Feb. 20


USA:

U.S.-German Flare-Up Over Vast Nazi Camp Archives


Tempers are flaring over a United States demand to open to scholars and
researchers a huge repository of information about the Holocaust contained
in the files of the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Based in part on documents gathered by Allied forces as they liberated
Nazi concentration camps, the stock of files held by the organization
stretches for about 15.5 miles, and holds information on 17.5 million
people. It amounts to one of the largest closed archives anywhere.

The collection is unique in its intimate personal detailing of a
catastrophe, which is what makes the question of open access so delicate.
The papers may reveal who was treated for lice at which camp, what
ghoulish medical experiment was conducted on which prisoner and why, who
was accused by the Nazis of homosexuality or murder or incest or
pedophilia, which Jews collaborated and how they were induced to do so.

Since the end of World War II the Tracing Service, operating as an arm of
the International Committee of the Red Cross, has used the files to help
people trace the fates of relatives who disappeared into the murderous
vortex of Nazi terror. Now, more than 60 years after the end of the war,
the United States says that task is largely done and it is time to open up
the archive, copy it so that it can also be stored in other countries and
make it available to historians.

"The U.S. government favors opening up all records on the Holocaust," said
Edward O'Donnell, the special envoy for Holocaust issues at the State
Department. "Our objective is to open the archive, and we will continue to
push."

But that push has met a wall of legal and procedural objections from
Charles Biedermann, the Red Cross official who has been director of the
Tracing Service for two decades, and from the German and Italian
governments. The atmosphere within the 11-nation international commission
that oversees the operation has become poisonous.

At meetings to discuss the opening of the archive, German officials have
asked whether it is really in anyone's interest to have accusations about
particular Jews being murderers or homosexuals made public. Because German
privacy laws are much stricter than those in the United States, German
authorities are concerned that an opening could lead to lawsuits charging
that personal information was handed out illegally.

Wide access to the papers could also provoke new claims for compensation.

"This is a scandal and a big scar on the image of Germany," said Sara
Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, which has been eager to secure copies of the files.

Paul Shapiro, the director of advanced Holocaust studies at the museum,
accused Germany of "abusing efforts to achieve consensus" and "exerting a
stranglehold on the process." He added, "Hiding this record is a form of
Holocaust denial."

Such strong words are at odds with the generally positive tenor of
German-American relations on Holocaust matters, even through negotiations
as elaborate as those that led to Germany's agreement in 2000 to
compensate former slave laborers of the Nazis.

Germany is outraged at the suggestion that it may be dragging its feet. "I
object to the assertion that we have something to hide or are not
forthcoming," said Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to the United
States. "That insinuation is false."

The clash has some of its roots in the complex history and labyrinthine
legal structure of the Tracing Service. Set up late in the war, it has
long been administered under the terms of the 1955 Bonn Agreements, which
restored German sovereignty.

That treaty says the facility must "take all reasonable steps to avoid
divulging information about a person or persons which might prejudice the
interests of the person or persons concerned or of their relatives."

In essence, it confines access to information to the persecuted
themselves, their relatives or legal representatives. But the accord also
says all of the governments in the 11-nation governing commission have the
right to inspect documents. Those countries are the United States,
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Israel,
Poland and Luxembourg.

Germany and Mr. Biedermann say that for the archives to be opened, the
treaty must be amended. That requires a unanimous vote and subsequent
approval of national legislatures. The process would take years even if an
elusive unanimity could be secured.

"As director, I must fulfill my orders," Mr. Biedermann said. "My superior
is the I.C.R.C., my ruling body the 11 governments. If they decide the
records can be opened and copies given to other countries, and if the
issue of legal liabilities is addressed, of course I will comply. But
right now there is no mandate for historical research."

Last month, the director posted a statement, now withdrawn, on the Tracing
Service's Web site, saying that handing over copies of the files to others
was "neither morally nor legally justifiable at present."

The United States, while ready to work for an amendment of the Bonn
Agreements, is impatient. It argues that it never ceded ownership rights
of the papers at Bad Arolsen, that all 11 governments have the right to
inspect them and that no absolute legal impediment exists to the immediate
copying and transfer of the files.

But the German government, having already paid out more than $80 billion
in reparations, is concerned that questions of legal liability be
thoroughly clarified before Bad Arolsen is opened up and its files made
available elsewhere.

"We have to address the question of who will be allowed to do what with
this data and who will be legally responsible if somebody abuses this,"
Mr. Ischinger said. "There are layers of legal difficulties."

The legal issues are indeed complex. But six decades after the war, it
seems clear that opening up Bad Arolsen would play a critical role in
filling in the details of the vile tapestry of Nazi crimes. "We need to
connect all the dots," Ms. Bloomfield said.

Besides, the Tracing Service is swamped. Its budget, provided by Germany,
has been cut as part of national austerity measures. Its staff has been
reduced to about 360 from more than 400. Its backlog of unanswered tracing
inquiries exceeds 400,000, partly because of a wave of questions on
slave-labor compensation that had to be answered. People demanding to know
what happened to their relatives sometimes go years without a response.

Its process of making digitized copies of papers has been painfully slow;
only 55 percent of documents have been copied electronically. This
copying, a necessary prelude to any transfer of information, will take two
more years, Mr. Biedermann says. That appears to be more time than the
United States is prepared to wait. Last June, at a meeting in Warsaw of
the 20-country Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust
Education, Remembrance and Research, a statement was issued calling for
"immediate steps to be taken to open the archive" at Bad Arolsen "to
scholars and other researchers." It said the 11-nation international
commission should "address this matter on an urgent basis."

But no urgency has been apparent, despite the fact that all 11 countries
in the commission overseeing Bad Arolsen are members of the 20-nation Task
Force. A meeting of lawyers from the commission is scheduled for later
this month in Luxembourg. It will be followed by a gathering in May of
leading officials, including Mr. O'Donnell, who made clear he would like
to see a resolution of the dispute then.

(source: New York Times)




AUSTRIA:

Controversial historian pleads guilty to Holocaust denial


In Vienna, right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty
Monday to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in
prison, even after conceding he wrongly said there were no Nazi gas
chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying
a copy of one of his most controversial books Hitler's War, which
challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,"
Irving told the court before his sentencing, at which he faced up to 10
years in prison.

He also expressed sorrow "for all the innocent people who died during the
Second World War."

But he insisted he never wrote a book about the Holocaust, which he called
"just a fragment of my area of interest."

"In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis,"
testified Irving, who has written nearly 30 books.

Irving's lawyer immediately announced he would appeal the sentence.

"I consider the verdict a little too stringent. I would say it's a bit of
a message trial," Elmar Kresbach said.

Irving appeared shocked as the sentence was read. Moments later, an
elderly man who identified himself as a family friend called out, "Stay
strong, David! Stay strong!" before he was escorted from the courtroom.

Irving, 67, has been in custody since his November arrest on charges
stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was
accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews. He has
contended that most of those who died at concentration camps such as
Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than execution.

The court convicted Irving after his guilty plea under the 1992 law, which
applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to
excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes
against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media."

Austria was Hitler's birthplace and once was run by the Nazis.

Irving's trial came amid new and fierce debate over freedom of
expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering
caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered deadly protests
worldwide.

Kresbach said last month the controversial Third Reich historian was
getting up to 300 pieces of fan mail a week from supporters around the
world and was writing his memoirs in detention under the working title
Irving's War.

Irving was arrested Nov. 11 in the southern Austrian province of Styria on
a warrant issued in 1989. He was charged under a federal law that makes it
a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.

Irving had tried to win his provisional release on $24,000 bail, but a
Vienna court refused, saying it considered him a flight risk.

Within two weeks of his arrest, he asserted through his lawyer that he had
come to acknowledge the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers. Before the
trial began, Irving told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis
systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II.

"History is like a constantly changing tree," he said.

In the past, however, he has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little if
anything about the Holocaust, and he has been quoted as saying there was
"not one shred of evidence" the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution"
to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massive scale.

Vienna's national court, where the trial is being held, ordered the
balcony gallery closed to prevent projectiles from being thrown down at
the bench, the newspaper Die Presse reported Sunday.

It quoted officials as saying they were bracing for Irving's supporters to
give him the Nazi salute or shout out pro-Hitler slogans during the trial.

In 2000, Irving sued American Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel
in a British court but lost. The presiding judge in that case, Charles
Gray, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic
and racist."

Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the years.

In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the equivalent of $6,000 for
publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.

(source: Associated Press)