Jan. 22

GERMANY:

Abroad----The Holocaust, Viewed Not From Then but From the Here and Now

Habbo Knoch, who runs the new Bergen-Belsen Memorial at the former
concentration camp, invited various scholars and museum directors to a
four-day conference here last week called Witnessing: Sites of Destruction
and the Representation of the Holocaust. He asked a question one evening
during a break: Will people in 20 years look back and say we built a
museum that focuses on Nazi genocide while Darfur was happening? Will they
ask whether anyone raised this issue?

The new memorial is an immense concrete and glass museum emerging from a
copse of trees beside the cemetery of mass graves (there are more than
70,000 bodies buried there), which had been the camp site. The permanent
exhibition is a model of its kind, focused on the meticulous and sober
reconstruction of the past. From time to time the present literally
intrudes with a bang, though, when practice rounds of tank fire from the
British military base next door boom over the treetops.

Otherwise you might be struck by how ordinary the whole area seems. During
the war, prisoners at first Soviet soldiers, later Jews used to be
marched several miles from a railway terminal beyond the base, which was
then for the Wehrmacht, and past fields, farms and houses. Some survivors
have said they were struck by the pretty scenery.

At the camp, corpses lay in piles and thousands were dying of starvation
and disease, from genocide by neglect. The farmers and villagers who had
watched the prisoners go by afterward mostly claimed they knew nothing
about it.

Times change. Some of the children of those farmers and villagers recall
on videotaped interviews the endless lines of walking dead. It was
impossible not to see what was plainly in front of them. Along these
lines, the constant television broadcasts during the conference of
grieving parents and wounded children in Gaza reminded a few conferees of
the emotions stirred up by video testimonies of Holocaust survivors (there
are dozens of these in the museum), and the comparison made several
scholars uneasy.

Videos are only one form of evidence, a French researcher ventured,
inadequate by themselves as history.

True.

That said, the Holocaust has become what one expert here called the master
narrative for suffering, shaping discussions about every present conflict
over genocide and human rights even as comparisons distort history and can
serve the purposes of propaganda as often as the truth. Every generation
gets the stories it wants to hear, is how Heidemarie Uhl, an Austrian
scholar, put it, which is to say that the master narrative of the Shoah
itself has evolved to suit different eras. She pointed out that the
memorial at the former Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria
was for several years after the war controlled by the Soviets, who put up
a monument to Communist resistance but none to the Jews.

Today the message at Mauthausen has come to reflect Austrias negative
memory, Ms. Uhl said, referring to the collective sentiment of Austrians
(many of them, she might have added, but alas, still not enough) who admit
their country willingly committed genocide. As at Bergen-Belsen, the
permanent exhibition there now speaks to a kind of post-ideological,
post-cold-war world that prizes victimhood and individual resilience, just
as the Communist memorial spoke to Soviet priorities.

History keeps moving, in other words. Here at Bergen-Belsen, after
liberation in April 1945, the military training barracks became a camp for
displaced persons. Jews awaited transport to America, Australia and to the
new Israel, a flashpoint with British authorities who also controlled
Palestine. Some Jewish survivors inaugurated a theater company called
Kazet (the name played on the German KZ, for concentration camp). Life
started over in other ways, too. Henri Lustiger-Thaler, who helped
organize the conference, recalled that his mother, a former prisoner,
returned from Paris to give birth at the camp hospital because her friends
were here.

Then Bergen-Belsen fell into neglect. Ronald Reagan was responsible
(inadvertently) for its revival. The announcement that he would visit Nazi
graves at Bitburg in 1985 resulted in an uproar that forced his staff to
scramble, and Bergen-Belsen was suddenly added to his itinerary.
Embarrassed Germans, who preferred to forget the site, threw together a
small documentation center. It soon became inadequate to the accumulating
archives, to the general liberalizing process of German identity building
after the wall fell, and to the growing public appetite abroad for
Holocaust museums, along with the tourist economy they generated.

Nothing about the present museum dramatizes information for visitors the
way, say, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington
apparently feels it needs to. Divorced as it is from the sites of
persecution, it turns relics of genocide like a Zyklon B canister and a
cattle car that transported Jews to Auschwitz into props.

Bergen-Belsen has the camp as evidence, or whats left of it. After
liberation, the British burned down the prisoners barracks to stem the
spread of typhus, and hired an architect to turn bulldozed graves into a
pastoral cemetery. The architect turned out to be a favorite of the Nazis,
adding insult to injury, but by the time that scandal broke it was already
too late, and the graves today look like Teutonic mounds, covered in
lavender.

In the absence of original buildings, the aura of Bergen-Belsen now, as at
all haunted places, can be linked to the superstition people tend to bring
to it the vague hope that our presence might somehow help renew the
ground. Meanwhile the sheer emptiness of the landscape, never mind the
graves, speaks clearly to loss.

Of course, there are still the photographs and films made by arriving
British troops to show what once was here. Various camps liberated before
Bergen-Belsen had been evacuated or destroyed, but the Germans turned this
place over as it had been. Circulated worldwide in newspapers, magazines
and movie theaters, the pictures made unconditional surrender obligatory
and the site forever synonymous with the worst Nazi atrocities.

In a sense, the images have become too familiar, too loaded. The museum
stresses the survivor testimonies instead. These run silently on monitors
throughout the galleries, accompanied by subtitles in German and English.
As Geoffrey Hartman, the literary scholar who helped start the Fortunoff
Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, remarked after walking
through the museum, the quiet promotes a space in which to think that
thinking is important.

But you can also wear headphones to hear the voices. Mr. Hartman borrowed
Paul Celans famous phrase about bottles in the ocean tossed at the
shoreline of a heart to describe the effect.

One survivor is Robert Rijxman. I was sitting on a rock, he recalls on
screen. It was sunny, in winter. I just prayed to die, but it didnt work.

Without sound, hes the picture of defiance, elfin and smiling, clutching a
pipe like an old Swiss mountaineer after a walk in the Alps. But listening
to him, you hear that he needs a moment to collect himself and it suddenly
becomes clear that Mr. Rijxman wishes to convey a thought darker and more
complicated than simple defiance.

Praying for death didnt work, is what he said.

Not to this day, he added.

Another reminder of historys relentlessness.

(source: New York Times)

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

Nazi forced labourers recount ordeal online


Video testimony of nearly 600 survivors of Nazi forced labour programmes
was posted online Thursday for historians and students to better
understand their ordeal, organisers said Thursday.

The project is an offshoot of a compensation fund founded by the German
government and major companies in 2001 for survivors of a programme that
saw 12 million people rounded up and conscripted to work during World War
II.

The 341 men and 249 women featured in the videos tell of working in
concentration camps or munitions plants under gruelling conditions for
little or no pay, miserable living conditions and exposure to hunger and
disease.

"Their suffering should not be forgotten," the head of the "Remembrance,
Responsibility and Future" foundation managing the 4.4-billion-euro
(5.7-billion-dollar) fund, Guenther Saathoff, told reporters.

Some 1.66 million people from nearly 100 countries received compensation
from the German fund between 2001 and 2007.

Saathoff said the online video project was launched because the former
forced labourers were seeking more than reparations.

"The victims did not want only money that was owed to them -- they also
wanted to tell about things that no one wanted to hear about for decades,"
he said.

In one account, a Hungarian Jew in his 80s who has lived in Atlanta since
the war's end, Henry Friedmann, explains that he was the only member of
his family to survive the Holocaust.

Friedmann told of being beaten and while he was forced to work at a huge
arms factory in Budapest in 1944, before he was assigned to transports for
German troops fighting the Russians in the countryside.

"We were taken by the Germans to a German outpost, and we were given
orders that every day we would assemble at 3:00 am and would climb the
mountain and would be over there from between 3:00 till 5:00, 6:00 the
next morning," he said.

"At that time, in the mountains, it was maybe 40 below zero. No clothing,
not the right clothing... When we finished supplying the hot food, we
brought down on stretchers the wounded or dead Germans to the base of the
mountains. That would be our job."

He said Jews suffered particularly brutal treatment among the workers.

"In case someone gets hurt, don't even ask for any kind of bandage or
anything because you're a Jew -- you're not entitled to -- which meant
that if you're lost or hurt, you have to freeze to death or bleed to
death," he said.

The 2.5-million-euro documentary project began in 2005. Survivors ranging
in age from 65 to 98 were recorded on video primarily in eastern Europe
but also in the United States, Israel and South Africa.

One-third of them were so-called "slave labourers", often Jews or Roma who
were forced to work in concentration camps in particularly degrading and
frequently life-threatening conditions.

A former slave labourer at the news conference, Felix Kolmer, said the
online archive would make increasingly rare personal accounts of the Nazi
programme available to researchers, teachers and students.

"Victims will finally get the public recognition and attention for which
they have often waited in vain over the last decades," said Kolmer, who is
also vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust
survivors group.

The project can be viewed at www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de.

(source: Agence France-Presse)



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



German trial of former SS man collapses


The planned trial of an 87-year-old former SS member who confessed to
killing three Dutch civilians collapsed after the court decided he was
unfit to stand trial for health reasons.

Heinrich Boere was due to be tried in Aachen early this year in what would
have been one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials.

But the court in the western city said a medical examination had found his
health was too poor for him to stand trial.

"The defendant is not in a position to attend the trial as the accused due
to a number of significant health problems," the Aachen court said in a
statement.

Boere was captured by U.S. forces in the Netherlands after World War II
and confessed to killing the Dutch civilians as a member of an SS hit
squad targeting anti-Nazi fighters.

He then escaped and fled to Germany, before being sentenced to death in
absentia in the Netherlands in 1949.

Germany refused a 1980 Dutch extradition request because of complications
over Boere's citizenship and other previous efforts to convict him in
Germany had also failed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which is hunting for hundreds of suspected
Nazis, lists Boere as one of the top 10 Nazi criminals still at large.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Centre, expressed deep
frustration at the decision and criticised the German justice system for
this and other cases.

"The case of Boere is a typical example for the failings of the German
justice system in the prosecution of Nazi criminals," he said.

"If his case had received the right attention at the right time, he would
have been in jail long before he could escape justice on health grounds."

(source: Reuters)


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

Nazi woman behind Winslet's award winning role is revealed


The identity of the real Nazi woman camp guard, who inspired the
character of Hanna Schmitz in the film "The Reader" which won
British actress Kate Winslet a Golden Globe has finally been revealed.
The woman Kate Winslet plays in the film was one of Germany's most
notorious war criminals, concentration camp guard Ilse Koch, the Guardian
reported.

Bernhard Schlink, whose controversial book was adapted for the film, had
refused to reveal the basis of Schmitz's character.

But Professor Bill Niven of Nottingham Trent University, who specialises
in literary studies related to Schlink and his works, believes the
parallels between Schmitz and Koch are unmistakable.

The Professor said that there were numerous similarities between the Ilse
Koch and Hanna Schmitz. The most prominent being the fact that Ilse Koch
was sentenced to life imprisonment and committed suicide a day before
release, just like Hanna Schmitz, the character played by Winslet in the
holocaust film.

(source: Press Trust of India)



USA//NEW JERSEY:

NJ: Disbar ex-Parsippany lawyer for stealing from Holocaust survivors


A state disciplinary board has recommended that an attorney who
gained international fame for helping Holocaust victims, and who had at
one time lived in Parsippany, be banned from practicing in the state.

Edward D. Fagan was charged four years ago by the state Office of
Attorney Ethics with misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars
entrusted to him by two Holocaust survivors.

Fagan, who was living in the Powdermill Heights apartments at the time the
charges were made, said in court papers that charges by one of the alleged
victims stemmed from what he called a fee dispute. He has claimed that he
had permission from another victim, Esther Sapir, who has since died, to
use some of her money to pursue Holocaust lawsuits.

A special ethics master recommended that he be disbarred last year and the
State Supreme Court Disciplinary Review Board agreed in a decision made
public Thursday. According to allegations made in court papers, Fagan was
in financial trouble and used money taken from the accounts to pay back
rent.

The review board made its recommendation to the state Supreme Court, which
has final say in the matter, said John McGill, III, Deputy Ethics Counsel
for the Office of Attorney Ethics.

Fagan was disbarred by New York state court officials late last year,
according to court papers, for filing a federal lawsuit in bad faith,
deceiving federal court officials about critical facts in another case,
naming a non-existent defendant in a lawsuit, and purchasing stolen
artwork solely for the purpose of bringing lawsuits involving that
artwork.

Fagan, who has been representing himself in New Jersey, according to court
papers, was unavailable for comment, and no longer lives at the Parsippany
address he gave authorities four years ago.

Michael Ambrosio, an attorney who once represented him, said last year
that Fagan had permission to move money out of the accounts in question
and paid it all back. At the time, Fagan was living in Florida and New
Jersey, the attorney said.

McGill said on Thursday that he doesnt know where Fagan has been living.

"Our communications with him have all been through e-mails," he said.

The review board said in court papers that while Fagan may have had
permission to use some of Sapirs money for Holocaust cases, there was no
evidence that he was authorized to use the money for personal expenses.

(source: Daily Record)





BELGIUM:

Yad Vashem exhibition at the European Parliament on Holocaust Remembrance
Day


"Auschwitz: From the Depth of the Abyss," an exhibition by Yad Vashem,
the Holocaust Memorial iand Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, will be
shown on 27 January at the European Parliament in Brussels in the
framework of the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The exhibition comprises photographs from The Auschwitz Album and sketches
by Jewish artist Zinovii Tolkatchev, a soldier in the Red Army who was
present at the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945.

The International Holoaust Remembrance Day will be marked at the European
Parliament by a special ceremony co-organized by the European Coalition
for Israel and the European Jewish Community Centre under the patronage of
the parliament's president Hans-Gert Poettering.

Guest speaker at the event will be Gert Weisskirchen, the OSCE's Personal
Representative for Combating Anti-Semitism.

(source: European Jewish Press)





ITALY:

Holocaust Refugee Museum Opens in Italy


A museum commemorating Jewish Holocaust refugees opened near the Italian
town that gave them shelter on their way to Palestine.

The Museum of Memory and Welcome was inaugurated Wednesday near Nardo, in
southern Italy. Israel's ambassador to Italy and Rome's chief rabbi,
Riccardo Di Segni, joined local officials for the ceremony.

Between 1943 and 1947, as many as 150,000 Jews fleeing Europe for
Palestine, then still under British control, found shelter in and around
Nardo, in the heel of Italy's boot.

The museum is in the seacoast village of Santa Maria al Bagno, one of the
main refugee centers where Jewish institutions, including a synagogue,
canteen, orphanage and hospital, were set up.

Three newly restored murals painted by one of the refugees, Romanian-born
Zivi Miller, form the centerpiece of the museum. The murals were painted
on a long-abandoned building.

One mural is of a lighted menorah; one depicts the journey of Jews from
southern Italy toward Palestine; and the third shows a Jewish mother and
child asking a British soldier to allow them to enter.

Di Segni in his speech thanked local officials for keeping to the opening
date "despite the grave international situation." Local media said police
stopped four neo-fascist youths who tried to distribute anti-Israel flyers
during the ceremony.

(source: Jewish Times)





ENGLAND:

Remembering the millions murdered in Hitler's Holocaust


THE millions who died during the Holocaust of the Second World War are
being remembered in a week of events in London from Sunday.

Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday (Jan-27) is the 64th anniversary of the
Allied liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Occupied
Poland, where a million Jews and 200,000 others were murdered in gas
chambers by the Nazis.

It was part of Hitler's ethnic cleansing of Occupied Europe in which six
million Jewish men, women and childrena third of their numbers in the
worldwere exterminated.

GATHERING DEATH STORM

A series of events in East London organised by the Jewish East End
Celebration Society begins with Sunday mornings walking tour which
includes the scene of the Battle of Cable Street, when Mosley's fascists
were blocked by East Enders preventing his Blackshirts marching through
Whitechapel in 1936 as the storm clouds gathered for the coming Holocaust.
The walk led by local historian Clive Bettington meets outside Aldgate
Underground station at 10.30am.

It is followed by a film screening of "The Relief of Belsen" at Mile Ends
Genesis cinema, near Stepney Green, at 1.30pm, about the liberation of the
Bergen-Belsen death camp by British troops in 1945.

Also on Sunday, an interfaith commemoration of the Belsen liberation
begins at the East London Central Synagogue in Nelson Street, Stepney, at
4pm, addressed by Marton Braun from Hackney whose family were Holocaust
survivors.

Other events in the week include a Holocaust Day gathering at Bethnal
Greens Oxford House community centre in Derbyshire Street, off Bethnal
Green Road, at 7pm on Tuesday, with the Searchlight campaign against
racism and the renowned 43 Group set up at the end of the war to monitor
the rebirth of fascism.

SIX MILLION MURDERED

The evening includes candle-lighting to remember the six million Jews and
other minorities put to death during the Holocaust.

A Yiddisher Kunst exhibition of Jewish art showing the vibrant life of
communities before the Holocaust by pre-War East European artists is being
staged at Tower Hamlets Town Hall in Blackwall, Whitechapels Brady art
centre in Hanbury Street, the Soanes Centre at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
in Southern Grove, Mile End, and the Whitechapel Ideas Store library
centre in Whitechapel Road, running until next Thursday.

(source: East London Advertiser)