July 7



CHILE:

Nazi hunters in Chile seeking Mauthausen "Dr Death"


Nazi hunters arrived in Chile on Monday on the trail of Aribert Heim,
nicknamed Dr. Death for killing hundreds of inmates at an Austrian
concentration camp during World War Two, who they believe may be lurking
in picturesque Patagonia.

Heim, who kept the skull of a man he decapitated as a paperweight, is the
most wanted Nazi war criminal still thought to be alive. He would be 94
and his family says he died in 1993.

"We are not here thinking that his capture is imminent, but we have to
bolster a campaign that we launched a few months ago," Sergio Widder, of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Buenos Aires, told Reuters on his arrival
in Santiago.

Widder was accompanying Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, who head's the
Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office. The center is offering a bounty of
around $450,000 for Heim as part of a new drive to catch aged Nazi
fugitives before they die unpunished.

Heim, an Austrian who killed hundreds of inmates at the Mauthausen
concentration camp by injecting gasoline or poison in their hearts, has
been on the run for 46 years since evading police in Germany in 1962 prior
to a planned prosecution.

A doctor with Adolf Hitler's SS, Heim removed organs from victims without
anesthetic.

Holocaust survivors remember him relishing the fear of death in his
victims' eyes. After administering lethal injections, he timed death with
a stopwatch.

The center believes Heim is likely in Chilean or Argentine Patagonia, the
region between the Andes and south Atlantic. Heim's daughter lives in the
scenic southern Chilean town of Puerto Montt 657 miles south of the
capital Santiago.

Hundreds of Nazis sought refuge in Latin America after World War Two, many
lured to Argentina thanks to the open-door policies of Gen. Juan Domingo
Peron, as well as to Chile and Brazil.

Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, escaped to Argentina and
also lived in Paraguay before he died in Brazil in 1979.

(source: Reuters)





GERMANY:

Man rips head from Hitler wax figure


A man tore the head from a controversial waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler
on the opening day of Berlin's Madame Tussauds museum Saturday, police
said.

Just minutes after the museum opened, the 41-year-old German man pushed
aside two security men guarding the figure before ripping off the head in
protest at the exhibit, a police spokesman said. The police were alerted
and arrested the man.

The waxwork figure of a glum-looking Adolf Hitler in a mock bunker during
the last days of his life was criticized as being in bad taste. A media
preview of the new branch of Madame Tussauds Thursday was overshadowed by
a row over the exhibit.

Critics said it was inappropriate to display the Nazi dictator, who
started World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews, in
a museum alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting
heroes.

Dressed in a grey suit, the figure of Hitler gazed downwards with a
despondent stare, his arm outstretched on a large wooden table with
a map of Europe on the wall of his gloomy bunker.

About 25 workers spent about four months on the waxwork, using more than
2,000 pictures and pieces of archive material and also guided by a model
of the "Fuehrer" in the London branch of Madame Tussauds where he is
standing upright.

It is illegal in Germany to show Nazi symbols and art glorifying Hitler
and the exhibit was cordoned off to stop visitors posing with him.


Unobtrusive signs asked visitors to refrain from taking photos or posing
with Hitler "out of respect for the millions of people who died during
World War Two." Camera surveillance and museum officials were meant to
stop inappropriate behavior.

Institutions such as the foundation for Germany's central Holocaust
memorial site condemned the idea of the exhibit as tasteless, saying it
had been included to generate business.

The wax figure is the latest in a gradual breaking down of taboos about
Hitler in Germany more than 60 years after the end of the war and the
Holocaust in which some six million Jews were killed.

The 2004 film "Downfall" provoked controversy as it portrayed the leader
in a human light during the last days of his life and last year a satire
about Hitler by Swiss-born Jewish director Dani Levy was released in
Germany.

(source: Reuters)





POLAND:

Jews to open Polish memorial


Relatives of thousands of Jews wiped out in a Polish town during the
Holocaust will witness a memorial being unveiled in honour of their family
members next month.

The Jewish population of Dobra in Poland dates back to the 17th Century
but disappeared during the Second World War, now one of its descendants,
Leon Weintraub, is funding the establishment of a thousand dollar Place of
Remembrance to honour the lost Jews of Dobra.

Centred around an old Jewish cemetery and built in the shape of a
Star of David, the memorial, backed by the local municipality, will be
opened on August 19 at a ceremony attended by the Polish Chief Rabbi as
well as relatives of former residents. Weintraub told the Jewish News: I
was searching for my family tree and visited the Registry office to Dobra.
The chairman, was very helpful and became a friend. He mentioned the
troubles the Dobra Municipality has with the Jewish Community in Wroclaw,
the owner of the property of the former Jewish community in Dobra so I
came up with the idea of a Memorial to honor the former Jewish residents
of Dobra to preserve the site.

Inscriptions, written in English, Polish and Hebrew at the site will read,
To honour and commemorate the history of the Jewish residents of Dobra in
particular the victims
of the Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945.

London-based Gavin Stollar will be one of the attendees. His grandmother
Pearla Moskovitch came to the UK in the 1920s but left her parents and
rest of the family behind in Dobra. They later perished in the Holocaust.

Stollar said the occasion will bring himself and his family closer to
their past, he told the Jewish News: "This event is important as it
highlights that even today, in 2008, the thousands descendants of people
living in the UK who were lost during the Holocaust can still be
remembered and finally be laid to rest. For my family it is about being
closer to our roots and paying final respects to great grand-parents,
grand-parents, aunts, uncles and cousins who were lost in the town of
Dobra (Turek), Poland during the Second World War."

"I'm sure my Grandmother would have been very proud that her family were
represented at this event. For my grandmother's children and
grand-children to witness a memorial confirming that our family and indeed
all the Jews of Dobra did exist in her home town will, I believe, go
someway to heal the wounds of the past."

(source: Totally Jewish News)