April 9



GERMANY:

Report Details Catholic Role in Nazi Abuses


The Roman Catholic Church in Germany exploited nearly 6,000 forced
laborers during the Nazi era, the church said in a report released
Tuesday.

In 2000, the church acknowledged its use of forced labor under Hitler; it
has paid about $2.35 million in compensation to foreign workers. The
report, Forced Labor and the Catholic Church 1939-1945, is the most
thorough look at the issue.

It documents the fate of 1,075 prisoners of war and 4,829 civilians who
were forced to work for the Nazis in nearly 800 Catholic institutions
including hospitals and monastery gardens to help the war effort.

The church, which has financed more than 200 reconciliation projects, said
final numbers would never be known.

It should not be concealed that the Catholic Church was blind for too long
to the fate and suffering of men, women and children from the whole of
Europe who were carted off to Germany as forced laborers, Cardinal Karl
Lehmann said at the presentation of the report.

Catholics and Protestants were subject to oppression under the Nazis, but
aside from some notable voices of opposition from each church, they
generally went along with the regime.

The SS expropriated more than 300 monasteries and Catholic institutions
from 1940 to 1942, and thousands of Catholics were sent to concentration
camps, said Karl-Joseph Hummel, a historian and a co-author of the report.

At a televised news conference in Mainz, Mr. Hummel said the term
cooperative antagonism summed up the churchs strategy at the time. The
report said a large proportion of the workers mostly from Poland, Ukraine
and the Soviet Union were forced to help the Nazi war effort in military
hospitals that would not have been able to keep operating without them.

The Nazis shipped millions of people from conquered territories,
especially in Eastern Europe, to work for the war economy in poor
conditions.

Mr. Hummel said the conditions for those in forced labor for the church
were not as bad as at some other organizations.

(source: Reuters)





USA//NEW YORK----FILM:

Eyeing Pornography That Uses the Holocaust as Titillation

In early-1960s Israel pornographic, possibly anti-Semitic novels that
detailed sensational tales of the torture and rape of male concentration
camp prisoners by curvaceous female Nazi guards rapidly rose from marginal
pulp reading to mass-market popularity.

Ari Libsker's documentary "Stalags" is named for these pocket-size books,
which were written under American pseudonyms in a style that suggested
translation. (They were in fact done in Hebrew by Israeli writers, some of
whom appear on screen.) The film examines the rise and fall of this
short-lived craze and the doors it opened for discussing the Holocaust, a
previously hush-hush subject in Israel.

The film also considers possible inspirations for the Stalags, from the
1961 trial of the high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which exposed sexual
abuse within concentration camps, to the works of K. Tzetnik, a Holocaust
historian or fabricator, depending on whom you ask. (His books recounted
similar atrocities.)

(source: New York Times)




GERMANY:

Berlin prepares to repair cracks in Holocaust memorial


Experts are preparing to repair cracks that have appeared in the slabs
that make up Berlin's Holocaust memorial since the monument opened in
2005.

Blue canvas covers have been draped over a few of the memorial's 2,711
slabs to dry them out and protect them from rain, Felizitas Borzym, an
official with the foundation that oversees the monument, said Wednesday.

Workers are to inject the gray concrete slabs with a special resin in the
next few days in an effort to seal the cracks.

The foundation said last month that as many as 1,900 slabs have cracks,
although some have only extremely minor damage.

The memorial opened to the public in May 2005. Cracks in several hundred
slabs emerged last year; earlier this year, an expert suggested that the
cause might be weather-induced tensions inside the slabs.

Other possible causes that have been suggested are vibrations from a
nearby building site and a suburban railway tunnel.

Officials have chosen slabs with five different degrees of damage for the
first repairs, to test out the sealing method.

It was not immediately clear how much the repairs might cost or how long
they would take. The company that built the memorial is taking on the cost
of repairing the first 50 slabs.

Designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial - located
close to Berlin's signature Brandenburg Gate - cost 27.6 million (US$43.4
million) to build. The site is open to the public around the clock.

(source: Associated Press)


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

Deutche Bahn compromises with Holocaust exhibition


German state railway operator Deutsche Bahn has made a significant
compromise in the escalating conflict with Holocaust survivor groups,
saying Tuesday they will allow the traveling exhibit "Train of
Commemoration" to stop at Berlin's Grunewald station instead of the city's
main station.

The "Train of Commemoration" spokesperson Hans-Rdiger Minow said he was
pleased with the compromise.

On Monday the exhibition organizer, the International Auschwitz Committee,
founded by concentration camp survivors, had expressed outrage at Deutsche
Bahn's decision not to accept their request to stop at the main station.
Closing important stations to the exhibit is "incomprehensible and
unacceptable," the group said.

Deutsche Bahn has blamed their refusal on technical problems.

Organizers of "Train of commemoration," which is supported by several
grass-roots initiatives, had rejected Deutsche Bahn's suggestions for
alternative stations, insisting that the exhibit should be held at the
Berlin central station to draw more visitors. The two sides have also
argued over fees for use of Deutsche Bahn tracks and depot space.

The exhibit, which has been traveling throughout the country since
November 8, 2007, features photos and films of Auschwitz survivors
describing their deportation to the Nazi concentration camp. It has been
making stops at former deportation stations. The travelling exhibit will
arrive at the Auschwitz memorial on May 8, the anniversary of the end of
the Second World War.

The Grunewald station is several kilometres away from central Berlin. The
train is expected to arrive on Sunday.

(source: The Local)








April 7




ENGLAND:

Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Bosss Orgy Draws Calls to Quit


Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay
across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix
motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page expos and
accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five
supposed prostitutes in a London sex "dungeon."

But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of
Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in
London's fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley's
resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de
l'Automobile. Known as the F.I.A., it is the international governing body
of motor sports, and has presided over the expansion of Formula One racing
into one of the worlds richest sports.

Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger
son of Britain's 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society
beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was
held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included
Hitler as a guest of honor.

The tabloid newspaper that broke the story of Mr. Mosley's Chelsea
session, The News of the World, described it as "a depraved Nazi
sadomasochistic orgy," and said Mr. Mosley had paid the equivalent of
$5,000 in cash for the five-hour session.

In a video the paper posted on the Internet but later removed, two of the
women wore black-and-white striped robes in the style of prisoners
uniforms. The video showed Mr. Mosley counting in German - "Eins! Zwei!
Drei! Vier! Funf!" - as he used a leather strap to lash one of the women.

"She needs more of ze punishment!" he cried in German-accented English.
One woman appeared to search his hair for lice while another called off
items on an inspection list. Mr. Mosley, naked, was bound face-down and
lashed more than 20 times.

Mr. Mosley has acknowledged participating in the session. But he has
denied that the role-playing had a Nazi motif, and announced Friday that
he had filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, claiming "unlimited damages"
for invasion of privacy.

In a letter on Saturday to the head of Germanys motoring federation, he
renewed his insistence that the Chelsea session was a private matter, and
added, in a reference to the F.I.A.s role in promoting road safety around
the world: "Had I been caught driving excessively fast on a public road or
over the alcohol limit, I would have resigned the same day. As it is, the
scandal paper obtained by illegal means pictures of something I did in
private, which, although unacceptable to some people, was harmless and
completely legal."

He has refused to resign his F.I.A. post, appealing to the federations
global network of motoring organizations for support. But denunciations
have cascaded from much of the racing world, from Jewish groups, and from
F.I.A.-affiliated motoring organizations around the world, including the
American Automobile Association, which said in a statement on Saturday
that Mr. Mosley, as F.I.A. chief, needed to set "the highest standards of
ethical behavior" if he was to represent millions of motorists worldwide.
It added: "It would be in the best interest of all concerned if he were to
step down."

Perhaps more significantly, calls for his resignation have come from four
major car companies, each of which owns or substantially controls grand
prix racing teams: BMW, Daimler Benz, Honda and Toyota.

For the world of Formula One, which attracts a global audience of tens of
millions of television viewers, the scandal has come at a bad time. It is
still reeling from the enmities sown last year when Mr. Mosley, as the
F.I.A. chief, served as chief prosecutor in the so-called spygate affair
in which nearly 800 pages of secret technical data were stolen from the
Italian Ferrari team and handed to its chief racetrack rivals, the British
McLaren team.

McLaren, in which Daimler Benz is a major partner, paid a fine of $100
million, the highest in sports history.

The Times of London reported Friday that Mr. Mosley would argue in his
lawsuit that he spoke German during the sex-and-bondage session because
two of the women involved were Germans, not to engage in Nazi role
playing. He learned the language when his parents, interned by Winston
Churchill during World War II as security threats and self-exiled in Paris
after the war, sent him to an exclusive private school in Bavaria for two
years. He later earned a physics degree from Oxford and became a lawyer
before making a career in motor racing.

The Sunday Times of London reported in this weekends editions that Mr.
Mosley was the target of a set-up involving a van with a hidden
videocamera parked outside the Chelsea basement flat where the sex session
took place, and that a miniature camera was concealed in the one of the
womens brassieres.

It quoted - Mosley associates as saying that the prison garb worn by the
women were "American convict uniforms" and as dismissing the Nazi
allegations by saying, "The scenario was more Alcatraz than Auschwitz."

While some British newspaper columnists argued that the affair was
strictly a family matter for Mr. Mosley, who has been married for 48
years, much of the news media coverage has cast it as a family tragedy in
another sense. Stories have recalled how he was 11 weeks old when his
mother was taken to prison, and have detailed how the shadow of his
parents - his father died in 1980, his mother in 2003 has long fallen
across his life.

Mr. Mosley has said that he had hoped for a career in politics, but that
his family name made that impossible. Explaining his turn to motor racing,
where he had an undistinguished record in the sports lower echelons, he
has said that he chose it as a career after drivers at a British track in
the 1960s speculated that he was related to an Alf Mosley, a prominent
builder of British buses. "I thought to myself, 'I've found a world where
they don't know about Oswald Mosley,'" he said. "And it has always been a
bit like that in motor racing: nobody gives a damn."

In the wake of the present scandal, that assumption may have to be
re-examined.

His explanations of the Chelsea session have run into a barrage of
condemnation, some from Jewish organizations. Stephen D. Smith, director
of Britain's Holocaust center, noted that Mr. Mosley had recently
proclaimed an "anti-racism" drive in Formula One after spectators in Spain
directed racial taunts at Lewis Hamilton, the 23-year-old black driver for
the McLaren team who is racing's latest sensation, and said that Mr.
Mosley should abide by his own standard.

"This is an insult to millions of victims, survivors and their families,"
Mr. Smith said. "He should resign from the sport."

A similar rebuke came from a former grand prix driver, Jody Scheckter of
South Africa, who won the Formula One world drivers championship for
Ferrari in 1979 and is still the only Jewish driver to have won the crown.

"I don't believe he can represent anything after this," Mr. Scheckter said
Sunday. "If it didnt have a Nazi connotation it would be a completely
different matter, but for a person in his position, and with his
background, it's unbelievable."

Similar statements have been made by Sir Stirling Moss, a grand prix
legend in the 1950s, and Jackie Stewart, a three-time world champion in
the 1970s. Mr. Stewart, a childhood dyslexic whose criticism of Mr.
Mosleys role in the spying scandal last year caused the F.I.A. chief to
mock him as "a certified half wit," told a television interviewer in
Bahrain that allowing Mr. Mosley to stay in his post would be an affront
to the multicultural nature of Formula One: "He's president of a global
federation that serves many religions, cultures and sensitivities," he
said. "And Formula One goes to many of these parts of the world."

But what may prove to have been a turning point in the affair came in the
form of the car manufacturer's statements on Friday. In a joint statement,
BMW and Daimler Benz described the facts outlined in The News of The World
as disgraceful. They added, "We strongly distance ourselves from it," and
said they would await appropriate action by the federations governing
body.

Honda said it was extremely disappointed and urged F.I.A. to make "an
immediate decision." Toyota said it did not approve of any behavior that
"could be understood to be racist or anti-Semitic."

Mr. Mosley, undaunted, tried to turn the tables on BMW and Daimler Benz,
which manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars, with a statement that raised the
specter of the two companies' own role during the Nazi era. In addition to
building engines for German fighters, bombers and tanks, they were accused
of using slave labor in some of their plants, and, in Daimler Benz's case,
providing Hitler and the German high command with staff cars. The
statement held to his insistence that fault lay with the way in which his
actions had been reported by The News of The World, and not with the
actions themselves.

If he recognized the irony in the son of the man who led Britain's
"blackshirts" in reproving German companies for their wartime past, Mr.
Mosley did not show it.

"Given the history of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, particularly before and
during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would strongly
distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful
content of these publications," he said. "Unfortunately, they did not
contact me before putting out their statement to ask whether the content
was in fact true."

(source: New York Times)