Aug. 23



USA:

Appeals court overturns Holocaust looted-art law, but Norton Simon suit
continues


A federal appeals court today struck down as unconstitutional a 2002
California law giving owners and heirs to artworks looted by the Nazis
extra time -- until the end of 2010 -- to sue for their return.

But the 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco did not settle the specific case at hand:

Does the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena really own one of the most prized
works hanging in its galleries, Lucas Cranach the Elder's depiction of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, moments before the Fall -- or should
the paintings on two wood panels be handed over to the daughter-in-law of
a Jewish art dealer who left the panels in Holland when he fled the
invading Germans in 1940?

The German artist painted them around 1530, and they were valued at $24
million in 2006, when the museum had them appraised for insurance
purposes.

Under the appellate ruling, Connecticut resident Marei Von Saher no longer
can take advantage of the special law -- now overturned. But the appeals
panel still opened a door for her to proceed -- if she can convince the
trial judge who previously dismissed her case that she sued in time to
satisfy California's regular statute of limitations, which gives victims
three years to sue for the return of property, starting from the date they
learn the lost items' whereabouts.

The appeals court agreed with John F. Walter, the U.S. District Court
judge in Los Angeles who threw out Von Sahers suit in October 2007 that
California officials overstepped their authority when they passed the
state's Holocaust art-restitution law, because they intruded on what is
strictly a federal government prerogative to shape policies on war and
foreign affairs.

But the appeals court ruled that Walter should not have dismissed the case
altogether, and needs to reconsider whether Von Saher has a right to sue
under the regular statute of limitations, whose cutoff date in her case is
unclear. Although the Norton Simon Art Foundation bought the Cranach
panels from a Russian owner in 1971, the appellate court said the statute
of limitations clock would not have begun to run on Von Saher until she
discovered or reasonably could have discovered" that she had an ownership
claim to the Cranachs," and that they were hanging at the Norton Simon
Museum. "It is not clear that the statute of limitations has expired,"
they said -- and that's now an issue for the two sides to argue, and for
Walter to decide.

Von Saher's father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, bought the life-size nudes
of Adam and Eve in 1931 when they were put up for auction in Berlin by
Josef Stalin's financially hard-pressed Soviet regime. When Goudstikker
fled Holland, his firm sold the paintings to the Nazis under duress.

After World War II, Goudstikker's family reached a settlement with the
Dutch government that left the Cranachs in Dutch hands. The Dutch
government then transferred ownership to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, an
heir to an old Russian family, who said the Bolsheviks had confiscated the
paintings from his forebears during the Russian Revolution.
Stroganoff-Scherbatoff subsequently sold them to Norton Simon, the Los
Angeles industrialist who established the Norton Simon Museum.

In her 2007 suit against the museum, Saher said that she learned in late
2000 that the Cranachs were at the Norton Simon Museum; the museum
contended that she first came forward with her claim in 2001. Mediation
sessions in 2005 and March 2007 failed to resolve the dispute, according
to a suit the Norton Simon Foundation filed in May 2007 asserting its
right to the Adam and Eve paintings.

In a prepared statement, the Norton Simon Art Foundation said Wednesday
that its legal title to the Cranachs is unassailable and that it will
defend ... vigorously its right to keep them.

We are satisfied with todays ruling and look forward to a quick resolution
to this matter, Norton Simon officials added.

Von Saher's lawyer, Lawrence Kaye, said that she "is certainly gratified
that ... she will have her day in court using the three-year statute of
limitations. He said its too early to say whether Von Saher will appeal to
preserve the broader deadline she clearly had met under the now-overturned
state law. In its written opinion, the Ninth Circuits panel of judges
noted that Norton Simon attorneys already have submitted news clippings
and other published items to show that the Adam and Eve paintings were
famous attractions at the museum decades before Von Saher came forward
with her claim -- evidence that the museum can use to argue that Von Saher
came forward far too late to satisfy the standard, three-year statute of
limitations that she must now meet.

One of the three appellate judges, Harry Pregerson, dissented from the
legal opinion by Dorothy W. Nelson and David R. Thompson. Pregerson argued
that the state law extending the statute of limitations for claims on
Nazi-looted art does not mean California is butting in on a federal
prerogative setting policies for war reparations but serves the states
legitimate interest in regulating museums and galleries.

The state attorney general's office filed a friend-of-the-court brief in
the Von Saher case, taking no position on whether the museum should turn
over the paintings to her, but arguing to uphold he California law
extending the statute of limitations for claims seeking the return of art
allegedly looted during the Holocaust.

Antonette Cordero, the deputy attorney general who wrote the brief, said
it would be up to Von Saher whether to appeal today's decision to a
larger, 15-member panel of the Ninth Circuit appeals court -- and then to
the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cordero said three other California laws on Holocaust redress also have
been found to be unconstitutional intrusions into foreign affairs: in
2003, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Holocaust Victims' Insurance
Relief Act, which required insurers to disclose information about policies
they sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945, and the Ninth Circuit court of
appeals invalidated a law extending the statute of limitations for claims
for payment for slave labor. In 2005, the California Court of Appeal found
that an extension of the statute of limitations for Holocaust-era
insurance claims was not valid.

(source: Los Angeles Times)




RUSSIA:

Soviet-Nazi pact revisited 70 years later


Seventy years ago today, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi
Germany that gave dictator Josef Stalin a free hand to take over part of
Poland and the Baltic states on the eve of World War II.

Most of the world now condemns the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but Russia has
mounted a new defense of the 1939 treaty as it seeks to restore some of
its now-lost sphere of influence.

"This is all being rehabilitated because this is now a very lively issue
for Russia," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "This is not about
history at all."

The pact, formally a treaty of nonaggression, was signed Aug. 23, 1939, in
Moscow by Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign
ministers of the two countries.

In addition to the pledge of nonaggression, the treaty included secret
protocols that divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of
influence.

On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland - thus igniting World War II - and
within weeks the Red Army had marched in from the east. After claiming
its part of Poland, the Soviet Union then annexed part of Finland, the
Baltic states and the Romanian region that is now Moldova.

Molotov's grandson and namesake, Vyacheslav Nikonov, said his grandfather
saw a deal with Nazi Germany as the only alternative after a failure to
reach a military agreement with Britain and France.

The Soviet government was convinced that a Nazi attack on Poland was
imminent and "we needed to know where the Germans were going to stop,"
Nikonov said. The pact also bought needed time for the country to prepare
for war, he said.

He said his grandfather later criticized aspects of Stalin's leadership,
including the purges, but he stood by the pact for the rest of his life.

"He said there were many, many mistakes done by the Soviet leadership, he
regrets many lives," said Nikonov, who was 30 when his grandfather died in
1986 and knew him well. "Molotov never considered Molotov-Ribbentrop as
something he would regret."

The Soviet Union officially denied the existence of the secret protocols
for decades. They were only formally acknowledged and denounced in 1989.

But as the 70th anniversary of the treaty has approached, some Russian
historians have stepped up to vociferously defend the Soviet Union's
decision to expand its territory at the expense of its neighbors.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, once part of the KGB, published a book
of declassified intelligence reports in an effort to make the case that
the nonaggression treaty and its secret protocols were justified and
essential to the victory over the Nazis.

Retired Maj. Gen. Lev Sotskov, who compiled the book, said the pact
allowed the Soviet Union to "move its borders with Germany" to the West.
This prevented the Baltic states of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia of
becoming a staging ground for an attack, he told journalists.

Even so, when Nazi Germany did attack in June 1941, all the territory the
Soviet Union had gained was lost in a matter of weeks.

At the end of the war, however, U.S. and British leaders accepted the
borders of the Soviet Union as defined by the treaty with Germany. This in
effect restored the borders of the Russian Empire.

The Allied leaders also allowed Stalin to extend the Soviet Union's sphere
of influence throughout much of eastern and central Europe.

The current attempt to justify the carving up of Europe during World War
II comes as Russia once again is trying to establish its sphere of
influence.

After last year's conflict with Georgia, a U.S. ally, President Dmitry
Medvedev asserted Russia's right to intervene militarily in what it
regards as its zone of "privileged interests" along its borders.

The war stripped Georgia of pieces of its territory, which are now under
the control of Russian-backed separatists.

"In his understanding of Realpolitik, Vladimir Putin does not diverge from
the line set by Josef Stalin," military analyst Alexander Golts wrote in
the online Yezhednevny Zhurnal. "Military force decides everything and if
there is an opportunity to grab a piece of someone else's territory then
it should be taken."

Moscow has insisted it should have a dominating influence over countries
that were once part of the Soviet Union. But Washington has continued to
encourage the NATO ambitions of Georgia and Ukraine, and has made clear
that it will accept no claims of a Russian sphere of influence over former
Soviet republics that are now sovereign states.

Russians' defense of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also is being used to
bolster the Kremlin's push for the creation of a new collective security
system to replace NATO, embracing all of Europe, the United States and
Canada.

Sotskov said the Soviet Union had to sign the 1939 treaty with Germany
because efforts to create "a system of collective security" with Britain,
France, Poland and the Baltic states had failed. The Soviet leadership
believed the West was hoping to turn Adolf Hitler's armies east against
Russia.

(source: Associated Press)







USA//LOUISIANA:

Traveling exhibit on Nazi book burnings will open at State Library Aug. 27


On May 10, 1933, just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power in
Nazi Germany and a full six years before World War II, German university
students carried out an "Action Against the Un-German Spirit."

They targeted authors ranging from Helen Keller and Ernest Hemingway to
Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Their orchestrated book burnings across
Germany would come to underscore German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine's
19th century warning, "Where one burns books, one soon burns people."

The State Library of Louisiana, 701 N. 4th St., will host a special
traveling exhibition, Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi
Book Burnings, organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. The exhibit opens with reception at 6:30 p.m. Thursday,
Aug. 27.

Fighting the Fires of Hate provides a vivid look at the first steps the
Nazis took to suppress freedom of expression, and the strong response that
occurred in the United States both immediately and in the years
thereafter. The exhibition focuses on how the book burnings became a
potent symbol during World War II in America's battle against Nazism, and
concludes by examining their continued impact on our public discourse.

Covered widely in the media, the Nazi book burnings provoked immediate,
strong reactions in the United States among writers, artists, scholars,
journalists, librarians, labor unions, clergy, political figures and
others.

Newspaper editorials and political cartoonists denounced the bonfires.
Newsweek called it a "holocaust of books;" Time a "bibliocaust." American
writers including Helen Keller, Lewis Mumford and Sinclair Lewis - some of
whose books had been consigned to the flames - wrote open letters
condemning the book burnings.

The American Jewish Congress organized massive street demonstrations in
more than a dozen U.S. cities to protest Nazi persecution of Jews, using
May 10 and the book burnings to broaden the coalition of anti-Nazi groups.

"Today, mass book burnings bring to mind almost nightmarish images, said
State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton. "To destroy a book is an attempt to
destroy a peoples culture and freedom of thought. This exhibition brings
to life the horrors that eventually became one of the most gruesome
examples of a government's attempts to purify a society into its own
vision of perfection - The Holocaust."

"Americans were deeply offended by the book burnings, which were a gross
assault against their core values," said Edward Phillips, exhibitions
director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Their response was
intense, in fact so strong that throughout the war the government used the
book burnings to help define the nature of the enemy to the American
public."

The exhibition also focuses on how organizations ranging from the Library
of Congress, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers
Association, the National Council of Women to the Writers War Board, the
Council on Books in Wartime and the Office of War Information used the
1943 10th anniversary of the book burnings to rally Americans around the
war effort.

It documents how the importance of books and the free marketplace of ideas
were given currency through the slogan "Books Are Weapons in the War of
Ideas," which appeared in posters, proclamations, radio broadcasts and
scores of other outlets.

The exhibition concludes with the postwar years, exploring how the Nazi
book burnings have continued to resonate in American politics, literature
and popular culture. It features post-war evocations of book burnings,
including a McCarthy-era speech in which President Eisenhower urged
Dartmouth graduates, "Don't join the book burners;" films such as
Pleasantville, Field of Dreams, episodes of The Waltons and M*A*S*H, the
death threats against Salman Rushdie, and the public burning of J.K.
Rowling's Harry Potter books.

"Appropriately enough, the exhibition precedes Banned Books Week, which is
recognized from Sept. 27 through Oct. 3," Hamilton said. "Closely after
that on Oct. 17, we strike quite a different note with the 2009 Louisiana
Book Festival where we celebrate and give honor to all books."

Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings will run
through Sept. 20, then continue its nationwide travel. It includes
displays of period artifacts, documents and news coverage, along with
film, video and newsreel footage.

Library hours are 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The exhibit is
free.

For more information on the exhibition, call (225) 219-9503 or visit
http://www.state.lib.la.us or http://www.ushmm.org.

(source: The Advocate)


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


Nazi imagery offensive?in health care debate


Recently, President Barack Obama was in New Hampshire to hold a town hall
meeting on the proposed health-care legislation.

While opinions seem to vary about how to resolve our heath-care crisis,
one thing is clear: Nazi terminology and images of swastikas hold no place
in this debate.

Following a health-care town meeting in Georgia, a swastika was painted on
the door of Rep. David Scotts office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that town hall protesters were
"carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health
care."

Rush Limbaugh compared the logo of the DNC's "Organizing for Health Care"
logo to the Nazi's Parteiadler (party eagle) symbol.

Rhetoric of this type has no place in the health-care debate. Use of this
language is an insult to Holocaust victims, survivors and their families.

It is important to learn about and remember the Holocaust to confront
hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity and strengthen democracy.
We should not debase this memory by using these terms inappropriately.

Our policy makers, media commentators and participants in the health-care
debate need to come up with new terms with which to conduct their debate.

K. Jeff Fladen, Executive Director Jewish Federation of New Hampshire

(source: Letter to the Editor, Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph)