Monday, April 2




GERMANY:

German Retailer to Pay Restitution to Jewish Family for Berlin Property


Settling one of the last big property restitution cases arising from the
Nazi era, Germany's largest retailer agreed on Friday to pay the heirs of
a department store once owned by a Jewish family more than $100 million
for the confiscation of what is now prime real estate in Berlin.

The company, KarstadtQuelle, will pay 88 million euros ($117 million), to
the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based
group that filed suit on behalf of the Wertheim family, which founded the
elegant Berlin emporium that still bears its name.

The five-acre parcel of land in question lies on the edge of Potsdamer
Platz, and is now the site of a glittering complex, with a Ritz-Carlton
and a Marriott hotel, as well as luxury apartments and offices.

"We've battled this case for 15 years," said Gideon Taylor, the executive
vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against
Germany. "Despite the length of time and despite the difficulties we
encountered, there is clearly the recognition in Germany that historical
injustices must be corrected."

The settlement is a vindication for the far-flung Wertheim heirs, not
least Barbara Principe, the 74-year-old daughter of Gunther Wertheim, who
fled Berlin with her family in 1939. Her father settled in southern New
Jersey, tending a chicken farm not far from where Mrs. Principe still
lives.

She spearheaded the family's quest for restitution, traveling to Berlin in
September with two grandsons to raise the pressure on KarstadtQuelle,
which inherited the Wertheim family's expropriated businesses in 1994
through its acquisition of another German chain.

Speaking by phone from New Jersey, Mrs. Principe said she felt Germany had
made adequate amends. "What more can you do?" she said. "The Nazis are
gone. This compensates for a lot of things."

For KarstadtQuelle which marked its recovery from years of financial
trouble this week by announcing a new name, Arcandor - the settlement
closes a lingering and unsavory chapter.

"We are leaving the dark, horrifying past behind us," the chief executive,
Thomas Middelhoff, said in an interview. "Our biggest pending legal
problem was this Wertheim issue."

Mr. Middelhoff credited the former German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, for
helping to break the logjam between the company and the Jewish claims
conference. Mr. Kohl, he said, persuaded the two sides that they could
negotiate in good faith, after years of often-bitter legal maneuvering.

The amount of the payment was a compromise - representing roughly a
one-third discount to the market value of the real estate, according to
another person involved in the negotiations.

"Of course, they asked for more; of course, we offered less," Mr.
Middelhoff said. "This is typical in these cases."

Like other German-Jewish merchants, the Wertheims lost their property in
the late 1930s under Nazi racial policies that expropriated Jewish-owned
businesses and put them in Aryan hands. In 1951, when Jews had begun
reclaiming property, an adviser to the Wertheims, Arthur Lindgens,
persuaded them to sell him the rights to their stores and real estate for
a pittance.

He then merged Wertheim with another former Jewish-owned chain, Hertie.
That company was taken over by KarstadtQuelle, which still owns the
Wertheim department store on the Kurfurstendamm, the prime shopping
promenade in West Berlin.

German restitution authorities ordered KarstadtQuelle to turn over other
former Wertheim land in East Berlin. What set this piece apart was its
tangled history. In 1949, when Berlin was divided into western and eastern
areas of control, the empty lot became part of East German territory.

Then, in 1961, it was cut off from the rest of East Germany when the
Soviets put up the Berlin Wall and did not properly follow the lines of
demarcation. In 1988, officials from East and West Berlin negotiated a
land swap to fix the error, which put the property on Western soil.

Because of that transfer, KarstadtQuelle contended, this parcel was
different from the other sites in East Berlin. Complicating matters
further, in 2000, it had sold the land to a developer for a huge sum.

Mr. Taylor said Mr. Middelhoff played a critical role in expediting the
settlement. In his previous post as chief of the media conglomerate
Bertelsmann, he ordered an investigation of its war-time activities (Mr.
Middelhoff is on the board of The New York Times Company).

"I have responsibilities as a C.E.O.," he said. "On the other hand, I was
watching these people getting older and older without any resolution."

(source: New York Times)






ENGLAND:

No Holocaust education?

A small number of schools in Britain are dropping teaching the Holocaust
for fear it may offend some pupils, a Government funded report by the
Historical Association has found.

According to the report, teachers have taken Holocaust education out of
the classroom for fear it may inspire some Muslim pupils to express
anti-Semitism.

The report revealed that teachers are worried about having to deal with
"anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils".

According to Holocaust Educational trust chief executive Karen Pollock,
while there may be a number of isolated cases where teachers fear teaching
about the Holocaust, there is much positive impact teaching can make.

"We find that learning about the Holocaust can inspire young people to
make a difference today," she said. "Whether it is in their own
communities, such as campaigning against far right groups that promote
hate and division or further afield, raising awareness about current
genocide such as Darfur - which we are witnessing today.

While the teaching of the Holocaust is not currently compulsory, there are
plans for it to be part of the new national curriculum from next year.

(source: Something Jewish)


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



Brit officer murdered by Hitler's Nazis identified after 60 years



A British officer, murdered by the Nazis in Rome and until now honoured
only as "The Unknown Englishman", has been identified after more than 60
years.

Second World War veterans and local historians in Rome have identified the
officer as Captain John Armstrong, Times Online reported.

According to the report, Captain Armstrong is thought to have been an
intelligence officer, liaising with anti-Fascist partisans. He was one of
the fourteen prisoners of the Gestapo taken in a lorry by Nazi forces
retreating northwards up the Via Cassia as Allied troops liberated Rome on
June 4, 1944.

The fleeing Germans swiftly concluded that the prisoners were an
encumbrance and unloaded them near the Rome suburb of La Storta. They were
herded into a wood, forced to their knees and shot in the back of the
neck.

A monument on the Via Cassia records the massacre, trees planted at the
site carry plaques bearing the names of the dead and a ceremony is held
every year on June 4. One plaque, however, has until now simply read "The
Unknown Englishman" ("L'Inglese Sconosciuto").

Harry Shindler, spokesman for the Italy Star Association, which represents
veterans who fought in the Italian campaigns, said that this year's
ceremony would be different.

"At last we can put a name to the British officer who was held at the
infamous Gestapo prison at Via Tasso in Rome but brutally murdered just as
our lads arrived to liberate Rome," he said.

Colonel Tom Huggan, a retired British army officer who acts as historical
consultant to the British Embassy in Rome, said that he was waiting for
one or two final bits of evidence. But research indicated "with reasonable
certainty" that Captain Armstrong had been an intelligence officer
liaising between advancing Allied forces and the antiFascist Resistance.

He said there had initially been some confusion because a John Armstrong
was buried at the Commonwealth military cemetery in Rome. Research had
established, however, that this was another soldier with the same name,
who had been killed by a landmine on a different date.

It is not known what happened to the remains of the Captain Armstrong
murdered at La Storta. The bodies were discovered by local people and
given a funeral service but it is not known where Captain Armstrong was
buried because records were lost.

Shindler said a clue came when he found a reference to Captain Armstrong
in Clandestine Rome, a little known 1944 memoir which names the La Storta
victims and adds that they included "an Englishman, probably a certain
Armstrong".

Last year, Shindler was the moving force behind a successful campaign to
have a memorial to the Allied troops who liberated Rome erected on Piazza
Venezia, in the heart of the city, next to the gigantic white marble
Victor Emmanuel monument housing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The
memorial depicts an Italian woman gratefully embracing an Allied soldier.

(source: Daily India)






USA///MAINE:

Holocaust, human rights center to open in Augusta this autumn


With a succession of four curved roof lines arching toward the southern
sky before ending abruptly with walls of glass, the architecture
is striking. But inside the new home of Maines Holocaust and Human Rights
Center, visitors may find what they see and hear even more moving.

Images of survivors of the Nazi horrors and their liberators will appear
on four screens to tell stories of what they experienced during those dark
days. As a backdrop to their words, ambient sounds from the death camps
will fill the air.

Visitors will see a letter from a Maine GI to his sweetheart in Waterville
describing what he saw as he became one of the first Americans to liberate
the death camps. Outside, a small plot of ground will hold earth from
Auschwitz-Birkenau, after a ceremony on April 15, international Holocaust
Remembrance Day.

For years, mementos, tapes and other material pertaining to Mainers who
survived or helped to liberate the concentration camps of the World War II
era were scattered in different locations. Tapes were housed in the state
library.

Other items wound up in Sharon Nichols home.

A Catholic who developed a deep interest in the Holocaust during a visit
to Germany in the 1960s, Nichols found herself consumed by questions about
how people could inflict such cruelty on fellow humans, and how anything
like it can be prevented in the future.

Last year - 21 years after the Holocaust and Human Rights Center was
founded - ground was broken for its permanent home.

The Michael Klahr Center is named in honor of a child Holocaust survivor
who eventually settled in Maine.

Klahr was born in Paris, France, in 1937. His mother was deported and
probably killed, and his father was shot by the Nazis. In 1946, Klahr
arrived on an orphan ship in the United States. He became wealthy in New
York after investing in real estate. Later in life, he moved to Maine,
where he married Phyllis Jalbert. The two ran sporting camps until Klahr
died in 1998.

Nichols, the centers executive director, said the timing is right for the
$2.8 million, 6,000-square-foot Klahr center to open because survivors and
liberators who serve as the backbone of public outreach efforts are now
old and dying.

Having it on the University of Maine at Augusta campus solidifies an
educational link between the UM System and the human rights mission of the
Holocaust center, said Sheri Stevens, UMAs vice president for
administration.

"It makes us feel pretty special," said Stevens. "Were really honored its
on our campus."

Researchers will find a rich archive of reference material at the site,
which is attached to UMAs library. In the Klahr Center, teachers will
attend seminars focusing on issues such as diversity. A symposium planned
for October will cover the topic of the Holocaust and medical ethics, said
Bob Katz, a UMA art professor and member of the centers board.

Katz emphasized that the center, which is scheduled to formally open Sept.
19, is not a museum, which suggests a lifeless collection of objects from
the past. He sees the center as an active, living resource for learning
lessons of the past and applying them to todays world.

The positive message carries over into the very design of the structure,
whose founders deliberately avoided incorporating death camp imagery.

"We were very definite on the fact that we didnt want Holocaust
architecture no barbed wire and no smokestacks," said Nichols. "We didnt
want to concentrate on the darkness of the Holocaust. We wanted something
more hopeful."

A competition for a winning design attracted more than 120 submissions,
and three years ago a Boston firms drawings were selected.

Harold Hon of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott said he and fellow
architect Son Wooten visited other Holocaust centers and museums and read
up on the Maine groups mission as they formulated a design.

"We came up with the idea of a flower," said Hon. "The light bulb went on,
and so we tried to have fun."

The architects ended up with a design that resembles petals of a flower, a
symbol of life and renewal.

Hon and Wooten said in their proposal that they sought to project the
centers mission to hold and direct light. "Dispelling darkness that
troubles the human spirit, the Centers glassy petals shine forth, creating
a light-filled meditative and educational space," they wrote.

The circular multimedia center, which will include four screens and 16
speakers embedded in the walls and suspended from the ceiling, "is really
the heart of the building," said Katz.

Other rooms will have equipment to show films and tapes. Space will be
available for seminars and workshops, temporary and permanent exhibit
space, and a long-range plan calls for an amphitheatre outside the
building.

Also outside, a 10 by 10-foot piece of ground will be consecrated before
the earth from Auschwitz-Birkenau is placed there. Its very likely that
the dirt contains at least traces of human ash, said Katz, so the small
area must be regarded as a cemetery.

Nichols, who is secretary of Association of Holocaust Organizations, most
states have some kind of remembrance center. Some are housed in synagogues
while others are set up as museums.

UMA provided a long-term lease for the land and will own and maintain the
Klahr Center. Its benefactors include author Stephen King and Klahrs
widow, Jalbert, formerly of Fort Kent. The Klahr center still must raise
$1 million.

(source: Associated Press)



USA///GEORGIA:

Georgia Secretary of State sets program for educators teaching the
Holocaust


The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust will accept 35 educators from
throughout the state for the 2007 Summer Institute for Educators: Facing
History and Ourselves, according to Secretary of State Karen Handel.

The program, to be held June 17-22 at the University of West Georgia,
Carrollton, is open to educators in grades K-12 and carries certification
credits. It will include Echoes and Reflections, a multimedia curriculum
of the Anti-Defamation League, and will cover resources and active
teaching methods, lessons for today and teaching strategies for the
Holocaust. Features will include curriculum connections to contemporary
issues of diversity, prejudice and bigotry and modern day genocide.

Among the topics in the program are: Society and the individual: How are
ones decisions influenced by ones society?; the concept of universe of
obligation; looking at the roles of bystanders; questions of judgment and
responsibility; the rise of the Nazis; anti-Semitism; the legacies of
Nuremburg; and survivor testimonies.

For information on the institute and this program, call 404-370-3056 or
visit www.holocaust.georgia.gov.

The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust is administratively attached to
the Secretary of States Office. Educators participating in the program
will receive free tuition, books, lodging and meals.

(source: Ledger-Enquirer)





POLAND:

Poles, Germans look back to Warsaw Uprising


Historians from Poland and Germany on Friday held a conference in Warsaw
focused on the tragic 1944 Warsaw Uprising which saw Polish partisan stage
a doomed insurrection against occupying Nazi German forces.

"Truth, Memory and Responsibility - The Warsaw Uprising in the context of
Polish-German relations", runs through to Sunday.

The conference is held under the patronage of Polish President Lech
Kaczynski and German President Horst Koehler in conjunction with the
Warsaw Uprising Museum and the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation.

Speakers include renowned British historian and Poland expert Professor
Norman Davies, Polish Warsaw Uprising expert Professor Tomasz Szarota and
Germany's Professor Hans Ottomeyer from Berlin's German Historical Museum.

Debates are to focus on Polish and German perceptions regarding the
Uprising, an event which Poland's post-war communist authorities
marginalised for ideological reasons.

"Real knowledge about the past should enrich social and political
discourse," Polish President Lech Kaczynski wrote in address opening the
conference. "Thanks to this we can base international relations on a
foundation of truth," he said.

Fought in a bid to secure Poland's post-war independence, the Warsaw
Uprising was launched by Polish Home Army (AK) commanders loyal to the
Polish government-in-exile in Great Britain August 1, 1944 by a largely
unarmed force of nearly 40,000 Polish partisans.

Despite small victories, the rising was crushed by the Nazis after 63 days
of savage battles. Nearly half of the AK insurgents and up to 200,000
civilians were slaughtered. The rag-tag partisan units had fought a
well-armed force of 50,000 German troops of whom some 16,000 died in
action.

The battle is widely regarded as the bloodiest in Poland's turbulent
history.

The Nazis deported an estimated half million Polish civilians from Warsaw
after the collapse of the Uprising, mostly to detention camps in Germany.

They then systematically plundered and destroyed what little was left of
the Polish capital.

(source: DPA)