Nov. 2



Albums cataloging Nazi-looted art presented to National Archives


Albums catalog artwork Nazis looted from French collections
Purpose of albums was for Hitler to select which pieces he wanted
Nazis looted thousands of items throughout Europe during World War II
U.S. soldier found albums near the end of war, brought them home with him


The discovery of two albums detailing stolen French art that the Nazis
were to take to Germany for Adolf Hitler's personal collection was
announced Thursday at the National Archives.

The leather-bound albums created by a special unit of the Third Reich
contain photographs of art by Hubert Robert and Francois Boucher.

Allen Wallenstein, chief archivist of the United States, called it, "One
of the most significant finds related to Hitler's premeditated theft of
art and other cultural treasures to be found since the Nuremberg trials."

American troops found 39 similar albums near the end of World War II and
used them as evidence against Nazi war criminals during the trials, but
historians think even more are out there.

"From the records, we believe there may have been up to 85 of these albums
put together by the Nazis for Hitler and for their purposes. So these are
the first two that have surfaced in, obviously, many decades," said
Michael Kurtz, assistant archivist for records services at the National
Archives.

The Nazis looted hundreds of thousands of cultural items throughout Europe
over the span of the war, mostly confiscating art from world-renowned
Jewish-owned art collections.

Art seizures from France totaled 21,903 objects from more than 200
collections, taking close to 9,000 pieces from the Rothschild, David-Weill
and Kann family collections alone, according to documents.

Soldiers filled 30 rail cars for the first shipment from France to
Germany. That initial shipment contained Vermeer's "Astronomer," now on
exhibit at the Louvre in Paris.

The albums were originally created by the Einstatzstab Reichsleiter
Rosenberg (ERR), a special Paris-based unit organized by Alfred Rosenberg
in 1940. Later that year, Hitler ordered all confiscated works of art to
be brought to Germany. According to archivists, the catalogs were to be
used so Hitler could pick and choose artwork for a museum to be created in
Linz, Austria.

The albums document "the relationship of the Nazi hierarchy to Hitler.
This is all meant to demonstrate their loyalty, their proficiency. It
demonstrates many other things as well, so that's part of the significance
of having yet another one of these albums surface," Kurtz said. "There was
a lot of competition amongst the top Nazis to get the best art."

The albums announced at the event came from the descendants of an American
soldier stationed in Germany who found them at Hitler's home in Berghof,
tossed them into his rucksack and brought them home with him. They sat in
an attic for years until the family of the now-deceased soldier contacted
the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, a group that
helps to recover and find the home of previously stolen artwork.

"I think [the soldier's family] understood the importance of it, but at
the same point in time, it was a perplexing situation. ... They were
concerned, like anyone that would have these things, about not wanting to
be in trouble," said Robert Edsel, president of Monuments Men, who met
with the family of the soldier and presented Album 8 to the National
Archives. A letter of intent to donate Album 6 also was presented to the
Archives. In the meantime, it will tour the U.S. with Edsel.

Officials hope to be able to recover more of this kind of documentation.

"Our hope is that the publicity and the education that Mr. Edsel and his
foundation are going to attain are going to make people aware of these
things, and perhaps ... as other GIs have picked up some of these albums
and their families realize that these are things that should come to the
National Archives, should be preserved and should be made available,"
Kurtz said.

(source: CNN)






GERMANY:

Work starts on permanent exhibit at former Nazi secret police HQ


Work starts Friday on a long-delayed exhibition centre that will document
Nazi-era crimes at the former headquarters of Adolf Hitler's secret
police in the heart of the capital.

The single-story, glass-fronted pavilion, designed by German architect
Ursula Wilms, should be ready in time for the 65th anniversary of Nazi
Germany's final surrender in 2010.

It will complete a memorial known as the "Topography of Terror" at the
site that served as the centre of Nazi power before and during the Second
World War - a place where some of the regime's most notorious figures
worked and planned the Holocaust.

Next door to the former Gestapo, or secret police, headquarters was the
Hotel Prinz Albrecht, which housed leaders of the SS, the Nazi party's
dreaded paramilitary unit - including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard
Heydrich.

Little remains of the buildings that once stood at the site, located just
inside West Berlin after the war and bordered by one of the few remaining
sections of the Berlin Wall.

Plans to build a documentation center date back to 1992. In the meantime,
visitors have been able to view an open-air exhibition in what remains of
the destroyed buildings' cellars.

Officials first awarded the project 14 years ago to Swiss architect Peter
Zumthor, but halted it amid spiraling costs. In 2004, the partly built
structure was demolished.

Wilms' design was selected last year to replace it. The 44-year-old is
known for simple and functional designs, which in the past have included
hospitals and nursing homes.

Plans call for the documentation center - just a few minutes' walk from
the capital's Holocaust memorial - to be opened on May 8, 2010, 65 years
to the day after the end of World War II in Europe.

The estimated US$33 million cost will be shouldered by the German federal
government and the city government.

The long delay in building the center was "more than an embarrassment, the
'Topography of Terror' being no less than the site of the most important
centres of National Socialist policies of repression and crime," said
Wolfgang Boernsen, a lawmaker for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian
Democrats.

The site will now become "a worthy place of memory," he added. "We more
than owe this to the victims of the Nazis' regime of terror, on whose fate
decisions were made here."

(source: The Canadian Press)

***********

Germany Starts Work on Gestapo Exhibit


The German government on Friday started construction of an exhibition
center at the site where the Gestapo, leaders of the SS and other top
officials in Adolf Hitler's police state presided over Nazi-era
crimes.

The site "stands like no other place in Berlin for terror and genocide,"
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit told reporters while marking the start of
work. With the new center, he said, "one of the most important, authentic
places of remembrance in Berlin will gain in stature."

The functional glass-and-metal structure, a single-story pavilion designed
by German architect Ursula Wilms, will complete a memorial known as the
"Topography of Terror" at what was one of the centers of Nazi power. It
should be opened on May 8, 2010 the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germany's
final surrender.

Visitors currently around 500,000 a year have been able to view an
open-air exhibition in what remains of the Gestapo cellars, which were
uncovered in the 1980s in what is now largely wasteland.

The Gestapo also had its prison at the headquarters.

Next door once stood the Hotel Prinz Albrecht, which housed the leadership
of the SS, the Nazi party's dreaded paramilitary unit including Heinrich
Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich and the Reich Security Main Office.
Officials prepared the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders
formalized their plans for the Holocaust, at the site.

The SS acted as a special police force and was involved in some of the
worst crimes committed in territory under Nazi control during World War
II.

The remains of the damaged buildings were leveled after World War II. The
site is in what was for decades a neglected corner of postwar West Berlin,
right next to the Berlin Wall. It is still bordered by one of the wall's
few remaining sections.

Wowereit said Wilms' design "is architecturally restrained and does not
distract from the matter at hand."

The estimated $33 million cost of the new center will be shouldered by the
German federal government and the city government.

Andreas Nachama, a former head of Berlin's Jewish community who leads the
foundation overseeing the project, said that it would include a library
and seminar rooms as well as the documentation center.

The site will now become "a worthy place of memory," said Wolfgang
Boernsen, a lawmaker for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

"We more than owe this to the victims of the Nazis' regime of terror, on
whose fate decisions were made here."

The site is a few minutes' walk from the capital's Holocaust memorial,
which opened two years ago. It is across the road from the one-time Nazi
Aviation Ministry, which is now Germany's Finance Ministry.

On the Net: http://www.topographie.de/en/index.html

(source: Associated Press)


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

TAKE TWO FOR TERROR--Nazi Documentation Center Finally Underway in Berlin

It took two decades and a second cornerstone laying ceremony, but on
Friday, construction at the 'Topography of Terror' got underway. The site
is to document the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo.

Memory in Berlin has never been easily approached. The fight over the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was long and bitter, and
disagreements over the planned monuments to the gay and to the Sinti/Roma
victims of the Holocaust have likewise overshadowed both projects.

None of the dust ups, though, have even come close to that surrounding the
so-called Topography of Terror. But on Friday -- fully two decades after
the project was originally set in motion -- the cornerstone was laid in
Berlin for a documentation center chronicling some of Nazi Germany's most
horrific crimes. For the second time.

"The whole process was unbearable," Andreas Nachama, head of the
organization in charge of creating and managing the exhibition, told
SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We kept getting different stories about when the center
would be finished. Now at least we have a date we can shoot for."

The 23 million ($33 million) center, designed by architect Ursula Wilms,
is to be built in the heart of Berlin on the site where the SS, Hitler's
feared paramilitary group, had its headquarters as did the Gestapo, the
Nazis' secret police force. Both Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich
had offices there. In 1939, the two were combined under the aegis of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt -- or Security Service Main Office -- where
Adolf Eichmann, under Ernst Kaltenbrunner, managed the logistics of the
Holocaust.

It is a place that has long been a magnet for tourists. As early as 1987,
a temporary outdoor exhibition was set up there, consisting of
informational placards and pictures plastered onto foundation remnants
left over from the terror authorities' headquarters. The site hasn't
changed much since, but that hasn't kept up to 500,000 visitors from
filing past the display each year. Even on Friday, with dark wet clouds
settling over Berlin, the site was full of sightseers.

The site's provisional nature, though, has never lived up to its
historical importance. When the Wilms building is finished -- the
dedication is set for May 2010, the 65th anniversary of the end of World
War II -- it will join the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust memorial as
part of the triumvirate of memory in the German capital.

But it has taken many years, and many millions of euros to get this far.
The first cornerstone laying ceremony took place way back in 1995. It
didn't take long, though, for the museum project, conceived by Swiss
architect Peter Zumthor, to rocket over budget. In 2000, construction was
officially stopped, after bits of the building were already in place.
Despite changes to the design, Zumthor's drawings were officially pitched
in 2004 and the modest beginnings to his building were torn down -- after
13 million had already been sunk into it. His resulting lawsuit was
eventually unsuccessful.

Wilms' design, a blocky, single-story pavilion -- which will also house a
20,000-volume library of Third Reich documentation -- is far from the
dramatic structure that Zumthor had envisaged. But with the beginning of
construction on Friday, the city may finally be on the road to putting the
ignominious chapter behind it.

"The construction has begun and we are confident it will be finished on
time," Nachama said. "I am greatly relieved."

(source: Spiegel Online)


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



Nov. 4



USA//NEW YORK:

Johtje Vos, Who Saved Wartime Jews, Dies at 97

Johtje Vos, a Dutch woman who with her husband hid three dozen Jews in
their home during World War II, shepherding them through a tunnel under
the backyard and into the woods whenever the Gestapo pounded on the door,
died on Oct. 10 in Saugerties, N.Y. She was 97, and had lived in Woodstock
from 1951 until a year ago.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Barbara Moorman.

During the war years, Mrs. Vos and her husband, Aart, lived in a
three-bedroom house on a dead-end road in the town of Laren in the
Netherlands, with acres of forest behind it. Mr. Vos, who died in 1990,
grew up in Laren and knew every stream and field in the area. That allowed
him to lead Jews through the woods to the house at night and back into the
woods when the Nazis were coming. Each time a German raid was imminent, a
sympathetic Dutch police chief in Laren, a friend of the Voses, would dial
their phone, let it ring twice, hang up, then repeat the code.

In all, 36 people were saved by the Voses, with as many as 14 hiding in
their home at any one time after the German invasion of the Netherlands in
May 1940.

Evelyn Loeb Garfinkel and her mother, Ilse Loeb, were among the three
dozen.

"If Johtje hadn't done what she did, my mother wouldn't have survived and
I wouldn't be alive," Mrs. Garfinkel, of Delmar, N.Y., told The Times
Union of Albany after attending Mrs. Voss funeral on Oct. 16.

Mr. and Mrs. Vos resisted the notion that they had done something out of
the ordinary. Interviewed for the 1992 book Rescuers: Portraits of Moral
Courage in the Holocaust, by Gay Block and Malka Drucker (Holmes & Meier),
Mrs. Vos said, "I want to say right away that the words hero and righteous
gentile are terribly misplaced."

"I don't feel righteous," said Mrs. Vos, who, like her husband, was a
member of the Dutch Reformed Church, "and we are certainly not heroes,
because we didn't sit at the table when the misery started and say, 'O.K.,
now we are going to risk our lives to save some people.'"

It started one night in 1942 when a Jewish couple asked to be sheltered
for just that night as they ran from the Germans. Soon after, another
friend asked them to keep a suitcase containing valuables before he was
sent to a ghetto.

The Voses were surprised to discover that their friend was Jewish. "We
never talked about Jews," Mrs. Vos recalled. "They were all just Dutch,
thats all."

A 3-year-old boy, Mark de Klijn, was later taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Vos as
his parents faced deportation. Word filtered through the Jewish community,
and other escapees began seeking shelter. Soon, mattresses covered the
floor. Unless they were trying to flee even farther, the guests would
never leave the house.

Except when the phone rang twice, then twice again. Then Mr. Vos would
lead them into a shed attached to the back of the house, down through a
camouflaged trapdoor under a coal bin and into a 150-foot tunnel through
which they would crawl before slipping into the woods.

Every time the Gestapo came, Mrs. Vos said, "I would take questions from
them and lie and lie and lie."

Johanna (she preferred the nickname Johtje, pronounced YO-tya) Kuyper was
born on Dec. 29, 1909, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, the second of three
daughters of Guillaume and Henrietta Storm van Leeuwen Kuyper. Her father,
a retired army officer, was the mayor of Amersfoort. Her grandfather
Abraham Kuyper had been prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to
1905.

As a young woman, Johanna Kuyper went to Paris to work as a freelance
journalist, "which was a scandalous thing at the time," she said. There,
she married a young German artist, Heinrich Molenaar, who hated Hitler,
she
said. The couple left France and moved into the family-owned house in
Laren, where their two children were born: Mrs. Moorman, of Glenford,
N.Y., and Hetty Crews, who died in 2001. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 1942, Johanna Kuyper and Aart Vos were married. They had four sons,
three of whom survive: Dominique, of Woodstock; John, of Saugerties; and
Sebastian, of the Netherlands. Their son Peter died in 1973. Mrs. Vos is
also survived by 15 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

As far as Mrs. Voss children are concerned, they have another sibling:
Moana Hilfman Brinkman, of Amsterdam.

When Mr. and Mrs. Vos were living in the house in Laren, they regularly
beseeched Moana Hilfmans parents to take refuge with them. The Hilfmans
refused.

"They said: 'We are Jews. This is our fate,'" Mrs. Vos once recalled. "I
begged them to at least let me take their 3-year-old daughter, Moana."

Only on the night that the Gestapo came did the Hilfmans hand over their
daughter to a friend, who spirited her to the Vos home.

"She lived with us for years after the war," Mrs. Moorman said on Friday.
"We consider her our sister."

(source: New York Times)



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





GERMANY:

Nazi Voting Paradox Emerges In Tale Of Two Villages


The village in Germany that formed the most united front against the
Nazis nestles next to one which was once hailed for its total support of
Adolf Hitler.

This unlikely tale of two villages, one Catholic, the other Protestant,
lies at the heart of a new book that sheds light on how age-old religious
differences influenced politics in Nazi Germany -- and how much has
changed in the country since.

In March 1933, the village of Hauenstein cast over 92 percent of its votes
for a joint Catholic ticket fronted by the Centre Party -- the highest
share received for any non-Nazi grouping in the last multi-party elections
before World War Two.

Three years earlier, the nominally Protestant Darstein 2.5 miles away had
become famous as the first village to vote exclusively for Hitler. It did
so again in 1933.

"There was only a mountain between the villages, yet their voting behavior
was worlds apart," said historian Theo Schwarzmueller, author of
"Hauenstein gegen Hitler" (Hauenstein against Hitler) and resident of the
southwestern village.

Schwarzmueller's book joins a growing body of work exploring domestic
resistance to Hitler, which for years received little attention as Germany
sought to avoid re-awakening divisive memories as it tried to re-establish
itself internationally.

Though local voting records during Hitler's dictatorship are known, the
book by the 46-year-old Schwarzmueller is the first to address the extreme
polarities of Hauenstein and Darstein.

"It was taboo for Catholics and Protestants to intermarry in those
villages before," he said. "Now, it's no issue at all."

So far the extent of local German Catholic resistance to the Nazis has not
been properly addressed, said Schwarzmueller.

"More attention must be paid to confessional allegiance to understand
history better -- particularly voting patterns," he said. "Electoral
research shows that Catholic areas put up the stiffest resistance to the
lure of National Socialism."

PATCHWORK QUILT

As Germany takes a more prominent global role again under Angela Merkel,
its first Chancellor born after World War Two, interest in the "good
Germans" from the Nazi era is growing.

"None of the voters are still alive," said Schwarzmueller. "But my
generation, who only heard reports about those events -- and a lot was
kept quiet -- wants to know what really happened."

Among the book's cast of characters are Hauenstein's priest Georg Sommer,
a stern authoritarian whose views on law and order extended to how long
women's hair should be. Arrested several times, Sommer shielded his parish
from the Nazis and battled anti-Semitism.

Mistrust of Nazis reflected the discrimination Catholics had suffered in
Germany since the rise of Protestant Prussia under Otto von Bismarck, a
policy intensified by Hitler -- even though he and a number of other top
Nazis had Catholic backgrounds.

When Germany unified in 1871, the country was a patchwork quilt of
Catholic and Protestant areas because of the political settlements of
religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In Weimar Germany, Darstein belonged to the predominantly Catholic
Bavaria, which helped to stoke anti-Catholic sentiment among locals during
the hardships of the Great Depression.

"The irony is that the only Catholic in Darstein was the local Nazi party
leader," said Schwarzmueller.

The book, which coincides with renewed German interest in the Church since
Joseph Ratzinger's election as Pope in 2005, yields other surprises: a
Berlin street still bears the name of Darstein which the Nazis gave it in
honor of the loyal village.

(source: Reuters)