Feb. 7



USA:

Group to Honor 4 Brothers Who Helped Jews


As the Nazis took power in Germany and the world turned its back on
Jewish refugees, four brothers who ran a cigar factory in the Philippines
worked quietly to help 1,200 Jews flee to Manila.

The Frieder brothers never talked about their part in the little-known
rescue. But some 65 years later, the remaining refugees want the world to
know what Philip, Alex, Morris and Herbert Frieder achieved.

``The Frieder brothers were just ordinary Jewish businessmen, but they
went out of their way to save lives,'' said Frank Ephraim, who was eight
years old when his family fled to Manila from Germany in 1939. ``No one
made them do it. They just did what they thought was right.''

The four brothers from Cincinnati had taken turns going to Manila for
two-year periods during the 1920s and '30s to run the Helena Cigar
Factory, started by their father in 1918.

While they were there, they established a Jewish Refugee Committee and
worked with highly placed friends -- U.S. High Commissioner of the
Philippines Paul V. McNutt and Manuel L. Quezon, the first Philippine
president -- to help the mostly German and Austrian refugees get
passports and visas, then find employment and homes in Manila.

``We were welcomed in the Philippines at a time when the gates to Jews
were closed all over the world,'' said refugee Lotte Hershfield, 74, of
West Hartford, Conn.

A fifth brother remained in Ohio and was not involved in the rescue.

The rescue was little known until a recent book by Ephraim, ``Escape to
Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror,'' led to efforts in the
United States and the Philippines to honor the humanitarian effort before
the aging refugees die off.

``Our numbers are dwindling, and I didn't want this story to be lost
forever,'' said Ephraim, 73, of Washington, D.C.

Next Sunday, Cincinnati's Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education
will honor the Frieder brothers, Quezon, McNutt and the Filipino people.
At least 25 refugees and their descendants and nearly 100 members of the
Frieder family will join relatives of McNutt and Quezon and the
Philippine Ambassador Alberto Del Rosario.

Documents show the four Frieders had hoped to bring as many as 10,000
refugees to the Philippines, but World War II intervened. They continued
working in Manila until the Japanese invasion in 1941.

Alex Frieder's daughter, Alice Weston, now 78 and living in Cincinnati,
said she remembers her father raising money and spending hours poring
over lists of desperate refugee applicants in Manila.

``Our children have asked why no one ever told them about this, but we
were just kids then,'' she said. ``After we came back to the United
States, my father and uncles never talked about it. I think they just
thought it was part of their duty, and they just went on with their
lives.''

Now the brothers' photos, letters and other possessions, along with those
of the refugees, will become part of a permanent exhibit in Cincinnati.
Part of the exhibit might be taken to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, and to Manila.

``We want to tell the world about the humanity of these men who did so
much to save so many people and were never recognized,'' said Racelle
Weiman, director of the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education. ``We
hope it will make people realize that everyone can make a difference.''

Manuel L. Quezon III said he is proud of his grandfather's role in the
rescue. ``In a sense, as president, he was implementing a national policy
of the heart,'' he said.

A great nephew of McNutt, who also was governor of Indiana in 1933-37,
didn't know about his role in the rescue but wasn't surprised.

``Paul had the chance to do many different things and always chose public
service,'' said John Krauss, director of the Indiana University Center
for Urban Policy and the Environment.

The brothers offered then-Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower a job in the rescue
effort, but he decided to stay in the Army, becoming commander of Allied
forces in Europe and then president, said granddaughter Susan Eisenhower.

The brothers have all died, but their family is grateful for the
long-delayed recognition.

``We are all so proud of them,'' said Morris Frieder's daughter, Jane
Ellis, 77.

``But we wish they could be here to enjoy this.''

------
On the Net:
Holocaust & Humanity Education: http://www.holocaustandhumanity.org

(source: Associated Press)





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


CIA Agrees in Principle to Disclose Nazi Records


The CIA, under pressure from Congress, has agreed in principle to release
new documents detailing its ties to former Nazis who aided U.S. Cold War
espionage against the Soviet Union, officials said on Sunday.

Facing demands for public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
CIA officials have conceded that records on former Nazis who have not been
accused of war crimes, including members of the German SS, should be
subject to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, the officials said.

"This means the information we thought would come out when we wrote the
law, will now come out," said Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican who
co-authored the disclosure legislation.

The CIA, which had no immediate comment, has released some 1.25 million
pages of documents about Nazi war criminals in compliance with the
disclosure act, which requires government agencies to divulge records of
war criminals to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government
Records Interagency Working Group.

But up to now, the CIA has refused to disclose documents on ex-Nazis who
have not been accused as war criminals. Members of the working group and
U.S. lawmakers contend the law applies to any individual who belonged to
an organization guilty of war crimes.

The records at issue include hundreds of thousands of pages of documents,
including material on CIA dealings with former members of the Nazi party
and the German SS, who joined the allied Cold War effort against the
Soviet Union in Europe, congressional officials said.

The CIA's position changed late last week in closed-door discussions with
working group members after DeWine, who sits on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, demanded that CIA Director Porter Goss appear before the panel
to provide a public explanation of his agency's refusal to disclose the
records.

Goss co-sponsored the 1998 disclosure legislation during his tenure in the
U.S. House of Representatives, where he led the chamber's intelligence
committee.

It was not clear whether DeWine would cancel the judiciary committee
hearing, tentatively set for Feb. 15.

A CIA spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said the agency was
prepared to demonstrate flexibility.

"As we deal with issues of review and declassification, the question we
ask is not what should we withhold but what can we release," the spokesman
said.

CIA officials and members of the working group were due to meet on Monday
at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to begin reviewing documents for
possible disclosure.

Former Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a working group member, and
DeWine said the release of Nazi-related material was essential now that
the United States is embroiled in a war on terrorism and battling
insurgents in Iraq.

DeWine is expected to seek a two-year extension for the working group,
which had been scheduled to dissolve at the end of next month.

(source: Reuters)


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


Former GI Claims Role in Goering's Death


It was one of the most baffling mysteries of the World War II era.

How did convicted war criminal Hermann Goering manage to poison himself as
U.S. soldiers prepared to hang him?

A dozen competing theories have swirled for nearly half a century about
how the onetime Nazi second in command was able to commit suicide despite
around-the-clock surveillance of his military prison cell.

Some historians assert that Goering had the cyanide poison with him
throughout his 11-month war crimes trial in Nuremberg, Germany. The poison
was hidden under a gold dental crown, or in a hollowed-out tooth, or
beneath slicked-back hair, or inserted in his navel or his rectum, various
accounts have theorized.

Others contend that someone sneaked poison to him shortly before his death
maybe a U.S. Army officer Goering bribed with a watch, or the German
doctor
who regularly checked on him, or a Nazi SS officer who passed it to him in
a
bar of GI soap, or his wife, Emmy, who slipped it from her mouth to his in
"a kiss of death" on their last visit.

They're all wrong, according to Herbert Lee Stivers.

"I gave it to him," said the retired sheet-metal worker from Hesperia.

Stivers, 78, said he had kept the secret of his role in Goering's death for
nearly 60 years, fearful that he could face charges by the U.S. military.
Now, at the urging of his daughter, he has decided to go public, he said.

Whether Stivers is telling the truth is impossible to know. Other key
players in Goering's case are dead.

An Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon declined to comment on Stivers'
statement. But military records do show that Stivers was a guard at the
Nuremberg trials.

And some historians contacted by The Times believe his story has a ring of
truth. At the very least, they say, Stivers' account underlines the
continuing puzzle of how one of the 20th century's worst criminals evaded
final justice.

"It doesn't sound like something made up," Cornelius Schnauber, a USC
professor who is director of the Max Kade Institute for
Austrian-German-Swiss Studies, said of Stivers' tale.

"It sounds even more believable than the common story about the poison
being in the dental crown."

Schnauber said he believes that someone smuggled in the poison ampul that
Goering bit into two hours before he was to be hanged. "It could have been
this soldier," he said.

According to Stivers, Goering escaped the hangman because of a teenager's
puppy love.

A 19-year-old Army private when he was assigned guard duty at Nuremberg,
Stivers said he was only trying to impress a local girl he had met on the
street when he agreed to take "medicine" to a supposedly ailing Goering.

Stivers was a member of the 1st Infantry Division's 26th Regiment, whose
Company D was assigned to serve as the trial's honor guard. The white-
helmeted guards escorted the 22 Nazi defendants in and out of the
Palace of Justice courtroom and stood at parade rest behind them during
court sessions.

It was boring, Stivers said.

"We spent two hours on and four hours off. They wanted us to be alert and
look neat. People had come from all over the world to see the trial," he
recalled.

"We didn't carry guns. We had short billy clubs that we held behind our
backs. That helped us hold our hands behind us. You'd get pretty tired
standing at parade rest."

The guards were free to chat with the prisoners and even collect their
autographs.

"Goering was a very pleasant guy. He spoke pretty good English. We'd talk
about sports, ballgames. He was a flier, and we talked about Lindbergh,"
Stivers said. Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly nonstop across the
Atlantic, had received a medal from Goering before World War II.

Between court sessions, there were few diversions for the guards.
"Off-hours, we had company clubs," Stivers said. "That was the only
recreation, except for Frauleins."

Stivers had a German girlfriend - an 18-year-old named Hildegarde Bruner -
to whom he gave candy bars, peanuts and cigarettes he got from the
military commissary so she and her mother could trade them for food on
the black market.

But he had an eye for pretty girls. And one day outside a hotel housing a
military officers' club, Stivers said, he was approached by a flirtatious,
dark-haired beauty who said her name was Mona.

"She asked me what I did, and I told her I was a guard. She said, 'Do you
get to see all the prisoners?' 'Every day,' I said. She said, 'You don't
look like a guard.' I said, 'I can prove it.' I'd just gotten an autograph
from [defendant] Baldur von Schirach, and I showed it to her.

"She said, 'Oh, can I have that?' and I said sure. The next day I guarded
Goering and got his autograph and handed that to her. She told me that she
had a friend she wanted me to meet. The following day we went to his
house."

There, Stivers said he was introduced to two men who called themselves
Erich and Mathias. They told him that Goering was "a very sick man" who
wasn't being given the medicine he needed in prison.

Twice, Stivers said, he took notes hidden by Erich in a fountain pen to
Goering. The third time, Erich put a capsule in the pen for him to take to
the Nazi.

"He said it was medication, and that if it worked and Goering felt better,
they'd send him some more," Stivers said. "He said they'd give him a
couple
of weeks and that Mona would tell me if they wanted to send him more
medicine."

After delivering the "medicine" to Goering, Stivers said, he returned the
pen to the young woman.

"I never saw Mona again. I guess she used me," Stivers said. "I wasn't
thinking of suicide when I took it to Goering. He was never in a bad frame
of mind. He didn't seem suicidal. I would have never knowingly taken
something in that I thought was going to be used to help someone cheat the
gallows."

But two weeks later - Oct. 15, 1946 - Goering did just that. He left a
suicide note bragging that he'd had the cyanide in his possession all
along.
A subsequent search of Goering's belongings locked in a prison storeroom
uncovered another cyanide vial - standard-issue for Nazi leaders - hidden
in luggage.

Stivers was shaken by Goering's suicide. Guards who were on duty at the
time
of the death were grilled by Army investigators. But Stivers and other
honor
guard team members were asked only if they had seen anything suspicious.

The Army's investigation concluded that Goering had the cyanide all along.
The report pointed to Goering's note and concluded that the vial was
"secreted in the cavity of the umbilical" and at other times "in his
alimentary tract" and behind the rim of his cell toilet.

Some historians and others have long been skeptical of the official
account.
Some Jewish leaders have wondered if Goering escaped the hangman with help
from a sympathetic American.

In his 1984 book "The Mystery of Hermann Goering's Suicide," the late
author
Ben Swearingen brushed aside the Army's conclusion as well as numerous
alternative theories.

Swearingen speculated that Army Lt. Jack Wheelis, who had a key to the
prison storeroom, had allowed Goering to visit the storage area shortly
before his death to retrieve the poison pill from his luggage. Wheelis - who
died in 1954 - had previously been given a wristwatch and other personal
items by Goering.

Swearingen did not explain how the closely watched Goering might have gotten
to the storeroom. But his research does suggest how the Nazi might have
briefly hidden something like the "medicine" Stivers said he delivered.

Goering, who was obese, had lost a lot of weight in prison. By the end of
the trial, he was draped in sagging skin that could have easily concealed
the capsule. And during the two weeks before his suicide, Goering had
passed
up opportunities to bathe in a heavily guarded shower area where a
concealed
vial might have been spotted.

Stivers said he has been haunted by his actions with the fountain pen for
58 years.

He said he has pondered the various theories on Goering's poisoning in an
unsuccessful search for a plausible explanation that would ease his sense
of guilt.

"I felt very bad after his suicide. I had a funny feeling; I didn't think
there was any way he could have hidden it on his body," he said.

The Army's explanation never rang true to him, Stivers said, noting that
Goering "was there over a year - why would he wait all that time if he had
the cyanide?"

It was daughter Linda Dadey who urged him to reveal his role. He disclosed
the fountain pen story to her about 15 years ago.

"I said, 'Dad, you're a part of history. You need to tell the story before
you pass away,' " said Dadey, 46, of Beaumont. "It's been on his
conscience all his life."

Stivers agreed to do so after learning that the statute of limitations had
run out long ago, preventing any prosecution of a case against him.

His story "is crazy enough to be true," said Aaron Breitbart, senior
researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "But there's no
way in the world it can be proven. Nobody really knows who did it except
the person who did it."

As for Stivers, he's convinced that he's that person. And, he said, "I
feel very bad about it."

(source: Los Angeles Times)