Jan. 6



USA:

Nazi Guard Deportation Order Stirs Holocaust Justice Debate


Last week's federal court order to deport John Demjanjuk, the convicted
Nazi guard once sentenced to death in Israel, is focusing renewed
attention on the question of how to pursue justice in Holocaust-related
cases.

Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled last week that
Demjanjuk, 85, a retired auto worker who lives near Cleveland, can be
extradited to his native Ukraine. In 2002, Demjanjuk once believed to be
"Ivan The Terrible," the notoriously brutal guard at the Treblinka death
camp in Poland was found guilty of having served as an armed guard at the
Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenburg concentration camps during World War II.

The ruling could end a 28-year fight by U.S. authorities to deport
Demjanjuk. It comes after several years of concern that public attention
on Holocaust matters had shifted from the hunt for the murderers to the
fight for financial restitution of victims' property.

"This may be one of the very last high-profile cases that the Justice
Department will be prosecuting," said Stuart Eizenstat, who led Holocaust
restitution negotiations while serving the Clinton administration and
earlier spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
while working in the Carter White House.

"For those who say that he is an 85-year-old man and we should forget the
past, I really disagree," Eizenstat said. "This refocuses us on the fact
that what was ultimately involved was not just the loss of property, but
it was the loss of life."

Justice Department officials first moved to deport Demjanjuk in 1977. In
1986, he was extradited to Israel, where he was tried and found to be
"Ivan the Terrible," a guard who helped oversee more than 700,000 murders
at Treblinka. He was sentenced to death, a punishment that Israel
previously has imposed only on Adolf Eichmann, the main planner of the
Nazi genocide.

Eventually, in 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ruling,
after evidence surfaced that while Demjanjuk had served as a Nazi guard,
another man, Ivan Marchenko, was in fact the infamous "Ivan The Terrible."
Demjanjuk was returned to America and his citizenship reinstated.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials resumed their fight to deport him, charging that
although he was not Ivan the Terrible, he still was guilty of lying to
immigration authorities about his wartime service in Nazi camps.

Demjanjuk has 30 days to contest last week's court ruling to the Board of
Immigration Appeals. He has denied he was ever a Nazi camp guard, saying
he was in the Soviet Army but spent much of the war as a German prisoner.

Soviet-era documents released by officials in Russia were responsible for
both Demjanjuk's exoneration as Ivan the Terrible and his subsequent
conviction in American courts as a different Nazi guard. In Ukraine,
Demjanjuk's native country, some see the case as one in a long line of
national indignities suffered at Russian hands. Russia dominated Ukraine
for centuries until the fall of communism in 1991.

Nationalist tensions could make Demjanjuk's possible extradition
politically uncomfortable for Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko,
acccording to Shai Franklin, executive director of the American section of
the World Jewish Congress. "We'll be very interested to see how the
government of President Yushchenko ... disposes of this case, not only in
terms of the legalities, but in terms of how they portray it to the
Ukrainian public," Franklin told the Forward.

In recent days, tensions between Ukraine and Russia received international
attention after a dispute between the two countries over natural gas
prices led briefly to Europe-wide gas shortages. The crisis began last
week when Russia's gas monopoly sought to increase the price it charges
Ukraine for natural gas and Ukraine refused to pay, leading Russia to cut
Ukraine's gas supply. Ukraine reportedly responded by siphoning off gas
that flows across its territory from Russia to Europe, reducing European
gas supplies by nearly half and prompting Russian charges of Ukrainian
theft.

Observers also said that the Demjanjuk case could provide Ukraine, which
in the past has failed to prosecute known Nazi war criminals, with an
opportunity to confront its long legacy of antisemitism.

During the past year, the country saw a steep increase in acts of violence
and vandalism against Jews, including several beatings in Kiev. In a
speech last month, Yushchenko condemned antisemitism and xenophobia, and
pledged to fight against discrimination in Ukraine.

But Ukrainian officials will not necessarily accept Demjanjuk for
extradition, according to a December 29 report by Agence France-Presse. A
Ukrainian government source told the news agency that Demjanjuk does not
have Ukrainian citizenship and "this is a 100% reason to refuse accepting
him."

American officials have said that if Ukraine does not accept Demjanjuk,
they would consider sending him to Poland, where the crimes took place, or
to Germany.

Thane Rosenbaum, a child of survivors and a lawyer who has written
extensively on Holocaust-related issues, said he was certain that
Yushchenko's government would not act against Demjanjuk. Rosenbaum
questioned the American rationale for deporting, rather than prosecuting
Demjanjuk.

"Why is it that the U.S. government deals with Nazi criminals only as an
immigration matter?" Rosenbaum said in an interview with the Forward. "We
are the architects of Nuremberg," which "provides universal jurisdiction
when it comes to crimes against humanity."

"With everything that we've done against Demjanjuk, why are we now in a
position to wonder what Ukraine will do?" Rosenbaum said. "That's the
imponderable."

(source: Forward.com)




GERMANY:

'New Year's orgy' at Holocaust memorial

New Years Eve celebrations held last Saturday at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate
poured into the nearby Holocaust memorial, Israel's leading newspaper
Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

"The riled up masses drank, ate and sent massive amounts of fireworks into
the air from in between the graves," an Israel Air Force pilot who is
currently visiting Germany said.

Following the celebrations, wine bottles, decorations and even empty packs
of condoms were left on some of the stones.

Ominous Prediction

In interview with BBC Radio, Britain's Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks says
he is 'very scared' by rise in anti-Jewish feelings, which have led to
Holocaust denial, attacks on synagogues, boycott of Jewish groups on
university campuses


Cleaning service employees were summoned to the scene, but it seems that
clearing the memorial of the filth left behind may take a while.

4 slabs defaced with swastikas

Last November the same memorial was partly defaced with yellow Stars of
David. A Berlin police spokesman said at the time that a star had been
painted by unknown vandals onto each of six of the 2,711 concrete slabs of
varying height that make up the memorial.

Under the Nazis, Jews had to wear yellow stars of David to distinguish
themselves from so-called "Aryan" Germans.

A Berlin Police spokesman said that the stars, which were removed, may
have been linked to a number of others found sprayed or painted onto
buildings and monuments in central Berlin.

The memorial, which was officially unveiled in May in the heart of the
German capital, is constantly under surveillance. It covers almost 20,000
square meters, allowing visitors to wander around its tight grid pattern.

Four of the slabs were defaced with swastikas shortly before a visit to
Germany by President Moshe Katsav in June.

(source: Ynetnews)

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


German museum renounces claim to art that Nazis took off walls


Berlin's greatest art museum renounced Wednesday any claim to a million-
dollar Edvard Munch painting that a Norwegian collector is to sell next
month at a Sotheby's auction.

Art experts had earlier suggested that the National Gallery in Berlin
demand the return of 'Summer Day', a work of expressionist art that the
Nazis condemned about 1937 as 'degenerate', removed from the gallery walls
and sold abroad to raise funds for the Nazi war chest.

The auction comes at a controversial moment, when art galleries in Germany
and elsewhere are being roiled by demands that all sales of artworks under
duress in the Nazi era be voided. Most claimants have been German Jewish
families prohibited from owning art treasures.

But this week, some experts argued that German public collections had also
been victims, since they were forced to sell off expressionist and
abstract works, many by Jewish and Communist artists, at a fraction of
their value.

The Prussian Cultural Foundation, which operates the National Gallery in
Berlin, disagreed, saying it had no such legal claim.

'It was the German state museums themselves which did not consider the
reviled art worth keeping. Though the state collections suffered from this
haemorrhage, they were fatefully intertwined with the state that did it,'
the foundation said in a statement.

Summer Day, painted in 1903, was bought in 1938 by Norwegian shipowner
Thomas Olsen. His son, Fred. Olsen, 77, has put 12 Munch works up for sale
next month. Another of the 12, 'Team' painted in 1916, hung in a museum in
Essen, Germany before the Nazi era.

Neither will be among the three Olsen Munch paintings to be shown in
Germany before the February 7 London auction, Selei Serafin, a spokeswoman
for Sotheby's Germany, said Wednesday.

Professor Odd Bjorn Fure, head of the Centre for Studies of Holocaust and
Religious Minorities, said in a 2002 interview that the current owners of
the Munch works should consider returning them to the museums in Germany.

Norwegian-born Munch, who lived from 1863 to 1944, is considered one of
Europe's most important expressionist painters.

The Nazis showed from 1937 to 1941 a collection of art of the 'Modern
movement' that they condemned as pessimistic and degenerate.

(source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur)




GLOBAL/IRAN:

World scholars back Iran's denial of Holocaust


A number of world scholars and journalists have expressed support for
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks on the Holocaust, IRNA
said.

The president last month said that the Holocaust was a "myth" fabricated
by the West and Europe.

Israel Shamir, a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual and journalist,
wrote to say he admired the stance of the Iranian president with regard to
the Holocaust, Mehr News Agency reported.

In a letter expressing support for President Ahmadinejad's view, he lauded
the Iranian nation and leadership as "dignified" while blasting the
Israeli regime as "bloodthirsty killers."

Shamir visited Iran in 1973 and 1974. His varied assignments as as a
freelance writer has brought him to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the
last stages of the war in South East Asia.

While in Moscow in 1989-1993, he reported for the Israeli daily `Haaretz'
but was sacked for publishing an article calling for the Palestinians
refugees to be allowed to return and rebuild their ruined villages, IRNA
added.

They have made a myth of the Holocaust and because of their view they have
opposed `revisionists' on the event, Shamir noted in his letter.

Another scholar, German in origin, Dr Fredrick Toben, in a separate letter
called the Holocaust a "lie" and described the event as a "legend."

An Australian citizen, Fredrick, has also edited a revisionist journal
called `Truth Missions' which was later renamed Adelaide Institute
newsletter, IRNA noted.

He said he has personally visited Auschwitz, burrowed himself under the
ruins of the alleged gas chamber, but was unable to find the four holes in
the roof which were supposedly used to throw in gas pellets, IRNA stated.

He was found guilty of "denying the Holocaust" by a German court in 1999
in Berlin.

Ahmad Rami, a former Moroccan officer, in a letter also announced his full
support for the remarks made by Iranian President Ahmadinejad on the
Holocaust, calling it a "big lie."

Living in exile in Sweden as a political dissident, he criticized the
information monopoly of the Zionists in Sweden and launched `Radio Islam'
there aimed at spreading information about Zionism, Jewish racism and the
so-called Holocaust.

In a letter to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, German lawyer Horst
Mehler denied the Holocaust, saying that it was aimed to damage the German
people, IRNA said.

"Mr Ahmadinejad has helped the revisionists. The Holocaust has never
happened and is considered the biggest lie throughout history.

The Germans should fight the fabricated story of the Holocaust to protect
their country," said Mehler in his letter.

Many historians have been forced to keep silent and many of them have been
jailed for telling the truth (denying the Holocaust), he noted in the
letter.

Mehler courageously denied the Holocaust at the opening of his trial in
the Berlin State Court.

"It is a lie that we systematically murdered six million Jews," he said in
the court.

Prosecutors warned the defendant he faced further charges if he continued
with such statements since a law in Germany punishes anybody denying the
Holocaust.

(source: IranMania.com)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust Survivors Admit to Forming Death Squad to Kill Nazis


As if taking a page out of Steven Spielberg's screenplay for his new
motion picture "Munich," several Holocaust survivors shocked many when
they admitted they formed a special death squad to hunt down Nazi war
criminals after World War II. They conceded it was a group effort less
concerned with bringing their persecutors to trial than with personally
taking revenge on their tormentors.

The survivors said they hunted the former SS officers who headed the death
camps executing and poisoning hundreds of them.

During a TV broadcast in Israel, the death sqaud members, some of whom
fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, described hunting down SS officers
in the dead of night. While wearing British or American military uniforms
and officers' insignia, they said they dragged the former SS killers out
of their homes and killed them execution-style.

In the biggest covert action undertaken, the group of Jewish men, who
called themselves "The Avengers," obtained arsenic and laced loaves of
bread with the poison which was fed to hundreds of SS officers who were
being housed in detention camps by the American military. They claimed
during the broadcast that they were also planning a large-scale action in
Nuremberg, but the Jewish leaders -- more interested in establishing an
Israeli state than in seeking revenge on fugitive Nazis -- ordered them to
abandon their deadly operations.

"I didn't see myself as a murderer, not then and not today," death squad
member Simcha Rotem told the Israeli TV audience. The special television
broadcast reported on a reunion of the death squad members that was held
outside of the city of Tel Aviv.

Exactly 60 years after the end of World War II, with most of several dozen
members of "The Avengers" either dead or in their late 70s and 80s, Rotem
told the Associated Press that "they gave into family pressure to recount
their experiences to their children, grandchildren and other relatives."

Now and then, stories of such death squads have circulated in Israel. The
Israeli government often turns a blind eye to such reports. In 2005, the
Israel government denied a Polish request for extradition of a suspected
member of "The Avengers."

Even more shocking was the story of how they wanted to poison the water
supply of five German cities. However, fear that innocent people might die
caused them to drop the plan.

----------------------------------
(source: MichNews----Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of
the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New
York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by
reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as
director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of
security for several major organizations)