April 13




GERMANY:

German ruling says Dresden was a holocaust


German prosecutors have provoked outrage by ruling that the 1945 RAF
bombing of Dresden can legally be termed a "holocaust".

The decision follows the refusal by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office
to press charges against a Right-wing politician who compared the bombing
raids to "the extermination of the Jews".

German law forbids the denial or playing down of the Holocaust as an
incitement to hatred.

So delicate is the subject of the slaughter of Jews under Hitler that any
use of the word "holocaust", or comparison with it, faces intense scrutiny
and sometimes legal action.

But prosecutors have declined to pursue further the case of Udo Voigt, the
chairman of the far-Right NPD, who likened the RAF's raids to the Nazis'
"final solution".

Rudigger Bagger, a spokesman for the Hamburg public prosecutor, said the
decision took into account only the criminal, not the moral, aspects of
the case.

But he cited as a legal precedent a ruling by the federal constitutional
court that favoured free speech in political exchanges, if defamation was
not the prime aim of the argument.

Holger Apfel, the NPD's leader in the Saxon regional parliament, caused a
scandal in January when he shouted down a commemoration of the Dresden
bombing, prompting many others to walk out in disgust.

His outburst was covered by parliamentary privilege but Mr Voigt applauded
and repeated the statements elsewhere.

Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany,
criticised the decision by prosecutors not to take action. He said the
statements were incitement and allowing them to stand opened the door to
further such comments.

"Morally, I have no understanding of this," he said. "One can ban such
remarks if you use the law consistently. It is questionable whether
statements that are clearly incitement come under freedom of expression."

Although the NPD is despised by other parties, German politicians
reluctantly accepted the ruling.

Dieter Wiefelspetz, the interior spokesman for the Social Democrat Party
described the phrase "holocaust" in the context of Dresden as an
"exploitation of the victims". But he supported the decision not to
prosecute.

Attitudes towards the Allied bombing campaign, which killed hundreds of
thousands of civilians, are changing. Estimates of the death toll in
Dresden in February 1945 hover at about 35,000. All the same, some
historians claim that as many as 500,000 people were killed in the raids.

Strictly speaking, the word "holocaust," which comes from the ancient
Greek for "burnt", might seem apt for Dresden, much of it immolated by the
fires started by the RAF's incendiary bombs.

But its primary meaning is now so closely linked to the Nazis' treatment
of the Jews that such etymology appears to be in bad taste.

(source: The Telegraph)

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


Holocaust survivors recall horrible past


More than 200 Holocaust survivors and 40 US veterans joined a solemn
ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where prisoners were forced
to build Hitlers feared rockets.

Day in and day out, the former prisoners think about the horrible, cruel
past and surely also about the many friends from across Europe who were
not able to experience the joy of survival, the chairman of the survivors
association, Albert van Hoey, said at the opening of a new museum at the
site.

Mittelbau-Dora was once a satellite of the larger Buchenwald concentration
camp where some 56,000 people - mainly Jews and political dissidents -
died between 1937 and 1945.

Hundreds of survivors and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder joined a
commemoration ceremony there Sunday.

The Mittelbau-Dora camp held forced labourers from across Europe who were
made to work under appalling conditions producing Hitlers V1 and V2
rockets.

Only two-thirds of the 60,000 people imprisoned there survived the ordeal.

When the US Army, on the march across Germany, opened the gates of the
camp on April 11, 1945, they found only a few hundred sickly, emaciated
prisoners.

The new 3mn-euro ($3.9mn) museum at the site includes a library, a lecture
hall and a cinema, which yesterday showed original material filmed by GIs
during the liberation six decades ago.

(source: Agence France Presse)





ISRAEL:

'Nazi who saved Jews' honoured


A German military officer who became known as the "Nazi who saved Jews"
was honoured yesterday by Israel's Holocaust memorial for rescuing
hundreds of Jews during World War II.

Major Karl Plagge, who served as a Nazi officer in Lithuania from
1941-1944, was named "Righteous among the nations".

Plagge was in charge of a factory that employed hundreds of Jews. He
employed unqualified people to save them from deportation, and warned his
workers in June 1944 that they would be handed over to the Nazis. That
enabled about 200 people to escape and survive.

(source: New Zealand Herald)




USA//INDIANA:

Holocaust exhibit at Munster art center


Anna Bloom cant wrap her head around the bag of hair she carried Monday
night.

When the 10-year-old from Valparaiso learned that the Nazis used to shave
Holocaust victims heads and use their hair to stuff mattresses, she
wondered how many people would be needed to do that. So she asked her
hairdresser, Kelly, to collect hair clippings for one week, and she
brought the clippings to the formal opening of "Lest We Forget:
Remembering the Holocaust," a gallery showing at the Center for Visual &
Performing Arts Bachman Gallery.

The hair from the 850 customers equaled a little less than three pounds
total, she said.

"It made me wonder why they did it," Anna said as hundreds walked through
the gallery staring at photographs taken in between 1940-1943 in the
Warsaw Ghetto and anti-Semitic propaganda posters used from 1933 to
roughly 1948. "What was the point of cutting hair, or what was the Nazis'
point?"

"Maybe their point was pure evil."

It's a point that the dignitaries, who were being honored, hope is never
witnessed again. The Midwest Consulates from Israel, Germany and Poland
attended.

Israeli Consulate Moshe Ram praised Pope John Paul II for his efforts in
acknowledging Catholicsm's role in the Holocaust and his tireless fight
for peace. Yet there is still a long way to go, as evidenced by a high
incidence rate of hate in Europe and Canada today.

"Hate crimes against Jews are at an all-time high in Europe and even
Canada," Ram said. "And a legislator in New Zealand recently said, 'Im
sick of hearing about how many Jews got gassed in Europe, and that's why
it can't be forgotten."

German Consulate Alexander Petri asked that people do not identify Germany
with just the Holocaust; with 1,800 years of Germans and Jews living
peacefully with each other, Germans couldn't be German without them.
Nevertheless, when he sees exhibits such as "Lest We Forget," he can't
help but feel ashamed.

"We Germans wouldn't be Germans without the Jews, but I hope well never be
Germans without the Jews living (in Germany) now," Petri said.

Franciszek Adamczyk, Poland's consulate, told of Polish people who had
friends who were Jewish, yet couldn't help them without the threat of
death to their own families.

"We could judge people about their decisions, but what would we do?"
Adamczyk asked.

(source: The Post-Tribune)