Feb. 5



USA----new book

"The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and the Meaning of a
Nazi Massacre in Rome" by Alessandro Portelli (Palgrave Macmillan)--

This is an oral history and study of an incident on March 24, 1944, at the
Ardeatine Caves, in which Nazi occupation forces killed 335 unarmed
civilians in retaliation for an attack on German police by Italian
partisans the day before.


*******


USA//MAINE:

Holocaust center launches design competition


In Augusta, the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine is launching a
design competition for its new home at the University of Maine at Augusta.

Trustees approved the plan to give the center a permanent home Monday.

The $1.5 million center is planned as an addition to the Bennett D. Katz
Library. It will be funded with private dollars.

The center's executive director, Sharon Nichols, said Tuesday she is
contacting architecture schools, architecture online magazines and members
of the Maine chapter of American Institute of Architects.

The guidelines will be posted online on Sunday.

Nichols says nearly $1 million already has been raised. She says a Fort
Kent woman whose parents were victims of the Holocaust is a key donor in
the campaign.

(source: Associated Press)



USA//CALIFORNIA:

Armenia Holocaust settlement announced


In Sacramento, the prolonged litigation between New York Life Insurance
and descendants of the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide has been
settled in California.

The $20-million settlement was announced by California Insurance
Commissioner John Garamendi, according to the Insurance Journal.

He said during the late 1800s and early 1900s New York Life sold thousands
of life insurance policies to ethnic Armenians in the Turkish Ottoman
Empire.

"Many of those who bought the policies were killed during a deliberate,
systematic and government-controlled genocide that began in April 1915,"
the report quoted Garamendi as saying.

"Many of the survivors of these policyholders live in California and I am
gratified that due to the parties' hard work in this matter, justice will
finally be served."

He said New York Life was generous in its willingness to compromise to
come to a complex, detailed agreement.

A three-member Settlement Fund Board will be appointed to evaluate each
claim.

(source: UPI)




ISRAEL/SWITZERLAND:

Israel Makes Play for Swiss Bank Funds


The Israeli government and an international Holocaust restitution
organization with which it is allied are raising eyebrows - and
hackles - with a proposal that 48% of any funds left unclaimed from the
$1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement be assigned to Israeli charities and
government ministries.

The request comes in a proposal submitted by the government and its
partner on restitution matters, the World Jewish Restitution Organization,
on ways to allocate any moneys that may be left over from a 1998 legal
settlement between Holocaust survivors and Swiss banks. The Brooklyn
federal judge overseeing the settlement, Edward Korman, directed that
proposals be submitted by January 31 for ways of using unclaimed funds to
aid needy survivors. The Israeli proposal, one of several dozen proposals
submitted to the court, recommends that only 17% of the leftover funds go
to survivors in the former Soviet Union and 15% go to the United States.

As much as $600 million may become available in unclaimed funds after the
heirs to Swiss bank accounts are paid out.

Under the original distribution plan, adopted by the judge in 2000, a
small portion of the $1.25 billion settlement was to be used to benefit
needy survivors around the world. Most of that so-called humanitarian fund
was allocated to programs assisting destitute survivors in the former
Soviet Union, where need was deemed greatest. The judge has agreed to
reconsider that ruling.

The World Jewish Restitution Organization is a partnership between Jewish
groups and Israel, formed in 1992 to negotiate with European nations other
than Germany and Austria over restitution of Holocaust-era properties.

One member organization of the WJRO, the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee, refused to sign on to the Israeli proposal. Joint
officials said there was not sufficient time to examine the proposal, but
that when calculating need it seemed to overlook the support Israeli and
American survivors already receive from their governments.

Some leaders in the survivor community were critical of the Israeli
proposal, saying they did not want to see restitution funds channeled to
survivors through the "bureaucracy" of Israeli ministries.

Israeli and American leaders of restitution efforts had resisted an
earlier attempt by the Israeli government to access a separate restitution
fund, saying they feared the money would be used to balance Israel's
troubled government budget. Israeli officials denied the accusation at the
time, promising not to use new restitution monies as an excuse to trim old
sources of funding for survivors.

The lead plaintiffs' counsel in the Swiss settlement, Burt Neuborne, said
that the court would not allocate any funds from the settlement to any
government entity.

"The money is not going into the Israeli budget," he said. "If it goes
into the Israeli government, it'll be over my objections. I don't think
the judge will be inclined to do that."

In the past few weeks scores of requests for funding have streamed in to
the office of the court. Among them are proposals by North American Jewish
federated charities, which calculated the unmet needs of survivors in
cities across the country. In New York alone, the cost of meeting
survivors' needs was estimated at $70 million a year.

The Joint, which administers the court-designated aid programs for
survivors in the former Soviet Union, submitted a proposal for a new
program that would improve the level of service to survivors at a cost of
$15 million per year. A court hearing on the many proposals is scheduled
for April 29.

The Israeli proposal was roundly criticized last week after an initial
draft included an index that divided survivors by their levels of
"sufferance." The so-called suffering index was removed after several
member organizations of the World Jewish Restitution Organization
complained. But critics found other points objectionable as well. They
took issue with the proposal's demographic breakdown of survivors,
questioning the Israeli estimate that 46.5% of all Holocaust survivors
live in Israel. Another recent study put the number at 38.5%.

Critics questioned Israel's inclusion within its so-called survivor
population of Jews who came to Israel from North African countries that
were essentially untouched by the Holocaust. Israeli experts have argued
that Jews who lived in Arab countries allied to Nazi Germany during World
War II may be considered victims of Nazism.

Critics also questioned the Israeli proposal's system of quantifying where
survivors are most in need. In a report submitted along with the proposal,
Israeli demographer Sergio DellaPergola lists variables in each country
that could affect a survivor's level of need, such as access to essential
drugs.

"I am against giving money to the government," said Noach Flug, president
of the Center of Survivor Organizations in Israel, a roof body of 44
survivor groups. "The ministry cannot make differences between a survivor
and not a survivor, and I think this money belongs only to needy
survivors." Flug, however, praised the rest of the proposal.

Rabbi Israel Singer, co-chairman of the World Jewish Restitution
Organization, defended the Israeli proposal to fund government agencies.
"These institutions were chosen because they are assumed to be the most
effective," he said.

"Depending on the exact percentages, nearly half of the survivors live in
Israel," said Elan Steinberg, executive vice-president of the World Jewish
Congress and a board member of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.
"The question which has been raised by those within the Israeli government
is, why aren't [Swiss] resources reflecting that?"

(source: AxisofLogic)




UNITED KINGDOM:

MIRACLE BIRTH AFTER MOTHER DEFIES NAZIS Jan 30 2004


EVA Clarke should not exist. Hitler's death camps were built for mass
extermination, not for the miracle of birth.

She survived Auschwitz as an unborn child and weighed only 3lbs when she
was born among the corpses of Mauthausen three days before it was
liberated - a tiny bundle of hope blackened by coal dust and wrapped in
newspaper.

"I've known my story all my life," says Eva at London's Imperial War
Museum.

There, inside the Holocaust exhibition, visitors contemplate the
unthinkable. Eva stops at a picture of the hill above the quarry at
Mauthausen, where thousands of prisoners died climbing the "stairway of
death". This is where she was born, in a cart filled with the dead.

This week - on the 59th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz-Birkenau - the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Eva and her mother remember the Holocaust every day.

"My mother survived selection after selection at Auschwitz, where one
group would be sent for labour and the other to the gas chambers," Eva
says. "She survived despite carrying me in her womb."

Anka Nathan is 86 now and lives in Cardiff. She tells it a different way:
"It was Eva that saved me."

Anka met Bernd Nathan, her German-Jewish husband, in the Czech capital
Prague in 1939, the year Hitler invaded. They married in 1940 but in
December 1941, they were among those sent to the Jewish ghetto at Terezin
(Theresienstadt), 30 miles from Prague.

At first, life there was bearable but things quickly became more sinister.

"There were hangings and shootings. If someone did not come back at night,
they were dead. It was an unreal world but we had no idea of the
catastrophe to come."

In 1943, despite the segregation of men and women, Anka became pregnant.
"You may wonder how but anything is possible," she says. She was forced to
sign an agreement that her child would be taken for "euthanasia".

"There was no choice," she says. "My little boy was born in February
1944." Baby George was never sent for euthanasia, though, as he died of
pneumonia at eight weeks.

Eva looks at her mother. "His death meant my life," she says.

IN June, news reached Terezin of the Allied invasion. Anka and her husband
tried for another baby. "It might seem crazy but we thought we'd be in
Prague in six months."

Then orders came that the men were to be transported East. Bernd went on
September 28. Anka followed three days later but she never saw him again.
Bernd never knew she was pregnant.

Days later, the cattle trucks full of people arrived in Auschwitz, Poland.

"As we came in we saw the huge chimneys spewing out smoke but had no idea
what they were for," says Anka. "The train stopped and a man indicated
which line we must join." That man was Dr Josef Mengele - the Angel of
Death - who became infamous for his depraved human experiments.

"They took our clothes and we were sent to some showers to wash. We didn't
know then that there were other types of showers. They shaved our heads
and gave us old clothes, without underwear or shoes. It was freezing."

Anka quickly learned that Auschwitz was a death camp.

"I asked if anyone had seen my parents and was told they were in the gas
chamber. The other prisoners thought we were mad that we didn't know. We
thought they were mad...

"But I also remember an awful smell, a sweetness like burning flesh. We
realised that no children or elderly people had come with us. We were all
able-bodied - they needed workers."

There were roll-calls at 4am each morning. Anka, weakened by her
pregnancy, often fainted but the women either side held her up.

"I'd have been sent to my death if I had fallen," she says. "We now knew
that something terrible was happening. We saw lorries full of naked women
going by.

"We were naked in front of the SS officers and soldiers but I kept getting
through the selections because my pregnancy didn't show."

Anka then joined a group of women on a hellish two-week journey to a
munitions factory near Dresden, in Germany.

"After Auschwitz, it seemed like luxury. In the morning the water buckets
would be full of bedbugs and lice but we didn't care."

The women worked 14-hour shifts building pilotless doodlebugs. At night,
they were locked in the factory, where they watched air raids light up the
sky. "We begged them to drop a bomb on us - we would have gladly died."

By April, the Allies were close and the women were loaded into open coal
wagons without food or sanitation. After 10 days, the train, travelling
South, stopped to throw out the dead.

STANDING by the open doorway, Anka caught sight of a farmer walking
through the field.

"He must have seen a pregnant skeleton covered in coal dust and brought me
a glass of milk. One of the SS officers had a whip in his hand but chose
not to use it. The milk tasted like ambrosia. You can't imagine what it
meant."

Eva looks up. "That milk saved both our lives," she says. Reaching
Mauthausen camp, in Austria, Anka felt her first contraction. Unable to
walk, she was loaded into a cart with the dead and dying. "It was about
7pm on April 29," she says. "The sun was just going down and it was
bitterly cold.

"Dying women lay in the cart. I sat up with my legs apart with lice all
over me. I tried not to make a sound.

"The baby slipped out and a prisoner cut the cord and smacked its bottom.
If you are starved half to death then delivering a baby is nothing."

Mother and baby would have been sent to the gas chamber at Mauthausen but
it had been blown up the previous day by the Nazis, to conceal their
genocide.

Three days later, the Americans arrived and six days after that, the end
of the war was officially declared.

"The American soldiers treated me as if I were a living miracle," Anka
says. "They gave us chocolate and took us to Budweiser, in Bohemia.

"When the train stopped, some women came up to me. I was in prison
clothes, I weighed five stone, my head was shaved and my baby was wrapped
in newspaper.

"They came back with so many baby clothes. I washed and changed Eva at the
hospital. I had eight doctors around my bed, who told us: 'You are free.'"

Anka and Eva returned to Prague to find no trace of their family. "This
was the hardest part," Anka says.

"I knew my parents were dead but until I came home, I didn't know it in my
heart." She learned that Bernd, her husband, had been shot close to
Auschwitz in January 1945, nine days before it was liberated.

"My two sisters, my brother, my two nephews, my parents and my
mother-in-law had all died in the gas chambers."

Eventually, Anka found a cousin and lived in Prague for three years.

As the months passed she met a childhood friend named Karel Bergman, who
had joined the RAF as an interpreter. The couple married and decided to
emigrate.

They settled in Cardiff, where Karel had been asked to look after a
factory for an RAF friend. By the end of 1948, Anka had a home, a child
and a husband who adopted Eva as his own.

"Wales felt like heaven," says Anka. "I got Eva's health back and I was
just grateful to be alive.

"I couldn't have done it without Eva," she smiles at her daughter. "She
helped me to live."

(sourc: The Mirror, Jan. 30)





GERMANY/SWITZERLAND:

Fagan files suit against UBS over Nazi gas maker


In Frankfurt, U.S. lawyer Edward Fagan said on Thursday he had filed a
law suit against Swiss banking giant UBS, demanding more than $35 billion
in damages or restitution on behalf of Nazi poison gas firm IG Farben
shareholders.

Fagan, who became known for his role in promoting Holocaust-related
claims, said the legal action against UBS was filed in U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

"It was dropped off at the court last night and the official filing date
will be today," Fagan said in a telephone interview.

IG Farben filed for insolvency in December after being in liquidation
since 1952.

The shares remain listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange, to the dismay of
critics who have called it a "blood stock", as the liquidation process was
held up by disagreements with former slave workers.

Fagan said the suit was lodged on behalf of shareholders of IG Farben and
a foundation set up to compensate surviving slave workers from the
thousands who worked in IG Farben's factories during World War Two.

"The new lawsuit claims recently discovered documents support claims that
UBS owes IG Farben, its shareholders and victims of Nazi persecution
billions of dollars in restitution, reparation and damages," Fagan said.

A spokesman for UBS repeated the group's view that there is no ground for
such litigation. "There is no basis for any claim against UBS," he said.

UBS shares were off 0.5 percent at 90.40 Swiss francs in afternoon trade.
IG Farben shares were unchanged at 1.20 euros.

At issue is the firm Interhandel, known in wartime as IG Chemie, whose
takeover more than 40 years ago led to the creation of UBS.

The suit demands $1.8 billion in damages relating to the transfer of IG
Farben's German assets to IG Chemie during the war and up to 45 percent or
$35 billion of UBS assets in restitution or damages.


PREVIOUS LITIGATION FAILED

UBS has said past attempts by IG Farben shareholders to sue the Swiss bank
have failed while a German court in 1988 found no evidence of German
ownership of IG Chemie.

Interhandel was a Swiss firm formerly controlled by IG Farben whose
biggest asset was majority holdings in U.S.-based General Aniline & Film
Corporation (GAF).

U.S. authorities confiscated GAF as enemy property in 1942 and Interhandel
tried to reclaim GAF assets after the war.

The long-running legal wrangle, which ended up in the International Court
of Justice, drew to a conclusion in 1965 after a deal struck between the
U.S. government and Interhandel which culminated in GAF shares being sold
in a public auction, and UBS making an offer for all outstanding shares.

Towards the end of the war, IG Farben operated a large chemical factory
near the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, using around 83,000 slave labourers.

It was joint parent with Degussa of Degesch, supplier of Zyklon B hydrogen
cyanide gas used by the Nazis in their genocide campaign which resulted in
the murder of six million European Jews.

After World War Two, IG Farben's assets were confiscated by the Allies and
transferred to what became German chemical companies Hoechst, Bayer and
BASF.




GERMANY:

German who trained 'Nazi dog' escapes jail


A German businessman who trained his dog to perform a Nazi salute was
today sentenced to 13 months' probation for violating laws banning
neo-Nazi activities.

Judge Wilhelm Brand told Roland Thein, 54, a rightwing fanatic: "You are
very close to going to jail for a very long time. I don't want to hear of
you again, not another provocative word."

Thein, who runs a prosperous truck dealership and a wine import business,
responded by taking out a comb and brushing his hair to resemble Hitler's
distinctive fringe. He was already sporting a toothbrush moustache.

"You are trying my patience," said the judge.

The judge had earlier ordered Thein to remove a T-shirt depicting a baby
with Hitler's head superimposed. Officials also confiscated a picture of
the German flag with his dog at its centre.

The charges against Thein included the wearing of a shirt with banned Nazi
symbols, including the swastika; the taunting of foreign schoolchildren;
the shouting of Nazi slogans in the middle of a Turkish market in Berlin
and insulting a policeman.

These incidents were only the tip of the iceberg, according to witnesses.

Thein, accompanied by his dog, Adolf, criss-crossed Berlin looking for
people to provoke, the court was told.

The dog, which lives in a fortified kennel marked with his name, was an
essential prop. For years, it has allowed Thein to shout out Nazi slogans
while pretending to bark orders.

When he spotted a foreigner coming in his direction, Herr Thein shouts:
"Sieg Heil! Adolf - sit! Give the salute!" The dog - an Alsatian vaguely
resembling Hitler's favourite dog, Blondie - obeys.

German lawyers have been unsure as to whether yelling Nazi catch phrases
at a dog constitutes an offence. As a result, Thein has escaped serious
punishment, getting away with a 100 fine and probation.

Thein could have been imprisoned for three years. German authorities
started to take a tougher line with him when he and his dog started to
become minor celebrities featured in the tabloid press.

Japanese tourists have come to visit the dog and police have become used
to frog marching Thein and his faithful companion out of public meetings
after loud homophobic tirades against Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin.

Thein was unrepentant, telling the court that the only good judge there
had ever been in Germany was Roland Friesler, Hitler's hanging judge.

The leniency shown to the businessman is largely because he is not linked
to any recognised neo-Nazi group. "He is simply a very offensive eccentric
loner," said a court official.

Thein said: "I am a German. I was born in Bavaria, the son of a cavalry
officer, and I grew up this way I don't know any other way."

"Adolf is a very sweet dog," said Nicole Bumann-Zarske, the man's lawyer.
"He loves biscuits, just like his owner!"

A friend of the man, who declined to give his name, said that the dog had
been hit by a car, damaging his right paw. "It's all bent, he can't stick
it out anymore.

(source: The Times)

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

Publisher Drops Book on Nazi Porno


A few weeks before it was to hit the presses, a German publishing house
pulled a book based on the secret porn industry of the Third Reich. The
reasons remain unclear.

Any book that attempts to shed light on the little-known Nazi porn
industry in the early 1940s is not likely to arrive in bookstores without
a hitch.

But when the Rowohlt publishing house completely cancelled its contract
with author Thor Kunkel shortly before his new novel, "Endstufe "(Final
Step), was to hit the presses, a slight sensation rippled through the
industry.

Little is being said by Rowohlt and its head Alexander Fest about the
reasons for the cancellation of the for-March planned release. A statement
by Rowohlt mentioned something about not being able to bridge differences
on questions on the "aesthetic and subject matter" in central parts of the
book.

The manuscript, which landed in the hands of the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonntagszeitung, was apparently not only filled with scenes of vivid sex
and brutality, but made some questionable ties between the crimes of the
allied army and those of the Nazi regime.

Kunkel is reportedly devastated by the cancellation of a book he spent
three years researching and writing.

"I had the impression at a certain point that (the book) was being edited
on ideological, not aesthetic levels," he said in an interview with Die
Welt newspaper. "And I saw that as censorship. I'm 40 years old. I know
what I'm writing."

The Frankfurt-born Kunkel is considered a rising talent in German literary
circles following his prize-winning 2000 debut, "Das
Schwarzlicht-Terrarium", about the Frankfurt drug and disco scene in the
late 1970s.

Porn traded for raw materials

He came upon the subject material for "Endstufe" after watching a
documentary in 1991 that looked into the little-known porn industry that
apparently flourished during the Third Reich. After asking around, he
eventually got in contact with someone who had copies of the so-called
Sachsenwald films. The films are reportedly filled with with scenes of
sex, power relations and violence. They were rumored to have been part of
a flourishing raw materials trade.

Kunkel, based in Amsterdam, moved to Berlin to research the book, drawing
upon witness testimony at the time, including a former actress in one of
the films. He forms his novel around a group of Nazi scientists who work
at a Secret Service clinic and produce porn films on the side. The films
are soon a major success and part of a trade network that stretches
throughout the wider war zone.

The author infuses the description of the group of scientists with an end
of the world attitude. The characters are apparently self-indulgent and
blissfully ignorant of the horrors of the concentration camps or
battlefield misery, both of which are dealt with only fleetingly,
according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Nazi theme shouldn't be too hot for Germany

No one seems to know for sure what combination of themes scared the
publisher off: whether it was because it was novel that belittled the
horrors of the Nazi period, or whether Kunkel documented the scientific
experimentation at the time with a bit too much fascination.

Fest, who recently cancelled a book called "I too, had to kill" by an
Israeli secret service agent, in a letter referred to the fact that
Kunkel's work and subject matter could reap a hefty amount of criticism.
But Kunkel seems nonplussed by such arguments.

"Germany is a very normal European country," he said in the Welt
interview. "I don't think we should be raised as humiliated,
mentally-disturbed garden gnomes....Endstufe is written in a very modern
language. It's not a historical novel. Instead, you have the feeling that
the Third Reich is just around the corner."

(source: Deutsche Welle)

***********

Ex-Nazi guard is unfit to stand trial


In Duesseldorf, aA German court ruled Monday that an 88-year-old former
member of Adolf Hitler's elite SS, who was charged with killing a Dutch
prisoner during the Second World War, was medically unfit to stand trial.

Herbertus Bikker's case was closed after a renewed examination by
neurological experts determined he was unfit, according to the state court
in the western city of Hagen.

Prosecutors asked for the exam last month after defence lawyers called for
the trial to be ended because of Bikker's ailing health.

Prosecutors accuse the Dutch-born Bikker of shooting 27-year-old
resistance fighter Jan Houtman in 1944 after becoming enraged by his
attempts to flee a Dutch labour camp.

Bikker's lawyers denied the charges, saying he was exercising his duty in
preventing an escape.

Several Dutch witnesses provided incriminating evidence against Bikker
during the trial, which began Sept. 19.

Court sessions had been limited to two hours a day since Bikker collapsed
at the start of the proceedings and was taken to a hospital for treatment
of high blood pressure.

Bikker could have faced a life sentence if convicted.

A Dutch court sentenced him to death in 1949 but later commuted the
sentence to life in prison. He broke out of a prison in the Dutch city of
Breda in 1952 and fled to Germany.

Bikker, who was granted German citizenship during the war, lived freely
for decades under German laws barring the extradition of people who served
as German soldiers in the Second World War.

Bikker served as a guard for the SS, short for Schutzstaffel, the dreaded
paramilitary unit of the Nazi party. It was used as a special police and
involved in some of the worst crimes committed in territory under Nazi
control.

(source: Associated Press)


**********

Nazi spoof musical hits Germany


The Producers, Mel Brooks' bad taste musical which sends up the Nazi
regime and famously features the song Springtime For Hitler, is set to
open in Germany.

Unlikely as it may seem, a German theatre company has expressed a keen
interest in staging the hit Broadway show.

A group of German theatregoers are being flown to New York next month to
see the musical, which is also coming to the UK's West End in November.

If they do not walk out in disgust - or even manage to laugh at a chorus
line of goose-stepping Nazi stormtroopers - it will get the go-ahead to
open in Berlin.

The musical is a stage version of Brooks' Oscar-winning 1968 film and
centres on has-been producer Max Bialystock and accountant Leo Bloom, who
set out to make a fortune by creating the world's worst musical.

They come up with Springtime For Hitler, a concept so tasteless it should
be a sure-fire flop.

The Producers has been Broadway's biggest success story of recent years,
winning an unprecedented 12 Tony Awards since it opened at the St James
Theatre in 2001 with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the starring
roles.

Speaking about the approach from the German theatre company, Brooks said:
"I said to them, why don't you get 25 Germans of disparate age and bring
them to the St James Theatre. See if it works out - if they are upset, or
if they are young enough to roll with the punches and themselves make fun
of the Nazi regime.

"If they like it, and say 'this will go down nicely', then we'll do it.

"They will decide whether or not this is just too unspeakably rude for the
Germans."

He added: "Some Germans seem to like the film but they're kids, they're
young and smart. Anyone over 60 might have an axe to grind."

Brooks said the production would only open in Berlin because the city was
more "sophisticated" than the rest of Germany.

And he joked: "I've asked the Germans to come next month. They are being
assembled in Berlin. They'll be coming through the Lowlands - they usually
do. It's probably best to tell Holland and Belgium that the Germans are
coming."

Susan Stroman, who is directing and choreographing the musical, said: "The
Germans have asked for it many times. Negotiations are under way. They
have come to us and seem to want to do it.

"It would certainly be talked about. I think everybody is worried about
offending people. We want to get people laughing, we don't want to offend
anybody."

Brooks was in London to promote the West End production, which opens in
November with Richard Dreyfuss and British comedy star Lee Evans in the
lead roles.

The 77-year-old American cast Evans after seeing him in the 1995 film
Funny Bones.

He described the comic as "a wickedly funny combination of Groucho Marx
and Marcel Marceau".

(source: This Is London)

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


East German doctor faces trial over Nazi murders


One of former East Germany's leading female doctors has been charged with
involvement in the murder of more than 150 mentally handicapped women and
children at a Nazi euthanasia hospital during the Second World War.

Prof Rosemarie Albrecht, 88, an ear, nose and throat specialist, was once
decorated by the old communist regime for exemplary medical work.

When the East German government found evidence of her alleged activities
during the Nazi era, it covered them up to save itself from embarrassment.
She retired in 1975.

Prosecutors in the east German town of Gera announced last week that they
had charged Prof Albrecht with the murder of a mentally handicapped woman
at Stadtroda hospital, near Jena, in 1941, and with complicity in the
killing of a further 158 female patients in her care between 1940 and
1942.

The murders were among an estimated 900 "euthanasia" killings at the
hospital, carried out under a Nazi doctrine that regarded the mentally ill
as a "useless burden" on the German people. The victims died mostly from
starvation and barbiturate overdose.

The charges against Prof Albrecht are the result of a four-year
investigation by Gera state prosecutors, first reported by The Sunday
Telegraph in 2000. Her case may prove to be the last Nazi euthanasia trial
in Germany.

Raimund Sauter, the chief prosecutor who led the inquiry, said: "The
evidence against Prof Albrecht is contained in a meticulously kept
hospital archive document, which shows that one of her woman patients was
given a massive dose of sleeping tablets that resulted in her being
poisoned to death."

Many other alleged victims at the hospital were mentally ill women and
children who were given huge doses of barbiturates that weakened their
lungs and led to their dying from pulmonary infections. "To outsiders, it
looked like natural death," said Goetz Aly, a historian who has been
pursuing the case.

Prof Albrecht, who now lives on a state pension near the east German city
of Jena, has denied the allegations. She once taunted journalists: "Amuse
yourselves: you'll get nothing from me."

Mr Sauter said she had not been arrested pending trial because of her
advanced age, but added: "We expect her to appear before a court within
the next two months."

Prof Albrecht's role as a doctor at Stadroda hospital - a Nazi euthanasia
centre - was a closely guarded secret throughout the communist era. Files
of East Germany's Stasi secret police that came to light during the
investigation showed that the communist regime had suspicions about her
Nazi past, but concealed the evidence to avoid embarrassment.

The files, dating from 1964, gave Prof Albrecht the codename Ausmerzer -
"the wiper out". However, by that time, she had won the approval of the
communist regime. She was awarded the title "Doctor of the people" for
successfully treating the former East German leader Walter Ulbricht, and
became a deacon at Jena University.

A Stasi officer wrote in her dossier: "As the accused holds a high
position in health care, an investigation could produce results that would
contradict the conditions of our society."

The secret police later ditched an attempt to investigate her, claiming
there was "insufficient evidence".

(source: The Telegraph)







POLAND:

Poland probes if cemetery honours Nazi criminals


Polish authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating whether some
German soldiers buried and honoured at a World War Two cemetery were not
in fact war criminals such as guards at the Auschwitz death camp.

The cemetery in the south-western town of Nadolice Wielkie was set up
after the 1989 fall of communism, along with a memorial, to serve as a
symbol of Polish-German reconciliation.

It was to contain the remains of regular German soldiers but newspapers
reported that Nazi SS troops, including those involved in atrocities in
Poland, were buried at the site.

"We have launched a probe into this matter," said Andrzej Przewoznik, the
chief of the government's Resistance and Martyrdom Protection Council,
which oversees war memorials.

"If indeed the names of war criminals are inscribed on the memorial wall,
we will seek to remove them," he told Reuters.

The cemetery is a mass grave of about 11,000 soldiers, a fraction of the
nearly 900,000 German troops that died in Poland during the war. Most of
them were killed in battles with the advancing Soviet armies towards the
end of the war.

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany occupied Poland between 1939 and 1945, setting
up death camps, mostly to kill Jews. About 1.5 million perished in
Auschwitz where, according to newspaper reports, some of the men buried in
Nadolice served as guards.

"The Nadolice mausoleum attracts tourists and school trips. They bow their
head before the graves of butchers," commented the weekly Wprost.

FEARED SS

The cemetery is among 10 such burial grounds set up after 1991 when
Poland, fresh from toppling communist rule, and Germany signed a treaty on
good neighbourly relations.

Wprost said the cemetery also contained the remains of SS soldiers who put
down the 1944 Warsaw uprising in which 200,000 Poles were killed and
hundreds of women were brutally raped.

Members of SS (Schutzstaffel), a paramilitary unit of the Nazi party, were
known for their cruelty and were deployed to carry out mass killings
across eastern Europe and Russia.

"It is a scandal," said Jerzy Czuba, a member of the Warsaw Uprising
Fighters Association.

The Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation, which has overseen the
identification and exhumation of German troops from around the country,
admitted some mistakes could have been made.

"We are talking about mass graves of people who died 60 years ago. Bones
look the same whether they belong to SS-men or other troops. Names could
have been confused," said Izabela Gutweter from the Foundation.

(source: Reuters)



URUGUAY:

Divers Set to Salvage German WWII Ship

The scuttled Nazi battleship "Admiral Graf Spee" has withstood the silt
and currents at the mouth of the River Plate for more than 60 years while
waiting for someone to salvage it.

Most of the Graf Spee survivors have died and only octogenarians in the
Uruguayan capital of Montevideo can recall watching one of the first naval
clashes of World War II unfold on their sleepy shores.

But the legend of the pride of the Nazi fleet continues to inspire younger
generations, and this week a team of divers will begin raising pieces of
the pocket battleship -- a smaller, lighter version of a conventional
warship -- out of the River Plate estuary in a project expected to take
years.

"It was a masterpiece in its time," said Mensun Bound, a marine
archeologist from Oxford University weaned on tales of the Battle of the
River Plate.

"And it doesn't have a dark history. Its captain was a man of great
dignity and honor. It was a battle in which both sides came out with their
honor intact."

Under the command of Capt. Hans Langsdorff, the Graf Spee sank nine
commercial vessels in the Atlantic in late 1939 but always gave the crews
time to evacuate the ships.

The British navy dispatched three ships -- HMS Exeter, HMS Achilles and
HMS Ajax -- to the Uruguayan coast and on Dec. 13, 1939, they sighted and
attacked the Graf Spee.

Langsdorff took his badly damaged ship to port in Montevideo, where he was
allowed to bury 36 dead sailors. His loyalty to Nazi leaders was
questioned when he gave the old German naval salute at the funeral instead
of the Nazi salute.

Neutral Uruguay, under intense diplomatic pressure from Britain, then
ordered the Graf Spee out to sea after 72 hours.

"I went down to the port the morning they left," said Maria Eleonor Ramis,
83, one of the estimated 750,000 people who watched events on the shore
that day. "It was very sad because the sailors were all so young, 18 and
19 years old."

'THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING'

Believing he would be met by a beefed-up British fleet, Langsdorff
evacuated his men to ships headed to Argentina, then sank the Graf Spee
with explosives to stop it from falling into enemy hands.

"It was an event that the whole world was watching," said Cristina
Maldonado, a historian at Montevideo's Naval Museum.

Two days after scuttling his ship, Langsdorff took his own life in Buenos
Aires.

Survivors who stayed in Uruguay and Argentina often spoke of recovering
the Graf Spee, located 4 miles off the coast in waters no deeper than 36
feet.

In 1997, Bound and Uruguayan partner Hector Bado found the ship was in
much better condition than expected as they extracted one of the guns.

On Thursday, they will attempt to raise the range finder, a component 34
feet wide and 20 feet tall that held the first radar antenna installed in
a warship.

The team will study how to lighten the Graf Spee until they can raise the
ship's hull, which is in two pieces, one 490 feet long, the other 98 feet
long.

The divers declined to discuss the cost of the project, but they say they
are working to bring on salvaging experts from Brazil, Argentina, the
Netherlands and perhaps Germany. The ship will remain in Uruguay.

"It will be rebuilt on land and will be the best ship museum in the
world," said Bado. "This is the last salvageable German battleship in the
world and it has an amazing story."

(source: Reuters)