Sept. 13



GERMANY:

Hitler Biographer Joachim Fest Dies


German historian and publisher Joachim Fest, author of a landmark
biography of Adolf Hitler, has died aged 79, German media reported on
Tuesday.

Fest, who was seen as one of Germany's leading authorities on National
Socialism (Nazism), died at his home in Kronberg near Frankfurt on Monday,
according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the paper he
co-published between 1973 and 1993.

The FAZ did not give the cause of his death.

Viewed as a conservative, Fest achieved widespread fame when his
bestseller was published in Germany in 1973 as ''Hitler. Eine Biografie''
(A biography).

In his book, Fest argued Hitler's personality and political skills were
central to the success of his party, thus distancing himself from
historians who laid more emphasis on the inter-war circumstances in
Germany when accounting for the Nazis' rise.

Fest's book ``Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich,''
served as part of the basis for the 2004 Oscar-nominated German film ``Der
Untergang'' (The Downfall), a claustrophobic depiction of the final days
of Hitler.

Other celebrated books by Fest include a 1999 biography of Hitler's
architect and armaments minister Albert Speer and a study of the attempt
to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Fest, whose memoirs of his childhood are due to be published next week
under the title ``Ich nicht'' (Not I), was born on December 8, 1926 in
Berlin. He was married and had two sons.


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

Germany to ordain first rabbis since Holocaust


In Dresden, a trio of students will be confirmed as rabbis this week, the
first such ordination in Germany since the Nazi regime began the
slaughter of six million European Jews more than 60 years ago.

The first graduating class of the Abraham Geiger College at the University
of Potsdam is made up of just three men. But Dieter Graumann, vice
president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said he hoped this
number would rise exponentially.

"We need many, many more rabbis in Germany. We have a great hunger for
rabbis," he told a news conference to introduce the rabbinical candidates
who will be ordained at a ceremony at the New Synagogue in the eastern
city of Dresden on Thursday.

There are now an estimated 100,000 Jews in Germany, compared with 600,000
before the war. Most of those fled or were killed, leaving Germany with
only 12,000 Jews after the war.

The flood of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s
led to a rebirth of Germany's Jewish community, but has highlighted the
dearth of rabbis. There are presently only around 25 rabbis serving 100
congregations.

"Things have changed over the last 17 years. The community has gotten
bigger and we have to do something to maintain unity," Graumann told
reporters.

ONLY ONE GERMAN

The Potsdam seminary, established in 1999, was named after Abraham Geiger,
who was a rabbi in Berlin from 1870 to 1875 and pioneered liberal Jewish
thought in Germany.

The choice of Dresden for the ordination is also significant. It is the
capital of Saxony, the German state with the strongest neo-Nazi movement.

Only one of the three graduates -- 47-year-old Daniel Alter -- is German
born. Alter will soon lead congregations in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst in
northwestern Germany.

The other two graduates are Czech-born Tomas Kucera, who will become a
rabbi in the Bavarian capital Munich, and Malcom Matitiani, who will head
back to his synagogue in Cape Town, South Africa.

The trio will be the first rabbis ordained here since the College of
Jewish Studies in Berlin was destroyed by the Gestapo, the feared Nazi
secret police, in 1942, the seminary's director Walter Homolka said.


Due to the destruction of records, the precise date of the last rabbinical
ordination in Germany is unclear. But Homolka said it was possible the
last one was as far back as 1940.

Homolka, Alter and Graumann said that while Thursday's ordination was
positive, it did not mean Jewish life was back to normal in the country
responsible for the Holocaust.

"It would be premature to speak of a normalisation," said Graumann. "We
are far from any kind of normalcy here, but we are getting a fresh
perspective."

(source for both: Reuters)

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

Nazis set to claim German seats


NEO-NAZIS are set to gain important seats in German Chancellor Angela
Merkel's home state on Sunday in an election that will show a dark past
continues to haunt the country.

As many as 12 MPs are forecast to be elected in the state near Berlin,
which US President George Bush visited in July. They will join other
neo-Nazis elected in Saxony two years ago as legislators in a state
government.

Despite attacks against black people in the run-up to the World Cup
itself themed against racism and warnings of no-go zones in the former
communist east because of right-wing violence, the lure of extremist
politics remains strong in the region.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, near Berlin, will vote on Sunday for a new
legislature that will control vital areas such as police, education and
health. A bloc of NPD (National Democratic Party) politicians would be
embarrassing and controversial, influencing policy in the region.

The strength of the far-right highlights the continuing agony of east
Germany 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Unemployment remains above 20
per cent in most places, more than a million people have gone west and
little investment has been forthcoming for those left behind.

In the past decade-and-a-half, Berlin has hurled about $A2.5 trillion at
the 17 million citizens who once lived behind the Iron Curtain.

East Germany loses 80 people a day. Since reunification, 1.4 million of
its best and brightest young people have left.

In Meck-Pomm, as locals call it, that has left behind the hardened
skinheads and others who have turned to the dubious glories of the Nazi
period. In some towns unemployment is as high as 25 per cent.

The NPD is Germany's oldest neo-Nazi party and is set to win about 6 per
cent of the vote in the September 17 election. Far-right parties would
then be represented in three of the six state parliaments in eastern
Germany.

Its xenophobia, anti-semitism and fondness for the Third Reich are couched
behind populist rants against globalisation and the European Union.

(source: The Age)




HUNGARY:

Hungarian Holocaust survivors go to court to re-claim accounts


In Budapest, 20 Holocaust survivors will have their case heard in
a Hungarian court later this month, to determine whether they can reclaim
their bank accounts. Hungarian Jews had their accounts confiscated during
the Nazi-controlled era.

In 1944, the leader of Hungarys Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szalasi, whom
the Nazis appointed prime minister in October 1944, compelled the countrys
Jews to transfer all their bank deposts to government banks. A short time
after this was done, the Hungarian Jews were no longer given access to
their own accounts.

Still no access

The order to block access to these accounts was only rescinded in 1988,
but according to the plaintiffs lawayers Peter Gal and Gabor Kereke, there
has been no case of a single Holocaust survivor receiving access to their
total amount in their account.

There have been previous court proceedings to reclaim access to the
ccounts but with little success. In one case, the representative of the
National Bank of Hungary, Peter Sardy, justified the nationalization of
the accounts as "an economic necessity."

There is also the matter of the interest accrued on these accounts over
the years. While some in the Hungarian government are claiming that due to
hyper-inflation of the Hungarian forint at the end of the second world war
the accounts severely lost a lot of their value. The lawyers for the
plaintiffs are calling for the accounts to be tied to the growing cost of
gold as a far more appropriate way of working out the true worth of the
accounts today.

Torrid history of restitution and compensation

The issue of restitution and compensation in Hungary has been a torrid
one. Many efforts were made to return property to those persecuted under
Communism but the Jews always seemed to be left out.

As a result of an agreement reached in 1996, the Hungarian government set
up the Hungarian Jewish Heritage Fund, appointed its curators and handed
over nine buildings, a few paintings and compensation coupons to the sum
of 200 million USD, the latter to be used for supplementing the pension of
the roughly 20,000 Holocaust survivors by 25-70 USD per month, depending
on age.

Hungarian Jews through the Claims Conference have also managed to receive
money from the German government. The Hungarian government announced the
re-opening of the compensation program at the March 2006 meeting of the
Claims Conference in Budapest.

(source: European Jewish Press)





CANADA:

Montreal foundation trying to get back art work looted by Nazis


In Montreal, a Canadian foundation dedicated to tracking down
Nazi-looted art has located one of the hundreds of paintings it is seeking
and hopes to have its first major victory in the coming weeks.

The Max Stern Art Restitution Project is looking for hundreds of paintings
seized by the Nazis during the Second World War. Although about 40 works
of art have been located, the process of recovering them has been slow and
sometimes frustrating.

The foundation is suing a German baroness after one of the paintings it
wants was spirited out of the United States and back to Germany.

"Good news only comes when a settlement is finalized," Clarence Epstein,
head of the foundation, said Tuesday. "We haven't finalized any
settlements but we're hoping to very soon.

"Another work was just identified this month as being in the collection of
a Spanish foundation."

He did not name the foundation or the artwork involved.

Max Stern operated an art gallery in Dusseldorf from 1913 to 1934. Then,
like many others, he was forced to sell his holdings to benefit the Third
Reich.

Stern fled Germany in 1937 and eventually moved to Montreal, where he and
his wife owned the Dominion Gallery.

When he died in 1987, Stern named Concordia, McGill University and Hebrew
University of Jerusalem the beneficiaries of his estate.

Since then, executors have taken on the challenge of tracking down what
they believe are tens of millions of dollars worth of looted works of art
from such masters as Jan Brueghel, Lodovico Carracci and Franz Xavier
Winterhalter.

Negotiations are ongoing with private collectors, galleries and government
institutions around the world to recover these works.

"We're finding them slowly but we're finding them," said Robert Vineberg,
lawyer for the Stern project.

But this year the project became embroiled in a legal dispute with
Baroness Maria-Louise Bissonnette, 82, who has taken Winterhalter's "Girl
from the Sabine Mountains" back to Germany, in search of a more
sympathetic jurisdictions, according to the project.

"It's the first time we've seen this kind of audacity," Epstein said.

Bissonnette's lawyer, John Weltman, said his client does not dispute that
the work was looted by the Nazis or that it should be returned.

But Weltman said it is a one-of-a-kind case because Stern was paid for the
painting - a work he had on consignment in his gallery and never paid the
artist for - first during the war and again in 1964 by a German
repatriation court.

"She's an elderly woman with very little assets and this is one of the few
assets that she had," Weltman said Tuesday, adding that she suffers from
cancer and requires expensive medications.

"She's not saying she won't return it."

The woman is seeking the estimated value of $150,000.

Vineberg said Stern was forced to put his art up for sale at auction.

"In our view, the art was stolen."

The case, launched by Bissonnette in April in Germany to have her declared
the artwork's sole owner and earlier by the Stern project in the U.S.,
could take years to make its way through the two courts.

An official from the Holocaust Claims Processing Office, in New York,
wouldn't comment on the case.

"It's in litigation," said Liz Billet. "We're not really involved
anymore."

The office has a total of 230 claims by Canadians, seven of them for art
looted by the Third Reich.

(source: Canada Press)