March 6




USA//CALIFORNIA:

Nazi Camp Survivors, Ex-GI Celebrate Anew----To mark a Holocaust victim's
80th birthday, his wife finds the U.S. Army sergeant who rescued him and
his older brother in 1945.


Twice in his five years of starvation and brutality in four Nazi
concentration camps, Lou Dunst was herded along with other prisoners into
a gas chamber to be killed.

Once there was a malfunction in the gas jets, and the other time a guard
decided that he did not want to waste precious coal to burn the bodies, so
the execution was called off.

More dead than alive, Dunst and other prisoners at the Ebensee camp in
Austria were rescued by the U.S. Army in the final days of World War II.

Once he regained his health, he moved to Italy and in 1951 to San Diego,
where he became a successful merchant and real estate investor.

On Sunday, in San Diego, Dunst was honored for his work in ensuring that
modern youths learn the story of the Holocaust and understand the
underlying moral about the destructiveness of intolerance.

As part of his 80th birthday party, Dunst was praised by several Jewish
organizations, Mayor Jerry Sanders and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Dunst
has been interviewed in Spielberg's effort to record the personal stories
of survivors and other witnesses.

In the emotional highpoint of the day, Dunst and his brother Irving, who
was also captive at Ebensee, met Robert Persinger, the Army staff sergeant
who led the platoon that liberated the camp on May 6, 1945.

The gathering of the three was arranged by Dunst's wife, Estelle.

"Thank you for saving our lives, God bless you," Dunst said as he and
Persinger embraced, both with tears in their eyes.

Persinger, 82, of the Rockford, Ill., area, said even hardened combat
veterans were shocked by the stench and horror they encountered at the
camp, where about 20,000 prisoners, many of them used as slaves, were
housed in filth.

"The smell of death was all over the place," Persinger said. But "this was
a different style of death, one you couldn't believe you were looking at."

Dunst speaks at school gatherings and soon will go to Harvard to address a
Holocaust seminar. He's taken groups of San Diego teenagers on trips to
Poland and Israel to learn about the Holocaust through a program called
March of the Living.

"I try to do the best I can," he said.

After a 2001 incident in Santee in which a teenager, feeling ostracized and
bullied, took a gun to school and opened fire, Dunst was asked by officials
to talk to students about tolerance. More than 1,000 students and adults
attended.

"He speaks simply and he speaks from the heart," said U.S. District Court
Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund, a longtime friend.

Ehrenfreund, who covered the Nuremberg trials as a reporter and is writing a
book about the legacy of the trials, will accompany Dunst to the Harvard
seminar.

Lou and his brother Irving became separated from their parents after the
family was rounded up by Nazis from their village in Czechoslovakia. The
sons never saw their parents again.

Although they cannot specifically remember Persinger, the brothers vividly
recall the day his tank, the name Lady Luck on its side, broke down the
gate.

Irving Dunst, 82, a retired cabinetmaker in Los Angeles, said he thought he
was dreaming and pushed through a crowd to touch the tank. When he
realized it was real, he ran to find his brother.

"I'm screaming, 'Lou, Lou, Lou, we're liberated,' " he said.

Lou Dunst was in a building where bodies had been stacked for disposal. He
estimates he was probably just a few days, maybe hours, from dying.

"I couldn't stand up, and there were thousands like me," he said. "I
couldn't walk and I had no desire to live."

Now his desire is that the horror of those years be remembered even after
the survivors are no longer here.

"Lou, you are a blessing and inspiration to us all, an angel in our midst,"
said Helaine Green. She and her husband, Dr. Steve Green, a cardiologist
in Northern California, are active in Jewish affairs and the March of the
Living program.

Persinger, retired after a career in sales, has also begun speaking to
groups, telling them what he saw at Ebensee and how it marked him even
after he returned to the Midwest.

Persinger said he has visited Ebensee four times since the war. "That's
sacred ground," he said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)


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

USA//TEXAS:

Holocaust Museum Houston marks anniversary with boxcar exhibit


When holocaust survivor Chaja Verveer saw the World War II-era rail car on
display at Holocaust Museum Houston, it chilled her to the core.

The boxcar was so similar to the one she rode in 60 years ago on her way
to a concentration camp that she could not bring herself to step inside,
she told a crowd of about 700 people today who gathered to dedicate the
1942 German rail car as the museum's newest exhibit.

"It is a living reminder of a terrible journey that I do not remember but
feel in my bones," said Verveer, who was only three years old at the time.
"Let it be a symbol that we today cannot afford to be bystanders watching
idly as other trains of genocide pass by."

She urged the audience to "walk into the car and imagine yourself in
another time and place, and ask why."

But many who heard her message did not have to imagine that time and place
they had experienced it in the flesh. About 50 of the Houston area's 250
Holocaust survivors attended the dedication, which marked the 10th
anniversary of the museum.

The rail car, with its unique rounded top, is a widely-recognized symbol
of oppression and evil. An estimated three million Jews were transported
by train to death camps in Germany and Poland in the early 1940s. Hundreds
of people were crammed into one car for days without food, water or fresh
air.

Officials say the rail car on display at the museum likely carried
Holocaust victims, although there are no records to prove it.

Survivors, many with tears in their eyes, placed roses and stones at the
base of the rail car to remember the millions of lives lost during the
Holocaust.

Riki Roussos, who kissed her hand before leaving her mark of remembrance,
was honoring her father and brother, as well as much of her extended
family, who were put to death at concentration camps.

She survived the ordeal along with her mother and younger brother. The
three were shipped from their home in Yugoslavia to various camps, making
the trip not by rail but by boat. Her father and older brother, however,
rode to their deaths in a rail car not unlike the one at the museum.

"It happened 60 years ago, but unfortunately people didn't learn their
lesson," said Roussos, 78, who has lived in Houston for 27 years. "People
still hate each other," she said, citing conflicts around the globe.

Several speakers at the outdoor ceremony also wondered aloud whether the
lesson of the Holocaust had been learned.

Fred Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, said the
resurgence of anti-Semitism in the very lands where the Holocaust occurred
and the genocide taking place today in Sudan prove that some people have
already forgotten the atrocities that took place more than half a century
ago.

"With every day, the memory grows a little less tangible, just a little
more abstract," he said.

The goal of the museum is to keep that memory alive, said Susan Myers, the
museum's executive director.

"We bring history to life in a unique way that creates parallels to modern
society, allowing students to learn from the past and learn how we can
prevent it from being repeated," she said.

Since the museum opened in 1996, more than 800,000 guests have visited.
And about 1,500 children learn about the Holocaust daily through the
museum's educational trunk program, which has traveled around the globe.

The $1 million rail car project, which began in Germany where the car was
restored to its original condition, accompanies another new exhibit that
opened Sunday. Survivors' Journeys is a collection of photographs and
artifacts chronicling the lives of survivors who later made Houston their
home, including Verveer and Roussos. The exhibit runs through Sept. 17,
while the rail car is on permanent display. Both are free to the public.

(source: Houston Chronicle)





GERMANY:

Fun With The Fuhrer----Hitler Farce Breaks German Taboos


An alarming sight in Berlin: The city's central "Lustgarten" square
transformed into a Nazi rallying ground complete with giant swastika
banners and a ranting Fhrer. But Germany's first comedy film about Hitler
was bound to break taboos.

Tourists passing in sightseeing buses stared open-mouthed at the scene in
central Berlin on Monday: huge red banners bearing the Nazi swastika
fluttering in the winter sun outside the city's cathedral, Wehrmacht
soldiers in their steel helmets standing guard between the imposing
pillars of the Old Museum and a crowd of hundreds cheering their Fhrer
with enthusiastic Hitler salutes and chants of "Sieg Heil!"

But a second glance caught the film crew, catering buses and cinema
equipment and quickly dispelled any concern that the Fourth Reich had
quietly dawned in Germany over the weekend. Still, the sight was unusual
enough to draw a crowd of onlookers and it marked a bold first in the
history of German cinema since World War II -- a comedy about Hitler.

"Mein Fhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" by Swiss director
Dani Levy, who is Jewish, takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Hitler's final
days and parodies both the dictator and recent portrayals of him such as
the critically-acclaimed 2004 film "Der Untergang" ("The Downfall"), which
itself broke a taboo by attempting to showing the Nazi leader's human
side.

Levy has said he wants the film to be an "anti-signal" against films which
he believes have put Hitler on too much of a pedestal. The film is being
backed with 450,000 of public money from film development firm Medienboard
Berlin-Brandenburg which describes the plot as follows: "Hitler lives and
tells the story of what he was really like -- a weakling who only made it
to the top with the help of the Jew Grnbaum."

In Chaplin's Footsteps

It remains to be seen whether the film can match the 1940 classic "The
Great Dictator" in which Charlie Chaplin as "Adenoid Hynkel" dances around
his office holding the earth in his hands in the shape of a big balloon
and holds rabid speeches in gibberish German in which "Wienerschnitzel"
seems to be the only recognizable word.

Levy's Hitler is portrayed by German comedian Helge Schneider -- who is
perhaps best-known for his hit song "Katzeklo" about a cat litter box sung
in a slightly disturbing nasal tone. Levy won acclaim for his 2004 comedy
"Alles Auf Zucker" about an athesist sports journalist from eastern
Germany forced to reconcile himself with his brother, an orthodox Jew from
western Germany, to get hold of his mother's inheritance.

A German-made farce about Hitler would have been unthinkable until quite
recently. But the gradual dying out of the Nazi era generation -- over 80
percent of Germans today were born after 1941 -- has given the country a
more detached view of its past, even though politicians continue to
acknowledge the country's deep moral responsibility for the Holocaust.

Several taboos have fallen in recent years. Germans have started recalling
their own suffering in bombing raids and mass evictions from eastern
territories. An intimate -- if unsympathetic -- portrayal of Hitler
followed in "The Downfall." And the public ZDF television channel is
currently screening a film about the February 1945 bombing of Dresden,
which some Germans see as the unnecessary destruction of a city that
caused mostly civilian casualties.

So despite a headline in top-selling tabloid Bild Zeitung alerting people
to the "Swastika Shock in Berlin," the sight of the Nazi symbol didn't
stoke much controversy. The president of the Central Council of Jews in
Germany, Paul Spiegel, told the paper: "Helge Schneider and Dani Levy have
the ability to approach this work with the necessary sensitivity."

Tourists as extras

Some tourists even joined in as extras to beef up the 300-strong crowd,
which Levy plans to enhance digitally to give the impression of a mass
rally.

Steve Krause, 31, an Aryan-looking American student, was picked along with
a number of fellow students to join the crowd hailing the Fhrer. "I'm
going to have to try not to laugh," said Krause, who just happened to be
passing when a member of staff lured him with the offer of a hot chocolate
after the shoot.

Dutch tourist Louw Hekkema couldn't believe his eyes at first. "I thought
there was a far-right demonstration going on," he said. "I don't think
making such a film here is a problem anymore."

Since Nazi symbols like the swastika and SS runes are banned in Germany,
Levy must have obtained special permission to display his banners.

Locals watching the filming also didn't seem particularly bothered by it.
One Berlin pensioner said he remembered watching the real Hitler hold a
May Day speech from the same spot 65 years ago. "We Berliners came here
and cheered," said the man who declined to be named. "I don't see why
anyone should get angry about a film being made here. It's part of our
history."

(source: Der Spiegel)





AUSTRIA:

Austrian court bars Holocaust denier Irving from speaking with press


Right-wing British historian David Irving, who was convicted by an
Austrian court of denying the Holocaust, has been barred from speaking
with the press, a court spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Since a Vienna state court found Irving guilty last month and sentenced
him to three years in prison, he has spoken to several news organizations,
including The Associated Press. Alexandra Mathes, spokeswoman for the
court, said it was unusual for a judge to grant reporters the right to
interview a convict in the first place, but because media interest in
Irving was so large, an exception was made.

That right was revoked Monday, after Irving said "certain things" to media
that could be grounds for him to face fresh charges, Mathes said. She
declined to give examples.

In a joint interview with the Vienna daily Die Presse and the Austrian
Press Agency last week, Irving likened Austria to a "Nazi state" and
criticized the country's strict laws against denying the Holocaust law as
"ridiculous."

During a jailhouse interview with The Associated Press on Feb. 23 Irving
said that he had erred 17 years ago in contending there were no gas
chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp, calling it a mistake in
"methodology." He also said that he accepted that millions of Jews died
during World War II. However, Irving refused to use the word Holocaust,
describing it as a concept that "became cleverly marketed, like Tylenol."

The 67-year-old historian has been in Austrian custody since his arrest in
November 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.

Both the defense and the prosecution have appealed the three-year
sentence.

(source: Associated Press)