March 3




ISRAEL:

Israeli Spy Who Captured Nazi Eichmann Dies


The Israeli spy who captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann,
approaching him on a Buenos Aires street with the words "one moment, sir"
before bundling him into a car to be smuggled to Israel, has died in New
York. He was 77.

Friends said Peter Malchin, considered one of the Mossad intelligence
agency's most intrepid agents, died earlier this week of complications
from an infection and was to be buried in Tel Aviv. He had been living in
New York for the past few years.

"He was an extraordinary secret warrior," said Israeli journalist Uri Dan,
a close friend.

Most of Malchin's missions remain state secrets.

But he earned renown as the agent who in 1960 found Eichmann, the German
SS officer responsible for deporting millions of Jews to concentration
camps during the Holocaust, living in Argentina. He approached him on a
Buenos Aires street, tapping him on the back with the words "one moment,
sir" before wrestling him to the ground and bundling him into a getaway
car.

Eichmann, who had been living in Argentina under a false identity since
fleeing Germany after World War II, was interrogated at a safehouse in
Buenos Aires before being smuggled to Israel.

The daring operation, which inspired books and films, led to Eichmann's
conviction in a 1961 trial and his hanging in 1962. He remains the only
person ever to have been executed in Israel.

Malchin, a martial arts expert, decided to confront Eichmann alone near
his home on Garibaldi Street to avoid attracting attention and to ensure
he would be brought to Israel "in one piece," Dan said.

"There were six million pairs of eyes on me ... I had to succeed," Malchin
later recounted, Dan said.

NAZIS KILLED NEPHEW

Malchin, who was born Tzvi Milchman, escaped the Holocaust, but dozens of
his relatives were among the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during
World War II.

In his book "Eichmann in My Hands," Malchin described how he told Eichmann
during the 10 days the Mossad team held him before smuggling him to Israel
on an El Al plane that he was responsible for the death of his nephew in
the Holocaust.

"He was just your son's age. Also blond and blue-eyed, just like your son,
and you killed him," Malchin told Eichmann.

"Genuinely perplexed by the observation, he actually waited a moment to
see if I would clarify it," Malchin recounted in his book. 'Yes', he said
finally, 'but he was Jewish, wasn't he," Malchin wrote.

Known as a technological wizard and master of disguise, Malchin served as
the chief of the Mossad's operations unit in the 1960s. He retired from
active duty in 1976. He was also an acclaimed artist, an author of five
books and was involved in private consulting on counter-terrorism methods.

Malchin joined the Jewish underground in British-ruled Palestine at the
age of 12 and became an explosives expert as well as a talented safe
cracker before being recruited by the Mossad where he served for 27 years.

Among his other achievements, according to a World Zionist Organization
Web Site, was the capture of a Soviet spy who had penetrated the highest
levels of the Israeli leadership and an operation against Nazi nuclear
rocket scientists who assisted an Egyptian weapons development program
after World War II.

(source: Reuters)



USA:

Brandeis grad returns to tell tale of rebuffing 'Holocaust denier'


Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, enthralled the audience
yesterday inside Brandeis University's Shapiro Campus Center with her
clear arguments and passionate voice stating that the horrors of World War
II were real and worth remembering.

"History can be interpreted. We can debate the start of World War II
and what caused it, but not whether it existed. World War II happened,"
said Lipstadt. She is a 1976 Brandeis doctorate degree recipient who was
invited to give the keynote speech for Truth at Stake, a conference
sponsored by the Fisher-Bernstein Institute for Jewish Philanthropy and
Leadership.

"The Holocaust deniers want the debate to be about two versions of
history. It isn't," continued Lipstadt, who spoke about her successful
defense against libel charges by David Irving, a British military
historian who took action against Lipstadt for labeling him a "Holocaust
denier." "This is about truth and lies, not about versions of history."

Lipstadt's defense of historical truth began years before the libel
trial. In 1993, Lipstadt deconstructed Irving's claims about the "Legend
of the Holocaust" in her book, "Denying the Holocaust."

Audience members lined up to ask Lipstadt to sign copies of her 2005
memoir, "History on Trial," her first-hand account of her experiences with
Irving and the libel suit.

"You can't fight every battle, but there are some battles you can't
walk away from," said Lipstadt to Brandeis student Stuart Klammer as she
wrote him a personal note on the inside cover of his copy of "History on
Trial."

Dorit Ingber, a Brandeis student involved in running the Truth at
Stake conference, asked Lipstadt to sign her conference T-shirt.

Lipstadt laughed, then agreed to do it.

"I feel like a rock star!" said Lipstadt, a popular professor at
Atlanta's Emory University.

During Lipstadt's hour-long speech yesterday, she cited historical
inaccuracies Irving made, including Irving's characterization that in
mid-1943, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler took action against Jews concentrated
in Budapest, Hungary, because 50,000 Jews in a Warsaw, Poland, ghetto had
just staged an uprising against Nazi rule.

"The concern Irving attributes to Hitler about Jews in Budapest and
its connection to the Jewish uprising in Warsaw is odd, since the uprising
hadn't happened yet," Lipstadt said.

During her libel trial, Lipstadt never said a word. On the advice of
counsel, Lipstadt did not testify on her own behalf, nor did she speak to
the media.

"For me, not talking is an unnatural act. I love to talk," said
Lipstadt, drawing laughter from the audience in the first floor foyer of
Shapiro, as Antony Polonsky, Brandeis professor of Holocaust studies,
stood by her side. "I begged them to let me talk."

Yet, by deciding not to settle Irving's suit, Lipstadt put her
scholarship to the test in a court hearing, confident she would be
vindicated.

She was. Judge Charles Gray validated Lipstadt's right to call Irving
a Holocaust denier, stating that "no objective, fair-minded historian
would have serious cause to doubt" that there were gas chambers at
Auschwitz, given the consistency of the voluminous information in records
and eyewitness accounts available to scholars today.

"She is gutsy in the fact that in this particular episode in her
life, she stood up for the truth, which is why she is one of our profiles
in leadership," said Amy Sales, Leadership Institute director and an
organizer of yesterday's conference.

"There are people around the world who don't believe there was a
Holocaust, that six million people did die," said Masha Lokshin of the
Brandeis Center for Modern Jewish Studies, a conference co-sponsor.

In a spirit of open inquiry, Lipstadt still invited the audience to
look at Irving's side.

"You can go to his Web site to read his arguments, but if you click a
particular button, you'll donate (to his cause), so be careful," Lipstadt
said, smiling.

Later in her speech, Lipstadt said historians have refuted all
arguments by Holocaust deniers up to the year 2001, but this work
continues.

"If David Irving had won, then my mother would have been a victim a
second time," Lipstadt read from a letter she got from the daughter of an
Auschwitz victim after Lipstadt won her libel case.

"Taking care of the dead is the most genuine act of loving kindness,"
Lipstadt said.

Lipstadt's Web log is located at www.lipstadt.blogspot.com.

(source: Daily News)





GERMANY:

Berlin to rule on large Holocaust claim

Jewish family says it was forced to sell its properties under the Nazis,
seeking $192M in damages.


A Berlin court is expected to rule on Friday on one of the largest
unsettled Jewish claims from the Holocaust -- the Wertheim family's quest
to recover a fortune in properties it was forced to sell under the Nazis.

The family, represented by 72-year-old New Jersey grandmother Barbara
Principe, is believed to be seeking a total of about 145 million ($191.6
million) in damages from German retailer KarstadtQuelle, which now owns
part of the disputed real estate.

Principe alleges in a suit that German department store chain Hertie --
later acquired by Karstadt -- committed fraud in 1951 when it convinced
her father and his brother to relinquish claims to the property.

"KarstadtQuelle knew exactly what they were getting into when they
invested in the company," Principe said on Thursday, standing near the
site on Potsdamer Platz where her family's flagship Wertheim store once
stood.

Karstadt maintains it is the land's rightful owner and says it owes the
Wertheims nothing.

"I am convinced that we will come out victorious in this case and I am
convinced that Karstadt will never have to pay damages in the reported
amounts," said spokesman Joerg Howe.

On Friday, the court is due to rule on a 20-million section of property
that is now part of a Karstadt store in central Berlin. The Wertheim
family believes the ruling could set a precedent for other disputed
Karstadt-owned real estate.

Six other former Wertheim properties, owned mostly by the German
government, are the object of settlement talks.

Forced to sell

The Wertheims owned retail stores and other holdings in the German
capital, including property that was later the site of the bunker where
Hitler committed suicide in 1945.

But in 1938, the family was forced to sell all its shares to a non-Jewish
consortium and in 1939 Principe's father, Guenther, fled Germany, changing
his name from Wertheim to Wortham.

In the early 1950s, the suit alleges, Guenther and his brother were told
by a lawyer involved in the Hertie deal that the future of the business
was doubtful because much of it had been expropriated by the Soviets in
East Berlin.

They agreed to drop the claims for $5,100 -- a sum the plaintiffs say
represented only four percent of their value.

Last May, a U.S. district court dismissed the Wertheim case on the grounds
it did not have jurisdiction. But the judge said evidence suggested the
family had been defrauded by previous owners of its assets.

The case has attracted additional interest because of the recent financial
troubles of Karstadt, a household name in Germany that first set up shop
in the 1880s.

Slow to respond to a prolonged consumer spending slump in Germany,
Europe's biggest department store operator has seen its losses balloon and
sales decline. In September, it unveiled a major restructuring plan that
calls for the sale of 77 of its 180 stores.

(source: Reuters)