Dec. 4



ENGLAND:
BBC Marks Holocaust with 'Auschwitz' Documentary


Almost 60 years after the Holocaust, a new British documentary will use
computer technology to recreate life within the Nazi death camps.

"Auschwitz," based on nearly 100 interviews with survivors and
perpetrators, will be broadcast by state-owned BBC2 on Jan. 27, Holocaust
Memorial Day.

It comes from Laurence Rees, the BBC's creative director of history and
the man behind the internationally successful "The Nazis: A Warning From
History."

Announcing the documentary, BBC2 also unveiled research showing that
nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz,
the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the
Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews.

"We were amazed by the results of our audience research," said Rees. "It's
easy to presume that the horrors of Auschwitz are engrained in the
nation's collective memory, but obviously this is not the case."

The survey found that 45 percent of the 4,000 people aged 16 and over
surveyed had not heard of Auschwitz. Historians estimate that anywhere
from one million to three million people, about 90 percent of them Jews,
were killed there.

Among women and people younger than 35, 60 percent had never heard of
Auschwitz, despite the recent popularity of films such as "Schindler's
List," "Life is Beautiful" and "The Pianist," which depict the atrocities
of the Holocaust.

(source: Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)




ITALY:

Italian doctor who fooled Nazis

The trick of prescribing Jews with a mysterious illness terrified the
Nazis and saved 45 Roman Jews.

Dr Vittorio Sacerdoti has told his remarkable tale on the 60th anniversary
of liberation of Rome.

He worked from a small and ancient hospital based on an island in the
River Tiber.

From his flat in the Jewish ghetto where he still lives, he told the BBC's
Guto Harri in Rome that he still remembers the day the Nazis turned up at
the ghetto to take away his fellow Jews.

Just 28 years old at the time, he used courage and ingenuity to save 45
people from certain death.


The doctor still lives in the Jewish area of Rome, minutes from the
hospital

As other Jews were being rounded up, Dr Sacerdoti admitted anyone who
could reach the hospital as patients - and diagnosed them with a dangerous
disease.

"We would write on their medical forms that the patient was suffering from
K Syndrome," he said.

"We called it K after the German commander Kesserling - the Nazis thought
it was cancer or tuberculosis, and they fled like rabbits."

K Syndrome saved his cousin, Luciana Sacerdoti, who was just 10 years old.

"The day the Nazis came to the hospital, someone came to our room and
said: 'You have to cough, you have to cough a lot because they are afraid
of the coughing, they don't want to catch an awful disease and they won't
enter'."

A detailed testimony has now been taken by the Shoah foundation belonging
to American film director Steven Spielberg.

But there is growing pressure for a larger exhibition closer to home. A
small exhibition exists in Rome's synagogue, but there is very little to
remind a new generation of the worst ills of the past.

As Tulia Zevi told our correspondent: "We are also what we remember. We
are made of our memories.

"A person who lives only in the present and has not a full consciousness
of what lies behind his back is not fully human."

(source: BBC News)




GERMANY:
Former Nazi camp commandant Josef Schwammberger dies in prison hospital



Josef Schwammberger, a former Nazi labor-camp commander who was known for
his particular sadism and hid for 40 years in Argentina before being
captured and returned to Germany for trial, has died in a prison
hospital. He was 92.

Schwammberger died during the night in the hospital in Hohenasperg,
outside the southwestern city of Stuttgart, said Tomke Beddies, a
spokeswoman for Stuttgart's prosecutors office said Friday.

He had been at the hospital for treatment since Sept. 20, but Beddies said
she could not comment on the cause of death.

Schwammberger, a native of Austria, was convicted in 1992 in Stuttgart of
seven counts of murder and 32 counts of accessory to murder and sentenced
to life in prison.

Schwammberger, who was born Feb. 14, 1912, appealed his incarceration in
2002 on the grounds that he was too frail to remain in prison. But he was
ordered to continue serving his sentence when the court ruled his
"particularly cruel" crimes outweighed his health concerns.

He was originally charged with murdering or helping murder 3,377 people,
including more than 40 by his own hand.

But in the final days of the 11-month trial, prosecutors reduced the
number of charges, because of lack of evidence, to 34 inmates killed by
Schwammberger and at least 275 who died as a result of his orders.

Most of the victims were Jewish inmates of three forced labor camps in
World War II Poland - Przemysl, Rozwadow and Mielec.

Schwammberger admitted having been an SS lieutenant in command of the
three camps between 1942 and 1944, but denied the charges.

Witnesses traveled from as far away as Israel, Canada and the United
States for the trial, telling the court how he set his German shepherd dog
Prinz on camp inmates and how he killed a man for stealing bread for his
hungry child.

American Abraham Secemski recalled watching as Schwammberger killed his
uncle, apparently for wearing a ring after being told to turn over all
valuables.

"His face, his actions are engraved in my brain. To my dying day, I'm
going to have it," said Secemski, who traveled to Germany from San Diego
to testify in 1991.

Schwammberger called Secemski's uncle out of an inspection line after
spotting the jewelry, pulled out his pistol and shot him, the Polish
native, who resettled in California, testified.

"He fell and he was moaning," Secemski testified. Schwammberger "didn't
have the decency to give him another bullet to put him out of his misery.
We went to work. When we came back my uncle wasn't there."

Schwammberger was arrested in Innsbruck, Austria, in the French occupation
zone after the war on July 19, 1945, but escaped in January 1948 from a
train taking him to U.S. military authorities in Austria for trial.

Within months he was able to enter Argentina, allegedly with the help of
Odessa, a shadowy organization formed to help former SS officers escape
punishment.

He lived under his own name and obtained Argentine citizenship in 1965,
working for years at a petrochemical plant in La Plata, 30 miles south of
the capital, Buenos Aires.

West German authorities had sought Schwammberger's extradition since 1973,
when they notified Argentina he might be living there and was on the top
10 list of most wanted Nazis compiled by famed Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal.

Argentine officials tracked him down on Nov. 13, 1987, in Huerta Grande, a
village 500 miles northwest of Buenos Aires near a German-Argentine
settlement. After two years of appeals to fight extradition, Schwammberger
was eventually returned to Germany in May 1990 for trial.

There were no immediate details of survivors or funeral arrangements
available.

(source: Associated Press)