January 1, 2009





USA:

Second book on fake Holocaust love story cancelled

A second book featuring a Holocaust love story between Florida-based
Herman and Roma Rosenblat was cancelled on Tuesday after the publisher
found out that the couple's amazing tale was not true.

For over a decade, Herman Rosenblat, 79, told newspapers, magazines and
twice appeared on the Oprah Winfrey TV show to tell the story of how he
met his wife-to-be when she threw apples and bread to him over the fence
of a Nazi concentration camp.

He said they met again by chance on a blind date in New York years later,
fell in love and got married.

But under scrutiny from scholars writing in The New Republic, Rosenblat
admitted this week that he invented the love story, prompting Penguin
Book's (PNGN.PK) imprint Berkley Books to cancel publication of his memoir
due out in February.

Lerner Publishing Group, which specialises in children's books, on Tuesday
said it was also recalling a newly released picture book "Angel Girl"
based on the Rosenblat's story after being "shocked and disappointed" to
learn the story was not true.

"While this tragic event in world history needs to be taught to children,
it is imperative that it is done so in a factual way that doesn't
sacrifice veracity for emotional impact," said Lerner Publishing's
President Adam Lerner in a statement.

"We have been misled by the Rosenblats."

Lerner said the company had recalled the book from the market, cancelled
all pending reprints and was issuing refunds on all returned books bought
since its publication in September.

Scholars in The New Republic said the story could not be true as it would
have been impossible to throw food over the fence at the camp at
Schlieben, Germany, where Rosenblat was held as a teenager, putting
pressure on the Rosenblats to explain.

Under public scrutiny, Rosenblat's agent Andrea Hurst said the writer had
revealed to her that he invented the crux of the love story although his
story about being in the concentration camps and the survival of the
writer and his brothers was true.

Polish-born Rosenblat, a retired electrical contractor from North Miami
Beach, Florida, could not be contacted for comment. While both books
related to the Rosenblats have now been cancelled, Harris Salomon,
president of Atlantic Overseas Pictures is pushing ahead with plans to
make a $25 million movie about Herman, with filming to start in Hungary in
March.

"The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a
survivor of concentration camps. He found a way to tell his story and
bring a message against hate. It is his story," Salomon said in a
statement on Tuesday.

Rosenblat's book, "Angel at the Fence, the True Story of a Love that
Survived," is the latest in a list of memoirs found to have been
fabricated.

In 2006, U.S. author James Frey admitted he made up key parts of his drug
and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces."

This year Misha Defonseca admitted most of her bestselling autobiography,
about a young Jewish girl saved by wolves, was made up while "Love and
Consequences" by a Margaret B. Jones about a mixed-raced girl growing up
with U.S. gangs was recalled.

(source: Reuters)


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


SF Holocaust memorial vandalized


Police are looking for a man who they say spray-painted graffiti on San
Francisco's Holocaust memorial.

Witnesses say they saw a man on Monday spraying red paint on the memorial,
located near the city's scenic Legion of Honor museum.

Police say the tagger wore a white bandanna, carried a black messenger bag
and fled in a car waiting nearby. Police did not describe the content of
the graffiti, which city officials said was removed Tuesday.

City director of cultural affairs, Luis Cancel, said removing the graffiti
costs between $6,000 and $8,000.

Cancel said the graffiti made reference to Israel, but did not know
exactly what had been written.

The incident was at least the second time in recent months that the
display of 11 life-sized figures was vandalized. Earlier this year,
swastikas were drawn on the bronze sculpture using a black marker, and a
swastika was scratched into a plaque near the statues.

Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a statement condemning the vandalism.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)


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

INTERVIEW US NAZI HUNTER

'We Are Ready to Deport Demjanjuk'


Suspected war criminal John Demjanjuk, 88, could be deported to face trial
in Germany within 48 hours if the German government issued travel papers
for him, Eli Rosenbaum, director of the US Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations, told SPIEGEL.


SPIEGEL: A little over a week ago the German Federal Court decided that
the Munich judiciary has jurisdiction in the investigation of the alleged
former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, who is accused of
participating in the killing of at least 29,000 people. He can now be
charged and put on trial in Germany. Why is he still at home in Ohio and
not in Germany?

Rosenbaum: The question would really have to be directed to the German
government. We are certainly ready to remove him.

SPIEGEL: How long would it take to transfer him to Germany?

Rosenbaum: The German government would have to contact Homeland Security
and issue travel papers for Demjanjuk. He has no passport because the US
has revoked his citizenship. Since then he is stateless. A German
consulate could issue the papers and within 24 to 48 hours immigration and
custom enforcement could put him on a plane.

SPIEGEL: That quickly?

Rosenbaum: Legally, the case of Demjanjuk is not an extradition, for that
you would need a warrant and more time. This is to implement an already
issued deportation order. The court battles are over. The order of removal
is there to be carried out as soon as a country is willing to receive him.

SPIEGEL: In 1988 Demjanjuk was already sentenced to death by an Israeli
court, in 1993 the Supreme Court had to acquit him because of "reasonable
doubt". Is there new evidence that Demjanjuk was indeed at the
concentration camp Sobibor in Poland?

Rosenbaum: I understand that the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the
Investigation of National Socialist Crimes has unearthed additional proof.
I am not at liberty to discuss what it is.

SPIEGEL: At a trial Demjanjuk's service ID card would be very important
evidence. At the end of the 80's experts of the German Federal Criminal
Police Office considered the document a fake.

Rosenbaum: This is, of course, nonsense. If someone reached that
conclusion, he is wrong. This is perhaps the most heavily tested document
in the history of law enforcement. It is clearly authentic. In fact, even
Demjanjuk's lawyer abandoned the claim that the card was a forgery by the
KGB. The new defense is that there was an Ivan Demjanjuk in Sobibor but it
was a cousin.

SPIEGEL: Are you surprised that it took the investigators in Ludwigsburg
and other German authorities so long to go after Demjanjuk?

Rosenbaum: No. I have very high regards for our colleagues in Ludwigsburg.
We have a very strong collaborative relationship with them. They know that
we are available to assist them on a twenty-four-hour-day,
seven-days-a-week basis.

SPIEGEL: In the United States, US authorities cannot indict Demjanjuk for
his alleged crimes because there is no law for it. But why did it take six
years for the deportation order to be possible?

Rosenbaum: Because it's not criminal prosecution here, it's civil
litigation and that always moves more slowly. There are many courts, seven
levels of jurisdiction.

SPIEGEL: For years Demjanjuk's family has claimed that he is too sick and
too weak to stand trial.

Rosenbaum: I think he is well enough to stand trial. His last court
appearance wasn't so long ago and he was able to participate in the
proceedings.

(source: Spiegel Online, Dec. 22)





FRANCE:

French Performer's Award to Holocaust Denier 'A Grotesque Provocation'


The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned French performer
Dieudonn Mbala Mbala for his grotesque onstage provocation of giving an
award to Robert Faurisson, a serially convicted Holocaust denier, at a
recent show at the Zenith theater in Paris.

In a videotaped performance, Dieudonn is seen encouraging the 5,000 member
audience to give loud applause as the award was handed to Faurisson by
someone costumed as a Jew with a yellow star on his chest.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

Dieudonn has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments and then
denying he is an anti-Semite. His grotesque onstage provocation of loudly
applauding Frances most infamous Holocaust denier and urging the crowd to
join him puts that question to rest.

The French entertainment industry has an opportunity to demonstrate that
such views have no place in French society. Having solidly established
his reputation as an unabashed bigot, we hope reputable theaters and other
performance centers will take into consideration Dieudonns bigotry before
providing him platforms from which to insult Jews.

(source: ADL; The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's
leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services
that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.)





(in) ITALY----obituary

Paul Hofmann, author and foe of Nazis, dies at 96


Paul Hofmann, a Viennese who resisted the rise of Nazism in his homeland,
acted as an informer for the Allies while serving on the staff of the
German commandants of occupied Rome during World War II and later became a
foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a prolific author of
travel books, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 96.

His death was announced by his son Alexander Hofmann-Lord.

A diminutive, dapper man who spoke German, Italian, French and English
fluently and several other languages more than passably, Hofmann had a
broad grasp of history and diplomatic affairs and an often playful
curiosity.

In 1958, for instance, when Hofmann was reporting on the death of Pope
Pius XII, he described how Sister Pasqualina, a German-born nun who had
been the pope's housekeeper for many years, left the papal summer
residence at Castel Gondolfo bearing six warblers in a cage. One of them,
Hofmann wrote, was a goldfinch named Gretel that the pope had found as a
fledgling in the papal gardens and had affectionately tamed.

Such details flowed into Hofmann's journalism and into the more than a
dozen books he wrote after retiring from The Times in 1990. Books like
"Roma," "That Fine Italian Hand," "The Seasons of Rome: A Journal" and "O
Vatican! A Slightly Wicked View of the Holy See," earned him a reputation
as one of the most knowledgeable writers about modern Italy, especially
about Rome.

Paul Hofmann was born in Vienna on Nov. 20, 1912, the son of a gardener.
He was reared by an uncle who was a Socialist and who influenced his early
politics between the world wars, when Vienna was a caldron of fiery
forces: the Socialists, the Monarchists and the National Socialists, or
Nazis, whose legions, formed in the late 20s, would grow powerful in the
30s.

After studying law at the University of Vienna, Hofmann became a disciple
of Richard Schmitz, the leader of the Christian Socialist Party and later
mayor of Vienna, who found work for him in Catholic social organizations.

In 1934, Hofmann became a traveling speaker at church-sponsored assemblies
for the Catholic Popular Federation, a religious and nationalist group.
Two years later he became editor and chief editorial writer of the
federation's publication, Die Sonntagsglocke.

In the late 1930s, as Austria came under immense military and political
pressure to accept Anschluss, or union with Germany, Hofmann wrote
editorials urging his country to resist the Nazis. The last one appeared
as German troops occupied Vienna in March 1938, and he fled to Rome only
hours before Gestapo agents searched his apartment.

Hofmann had another reason for choosing Rome. Two years earlier, while on
a vacation there, he had met Maria Anna Tratter, whose family was from a
part of the Austrian Tyrol that had been annexed by Italy after World War
I. He married Miss Tratter and in 1940 their son, Ernesto, was born.

In Rome, Hofmann earned a meager living as a hotel clerk and freelance
journalist. He befriended Herbert Matthews, The Times's correspondent in
Rome. At the suggestion of Matthews, he took a job with a German news
agency, translating Italian news reports and transmitting them to Berlin.
Through friends, he came to know members of the anti-Fascist underground
in Rome.

With the Anschluss, Hitler had made Austria a part of the Third Reich, and
Hofmann was drafted into the German Army and posted to Rome. For the next
three years he was the personal interpreter for two successive Nazi
commanders, General Rainer Stahel and the infamous General Kurt Mlzer, a
brutal and imperious air force officer who styled himself the king of
Rome.

From Mlzer's offices in the Hotel Excelsior on the Via Veneto, Hofmann
passed information to the anti-Nazi underground. He was able to inform the
underground about the deportation of the Jews from occupied Rome in
October 1943 and the killing of 335 Italian hostages in March 1944 at the
Fosse Ardeatine outside Rome in reprisal for the killing of 33 German
policemen by Italian partisans.

Most of the information he passed along was what he had heard or observed.
He also had access to confidential documents that he was called on to
translate.

Hofmann recalled interpreting for Stahel when he discussed with Italian
officers the removal of the Jews from Rome; many of them never returned
from concentration camps.

He was also the interpreter at a breakfast meeting between Mlzer and the
Italian interior minister after partisans had ambushed some German
policemen on March 23, 1944. Later that day, he accompanied Mlzer on a
personal inspection of the caves at the Fosse Ardeatine, where the
massacre of 10 Italians for each dead German was to take place.

Later, after the Italian hostages were killed on March 24, Hofmann
gathered information over supper in the officers' mess from German
officers who had taken part in the killings and passed it on to the
underground. Hofmann assumed the underground was channeling the
information he gathered to the Allies.

In June 1944, as Allied forces drove closer to Rome, Hofmann left the
Excelsior on a pretext, shed his German uniform, retaining only his
service revolver, and deserted. He hid his wife and son in a convent and
fled to a safe apartment. In November 1944, he was tried in absentia by a
German military court in occupied northern Italy and sentenced to death
for desertion and treason.

After Rome was liberated Hofmann served briefly with the Allied
Psychological Warfare Bureau, broadcasting news reports to areas of Europe
still under German occupation. After the war, Hofmann appeared as a
witness for the prosecution at the war crimes trial of Mlzer in Florence,
Italy. Mlzer was sentenced to death for his role in the Ardeatine Caves
massacre, but his sentence was commuted to life behind bars and he died in
prison.

By that time, Hofmann had linked up in Rome with Matthews, who was among
the first correspondents to enter occupied Rome with the Allied troops.
After the war, Hofmann became a news assistant at The Times's bureau in
Rome, from which he would report for the paper for more than half a
century.

Hofmann alternated between reporting from Rome and covering hot spots in
Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, especially the Communist-ruled
countries of the old Warsaw Pact.

Hofmann joined the paper's metropolitan staff in 1966 and was later
assigned to the Detroit and United Nations bureaus, with temporary
assignments in Peru and Brazil. He became an American citizen in 1968.

In 1968 and 1969, he was assigned to Paris and reported on the
negotiations there that eventually brought an end to the fighting in
Vietnam. From 1970 to 1976 he was Rome bureau chief, and in 1978, he
covered the "year of the three popes": the death of Pope Paul VI, the
brief pontificate of John Paul I and the elevation to the papacy of the
Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla. His wife, Maria Anna Tratter, died in 2003.
Besides his sons Alexander Hofmann-Lord and Ernesto Hofmann, he is
survived by one grandchild and Alexander's mother, Christine Lord, who
with Alexander cared for Hofmann after he had a stroke three years ago.

(source: International Herald Tribune)