July 29



POLAND:

UN says yet to decide on Auschwitz camp renaming


The United Nations said on Friday it would decide next year whether to
rename the Auschwitz death camp, a U.N. World Heritage site in Poland, to
make clear that it was operated by Germans not Poles.

Earlier this month Poland said it had won approval to change the site's
name from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "the Former Nazi German
Concentration Camp of Auschwitz." But a United Nations spokesman denied a
decision had been made.

Roni Amelan, a press officer at the U.N.'s Paris-based education and
culture arm UNESCO, said its World Heritage Committee formally
acknowledged Poland's request but that a final decision would only be
taken next year.

"Poland had informed the Committee through UNESCO it wants to change the
name of the concentration camp and the Committee decided that such a
decision would require more consultations internationally," Amelan told
Reuters.

Six decades after the Holocaust, many Poles fear the world is forgetting
that it was German Nazis who set up the Auschwitz death camp in occupied
Poland during World War Two.

More than a million Jews from across Europe died at Nazi hands in
Auschwitz and the linked camp of Birkenau.

Warsaw points to references to "Polish gas chambers" or the "Polish
concentration camps" popping up in world media as evidence Poles are
wrongly portrayed as collaborators in the Nazis' drive to exterminate
European Jewry.

In April, Poland formally asked UNESCO to change the camp's name on the
list of World Heritage sites. After initial reservations, Jewish
organizations and Israel backed the plan and UNESCO's World Heritage
Committee agreed to consider it.

In a communique following its meeting in Vilnius earlier this month, the
committee said it "welcomed" the proposal but that it needed further
international consultations. It said a final decision would be made at its
next year's meeting.

Warsaw saw the statement as a sign of agreement, prompting Culture
Minister Kazimierz Ujazdowski to call it a "victory for both Poland and
historical truth".

German forces occupying Poland set up Auschwitz in southern Poland in 1940
as a labor camp for Polish prisoners, gradually expanding it into a vast
labor and death camp that became the centerpiece of their plans to kill
all European Jews.

Between 1.2 and 1.5 million people died there, most of them Jews. Polish
political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals, people
with disabilities and prisoners of conscience or religious faith were also
killed.

Poland has long battled accusations by some Jewish and Western
commentators that Poles were willing Nazi helpers during the war --
accusations driven by documented incidents of Polish anti-Semitism and
complicity in the Holocaust.

Poles argue that such cases were isolated and point out that 3 million of
their ethnic kin perished during the bloody German occupation. Some were
killed for trying to save their Jewish compatriots.

(source: Reuters)

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

Nazi ship identified in Baltic


Poland's navy said yesterday it identified a sunken ship in the Baltic
Sea as almost certainly being Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the
Graf Zeppelin -- a find that promises to shed light on a 59-year-old
mystery surrounding the ship's fate.

The Polish oil company Petrobaltic discovered the wreck July 12, 60 km
north of Gdansk.

Suspecting it could be the Graf Zeppelin, the Polish navy sent a survey
vessel "We are 99 percent sure ... these details point unambiguously to
the Graf Zeppelin," said Dariusz Beczek, the vessel's commander.

At sea, naval experts gathered digital images of the 260-metre-long ship,
and compared them with historical documents.

The Graf Zeppelin was launched Dec. 8, 1938, but never saw action due to
Hitler's disenchantment with his navy and political squabbles in the Nazi
high command. After Germany's defeat, the Soviet Union took control of the
ship.

On Aug. 16, 1947, Soviets used the ship for target practice. It eventually
sank, but its exact position has been unknown ever since.

Nick Hewitt, a historian at the Imperial War Museum in London, called the
Graf Zeppelin "a fascinating what-if."

"You get a look at what she was like ... and you can figure out what she
might have achieved," Hewitt said, adding the aircraft carrier could have
had "an enormous impact" on the war.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Holocaust Art Recovery Goal Still Eludes Advocacy Groups


A House panel urged representatives of American museums yesterday to
continue searching their collections for objects that might have been
stolen by Nazis during World War II, after a group that acts as a
clearinghouse for Holocaust claims expressed frustration over the slow
pace of the process.

"We've made progress in working together," said Rep. Barney Frank
(D-Mass.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Financial
Services. Sitting at the witness table yesterday were seven
representatives of the art world and organizations that work to return
funds and property stolen during the Holocaust. "We are still dealing with
the awful consequences, not only the lives lost, but the lives scarred,"
Frank said.

Earlier this week, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against
Germany reported that 35 percent of the 332 museums it had asked about
their progress on collections research did not respond to its survey in a
four-month window. The National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian
Institution and the Phillips Collection were among those that did respond,
but none has finished the massive job of fully investigating its
collection.

"At a time when almost all the other Holocaust-related restitution and
compensation matters have been or are nearing completion, Holocaust-era
art recovery remains a major unresolved challenge," said Stuart E.
Eizenstat, former head of the presidential commission on Holocaust assets.
"A certain art restitution fatigue seems to have set in, particularly in
many foreign countries."

The campaign to identify and perhaps return art to its owners or their
heirs began in the late 1990s. During the nearly eight years of an
official mandate to review ownership history of artwork, the American
Association of Museums reported that only 22 works had been firmly
identified as stolen and returned, out of thousands of works researched.

Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the claims conference, said 52
percent of the respondents reported they had completed research on less
than half of the relevant materials. "That is discouraging, and we have to
work on that," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), ranking minority member
of the subcommittee that organized the hearing. One thorny issue is just
how many looted items could have made their way to American museums. Under
scrutiny are objects that were created before 1946 and obtained by a
museum after 1932. Other criteria are whether the piece was in Europe at
that time and whether ownership changed between 1932 and 1946.

The claims conference estimated that 140,000 objects require ownership and
transfer research. Since the 2003 launch of the Nazi-Era Provenance
Internet Portal, a project of the American Association of Museums, more
than 150 museums have registered more than 18,000 objects that changed
hands in Europe during the war years.

This scrutiny, said Edward H. Able Jr., president of the museum
association, will continue. "It seems very unlikely that any large troves
of looted objects remain to be found," he said, but asked the panel to
approve funds so that the "research can proceed more quickly."

(source: Washington Post)

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

WISCONSIN:

Former SS soldier's citizenship questioned


In Sugar Creek Township, two college student groups want a federal
investigation into the citizenship of Ted Junker, an 87-year-old Millard
man who built a memorial to Adolf Hitler in his yard.

Junker claims to be a former Nazi Waffen-SS officer who fought on Europe's
eastern front in World War II.

Junker, who came to the United States in 1955, says he is here legally.

Junker says he earned his citizenship in 1960.

Walworth County Sheriff David Graves said he has talked with FBI
officials, who confirmed Junker is in the country legally.

But the student groups-Lhaim and the UW-Milwaukee Campus Organization for
Israel-have taken their concerns to the Office of Special Investigations,
a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said Eli Federman, president
of the Jewish student group Lhaim.

Jonathan Brostoff, president of Campus Organization for Israel, said it's
possible Junker lied on his immigration papers "about his status in the
SS, or his conduct during the war. This must be investigated, and that is
what we are here to demand; an honest and open investigation by the
Justice Department."

Federman said investigating Junker "sends a message of deterrence to all
who may have been complicit in past, current or future genocides, that
they will be held accountable, even if it is 60 years later."

"Based on his admitted affiliation with the Waffen-SS, we thought it would
be important to have his background investigated and his immigration
records," Federman said.

The Office of Special Investigations could not confirm if the groups have
made a complaint.

"It is the Department of Justice's policy not to talk about individual
investigations or complaints," spokesperson Donna Sellers said.

The Office of Special Investigations investigates cases of Nazi war
criminals living in the U.S. and other allegations of people who
participated in genocidal events, said Director Eli Rosenbaum.

After World War II, Congress passed laws allowing some war refugees to
come to the United States but denied citizenship to war criminals.

From 1948 until 1957, anyone proven to have committed crimes against
humanity was barred from becoming a citizen, Rosenbaum said. That included
concentration camp guards, Gestapo police squads and others, Rosenbaum
said.

Since its inception in 1979, the Office of Special Investigations has
denaturalized 101 war criminals, including three found in Wisconsin,
Rosenbaum said.

In 1948 and 1949, Waffen-SS veterans were not considered refugees and were
not allowed citizenship, Rosenbaum said. At the onset of World War II,
Waffen-SS soldiers were considered the elite in the German Army, according
to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com.

In 1950, the now defunct U.S. Displaced Persons Commission said service in
the Waffen-SS alone was not sufficient to deny a citizenship visa,
Rosenbaum said.

"They would certainly bar people who took part in Nazi war crimes, but not
those who served in the Waffen-SS (where) nothing more could be proved,"
Rosenbaum said.

(source: Janesville (Wis.) Gazette)




GERMANY:

Kirchner Painting Stolen by Nazis Returned to Jewish Family


A 1913 painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner depicting a Berlin street scene
will be returned to heirs of the Jewish family forced to hand it over to
the Nazis before World War II, the state government said yesterday.

Kirchner's "Berliner Strassenszene," with an estimated value of $12.59
million, has hung in the Bruecke Museum in the German capital since 1980.
It will remain until Sunday then be returned to heirs of the family that
originally owned the work, Berlin's state Ministry for Culture said in a
statement.

No details of the restitution, including the identity of the original
owners, or the heirs, were released.

A modern art expert for the Berlin-based auction house Villa Grisebach,
Bernd Schultz, said he considers the painting one of the most outstanding
in Kirchner's series of street scenes.

Kirchner, born in 1880 in the western German town of Aschaffenburg, was
one of the most creative artists of "Die Bruecke," or "The Bridge," a
group of German painters that he co-founded in 1905. After the Nazis
seized power, they confiscated 639 of Kirchner's paintings from museums
and, in despair, he took his own life in 1938.

In 1933, the painting was taken to Switzerland, where it was exhibited in
Basel and Zurich. Three years later, the owners sent it to the Art
Association of Cologne. An art collector then bought the paintings, but it
is uncertain whether the Jewish owners ever saw any of this money, the
ministry said.

After World War II, the new owners donated the painting to the Staedel
museum in Frankfurt. It was then acquired by the state of Berlin in "in
good faith," the ministry said.

(source: Associated Press)





ENGLAND:

MP bids to bring Nazis to justice


The Hendon MP Andrew Dismore has named and shamed 50 alleged Nazi war
criminals living in Britain because 'time is running out' to bring them to
justice.

Mr Dismore printed the names in three Early Day Motions (parliamentary
petitions) on Tuesday because he says that police efforts have 'lost
impetus' over the past year and needed to be put back on the Government's
agenda.

A specialist police war crimes unit was disbanded in 1999 and any
investigations have since been pursued by other officers but, according to
Mr Dismore, not as tirelessly as they should have been.

He said: "There's been very little progress and there could still be
several hundred suspected war criminals living in the UK.

"I have taken the very unusual step of naming these individuals publicly,
as I believe that time is running out to bring former Nazi war criminals
to justice.

"It is well known that former members of the Ukranian SS Galizien division
were allowed to settle in the UK, and there are real suspicions over the
activities of many of them during the war.

"Indeed, some of those that I have named are actually listed in the
telephone book, and their whereabouts are well known.

"I also believe that it is time the Government opened MI5 files on former
Nazi officers, to assist those involved in investigating war crimes."

Dr Stephen Ankier, from Edgware, a Holocaust researcher who has assisted
Mr Dismore's investigation into war criminals, said: "This matter is not
about inciting a lynch mob to persecute any innocent persons, which is
exactly what the Nazis did on a massive scale, but to hold any culprit
found guilty in a court of law to account."

He added that the Government needed to finance investigations in order for
them to proceed.

(source: This is Hertfordshire)

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

Row over Nazi war criminal portrait in embassy


An oil painting in the German embassy in London of a former ambassador
who was later convicted of war crimes is to have an explanatory plaque
attached to it, a Foreign Office official said in Berlin Saturday.

He spoke after the news magazine Der Spiegel had reported the cancellation
of plans to completely remove the image of the disgraced Baron Konstantin
von Neurath, which hangs in a corridor among other pictures of previous
ambassadors to the Court of St James.

The spokesman said it had been decided to attach a little plaque with
biographical information, with assistance from the German History
Institute in London. The painting hangs just outside the office of the
current ambassador, Wolfgang Ischinger.

Germany's conservative diplomatic service has been under pressure at home
for several years to expose past diplomats' links with the Nazis. Von
Neurath, ambassador to London from 1930 to 1932, was later the first
foreign minister under dictator Adolf Hitler.

He was the Nazi governor, or "protector", of occupied Bohemia and Moravia
and was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes
Tribunal in 1946 for crimes against humanity. He was released in 1954
because of illness and died in 1956.

Der Spiegel reported it had been planned to quietly take away the portrait
at the time when Ischinger took over earlier this year, but instead, some
data about von Neurath would be hung on the wall.

The spokesman declined to confirm that there had been debate for months in
the diplomatic service about the picture as Der Spiegel had reported. He
said the Foreign Office had been in discussion with a committee of
historians who are exploring the service's past.

The historians have been tasked with telling the story of the German
diplomatic service under the Nazis and the later skirting of that topic
after former diplomats were re-engaged when the service was re-established
in 1951.

(source: Expatica News)






FINLAND:

While Jews serve in my army I will not allow their deportation


[Rachel Bayvel reveals the extraordinary story of the Finnish Jewish
soldiers who fought alongside the Germans in the Second World War]


Despite sixty years intensive research and thousands of publications,
certain aspects of the Second World War are still little known or remain
to be discovered. It is only now, since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
for example, that we can reconstruct the full story of Finlands
participation in the war.

Consider the paradoxes. Finland fought on the German side (although it
always refused to call itself an ally and insisted that it was only a
co-belligerent). Yet it refused to deport, persecute or even discriminate
against its Jewish population. And the country even behaved humanely
towards Jewish prisoners of war.

Even stranger, Jewish soldiers fought in the Finnish ranks as equals
thereby, inevitably, helping the Germans achieve some of their war aims.
Yet in doing so, I will argue, they also served Jewish interests. This
article explains the background to these startling anomalies.

There was no Jewish population in Finland before 1809, when it became part
of the Russian Empire. In 1827 Tsar Nicholas I issued an edict requiring
Jewish boys from the age of 12 who became known as cantonists - to
undertake 25 years of compulsory military service. The main aim of this
edict, abolished only in 1856, was to assimilate and eventually convert
Jews to Christianity. Yet the soldiers who completed their military
service were allowed to live anywhere in the Russian Empire, and many
remained in the last place where they had been stationed. Hence some
Jewish soldiers settled in Finland and, since there were no Jewish brides
there, asked matchmakers from the Pale of Settlement to help them find
wives. In the absence of railways unmarried girls and widows were
transported by horse-driven cart. (When former cantonists were asked How
did you meet your wife? they would reply I got her from a cart.) This was
the beginning of the Finnish Jewish community.

After the 1917 Revolution some more Jews emigrated from Russia and settled
in Finland, increasing the numbers to 2,000 (Finland became independent in
1918). A further influx arrived after the Anschluss of 1938, when the
leaders of the Finnish Jewish community asked the government to provide
entry visas for Austrian Jews - whom they offered to provide for without
requiring any public funds. Altogether, 300 Jewish refugees from Austria,
Germany and Czechoslovakia came to Finland.

In December 1939, the Soviet Union started a war with Finland in order to
gain territory. In the initial stages of the conflict (known in Finland as
the Winter War) the Finnish army under Marshal Mannerheim successfully
repelled the numerically superior Red Army. Then, in February 1940, Soviet
troops managed to break the main defensive line (the so-called Mannerheim
Line), although they continued to suffer heavy losses due to fierce
resistance. The peace treaty of March 1940 forced Finland to cede parts of
its territory.

From the Jewish point of view, this war was highly significant. It was the
first time since the First World War that Jewish soldiers had fought on
both sides of a front line. Many Jews served with distinction in the
Finnish army, where they were treated as equals; 15 were killed in battle.
But many also fought in the ranks of the Red Army. Lieutenant Leonid
Buber, for example, was awarded the highest honour of Hero of the Soviet
Union for his part in breaking the Mannerheim Line. In charge of a rifle
company, he was wounded three times but did not leave the battlefield. He
was later appointed a member of Jewish Antifascist Committee and was one
of the few who miraculously survived after most were exterminated on
Stalins orders in 1952.

In 1940 two Scandinavian countries - Denmark and Norway - were occupied by
the Germans. Finland faced a stark choice: also being occupied or becoming
another Soviet Republic like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Occupation was
a very real danger since the German army could easily enter Finland from
Norway, with a view to using its long frontier as a springboard for
attacking the Soviet Union. Its substantial nickel deposits were also
needed for military purposes.

In the event, the Finnish government chose to join forces with Germany in
the hope of regaining the territory it had lost in the Winter War and so
declared war on the Soviet Union on 25 June 1941, three days after Germany
attacked the USSR. (This was the start of what is known in Finland as the
Continuation War.) The German army was permitted to deploy in Lapland, in
the north of the country, so to attack the Soviet Union from there. All
this led Great Britain to declare war on Finland.

By August 1941 the Finnish troops under the command of Marshal Mannerheim
had managed to regain the lost territories and almost reached the
preWinter War border, securing positions on the shores of Lake Ladoga, on
the Karelian Isthmus and on the Svir river. It was here the front
stabilized until the summer of 1944 something which allowed Finnish
troops to play a crucial role in the further course of fighting between
the Germans and Russians.

Despite the presence of German troops in Finland and the German command
and Gestapo in Helsinki, Finland rejected Hitlers demands to introduce
antiJewish laws. Neither in Finland nor in the occupied parts of the USSR
were Jews persecuted. Himmler twice came to Finland and tried in vain to
persuade the Finnish authorities to deport the Jewish population. Only in
a single case, near the start of the war, did the head of the Finnish
police agree to extradite eight Jews without Finnish citizenship, seven of
whom were immediately murdered. When the Finnish media reported on this, a
huge scandal broke out and ministers resigned in protest. (In spring 1944,
160 Jewish refugees who did not have Finnish citizenship were transported
to neutral Sweden to save their lives - on the orders of the Marshal
Mannerheim, commander of the Finnish army.)

During the war, the lives of the Finnish Jews continued as before:
synagogues and communal institutions functioned and the Jewish newspaper
was published. Three hundred Jewish officers and soldiers served in the
Finnish army during the Continuation War (eight were killed in battle).

Yet they faced an agonizing dilemma. Those who took part in the Winter War
knew that they were fighting against an aggressor. Now Jewish soldiers
understood that, by serving in an army fighting the USSR, they were also
helping Hitler. Throughout the Continuation War, they had to collaborate
with the Germans. Some who were fluent in German served in the
Intelligence Service and so, throughout constant liaison with German
Intelligence, acquired information about the extermination of European
Jewry. On the other hand, Jewish soldiers remembered the words of Marshal
Mannerheim when Himmler tried to persuade Finnish leaders to deport the
Jews to concentration camps: While Jews serve in my army I will not allow
their deportation. By serving in the Finnish army Jewish soldiers hoped to
prevent the community from being persecuted.

The maintenance of Jewish religious tradition was of paramount importance
to soldiers fighting on the FinnishSoviet front. A field synagogue was
established a mere 2 kilometres from the German troops. This was the only
field synagogue on the German side of the 2,000-mile front line which in
1942 stretched all the way from the North Cape in Norway to El Alamein in
Egypt. The Finnish High Command granted leave to Jewish soldiers on
Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Worshippers came to pray from near and far,
some on skis, some on horseback, most on foot. The Germans were astonished
and frustrated to see Jewish soldiers holding religious services in an
army tent. It is also interesting to note that the most popular Finnish
singer, the soldiers sweetheart (or Finnish Vera Lynn), was Jewish. Yet
she entertained only Finnish soldiers and refused to do the same for the
Germans.

Three Jews serving in the Finnish army were awarded Iron Crosses by the
German command for their bravery (Hannu Rautkallio, Cast into the Lions
Den, Journal of Contemporary History 29, 1994). Major Leo Skurnik was a
descendant of one of the oldest cantonist Jewish families. He served as a
doctor, organized the evacuation of a German field hospital and thereby
saved the lives of more than 600 German officers and soldiers. He refused
to accept the decoration on the grounds of being a Jew. Captain Solomon
Klass saved a German company that had been surrounded by Soviet forces.
Two days later, German officers came to offer him the Iron Cross. He
refused to stand up and told them contemptuously that he was Jewish and
did not want their medal. The officers repeated their Heil Hitler salute
and left. A third Jew, a nurse, also refused the Iron Cross.

Information about Soviet Jewish prisoners of war captured by Finnish
troops only became available recently. Some very interesting reminiscences
by one such prisoner, Lazar Raskin, appeared in a special issue of the
Jewish journal Lechaim (published in Russian in Moscow) devoted to the
sixtieth anniversary of victory in Europe in May 2005. Raskin served as a
soldier in the Red Army and, after being wounded, was taken prisoner by
Finnish soldiers and sent to hospital. Later, along with over a hundred
other Soviet Jewish prisoners, he was transferred to a special camp where
the conditions were marginally better than in other prisoner-of-war camps.

They were assigned to a factory producing fertilizers. Raskin spent two
and a half years there, as he later recalled:

In spring 1943 we were informed that several Finnish Jews were coming to
our camp. We were extremely surprised because we did not think that there
were Jews in Finland and that they were free to come and go. Three elderly
men came and introduced themselves as representatives of the Helsinki
Jewish community. They brought boxes with matzoth and told us that
Passover was imminent . . . They also brought books, including stories by
Shalom Aleichem and I. L. Peretz and The History of the Jews by the famous
historian S. Dubnov (all in Yiddish).

In the evening after work we spent time with our visitors. We felt at ease
with them and had a friendly chat in Yiddish. Just the fact that we saw
Jews before us, safe and prosperous, made it a festive occasion. We knew
what the Nazis were doing to European Jewry. The visitors told us that the
Finnish authorities, despite the demands of the Germans, not only did not
persecute the Jews but even defended their interests. Later we sang Jewish
songs together. Surprisingly, the Finnish Jews knew the same songs as we
did.

The prisoners also realized that the representatives of the Jewish
community had spoken to the manager of the factory. After their visit the
food we were given got better and the regime less strict.

The visit left a pleasant impression and we remembered it for a long time.
The most precious presents were the books. Because very few people could
read Yiddish I read aloud the stories of Shalom Aleichem and everybody
laughed. I studied The History of the Jews very thoroughly and later gave
several lectures on this theme. Everybody listened very attentively
because for most of us the history of our people was absolutely unknown.

After the peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Finland was signed in
1944, Soviet prisoners of war were sent back to the USSR. It is
interesting that Lazar Raskin (like most of his fellow prisoners) was not
allowed to go home to his family but sent to work in the coal mines on
Stalins orders. He was released only after Stalins death in 1953.

It is obvious that the policy of the Finnish authorities towards the Jews
was in striking contrast with the situation not only in Germany but in its
allies and in occupied countries such as France where the Vichy government
actively helped to round up the Jews. One of the main reasons for this was
the personality of the great Finnish leader Carl Gustav Mannerheim
(18671951). He was a general of the Imperial Russian Army, served as a
Garde du Chevalier officer to the Tsarina and accompanied Tsar Nicholas II
and the Tsarina during their coronation in Moscow in 1896. He was also a
scientist and explorer of Asia and the Far East.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917 he became a leader of the Finnish
army which suppressed a rebellion by Bolshevik forces. It was as a result
of this that Finland became an independent state. During the period from
1927 to 1939 he built the system of fortifications along the border with
the USSR known as the Mannerheim Line which the Soviet Union in 1939 paid
a heavy price in breaking through. Stalin long remembered the lesson he
had been taught by Mannerheim: fierce Finnish resistance saved the country
from becoming a Soviet Republic.

Mannerheims war aims were quite different from those of the Germans he
fought alongside. He merely wanted to recover Finnish territory lost in
the Winter War and to preserve the countrys independence. He had no desire
to destroy the USSR because, as he once put it, Russia will always be our
neighbour. And he never pursued Hitlers racial policies. Indeed he helped
ensure that Finnish Jews had equal rights with the Christian majority.

One of the decisive battles of the Second World War was the siege of
Leningrad. At the end of August 1941 the city was completely surrounded by
German and Finnish troops, with the latter holding positions almost all
round Lake Ladoga. The Russians controlled only part of its south-eastern
shore. Because food stocks were destroyed by German bombers, a million
inhabitants of Leningrad died of hunger and cold during the unusually
harsh winter of 1941-2.

The only way in and out of the city was over Lake Ladoga. Hence, under the
most difficult conditions, a road known as the road of life - was built
from Leningrad to unoccupied Soviet territory via the frozen lake. It was
along this road that hundreds of thousands of children, sick and wounded
were evacuated from Leningrad during 1941-2, and food, armaments and
ammunition brought into the city.

If it had not been for this road, Leningrad would never have been able to
survive and fight on against the Germans. Yet the Finnish troops
positioned around the lake could easily have destroyed the road of life.
Hitler proclaimed at the beginning of the war that he would raze Leningrad
to the ground. This did not happen purely because Mannerheim did not want
it to happen and so refused to order his troops to attack the road of
life.

If Finland had not occupied the Karelian Isthmus and the shores of Lake
Ladoga, the Germans would have been there - and Leningrad would have been
doomed. Mannerheims decision saved an important city and the 150,000 Jews
(including my father) who lived and worked there during the siege.

Equally significant were the two naval ports which had not frozen over,
Murmansk and Archangelsk, in the north of the USSR. Since Britain and the
USA organized Arctic convoys to deliver armaments, ammunition, vehicles
and food, the Germans often asked Mannerheim to bomb the railways to the
ports and to cut off communications with the north. At the beginning of
1943, Hitler came to Finland for a day to congratulate Mannerheim on his
75th birthday. According to standard Soviet historians, Mannerheim assured
Hitler that the Finnish army would undertake these operations after the
fall of Leningrad (History of the Great Patriotic War 19411945, vol. 2,
[Moscow, 1961]).Yet this was just a ruse to gain time - he did not want
Hitler to defeat the Soviet Union.

In August 1944 Mannerheim was elected President of Finland and initiated
peace negotiations with the USSR. The armistice agreement was signed in
September 1944. According to this agreement Finland started military
actions against German troops deployed in Lapland an action in which some
Finnish Jewish soldiers also took part.

On 6 December (Independence Day) 1944 President Mannerheim visited the
Helsinki synagogue, took part in a commemorative service for the Jewish
soldiers who had died in the Winter and Continuation Wars and presented
the Jewish community with a medal.

It was because of Mannerheim that Finland remained an independent state,
unlike the many East European countries which became satellites of the
Soviet Union. Finnish Jews continued to have every opportunity to live as
a vibrant community or to emigrate to Israel. Twenty-seven Jews with
battle experience went there in 1948 to take part in the War of
Independence.

In 2005 an exhibition dedicated to Marshal Mannerheim was held at the
Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, and Finnish historians had an
opportunity to show for the first time Mannerheims role in saving
Leningrad. It is here, perhaps, that the Finnish Jewish soldiers who took
part in the Second World War on the German side can take consolation. By
fighting alongside the Germans, paradoxically, they helped to save not
only the Finnish Jewish community but the Jewish community of Leningrad as
well.



I would like to express my gratitude to Boris Ben-Ari (London) and Gideon
Bolotowsky (Helsinki) for valuable information about the participation of
Finnish Jewish soldiers in the Second World War.

(source: Jewish Quarterly--Rachel Bayvel has a Masters degree from the
University of Design and Technology in Leningrad. She has lived in London
since 1978 and researches Eastern European history)




BULGARIA:

Defying the Nazis

ARTS: Film recounts Bulgarian efforts to save Jews during Holocaust


In 1943, millions of Jews were transported to concentration camps where
they were systematically murdered. Roughly 6 million Jewish people were
killed in what would come to be called the Holocaust.

Nazi pressure led Jews from Germany and German-controlled areas of Europe
to be sent to death camps. Only one European country - Bulgaria - was able
to protect its Jewish community.

A film, "The Optimists," tells their remarkable story. Written and
produced by Jacky and Lisa Comforty, and directed by Jacky Comforty, the
film describes how Bulgaria was able to protect its 50,000 Jewish
residents despite the Nazi pressure.

On March 10, 1943, 8,500 Bulgarian Jews were waiting at departure centers
to be sent to the death camp of Treblinka. After several hours of waiting
for a departure that would have meant certain death for thousands of them,
they simply were told to go home.

This is the story that "The Optimists" focuses on. How was it that the
Bulgarians were able to save their Jewish community, but the rest of
Europe was not?

The answer, stated Jacky Comforty, is complex. The first reason they were
able to defy the Nazis is they never were officially occupied by Germany.
Under King Boris III, who also had become dictator in 1934, the Bulgarians
were an ally of Germany. The second reason, and one that the film
particularly stresses, is that the Bulgarian people would not have allowed
their government to deport the Jews.

"No government can apply an extreme policy without the backing of the
population. They could do it if it was a secret, but once the people found
out what was going on the deportation became impossible," Jacky Comforty
said. "The government of Bulgaria does not deserve the credit. They wanted
to deport the Bulgarian Jews and did deport the Jews of
Bulgarian-controlled Thrace and Macedonia. This was a triumph of the
common man."

Comforty, who was born in Jaffa, Israel, of Bulgarian parents who lived
through the events, was determined to make the movie to raise awareness of
the events and heroism of the time. He believes Bulgaria's postwar
Communist history, and the fact the Jewish community was relatively small
helped keep the story from the mainstream. He hopes this movie will help
to separate fact from fiction.

The film relates several accounts of incredible bravery, and also some
stories of immense sadness and suffering. With firsthand accounts from
many people who lived through and played major roles in the events of 1943
and beyond, Comforty weaves the story of a people forced to survive.

Specifically, Comforty tells the stories of a Jewish jazz band, the
incredible mercy and fortitude of the Bulgarian church and also of members
of his family.

For more information about the movie, or the work of Jacky and Lisa
Comforty visit their Web site at www.comforty.com.

(source: Northwest Indiana Times)





LATVIA:

Remembering the Gay Victims of the Nazis in the Kurtenhof Concentration
Camp in Salaspils


It was, ironically, the one event during Riga Gay Pride that escaped the
attention of the ultra-right. A small group travelled the 20 kilometres
to the Salaspils Memorial on the site of the notorious Nazi concentration
camp Kurtenhof.

They made the short journey to remember the gays and all victims of the
Nazis. At the Salaspils Memorial, the group found peace and calm. The
fascist thugs had not figured out our plans, Lars Grava wrote in his
personal account Riga Pride 2006.

There, the group walked to the monument with their rainbow flags.
Himmlers views on homosexuals were read and a prayer was said.

The group also mourned the death of democracy in Latvia with a short
30-second moment of silence.

The small impromptu ceremony was filmed by Latvian television and
broadcast that night. The broadcast item included the entire 30-second
silence.

While there are many published images of the troubled Riga Gay Pride,
none have so far been published outside of Latvia of this simple ceremony.

(source: UK Gay News)





NORWAY:

Cartoon of Olmert as Nazi Guard Sets Off Free Speech Debate


A Norwegian cartoon depicting Prime Minister Olmert as a Nazi commander
indiscriminately shooting Palestinian Arabs in a concentration camp has
elicited an angry response from Israel's ambassador to Norway, Miryam
Shomrat, and a defense of the newspaper's editorial stance by its editor.

The cartoon, which caused little uproar in Norway when it was first
printed, has become a hot topic of discussion after Ms. Shomrat filed a
complaint with the Norwegian Press Trade Committee arguing that the
cartoon exceeded the limits of free speech.

"I do respect the principle of freedom of speech very much," Ms. Shomrat
told The New York Sun yesterday. "I know it has very broad borders, yet I
believe that in this case, the border between freedom of speech and the
abuse of that freedom has been transgressed."

The cartoon was first printed in the July 10 edition of the Oslo daily
Dagbladet and came in response to Israeli action in the Gaza Strip, not
Lebanon. The paper's acting editor in chief, Lars Helle, has vigorously
defended the cartoonist and refused to apologize.

"I don't regret that we printed it and we allowed it," said Mr. Helle, who
added that he was confident the paper would not be convicted of
wrongdoing. This issue goes to the "core of the free speech that we have
in the democratic part of the world," he said.

Ms. Shomrat, however, said she thought the cartoon was anti-Semitic. "I
have zero tolerance for reference to the Shoah in political cartoons. I
think it is an insult to the memory of 6 million victims," she said.

Ms. Shomrat said that while Dagbladet, a "reputable" paper, has allowed
pro-Israel opinion pieces, it has been quite critical of Israel, a view
Mr. Helle said he agreed with. She also said that if the cartoon were
printed 50 years ago, it would have been fit for Der Strmer, the weekly
Nazi newspaper.

Mr. Helle said he found the suggestion offensive. "They should maybe
apologize to us for comparing us to a Nazi newspaper and for trying to
stop discussion and free speech," he said. "We haven't broken the law or
something like that. We have broken some people's taste. It's a question
of taste, not the law, or press ethics, or Nazism."

The cartoon alluded to a famous scene in the 1993 film "Schindler's List,"
in which a Nazi concentration camp commander shoots Jews at random while
standing on a balcony. In this cartoon, Mr. Olmert shoots at a mass of
people with a sniper's rifle outside barracks marked by a lone Palestinian
Arab flag.

Despite the obvious similarities, Ms. Shomrat said that because Israel is
now fighting a war, her objections were nothing like the complaints many
Muslims made after inflammatory cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as
a terrorist were printed in a Danish paper and later syndicated in
numerous other papers, including Dagbladet. Days after the cartoon
appeared, the paper asked Ms. Shomrat to be the subject of a weekly
interview in its magazine. After finding out that the same cartoonist
would be drawing her, Ms. Shomrat declined the interview.

(source: New York Sun)





ROMANIA:

Alexander Safran, Romanian rabbi


Alexander Safran, the former chief rabbi of Romania who tried to
prevent the deportation of Jews by his country's pro-Nazi regime during
World War II, has died, his family said Friday. He was 95.Safran died at
home in Geneva on Thursday, according to the family's death notice
published in the Tribune de Geneve.

After leaving his homeland for Switzerland, Safran became the chief rabbi
of Geneva in 1948. He was also professor of philosophy at the Swiss city's
university, and published a number of literary works.

Rabbi Safran was elected chief rabbi of Romania in 1940, when he was only
30. From April to August 1940, as a member of the Romanian Senate, he
tried to persuade the military government of Ion Antonescu to moderate its
anti-Jewish legislation.

After the authorities ordered the dissolution of all Jewish organizations
in December 1941, Rabbi Safran helped set up the Jewish Council, an
underground organization that included all sectors of the Jewish
population. His home became the groups meeting place.

The council used its links with Romanian church officials, the Vatican and
the royal family in an effort to prevent the mass deportation of Romania's
Jews to the Nazi extermination camps.

About half of the 800,000 Jews who lived in Romania before World War II
were killed during the war. But the fact that many were saved was widely
attributed to Rabbi Safran's efforts.

When Soviet forces entered Romania in 1944, Rabbi Safran refused to
cooperate with the new Jewish Democratic Committee, saying it was a
Communist body intent on breaking up traditional Jewish organizations and
bringing Jewish life in Romania to a standstill. As a result, he was
dismissed from his post in 1947 and forced to leave the country.

He is survived by two children.

(source: Associated Press)




AUSTRALIA/HUNGARY:

Accused war criminal challenges law


THE Federal Government may have to rewrite its extradition legislation if
a Federal Court challenge by accused Nazi war criminal Charles Zentai is
successful.

Zentai, 84, is fighting a request for his extradition to Hungary, where he
is alleged to have murdered Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in 1944.
The case was due to be heard in the Perth Magistrates' Court in February,
but Zentai - in tandem with alleged Irish fraudster Vincent O'Donoghue -
has initiated a Federal Court challenge against the West Australian
magistrates' power to deal with Commonwealth extradition laws.

Under federal law, extradition applications from foreign countries go
before state magistrates, who assess their validity before referring them
to the federal Attorney-General or Justice Minister for final
adjudication.

Barrister Steven Churches, representing Zentai and O'Donoghue, today told
the Federal Court in Perth that magistrates should not have such powers.

Mr Churches argued there were several "constitutional defects" inherent in
investing state judicial officers with powers to perform "executive"
Commonwealth roles.

He said the roles were incompatible because the separation of powers had
to be maintained.

Mr Churches said the Commonwealth was using state magistrates - who should
be the subjects of state jurisdictions - as "ad-hoc functionaries", when
they should be utilising Commonwealth officers.

"It's absolutely inappropriate for the Commonwealth to come along and say,
'you can just opt out of (your work as a state magistrate) and spend a day
doing extradition'," he said.

Mr Churches also said it was not appropriate to have state magistrates
making decisions which could effect Australia's relations with other
countries.

"That's just not what the states do, they do not have an international
personality," he told the court.

He said the Federal Government may need to amend the legislation. Michelle
Gordon, SC, appearing for Hungary and Ireland dismissed Mr Churches
arguments as "novel" and said the challenge should be dismissed.

"We have Commonwealth power here and it's valid," she said.

She said magistrates do not perform extradition duties in their capacity
as a magistrate but as a "persona designata" of the Commonwealth.

Justice Antony Siopis has reserved his judgment in the matter.

Zentai has denied the allegations brought against him by the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish human rights organisation.

He is scheduled to reappear in the Perth Magistrates Court on September
22.

(source: News.com.au)

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


Accused Nazi criminal dies in Melbourne


A Melbourne man accused of genocide during World War II has died.

Lajos Polgar was a member of Hungary's Arrow Cross, which was allied to
the Nazis and responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews in Budapest
during the war.

He died suddenly on Saturday night, aged 89, The Age reports.

The exact cause of death is unknown but the circumstances were not
suspicious.

Leading Nazi hunter Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem bureau of
the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, claimed in February that
fresh evidence linked Mr Polgar with the atrocities committed by the Arrow
Cross.

Dr Zuroff said he was intensely disappointed that Mr Polgar died before
being thoroughly investigated.

"It's very frustrating, to put it mildly," he told The Age.

"But this man should go down publicly as what he was - someone who was
involved in the genocide and murder of Jews."

The Australian Federal Police recently dropped its case against Mr Polgar,
citing insufficient evidence, while the Hungarian National Bureau of
Investigations turned up no key evidence, The Age reports.

Mr Polgar's son Lou has told AAP his father was innocent of war crimes,
and was not aware of any torture or killing.

He told The Age the stress of being "outed" as an alleged war criminal had
played a big part in his death.

"It weighed on him like a bloody lead anchor," he told the Age.

(source: National Nine News, July 13)






FRANCE:

Le Pen to face trial for Nazi comments


France's extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will stand trial for
commenting that Nazi occupation of France had not been "particularly
inhumane."

The comments were made during an interview with the far-right weekly
magazine Rivarol. Le Pen had said: "In France, at least, the German
occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some
blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km."

A judicial source said Le Pen would be tried for "complicity in contesting
crimes against humanity and complicity in justifying war crimes."

The source did not say when the date had been set for the trial.

This is not the first time that Le Pen has made insensitive comments about
the Holocaust. In 1987, the Front National (National Front) party leader
stated on RTL radio that the Holocaust was "a detail of history."

In 1990, he was convicted of incitement to racial hatred by casting doubt
on the Nazi persecution of Jews and Gypsies under a French law banning
such rhetoric.

He was fined 183,000 euros for "trivializing" the Nazi persecutions. He
appealed the sentence to the European Court of Human Rights. He made
similar statements in Munich in 1997, violating Germany's hate speech
laws.

Le Pen responded to critics using a refrain common to Holocaust deniers
and revisionists, saying he would no longer answer questions on the topic
because, "it's a taboo subject which is protected by legal and criminal
law and the only opinion you can express on it is that allowed by the media.
There is a propensity in our political life to exaggerate the importance
of the past, particularly of WWII."

Troubled past

Le Pen has also been no stranger to outright anti-Semitism. In February
1997, Le Pen accused President Jacques Chirac of being "in the pay of
Jewish organizations."

In April 2000, Le Pen was banned from public office and stripped of his
seat in the European Parliament for one year, following a 1998 conviction
for assaulting a Socialist politician the year before during elections.

However, more recently Le Pen has turned his attention to Muslims, more
specifically North African immigrants to France.

His party has taken an anti-immigration stance, while also calling for the
death penalty and mandatory conscription to the army.

In 2002, Le Pen qualified for the second round of presidential elections
and a run off against eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.

(source: Ynetnews)