July 30




GERMANY:

Net closing in on top Nazi criminal - German magazine

Investigators are closing in on one of the last living top Nazi war
criminals, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reported on Saturday.

Germany has for decades been searching for Aribert Heim, an SS doctor
accused of having killed hundreds of concentration camp inmates with heart
injections.

Earlier this month, Austria said it was offering a 50,000 euro ($68,260)
reward for information leading to the arrest of Heim and Alois Brunner, an
aide to Adolf Eichmann who helped organise the deportation of Jews to
death camps.

Spiegel magazine said investigators were focusing on Spain and Austria in
their hunt and that they had their sights on friends and relations of
Heim, known as "Dr Death" at the Mauthausen concentration camp.

The magazine did not name its sources.

The 93-year-old is presumed to be living in Spain or Latin America,
according to the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Germany had offered a 130,000 euro reward for Heim a few years ago but
Austria's move was the first offer it has made for Nazi war criminals.

The Alpine country has been accused for decades of dragging its feet over
prosecuting Nazis and for being lenient when they are brought to court.

(source: Reuters)



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

CLOSING IN ON DR. DEATH----Germany Steps Up Hunt for Nazi War Criminal


The net is closing in on Aribert Heim, a Nazi war criminal who has been on
the run for 45 years. Austria and Germany are offering rewards for
information leading to the capture of the man known as "Dr. Death."

Investigators are closing in on one of the last living top Nazi war
criminals, Aribert Heim -- also known as Dr. Death for his gruesome
medical experiments on concentration camp inmates during World War II.

German investigators have stepped up their hunt for Heim and are focusing
their search on Austria and Spain and in particular on his friends and
relatives. The Austrian government is also supporting the hunt, by making
its first-ever offer of a reward for finding Nazi war criminals.

Germany had already offered 130,000 ($177,000) for information on the
whereabouts of Heim, who would be 93 years old today. An unnamed American
businessman has said he will match this sum.

The Austrian justice ministry announced earlier in July that it was
offering an additional 50,000 for any clues that would help find Heim or
Alois Brunner, a former SS officer who the Austrian government has
described as Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man, helping him organize the
deportation of Jews to death camps. Vienna had been accused for decades of
not doing enough to prosecute Nazi war criminals.

Heim is believed to have killed more than 300 people at the Mauthausen
concentration camp in northern Austria by injecting them in the heart with
poison. He went into hiding in 1962.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jewish human rights organization Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told DER SPIEGEL he believes Heim is still
alive and is living in Europe or South America. The Simon Wiesenthal
Center has played a key role in locating Nazi war criminals in recent
decades.

(source: Der Spiegel)




YUGOSLAVIA:

The role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's holocaust


Historical information about Catholic priests and Muslim clerics being
willing accomplices in the genocide of the Yugoslavia's Serbian, Jewish
and Roma population during the Second World War.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Catholic priests and Muslim
clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian,
Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed
regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific
crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over
800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In
these crimes, the Croatian Ustasha and Muslim fundamentalists were openly
supported by the Vatican, the Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Alojzije
Stepinac (1898-1960), and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj
Amin al-Husseini. Many of the victims of the Pavelic regime in Croatia
were killed in the war's third largest death camp - Jasenovac, where over
200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their deaths. Some 240,000 were
"rebaptized" into the Catholic faith by fundamentalist Clerics in "the
Catholic Kingdom of Croatia" as part of the policy to "kill a third,
deport a third, convert a third" of Yugoslavia's Serbs, Jews and Roma in
wartime Bosnia and Croatia (The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican,
Vladimar Dedijer, Anriman-Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, 1988).

On April 6th 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia. By April 10th,
Croatian fascists led by Ante Pavelic were allowed by Hitler and his ally
Mussolini to set up a "independent" puppet state of Croatia. Hitler
granted "Aryan" status to Croatia as his fascist allies carved up
Yugoslavia. Pavelic had been awaiting these developments whilst under the
auspices of Mussolini in Italy who had granted them the use of remote
training camps on a Aeolian island and access to a propaganda station
Radio Bari for broadcasts across the Adriatic. As soon as the new fascist
state of Croatia was born, and campaign of cold-blooded terror began, as
noted by John Cornwell in his book Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of
Pius XII (Viking, London, UK, 1999):

"(It was) an act of 'ethnic cleansing' before that hideous term came into
vogue, it was an attempt to create a 'pure' Catholic Croatia by enforced
conversions, deportations, and mass exterminations. So dreadful were the
acts of torture and murder that even hardened German troops registered
their horror. Even by comparison with the recent bloodshed in Yugoslavia
at the time of writing, Pavelic's onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs
remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history" (p
249)

Furthermore, as Cornwell notes, Pius XII had not only "warmly endorsed"
Croat nationalism, he had, before the war in November 1939, described the
Croats in a speech as an "the outpost of Christianity" of whom "the hope
of a better future seems to be smiling on you". Pavelic and Pope Puis XII
"frequently exchanged cordial telegrams" according to Dedijer, one on New
Year's Day 1943, saw the Pope give his blessing to Pavelic:

Everything that you have expressed so warmly in your name and in the name
of the Croatian Catholics we return gracefully and give you and the whole
Croatian people our apostolic blessing (Dedijer, p 115).

On April 25th 1941, following his seizure of power, Pavelic decreed that
all publications, private and public, of the Cyrillic script was banned.
In May 1941, anti-Semitic legislation was passed, defining Jews in racist
terms, preventing them from marrying "Aryans". One month later all Serb
Orthodox primary and preschools were closed. As soon as Pavelic had taken
power, the Catholic Church in Croatia began compelling Orthodox Serbs to
convert to the Catholic religion. But this was, as pointed out by
Cornwell, a highly-selective policy: the fascists had no intention of
allowing Orthodox priests or members of the Serb intelligentsia into the
religion - they were to be exterminated along with their families.
However, for those Serbs who were forced to convert, there was no immunity
or protection from the Catholic church when the "crazed bloodletting" of
the Ustashe began, as indicated by the speech made by the Croatian Nazi
Mile Budak, who was a Minister in the Ustasha regime in Gospic, Bosnia
during July 1941:

We will kill one part of the Serbs, the other part we will resettle, and
the remaining ones we will convert to the Catholic faith, and thus make
Croats of them (Dedijer, p 130).

Budak was talking about something that had already started: In an example
of savage butchery carried out in the village of Glina on May 14th 1941,
hundreds of Serbs were brought to a church to attend an obligatory service
of thanksgiving for the fascist state of Croatia. Once the Serbs were
inside, the Ustashe entered the Church armed only with axes and knives.
They asked all present to produce their certificates of conversion to
Catholicism - but only two had the required documents, and they were
released. The doors of the church were locked and the rest slaughtered.

Like with the Jews, who had to wear the Star of David in public, the Serbs
were forced to wear a blue band with the letter "P" (i.e., Orthodox) on
their sleeve. The Nazi regime decreed that the Roma were to be "treated as
Jews" and they were forced to wear yellow armbands. (A History of the
Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia, David M. Crowe, St. Martin's
Griffin, New York, USA, 1994).
Stepinac blesses the puppet Nazi regime in Croatia

When the Nazi's installed the puppet Ustashi regime in May 1941, Stepinac
immediately offered his congratulations to Pavelic, and held a banquet to
celebrate the founding of the new nation. After the opening of the Ustasha
Parliament, Pavelic attended Zagreb cathedral, where Stepinac offered
special prayers for Pavelic and ordered a solemn "Te Deum" to be sung in
thanks to God for the establishment of the new regime. In May 1941,
Stepinac also arranged to have Pavelic received personally by Pope Pius
XII in Rome in the Vatican, where on the same occasion, he signed a treaty
with Mussolini. Once Pavelic was in power, Stepinac issued a Pastoral
Letter ordering the Croatian clergy to support the new Ustasha State.
Stepinac alter recorded in his diary on 3rd August 1941 that "the Holy See
(the Vatican) recognized de facto the independent State of Croatia". In
the same year, Stepinac himself declared:

"God, who directs the destiny of nations and controls the hearts of Kings,
has given us Ante Pavelic and moved the leader of a friendly and allied
people, Adolf Hitler, to use his victorious troops to disperse our
oppressors... Glory be to God, our gratitude to Adolf Hitler and loyalty
to our Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic."

The involvement of Catholic clergy either in active participation or in
blessing the Ustashi involvement in the Holocaust is well-documented.
Stepinac himself headed the committee which was responsible for forcible
"conversions" to Roman Catholicism under threat of death, and was also the
Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, which effected the
slaughter of those who failed to convert. Stepinac was known as the
'Father Confessor' to the Ustashi and continually bestowed the blessing of
Catholic Church upon its members and actions.

Right from the very beginning, the Vatican knew what was happening in
Croatia, and certainly known to Pius XII when he greeted Pavelic in
Vatican - jus four days after the massacre at Glina. On this visit,
Pavelic had a "devotional" audience with Pius XII, and the Vatican granted
de-facto recognition of fascist Croatia as a "bastion against communism" -
despite the fact that the Vatican still had diplomatic ties with
Yugoslavia. Cornwell observes that right from the start it was known that
Pavelic was a "totalitarian dictator", a "puppet of Hitler and Mussolini",
that he had passed racist and anti-Semitic laws, and that he was "bent on
enforced conversions from Orthodox to Catholic Christianity". Effectively,
on behalf of Hitler and Mussolini, the Pope was "holding Pavelic's hand
and bestowing his papal blessing" to the new puppet state of Croatia.
Thus, it can argued, that the Catholic Cardinals in the Vatican were
accomplices of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and the extermination of the
countries Jews, Serbs and Roma citizens. Indeed, many of members of
Croatian Catholic clergy took a "leading part" in the Holocaust.

One leading member of the Catholic church in Croatia was the Nazi
collaborator Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. When he met Pavelic on April
16th 1941, he later noted that he had promised that he would "not show
tolerance" to the Orthodox Serbian church - which gave Stepinac the
impression that Pavelic "was a sincere Catholic". By June 1941, when
German army units were reporting that the "Ustashe have gone raging mad"
killing Serbs, Jews and Roma, Catholic priests, notably Franciscans took a
leading part in the massacres, as pointed out by Cornwell:

"Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres.
Many, went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with
zeal. A Father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his
constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of
180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most. Individual Franciscans killed, set
fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at
the head of Ustashe bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote
of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of
Ustashe with his crucifix." (p 254).

It is clear now, that other members of the Catholic Cardinals in Europe
also knew about the massacres. On March 6th 1942, a French Cardinal Eugne
Tisserant, a close confident of the Pope to the Croatian representative to
the Vatican:

"I know for a fact, that it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example
Father Simic of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox
populations so as to destroy, the Orthodox Church. In the same way, you
destroyed the Orthodox Church in Banja Luka. I know for sure that the
Franciscans in Bosnia and Herzegovina have acted abominably, and this
pains me. Such acts should not be committed by educated, cultured,
civilized people, let alone by priests". (p 259)

The Catholic Church took full advantage of Yugoslavia's defeat in 1941 to
increase the power and outreach of Catholicism in the Balkans - Stepinac
had shown contempt for religious freedom in way that even Cornwell says
was "tantamount to complicity with the violence" against Yugoslavia's
Jews, Serbs and Roma. For his part, the Pope "was never but benevolent" to
the leaders and representatives of fascist Croatia - in July 1941 he
greeted a hundred members of the Croatian police force headed by the
Zagreb chief of police; in February 1942, he gave gave an audience for
Ustashe youth group visiting Rome, and he also greeted another
representation of Ustashe youth in December of that year. The Pope showed
his true colours when in 1943 he told a Croatian papal representative that
he was:

"Disappointed that, in spite of everything, no one wants to acknowledge
the one, real and principal enemy of Europe; no true, communal military
crusade against Bolshevism has been initiated" (p 260)

Stepinac for one, appears to have been a full supporter of forced
conversions - along with many of his bishops, one of whom described the
advent of fascist Croatia as "a good occasion for us to help Croatia save
the countless souls" - i.e., Yugoslavia's non-Catholic majority.
Throughout the war, Croatian bishops not only endorsed forced conversions,
they never, at any point, dissociated themselves from Pavelic's regime,
let alone denounce it or threaten to excommunicate him or any other senior
member of the regime. In fact, before Yugoslavia was invaded, Stepinac had
told Regent Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in April 1940:

"The most ideal thing would be for the Serbs to return to the faith of
their fathers, that is, to bow the head before Christ's representative
(the Pope). Then we could at last breathe in this part of Europe, for
Byzantinism has played a frightful role in the history this part of the
world" (p 265).

The Pope was better informed of the situation inside Yugoslavia than he
was about any other area of Europe. His apostolic delegate, Marcone, was a
regular visitor to Croatia, travelling on military planes between Rome and
Zagreb. Cornwell describes Marcone - who was the Popes personal
representative in Croatia - as "an amateur who appeared to sleepwalk
through the entire bloodthirsty era" (p 257).

The Vatican would also have been aware of frequent BBC broadcasts on
Croatia, of which the following (which were monitored by the Vatican
State), on February 16th 1942, was typical:

"The worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the
archbishop of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of brothers is flowing in (the)
streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and we
do not hear the archbishop's voice preaching revolt. Instead it is
reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades" (p 256).

And, according to to Dedijer:

Throughout the whole war in more than 150 newspapers and magazines, the
church justified the fascist state under Pavelic as the work of God.

Many Roman Catholic priests served the Ustasha state in high positions.
The pope appointed the highest military vicar for Croatia. The latter had
a field chaplain in every unit of the Ustasha army. The task of this field
chaplain consisted among other things of repeatedly goading the Ustasha
units in their mass murders of the peasant population. High dignitaries of
the Roman Catholic Church and of the Ustasha state together organized the
mass conversion of the Orthodox Serbian population. Hundreds of Orthodox
churches in Serbia were plundered and destroyed; the three highest
dignitaries and two hundred clerics were murdered in cold blood; the
remainder of the clergy were driven into exile. In the concentration camp
of Jasenovac, hundreds of thousands of Serbs were murdered under the
command of Roman Catholic priests.

The papal emissary Marcone was in Croatia during this entire time. He
sanctioned silently all the gory deeds and permitted pictures of himself
with Pavelic and the German commanders to be published in the newspapers.
After the visit to Pope Pius XII, Ante Pavelic exchanged Christmas and New
Year's greetings with him that were published in the Ustasha press.

Pavelic escapes to Argentina disguised as a Catholic priest

The Catholic Church was not only closely involved with the Ustasha
movement in wartime Croatia, it helped many Nazi war criminals escape at
the end of the war, including Ante Pavelic, who fled to Argentina via the
Vatican and the "ratlines" of the Vatican. In mid-year 1986 the U.S.
government released documents of their counter-espionage agency, the OSS.
These reveal that the Vatican had organized a safe-flight route from
Europe to Argentina for Pavelic and two hundred of his advisors known by
name. The fascists hid frequently during their flight in cloisters and in
many instances disguised themselves as Franciscan monks (Pavelic himself
escaped disguised as a Catholic priest).

Also, at the end of the war, the Ustashe looted some $80 million from
Yugoslavia, much of which was composed of gold coins. Here again, they had
the total collaboration of Vatican, which according to Cornwell included
not only hospitality of a pontifical Croatian religious institution (the
College of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Rome), but also provision of
storage facilities and safe-deposit services for the Ustashe treasury.
During the war, the College of San Girolamo became a home for Croatian
priests receiving Vatican-sponsored theological education - after the war,
it became the headquarters for the postwar Ustashe underground, providing
Croatian war criminals with escape routes to Latin America.

A leading figure at the College of San Girolamo was the Croatian priest
and Nazi war criminal Father Krunoslav Draganavic - described once by U.S.
intelligence officials as Pavelic's "alter ego". His arrival in Rome in
1943 was to coordinate Italian-Ustashe activities, and after the war, he
was a central figure in the organising escape routes for Nazi's to
Argentina. It was later claimed that members of the CIA had said that he
had been allowed to store the archives of the Croatian legation inside the
Vatican, as well as valuables brought out of Yugoslavia by fleeing Ustashe
in 1945.

The most famous Nazi mass-murderer who passed through the College of San
Girolamo was Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyons, the Gestapo
police chief in that French city between 1942 and 1944, who had tortured
and murdered Jews and members of the French resistance. Barbie lived under
Draganavic's protection at San Girolamo from early 1946 until late 1947,
when the US Counter Intelligence Corp helped him escape to Latin America.
Another Nazi war criminal, Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka
death camp was assisted with false papers and hiding places in Rome by the
Nazi sympathizer Bishop Alois Hudal. Draganavic was expelled from San
Girolamo a few days after Pope Pius XII death in October 1958.

While it may be true that individual Catholics risked their lives to save
the Jews, Roma and Serbs from the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, as an
entity, did not. The Vatican also assisted thousands of Nazi war criminals
such as Adolph Eichmann, Franz Stangl (the commandant of Treblinka),
Walter Rauf (the inventor of the "mobile" gas chamber), and Klaus Barbie
(the "Butcher of Lyons"). Pope Pius XII personally authorized the
smuggling of Nazi war criminals, which was directed by his political
advisor Giovanni Montini (who later became Pope Paul VI). Shortly before
his death in Madrid in 1959, Pope John XXIII granted Pavelic his special
blessing. On his death bed, Pavelic held a wreath that was a personal gift
from Pope Pius XII from the year 1941.
Stepinac found guilty of collaboration

After the war Stepinac was arrested by the Yugoslav government and
sentenced to 17 years in prison for war crimes. A parade of prosecution
witnesses at his trial in Zagreb testified on October 5, 1946, that
Catholic priests armed with pistols went out to convert Orthodox Serbs and
massacred them. In one instance, one witness said 650 Serbs were taken
into a church under false pretenses, and then were stabbed and beaten to
death by Ustashi members after the doors were locked. Stepinac was
convicted on all principal counts of aiding the Axis, the Nazi puppet of
Ante Pavelic, and of glorifying the Ustashi in the Catholic press,
pastoral letters, and speeches. He eventually died under house arrest in
1960 after being sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration by the
postwar communist government in Yugoslavia.

The Investigation by the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission established that
Stepinac had played a leading part in the conspiracy that led to the
conquest and breakdown of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941. It was
furthermore established that he had played a role in governing the Nazi
puppet state of Croatia, that many members of his clergy participated
actively in atrocities and mass murders, and, finally, that they
collaborated with the enemy down to the last day of the Nazi rule, and
continued after the liberation to conspire against the newly created
Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia.

Stepinac only served a few years in prison because of the Vatican's
anti-Communist propaganda of the "suffering martyr" and their organizing
of "Cardinal Stepinac Associations" which lobbied for his release.

Jews and Serbs say that Stepinac was a Nazi collaborator. Catholic
supporters claim he initially backed the regime, but later withdrew his
support because of the mass executions and forced conversions of Orthodox
Christians to Catholicism - although little credible evidence is presented
of this.

Archbishop Stepinac was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Croatia on
October 1998. Following the countries succession from Yugoslavia in 1991,
the ultra-Nationlist Tudjman regime in Croatia renamed a village in
Krajina after him. The late President Tudjman himself is on record as
having said that he is "proud that his wife has no Jewish or Serbian blood
in her". Ironically, unlike Pavelic himself, whose wife seems to have been
Jewish (Pavelic's mother-in law, Ivana Herzfeld was said to be was Jewish)

Like the French Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen (who described the Holocaust as a
"mere detail of history"), Tudjman also become a Holocaust revisionist. In
his book Wastelands of History, he questioned the truth behind the
Holocaust and moved to cover up the role of Ustashe regime in the darkest
period of Croatia's history. Worse, Tudjman rehabilitated fascist war
criminals and gave them medals, and, as in the case of Stepinac, had
streets named after them.

On two occasions in 1970 and 1994, attempts were made to the Yad Vashem
Holocaust to get Stepinac added to the "List of the Righteous" - which
includes people like Oskar Schindler, but this was turned down.
Interestingly, the request was sent by private Jewish citizens from
Croatia and not the official Jewish organization in Croatia, which has
never sent such a request Explaining the refusal, an official of the Yad
Vashem explained that:

"Persons who assisted Jews but simultaneously collaborated or were linked
with a Fascist regime which took part in the Nazi orchestrated persecution
of Jews, may be disqualified for the Righteous title".

Nazi connection to Franciscan Order uncovered near Medjugorje, Bosnia

The Franciscan order has always denied the evidence of its wartime ties to
the Ustasha regime in Croatia. They acted as facilitators and middlemen in
moving the contents of the Ustasha Treasury from Croatia to Austria, Italy
and finally South America after the war. During the Nazi occupation of
Bosnia, the Franciscans were closely involved with the Ustashe regime. Not
far from Medjugorje in Bosnia (where the Virgin Mary is said to put in
nightly appearances for the tens of thousands of Roman Catholic pilgrims),
is the Franciscan monastery at Sirkoi Brijeg which has become the centre
of allegations linking it to disappearance of the Ustashe treasury after
the war.

In San Francisco Federal Court in November 1999, in what was described as
"tangible proof" of the Nazi Franciscan connection, was obtained when
cameramen working for Phillip Kronzer (who has helped expose the
Medjugorje myth) obtained entry to the Monastery and filmed a secret
shrine honouring the Ustashe. A plaque dedicated to Franciscan monks who
were Ustasha members was filmed along with a massive shrine lining the
walls complete with photographs of Ustasha soldiers some in Nazi uniforms.
The admonition, "Recognize us, We are yours" can clearly be seen in the
video footage. On a later visit to the monastery the shrine had been
dismantled but the videotape preserved the evidence and has now been made
available by the Kronzer Foundation.
Cold War Era Files May Hold the Key to Holocaust Lawsuit

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed in August 2000 in San
Francisco, USA by California attorneys Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton
against the U.S. Army and the CIA. Easton and Levy are also pursuing a
Holocaust era lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order
regarding the disappearance of the World War II Nazi Croatian treasury
including gold, silver, and jewels plundered from concentration camp
victims in Croatia and Bosnia, mainly Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.

The lawyers are seeking the release of over 250 documents from the files
of Draganavic. He is now regarded as one of the of the principal operators
of the so-called Vatican "ratline" that smuggled Nazis and their loot to
South America between 1945 and the late 1950's. Beneficiaries of the
ratline included Adolf Eichman, Klaus Barbie "the butcher of Lyons" and
the notorious Croatian mass murderer Ante Pavelic as well as thousands of
lesser known Nazis and collaborators.

While file releases on the ratline date from as early as the 1983 Barbie
case, a core of documents remain withheld on grounds of "national
security." It is these documents the attorneys want from the Army and CIA.
They describe him as a "sinister priest" who is alleged to have worked at
various times for the secret services of Croatia, the Vatican, the Soviet
Union, and Yugoslavia as well as British and American intelligence.

The attorneys have suggested that the withheld documents, most well over
40 years old are highly embarrassing to the Americans, the British, and
Vatican and hold the key to a multinational money laundering scheme that
used Holocaust victim loot to finance covert Cold War era operations
against the Soviet Union and its allies.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

(source: libcom.org)





CZECH REPUBLIC:

Visit to Czech Nazi camp inspires Massey author


Should travellers visit death camps? If so, should they then write about
them?


These questions plagued senior English lecturer Dr Jack Ross before and
during his visit to Terezn - a former Nazi prison camp near Prague.

Hed heard about Terezn, (Theresienstadt in German) before he arrived in
Czech Republic to visit Prague-based friends in 2004.

Once there, the efforts of locals to discourage him from going to the
village - just 20 kilometres from Prague and where people still live -
made him all the more curious and determined to get there.

The result of his journey is a monograph of verse, essay and photographs,
titled To Terezin. Its the latest to be published in a series by Massey's
School of Social and Cultural Studies.

In it, he evokes not just scenes and images of the place itself and of his
observations of modern life in Prague, but ponders the ethical dilemma of
what it means to attempt to write about atrocities without exploiting
others misery and suffering for art's sake.

"I guess I didn't really respect the idea of writing about prison camps,
of pre-empting someones suffering," Dr Ross says.

"If I can go prattling on about being in a death camp, what's left for the
person who was there?"

Czechs he encountered, including some who still live in the "miserable
little town" as he describes it, had implied that to visit the prison site
was somehow vulgar, bad taste, inappropriate and a waste of time.

"My subject declared itself pretty early on in the inability of (at least
some) of my hosts to understand my motives in wanting to visit
Theresienstadt. This led me to question why it had become important to me
to go there, and (especially) what I hoped to find there to justify the
effort. It was so difficult for me to find answers to their questions that
I realised I had inadvertently struck a personal nerve."

"My problem was to write 'naturally' and approachably about one of the
most unnatural acts of modern times - without a distinct personal axe to
grind and with the full awareness of my temerity in doing so," he says in
the book.

Terezn was originally an Austrian garrison town built in the late 18th
century. When Hitler's Nazis annexed Czechoslovakia in 1938, it became a
concentration camp used as a transit point for more than 200,000 Jews who
were moved to death camps further east. Of the 15,000 children who entered
Terezn, only 132 survived, although thousands of drawings from children
incarcerated there were hidden and can be seen at museums on site as well
as in Israel and the United States.

"Most terrifying were the children's drawings - a whole room of them. Lots
of them died there," he says.

For Dr Ross, who teaches travel writing at Massey in Auckland, Terezn was
also the catalyst for reflecting on how people deal with the past, and how
they deny the continuance of past horrors. In the case of Eastern Europe,
he observed how vehemently the Romany gypsies are still hated and
persecuted, with people referring to them as thieves and vigilante groups
burning their tents when they come to town.

To Terezin is an entrancing model of how travel writing can encompass a
range of genres - essay, verse, images - as well as wider themes of
ethics, philosophy, literature, art and history that feed into a personal
exploration of ideas sparked by a particular place.

"As a human being, I have no right to sit in judgement on the people who
live in or near Terezn or the thousands of other camps lying like unhealed
scars on the body of Europe," he says in the book's epilogue.

"As a writer, though, I have to poke in my nose. If one could feel sure
that it really was all in the past, that such things could never recur,
then it would be easier to leave it alone."

(source: Massey News)