Aug. 20


USA:

As Nazis Die Off, Their Hunters Widen Net----Justice Department Unit Now
Focusing on Perpetrators From Other Atrocities


Earlier this year, 400 miles from downtown Washington, a Gulfstream IV jet
carrying one of the country's most infamous accused war criminals prepared
to take flight as Justice Department prosecutors watched via a live
television feed.

The target of their rapt attention: onetime Nazi concentration-camp guard
John Demjanjuk, 89, who had outlasted a generation of American lawyers
vying to deport him from the United States for allegedly lying about his
role in the Holocaust. One attorney in the department's elite Office of
Special Investigations died of cancer, another perished in an airplane
crash and others had retired from public service in the nearly three
decades since the investigation began.

"Even as the plane took off, I thought, 'Something's going to happen,' "
recalled OSI Director Eli Rosenbaum. "Because that was the case for so
many years, where if something could go wrong, it did go wrong."

On that day in mid-May, Rosenbaum tracked the plane's ascent from a
Cleveland airport on a journey that would deliver Demjanjuk to Germany to
face criminal charges. But as employees in the Justice Department office
basked in the afterglow of one of their largest victories, they wondered:

What next?

The subjects of their life's work -- people with Nazi ties who lied on
citizenship forms to enter the United States after World War II -- are
dead or dying. Current and former OSI employees say the unit is racing to
extradite the few elderly Nazis still residing on American soil. Jonathan
Drimmer, the lead trial lawyer in the government's case against Demjanjuk,
said that Demjanjuk's expulsion is "a coda on a generation of work to
bring major Nazi war criminals to justice."

Since the OSI began operations in 1979, it has won deportation orders
against 107 people and prevented 180 more from entering the United States
through its watch list. Yet it remains to be seen how the close-knit group
of lawyers and historians, accustomed to combing document-rich archives in
the Eastern Bloc for clues, will recast its mission from capturing Nazis
to catching criminals who fled murderous conflicts in such diverse places
as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The OSI focuses on revoking the
citizenship of Americans who entered the country on false pretenses by
lying about their involvement in war crimes, rather than targeting
wrongdoers based overseas.

The office continues to rack up international accolades for its work on
the defining battles of the 20th century. "It's been the most important
instrument in trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," said Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust
survivor who was hidden as a boy by a Catholic nun. The Simon Wiesenthal
Center gave the OSI a grade of A for its efforts and concluded in a report
last winter that it had "conducted the most successful program of its kind
in the world."

But its staff levels have settled at around 28 employees after peaking in
the 1980s at nearly double that number. And many of the tools that served
the unit so well are no longer available to its history detectives.
Scrupulous recordkeeping practices of the Nazis, including a handwritten
1942 ammunition order that prompted a court to revoke the citizenship of a
Michigan man last year in what OSI lawyers call the "ultimate cold case,"
largely do not exist in the modern conflicts. Instead, the Justice
Department must rely on cooperating witnesses, whose languages, cultures
and motives may be difficult to translate.

Nonetheless, OSI leaders say they are aggressively shifting their focus to
fresh cases, which now make up the bulk of the workload. The French
historian is reading about Africa; investigators who studied Hungarian are
practicing Balkan languages; and plans are afoot to hire a Swahili
linguist. They are all scouring government records, diplomatic cables,
refugee statements and truth commission reports for leads on alleged
perpetrators from every part of the world who may have relocated to the
United States.

So far, the unit has filed charges in half a dozen new war crimes cases,
led by an effort this year to revoke the citizenship of Lazare Kabaya
Kobagaya, 82, of Topeka, Kan., who allegedly took part in the 1994 Rwandan
genocide. Kobagaya, a member of the Hutu ethnic group, incited villagers
gathered at a marketplace to torch homes owned by rival Tutsis and urged
others to kill Tutsis by making threats, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors assert that Kobagaya lied on his citizenship application and
in an interview with U.S. immigration authorities.

Nearly 80 similar episodes involving modern war crimes remain under the
office's investigation. Congress formally expanded the OSI mandate in late
2004 to cover people who misrepresented their involvement in a wide array
of genocides and human rights violations in order to enter the United
States. But navigating sensitive diplomatic and political straits in
international conflicts that are still "simmering under the surface,"
Deputy Director Elizabeth White said, requires careful evaluation.

Director Rosenbaum, who joined the unit as an intern three decades ago,
said that "unless mankind stops perpetrating these crimes, we will exist
for the foreseeable future."

The job is "obviously suffused with sadness," he said. "Meet surviving
victims, and it just demolishes you. One of our attorneys spent weeks in
Rwanda and was very badly shaken. We had a visit here recently from the
human rights ombudsman in Guatemala. There's just no end, no end."

The emotional pressure and shared sense of mission have fostered tight
bonds among OSI lawyers and investigators. Veterans of the office say that
competition with other elements of the government, including the
Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and several U.S. attorneys'
offices, however, could grow more intense as they vie for a chance to
prosecute the modern genocide cases.

In January, the Justice Department's domestic security section scored
international headlines when it won a 97-year prison sentence for Charles
Taylor Jr., the son of Liberia's former president, for his role in a
paramilitary group that doled out electric shocks, cigarette burns and
buckets of scalding water to its political opponents.

Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the department's criminal
division, left open the possibility of a merger between OSI and the
domestic security section, which brings prosecutions for torture, rather
than the OSI approach that generally homes in on residency status.

"There are certain acts, and obviously the Nazi prosecutions are an
example where we have a moral and ethical imperative to bring them to
justice," said Breuer, whose 89-year-old mother survived the Holocaust and
resettled in Queens. "There has to be a component of the criminal division
that deals with human rights violations, no matter how much time passes."

(source: Washington Post)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust survivor now lives on Tel Aviv park bench


For the last eight months, a 71-year-old Holocaust survivor has been
sleeping on a bench in a downtown Tel Aviv park.

Yevgeny Bistrizky was three years old when he was taken to the killing
fields at Babi Yar. His father was murdered. His mother was shot before
his eyes, but survived. He has no recollection of how they escaped; he
only knows that no one else from his family did. He remembers the long
march through the snow, the hunger, the bodies piled up all around him.
But he survived, married, had a family, earned a living.

And now, at age 71, he is homeless again.

Every night, after finishing his job as a janitor, he comes to the park in
the luxury Beeri Nahardea housing project, not far from Ichilov Hospital,
to sleep. Early each morning, he leaves. He said he chose this park
because of its ritzy location: Should anyone attack him, he said, the
neighbors would surely call the police.

All his belongings are in one satchel - a rolled-up mattress, two shirts,
two pairs of pants. In a plastic bag, he has soap and some food. It is
very important to him that he not look like a bum: He shaves every day;
his shirt is neatly tucked in. He washes himself and his clothes at a tap
in a nearby building.

"It will be harder in the winter," he says. "In the summer, everything
dries instantly."

Yevgeny moved to Israel in 1993 with his wife and daughter. He lived and
worked in Ariel, but then the factory that employed him closed. Then he
found work in Tel Aviv, so the family moved there.

Two years ago, he was fired from that job, and after that, everything fell
apart. He separated from his wife; his daughter went to study in Germany.
He returned to Ariel, but no one would rent an apartment to an unemployed
senior citizen with no collateral or guarantors. He found an abandoned
Amidar apartment (public housing) that had no electricity or running
water, but eight months ago, he was evicted.

Officials in Ariel advised him to go to Tel Aviv, saying its welfare
department was excellent. He did, but got no help.

He found a cleaning job that pays NIS 2,000 a month, and he also has his
Israeli old-age allowance and the monthly 270-euro pension that he has
received from Germany for the last three years. But he still cannot find
anyone willing to rent him an apartment, given his age and his lack of
collateral and guarantors. So he sleeps in the park.

His has not told his daughter about his plight. When she calls his cell
phone, he describes a very different life.

Yevgeny speaks very little Hebrew. But this week, one couple managed to
communicate with him and promptly called Latet, a nonprofit that helps the
needy. The organization has helped more than 1,200 Holocaust survivors
over the last three years, but Yaron, who is helping Ivgeny, is
dumbfounded by this case.

For four solid hours, he called the emergency hotlines of various towns in
the center of the country, but at each, got only a recorded announcement
saying they were on vacation. The same was true of the towns' welfare
departments. Finally, he reached someone in Tel Aviv's welfare bureau, who
directed him to a homeless shelter in Jaffa. But after seeing it, they
took the advice of the drug addict at the door and returned to the park.
It was no place for a drug-free 71-year-old.

The Ariel municipality said Yevgeny is not eligible for government housing
until his divorce is finalized - which he lacks the money to do, quite
aside from the fact that it usually takes months.

Finally, a pre-army academy in Tel Aviv agreed to give him a room for a
few days. On Wednesday night, he slept there, and could not stop gushing
over the clean sheets. The question is what will become of him tomorrow.

(source: Ha'aretz)






AUG. 21


GERMANY:

The Fhrer's Obsession with Art----'Hitler Considered Himself an Artistic
Genius'


Art historian Birgit Schwarz talks to SPIEGEL about why Adolf Hitler saw
himself as a genius and how his obsession with art affected his political
views.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Schwarz, countless books and academic papers have been
written worldwide about Hitler, the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Now you
are claiming that it's time to correct our image of Hitler. In what sense?

Birgit Schwarz: In my opinion, people have underestimated the notion that
Hitler considered himself an artist, in fact, an artistic genius, and that
much can be deduced from this self-image, this overheated artist's ego.
However, this has hardly played a role in the research to date. That's the
starting point, from my perspective, because it can help us gain a better
understanding of Hitler as a person, as well as his system of power.
Hitler's deluded view of himself as a genius is based on the confused
system of thought emerging in the late 19th century, which centered on the
idea that a genius -- a strong personality who outshone everything else --
could do anything and could do anything he pleased.

SPIEGEL: That sounds like a debatable view. Historians will complain.

Schwarz: Perhaps. But I believe that it's important to amend the history
of his personality. Aside from that, I'm looking forward to the debate.

SPIEGEL: Hitler's relationship with art is well-documented. He earned
money with his watercolors and wanted to become a painter. Later he became
an insatiable collector, a passion which turned into the most brutal art
theft of all time. All of this is well known. What, then, is supposedly
incorrect about the current image of Hitler?

Schwarz: There is a widespread view that he was not truly fascinated by
art, and that although he collected art and used it to cultivate his
image, he then hid it away in basements and mines. Someone like Gring was
constantly bragging about his collection, but many believe that Hitler
wasn't actually that interested. But it was very deeply ingrained in his
personality.

SPIEGEL: What makes you so certain?

Schwarz: The previously underestimated observations of his contemporaries,
for one. For example, there was the Italian archeologist and art historian
Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an accomplished expert who was not on
Hitler's side. He became one of Italy's great intellectuals after the war.
In 1938, Bianchi Bandinelli was asked to play the role of tour guide
during one of Hitler's state visits, and Hitler spent hour after hour
admiring paintings. According to Bianchi Bandinelli, it was evident in
Hitler's body language that he was truly entranced by the art.

SPIEGEL: But Mussolini was simply annoyed by the time Hitler spent looking
at art.

Schwarz: Yes, but sources like Bianchi Bandinelli's account show that
there is something important missing from our picture of Hitler, something
we still need to understand and that hasn't been taken into account until
now. In fact, a very different image was built up over decades, namely of
Hitler and his fight against so-called degenerate art.

SPIEGEL: But that too is an important part of his relationship with art.

Schwarz: Of course, and it was probably fueled by real hatred. At the same
time, art was very important to him throughout his entire life.

SPIEGEL: Doesn't the perception of Hitler as an artist make him seem less
evil?

Schwarz: No. In fact, his love of art led directly into the heart of evil.
But neither is it the root of everything else. His fanatical pursuit of
his own cause, and his self-image as a genius, contributed to his powers
of persuasion and, therefore, his success. Art was part of his life until
his last hours, even playing a role in his private will, in which he
mentions his collections. This was someone who issued the so-called Nero
Decree (Ed's note: Hitler's Nero Decree, issued in March 1945, ordered the
destruction of any infrastructure which could be of use to the Allies.)
while at the same time making sure art treasures were rescued. But no one
is willing to admit to his obsession with art.

SPIEGEL: But the story of how Hitler flew to occupied Paris and visited
the main sights at dawn is legendary.

Schwarz: This obsession with art was interpreted as nothing but a
cultivation of his image and propaganda. When you look at his biography,
you understand that art was vitally important to him much earlier, and
that he needed it for self-affirmation.

SPIEGEL: Prominent historians, particularly the brilliant Ian Kershaw, see
the young Hitler primarily as a failed painter. He wanted to study
painting, but he was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts twice, in
1907 and 1908. Why don't you accept this interpretation?

Schwarz: Of course, being turned down was a fundamental shock to him. But
the Hitler research community believes that he accepted his failure, and
that he gave up the artistic world. But in reality he always retained his
self-image as an artist and as someone obsessed with art. The rebuff from
the academy was probably what prompted him to consider himself a genius.

SPIEGEL: In your opinion, he saw himself as someone who had been
underestimated. But where is the difference between "failed" and
"underestimated," which is so critical to understanding Hitler?

Schwarz: If he had seen himself as failed, he would have had to abandon
his idea of being an artist. That's what Ian Kershaw, for example, claims.
And (German historian and Hitler biographer) Joachim Fest didn't take
Hitler's self-image as a genius seriously enough. Many believe that
Goebbels didn't start consistently referring to Hitler as a genius until
later on.

SPIEGEL: And that was indeed the case.

Schwarz: But for Hitler it was more than a propaganda strategy. He
seriously believed he was a genius, long before Goebbels referred to him
as such. And it makes sense that Goebbels constantly described him as a
genius. A genius shouldn't refer to himself as a genius. He needs a
community of admirers. His conviction that he was a genius, in my
interpretation, was at the center of his entire worldview.

SPIEGEL: For a time, Hitler survived by painting watercolor scenes of
Vienna. He was apparently fired by an architecture firm where you believe
he worked, because his performance wasn't good enough. He then moved to
Munich, where he hung around in cafs. That doesn't sound like someone with
the creative urges of a genius.

Schwarz: On the contrary. Let me give you an example. A competition for an
imposing building project of the late Kaiser period was announced in
Berlin. The opera house was going to be rebuilt. We don't know if Hitler
attempted to officially enter the competition -- in fact, it's unlikely --
but it appears that he did draw some of his own designs. He believed that
he could hold his own with the most famous architects.

SPIEGEL: Why didn't he seek public attention?

Schwarz: A genius can shine in secret, hoping that he will make a big
splash one day.


'The Genius Was Allowed to be Above Morality'


SPIEGEL: Could Hitler seriously have considered himself a genius? His
talent as a draftsman was moderate at best.

Schwarz: He apparently felt differently, and it was important for his ego
that he was self-taught. After the humiliation of being rejected by the
academy, he developed an aversion to all professors, and to all academic
study. He referred to himself once as a minor painter, but that was at a
time when he believed he was a great architect. On the whole, he saw
himself as a creative genius. You mustn't forget that the concept we have
today of a genius is so much more harmless than it was back then.

SPIEGEL: In what sense?

Schwarz: We define a genius on the basis of his talent. At the time,
talent was not the main focus. A genius had to have a strong personality.
He was a larger-than-life talent who was permitted to do anything,
including evil things. The genius has outstanding ideas, and they must be
implemented, even if they are completely amoral. Hitler admired the work
of dour philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. One
important aspect is often overlooked, namely that the concept of genius
had long been colored with racism. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a Briton
by birth who had married into the family of Richard Wagner, was a
significant figure. He published his views in a book, which became a
bestseller. Chamberlain, who promoted the great Aryan personality, was a
key figure for Hitler.

SPIEGEL: Are you going so far as to draw a line between the concept of
genius and the Holocaust?

Schwarz: Let me say it one more time: The genius was allowed to be above
morality. The amorality of the Nazis represents taking this position to
its unthinkable extreme. Goebbels wrote the brutal sentence: "Geniuses
consume people." Part of Hitler's concept of a genius was the image of an
enemy. In his case, it even needed to be a mortal enemy.

SPIEGEL: But his worldview was strongly influenced by World War I and his
own drastic experiences at the front.

Schwarz: Naturally that was a turning point. However, he believed that the
world war proved that it was possible to overcome all odds. But I don't
see an absolute shift in his life. Even before World War I, he had the
self-image of a genius, and he kept it up after that. That's continuity.
In the early 1920s, he even declared that what was needed was "a dictator
who is a genius." Of course, the population also yearned for a genius.

SPIEGEL: But shouldn't the word "genius" be replaced with "Fhrer"
("leader")?

Schwarz: No. The Fhrer concept arose from the genius concept in the first
place. Once again, too great a distinction has been drawn between Hitler
the artist and Hitler the politician until now. The research describes
Hitler as a man who was a failure during his first 30 years before
suddenly, as if in a new life, managing to captivate the masses as a
politician. It's a divided biography, in other words. But the question is:
Where did he get his self-confidence, and the certainty that he was an
exceptional figure?

SPIEGEL: Hitler himself described a split in his biography, "Mein Kampf,"
in which he famously wrote: "But I decided to become a politician."

Schwarz: It wasn't a split, but a development. His career as a politician
doesn't contradict his self-image as a genius by any means. And that was
what he considered himself to be, first an artist, and then a politician
and strategist. But without the self-image as an artist, he would never
have been able to see himself as a genius. That's why he constantly had to
reaffirm his love for art.

SPIEGEL: You describe which paintings Hitler hung, re-hung or removed in
his private and official rooms, including works by the Swiss painter
Arnold Bcklin and the German painter Carl Spitzweg. These two painters
represent very different styles: overblown and aggressive versus detailed
and contemplative, respectively. And then there were the neo-classical
portraits of women by painters like Anselm Feuerbach. How does all this
fit together?

Schwarz: It doesn't fit together at all. I have reconstructed his
collection of paintings, including the ones in his private rooms. Hitler's
taste cannot be pinned down. There is no aesthetic lowest common
denominator. But what his favorite painters do have in common is that
Hitler saw them as misunderstood geniuses.

SPIEGEL: Does a genius need a muse? If so, was Hitler's muse Eva Braun --
or perhaps his favorite architect, Albert Speer?

Schwarz: Perhaps an artist needs a muse, but a genius doesn't, because a
genius's creative strength comes from within. And a genius, as Hitler
explained to his secretary, could not have any children. However, he did
have role models, including Frederick the Great, who became increasingly
important to him. Hitler felt that he was an incarnation of this
art-loving ruler, who was both a collector and a military strategist. He
imitated everything about him, including his love for dogs and, later, his
shuffling walk and stained uniform. It was even obvious to the terribly
banal Eva Braun, who chided him for his excessive efforts to imitate
Frederick. In the end, he insisted on having a portrait of the king nearby
at all times, even in the bunker. Academics are familiar with this
adoration and with how alarmingly deep it went, but it probably hasn't
been adequately studied.

SPIEGEL: In the end, how much did he retain of his belief that he was a
genius?

Schwarz: It was everything at the end. In fact, Hitler, in his delusions
of being a genius, is best understood by studying the last months of his
life. The period in the Fhrer's bunker is very illuminating. It was only a
few steps from his quarters to the cellar of the New Reich Chancellery,
where the model of his architectural plans for Linz was displayed. He had
to reaffirm his status as a genius, and he could only do so through his
close connection to art and architecture. These final attempts at creating
a certain image for himself had a fatal effect. He made a strong
impression on many of the people around him. Many believed that Hitler
would succeed in the end, just as his role model and supposed fellow
genius Frederick the Great managed to win certain battles, even emerging
from wars as the victor despite having suffered military defeats.

SPIEGEL: So art never opened Hitler's eyes -- he saw only what he wanted
to see?

Schwarz: That was always his intention, right from the start.

SPIEGEL: Ms Schwarz, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Ulrike Knfel

(source: Spiegel)