July 19




ENGLAND:

Pianist and Holocaust Survivor Natalia Karp Dies at 96


Pianist Natalia Karp, whose life was spared during the Holocaust because
of her musical talent, died on July 9, The Daily Telegraph of London
reports.

Born in Krakow, Poland to wealthy parents, Karp showed promise as a
musician early on and decided at age 13 to pursue a career as a pianist.
Guided by her grandfather, a gifted cantor, she went to Berlin three years
later to study with Artur Schnabel. At 18, Karp performed Chopin's First
Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic; rather than pursuing her
nascent career in the city, however, she returned to Poland to be with her
ailing mother.

After her mother's death, Karp had to care for her siblings and so was
unable to devote time to the piano. As conditions deteriorated following
the German invasion of Poland in 1939, she went into hiding with her
sister Helena, experiencing the brutality of the Gestapo through an
interrogation and the sight of mass shootings. Both she and Helena were
captured in 1943 during an escape attempt and taken to Plaszw
concentration camp.

Celebrating his birthday around the time of Karp's arrival was camp
commandant Amon Goeth, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in the film Schindler's
List.

"We were being taken in a bunker to be shot when I was told I would have
to play at his birthday party," Karp told The Independent in 2005. "I had
not played since 1939 and my fingers were stiff. The guests were all
looking at me and Goeth called me 'Sarah'the Nazis called all Jewish women
Sarahand told me to 'play now.' I sat down and started to play Chopin's
[posthumous C-sharp minor] Nocturne because I have always found it very
sad."

Moved, Goeth proclaimed, "Sie soll leben" ["She shall live"]. Karp
replied, "not without my sister," and the commandant agreed. The pair
spent ten months in the camp before being shipped to Auschwitz in 1944.

Released in 1945, Karp resumed piano practicing and performed
Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with the Krakow Philharmonic the
following year. "I wanted to show to show the Nazis that I was not
beaten," the Telegraph quoted her as saying.

She married her second husband, Josef Karpf, a Treasury counselor in
Warsaw, and moved to London. There she started a family and a successful
career as a pianist, and took "Karp" (dropping the "f") for her stage
name.

Karp toured throughout U.K. and Europe, appearing twice at the Proms,
making several BBC broadcasts and performing with the London Philharmonic
and the London Symphony Orchestras. She also founded the London Alpha
Trio, of which Regina Schein, mother of Carnegie Hall's artistic director
Clive Gillinson, was a member.

Especially fond of Chopin, she gave concerts on the composer's own
Broadwood piano, working closely with the musicologist and Chopin scholar
Arthur Hedley.

As duo pianists, she and Hisao Shimizu gave an honorary concert for Oskar
Schindler when he received the Martin Buber Peace Prize in 1967.

Karp's playing has been characterized as "essentially feminine" and has
having a "mellow tone and intuitively musical phrasing," the Telegraph
reports.

In addition to her resilience, she is remembered for her warm spirit,
beauty and sense of humor.

Josef, whom she called her true love, was almost introduced to her before
the war, but told his matchmaker that he had no need for a rich wife. On
hearing this, Karp said, "serves you right, you could have married me when
I was wealthy, now you get me when I am poor."

Josef Karpf died in 1993. Natalia Karp is survived by her daughters Eve
and Anne, a writer for The Guardian of London, and four grandchildren.

(source: Playbill Arts)





GERMANY/DENMARK:

Wiesenthal Centre to Danish Prime Minister: Withdraw State Award To
Holocaust Denier

Wiesenthal Center Los Angeles

Paris, 18 July 2007

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has urged Denmark's Prime Minister, Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, to void a monetary award by the Ministry of Culture's Arts
Council (Kunst Raadet) to Erik Haaest (picture), known as the "Holocaust
Sceptic".

In his protest to PM Rasmussen, Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal
Centre's Director for International Relations, wrote in part: "Haaest
reportedly received this prize for his work on 'The Danish Friekorps on
the Eastern Front 1941 1965', hardly a symbol of Danish National pride",
adding, "Haaest's citations from Holocaust denial literature go back to
the 1959 volume of the Journal of Historical Review published by the
institute of the same name, frequented by neo-Nazis worldwide."

Dr. Samuels cited the culture section of DR Nyheder, which, under a photo
of the gas chamber states, "Erik Haaest questions existence of gas
chambers at Auschwitz KZ in Poland". Another publication reports Haaest as
declaring Anne Frank's diary "a swindle".

The Wiesenthal Centre's protest declared, "your government's award to
Haaest violated the commitments of Denmark to the European Commission and
to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This act
legitimizes (...) Holocaust denial, incitement to antisemitism and is an
offence to Holocaust survivors and to the families of all victims of
Nazism. Our Centre urges you to immediately withdraw this outrageous
award, to investigate its circumstances and publicly dismiss those
responsible."

"Silence would only be construed by hate mongers as a seal of approval",
Dr. Samuels concluded.

(source: Die Judische)





GERMANY:

Mein Kampf ban 'should end in Germany'


A leading historian has called for Hitler's notorious treatise Mein Kampf
to be published again in Germany to expose the nation to the incoherent
ramblings of the Nazi dictator.

Known for its cocktail of pro-Aryan propaganda and anti-Semitism, the book
has been effectively banned since 1945, with Bavarian state authorities,
which hold the copyright, refusing demands to print on the grounds that it
would be an affront to victims of the Nazis.

But with copyright due to expire in 2015, Horst Mller has said that the
time has come to print a scholarly edition to pre-empt and debunk
sensational neo-Nazis versions.

advertisement"As long as a carefully annotated edition of Mein Kampf
doesn't exist, the simple-minded speculations about the book's contents
won't end," said Mr Mller.

"The book is badly written, it's put together from all kinds of different
sources and consists of many incendiary tirades. An academic edition could
break the peculiar myth which surrounds Mein Kampf."

The idea of a reprint has been swiftly criticised by Jewish groups.
Wolfgang Benz, who heads the centre for Anti-Semitism Research in Berlin,
described it as "absurd". Salomon Korn, of the Central Council of Jews in
Germany, said it would be an insult to Holocaust survivors.

But Mr Mller said: "It's not justifiable to prohibit this document out of
fear that it might have a negative, symbolic effect."

(source: Daily Telegraph)

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

Font:
PUTTING HITLER BACK ON THE SHELVES
Should Germany Republish 'Mein Kampf'?
By David Gordon Smith in Berlin

A leading historian wants 'Mein Kampf' to be republished in Germany.
Copyright issues have kept it off the shelves since World War II, but in
2015 it will enter the public domain. Then, anyone will be allowed to
print it -- including neo-Nazis.


AFP
"Mein Kampf" cannot be published in Germany. However second-hand copies,
such as this first edition, can be freely bought and sold.
It is arguably the most controversial book of the 20th century. Indeed,
Adolf Hitler's notorious polemic "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") hasn't been
legally published in Germany since the end of World War II. Many are
concerned the frenzied tome could become a kind of scripture for
right-wing extremists.

Now, though, a Munich historian has called for it to be republished in
Germany -- as a pre-emptive strike against any neo-Nazis who might want to
abuse the text for their own fell purposes.

Horst Mller, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich,
would like to see a "Mein Kampf" redux in the form of an academic edition
with comprehensive footnotes. "As long as 'Mein Kampf' is not available in
a carefully annotated edition, there will be no end to the oft
simple-minded speculation about what is actually in the book," Mller said
in an interview published Monday in the German newspaper Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung. "An academic edition could break the peculiar myth
which surrounds 'Mein Kampf.'"

Available Abroad

The book, written while Hitler was in prison for attempting to seize power
in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, originally hit the presses in 1925. In it,
the future dictator sets out his worldview and Nazi ideology, mixed with
autobiographical detail and tirades against the Jews and other groups. The
book is widely available in several countries, including the United
Kingdom and the United States, but cannot be published in Germany.

Contrary to popular belief, the book is not actually banned in Germany.
Instead, the copyright is held by the state of Bavaria, which took over
the rights of the main Nazi party publishing house Eher-Verlag --
including the rights for "Mein Kampf" -- after the end of World War II as
part of the Allies' de-Nazification program. As copyright holder, the
state has since refused to allow the book to be published, on the grounds
that it would promote right-wing extremism. The German Foreign Ministry
has also repeatedly recommended that the book not be published, for fear
of damaging Germany's image abroad.

Mller said he has repeatedly asked the Bavarian Finance Ministry, which
controls the copyright, for permission to produce a scholarly edition, but
has always been turned down. The Bavarian government has in the past taken
legal action against attempts to publish the book in other countries, such
as in Sweden in 1992 and in Poland in 2005 (more...).

Out of Copyright

But the state cannot maintain the status quo for much longer. In 2015, 70
years after the death of the book's author Adolf Hitler, the copyright
will expire in accordance with standard copyright law -- at which point
anyone will be able to publish "Mein Kampf."

"There will be enough publishers who will want to sell it then with the
inevitable sensationalism," said Mller, who argues that it would be better
to produce an annotated edition which explains why Hitler was wrong now,
rather than wait for a flood of uncommented commercial editions.


FORUM

Should "Mein Kampf" be re- published in Germany?
Discuss the issue with other SPIEGEL ONLINE readers!

14 Posts
Latest Post: Yesterday 09:49 pm
By Insulaner
However the Bavarian Finance Ministry is sticking to its guns, at least
for now. In a statement given to SPIEGEL ONLINE Tuesday, the ministry said
they would continue to block the publication of the controversial text:
"In terms of managing the (Eher-Verlag) rights, the state of Bavaria has
taken a restrictive position over the last decades," spokeswoman Judith
Steiner wrote in an e-mail message. "Permission is not granted for
complete works to be published, neither in Germany nor abroad, with the
intention of preventing the distribution of Nazi ideology."

The statement adds that the state's position is based on "responsibility
and respect for the victims of the Holocaust, for whom republication would
always represent an affront ... to their suffering."

Unlike Mller, the Bavarian Finance Ministry does not believe that an
annotated scholarly edition is useful. "It is already possible for
historians who want to take a critical approach to the work 'Mein Kampf'
to do so through the means of the annotated literature which has already
been published," the statement reads.

Off the Rails

Other academics are likewise unconvinced that re-publishing the book is
desirable. "I think the idea is absurd," Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center
for Antisemitism Research (ZfA) in Berlin, told SPIEGEL ONLINE Tuesday.
"How can you annotate an 800-page monologue exposing Hitler's insane
worldview? After every single line you would have to write, 'Hitler is
wrong here,' and then 'Hitler is completely off the rails here,' and so
on."

The argument that it is better to print a scholarly edition now than wait
for the sensatationalist editions does not hold water, he feels. "The
neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists will publish it anyway once the
copyright expires," he says. "And no one will buy an academic edition for
hundreds of euros when they can pick up a cheap paperback from a
right-wing publisher for a couple of euros."


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He points out that the book is freely available in its complete form in
second-hand shops, libraries and on-line -- and many families still have
copies. "Anyone who wants to read it can," he said. "The text itself has
not disappeared."

Salomon Korn, the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in
Germany, also feels that the book should not be published until 2015, when
it enters the public domain. "For me the key thing is to take the feelings
of Holocaust survivors into consideration," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It is
unacceptable that such a symbolic work should be published with the
state's stamp of approval while any survivors who suffered directly under
the Nazis are still alive. It would create a very bad feeling for them."

He believes, however, that a scholarly edition should be prepared -- but
closer to the 2015 deadline. "It should be brought on to the market six
months before the copyright lapses," he says.

Korn is not worried about the effects of the book -- which he describes as
"barely readable" -- when it does become available. "I can't see it having
much influence," he says. "It's so badly written, with such a mishmash of
illogical ideas, that any sensible reader would simply throw it aside."

(source: Der Spiegel)




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

Survivors' children suing Germany

Children of Holocaust survivors are suing Germany to pay for their
psychotherapy.

The lawsuit, involving some 4,000 plaintiffs, was filed Monday in a Tel
Aviv court. The children of survivors argue that they have been scarred
being raised by parents who experienced the Nazi Holocaust, and as a
result Germany should pay for their psychological therapy.

Baruch Mazor, director of the Fisher Fund, which filed the lawsuit, said
thousands of people raised by survivor parents suffer from depression and
anxiety and cannot function normally at work or home. He estimated that
some 5 percent of Israels 400,000 children of survivors are in need of
therapy.

The lawsuit seeks the establishment of a German-financed fund to pay for
three years of biweekly therapy sessions for some 15,000 to 20,000 people,
at a cost of about $10 million, according to The Associated Press. The
Germany Foreign Ministry declined to comment, according to the report.

Israeli and international law may prevent such a suit from being brought
in a Tel Aviv court against a foreign government.

(source: JTA)

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

German Historian Wants New Publication of Hitler's Banned Book


Groansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The copyright for the
book expires in 2015

A German historian has called on the Bavarian government to lift a ban on
publishing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," saying that an
annotated edition could expose the book as a badly written hate tirade.

In an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Horst
Mller, director of the Institute of Contemporary History, said that
historians should be given a chance to publish an edition of Hitler's 1924
book.

"All kinds of Nazi incendiary writings have been published in a scientific
format, except for 'Mein Kampf,'" said Mller, a history professor at
Munich University. "In my opinion, it's not justifiable to prohibit this
for a single document out of fear that it might have a negative, symbolic
effect."

Copyright issues

Bavaria's finance ministry, which holds the copyright to "Mein Kampf," has
so far refused to permit publication of the book. While it has been
published abroad after 1945, it is only available for scientific research
within Germany.

In the interview, Mller said that he had recently discussed the issue with
Bavarian Finance Minister Kurt Falthauser, who had declined to give
permission. Mller also said that officials at Germany's foreign ministry,
where Mller's publicly funded institute also has an office, had advised
against publication, saying that it could have a negative effect for
Germany abroad.

But the copyright is running out in 2015 and Mller said he expected many
to try and make a quick buck with a sensationalist publication of the
book. His institute, on the other hand, has the resources and expertise to
produce an edition that won't be easily abused by neo-Nazis for propaganda
purposes, Mller said.

A need for disillusionment


"The book is badly written, it's put together from all kinds of different
sources and consists of many incendiary tirades," Mller said, adding that
the book still deserved scientific attention as a key document of the
national-socialist regime. "As long as a carefully annotated edition of
'Mein Kampf' doesn't exist, the simple-minded speculations about the
book's contents won't end."

Mein Kampf sets out Hitler's claim that "Aryans" were the founders of
human culture and Jews its spoilers as well as his denunciation of
"inferior races" and call to seize lebensraum or territory in eastern
Europe.

Prohibiting publication beyond 2015


Bavarian finance ministry officials meanwhile said that publication of a
sensationalist edition of "Mein Kampf" would still be illegal after the
copyright expires as German law prohibits the distribution of
national-socialist propaganda.

They also said that the Bavarian government feels a responsibility towards
protecting Holocaust victims against a new publication of the book --
including an annotated version as suggested by Mller.

"Considering that Bavaria's strict stance...is welcomed and supported both
domestically and abroad, permission to reprint 'Mein Kampf' still cannot
be considered," reads a statement from the ministry.

(source: Deutsche Welle)



AUSTRIA:

Austria late in offering rewards to find Nazis


Austria has offered its first ever rewards for information leading to the
arrest of Nazi war criminals, 62 years after the end of the Second World
War.

The justice ministry in Vienna has put up 50,000 (34,000) for tips on the
whereabouts of Aribert Heim, an SS doctor accused of having killed
concentration camp inmates with heart injections, and Alois Brunner, an
aide to Adolf Eichmann who helped organise deportations of Jews to death
camps.

"Austria is often blamed for having done too little," said Maria Berger,
the justice minister. "I don't want to judge previous governments, I want
to do now what we still can do."

She said that she hoped that the rewards were "more than a symbolic act".

Mrs Berger, of the centre-Left Social Democrats, was appointed six months
ago, when Austria's broad coalition government replaced the previous
Right-wing coalition.

Austria has been accused for decades of dragging its feet over prosecuting
Nazi war criminals and for being too lenient when they were brought to
court.

Even though Austrians pervaded the ranks of the Nazi Party and the army,
the country for decades portrayed itself as "Hitler's first victim"
because it was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1938.

Heim, also known as "Dr Death" in the Mauthausen concentration camp, was
born in 1914 and is presumed to be living in Spain or Latin America,
according to Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in
Vienna.

Brunner was last seen alive in Syria in 2001, where he is alleged to have
enjoyed the protection of the Syrian government for decades.

Some 65,000 Austrian Jews died in the Holocaust.

(source: Daily Telegraph)


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


Nazi victim heirs want Klimt, Nolde paintings back


In Vienna, the heirs of two Nazi victims are demanding the
Austrian city of Linz return paintings by art nouveau master Gustav Klimt
and expressionist Emil Nolde which they say were stolen by the Nazis,
their lawyer said.

The latest in a string of Nazi restitution cases in Austria was made
public by the heirs' lawyer Alfred Noll after two years of lobbying in
private, because he said the Linz city council was dragging its feet and
he feared the case was going nowhere.

"The goal is to free the paintings from Linz," Noll told Reuters on
Tuesday. "I have tried first to settle the issue directly with those
responsible. But this has been going on for two years now and it's going
nowhere."

Mayor Franz Dobusch said in a statement Linz would step up an
investigation into the paintings' ownership.

"The city of Linz is not trying to violently defend a picture, but it aims
to determine objectively whether there is a case for restituting them,"
Dobusch said in a statement.

Klimt paintings looted by the Nazis and later reclaimed by the heirs of
their original owners have fetched record prices recently. His "Adele
Bloch-Bauer I" portrait was sold for a then record $135 million last year.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The Klimt painting in Linz is an unfinished portrait of Ria Munk, the
daughter of an Austrian Jewish industrialist. Her family commissioned it
after Ria committed suicide in 1911, said Sophie Lillie, an expert on art
seized by the Nazis.

Klimt finished the portrait of Ria on her deathbed and was then asked for
another showing her alive, Lillie said. He died before he completed the
second portrait. Ria's mother Aranka Munk kept only the unfinished work in
her holiday villa.

The Nazis seized the painting in 1941 when Aranka Munk was deported to
Lodz in what is now Poland, where the Litzmannstadt concentration camp was
based. She died soon after.

According to Lillie, Linz first considered acquiring the painting in 1953
from a collection known to include artworks seized by the Nazis, but the
city official in charge noted on the file: "Jewish property! Subject to
clearance!"

But Linz bought the painting anyway in a second round of purchases from
the collection three years later.

Lawyer Noll is representing around a dozen Munk heirs in Europe and the
United States. He expected the painting to be sold due to the large number
of heirs.

The Nolde painting, dated 1915 and called "May Meadow", was owned by
Jewish physician Fred Julius of Hamburg, a major patron of Nolde's
"Bruecke" (Bridge) group.

The oil painting disappeared en route to his home in exile in Switzerland
in 1939, Lillie said. Linz bought it in 1953 from another collector known
to trade in artworks seized by the Nazis, she added.

Noll's clients for the Nolde painting are two Julius heirs based in
Britain.

(source: Reuters)





GREECE:

He wiped out Greeces Jews. Should he stand trial?HARRY REID July 19 2007
Comment | Read Comments (8)Should a pathetic old man of 94, badly maimed
by a letter bomb he opened 20 years ago, and believed to be skulking
somewhere in Syria, be brought to justice in Europe for crimes committed
more than 60 years ago? In a world confusedly grappling with current
dangers such as global terrorism, acute climate change and desperate
disparities in wealth, health and nutrition, has the international
community not far more pressing matters to prosecute?

The Austrian government appar-ently thinks not. Its justice minister,
Maria Berger, has just announced that now is the "last opportunity" to
capture and try prominent Austrian Nazis. In this context, her ministry
has offered a 50,000 (33,600) award for information leading to the
apprehension of the 94-year-old Alois Brunner.

Even by the vile standards of prominent Nazis, Brunner was a particularly
repellent figure. He was Adolf Eichmann's most enthusiastic lieutenant
when it came to hunting, deporting and exterminating Jews. His most
hideous crimes were committed in Greece.

advertisementThe Italian leader Benito Mussolini, dreaming of easy
military glory, ordered his troops into Greece at the end of 1940. The
Greeks resisted heroically and the Italian soldiers were on the point of
defeat when Hitler ordered a second, more effective, invasion. Still the
Greeks fought on, now backed by limited numbers of British and New Zealand
troops. But it was clear that they were no match for the Germans. The
Greek commander, General Alexandros Papagos, movingly told the British:
"You have done your best to save us. We are finished, but the war is not
lost. Save what you can of your army, to win elsewhere."

The capitulation was bad news for the Greeks, and Greek Jews in
particular. Brunner, who had joined the Austrian Legion in Germany in
1933, and the SS in 1938, set to work with relish. The biggest
concentration of Jews (as many as 60,000) was in Greece's second city,
Salonika (now known as Thessaloniki), where a successful Jewish community
had been settled since the Spanish dispersion of 1492.

Brunner descended on Salonika's many Jews with what Adolf Eichmann's
biographer Prof David Cesarani called "the utmost brutality". In the
summer of 1943, 46,000 Jews were deported to the concentration camp
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were exterminated. Some tried to claim
Spanish protection, but as so often, Eichamann intervened to negate any
case for exemption. One of the strongest Jewish settlements in the Balkans
was simply eradicated.

Brunner's central involvement in this heinous crime is undisputed. But if
he is to be hunted, captured and tried, you have to ask: to what end?

There must be a suspicion that the intervention of the Austrian government
is symbolic, an act of retrospective tokenism. The present Social
Democratic administration clearly wants to be seen as different from more
right-wing Austrian governments of the past, who were often criticised for
being soft on Austrian Nazis. Such criticism reached a crescendo when Kurt
Waldheim, who had been a Wehrmacht officer in the Balkans, became
Austria's president.

There is also a sense that the era of unceasing Nazi hunting ended with
the death in 2005 of Simon Wiesenthal, an extraordinary man who dedicated
his life to meticulous documentation of all the component crimes of the
Holocaust. He tracked down many perpetrators enjoying new lives in South
America and also southern Spain, where some reputedly remain. In so far as
Wiesenthal has a successor, he is probably Efraim Zuroff, who five years
ago co-founded an organisation called Operation Last Chance, tasked with
working for the prosecution of all remaining Nazi war criminals.

Then there is the debate about how some Nazis were guiltier than others,
which overlaps the notorious "only obeying orders" defence. Perhaps the
most alarming aspect of the Holocaust, the worst mass crime of all time,
is that so many of those who took part in deportations and executions were
ordinary, common or garden citizens. They were certainly not ideologues or
fanatics or crazed sadistic zealots. Yet how many instances are there of
refusals to shoot innocent civilians being punished by death? None,
according to the historian Mark Mazower. The Jews were relentlessly
expunged, with bureaucratic and smooth efficiency.

That said, Brunner was worse than most. But what then of the most noble
human quality, compassion? Given that Brunner is so old, and maimed,
should he not be left to die in something akin to peace, if he can find
it? Should compassion, forgiveness and mercy not be unlimited?

Possibly, but I and no doubt many others would baulk at that. Justice and
retribution have their place too. Last century was the worst in human
history and right at its evil heart was the Holocaust. Those of its
perpetrators who remain at large must surely be punished in the name of
all humanity, whatever their age and their personal condition.

(source: The Herald)