

The Last Hope of Survival

But for many of the women living under the threat of death, serving in a
brothel was their last hope of survival. "The main thing was that at least
we had escaped the hell of Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrck," said Lieselotte
B., who was a prisoner at the Mittelbau-Dora camp. "The main thing was to
survive at all." Whatever made them go along with the regime, the
suggestion that they did so "voluntarily" is one reason "why the former
brothel women are still stigmatized today," explained Insa Eschebach, head
of the memorial site at Ravensbrck.

In keeping with the Nazi's racist hierarchy in the camps, first it was
only Germans were allowed to visit the brothel, then foreigners as well.
Jews were strictly forbidden. It was predominantly foremen, heads of
barracks and other prominent camp occupants who were given this "bonus."
And they would first have to have the money for a ticket which cost two
Reichsmarks. Twenty cigarettes in the canteen, meanwhile, cost three
Reichsmarks.

Brothel visits were regulated by the SS, as were the opening hours. In
Buchenwald, for example, the brothel was open from 7 to 10 p.m. They
remained closed at times of water or electricity shortages, air raid
warnings or during the transmission of Hitler's speeches. Edgar
Kupfer-Koberwitz, a prisoner at Dachau, described the system in his
concentration camp journal: "You wait in the hall. An officer records the
prisoner's name and number. Then a number is called, and the name of the
prisoner in question. Then you run to the room with that number. Each
visit it's a different number. You have 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes."

Privacy was a foreign concept in the concentration camps -- and the
brothels. The doors had spyholes and an SS soldier patrolled the hall. The
prisoners had to take off their shoes and were to speak no more than
absolutely necessary. Only the missionary position was allowed.

Often it didn't even get as far as intercourse. Some men were no longer
physically strong enough, and according to Sommer, "some had a greater
need to talk with a woman again, or to feel her presence."

The SS was very afraid of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The
men were given disinfectant ointments in the hospital barracks before and
after each brothel visit, and doctors took smear samples from the women to
test for gonorrhea, and tested their blood for syphilis.

Contraception, on the other hand, was one aspect that the SS left up to
the women. But pregnancies rarely occurred since many women had been
forcibly sterilized before their arrest and others had been rendered
infertile through their suffering in the camps. In the event of an
"occupational accident," the SS would simply replace the woman and send
her to have an abortion.

Those who withstood the hardship of brothel life did have more chance of
escaping death in the camps, according to Sommer's research. Almost all
the women in forced prostitution survived the Nazis' terror regime. It is
largely unknown what became of them or whether they were ever able to
recover from their traumatic experience. Most of them remained silent
about their fate for the rest of their lives.

Robert Sommer's book, "The Concentration Camp Bordello: Sexual Forced
Labor in National Socialistic Concentration Camps," is scheduled to be
published in German ("Das KZ-Bordell") by Schningh Verlag, Paderborn, in
July. 492 pages; 39.90.

(source: Der Spiegel)



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


"Hitler's Stealth Fighter" Re-createdBrian Handwerk


ON TV-- Hitler's Stealth Fighter airs Sunday, June 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on
the National Geographic Channel.

Top stealth-plane experts have re-created a radical, nearly forgotten Nazi
aircraft: the Horten 2-29, a retro-futuristic fighter that arrived too
late in World War II to make it into mass production.

The engineers' goal was to determine whether the so-called stealth fighter
was truly radar resistant. In the process, they've uncovered new clues to
just how close Nazi engineers were to unleashing a jet that some say could
have changed the course of the war.

To replicate the Ho 2-29 late last year for a documentary premiering
Sunday, a team from the Northrop Grumman defense-contracting corporation
used original Nazi blueprints and the only surviving Ho 2-29, which has
been stored in a U.S. government facility for more than 50 years.

The all-wing Ho 2-29 looked more like today's U.S. B-2 bomber or
something from a Star Wars preQUEUElthan like any other World War II
aircraft. Made primarily of wood and powered by jet engines, the
plane was designed for speeds of up to 600 miles an hour (970 kilometers
an hour).

Armed with four 30mm cannons and two 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bombs, the
planned production model was also meant to pack a punch.

(source: National Geographic)





AUSTRIA:

Heirs race to find Nazi-looted art before time runs out


Eighty-one-year old Thomas Selldorff, who fled Austria with his family
before it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, hopes an upcoming
international conference will bolster efforts to return Nazi-looted art.

The Nazi's seized over 200 artworks owned by his grandfather, an avid art
collector, as part of a policy of seizing Jewish property. So far,
Selldorff has been able to retrieve only two of the lost paintings.

"I want to be able to pass these things on to my family ... I want them to
have the link and an appreciation for some of the things my grandfather
was involved with," said Selldorff, who lives in the United States and
wants to exhibit the altar pieces by Austrian baroque artist Kremser
Schmidt in a museum.

Some 65 years after World War Two, experts say thousands of artworks
confiscated by the Nazis, including masterpieces by art nouveau master
Gustav Klimt and expressionist Egon Schiele, still need to be restituted
to their rightful owners.

Government officials from around 49 countries, dozens of non-governmental
groups and Jewish representatives will meet in Prague this week to review
current practices. They are likely to sign a new agreement to step up
restitution efforts.

Some participants hope the conference will lead to the creation of a
central body responsible for publishing updates on countries' progress,
which could prompt them to do more.

The task of restituting Nazi-looted works is an epic one. The Nazis formed
a bureaucracy devoted to looting and they plundered a total of 650,000 art
and religious objects from Jews and other victims, the Jewish Claims
Conference estimates.

Artworks were auctioned off, handed over to national museums or top Nazi
officials, or stashed away for a Fuehrer museum Adolf Hitler was planning
to build in the Austrian town of Linz, where he spent a part of his youth.

"This is one way that Jews were made to pay for their own elimination,"
said art restitution expert Sophie Lillie.

At the end of World War Two, some works were returned but many continued
to circulate on the international art market or stayed put in museums, and
it was only in the 1990s that there was a new burst of Holocaust
restitution.

PATCHY RECORD

Austria is considered among the leaders of art restitution efforts,
putting its larger neighbor Germany to shame. The Alpine Republic in 1998
passed a law governing art restitution and has since returned over 10,000
artworks.

"There are a handful of countries that have achieved a lot," said Anne
Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, citing
Austria, Holland and Britain.

Austria's Belvedere Gallery has had to restitute 10 paintings by Gustav
Klimt, including two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which are among the
artist's most famous works.

"Most countries have not even undertaken the work which was endorsed in
Washington in 1998," said Webber, referring to the non-binding Washington
Principles agreed by 44 countries in 1998 as the framework for returning
looted art.

Under the Washington Principles, countries agreed to identify stolen art,
open up archives, publicize suspicious cases and "achieve a just and fair
solution" for the Nazi-persecuted pre-war owners or their heirs.

Lawyers and experts say many countries have not enforced the principles
and hope they will agree at the Prague conference on a transparent way to
report on progress.

One of the main obstacles to art restitution is the difficulty in tracing
the provenance and proving the ownership.

Gunnar Schnabel, a German lawyer and author of 'Nazi Looted Art' said
museums often "hold back any information they might have" about the murky
war-time past of some of their works.

The unique nature of the Nazi regime also makes it difficult to legally
define which art was looted or not.

"The Nazis were very inventive, and thought up lots of ways to expropriate
someone of their belongings," said Christoph Bazil, head of the Austria's
art restitution committee.

For example, Jews sometimes were coerced to sell their art to Nazis and
their sympathizers, or they had to sell paintings to fund day-to-day
living because they were forced out of work or because they had to pay
discriminatory taxes.

Some people argue that in cases where the original owners of the artworks
received money for them, it was a legally valid transaction, while others
say the discriminatory Nazi policies imposed on Jews mitigates that
validity.

Even when claimants are successful at proving their ownership of an
artwork, they have often been unable to retrieve the work of art due to
rigid export bans on cultural patrimony.

A Jewish American heiress won a court battle with Hungary in 2000 for the
return of art looted by Nazis, including works by Cranach, Van Dyck and El
Greco. But the outcome was a Pyrrhic victory, as the works were not
allowed to leave the country.

BACKLASH

As art restitution speeds up and returned works of art fetch record sums
at auctions and private sales, there is a beginning of a backlash against
the claimants who some say are tracking down their inheritance to sell for
profit.

One of the five Klimt artworks returned to the Bloch-Bauer family a few
years ago was sold for $135 million, believed to be the highest price ever
paid for a painting.

Yet art restitution experts say most looted artworks are worth more
sentimentally than financially and they are in some cases the only
remaining possessions of murdered relatives.

"The few examples of restituted paintings then sold at auction are of
course the ones that everyone talk about, but there are many that stay in
the families," said Monika Tatzkow, 54, historian and provenance
researcher.

Some say it is time to close the chapter on looted art.

Norman Rosenthal, a former curator at London's Royal Academy of Arts whose
own family fled Nazism, has suggested that the issue of Nazi-looted art
must now be confined to history, just as with other cases of looted art,
during the Bolshevik Revolution for example, or the Napoleonic Wars.

Supporters of art restitution, however, say Nazi-looted art is unique
because it was part of the process of genocide, starting with the
elimination of peoples' professional existence and their possessions, and
ending with their murder.

Expert Lillie argues museums that benefited from Jewish expropriation and
then dragged their feet on art restitution for decades have a moral
responsibility to address the issue.

"This is their last chance to try to atone for past wrongs."

(source: Reuters)






USA//NEW JERSEY:

Lawyer for Holocaust victims disbarred in NJ


A lawyer who won judgments for Holocaust survivors and victims of South
African apartheid has been disbarred in a second state.

The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed that Edward Fagan knowingly misused
client and escrow trust funds.

He was disbarred in New York in December for similar offenses.

Last week, Fagan told New Jersey's Supreme Court that he did not
misappropriate any client money. He did not deny that he had taken more
than $80,000 from a Holocaust survivor. But he said he was entitled to
that money for legal work.

Fagan got international attention in the 1990s for his work for Holocaust
survivors. In 1998, he got Swiss banks to settled with thousands of
survivors for $1.25 billion.

(source: Newsday)






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



June 26





CZECH REPUBLIC:

Holocaust assets conference opens in Prague


Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and experts gathered in Prague on
Friday to assess efforts to return property and possessions stolen by the
Nazis to their rightful owners or heirs.

The five-day conference, which brings together delegates from 49
countries, is a follow-up to a 1998 meeting in Washington that led to
agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis.

Stuart Eizenstat, head of the U.S. delegation, called it the most
ambitious international meeting ever on the recovery of such stolen
possessions or compensation for their loss.

One goal is to produce international guidelines on this, but they would
not be compulsory for the governments involved.

"There's no political will to have a binding treaty," Eizenstat
acknowledged.

But he said the voluntary principles that were approved in Washington are
having an impact. "We have hundreds of pieces of art that have been
returned," he said.

During the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and his followers killed 6 million Jews
and seized billions of dollars of gold, art and private and communal
property across Europe. But while countries such as Austria have stepped
up restitution in recent years, critics claim some Central and Eastern
European states still have a long way to go.

"Many governments in Central and Eastern Europe have not found a way to
implement a process to resolve outstanding real property issues that is
both consistent with national law and incorporates basic principles such
as nondiscriminatory treatment of non-citizens and a simple, expeditious
claims and restitution process," said conference delegate Christian
Kennedy, the U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

Kennedy said the U.S. wants the meeting "to provide an impetus for an
expansion in social welfare benefits to survivors and lay the framework
for further real property compensation."

The Czech Republic, host of this week's meeting, and other countries, have
come under fire for legal hurdles and a lack of political will that
critics claim make property restitution in some cases practically
impossible.

For example, attempts by Maria Altmann of California to reclaim a castle
north of Prague that once belonged to her uncle, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer,
proved futile since she is not a Czech citizen.

"As far as I know, there is no legal method for obtaining any recovery
there at this time," Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, said in an
e-mail. Altmann had waged and won a seven-year legal battle in
neighboring Austria for the return of five paintings by Gustav Klimt.

Efforts by the daughter of wealthy Jewish banker Jiri Popper to recover a
building he once owned in Prague also have stalled.

Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes gave the building, which currently
houses the Russian Embassy, to the Soviet Union in 1945. Last year,
Popper's daughter filed lawsuits against both the Czech Republic and
Russia demanding restitution, but no trial date has been set because Czech
authorities said they have failed so far to formally inform Moscow about
it, said Irena Benesova, the family's lawyer.

While the Justice Ministry declined to comment on the matter, Russian
Embassy spokesman Alexandr Pismenny said Moscow was the "honest owner."

Both Schoenberg and Benesova wanted to make their case at the conference
but were turned away by organizers who said they did not want discussion
of individual cases. The Holocaust Survivors' Foundation claims that
others also have not been allowed to have their say in setting the agenda
for the conference.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated June 19, the
group expressed concern about "the lack of survivor involvement on the
planning, priority setting and policy making roles in the conference."

Still, the Czech Republic does appear to be taking some steps in the right
direction.

A government fund created nine years ago with 300 million koruna (US$15.9
million) has paid out 100 million koruna (US$5.3 million) to 516 out of
1,256 requests from 27 countries. The requests came from people whose
restitution claims did not meet the criteria set by law.

The country also has set up the Documentation Center of Property Transfers
of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, an institution that identifies artwork
and other items in Czech collections and museums that were seized from
Jews during the Nazi occupation.

According to Director Helena Krejcova, some 7,000 paintings and other
works of art that originally belonged to Czech Jews have been found, and
another more than 1,000 stolen pieces are believed to be abroad.

"There's still a lot of work ahead of us," Krejcova said, adding that
sometimes efforts to restitute items are stymied by a lack of cooperation
from other states and a change to that is nowhere in sight.

Case in point: Czech authorities have been waiting five years for a reply
from Russia after Krejcova's team traced a valuable collection of 500
porcelain pieces once owned by Holocaust victim Hans Meyer to St.
Petersburg.

On the Net:
Holocaust Era Assets Conference: http://www.holocausteraassets.eu

(source: Associated Press)

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

Summit addresses Nazi-looted art


Much of the art stolen by Nazis has already been returned to its owners
Jewish groups and representatives of 49 countries are gathering in Prague
for talks on returning art and possessions stolen by the Nazis.

The five-day conference in the Czech capital will also aim to increase
Holocaust awareness and education.

The Nazis stole an estimated 650,000 religious items and works of art from
European Jews during World War II.

While much of the art been returned, a great deal remains in museums and
private collections.

The BBC's Rob Cameron in Prague says there has often been considerable
reluctance on the part of those in possession of the looted art to return
it.

Steps have been taken in countries such as Austria to make it easier for
owners to claim back looted art.

But the US Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Christian Kennedy,
attending the conference, said many central and eastern European countries
had not yet found a way to implement a restitution process.

He said any such process would have to be consistent with national law
while also ensuring non-citizens seeking to reclaim property were given
equal treatment.

Delegates from the 49 states will be asked what progress they have made in
returning looted Jewish property since the 1998 conference in Washington.

That meeting introduced ground-breaking principles for dealing with such
items.

The Prague conference, the last major event of the Czech Republic's
European Union presidency, is aimed at reinvigorating that process, says
our correspondent.

(source: BBC News)








USA//NEW YORK:

Project Finds Holocaust Survivors In Poverty ----Experts Believe 100,000
Holocaust Survivors Remain Alive In United States; 30 Percent Living In
Poverty Reporting


Long Island eighth grader Joe Klein recently completed the videotaping of
an eye-opening school project.

His class thesis, titled "Surviving, Surviving," sought to document
Holocaust survivors in New York City; though Klein found these were not
always the easiest subjects to track down.

"I worked the phones," he said. "I had to keep on asking and keep on
asking."

Bucking the naysayers, including his teacher, and relying on some help
from his parents, Klein eventually found four survivors to profile.

But along the way, he discovered a startling statistic one that is often
swept under the rug.

Experts told him that a whopping 30 percent of the 100,000 Holocaust
survivors still believed to be alive in the U.S. are reportedly living in
poverty. Many find themselves alone, forgotten and too ashamed to ask for
help.

Klein's parents, Harold and Nan, long ago instilled in him the motto "we
may not all be guilty but we are all responsible." Nan believes it played
a role in inspiring her son to film the documentary.

"Joe is disappointed that the community is not aware of this very sad
situation," she said.

Klein added it's almost impossible for typical New Yorkers to identify
with the predicament many survivors find themselves in.

"Some people (today) get a $4 cup of coffee," Klein said. "That's lunch
for these people."

Harold filmed his son's interviews, which featured survivors from Queens,
Brooklyn and Manhattan. He believes the experience will stay with him for
the rest of his life.

"It haunted me because of my background," Mr. Klein said.

Harold's father, Nufteli, was a Holocaust survivor, and the documentary
was created in his memory.

"Knowing people could exist like this, it doubly haunted me because people
don't know about it," he added.

But Joe feels "Surviving, Surviving" can correct the problem.

"Maybe this exists because it gives us another chance to help these
people," he said.

People interested in aiding suffering survivors can contact one of the
Holocaust support agencies located in the Tri-State area; where groups
such as Blue Card, Self Help and iVolunteer estimate there are roughly 50
thousand.

Fifteen thousand people are said to be living in poverty.

(source: WCBS TV)






RUSSIA:

Russia won't participate in Jewish documents suit


Russia told a U.S. court on Friday that judges have no authority to tell
the country how to handle sacred Jewish documents held in its state
library that were seized by the Nazi and Soviet armies.

The documents are at the center of a lawsuit brought by members of
Chabad-Lubavitch, which follows the teachings of Eastern European rabbis
and emphasizes the study of the Torah. The group is suing Russia in U.S.
court to recover thousands of manuscripts, prayers, lectures and
philosophical discourses by leading rabbis dating back to the 18th
century.

The case is being handled by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in
Washington, Royce Lamberth, who in January ordered Russia to preserve the
documents over Chabad's fears they are not being properly cared for and
could be sold on the black market.

But Russia said in its filing Friday that even though it respects the U.S.
court, it would not participate in the litigation to protect its
sovereignty. Russia said the United States should use diplomatic channels
to address any concerns it has about the collection and that Chabad can
pursue claims in Russian courts.

"This court has no authority to enter orders with respect to the property
owned by the Russian Federation and in its possession, and the Russian
Federation will not consider any such orders to be binding on it," said
the Russian filing.

Lamberth agreed to take the case in U.S. court because he said both the
Nazi seizure and the Russian government's appropriation of the collection,
which Chabad says totals 12,000 books and 50,000 rare documents, violated
international law.

The collection was formerly held by Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, a
leader of Chabad-Lubavitch who was born in Russia but forced by the
Soviets to leave in 1927. He took the documents to Latvia and later
Poland, but left them behind when the Nazis invaded and he fled to the
U.S. The collection was seized and taken to Germany, then recovered by the
Soviet Army in 1945.

Attorneys representing Chabad at the law firm Bingham McCutchen said after
five years of litigation, Russia "is now acting like a child who has lost
the game and wants to start all over on its home court."

"Obviously, Russia cannot justify why it has refused to return Jewish
manuscripts which were stolen by the Nazis and then looted by the Soviet
Army during the Second World War," the attorneys said in a statement. "The
plundering of religious texts during war is contrary to the Hague
convention and the norms of any civilized society."

On the Net: Chabad-Lubavitch: http://www.chabad.org

(source: Associated Press)





ISRAEL/HUNGARY:

Bringing Sandor Kepiro to trial

This week's visit by Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Banjai is an
excellent opportunity to focus on one of the most important and
interesting cases of a Nazi war criminal who can still be brought to
justice. I am referring to Dr. Sandor Kepiro, who served as a gendarmerie
officer during World War II and was among the key organizers of the mass
murder of at least 1,250, but probably as many as 3,000 men, women and
children (mostly Jews, but also Serbs and Gypsies) in the Serbian city of
Novi Sad on January 23, 1942.

Until now, Israel has done relatively little to press Hungary to prosecute
Kepiro, so Banjai's visit might well be the last opportunity of its kind
for the government to send a clear-cut message to the Hungarians that
their failure to bring Kepiro to justice is incomprehensible and
unacceptable.

The Kepiro case has special significance for several reasons. First and
foremost is the scope of the massacre in Novi Sad, which was the largest
single action of its kind against Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust, and
besides the murders carried out by Hungarian troops in Kamenetz-Podolsk,
was the worst case of the mass murder of civilians carried out by
Hungarian forces during World War II. Another important point is that if
Kepiro is brought to trial in Budapest, he will almost certainly be the
first Hungarian Nazi collaborator to be prosecuted since the country
became a democracy. Like all the post-communist states of Eastern Europe,
Hungary conducted many trials of Nazi collaborators in the immediate
aftermath of World War II, but none since the transition to democracy.
This would be particularly significant in a country like Hungary, which is
only beginning to honestly confront its crimes during the Holocaust, which
included mass murder.

THERE ARE ALSO several unique aspects to the Kepiro case which add to its
significance. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only case of
Holocaust crimes carried out by the forces of a country allied with Nazi
Germany, in which the perpetrators were actually prosecuted by their own
government in the course of World War II. In December 1943, the 15
officers who organized and carried out the mass murder in Novi Sad were
put on trial in Budapest. Not for murder, but rather for violating the
code of honor of the Hungarian forces, since the operations they carried
out in the Voivodina province had not been approved by their superiors.
All of them, including Kepiro, were convicted and sentenced either to
death or to lengthy prison terms.

The convicted officers, however, never served their sentences since
shortly after the end of the trial and before they could be implemented,
Nazi Germany occupied Hungary and pressured the Hungarians to cancel the
convictions and the punishments. Thus Kepiro's identity and participation
are not in doubt, having already been duly confirmed by a Hungarian court.
In fact, Kepiro himself admits his participation in the Novi Sad
operation, but simply denies having committed any "war crimes."

In that context, a fascinating aspect of Kepiro's behavior in Novi Sad
came to light during his 1944 trial. When Kepiro was briefed on his
assignment before the roundups and murder took place, he asked for the
orders in writing. Already a lawyer, he apparently immediately recognized
their immorality and consequent illegality. His superior responded,
however, that orders of this kind were only transmitted verbally, and
Kepiro carried them out loyally.

Ironically, this behavior prompted the Hungarian court to reduce his jail
sentence, but in theory they should have done the opposite, since Kepiro
was, in essence, the worst type of Holocaust perpetrator, an intelligent
and educated professional who clearly understood that what he had been
told to do was totally reprehensible, yet did it anyway. He was obviously
a person who was more concerned about his alibi than about the fate of his
innocent victims, and thus someone undeserving of any sympathy.

ON AUGUST 1, it will be three years since I initially notified the
Hungarian authorities that Kepiro was alive and living in Budapest. (After
the war, he had escaped to Austria and from there to Argentina, where he
lived for 48 years.) At that time, the prosecutors assured me that if he
had committed war crimes (which obviously was the case), they would
immediately implement his original sentence, but six months later I was
informed that this was not possible since a Hungarian court had cancelled
his conviction.

Instead, prosecutors launched a new investigation against Kepiro, which in
theory should have long ago resulted in a trial. But the wheels of justice
for a Hungarian Nazi war criminal turn incredibly slowly and without
external pressure it appears very doubtful whether Kepiro will ever be
punished for his crimes. In the meantime, he is conducting an active legal
battle against his prosecution and giving numerous interviews in which he
protests his innocence, while admitting his presence in Novi Sad on
January 23, 1942.

In these days in which the nationalist extremist Magyar Garda march in the
streets of Hungary in black uniforms with symbols reminiscent of the
wartime fascist Arrow Cross, and the racist and anti-Semitic Jobbik party
garnered 15 percent of the votes in the recent elections for the European
Parliament, the fate of an elderly Hungarian Nazi war criminal may not
seem particularly pressing. The fact is, however, that precisely by
mustering sufficient political will to bring to justice people like
Kepiro, the government will be sending an unequivocal and necessary
message to Hungarian society and especially to the ultranationalists that
the days of Arrow cross terror, anti-Semitism and racism are long gone
never to return and that democratic Hungary will not countenance their
revival.

Now if only Prime Minister Banjai's hosts in Jerusalem will make sure to
deliver the message loud and clear.

(source: Op-Ed, Jerusalem Post----The writer, Efraim Zuroff, is director
of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center)