Feb. 22




GERMANY:

FILES ON NAZI VICTIMS----Germany Denies Blocking Opening Holocaust Archive


Tucked in a small town in central Germany is the world's biggest archive
on the fate of millions of Holocaust victims and Nazi era slave laborers.
The United States and historians are calling for it to be opened up for
research, but claim Germany is refusing to do just that.

Germany has vigorously denied that it is obstructing efforts to give
historians access to the world's largest archive on the Nazi concentration
camp network and the victims of the Holocaust. A spokeswoman for the
Foreign Ministry in Berlin rejected reports of a spat with the United
States over the database, which was set up after the war to help families
find out what happened to their relatives in the Holocaust.

"The accusation that we are being obstructive is unfounded. Germany is
being cooperative and supportive in working towards the opening of the
archives," she said on Tuesday.

The New York Times reported that the atmosphere among the 11-nation
international commission overseeing the archive had become poisonous and
that US government efforts to have it opened were running into legal and
procedural obstacles. The German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that
while the nations agreed on opening the archive, the 1955 "Bonn
Agreements" governing its statute would need to be amended because they
stipulated that the database must protect the privacy of the information
it contained.

"The database contains sensitive and highly personal details about people
who are still alive," she said. She added, however, that she was confident
the committee would agree to open the archive up and that a working group
has been discussing such a move.

The files have been used by the International Tracing Service, an arm of
the International Red Cross, to help people trace displaced relatives whom
the Nazis sent to concentration camps or used as slave laborers. The
United States argues that the archive's tracing role has now largely been
fulfilled.

The archive contains documents gathered by Allied forces as they freed
concentration camps at the end of World war II. It includes information on
what medical experiments were conducted on inmates, what they were accused
of, or which inmates collaborated and how they were coerced.

Calls for archive to be opened

Historians, Jewish representatives in Germany, victims' associations and
museum staff at concentration camps have been lobbying for years for the
archives to be opened. The database contains information on around 17
million victims of Nazi persecution, and the files extend for over 25
kilometers. They include Schindler's List, according to political
scientist Frank-Uwe Betz, who last year published an essay in Die Zeit
newspaper calling for them to be opened.

Financed by the German government, the archive is supervised by an
international committee consisting of representatives of Germany, the
United States, Israel, France, Britain, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Italy, Poland and Luxembourg.

Betz described the center as a "bureaucratic dinosaur." "The huge
Holocaust memorial next to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin may be
impressive. But what use is it if the other memorial, the true memorial in
Arolsen, remains closed?" he wrote.

Maria Raabe, spokeswoman for the archive, said: "The Bonn agreements state
clearly that the archives should not be opened to historical researchers.
There are a large number of documents dealing with sensitive issues such
as disease, homosexuality or rape." She said the committee would meet in
mid-May at the earliest to reach a decision.

(source: Spiegel)



UNITED NATIONS:

U.N. Guard Reprimanded for Swastikas


The United Nations has reprimanded a security guard for drawing swastikas
on a log sheet later seen by a guard from Israel, a U.N. spokesman said
Tuesday.

The guard who drew the swastikas was issued a letter of reprimand and was
asked to attend sensitivity training for the September incident, U.N.
spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Dujarric would not identify the guard who was reprimanded. The Israeli
guard also was not identified.

The United Nations in recent years has tried to live down an infamous 1975
resolution that equated Zionism with racism, which was repealed in the
1990s. Some critics still accuse the world body of being anti-Semitic
because a bloc of Middle Eastern, African and Asian states have in the
past used the General Assembly to broadcast their opposition to Israel.

Daniel Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said the
act of one security guard could not be compared to the larger issue of
anti-Semitism at the U.N.

''You have to divide between the political activity in the U.N., in which
there is still lots to do but in which there have been lots of
improvement, and something that is worrying (but) as grave as it is, it's
on a completely different level,'' Carmon said.

(source: Associated Press)




AUSTRIA:

Irving to appeal Holocaust sentence


Controversial historian David Irving confirmed he is to appeal against his
three-year sentence for denying the Holocaust.

Mr Irving, 67, said the decision by Austrian prosecutors to file an appeal
on the grounds the sentence is too lenient showed how "crazy" they were,
saying: "I am not going to let anybody silence me."

"I come from a free country, I am not going to let anybody silence me," he
said in an interview from his jail in Austria with Sky News.

"I think they are trying to silence me and by increasing the sentence they
are trying to silence me for even longer.

"They are not going to succeed, I don't think."

He was arrested last November in Austria in connection with two speeches
he gave in the country in 1989, in which it was alleged he denied the
existence of the gas chambers.

Mr Irving pleaded guilty on Monday to denying the Holocaust, a crime in
Austria punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

During the day-long trial in Vienna, he insisted he had a change of heart
and that he now acknowledged the Nazis' Second World War slaughter of six
million Jews.

Irving also acknowledged he had erred in contending there were no gas
chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

(source: This Is London)






LATVIA:

Latvia's President Regrets Her Countrys Role in Holocaust


Latvia's president has apologized for her countrys behavior during the
World War II. I regret the participation of Latvians in the extermination
of Jews during World War II, Vike-Freiberga said during a reception hosted
by her Israeli counterpart Moshe Katsav on Monday.

"Regrettably, there were people in Latvia who took part in the Nazi
campaign to annihilate the Jewish population in Europe. But there were
also a number of brave souls, of whom about 500 have been officially
documented in Latvia, who risked their own lives and the lives of their
loved ones to hide and protect their Jewish friends, neighbors, and
acquaintances, as well as complete strangers," The Baltic Times reported.

An international conference on the Holocaust will open in Latvia on July
4, Vike-Freiberga said. Another conference that deals with Jewish life
today will take place in September.

She also reiterated Latvia's commitment to Israel's existence and said
Iran should be prevented from developing nuclear weapons, Israeli media
reported.

Only around 6,000 of Latvia's pre-war Jewish community survived the
genocide. Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union after the end of
the Nazi occupation in 1945 before gaining its independence in 1991.

(source: MosNews)






ISRAEL:

Israelis to sue Ahmadinejad for Holocaust denial


A group of Israeli citizens is set to file a lawsuit in a German court
against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because of his series of
remarks denying the Holocaust, the Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily reported
Wednesday.

The suit, brought by an Israeli lawyer and the Civil Coalition - a human
rights organization working both in Israel and abroad - requests
Ahmadinejad be tried for Holocaust denial, harming the memory of Holocaust
victims, incitement to hatred, racism, and violation of United Nations
conventions and resolutions.

The suit was submitted to the Karlsruhe constitutional court.

The plaintiffs decided to submit the suit in Germany because of its tough
anti-Holocaust denial laws which ban the direct and indirect denial of the
Holocaust and outlaw harming the memory of the dead.

They have also hired the services of a German public relations firm in a
bid to initiate a media campaign that would place the matter firmly on the
agenda.

Ahmadinejad provoked international outrage late last year when he said the
Nazi genocide of European Jewry was "a myth."

He had previously said Iran did not accept the claim made by "some
European countries" who "insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of
innocent Jews in furnaces."

(source: Expatica)