March 30



GERMANY:

Exhibition on crimes of Hitler's army closes after nine years


An exhibition implicating regular German troops in Holocaust crimes was
shown for the last time in Hamburg today, contentious even after nine
years with hundreds of right-extremists, and even more anti-Nazi
protesters, taking to the streets to demonstrate.

War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1944, put
together by German historians and sponsored by philanthropist Jan Phillipp
Reemtsma, attracted some 1.3 million visitors since it opened in 1995 and
toured Germany and Austria.

Police officers began work early in preparation for the final showing,
searching the area on Friday night where the protests were planned, and
uncovering two caches of stones believed to have been hidden to be used as
weapons.

On Saturday, 4,385 officers from Hamburg, the Federal Border Police and
eleven other German states kept tight control as some 500 neo-Nazis
marched against the exhibition.

Some 1,800 counter-demonstrators chanted Nazis out, as the right-
extremists shouted "honour and pride for the Wehrmacht!". Apples and
eggs were thrown, but the tensions did not escalate further and police
reported no arrests.

The Wehrmacht exhibit made use of photographs, official records and
letters from soldiers to show that killings of Jews and other civilians
were carried out not only by SS units but by ordinary German soldiers.

One section examined the various ways in which lower-ranking officers and
ordinary soldiers interpreted orders that led to war crimes, while other
areas focused on the gruesome fate of Soviet Jews and prisoners of war,
and reprisals against civilians for partisan raids.

Conservative politicians blasted the show as degrading to the ordinary
German soldier, while right-wing radicals regularly protested at the
exhibition.

The exhibition was temporarily withdrawn in 1999 over concerns by
historians it falsely blamed the Wehrmacht for some of the atrocities
shown.

An independent review found several mistakes, which were corrected before
it went on display again.

It will now be archived in a Berlin museum of German history

(source: Associated Press)


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


Compensation Hope for Holocaust Slave Laborers


Almost six decades after the end of World War II, former slave-laborers
who worked for the notorious chemical giant, IG Farben, could finally be
granted the compensation they have long been waiting for.

The call for compensation payments from the now insolvent chemical
manufacturer took wing when the 'IG Farben Foundation' was established
with the express aim of processing continued claims. But with little money
to play with, the foundation has now announced plans to try and secure a
fund from the UBS Swiss bank, which acquired a former Swiss subsidiary of
IG Farben after the end of the war.

IG Farben, which was linked to the manufacture of the Zyklon-B poison used
in the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps, filled its chemical
factories with tens of thousands of slave laborers during the war. The
foundation wants to go some way to righting the wrongs of the company's
dark past.

"The IG Farben Foundation recognises that IG Farben continues to carry the
weight of the guilt born out of its unreserved cooperation with the
National Socialist regime, and the exploitation of forced laborers during
World War II," reads the foundation's mission statement.

Fair distribution

One of the founding members of the trust is the Christian Democrat
parliamentarian Otto Bernhardt. He worked as chief liquidator on the
dissolution of IG Farben until it was declared insolvent in November last
year, and is keen to see the remains, both financial and educational help
the right people.

"The trust has a very valuable archive. Not valuable in material terms,
but in the sense that there are masses of documents which have to be
processed, and there have already been numerous requests from
under-graduates and post-graduates who want access to these documents,"
said Bernhardt. "And as a foundation, we are naturally willing to grant
them this access. The second and central point which we have stated
repeatedly, is that if we succeed in getting money for the foundation, the
majority of it should go to the victims"

Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, an expert on Judaism and an advisor to the
foundation, says the foundation plans to be very careful about where the
compensation money ends up.

"It is not a matter of just giving a sum of money to 'company X' in Kiev,
we have found possible ways of handing it to people directly, particularly
in fairly remote places," said Ehrlich, who fled from the Nazis.

Keeping shareholders at bay

Another of the foundation's advisors is the former German interior
minister, Gerhard Baum. The FDP politician has worked as an advisor to the
Russian forced laborer foundation for more than ten years, and is
determined that any forthcoming fund go to those who deserve it. "Although
I don't perceive this to be a danger, I will say as a preventative
measure, that the trust must not be allowed to serve as a vehicle for
securing the interests of the shareholders," said Baum.

Former IG Farben shareholders are already engaged in a lawsuit with the
UBS bank, claiming their share of billions of dollars worth of assets they
link to the company.

IG Farben's lawyers, including Matthias Druba, are optimistic that the
insolvent company's capital will be used to a good end.

"The death and final dissolution of the company should go hand in hand
with helping the victims, both victims of the Holocaust in general and
more specifically, the victims of IG Farben," says Druba.

The next step is the creation of a board of trustees and negotiations with
the Swiss bank. But these things take time, and the longer the wait, the
fewer the victims who stand to benefit from what is rightfully theirs.

(source: Deutsche Welle)











ROMANIA:

Romania's Gypsy Holocaust survivors anxiously await reparations


Things quickly got out of hand. Dozens of Gypsies clamored to meet with
human rights activists who are helping them win compensation for being
forced into slave labor under Romania's Nazi-allied regime during World
War II.

Windows broke and heated words were shouted before the crowd realized a
mistake had been made: The visitors in town were journalists, not lawyers
come to document their claims for compensation.

That a rumor could nearly touch off a riot underscores the tensions
simmering in Gypsy communities across Romania as people wait for money or
at least some news on whether they qualify.

The program, paid for by the German government and private industry, is
the first to compensate Gypsies, or Roma as they also are known, for their
suffering in the Holocaust. Payments are only now starting to arrive.

Those waiting like Diamanta Stanescu, 77, who lives in the nearby village
of Liesti, 140 miles northeast of the capital, Bucharest fear they may
remain forgotten.

Sitting with 15 other members of her clan in a room in the gloom of a
single light bulb powered by a car battery, she wept at the memory of a
youth lost in wartime concentration camps. Her father, a brother and a
sister were killed shot by German soldiers near a river in Ukraine.

"We left as beautiful as roses and we came back naked, starving, and full
of mud," she said.

Stanescu was among the 25,000 Gypsies deported by the Nazi-allied Romanian
authorities to what was then the German-occupied part of the Soviet Union.
Tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were also sent to the camps.

Most of the deportees died, mainly from hunger and typhus, but executions
and other brutalities also took a heavy toll.

The Gypsies were used as slaves by the Nazis and their allies, forced to
work on farms, fix roads, dig trenches and fell trees behind the front
lines.

About 5,900 Romanian Gypsies applied for compensation, says the
International Organization for Migration, which handled applications for
non-Jewish victims in most European countries. Only survivors and heirs of
deportees who died after Feb. 15, 1999, were eligible.

A relatively modest amount by Western standards under $10,000 in most
cases the compensation looms huge for impoverished Gypsies living on less
than a few dollars a day.

But, while decades had passed, the trauma of the experience was so
pervasive that some survivors feared they could be persecuted again if
they were to be identified by applying for compensation.

"Many of them were afraid," said Viorica Gotu, a social worker who helped
process claims. "They thought we came to make lists to deport them again."

Some didn't apply for the funds. Now that payments have begun arriving in
Gypsy communities, they regret their reticence and have been trying to
make claims.

But it's too late, the International Organization for Migration says.

The German law establishing the program set a 2001 filing deadline, said
Marie-Agnes Heine, a public information officer for IOM's compensation
programs in Geneva, Switzerland. Even though the organization sympathizes
with those left out, "at a certain point of time, you have to close the
door," she said.

Rancu Stanescu, 84, who is not related to Diamanta Stanescu, is one of
those anxious to live his remaining days in peace.

He was deported to the camps when he was 22, and worked as a slave for 2
years. Telling of the beatings and the starvation, his voice dropped and
tears flowed.

"Out of hunger, when we saw someone die, we would run over and cut a piece
of meat out of him, and eat it," he said, clutching a walking stick.

He's one of the lucky ones, having received a first installment of $7,000
toward his compensation. He said he used the money to buy food.

Diamanta Stanescu is just hoping that something comes to her family before
she dies.

"This is funeral money, because I am old," she said. "Without the money,
when I die, no one will help me."

On the Net: European Roma Rights Center: www.errc.org

Site on Gypsy culture: www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/patrin.htm

(source: Associated Press)





CANADA:

Supporters of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel hold rally in Edmonton


Close to 30 demonstrators held a rally in support of Ernst Zundel on
Sunday, saying Zundel should have the right to deny the Holocaust took
place.

Protest organizer Glenn Bahr said the event, held outside Deputy Prime
Minister Anne McLellan's constituency office, wasn't about whether the
slaughter of Jews during the Second World War took place.

"It's about free speech and . . . if you have a point of view, being able
to express it," Bahr said.

Zundel has been accused of being a dangerous preacher of anti-Semitic,
white-supremacist hatred and is currently being held in a Toronto jail on
a controversial anti-terrorism measure known as a security certificate.
The certificate can be used to deport non-citizens who may pose a security
risk.

The 65-year old native of Germany had been living in the United States
since he retired three years ago, but was returned to Canada last year
after missing a routine meeting with immigration officials.

Zundel has launched a constitutional challenge against the security
certificate and has been granted a hearing by the Ontario Court of Appeal
in mid-May. If he loses, he could be deported to Germany.

Demonstrators at Sunday's rally said they belonged to a group called
Western Canada For Us and carried signs reading "Zundel is right," and
"Free Zundel Now."

Bahr, when asked whether he himself believes Zundel's views about the
Holocaust are true, responded: "A fact's a fact. I don't really think it's
about hatred."

Abe Silverman, an Edmonton representative of the national Jewish lobby
group B'nai Brith, said Zundel has been given due process under Canadian
law and that courts found he was promoting hatred.

He said it's an issue of justice.

"He was found to be a national security risk. Who's to question that?"
Silverman said.

(source: Canadian Press)

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

60th anniversary of Hungarian Holocaust marked


The Allies came to call it the greatest crime within the greatest crime.
The massacre of the Jews of Hungary some 480,000 people in just eight
weeks of deportations represented a concentration of killing that
outstripped any other place the Nazis scourged.

And since even the German high command considered the war more or less
lost by that point, the murder of Hungarian Jews was that much more
monstrous.

The madness began March 19, 1944, when the Germans invaded Hungary without
resistance and occupied its ally chiefly to prevent it from pulling out of
the war.

Anti-Jewish laws were implemented immediately and the deportations of Jews
from the countryside lasted just from May 14 to July 9. At more than 8,000
people a day, it was at a rate that not even the crematoria of Auschwitz
could absorb.

Some 400 survivors of the slaughter and their descendants pondered the
dark days at the Baycrest Terraces Wagman Centre last week at a service to
mark the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary.

Chaired by well-known local Holocaust survivor and educator Judy Cohen,
the memorial featured a moving candlelighting ceremony, live music from
the film Schindlers List and remarks from Hungarys consul general in
Toronto, Istvan Emri.

The Hungarian government has declared April 16 a memorial day to mark the
Holocaust, Emri said, and the country will host Holocaust-related
conferences and seminars in Budapest this spring.

Also among the speakers was Hungarys former chief rabbi, George Landesman,
who fled to Canada about a decade ago after receiving death threats for
intemperate remarks hed made about Gentiles.

The number of Jewish deaths in Hungary exceeded the total number of
military fatalities sustained by the United States in all theatres of
World War II by almost a third, said keynote speaker Annie Szamosi, a
screenwriter, director and Holocaust scholar.

Much of Hungarian Jewry was highly assimilated following World War I, and
Jews attained high positions in finance and industry. The community
remained more or less safe until relatively late in World War II, Szamosi
said in her overview.

The first instance of mass murder took place in 1941, when some 12,000
Hungarian Jews were murdered in Galicia. Following the establishment of
forced labour battalions of up to 60,000 Jews, between 45,000 and 50,000
died in 1941 and 1942 in German-occupied areas to the east, Szamosi noted.

Hungarian officials, she said, co-operated with the invading Germans in
1944 with remarkable enthusiasm. Only weeks after the occupation, Jews had
to wear the infamous yellow Star of David.

Once the rural deportations ceased, the Nazis divided the remaining Jews
in Budapest into two groups: Those herded into a ghetto and those who had
found refuge in safe houses under the neutral protection of Switzerland
and Sweden.

But between October 1944 and January 1945, more than 98,000 Jews were
either killed, committed suicide or died of illness or starvation.

Szamosi paid tribute to two heroes from the era, the diplomats Carl Lutz
of Switzerland and Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, who combined to rescue tens
of thousands of Jews by issuing false documents.

The memorial was sponsored by the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and
the UJA Federation Holocaust Centre of Toronto.

(source: Canadian Jewish News)







GLOBAL:

Holocaust survivors can collect insurance policies


Some 16,000 Holocaust survivors and their heirs who hold unpaid
Holocaust-era insurance policies - but lack documentation to prove their
claims - will receive a total of $16 million in payments through the
International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), the
commission plans to announce today (Tuesday) in New York.

The 16,000 claimants, who were ineligible to collect restitution in the
past, submitted "anecdotal evidence or recollections" in lieu of documents
on their families policies.

According to an ICHEIC press release, undocumented claims were evaluated
according to criteria developed by former US National Security Advisor
Sandy Berger, who currently serves as a senior advisor to ICHEIC s
humanitarian claims process.

(source: Jerusalem Post)