Dec. 5



UKRAINE:

New Holocaust Memorial for Eastern Ukraine


A new memorial complex has been built in the Donetsk Region to commemorate
local victims of the Holocaust. Erected in the town of Yenakiyevo, the
monument features an eternal flame to symbolize that the plight of these
approximately 600 victims shall not be forgotten, as well as a large cast
iron Menorah made at the local metallurgic plant.

In June 1942, occupying Nazi forces drove all Jews to barracks in the
city's outskirts. After spending several cold days there without food or
water, they were then loaded on trucks and driven to the Uzlovaya Mine,
where they were thrown into the mine pits.

This is the fourth monument inaugurated by the 'Chesed Tzdaka' Charity
Foundation and the Ukraine-Israel Society. Hundreds of people came out for
the opening event children, middle-aged and elderly Jews, and other local
residents gathered to commemorate those whose lives ended on that tragic
day. Out of the 600 persons killed here, 51 were children. Students from
the Ohr Avner Chabad Day School in Donetsk carried 51 candles in honor of
each of the youngsters lost.

The Jewish community of Yenakiyevo, which is a member of the Federation of
Jewish Communities of Ukraine, paid for this monument after having
collected funds for five years. The town's Mayor, Sergei Rukhadze,
assisted in allocating a plot of land, as well as with respect to the
construction process.

(source: Federation of Jewish Communitites of CIS)




GERMANY:

Israeli author wins German literature prize for Holocaust stories


Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld picked up Germany's prestigious Nelly
Sachs Prize for literature on Sunday for his harrowing autobiographical
stories of escape from the Nazis.

Appelfeld, 73, traveled to the western German city of Dortmund with his
wife to accept the award, which was presented by the leader of Germany's
Jewish community Paul Spiegel.

"His writing is the continued attempt to put into words the feelings of a
persecuted young person living in fear for his life," Spiegel said.

Born in 1932 as the only child of a Jewish businessman in Czernowitz,
Romania, Appelfeld was deported to a concentration camp at the age of
eight.

He escaped and managed to reach Italy via Yugoslavia. After the war, he
settled in Israel and after learning Hebrew, studied literature in
Jerusalem.

The author is now a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion
University.

Appelfeld released this year The Story of A Life, his account of a
childhood in wartime eastern Europe.

The Nelly Sachs prize, named for the 1966 Nobel literature laureate, has
been awarded every two years since 1961.

(source: Middle East Times)

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

The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler


The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler, by Leonard L. Heston, M. D., and
Renate Heston, R. N., with an introduction by Albert Speer, published in
1979. Available used, unfortunately out of print.

Book Review: Adolf Hitler was variously diagnosed as bipolar,
schizophrenic and paranoid schizophrenic. He was also diagnosed as having
had Parkinson's disease, which Yasir Arafat reportedly suffered from. Yet
Hitler had none of these disorders: he was an amphetamine and barbiturate
addict.


This marvelous little book, which reads like a medical mystery novel,
slowly dismantles every other explanation for Hitler's increasingly
reckless behavior. We can conjecture that he may have triggered
barbiturate addiction long before amphetamine addiction. However, the
reader is left with no doubt that injections given to him by the doctor
without whom he "could not live," Dr. Morell, included large quantities of
amphetamine, beginning by 1937. (Because Hitler can be seen moving his
hands back and forth on his upper legs in a way consistent with
amphetamine use, called "stereotypical behavior," in 1936 Olympic Games
videos, use likely began a bit earlier.)

The authors offer numerous clues to addiction. When injections, widely
believed to be multi-vitamins "specially compounded for the Fuhrer,"
ceased on occasion, Hitler experienced severe depression, a common symptom
among newly abstinent amphetamine or cocaine addicts. He engaged in
all-night monologues with an endless repetition of stories, along with
increasingly disorganized thinking and confused syntax. The latter would
not be expected of someone considered to have been a supreme orator. His
mood swings became more volatile, paranoia increased (a common side effect
of amphetamine addiction) and, while early on he accepted blame for
tactical errors, he developed a tendency to project blame onto others.

Intravenous injections of the "special compound" increased from one to as
many as five daily. While intravenous amphetamine use has the same effect
as injecting cocaine, it is much longer lasting: the half-life of
amphetamines is twelve times longer. He took barbiturates every night
during WW2, no doubt needed to offset the effect of amphetamines to allow
for sleep. Hitler also used narcotics from 1938 onward, in particular,
Eukodal, an early version of Percodan. A potent mix of drugs such as this
has adverse effects on a person's personality, thinking, perceptions and
behaviors.

Over-confidence and intoxication with his own early successes, common to
early-stage addiction, fuelled a propensity to risk-taking and impulsive
behaviors. As his use progressed during WW2 he experienced tremors, often
attributed to Parkinson's disease. However, heavy amphetamine use mimics
Parkinson's, probably because the neurotransmitter dopamine is affected by
both. A stereotypical behavior very common to amphetamine addicts, an
incessant scratching (the description offered by amphetamine addicts is
"bugs are crawling under their skin"), began by 1943.

The fact that no one figured this out until 1979, 34 years after Hitler's
death, provides some of the most damning evidence ever of how completely
unaware biographers and historians are of the role of addiction in
determining the course of events. They don't look for it because they
don't know it's relevant. In my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I
wrote that someday historians and biographers would view their subjects in
a new light. Judging from the current treatment of Arafat, there is still
a long way to go.

The only flaw in The Medical Casebook is that barbiturates are only
mentioned in passing, explaining that Hitler didn't take them in large
enough pharmacologic doses for addiction to have occurred. However, the
mix of drugs, the fact that drugs potentiate each other in remarkably
potent ways (two plus two equals ten) and continuous use strongly suggests
that this addiction intertwined with amphetamine use to create the most
reviled monster in history. It is an irony of history that Hitler chose
never to drink because of the vile effects that alcoholism had on others.
However, barbiturates are alcohol in pill form for the alcoholic. Hitler,
then, was likely an alcoholic who used only other drugs, by Leonard L.
Heston, M. D., and Renate Heston, R. N., with an introduction by Albert
Speer, published in 1979. Available used, unfortunately out of print.

(source: New Criminologist)



POLAND:

Art is added to Schindler's list


THE Polish factory where Oskar Schindler famously shielded more than 1,000
Jews from the Holocaust is being turned into a museum and art gallery.

The Emalia factory on the outskirts of Krakow has barely been touched
since the end of the Second World War and has become a must-see
destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists.


The centre for one of the most unlikely humanitarian operations ever seen
will feature works by young artists in an effort to turn the building into
a symbol of peace and creativity.

Schindler, a German industrialist, became a hero for Jews seeking refuge
from the Holocaust when he gave them sanctuary in his factory that made
supplies - such as enamel pots and pans - for the German army.

His amazing role in saving Jews was immortalised in the 1993 Steven
Spielberg film Schindler's List, starring Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes.

The Polish Ministry of Culture and the city of Krakow are spending some
700,000 on the building, which will be completed in the next few weeks.

Much of the art that will adorn the former factory has been produced by
the "new school" of young Krakow artists.

In addition to rooms and props featured in Spielberg's film, the museum
will have files on all the workers Schindler saved, as well as a set of
enamel pots and pans made in the factory during the war.

The Emalia factory lies in an industrial area on the southern edge of
Krakow - in a district that can be described as grim even by Eastern
European standards.

It is dominated by the relics of old engineering works and the moving of
heavy cargo.

Tourists coming to see the building, in Lipova Street, remark on the smell
of diesel and coal fumes.

Although it has become a magnet for tourists, especially from the United
States and Israel, many locals barely realise the building is still there,
and know little of its significance.

Inside little has changed since the 1940s, although much of the equipment
was stripped out at the end of the conflict.

A modest plaque outside, written in Polish and Hebrew, describes the
significance of the building and quotes a Jewish survivor: "Whoever saves
one life, saves the whole world."

'No Pipe-smoking' signs are still in evidence, and barrels have been left
around to collect rainwater.

The large work halls are ideal for displaying works of art, according to
those involved with the project.

Adam Deskor, the art curator for the former factory, said: "This factory
is a good place for art because during the war it was not destroyed, and
it was spared from the Holocaust. Here there were only positive thoughts,
so I think this will be a good place for art."

Aleksander Janicki, a local artist and the project manager, said: "This is
a story which needs to be documented, it's part of Krakow history.

"This is one of the few places connected to the Holocaust which is not
entirely negative and associated with dead bodies."

Born on April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, in what is now the Czech Republic,
Schindler was one of the Second World War's least likely humanitarian
heroes.

The hard-drinking, money-hungry womaniser followed the German occupiers
into Poland in 1939, hoping to make a fortune as the Nazis allowed their
own to take over factories and businesses.

The Nazi party member got involved with the local Krakow black market and
soon made friends with the local Gestapo. His connections helped him
acquire a factory, which he ran using the cheapest labour - the local
Jewish population.

Although he earned a lot of money through the factory, by the end of the
conflict he had spent much of it to save the 1,300 Jewish men and women.

He used connections and bribes and insisted that the workers were
essential in order to get production quotas completed.

Soon after the deportation of Jews to death camps began, Schindler's
Jewish accountant put him in touch with the few Jews who still had some
wealth.

They invested in his factory and were allowed to work there. While life at
the factory was hard, especially for some wealthier Jews who had been used
to lives of luxury, everyone working there was fed, and no one was beaten
or killed.

After witnessing a Nazi raid on a Jewish ghetto in 1942, Schindler was
appalled and resolved to beat the system. His workers became known as the
"Schindlerjuden", the "Schindler Jews", and he referred to them as "my
children".

After the war ended, Schindler fled to Argentina with his wife and a
handful of his workers and bought a farm.

But in 1958 he abandoned his farm, his wife and a mistress to return to
Germany.

He spent his remaining years dividing his time between Germany and Israel,
where he wase feted and helped by Jews he had aided. He died in Hildesheim,
Germany, in 1974.

(source: The Scotsman)





FRANCE:

In Pursuit of the Desk Murderers----Parisians track down Nazis who ordered
deaths


If not for a chance encounter at a Paris Metro station, history probably
would have forgotten the likes of Kurt Lischka, Maurice Papon and Klaus
Barbie. They would have continued to live out their lives after the
war in relative obscurity their past crimes an ever-fading memory.

But when a young German-born au pair bumped into a University of Paris
political science student on that subway platform one day in 1960, the
course of history changed. And for men like Lischka, Barbie and numerous
others, the pair would become their worst nightmare.

For nearly 40 years, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld have dedicated their lives
to tracking down those who were major cogs in the Nazi killing machine and
"the Final Solution" the annihilation of the Jews of Europe during World
War II.

While their better-known counterpart, the late Simon Wiesenthal, focused
much of his efforts on those who ran the infamous death camps like
Auschwitz and Buchenwald, the French couple have gone after what Beate
Klarsfeld calls the "desk murderers" those who signed the orders and
those who collaborated with their Nazi masters to arrest and deport Jews
to a certain death. For her indefatigable pursuit of such war criminals,
Beate has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Seated in a slightly worn upholstered leather chair in her large fifth
floor office on the Rue Boetie, not far from the Champs Elysees, Beate
Klarsfeld is surrounded by ceiling-high bookcases with shelves neatly
stacked with file folders of different colors, microfilm and books on the
Holocaust and its perpetrators.

The collection represents a Nazi-hunting career that has taken her and her
husband to almost every corner of the globe and to some not so hospitable
places like Syria, Chile and Paraguay. It has not been an easy job
tracking down those who disappeared after the war to take up lives of
respectability. Their task was made more difficult because the Cold War
was the focus and ex-Nazis were seen as a good investment by the United
States and its allies in the fight against communism. There was little
interest, Klarsfeld says, in rehashing the past and bringing those who
"followed orders" to justice. But as a German and a Christian married to
a Jew whose father died at the hands of the Nazis Klarsfeld says she
became acutely aware of the crimes committed by her countrymen.

"As Germans, we had to do something and to assume some kind of
responsibility. I would say it's not political but I would say it's more
historic and moral," says Klarsfeld, whose father served in the German
army during the war.

For Serge Klarsfeld, his epiphany came when he visited Auschwitz in 1960,
the place where his father, Arno, was murdered. It was then that he
realized that he should follow the lead of Beate and that those who were
responsible for mass murder on an unprecedented scale should be held to
account.

And while others may have wanted to forget the past, the Klarsfelds were
determined to draw attention to their efforts to bring the former Nazis to
justice. That often meant very public displays of protest, risking arrest
or worse.

In 1966, Klarsfeld says she was fired from her job at the Franco-German
Alliance for Youth after she wrote a newspaper article accusing the new
German chancellor, Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, of hiding his past as a key
figure in the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda under Josef Goebbels.

"I can tell you in the very beginning when I started my campaign against
Kiesinger, I was dreadfully alone," she recalled.

Refusing to give up, Klarsfeld organized a campaign in Germany to oust
Kiesinger who was seeking reelection. Disguised as a reporter, she gained
entry to Kiesinger's Christian Democratic Union party congress meeting.
What took place next made Klarsfeld a force to be reckoned with in the
ensuing years.

Klarsfeld confronted Kiesinger with shouts of "Nazi, Nazi" and slapped his
face, bringing the German chancellor's wartime past into the public
spotlight.

Recalling that incident nearly 40 years ago, Klarsfeld says resorting to
dramatic acts of protest was the only way to draw attention to their
cause.

"We discovered it's not so easy and public opinion the Germans didn't
want to do anything and neither did politicians, the newspapers," says
the 66-year-old Klarsfeld, a neatly dressed woman with dark blonde hair,
whose calm manner belies her intensity and the risky nature of her work.

Klarsfeld was arrested on the spot but received a suspended, one-year jail
sentence. Undeterred, she continued her public campaign against Kiesinger
who didn't survive "the slap" heard around Germany. He lost the 1968
election to then-mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt.

Kiesinger was the first in a long line of ex-Nazis forced to confront the
Klarsfelds and their pit bull-like tactics. Others targeted by the pair
were Kurt Lischka, Gestapo chief for Jewish affairs in France, and one of
those responsible for arranging deportations to the death camps.

In 1970, the Klarsfelds hatched a plot to kidnap Lischka from his home in
Germany and return him to France for trial, but the plan failed. The
Klarsfelds, however, didn't give up. In 1972, Beate led a group of
protestors into Lischka's Cologne office. Lischka, according to Beate,
pulled out a handgun and threatened them. Some time later, Serge returned
the favor by confronting Lischka on the street and sticking an unloaded
gun in his face before walking away.

Lischka, however, couldn't escape his past. After Germany ratified a
treaty allowing for the prosecution in Germany of war crimes committed in
France, Lischka and two other former SS men were tried in 1979 for their
crimes, convicted and given prison sentences.

Not all of the willing executioners of the Holocaust were Germans. There
were French collaborators as well those in the puppet regime at Vichy who
were responsible for sending 80,000 French Jews many of them children to
their deaths. Klarsfeld points out that "more than Klarsfeld points out
that "more than 80 percent of the Jews arrested in France were arrested by
men in a French uniform."

Among those set upon by the couple included Rene Bousquet, Paul Touvier
and Maurice Papon - the latter was the wartime secretary general in
Bordeaux. Following the war, Papon rose up the political ladder becoming a
member of parliament and later attaining a Cabinet post.

For decades after the war, she says Papon was protected by friends in high
places within the French government. "When we started to unmask him - we
were told we would never get this man to jail because he was after the war
protected by (president) de Gaulle - and then one day he was obliged to go
to jail and no one expected it," says Klarsfeld,

Papon was convicted in 1998 of crimes against humanity for his role in the
fatal deportation of 1,600 French Jews. The 87-year-old was sentenced to
10 years in prison but has since been released from jail for health
reasons.

Klarsfeld also turned the spotlight on former Secretary General Kurt
Waldheim and his Nazi past. She was arrested several times while
protesting his candidacy to become president of Austria in 1986.

But to this day the Klarsfelds most famous catch was the former Gestapo
chief in Lyon. Klaus Barbie was nicknamed the "Butcher of Lyon" for his
countless atrocities, including the brutal torture and death of French
Resistance leader Jean Moulin. But Barbie's trial focused on his
deportation of 44 children from a children's home in the hamlet of Izieu
to Auschwitz. They never returned.

Barbie would not have escaped justice for decades without the help of the
Central Intelligence Agency, who used him after the war as an anti-communist
expert. "When the Cold War started the thought was to fight against
communism so all these Nazi criminals were anti-communists so they
were used," Klarsfeld says. "Barbie was used by the secret service of the
United States and the French had theirs and the British had theirs."

The Klarsfelds eventually tracked Barbie to Bolivia where he was living
under an assumed name and protected for years by the right-wing government
in power. In 1983, with a change in government, he was finally returned to
France.

At Barbie's trial four years later, Serge Klarsfeld was one of the more
than three dozen lawyers representing the victims. The evidence of
Barbie's involvement in the Izieu roundup was gathered by Serge and helped
seal the former Gestapo chief's fate. Barbie was convicted and given a
life sentence. He died in prison.

The Klarsfelds' crusade to hold war criminals to account has not been
without peril. The couple has been arrested on numerous occasions,
deported from countries unsympathetic to their cause and often receive
death threats. In 1979, a time bomb blew up their car in a Paris garage.
No one was hurt but the message was clear that neo-Nazi and right-wing
political types didn't care for their work.

But even some of those closest to Beate were opposed to her Nazi-hunting
endeavors. She says that for years even her mother didn't approve of what
she was doing but eventually came around to her appreciate her work.

"It's still the generation of Germans who voted for Hitler," she says,
noting her father had died before she embarked on her career.

Sixty years after the end of the war, there remains one Nazi fugitive on
the Klarsfelds' list: former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Alois Brunner. The
Austrian for a time was Adolph Eichmann's deputy, helping to arrange the
deportation and murder of Europe's Jews, including 47,000 Jews from
Austria and 43,000 from Greece. In 1943, Brunner was placed in charge of
the Drancy transit camp near Paris where he deported 25,000 Jewish men,
women and children to their deaths in 14 months.

For the couple, hunting Brunner has a very personal side. In 1943, it was
Brunner who commanded the SS units in Nice that arrested Serge Klarsfeld's
father, Arno. He like many others would perish at a place called
Auschwitz.

Brunner disappeared after the war and, like Barbie, wound up working for a
Western intelligence service (West Germany). The Klarsfelds finally
tracked Brunner to Syria where he apparently lived for years under the
protection of the Syrian government.

Despite the efforts of France and Germany to seek Brunner's extradition,
Syria has refused to even acknowledge his existence. Klarsfeld speculated
that the Syrian government, under the iron-fisted rule of the late
President Assad and now his son, regarded Brunner as an asset.

"When he came from Egypt to Syria he unmasked himself, they had known who
he was - an enemy of the Jews with some advice to give," she says. "I
think he worked in the arms business after the war so he was very helpful
to the Syrians."

Brunner has twice been convicted in absentia in France, the last time in
2002 when he was sentenced to life in prison. Klarsfeld adds, however,
that at 93 years of age Brunner is likely dead.

And while the couple are best known for their Nazi hunting work, they have
also spent much of their time ensuring that those who perished in the
Holocaust are not forgotten.

The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation (www.klarsfeldfoundation.org), established
in the late 1970s, has funded Holocaust exhibits and published a number of
books, including one researched by Serge Klarsfeld. "The Memorial to
Jewish Children Deported from France," is a 1,550 page tome that
meticulously details the lives of the Jewish children who never returned
home. It's a moving tribute that contains more than 2,000 photos of the
11,400 children (only 300 survived) seized and deported to the
concentration camps.They also founded the Sons and Daughters of Jewish
Deportees from France, an organization which helps support the Klarsfelds'
activities in France. In Roglit, Israel, the pair were responsible for the
creation of a memorial to the 80,000 French Jews who perished during the
war. They also were instrumental in getting the French government to
establish a pension fund for the orphans of the Holocaust.

The Klarsfelds' work has not gone unnoticed. Both have received numerous
honors, including France's Legion of Honor and the Raoul Wallenberg Prize,
named for the Swedish diplomat who helped Jews escape during the war. In
1986, a made-for-TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett chronicled the
Klarsfelds' Nazi-hunting crusade.

The couple's work has also become a family affair. Their two children,
Arno and Lida, both lawyers, have taken up the cause. It was Arno, who was
active in the Papon case, representing a number of victims and their
families.

Reflecting on how her life turned after that chance meeting on a Paris
Metro platform 45 years ago, Beate says hunting Nazi war criminals was not
on her agenda. "When I left Berlin in 1960 as an au pair, I couldn't
imagine that one day I'd have all these honors and have accomplished quite
a lot," she says.

But more importantly, Klarsfeld says, their work and that of the late
Simon Wiesenthal have helped forced the world to confront and remember a
dark chapter in history when 6 million human beings perished.

"It's useful, you know, not to forget."



Bruce Edwards has written a number of stories related to World War II,
including articles about the 50th and 60th D-Day anniversaries and
Holocaust victims' assets. He interviewed Beate Klarsfeld this month in
her Paris office.

(source: Times Argus)