May 27




GERMANY:

Memorial for gay victims of Nazis unveiled

Memorial sits in Tiergarten Park, opposite Holocaust memorial

Single gray concrete slab also contains video of two men kissing

Federal government funded the $945,000 construction costs


Germany on Tuesday inaugurated a memorial to the thousands of homosexuals
persecuted and killed under the Nazis, a monument meant both to honor a
long-ignored group of victims and to make a statement against ongoing
intolerance.

Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit helped open the memorial to remember gay
people killed by the Nazis.

The memorial sits on the edge of the capital's Tiergarten park -- across
the road from Germany's memorial to the Holocaust's 6 million Jewish
victims.

The single gray concrete slab is a deliberate echo of the smaller slabs
that make up that memorial, but also includes a small window that lets
visitors see a film of two men kissing.

"This memorial is important from two points of view -- to commemorate the
victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so
much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily,"
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said.

Wowereit, who is openly gay, inaugurated the memorial alongside Germany's
culture minister, Bernd Neumann. The federal government financed the
$945,000 building costs after Germany's parliament approved the memorial's
construction in December 2003.

Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the
German race, and convicted some 50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An
estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps,
where few survived.

Don't Miss
Merkel admits Germany's 'Holocaust shame'
"We stand stunned before the brutality with which the Nazis threatened,
persecuted and destroyed all those who did not correspond to their inhuman
ideology," Neumann said.

He noted that the memorial commemorates "a group that long drew little
attention in the public arena."

Few gays convicted by the Nazis came forward after World War II because of
the continuing stigma attached to homosexuality. The law used against them
remained on the books in West Germany until 1969.

The German parliament in 2002 issued a formal pardon for homosexuals
convicted under the Nazis. One reason the pardon took so long was because
supporters linked it to a blanket rehabilitation of 22,000 Wehrmacht
deserters, a move many conservatives opposed.

The memorial was designed by Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian
native Ingar Dragset, who are based in Berlin

(source: Associated Press)


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

Far-Right NPD Appoints Holocaust Denier as Vice President

Germany's main far-right group, the National Democratic Party (NPD),
embraced a leading extremist Sunday, May 25 but avoided explicit
expressions of neo-Nazi opinion which are prohibited under German law.

Juergen Rieger, a lawyer who has advised and defended neo-Nazis, was
appointed one of the group's three vice-presidents. Rieger has convictions
for Holocaust denial and assault.

Reporters suggested that the overtly neo-Nazi faction within the NPD was
gaining a greater voice in the anti-foreigner party, which has seats in
two of Germany's 16 state assemblies but has never won parliamentary
representation at federal level.

A party spokesman later welcomed Rieger's appointment, saying he would
energize the NPD.

Under party leader Udo Voigt, the NPD has sought the support of militants
who praise Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist or Nazi doctrines, though
Voigt insists that the NPD's nationalist views comply with Germany's
democratic constitution.

In a speech to delegates, leader Voigt won applause as he said the party's
policy was both nationalist and socialist, but used German grammar to
carefully separate them into two words. He said this had no connection
whatever to the Nazi era.

More than 2,000 people demonstrated Saturday against the annual convention
of the NPD in the Bavarian city of Bamberg.

Kurt Beck, leader of Germany's co-ruling Social Democratic Party SPD,
called in Leipzig for the NPD to be compulsorily dissolved.

"It ought not to be allowed," he said. "A robust democracy ought not to
give state support to people who want to abolish democracy."

(source: Deutsche Presse Agentur)





IRAN:

Iranian website promotes Holocaust denial


The massacre of Jewish people during the Holocaust was "scientifically
impossible," according to an article published by an Iranian satellite
channel on its Web site.

The article was written by Nicholas Kollerstrom, an academic specializing
in astrology and crop circles, who had his fellowship terminated by
University College London last month after he said there were never any
gas chambers at Auschwitz.

"The views expressed by Dr. Kollerstrom are diametrically opposed to the
aims, objectives and ethos of UCL, such that we wish to have absolutely no
association with them or with their originator," the University College
said in a statement. "We therefore have no choice but to terminate Dr.
Kollerstrom's honorary research fellowship with immediate effect."

Press TV, an Iranian English-language 24-hour news channel, was set up
last year, by the Iranian government, to offer "unbiased" reporting and
"in-depth and complete analyses of current affairs," according to its Web
site. It posted Kollerstrom's article on Sunday, and despite protest from
a Jewish community organization, the article is still on the site.

In the article, titled "The Walls of Auschwitz" Kollerstrom argues that
"the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War II was
scientifically impossible."

Kollerstrom's work is also hosted on the Web site of the Committee for
Open Debate on the Holocaust which also promotes the works of Holocaust
deniers David Irving of England and Ernst Zundel of Germany.

In an article on the site, titled "The Auschwitz 'Gas Chamber' Illusion,"
Kollerstrom writes that only a million Jews died in the war and that "the
only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps of
World War Two was targeted at Germans."

The article concludes by saying: "The UN has now established its annual
Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, as of 2006. On this anniversary,
we all need to mull over the faking of history and the Greatest Lie Ever
Told. As Perseus gazed at the Medusa only via a mirror, to avoid being
petrified, so, too, we need calm reflection and the power of Truth to
avoid our collective destruction."

Gavin Gross, public affairs director at the UK's Zionist Federation, who
has appeared in debates on the Iranian channel, wrote to Yvonne Ridley at
Press TV, saying: "I can understand that Press TV takes a strong line
against Israel, but Holocaust denial is another thing entirely. Nicholas
Kollerstrom had his research fellowship terminated by University College,
yet Press TV has called him a 'distinguished academic' and published his
work."

"Iran sponsors both Holocaust denial and Press TV, so this filth should
come as no surprise," said Mark Gardner, director of communications at the
Community Security Trust, which provides security for British Jews and
represents the community to police, government and media on anti-Semitism
and security issues.

"Press TV has the faade of a respectable media outlet, but this shows them
for what they really are," Gardner added.

According to its Web site, Press TV's vision is "embracing and building
bridges of cultural understanding; encouraging human beings of different
nationalities, races and creeds to identify with one another."

Despite repeated requests, Press TV declined to comment.

(source: Jerusalem Post)





USA//MAINE:

Holocaust Center opening to public

The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine's Michael Klahr Center
opens to the public Tuesday.

Officials, donors and dignitaries plan to gather today to celebrate the
public opening of the center, located on the University of Maine at
Augusta campus.

Established in 1985, the purpose of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center
of Maine is to revitalize the story of human rights by making history more
relevant and compelling to students and spectators, according to a news
release. The mission extends beyond the study of the Nazi Holocaust to
address all human rights abuses.

The building, designed by Harold Hon and Son Wooten of a Boston
architectural firm, is adorned in copper sheets inspired by the petals of
a flower.

Funded by donations, the center was named for the late Michael Klahr, who
survived the Holocaust as a child and was the husband of Phyllis Jalbert,
who donated $500,000 to help build the $1.8 million, 6,000-square-foot
facility.

The center opens to the public Tuesday. Admission is free.

(source: Kennebec Journal)



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


New books and film find hidden hero of Holocaust


History has not been kind to Rezso Kasztner.

He saved more Jews from death in the Holocaust than any other Jew. His
reward was the accusation that he sold his soul to the devil and
assassination by Jewish extremists.

But Kasztner's reputation may be about to be restored, more than 60 years
after he negotiated a "blood for money" deal with an armed, drunk and
often ranting Adolph Eichmann to save Jewish lives in exchange for cash,
jewels and trucks.

Two new books about Kasztner have been published and a documentary film is
being prepared for distribution later this year. All paint him as a hidden
hero of the Holocaust, a man who risked his life in countless bargaining
sessions with the Nazis.

During World War Two, he negotiated a train to carry almost 1,700
Hungarian Jews to safety in Switzerland, while he stayed behind to
continue negotiating.

Later in the war, he also accompanied an SS officer on visits to
concentration camps to tell commandants to stop the killings, saving up to
100,000 Jews according to some experts.

At that point, it was clear that Germany was on the verge of losing the
war and there would be trials afterward. SS Col. Kurt Becher took Kasztner
along possibly because he wanted a Jewish witness to his good deed.

Anna Porter, whose book "Kasztner's Train" draws on seven years of
research, scores of interviews and previously unknown papers, says that it
is time to honour Kasztner and to dismiss the many accusations against
him.

The second book, German literature professor Ladislaus Lob's "Dealing with
Satan: Rezso Kasztner's Daring Rescue Mission," is part reexamination of
Kasztner and part memoir.

Lob was 11 years old when he escaped with his father on Kasztner's train
to Switzerland from the Bergen-Belsen camp.

A NOBODY

At the time, Kasztner was an obscure official of a minor Zionist committee
but who had links with Jewish rescue groups in the United States, Turkey
and Switzerland.

"He was a nobody who had muscled his way into the negotiations," said
filmmaker Gaylen Ross. "He was just a member of a small group of
Zionists." Ross' upcoming film has the working title of "The Persecution
and Assassination of Dr Israel Kasztner."

After the war, Kasztner and his family emigrated to Israel.

Complaints against him surfaced along with a scathing book by American
screenwriter and journalist Ben Hecht. Hecht painted Kasztner as a Nazi
collaborator who withheld key information from the Allies, stuffed the
train with his own relatives and charged for the seats.

Kasztner had saved 19 of his relatives by getting them seats on the train
but 100 other relatives died in Auschwitz.

As for making money off the train, 150 people paid for tickets and that
was enough to cover the costs of the other, poorer Jews.

In 1952 he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis by Machiel
Grunwald, an elderly pamphleteer.

The Israeli government sued Grunwald for libel but the trial proved to be
an all-out attack on Kasztner, with the lone judge ruling that he had made
a deal with the devil.

The verdict was overturned in 1957 but by then it was too late. Kasztner
had been assassinated outside his home by three extremists, his reputation
already dead in the courtroom.

Holocaust author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel says of
Kasztner, "I followed his trial and I think he wanted to help but he chose
the wrong method."

Ross, the filmmaker, likened Kasztner to the Rorschach inkblot test, a
psychological evaluation in which patients are asked to interpret inkblot
patterns.

"For me, Kasztner is a Rorschach test. People put on him what they feel,"
Ross said.

First and foremost, there is the guilt felt by the survivors for having
lived while others died and then there are the moral questions of dealing
with the Nazis and of buying Jewish lives for cash, Ross said.

Jews questioned the motives of other Jews, forgetting that the Holocaust
was a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis, not Jews, Ross
said.

For Porter, the Kasztner story is how his acts of bravery could be so
fiercely debated even though they equalled those of righteous Gentiles
Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.

"He wanted to be seen as a saviour of Jews and he was essentially a good
man. Schindler called him the most fearless person he knew," Porter said.

(source: Reuters)