Feb. 13




POLAND:

Race to conserve death camp

Auschwitz succumbs to the ravages of time



Auschwitz is disintegrating.

Over 60 years of winter snow, summer drought and millions of visitors have
taken a heavy toll on the former Nazi death camp.

Just as survivors visiting the camp dwindle each year, so time is bearing
down on the prison buildings, the rusting barbed-wire fencing and remnants
of the gas chambers left behind when the Germans fled in January 1945.

Evidence of the victims - hair, spectacles, children's toys and other
belongings - is also falling to pieces, eaten away by insects and mildew,
its disappearance giving slow support to those who try to deny the
Holocaust ever happened.

Unless conservation is stepped up, there may soon be little left of the
biggest graveyard in Europe, where up to 1.5 million men, women and
children, mostly Jews, were slaughtered.

Now new management at the camp, covering 190ha on two sites near Oswiecim
in southern Poland, is accelerating work and hiring more staff to slow the
deterioration and save the site as a lesson for future generations.

"If there is one place in the world that should be kept as a reminder of
the consequences of racism and intolerance, it is this one," said Piotr
Cywinski, who took over as director of Auschwitz in September. "But it
gets more difficult every year."

One of the many problems facing Cywinski and his 260 staff at the site,
now a museum, is that Auschwitz was not built to last. The concentration
camp known as Auschwitz was actually two camps, and both are suffering
serious problems.

Auschwitz I, a stone and brick-built Polish military base used by the
Nazis to house Polish political prisoners, was hastily enlarged with
forced labour using the cheapest possible materials after Germany invaded
Poland in 1939.

Auschwitz II Birkenau, 3km away, was a specially built killing factory
thrown up in 1943 for the mass murder of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and
other minorities.

Linked directly to Europe's railway network by a special siding to speed
up the murders, the Nazis used it to expedite their plans for a "Final
Solution" to "the Jewish problem".

Parts of the Birkenau site are built from the remains of demolished Polish
villages and stable blocks and these have survived. But many other
buildings have already disappeared.

Most wooden huts were removed after the war for use as temporary shelters.
And the strongest of the buildings, the concrete gas chambers and
crematoriums, were blown up by the guards before their retreat. These
ruins have collapsed, undermined by rising ground water, flooding and
erosion.

The area around the gas chambers is cordoned off with tape but still
accessible to the public, some of whom clamber over the rubble.

Some visitors even remove relics and artefacts.

The ash pits where the remains of many victims were dumped lie open to the
elements and the ground trampled by visitors around them is studded with
what look like tiny white stones.

"Not stones - bones," explains Jarek Mensfelt, a linguist and senior guide
at the museum. "Tiny fragments of human bones. It is terrible that
tourists can tread on human remains."

Cywinski is acutely aware of the deficiencies of the museum but is
constrained by money and the physical limitations imposed by the scale of
the site.

Various grandiose ideas - including one for a giant dome - have been
rejected on grounds of cost and because any major construction would
destroy some of the area and alter it.

Smaller-scale enclosures to protect the buildings would be possible, but
even these would be expensive and would have to be agreed upon by all the
groups that protect the site.

"Tens of millions of dollars, more, would be needed to do all the work,"
said Cywinski. But money is not the main problem: the Polish government
has provided large sums and there are a number of international donors.

Time itself is the enemy, eroding the site and its contents.

"Conservationists are like doctors: we can extend life, but not for
eternity," said Cywinski, who opposes any suggestion that decaying
original artefacts should be replaced by copies.

Faded and frail, two tons of hair shorn from victims is piled up in one
cell block: once blonde plaits, black pony-tails and auburn curls, it is
gradually decaying and now looks like grey wire wool.

The museum has had more luck with its 80 000 shoes, mostly odd. Chief
conservationist Rafal Pioro and his staff of 38 invited school children to
help clean and polish some of them.

But there are so many, most still have to be stored in a warehouse without
air-conditioning. Slowly, most are falling apart.

"The work is endless and painstaking and can be heart-rending," said
Pioro. "When we were working on the children's shoes, some of us were
crying all the time."

Workers at Auschwitz are struggling to slow the ageing of the camp and
keep it as a lesson on the evils of anti-Semitism.

They aim, in the words of a plaque near the gas chambers, to keep
Auschwitz as "a cry of despair and a warning to humanity".

Israel Gutman, a former Auschwitz prisoner and adviser to the Yad Vashem
holocaust institute in Israel, is determined the camp will be conserved as
long as possible, whatever the cost.

"There are still people who claim the Holocaust never took place," he
said. "Auschwitz must be preserved for as long as possible because it
gives those people a chance to go there, to see the real gas chambers."

(source: Reuters)



GLOBAL:

18-month extension gives Holocaust claims fresh chance


An Italian insurance company's agreement to extend by 17 months the
deadline to accept new claims from Holocaust victims and their relatives
gives some victims another chance to find records of their losses, a
museum official said.

Paul Shapiro, an executive of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, DC, said Tuesday the decision by Assicurazioni Generali to
extend the March 31 deadline to Aug. 31, 2008, means victims may benefit
from the opening of sealed Nazi archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

The settlement would end the last of the large cases brought in US courts
to get money from companies responsible for aiding Nazis during the
Holocaust.

"It's very hard to tell whether there's documentation here or not that
relate to those claims in a way that will help people," Shapiro said. "The
key, however, is to give people an opportunity to find out."

(source: Associated Press)





USA//FLORIDA:

Holocaust researchers display Nazi train car in Florida


Three teenagers were pushed onto a cattle car in 1943. They stood for two
days in the sweltering car, lurching as the train rattled toward
Auschwitz. Only one survived, the digits 5-7-7-7-9 tattooed on her arm.

Joyce Wagner trembled Tuesday before the railroad car, just as she
remembers trembling before that similar car six decades ago in Poland.

"I was thinking my brother, my sister. Where did we stand?" said Wagner,
84, her voice wavering. "I'm the only one who survived, from nine
children."

Wagner joined about 150 other Holocaust survivors Tuesday to view a
railroad car of the type used to transport Jews from Poland's Warsaw
Ghetto to a Nazi death camp during World War II.

The 31-foot (9.3-meter) railroad car still bears a faint swastika stamped
into the paint peeling off its side. It arrived in Florida last month from
Poland. Officials plan to park it on railroad tracks that end near the
site of the planned South Florida Holocaust Museum, scheduled to open next
year.

A handful of similar cars are displayed at museums in Israel, throughout
the U.S. and at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

"This particular car was seized from the Germans at the end of the war on
Polish territory," Rositta Kenigsberg, the center's executive vice
president, said Monday.

The car could have carried Jews to the infamous Polish death camp,
Treblinka. It also could have transported Nazi soldiers or war supplies,
officials said. Even without proof it carried human cargo, the car is a
disquieting reminder of the Nazi war machine.

When exterminating Jews village by village, one by one, became too
inefficient, too cumbersome for individual death squads to handle, the
Nazis mobilized their victims instead.

"The trains were the indispensable ingredient that made all this happen,"
said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust historian who oversaw the creation of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The six major Nazi death camps were all located along rail lines.
Auschwitz alone had 44 separate railroad tracks about twice as many as
Penn Station in New York to receive trains from throughout Europe,
Berenbaum said.

About half the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust rode to their
deaths in such trains, Berenbaum said.

Officials asked the 150 survivors in attendance to stand during the
unveiling ceremony. During the war, most of them would have been squeezed
into a similar railroad car with no food or water. Many passengers on such
cars died en route.

The car's unveiling ceremony included a recitation of the Kaddish, the
Jewish mourning prayer.

___

On the Net: Holocaust Documentation & Education Center:
http://www.hdec.org

(source: Associated Press)

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



Little-known heroes hunted art treasures stolen by Nazis


COURTESY CZARTORYSKI MUSEUM
Leonardo da Vinci's, "Lady with an Ermine," was discovered after World War
II by a small army of art experts under the auspices of U.S. forces
launched a search and rescue of Europe's art treasures.

It was the greatest art theft in history. It was also the greatest
rescue. The looting of Europes public and private collections
by the Nazis beginning in the 1930s propelled a small army of art experts,
under the auspices of U.S. forces, to search for and rescue art pieces
that had been stored in salt mines, caves and castles to protect them from
the ravages of war.

The Monuments Men, as they were known, tracked down, identified and
catalogued millions of works of art and cultural artifacts by such masters
as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Vermeer, for the purpose
of returning them to their owners. They also identified historical and
cultural sites to prevent Allied forces from bombing them.

Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art, America
and her Allies Recovered It (Laurel Publishing, $55), by Dallas author
Robert Edsel, puts the spotlight on these little-known heroes, who hailed
from many nations. It also identifies 12 living members of the 350-member
team.

During World War II, U.S. art experts and organizations won the support of
President Franklin Roosevelt for a national effort to preserve art in the
European theater. The president established a commission, headed by
Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, that led to the creation of a
monuments, fine arts and archives branch of the Allied armies in 1943.

European institutions already had swung into action following Germanys
attack on Poland in 1939. Louvre museum curators moved 400,000 works of
art out of Paris within a few weeks, stripping the walls bare, and kept
moving them throughout the war.

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, was moved six
times during the war. From its home in the Louvre, it was first moved to a
chateau outside of Paris, traveling by ambulance to better disguise the
occupant. The back of the ambulance was sealed to protect the painting,
but the curator who went with it almost fell out when they got there from
lack of oxygen, Edsel said.

Much of the thousands of pieces of war booty that the Nazis confiscated
were for Adolf Hitler himself. The Nazi leader was obsessed with
collecting the finest art for his museum, which he designed to be built in
Linz, Austria, near his birthplace. Hitlers most coveted work of art,
according to Edsel, was Vermeers The Astronomer, which was among hundreds
of works that the Nazis took from Jewish banker Edouard de Rothschilds
collection in Paris. Its now at the Louvre.

The "Monuments Men" discovered a stash of more than 6,500 works being held
for the Linz museum at Alt Aussee, a salt mine near Salzburg. Edsel said
one of the most breathtaking moments of his research occurred when he
found a swastika-embossed leather-bound book in Krakow that was made for
Hitler. It listed the available art in the occupied region for him to
peruse and select.

Da Vincis Lady with an Ermine, originally part of a private collection in
Krakow, was the subject of a tug-of-war between Hans Frank, the Nazi
governor general of Poland, and Hermann Goering, Hitlers second in
command, who had a fondness for art looted from the occupied countries.

The tales of the "Monuments Men" gripped Edsel when he was living in Europe
a few years ago. A wealthy former Texas oil and gas executive and onetime
professional tennis player, Edsel turned into a self-taught art historian
as he became obsessed with the history of the art treasures rescued and
restored after the war.

In the sense of civilization, its irreplaceable, he said.

Edsel poured about $2 million of his own money into researching and
digging for photos in archives, churches and museums; he ended up
publishing the book himself. The book became available on Amazon.com and
in major bookstores in early January.

Hollywood has taken notice, and producers are talking to Edsel about a
movie. He already helped co-produce a documentary, "the Rape of Europa,"
based on a scholarly book by Lynn Nicholas about the looted art.

For Edsel, honoring the Monuments Men is a race against time. He met with
98-year-old S. Lane Faison last fall to hear his story. Faison, who had a
long career as an art professor at Williams College, had never spoken
extensively about his role in saving Western art.

I've been waiting to meet you all of my life, he told Edsel.

He died 10 days later.

(source: Bellingham Herald)



GERMANY:

40 per cent of Germans see some good in Nazis - poll


Four in ten Germans say the Nazis had some "good and bad aspects" but a
growing majority feel shame for the Holocaust, according to
a survey published by the Bertelsmann Foundation on Monday.

Of the more than 1,000 Germans surveyed, 55 per cent said Nazism was
mostly or only negative, while one per cent saw more good aspects than
bad.

The number who saw some good in National Socialism fell to 40 per cent,
down slightly from 42 per cent recorded in a similar poll in 1991.

The German-Jewish Dialogue survey, carried out by the respected TNS Emnid
polling organisation, said many of those who viewed parts of the Nazi
regime favourably were elderly or had little education.

The report said the "favourable" aspects referred to in the survey
included the German economic upturn after 1933.

The 112-page report also found that two-thirds of Germans "absolutely
agree" with the statement "I am ashamed that the Germans have committed so
many crimes against the Jews", up from 60 per cent in 1991.


The number of those who said they "absolutely disagree" with that
statement fell to eight per cent, down from 13 per cent in the earlier
poll.

(source: Reuters)


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

Study: Germans more ashamed by Nazis


Germans are increasingly ashamed of their countrys Nazi past, a poll found.

Results of the German-Jewish Dialogue survey published this week found
that two-thirds of Germans express absolute shame over the Holocaust, up
from 60 percent in 1991.

According to the poll, the number of Germans who think there was some good
in the Nazi regime has fallen slightly to 40 percent, from 41 percent in
the previous study.

One thousand Germans were polled for the survey; no margin of error was
given.

Researchers involved in the study said respondents who were likelier to
sympathize with the Nazis tended to be elderly or relatively uneducated.

(source: JTA)




BELGIUM:

Groundbreaking study blames Belgium's elite for cooperation with Nazis'
persecution of Jews


A groundbreaking, government-backed report released Tuesday blamed
Belgian authorities and the ruling elite for collaborating
with the Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II.

"The Belgian authorities cooperated with the racial anti-Jewish policies
during the occupation," and acted in a way "unworthy for a democracy," the
conclusion of the study "Submissive Belgium," said.

Parliamentarians and Jewish representatives sat in silence in the Senate,
as chief researcher Rudi Van Doorslaer read the conclusions of the damning
report for 50 minutes.

"It presents a mirror of ourselves," said Senate chairwoman Anne-Marie
Lizin, who condemned the "cowardliness of our administration" during the
1940-1944 occupation.

Over six decades after the Nazi Holocaust ended, "to forget is to condemn
oneself to the same errors," said Lizin.

Some 50,000 Jews lived in Belgium in the 1930s and about half were
exterminated in the Holocaust.

The first reactions to the 1,116-page report were positive. "This report
is fundamental and it is a victory for enlightened democracy," said
Philippe Markiewicz, the president of the Coordination Committee of
Belgian Jewish Organizations.

Although Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt had already recognized the level
of collaboration over the past years, it was the first time it had been
presented in such detail. The study will be published in a book in May.

The report documents how an influx of Jewish refugees from Germany in the
1930s combined with a turn to the political right because of the economic
crisis created an unsavory mix where anti-Semitism and right-wing
extremism could rise.

After the Nazi invasion in May 1940, the Belgian government fled to
Britain, but issued instructions authorizing civil servants who stayed to
work with the Nazis to keep services running and prevent the economic
breakdown that occurred during the German occupation in WWI. During the
war, in many cases, that deteriorated into collaboration with the
persecution of Jews.

At first Jewish citizens had to be registered, then they were obliged to
wear yellow stars, then schools and hospitals were segregated. Soon raids
rounded up Jews in Belgian cities and they were deported to camps in the
east. Although some cities refused to help, others continued collaboration
with the deportations which send thousands to their deaths at Auschwitz.

Even the government in exile in London, "never let it be known that
policies had to be adapted and that the behavior of leading civil servants
and magistrates was unconstitutional and democratically reprehensible,"
the study said.

After the war, many cases were considered too delicate to handle by
military courts and "every responsibility of the Belgian authorities in
the persecution and deportation of Jews was rejected," the study said.

For decades, the issue became part of a collective repressed memory, and
it is only since the 1990s that the issue has slowly gained political
prominence, especially because of the resurgence of the extreme-right in
much of Europe.

Markiewicz highlighted however that despite the negative impact of the
report, there were many Belgians who risked their lives to save Jews. "You
also have to see that there were some administrations which had a
remarkable attitude and rescued Jews," he said.

While about half of Belgium's Jews escaped, over 75 percent of Jews in the
Netherlands died in the Holocaust.

(source: Associated Press)





AUSTRALIA:

NGV relaxed about looted Nazi art


The National Gallery of Victoria seems unruffled in the wake of demands
for the return of an artwork in its collection pilfered by the Nazis
during World War II.

The painting, Lady with a Fan, by the Dutch artist Gerard ter Borch, is
valued between $100,000 and $1 million. It is claimed that the painting
was stolen from the Emden family in the 1930s.

(source: Crikey, Australia)