Oct. 26


GERMANY:

Belgian Holocaust denier to face trial in Germany


Belgian Holocaust denier Siegfried Verbeke is to face trial in Germany
for claiming the Nazis did not murder six million Jews.

On Wednesday, Le Soir reported that a court in Amsterdam had agreed to
extradite Verbeke, who comes from Kortrijk in Flanders. He was arrested at
Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in August and charged with racism and
xenophobia and of spreading negationist opinions on the internet.

Germany had already asked Belgium to extradite Verbeke last year, but a
Belgian judge refused the request.

In his home country Verbeke has already been convicted of Holocaust
denial. The appeals court in Antwerp sentenced him in April to a maximum

one-year jail term and a EUR 2,500 fine for breaching negationist and
anti-racism laws.

Verbeke also faced similar allegations in the Netherlands, but Justice
Minister Piet Hein Donner put the charges on ice, on condition that
Verbeke was sent to trial in Germany.

The 63-year-old Verbeke has been the head of the Free Historical Research
centre (VHO) since 1983. The centre publishes books in which the Holocaust
is denied or downplayed.

Verbeke, who has become a well-known figure across Europe, has used the
principle of freedom of speech to defend himself in the past, and is
reported to hold links with various extreme-rights groups across the
continent.


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

BMW publishes book telling its history under Nazis


In Munich, German carmaker BMW detailed Wednesday how it became part of
the Nazi system, employing forced labour and concentration camp inmates
in its factories during the Second World War.

The company has led efforts by German industry to make amends,
spearheading the huge Remembrance fund that paid lump-sum compensation to
survivors in Israel and all over Europe in recent years.

It and MTU, the aircraft engine company that grew out of the former BMW
aero-engine arm, jointly commissioned a historian, Constanze Werner, to
study the corporate record during the Nazi era. She worked on the topic
for six years.

Her book, "War Economy and Forced Labour", was published Wednesday, and
joins other studies of how BMW helped the Nazis arm Germany.

"The book describes the process by which BMW got steadily more involved
with the Nazi regime and its crimes, to the point where it deliberately
employed forced labour and concentration camp inmates," Werner said.

The Nazis press-ganged people from France, Poland and other nations to
work in German factories at low pay in bad conditions.

(source for both: Expatica News)

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


Should Germans Keep Apologizing for the Holocaust?


A survey of 3000 people questioned by researchers from the University of
Bielefeld in Germany early this year found that 62 percent of Germans
agreed that they were sick of being reminded about the Holocaust. The
survey was released on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, an
infamous German concentration camp.

The Holocaust was the anti-Semitic actions and mass murder of nearly 6
million Jews carried out by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 in
Europe. Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party participated in heinous crimes
against humanity until the end of World War II.

After the Holocaust, Germans found themselves apologizing often to Jews
for the actions in their history. Now, more than 70 years later, many
Germans believe that enough is enough. Should Germans stop apologizing for
the Holocaust?

Should African- Americans still be apologized to for slavery? Here is what
some Howard students and professors said.

"[Germans] do need to stop apologizing so that they can move forward from
the tragedy. The event was a long time and really, you can only apologize
so much."

Erin Kendrick, junior, marketing major


"On the question of apologies, here is my position: Some situations are
too horrendous to be closed with an expression of 'good' manners. The
Holocaust and black enslavement fall into this category. Remorse in either
case is best represented by some tangible program of restorative
substance. Apologies are social freebees; economic programs of assistance
and empowerment. Help victim groups to recover at least some of what the
holocaust and slavery did to them."

Dr. Russell Adams, professor of Afro-American studies


"Apologies are soothing and sometimes heal. But more is needed to deal
with the atrocities of the Nazis and the USA and Europe's creation and
participation in the European Slave Trade and slavery. I am not sure if
reparations is what's called. Perhaps the magnitude of these events is
such that little if anything will compensate. I don't have a definitive
answer."

(source: The (Howard University) Hilltop)





GREAT BRITAIN:

Holocaust on film
by: Leslie Bunder

Holocaust and The Moving Image


Holocaust and the Moving Image is a book that came out as the result on an
event that was held at London's Imperial War Museum.

2001's Holocaust, Genocide and the Moving Image symposium looked at how
the big screen and small screen covered the Nazi era.

Now, the book takes some of these themes and looks to put them into words
to educate and inform readers.

With over 35 contributors offering their thoughts and perspectives, the
book attempts to provide the reader with access to information that
previously was not easily accessible or known about.

It is a tough book. Not so much in terms of its content, but more on how
it attempts to cover both big screen as well as small screen. It's also
tough in terms of reading some of the chapters. Some of the contributors
come from the academic world and is written with the academic/historian
perspective, very dry and not easy to get into, while other chapters are
written well and give the reader something to learn from regardless on how
knowledgeable they were previously.

And that's the real problem with the book, it doesn't quite know who it is
being aimed at? Is it academic/historian, is it general reader? Or is it
trying to cover both?

The chapter of the notorious Nazi film Jud Suss (Jew Suss) is written
extremely well and provides an excellent overview on the film, how it came
to be made by director Veit Harlan. The writer of this chapter, Susan
Tegal provides an easily digestible piece full of facts and other useful
trivia that puts everything into perspective. From how the Nazis were not
the first to make a film on the life of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer to how
Jews actually had supporting roles in this piece of propaganda.

Likewise, a chapter on Fritz Hippler's The External Jew written by Terry
Chapman provides an excellent overview on this "documentary" that looked
at Jews in Poland and aimed to make people despise Jews and how they live.

The problem I have with the book is that when its interesting to read, the
content is truly fascinating and engages the reader to read it, but
certain chapters do not engage with the reader and so will be skipped.

For me, the coverage of the big screen during the Nazi era is the most
interesting.

As well as finding out what the Nazi's were releasing, a chapter by
Matthew Lee details short anti-Nazi films made during the time by the
Ministry of Information.

Overall, the book provides a much needed resource but there are a few
things I would have liked to read about. What about Nazi films of the
time that were made in English? What did the Nazi regime do with regards
to that issue? Likewise, did anyone make anti-Nazi films in German to be
shown to Germans? These are some themes, I would like the book to have
examined.

The book also leaves out some major films that cover the issue of the
Holocaust, no mention of Robin Williams' Jakob The Liar, nor the
unreleased The Day The Clown Cried starring Jerry Lewis.

Holocaust and The Moving Image provides a useful starting point for
readers to explore its themes. There is certainly scope for one of the
themes, screen film to be further expanded and developed into its own
book.

Holocaust and The Moving Image (16.99) is published by Wallflower Press

(source: somethingjewish.co.uk)





SPAIN:

Spanish Police Say 40-Year Manhunt Is Zeroing In on Nazi Concentration
Camp Doctor


After more than 40 years of searching, an international manhunt for
Aribert Heim, a notorious doctor from the Nazi concentration camps and
one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, has zeroed in on a stretch of
the Mediterranean coast of Spain, according to Spanish police officials.

Mr. Heim, born in Austria 91 years ago, is accused of torturing and killing
hundreds of prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in
1941 and 1942. The crimes for which he is sought include injecting gasoline
into the hearts of victims, conducting operations on prisoners without
anesthesia and executing prisoners just to record how long they took to
die.

"The trial would be the most significant in the last 30 years," said Efraim
Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which
helps search for Nazi war criminals. "This case symbolizes the Nazi
perversion of medicine and science, and the application of medicine to
commit the most horrible atrocities."

Mr. Heim is second on the Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list of Nazi war
criminals, after Alois Brunner, an assistant to Adolf Eichmann who is
accused of deporting tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration
camps. Mr. Brunner is believed to be in Syria, and there is thought to be
little chance of his being captured.

Spain has been a haven for Nazi war criminals since the end of World War
II, when many were drawn here by the protection offered by the government of
Francisco Franco, according to scholars of the issue.

Even after Franco died in 1975 and democracy was established, Spain's
elected governments did little to cooperate with international searches
for Nazi war criminals, those scholars said.

Jos Mara Irujo, author of "The Black List," a book about Nazis who fled to
Spain, said in an interview that whole colonies of them lived here
undisturbed for decades. "Many lived out their lives here, and died
peacefully," he said.

"We are talking about hundreds of people," he said. "Spanish governments
never did anything."

Dr. Zuroff of the Wiesenthal center said Spain had "a horrendous record on
Nazi war criminals." But he added that under the government of Prime
Minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, a Socialist who was elected in March
2004, Spain appeared to have begun cooperating.

The Spanish police began searching for Mr. Heim over the summer in response
to a request from the German government, which had detected large transfers
of money to Spain from Mr. Heim's family in Germany, according to Dr. Zuroff
and a Spanish police official.

The transfers, worth a total of about $400,000, were sent to Palafrugell, a
town near Spain's northeastern coast, from 2000 to 2003, Dr. Zuroff said.

Other Spanish officials said their search for Mr. Heim was not limited to
Palafrugell, but refused to specify where it was focused. They would say
only that it spanned much of the Mediterranean coast, going at least as far
south as Alicante, a section of southeastern Spain where many Nazis
reportedly sought refuge after the war.

The developments in the search for Mr. Heim came 18 months or so after
Germany set up a task force to find him. As part of the search, the Germans
distributed a computerized rendering of what Mr. Heim, who is about 6 feet
3 inches tall and has a scar on his right cheek, might look like today and
offered 130,000 euros, about $156,000, for information leading to his
arrest. The Wiesenthal center offered an additional 10,000 euros.

There has always been reason to believe Mr. Heim is still alive, Dr. Zuroff
said, because his million-euro bank account in Berlin has yet to be tapped
by his children, who are free to do so if they can prove he is dead.

Mr. Heim has been a fugitive since 1962, when he fled his home in
Baden-Baden, Germany, as the police were preparing to arrest him.

In 1979, a Berlin court declared him a major Nazi war criminal and convicted
him in absentia of killing scores of prisoners at the Mauthausen
concentration camp, some out of "pure boredom."

(source: New York Times)





ROMANIA:

Romanian President: Roma must be considered as Holocaust victims


Romanian President Traian Basescu has sent a bill back to parliment
requesting that the definition of the Holocaust include Roma. The request
follows an open letter Mr Basescu received from rights activists and
European lawmakers, which asked him change the wording of the Holocaust in
the bill. The bill will ban Holocaust denial and aims to make racism
illegal.

The previous legislation excluded Roma by defining the Holocaust as
state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry
by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
The signatories of the open letter declared that it is outrageous that the
draft law makes no mention of the Roma as victims of the Holocaust.

According to the letter, not including Roma in the definition of the
Holocaust can lead to serious consequences with regard to Romanias efforts
to adhere to the European principles of reaching reconciliation with its
own history. Furthermore, the absence of Roma from the text of the law
means that the Roma minority will be excluded from any discussions about
the Holocaust. This will make it impossible for the citizens of Romania to
receive proper education on the Holocaust. Moreover, this law will fail to
apply in the case of the denial of the persecutions of the Roma.

The letter is based on the report of the International Committee for the
Study of the Holocaust, which states that both Jewish and Roma people were
victims of the Holocaust and of the deportations to Transnistria during
the wartime regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu. The regime was responsible
for the deaths of more than 11,000 Roma and between 280,000 and 380,000
Jews.

Over 600, 000 Roma died during World War II due to the Holocaust.
Additionally, thousands of Roma were killed during active fighting against
Nazis as members of various national armies. Many others were murdered
without any record.

In the Czech Republic, it is becoming increasingly apparent that only 10%
of Roma survived Holocaust fury. Even more disconcerting is the fact that
in the place of a former concentration camp in Lety u Pisku -- where more
than a thousand Roma and Sinti were sent to die during the Second World
War -- now stands a pig farm.

(source: Dzeno Association)





USA//VIRGINIA:

POLITICS: Play the Hitler card --and lose


Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without someone invoking the name of Hitler
to drive home a political point. This trivializes one of history's true
monsters and cheapens the horror of historical events.

Most annoying of all is the routine comparison - in certain circles - of
President George W. Bush to the German fuehrer, an analogy so ridiculous
and historically inane that it doesn't bear refuting.

The idea, conceived in the anti-war/anti-Bush camp before and after the
Iraq invasion, was recently resurrected on comedian Bill Maher's late-night
HBO show. Maher showed a series of doctored photographs depicting Bush as a
drunk and a wife beater. One of Maher's guests, journalist Christopher
Hitchens, defended Bush: "It must be to his credit he got Laura Bush to
marry him. She's an absolutely extraordinary woman."

Maher countered, "Oh, come on. That's like Hitler's dog loved him." A
provoked Hitchens replied: "You're being ungallant about Laura Bush. You've
compared her to Hitler's dog. I'm not going to sit here and listen to
that." Explaining himself, Maher said that "the idea that we somehow
humanize any person because somebody else loves them is ridiculous."

Point taken. But the larger point may be that Hitler's usefulness as an
analog has expired; he has become a comedian's punch line.

Or a politician's blunt instrument:

Several days ago in Virginia, one gubernatorial candidate accused the other
in a television ad of being weak on Hitler. The ad, for Republican
candidate Jerry Kilgore, claimed that his Democratic opponent, Tim Kaine,
had said that Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty. The
implication: Kaine is so wobbly on the death penalty that even Hitler would
escape punishment.

But Kilgore's camp distorted both what Kaine said and what he meant.
FactCheck.org, the fact-checking arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
of the University of Pennsylvania, dissected the Kaine quote in question,
a variation of which came from a September editorial board meeting at the
Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Kaine was responding to a reporter's questions about the extent of his
opposition to the death penalty, as in: Would even Hitler qualify for
ultimate justice? Kaine, who also opposes abortion, replied that "God
grants life, and God should take it away." He never said that Hitler
wouldn't "qualify," and in any case, Kaine is repeatedly on record as
promising to enforce the laws of the state, including the death penalty
laws.

Playing the Hitler card is a cheap trick designed only to sensationalize
and stir emotions, and hyperbolists on both sides of the political aisle
are equally guilty of using it.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, writing for Time magazine a few
years ago, described Adolf Hitler as "the incarnation of absolute evil. . .
. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one
could see the abyss."

As such, Hitler deserves our continued scrutiny and study. But we should
retire his name as a casual catchall for whomever we find awful.
Familiarity breeds not only contempt, but also indifference - and Hitler's
death camps taught us what indifference breeds.

(source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)