June 2



CANADA:

Passage of time has altered perspectives on war crimes


By now, most of us are familiar with the case of Helmut Oberlander. The
83-year-old Waterloo resident's citizenship was recently revoked for the
second time by the Canadian government over accusations that he took part
in war crimes during the Second World War. His ordeal has stirred
passions, both among his supporters and foes.

The debates about Oberlander have raged for more than decade. His backers
argue that he has been a "model citizen" since arriving in Canada more
than 50 years ago. Moreover, they point out that Oberlander was only 17
when he was forced to become an interpreter for a mobile Nazi killing unit
in Ukraine.

Oberlander's critics, by contrast, insist his contributions to the Nazi
death machine were meaningful and that he ought to face some sort of
consequences for his actions.

Oberlander's story is part of a larger dilemma. With the chief architects
of the Third Reich dead and many of the mid-level figures also deceased,
what purpose - if any - is served by continuing to hunt down the
remaining, low-level alleged Nazis and Nazi collaborators? Should the hunt
continue for what the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel called the
"boy-next-door Nazis" (meaning those who were young and did not have
leadership roles in the regime)? Or should they be left alone to live out
their final days without facing penalties and punishments?

The answer depends on the actions of each individual ex-Nazi during the
war. Those who participated in genocide certainly should be punished,
whenever possible.

Efraim Zuroff, an American-born Israeli historian, has been nicknamed "the
last Nazi hunter." Based at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, he
travels around the world tracking down the last surviving Nazi war
criminals - the "boy-next-door Nazis" - who weren't much older than Helmut
Oberlander during the war.

"We're talking about people in units that carried out some of the worst
murders of World War II," Zuroff explained. "There's no reason why someone
who's been out there day after day shooting civilians shouldn't be held
accountable. For the family or friends or relatives of the Jews killed,
the fact that the guy was a corporal is irrelevant and does not provide
him with a justifiable excuse for the crime he committed."

Zuroff is responsible for many important, high-profile captures. But his
critics fault him for pursuing elderly men whose mental and physical
capacities are rapidly deteriorating.

The culprits they're now looking for are getting on in years and, one
would suspect, are neither capable of interrogation nor standing trial,
Zuroff's critics insist.

Such is the case with Jacob Fast, a 97-year-old resident of St.
Catharines, who played a key role in a Nazi unit that routinely murdered
Jews. He failed to reveal this fact to authorities when he arrived in
Halifax in 1947. Now suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Fast's memory is
shot and his health is declining.

Like Oberlander, Fast was recently stripped of his citizenship, yet he
probably isn't even aware of it.

Ultimately, this issue has everything to do with the choices that people
make in life, not only when they're young and inexperienced, but more
importantly, when they're older and hopefully a little wiser.

Today, Oberlander remains defiant and continues to see himself as a victim
of endless harassment.

A nobler approach to past events was shown by Adalbert Lallier, a retired
professor at Concordia University in Montreal.

In February 1945, Lallier was a 19-year-old Waffen SS officer-in-training
in Czechoslovakia. He did not participate in war crimes, but he did watch
in horror as his commanding officer, Julius Viel, savagely shot to death
seven unarmed Jewish prisoners while they were digging a ditch.

When he came to Canada in 1951, Lallier informed immigration officials of
his SS affiliation. Still, he kept this dark chapter of his life a secret
from his friends, colleagues and students. That changed in the 1990s, when
Lallier discovered that Viel had gone on to become a respected German
citizen and recipient of the Federal Service Cross, the German
government's highest civilian honour.

Sympathetic to Jews and haunted by his past, Lallier decided to act. He
travelled to Germany, where he testified as the main witness against Viel
in a German courtroom. Thanks to Lallier's testimony, Viel was convicted
of war crimes in 2001 for murdering those seven Jewish prisoners.

"Adalbert Lallier is a terrifically brave individual," observed a Jewish
activist. "He had no legal obligation to come forward. He is not even
remotely suspected of any improper act. ... The Jewish community owes him
a real debt of gratitude."

Lallier, unlike Oberlander, has used his experiences to educate others
about the evils of Nazism. "I have no regrets about coming out. I will
spend the rest of my days as a living reminder of what happened in the
Holocaust," he said.

Oberlander and Lallier are a study in contrasts. While Oberlander remains
angry and defensive, Lallier will long be remembered for his character and
quiet courage.

(source: Andrew Hunt is chair of the department of history at the
University of Waterloo; The Record)





ISRAEL:

'Claims Conference needs reform'


WJC presidential candidate Lauder: Why are Israeli Holocaust survivors not
receiving funds?

The Conference on Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), the
organization set up to help distribute funds to Holocaust survivors, needs
reform and an injection of transparency, World Jewish Congress (WJC)
presidential candidate Ronald Lauder said during an interview with the New
York Jewish News published on Friday.

During the interview, Lauder "charged that the Claims Conference, had
'anywhere between $900 million and $9 billion available at a time when
80,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel are living below the poverty line.
And the question is why is the Claims Conference holding the money?'"

"Lauder said he would use his presidency to clean house while 'no one else
wants to do it,' including his rival for the WJC post, Mendel Kaplan,
chair of the WJC executive committee. He implied he would also use the WJC
platform to call for more accountability within the Claims Conference,"
the Jewish Week said.

US Israel Consul brings pastors for visit

The Israeli Consul General in New England, Nadav Tamir, has organized a
visit to Israel for a number of local pastors, Boston's The Jewish
Advocate reported.

"In his post as consul general, Tamir has encouraged many Christian
religious leaders to visit the Jewish state so that they may learn about
the many aspects of a dynamic Israeli society," The Advocate said.

"This is a priority for us. Some people think that the only way to help
Israel is politically, but we believe we can do things together not only
in terms of politics, but also in tourism and investment ? things that
have been considered soft in the past," the report quoted Tamir as saying.

Evangelical Rev. Fumio Taku, who has been to Israel three times before,
and who will head a group of visiting pastors, told The Advocate: "When I
first went there it struck my heart very strongly. As a Christian, having
biblical roots going back to the land and the Jewish people, I felt a love
and affinity to the country. When I came back, my understanding and heart
had totally been transformed."

Nazi collaborators lose citizenship

The Canadian government "has revoked the citizenship of Nazi collaborators
Helmut Oberlander and Jacob Fast, opening the door for their possible
removal from Canada," the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported.

"However, one of the lawyers representing Oberlander said last week he
would seek a judicial review of the cabinet decision, and promised his
client will never be forced out of Canada," CJN added.

According to the report, the men were "alleged to have served in German
units during World War II and lied about their wartime activities when
they obtained Canadian citizenship."

Bernie Farber, CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, said Oberlander "served as
a translator for Einsatzkommando 10A, a unit that was part of the
Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads whose only task was to murder Jews.
It is estimated they killed more than one million Jews during the
Holocaust."

"Everybody, from the cook to the translator to the shooters who
participated in the Nazi killing units, bears equal responsibility,"
Farber said. "He's been here 50 years too long," the CJN quoted Farber as
saying.

(source: Jewish World)




USA:

Bush taps Holocaust envoy as ambassador

President Bush nominated his top Holocaust recovery official to become an
ambassador.

J. Christian Kennedy has served as the State Department's special envoy
for Holocaust issues since last August. In that position he works with
counterparts in Europe and Israel on compensation, property recovery and
Holocaust remembrance issues.

On Wednesday, Bush asked the U.S. Senate to confirm Kennedy as an
ambassador. The higher rank would underscore to Kennedy's counterparts the
Bush administration's seriousness on the issue.

(source: JTA)

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


USA//NEW JERSEY:

Ex-Nazi camp guard too sick for deportation, official says


A man who was a Nazi prison guard during World War II and has lived in
Hamilton Township for many years is unlikely to be deported, a spokeswoman
for the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday.

A federal court judge in Camden ordered Andrew Kuras to be deported in
2004 and revoked the man's 1962 naturalization certificate and other
citizenship documents.

But years later, Kuras still remains in the Laureldale section of the
township, where he has lived with his wife for more than 30 years. They
raised three children in the community.

I spoke with an official at the Department of Justice who said that Mr.
Kuras is gravely ill, Jaclyn Lesch said Friday. His deportation is under
review.

Kuras, 85, was born in a village that changed hands as European borders
were redrawn during World Wars I and II. It was unclear to where he would
be deported were he ordered to leave the country.

In 2005, a Justice spokesperson would not elaborate on the reasons Kuras
was still in the country. However, sometimes elderly and sick people are
not deported if it would be a detriment to their health.

Since 1979, when the Office of Special Investigations was created to
investigate and deport former Nazis, it has won more than 100 cases
involving people in this country.

In 1942, Kuras was one of more than 100 Ukrainians to start work at the
Trawniki labor camp in Poland - a camp for Polish Jews.

Kuras helped guard the Jews inside the Trawniki camp. He ordered the
shooting of anyone who tried to escape, according to court documents. He
also had duties to guard two other labor camps.

In 1943, he took a leave to visit his grandfather. On Nov. 3-4, 1943,
Nazis conducted Operation Harvest Festival, during which they killed
42,000 Jews working at area labor camps.

Kuras repeatedly has said that he was visiting his grandfather at that
time.

(source: Madelaine Vitale, Press of Atlantic City)



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


USA//RHODE ISLAND:

Court stops movement of painting allegedly looted by Nazis



In Procidence, a federal judge grants a request by the estate of a late
Jewish art dealer to stop an elderly German baroness from moving a
painting that it says was looted by the Nazis.

Judge Mary Lisi also ordered Maria-Luise Bissonnette of Providence to
allow representatives from Max Stern's estate to inspect the painting.

The Canadian foundation that inherited Stern's estate filed a lawsuit last
year to reclaim the painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

The suit says the painting was auctioned under duress after the Nazis
forced Stern to close a family gallery in 1937.

Bissonnette's stepfather acquired the painting and she inherited it. She
says her family did nothing wrong.

(source: Associated Press)



VATICAN CITY:

Pope recognizes martyrdom for Austrian beheaded by Nazis

Pope Benedict XVI approved recognition of martyrdom for an Austrian who
was beheaded by the Nazis for refusing to serve in Hitler's army, a step
toward possible sainthood.

Ten years ago, a Berlin court posthumously exonerated Franz
Jaegerstaetter, who was drafted after Germany annexed his native Austria,
for refusing to serve in the Nazi army. His request to be excused from
regular army service had been denied, and he was ordered executed for
treason.

Jaegerstaetter had been the only person in his village to vote against
the creation of a so-called Greater Germany shortly after Austria was
annexed in 1938. He was beheaded in 1943.

(source: Associated Press)





FRANCE:

Operetta Written in Nazi Death Camp Premieres in Paris


Groansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Over 150,000 prisoners
were held in Ravensbrck between 1939 and 1945

An operetta composed in hiding by a French prisoner in the Ravensbrck
concentration camp towards the end of World War II will premier on
Saturday in Paris' Theatre du Chatelet.

Germaine Tillion, a leader in the French resistance movement, wrote the
operetta "Le Verfgbar aux enfers" (The Available One in Hell) as a
prisoner of the Nazis in the concentration camp in Ravensbrck in
north-eastern Germany.

The piece, which was never intended for performance, is a combination of
folk music, operas, operettas and classical tunes and Tillion's original
texts and choreography.

Staunchly against making any contribution to the Nazi war effort, Tillion
was hidden by her fellow prisoners and wrote a large portion of the
operetta's 104-page manuscript from her hideout in a box.

"Le Verfgbar aux enfers" deals with the humiliation of daily life in a
concentration camp, where Tillion was brought in 1943. Its title, which
incorporates the German word "Verfgbar" into the French, refers to the
group of prisoners Tillion was placed in by the Nazis. She and her fellow
prisoners weren't given set jobs, rather they were dubbed "available" and
assigned to any task their captives needed.

Tillion celebrates 100

Tillion, who turned 100 this week, had made a name for herself as an
ethnologist and was conducting research in Algeria when the war began. She
returned to occupied France in 1940 and joined the resistance movement
shortly thereafter.

She was arrested by the Nazis in 1942 and sent to Ravensbrck the following
year along with her mother, who later lost her life in a gas chamber.

After the war, Tillion published numerous books and essays on the
Ravensbrck concentration camp and the resistance movement. She has
received multiple awards for her involvement in the resistance, including
the Federal Cross of Merit in both France and Germany.

(source: Deutsche Welle)





SWITZERLAND:

Swiss Prosecutor Raids Bank Safe Holding Nazi-Looted Pissarro


Zurich authorities secured a bank safe containing a Camille Pissarro
painting looted by the Nazis in 1938 as part of a three-nation
investigation on suspicions of money laundering and extortion, prosecutor
Ivo Hoppler said.

The picture, ``Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps,'' belonged to a publishing
family that fled Vienna and the Nazis before World War II. The safe at the
Zuercher Kantonalbank was used by a Liechtenstein company linked to Bruno
Lohse, who was appointed by Hermann Goering in 1941 to confiscate art in
occupied France. Lohse died in Munich on March 19, aged 95.

``Swiss prosecutors have viewed art objects in Switzerland and are now
seeking to establish whether the Pissarro picture is among them,'' Hoppler
said in a telephone interview. ``At the beginning of next week we'll send
documents to the investigating authorities in Germany and Liechtenstein.''

During Hitler's 12-year rule, the Nazis looted about 650,000 works in the
biggest art heist ever, the New York-based Jewish Claims Conference
estimates. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the art-looting unit
that employed Lohse, seized almost 22,000 objects from more than 200
collections in France, according to U.S. government estimates.

Munich prosecutor Hans-Joachim Lutz said his office is investigating one
person on suspicion of extortion in connection with the looted painting.
Lothar Hagen, the spokesman for the Liechtenstein court, said it is
investigating one person on suspicion of money laundering.

Urs Ackermann, a press spokesman for Zuercher Kantonalbank, said the bank
was not aware that the safe contained looted art.

``Anyone can rent a safe from us just with a contract with the bank,''
Ackermann said. ``We don't know what is in the safes.''

(source: Bloomberg News)





AUSTRIA:

A Nation's Lost Holocaust History, Now on Display


When Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, or Jewish Community Vienna,
decided to sell a vacant building in the summer of 2000, two employees
were sent to look for any archival material that might have been left
behind.

What they found exceeded any historians dream: Stacked floor to ceiling in
two rooms of one apartment sat some 800 dusty boxes containing, among
other things, about half a million pages of detailed records of the
community during the Holocaust - archives not known to have survived.

"Opening each box was extremely exciting," said Lothar Hlbling, the chief
archivist and one of the discoverers. "Eight hundred excitements."

Now, after seven years of quiet work reordering, preserving and
microfilming the archives a joint project of Jewish Community Vienna and
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington the documents
are about to be officially unveiled with a presentation at the museum on
Thursday, followed by an exhibition, opening on July 3, at the Jewish
Museum Vienna.

When combined with community records stretching back to the 17th century
that had been shipped to Israel in the 1950s, the Vienna cache makes up
one of the largest Holocaust archives of any Jewish community, some two
million pages. With it historians will be better able to understand how
the Holocaust unfolded and provide a window into the daily life of Vienna's
Jews. The archives of Jewish Community Vienna, the representative body of
the citys Jews, will also be of great help to families in uncovering
exactly what happened to their relatives.

"For most of the last six decades, people believed that one could not study
the action of Jews in the Holocaust period because the Nazis systematically
destroyed the records of Jewish communities and organizations," said Paul
Shapiro, director of the Holocaust museums Center for Advanced Holocaust
Studies. "Most Holocaust scholarship has been written based on the
documentary record created by the perpetrators of the Holocaust."

The Vienna archives, in their entirety, are believed to be the largest
collection of material about a Jewish community in the German-speaking
world, Ingo Zechner, director of the Vienna group's Holocaust Victims
Information and Support Center, said. Indeed, Vienna once had the
third-largest Jewish population in Europe.

A survey of Viennas pre-Holocaust records illustrates the community's
diversity: Jewish cultural organizations, welfare societies, chess clubs,
groups of Jewish soldiers from World War I, Zionist groups even
monarchist clubs are represented, Mr. Zechner said. A 1927 letter from
Sigmund Freud declared his 1926 income of 50,000 Austrian schillings and
the tax he expected to pay the group.

Some of Vienna's Holocaust-era files can already be viewed on microfilm at
the Holocaust museum in Washington and at the Central Archives for the
History of the Jewish People in Israel. And, according to plans arranged
with Simon Wiesenthal before his death, a proposed Vienna Wiesenthal
Institute for Holocaust Studies will unite under one roof Mr. Wiesenthal's
Nazi-hunting files with the Jewish Community files and will serve as a
research institute for visiting scholars and a showcase for themed
exhibitions.

After the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, they began disbanding virtually
all Jewish groups. Two months later the Nazis reinstated Jewish Community
Vienna, Mr. Zechner said, enlisting it to help carry out their initial
plan, which was for Jews to depart Austria after paying fees and leaving
behind most of their property.

Discovered within the Vienna apartment were card indexes, produced by the
communitys emigration office, with the names of 118,000 Jews from families
that had sought its assistance to emigrate in 1938 and 1939. These indexes
were the key to sorting through thousands of emigration questionnaires
already stored in Jerusalem.

The questionnaire, filled out by the head of a household, solicited four
pages of detail about family and economic status, references and contacts
abroad pertinent information for those seeking visas.

A Jewish community official would make a house visit and describe the
living conditions, Anatol Steck of the Holocaust museum said. In many
cases it is now possible to trace every administrative step, from someones
first contact at the emigration office to when the family boarded a train
or a ship, Mr. Zechner said.

The archive also contains thousands of letters, many related to emigration
issues. They would assist families in working through the bureaucratic
maze of getting out of the country, Mr. Shapiro said. They also made a
calculation of which families needed cash.

"Jewish Community Vienna encouraged Jews to learn new skills, like farming
and mechanics, so they could be placed abroad," Mr. Steck said. When the
psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, the founder of existential analysis, filled
out an emigration questionnaire in 1938, Dr. Frankl wrote by hand in
German: "I'm living with my father, a federal retiree. My income from my
medical practice is so little, I will have to close my medical office."
Asked if he had been trained in a new profession, he wrote, "I'm about to
learn the craft of house painting."

Dr. Frankl received an immigration visa to the United States but
forfeited it so as not to leave behind his parents. He, his wife and his
parents were deported in 1942 to concentration camps; only Dr. Frankl
survived, writing of his Auschwitz experiences in "Man's Search for
Meaning."

For Jews who perished, Mr. Steck said, the questionnaires are like the
last testament of the victims. Ultimately, two-thirds of Viennas Jewish
community survived the Holocaust, but more than 65,000 Austrian Jews were
murdered.

Walter Feiden, 79, of New York City, is the only survivor of his Viennese
family. His father, Moses, went to the community organizations offices to
research names and addresses in phone books before securing affidavits of
support from two American strangers: a Jewish manufacturer and a district
attorney named Feiden. Yet the United States consulate rejected Moses
Feidens visa request after learning he was born in Poland, not Austria. On
Oct. 15, 1941, the Feidens were deported to the Lodz ghetto, where Moses
died; Emilie, Walters stepmother, was transported to Chelmno and gassed.

Just last month Mr. Feiden learned of a letter found in the archives
indicating that right before the family's deportation, the Dominican
Republic had approved visas, and that a Jewish community official had
asked the Gestapo to strike the Feidens from the deportation list.

"This is a shocker to me," Mr. Feiden said. "There's no way to get back
what I lost," he said, adding that he was glad to know the new information
to "the extent that it proves to me that my father tried even harder."

Also found in Vienna: the lists for 45 deportations, each naming about
1,000 Jews scheduled for transport in 1941 and 1942 to destinations like
Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, Lodz and Minsk. Some of these locations were
known then as Jewish ghettos. Not as widely known, however, was the fact
that after a certain time, they became transfer points to death camps.

Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, viewed the
deportation lists in the archives last year. "The most troublesome
question which occurred to me is, who prepared the list?" he asked. "Who
picked these names to begin with? Whenever I asked anyone at all, I got
the same answer. The community did not prepare the list. On the other
hand, the Gestapo people after the war insisted that they prepared no
lists. But someone had to choose the people and look up the addresses."

The records found in Vienna are also being used to help families file
restitution claims. The Holocaust Victims Support Center was founded in
1999, the year after Austria began serious discussions about compensation
for looted artwork, slave labor and stolen property.

The tireless efforts of Mr. Zechner, 34, and Mr. Hlbling, 36, to
reorganize the files are noteworthy because neither is Jewish, nor is most
of the centers 12-person staff. Mr. Zechner said the involvement of
non-Jews was partly due to Austria's increased openness to reflecting
about the Holocaust in the years since revelations emerged about the Nazi
past of Kurt Waldheim, the nation's former president.

For Mr. Zechner, a historian and philosopher, a major motive in working
for the organization "was to understand what happened during the Holocaust
and how the Holocaust affects our present life."

(source: New York Times)