Feb. 6




USA:

Holocaust survivors say no to blood money

REPARATIONS
Holocaust survivors interested in pursuing the latest offer of reparations
from the German government can get information and assistance in Houston.

To apply: All people who think they qualify may contact Ruth Sherman or
Leah Mueller at Jewish Family Service, 713-667-9336.

Participation to date: Ellyn Haikin Josef, pro bono coordinator for Vinson
& Elkins, says about 30 Houstonians already have filled out applications.

--

The German government is looking for Sam Spritzer.

Again.

In 1939, when Spritzer was 17, Nazis rounded him up and forced him into an
old theater hall with other boys and men from his Polish town. There was
no running water and only one toilet, and Spritzer's tormenters made him
spend his daylight hours cleaning up human excrement.

Today, 70 years later, the German government is offering to pay Spritzer
and thousands of other Jews for the work they were forced to do in those
Nazi ghettos.

The Holocaust survivors stand to gain 2,000 euros, or about $2,500, from
the Germans latest reparations program, launched in October 2007. But
theres a catch or two: The forms are difficult for people in their 70s and
80s to complete. Also, there's reluctance on the part of many survivors to
participate.

"It's blood money," Spritzer says. "In the past, I haven't wanted any of
it."

Spritzer grew up in Rawa Ruska. On his fathers side were dairy farmers. On
his mother's side were furriers and tailors. Until the German invasion,
Spritzer led a sheltered, religious life.

"If my mother had told me to jump, I would have said, 'how high?'"
Spritzer says.

When the soldiers came with machine guns, Spritzer found himself trapped
in the theater. He endured for a few days, scooping waste, then told a
Nazi soldier he needed water from an outdoor pump.

When the soldier wasn't looking, the kid jumped the bushes and ran. As it
turned out, his escape was perfectly timed.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were in the process of splitting Poland in
two, and Spritzer and his mothers side of the family were fortunate to
wind up on Soviet turf.

But the Nazis struck again in 1941. When Spritzers mother told him to run
for his life, he did, disappearing into the Russian countryside.

"It was a time of wandering," Spritzer says. "If you ask me where I went
or why, it's almost impossible to describe."

Sometimes he walked, sometimes he hopped trains. He had no money, not even
a change of clothes. He will never forget stooping to drink from a puddle
"green from frogs."

Eventually he was drafted into the Soviet army, but he didn't fight, he
dug ditches. Sometimes, because he was adept at half a dozen languages,
he worked as an army escort.

Once, Spritzer took a group of soldiers to a training camp in Siberia. On
the long and lonely trip back to base, he got off the train in search of
food. Immediately he sank thigh-deep in snow.

The wind was whistling, the temperatures were 30 or 40 degrees below zero,
and there was nothing in sight except a distant light.

Spritzer trudged toward the beacon, hoping he might find someone who would
give him something to eat.Miles later, he realized he was making no
progress. The light was still there, shining in the distance, but it was
miles and hours away. Deeply discouraged, he retraced his snowy steps and
prepared to board the next train. In time a train did pull into the
station. But the doors wouldnt open, and Spritzer plastered himself to the
side and held on tight.

"I cried," he says. "That was one of many times."

In 1943, while still in the army, Spritzer's fortunes improved. He got a
job as a postman, and villagers gave him bread as he delivered their mail.

But he didn't stick with it very long. In 1944 he got word that his Polish
city had been destroyed by the Nazis, and everyone in his family was
killed.

Once again, he got back on the train. He had to go to Rawa Ruska and see
for himself.

After the war
By 1950, Spritzer had only a few relatives left in the world. One was in
Paris, and Spritzer moved to France.

Another was in Houston, and in 1955, Spritzer moved again, thinking he
could build a bigger, better fur business here.

In the past half-century, the Texas Gulf Coast has agreed with him. The
modest enterprise he started in 1957 grew into Furlan Spritzer Furs with
stores downtown and on River Oaks Boulevard. In 1970, he and his business
partner moved into the Galleria, where they entertained Hollywood
starlets, local socialites, anyone and everyone wanting knockout fur
coats.

Along the way the amicable partnership ended, but Spritzer kept the
business going and contributed money and furs to countless charities.

"Why not?" he asks in an accent still reminiscent of the Old Country. "I
came into this world with nothing. I will leave with nothing. All I
really have is my wife, Pantipa, our daughter, Kristina, my name, and the
good I did in this town."

Spritzer is 86. He and Pantipa closed their Galleria store in 2003, but
they continue to sell furs at Houston Jewelry, 9521 Westheimer.

He also works as a volunteer and gives speeches about his experiences
during the Holocaust.

"If we don't talk about it," he says, "we will not remember. And life will
repeat itself."

In the past, Spritzer has ignored other efforts by the German government
to make reparations.

This time, with the help of an army of local attorneys organized by firms
Weil Gotshal and Vinson & Elkins, Spritzer will apply for the money. He
encourages other survivors who qualify to apply, too.

The volunteer attorneys are making the complicated process as easy as
possible, he says.

And he thinks it's time to accept the help, which, truth to tell, would
come in handy.

"I'm older," he says. "I've cooled off. I forgive."

(source: Houston Chronicle)






GERMANY:


Merkel Criticizes Pope On Holocaust Denier
Vatican's Pardon of Bishop Is Decried


In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a stern rebuke
Tuesday to Pope Benedict XVI, accusing the Vatican of giving "the
impression that Holocaust denial might be tolerated" by welcoming a
disgraced bishop back into the church.

Benedict, the first German pope in 500 years, has faced a fierce backlash
from his home country for reversing the excommunication of a bishop who
has questioned whether the Nazis systematically killed 6 million Jews
during the Holocaust.

Several leading German Catholics have joined in the criticism in recent
days, openly wondering whether Benedict and the Vatican knew what they
were doing in rehabilitating the bishop, Richard Williamson, who has not
backed away from his comments on the Holocaust.

In a radio interview Monday, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the bishop of Mainz,
said Benedict's order was "a disaster for all Holocaust survivors" and
called on the Vatican to apologize. Werner Thissen, the archbishop of
Hamburg, called the case "dreadful" and accused Benedict's advisers of
bungling the episode.

The Vatican has distanced itself from Williamson's views. Last Wednesday,
Benedict declared his "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews and
warned against the dangers of denying the Holocaust.

But the pope's comments only fanned concerns among many Germans that he
was not taking the situation seriously enough.

It is a crime in Germany to deny the existence of the Holocaust. Merkel,
the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, said the German pope has a special
responsibility to speak out more clearly on the subject.

"The pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be
no denial and that there must be positive relations with the Jewish
community overall," Merkel told reporters in Berlin. She said the
Vatican's efforts to explain itself were "not yet sufficient."

The Vatican fended off the rare public criticism from the chancellor,
saying that Benedict had properly addressed the controversy in his remarks
last week. "The condemnation of declarations which deny the Holocaust
could not have been any clearer," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said
in a statement.

Benedict was forced as a teenager to serve in the Hitler Youth in his
native Bavaria, although he and his family were opposed to the Nazis.

He has tried to build closer ties between Jews and Catholics since he
became pope in 2005. He visited a synagogue in Cologne during his first
trip to Germany as pontiff and made a pilgrimage to the site of the
Auschwitz concentration camp the following year.

But the pope's efforts have been undermined by his decision to
rehabilitate Williamson, a British-born bishop who lives in Argentina.

Williamson was excommunicated two decades ago after he was consecrated as
a bishop -- without papal consent -- by a conservative Catholic sect, the
Society of Saint Pius X.

Benedict agreed to reverse the excommunications of Williamson and three
other bishops last month in an attempt to repair a rift between the sect
and the Vatican. But his action was overshadowed by Williamson's views on
the Holocaust.

In an interview broadcast on Swedish television a few days before his
excommunication was lifted, Williamson asserted that historical evidence
is "hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas
chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

Instead, he asserted that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in Nazi
concentration camps, and "not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber."

(source: Washington Post)




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


Nazi fugitive 'Doctor Death' died in 1992: reports


One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim or "Doctor
Death", thought to be in his 90s and in South America, actually died in
Cairo in 1992, media reports said Wednesday.

Heim was wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with
horrific medical experiments, including performing operations without
anaesthetics and injecting petrol directly into their hearts.

German public TV channel ZDF said in a statement that Heim died of bowel
cancer in 1992, citing his son and acquaintances in Cairo where he had
been living under the assumed identity of Tarek Farid Hussein after
converting to Islam.

ZDF and also the New York Times claim they have more than 100 documents
including Heim's passport, bank statements, personal letters and medical
records that prove without a doubt that Heim lived in a Cairo hotel until
his death.

He had been in hiding since 1962. Leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff from
the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said last July that he believed Heim was still
alive and living in either Argentina or Chile.

On Wednesday, Zuroff said that the German TV report sounded authoritative
but that he would be seeking further confirmation.

"The report on the death of the 'butcher of Mauthausen' is apparently
reliable but we don't for the moment have either a body or a grave...," he
said.

"Some people have an interest in substantiating this death, so we are
going to check the available documents on the subject."

He added: "Personally, I would be very disappointed if Heim had been able
to end his life without being tried, but I do not regret the efforts that
we have made to try and have him arrested because through this the world
came to know what he was."

Born on June 28, 1914, in Radhersburg, Austria, Heim joined the Nazi party
before Germany annexed Austria, when membership of the party was still
illegal.

He then became a member of Hitler's elite SS guard in 1940 and, after
stints at camps in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Germany, was posted to
the infamous Mauthausen camp in Austria.

It was at Mauthausen that he became known as "Doctor Death" after
performing sadistic and grotesque medical experiments. Survivors of
Mauthausen allege the father of three cut prisoners open, removing their
livers, among other things. His cruelty was such that he has frequently
been compared to Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death" who was a
doctor at Auschwitz.

The New York Times -- which carried out the investigation along with ZDF
-- said on its website that Heim would decapitate prisoners, boil their
heads until only the skull remained and keep them as souvenirs and
decorations.

Heim was number two on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most wanted Nazi
list, after Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's main assistant, who is thought
to be dead.

Eichmann, one of the leading architects of the extermination of the Jews,
was himself hanged in Israel in 1962.

Heim was arrested by US troops in 1945 but was released two-and-a-half
years later. He subsequently set himself up as a gynaecologist in Germany
but fled in 1962 when authorities were poised to arrest him.

There had been numerous reported sightings of him as far afield as South
America, Egypt and Spain.

Nazi-hunters thought twice in recent years they were close to pinning him
down, once in Spain in 2005 and again last year in a small Chilean town
some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Santiago.

However, Heim's son Ruediger told ZDF in an interview that his father went
to ground in 1962 and travelled to Cairo via France, Spain and Morocco.

Here he contracted an incurable form of bowel cancer in the early 1990s
and died following several months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

German police said on Wednesday that the reports by ZDF and the New York
Times "correspond with the authorities' most recent information" and that
a press release would be released on Thursday.

(source: Agence France-Presse)





VATICAN CITY:

LOSING TOUCH----A German Pope Disgraces the Catholic Church


Many knew that Richard Williamson was a notorious Holocaust denier. Pope
Benedict XVI, who brought him back into the Catholic fold two weeks ago,
did not. Many are now wondering whether the pope has lost touch with the
world outside the Vatican walls.

Via Urbana is an alleyway of prostitutes and craftsmen, not far from the
city's main train station and yet, like everything in Rome, so close to
heaven. The words Regina angelorum ora pro nobis ring out from the ground
floor of No. 85 Via Urbana, a shop furnished with crystal chandeliers and
damask wallpaper.

A group of devout Catholics meets here every Thursday, at 6:30 p.m. Its
members consider themselves the keepers of eternal truth, and they feel
flattered when berated for being more papal than the pope. Indeed, that is
precisely what the ultra-religious members of the SSPX strive to be.

SSPX, which sounds some new piece of computer software, is in fact an
acronym for the "Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X," or the Society of
Saint Pius X. It is home to the traditionalist followers of Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre.

These nine members of the SSPX, devotees of the old mass celebrated in
Latin, are sitting or kneeling here, in their chapel of St. Catherine of
Sienna. They include two matrons wearing little hats, three
apostolic-looking teenagers and a girl wearing a veil. The priest stands
with his back to the congregation.

There could be no greater contrast than between this archaic service in a
540-square-foot shop and the massive St. Peter's Basilica across the River
Tiber. And yet last week, one of these guardians of a lost form of
Catholicism drew the Vatican into a crisis that has seriously damaged
relations between Catholics and Jews, and has even caused fractures within
the Christian community itself. Indeed, it will be a while before its
repercussions can be fully assessed.

Notorious Holocaust Denier

The decision by Pope Benedict XVI to reinstate the bishops of this
brotherhood of St. Pius, who were excommunicated in 1988, has been the
source of astonishment, disillusionment and outrage both inside and
outside the Vatican. It has also triggered a deep sense of despair over
the future relationship among religions. The fact that it was merely a
matter of housekeeping within the church -- the ultra-conservatives who
were restored to the pope's good graces had been made bishops in
unsanctioned consecrations by Lefebvre in 1988 -- was irrelevant. What
triggered the scandal, as SPIEGEL reported two weeks ago, was the fact
that one of the priests brought back into the fold, Bishop Richard
Williamson, is a notorious Holocaust denier.

During a visit to Germany only two weeks ago, the British cleric told
Swedish television: "Not a single Jew died in a gas chamber." The
68-year-old Cambridge graduate then proceeded to talk about technically
unsuitable chimney heights and poorly sealed doors at Auschwitz. When
asked about his anti-Semitism, Williamson replied: "Anti-Semitism can only
be bad if it is against the truth. But if something is true, it can't be
bad. I am not interested in the word anti-Semitism."

And this obstinate priest, of all people, is to be reinstated into the
church, according to the will of the pope?

With a single, perhaps imprudent gesture, Benedict XVI has reignited old
fears among Jews the world over, fears that the Catholic Church has in
fact never really shed its old anti-Semitism. Benedict has called into
question the efforts of his predecessor, John Paul II, who was the first
pope to apologize for the crimes of his church. And he has raised a
concern among his supporters that the German pope could in fact be a pope
of the Restoration, a man who is taking his church, which had cautiously
stepped into the modern world, back into the ivory tower of theological
dogma.

And then there is the question that has the entire world worried: How can
it be that a German pope, of all people, is pardoning a Holocaust denier?
Did the pope underestimate the impact of his gesture? Did Benedict XVI
have a plan, or was his decision based on the occasionally obscure
theological logic of the Vatican's clerical bureaucrats? Does the pope, a
man of books throughout his life, still understand the world outside his
palace walls?

'How Can a Liar Be Pardoned'

The decision has sparked outrage among Jews worldwide. The Israeli Chief
Rabbinate promptly cut off its interfaith dialogue with the Vatican.
Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen, referring to Israel's
diplomatic relations with the Vatican, recommended "completely cutting off
connections to a body in which Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites are
members." A stunned Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, a survivor of the Buchenwald
concentration camp and Israel's former Chief Rabbi, asked: "How can such a
liar be granted the protection and pardon of the leader of the Catholic
Church?"

It is a question that many Catholics are asking themselves, especially in
the pope's native Germany. "People here are simply dismayed," says Klaus
Mertes, a Jesuit priest and rector of the Maria Regina Martyrium Church, a
commemorative church for the victims of the Nazi era in Berlin's
Charlottenburg neighborhood. This sense of outrage, he says, is reason
enough to speak out on the incident. "There is outrage over Bishop
Williamson, on the one hand, as well as over the decision coming from
Rome. It may be that the reasons have not been communicated yet. But what,
for heaven's sake, could those reasons be?"

Bishop Gerhard Mller of Regensburg, a traditionalist himself, criticized
the pope for having "extended both hands to a marginal group" and banned
Bishop Williamson, who "invented stories idiotically and scandalously,"
from all churches and facilities in his diocese.

In the northern city of Mnster, where Joseph Ratzinger was once a theology
professor, almost the entire Catholic faculty signed a sharply worded
letter of protest and criticized the shift in the Vatican. Ferdinand
Schuhmacher, the city's official representative of the Catholic Church,
apologized publicly to the chairman of the local Christian-Jewish
alliance, Sharon Fehr, for the pope's behavior: "No matter how hard I try,
I cannot understand the pope's action."

Some German Catholics have already made their way to their local registry
offices to officially leave the church. The mood among many is reflected
in the succinct words of Helmut Reinhard, a 62-year-old Munich Catholic:
"I've had it!"

Damaged Jewish-Catholic Relations

Fifteen members of his family were lost in Auschwitz-Birkenau. "They were
all gypsies," he says, "and all Catholics." His cousin Markus Reinhard,
50, lives in Cologne. Last Tuesday, on Germany's Holocaust Remembrance
Day, he, his wife and his four sisters left the Catholic Church.

Many others in the religious community began to vent their anger on the
Internet early last week. The religious forums on Web sites like
"myKath.de" have been inundated with comments. "As of last Saturday, who
even takes excommunication seriously anymore?" asks one contributor to the
forum. Another outraged Catholic writes: "Williamson is committing a crime
in Germany (denial of the Holocaust), while his flock looks the other way
and the pope rewards him by making him a bishop in the Catholic Church.
What happens if Williamson sets off a bomb in a synagogue? Will the pope
appoint him as a cardinal then?"

Even Heiner Geissler, a former general secretary of the conservative
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), regrets "that the pope is sealing
himself off from women, people of other faiths, divorced people and
homosexuals."

Just four years after the first German pope of the modern era took office,
the relationship between two major world religions is shattered. The
process of reconciliation between Catholics and Jews may have been damaged
for years.

Of course, Benedict has done what he could to control the damage. In his
Wednesday audience last week, he addressed the subject directly: "In these
days, as we commemorate the Shoah, I remember the images of my repeated
visits to Auschwitz () While I once again express, from the bottom of my
heart, my full and indisputable solidarity with our brothers, the bearer
of the first covenant, I hope that the memory of the Shoah moves humanity
to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human
heart."

Despite the clarity of these words, the pope read them with barely
perceptible conviction. And they did little to defuse the conflict. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed the comments on Tuesday, saying that
she expects more. "I do not believe sufficient clarification has been
made," she said.

Indeed, until this week the pope seemed not to have recognized the scope
of worldwide outrage. Now, though, the volume of protest seems to have
reached a volume that has even managed to penetrate the Vatican's inner
sanctum. On Wednesday, almost two weeks after the controversy began, the
Vatican finally issued a statement demanding that Williamson, "in an
absolutely unequivocal and public fashion," distance himself from his
statements denying the Holocaust before he can be fully readmitted to the
Church.


A Pontiff of Slip-Ups and Blunders


The Vatican also admitted that Pope Benedict XVI had been unaware of
Williamson's views on the Holocaust when he revoked his excommunication.
It is an admission that may ultimately defuse the present dispute. But it
will do little to assuage Catholic fears that Pope Benedict XVI has a
tenuous grasp on reality.

On April 25, 2005, when the man who was once Joseph Ratzinger greeted
German pilgrims as Pope Benedict XVI for the first time, he confessed: "I
said to the Lord, with deep conviction: Do not do this to me!"

His quick prayer was not heard, and there was enormous enthusiasm for the
new pope at first, at least in Germany. Wir Sind Papst! (We Are Pope!),
the tabloid Bild trumpeted in celebration of the career of the Bavarian
theology professor, who, in his previous job as head of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith for several years, had kept watch over the
purity of the Church's teachings. But now there is growing skepticism over
this pope's ability to discharge his office. Some of the sheep in his fold
already fear that this erudite spiritual leader will go down in church
history as a wrong choice, as a pontiff of slip-ups and blunders.

The pope, for his part, seems not the least bit concerned about the rapid
vanishing of public enthusiasm. Ratzinger has always been suspicious of
the adoration of the masses. He had deep misgivings about the pilgrimages
young people made to hear his predecessor, John Paul II.

Falling Numbers

This may explain why he seems untroubled by the continuous decline in the
numbers of pilgrims appearing on St. Peter's Square. Last year, 2.2
million people attended his Wednesday audiences, one million fewer than
two years earlier. The anticipated recent awakening of his church has
failed to materialize, which is another reason why there is so much
disappointment over the pope's most recent decision.

Last week, Radio Vatican received a constant stream of furious e-mails.
Some were read on the air. One listener wrote: "Shame on the Vatican,
which supposedly knew nothing about the statements of Bishop Williamson.
Pope John Paul II would have thrown out the people at the Vatican
responsible for this."

Another wrote: "I am unspeakably furious with Mr. Ratzinger. The ground is
being prepared for new pogroms here." A third listener of the radio
station, which is broadcast internationally, even called upon the Vatican
to convert the Holocaust denier and bishop "with a mandatory pilgrimage to
Auschwitz." Yet another yearned for the days of Ratzinger's predecessor:
"With the rehabilitation of the openly anti-Semitic Lefebvre priest,
Benedict ridicules the legacy of his predecessor, who fought tirelessly
for reconciliation between Christianity and Judaism."

Many in the pope's immediate surroundings are also dismayed about the new
debate over anti-Semitism. Last week even the loyal Osservatore Romano
sharply criticized the pope's handling of the matter. The paper wrote that
it regretted that the repeal of the excommunication of the four St. Pius
bishops was simply handled "according to the wrong script" at the Vatican.

How could this have happened?

Benedict decided to issue the decree lifting the excommunications without
consulting with the relevant offices of the Curia. Vatican sources say
that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was not
consulted. "It was the pope's decision," German Cardinal Walter Kasper,
the chairman of the council, explained. Kasper, a former companion of the
pope now somewhat saddened by his friend, has since submitted his letter
of resignation.

According to a member of the bishop's congregation charged with the
matter, the decree, which was intended to reconcile the traditionalists
with their church, was to be issued on the 50th anniversary of the
decision to convene a second Vatican Council by reformer Pope John XXIII.
That would have been on Jan. 25 -- perfect for a historically-minded pope
like Benedict XVI.

The pope, though, was apparently unaware of the fact that Jan. 27 was the
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and, as the Vatican has now
admitted, he did not know that one of the rehabilitated bishops was a
notorious Holocaust denier. And none of his close associates seemed to
feel a need to enlighten him.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the prefect of the Congregation for
Bishops, signed the decree on Jan. 21, a Wednesday. But just a short time
later, he apparently realized what he had done.

The papers were already filled with Williamson's views at the time. The
smart thing to do would have been to hold off with publication of the
decree. Italia Oggi, a business newspaper, cited witnesses who claimed to
have listened in on a fit of rage by Cardinal Re. "What a bungler!" the
witnesses say the cardinal shouted, as he sat in a bus on a Sunday
morning, on his way to mass at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
He was not referring to the Holy Father, but to one of his fellow
cardinals, Columbian Daro Castrilln Hoyos, who had urged him to sign the
decree.

In the wake of the slip-up, however, there was no efficient crisis
management, not even in the Vatican Press Office. While Bishop
Williamson's comments on the Holocaust were broadcast across the world,
the press releases from the Holy See initially addressed the awarding of
honorary citizenship to the pope by the German town of Mariazell and the
communion of the Patriarch of Antioch.

Sloppy Work

It was not until mid-week that Vatican officials realized that a disaster
had occurred. Aides quickly posted a few videos on YouTube, showing the
pope's speech at Auschwitz, his visits to synagogues and amiable meetings
with Jewish dignitaries. The YouTube site had received all of 1,900 clicks
by Friday.

Did the Vatican even know about Williamson? "Here is the problem," Father
Eberhard von Gemmingen, the head of Vatican Radio's German service, said
in a commentary last week: "What exactly is meant by the term 'the
Vatican?' The Vatican is large. It has many offices. Some offices that
deal with politics were certainly familiar with his anti-Semitic
statements. But perhaps these offices were not informed early enough that
his excommunication was being revoked."

The second department of the Secretariat of State, which handles foreign
relations, should also have concerned itself with the decree. "There must
have been individuals there who knew Bishop Williamson. Tarcisio Bertone,
as Cardinal Secretary of State, hovers above all agencies, and above him
is the pope."

In other words, the explanations seem to indicate, it was all the result
of sloppy work in the Roman Curia bureaucracy. If only it were that
simple.

The slip-up involving the St. Pius bishops could not have turned into a
scandal but for two, closely-related problems associated with this
pontificate.

The first is the growing isolation of Benedict XVI. And the second is his
trepidation when it comes to interacting with the modern world. It is a
deeply conservative fundamental attitude, which repeatedly leads to
"ecumenism to the right," as Johann Baptist Metz, a theologian and
professor of fundamental theology, said recently in criticism of the pope.

The pope, says one member of the Curia, has surrounded himself with a team
of yes-men, devoid of any critical voices. The team even shields the
81-year-old pontiff from unfavorable reports in the media. "As a rule,"
says the official, "he is only presented with excerpts from the
international press. And in many cases, his staff members say: No, no, we
cannot show him that article."

Unlike his predecessor Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Secretary of State Bertone
is considered relatively apolitical. Benedict appointed the cardinal
because he had shown himself to be "prudent in pastoral care," and because
he was familiar with Bertone from their days serving together on the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.


Isolated within the Confines of Doctrine


A conservative lobby has formed around the pope over the years, with
considerable influence and abilities to manipulate policy. It includes the
members of groups like Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ, the Priestly
Fraternity of St. Peter and the SSPX.

When it comes to rapprochement with other religions, they not only delay
and debate ad nauseam pending decisions, but they also allow their views
to leak to the outside world. One example was the pope's baptism of a
Muslim during the Easter vigil mass in St. Peter's Basilica in 2008. The
conservative lay movement "Comunione e Liberazione," which is highly
influential in Italy, orchestrated the baptism.

The demonstrative conversion of a Muslim to Catholicism became an
immediate source of indignation among Muslims around the world. Arab
dailies wrote that the water that Pope Benedict had poured onto the head
of the convert was "like petrol thrown onto the fire of the clash of
cultures." At almost the same time, terrorist leader Osama bin-Laden
broadcast on the Internet a message critical of the pope, accusing him of
playing a key role in a new crusade against Islam.

Minor acts, fleshed out in the backrooms of the Vatican by orthodox
lobbyists, can have a substantial political impact. Apparently Benedict
failed to recognize the explosive nature of this baptism. It marked the
second time that he was responsible for serious consternation in the
Islamic world.

Critical of Islam

The first was his 2006 speech in Regensburg that angered Muslims from
Jakarta to Casablanca. In September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, without so
much as consulting with the relevant bodies in the Curia, delivered a
lecture on faith and reason, and in doing so he unwittingly set off a
global religious controversy. "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was
new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman," the pope said,
quoting a Byzantine emperor. The speech quickly ignited outrage around the
world. Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia called for the pope's death,
and in Somalia a nun who had worked in a children's clinic was shot. A
pope had openly insinuated that another world religion showed a tendency
toward violence, and a pope had cited a sentence critical of Islam without
distancing himself from it clearly enough.

Ratzinger, who holds a doctorate in theology, wrote the speech himself,
which shows that the Holy Father apparently has difficulty comprehending
the public impact of his actions. Benedict has almost no sensitivity for
the public mood, and he is no politician. His actions are based on other
maxims, derived from theological tenets, dogmatic insights and the
constraints of church law.

Wolfgang Thierse, a Catholic German politician and member of the Social
Democratic Party (SPD), thinks Benedict's gaffes come from his isolation.
"The pope's faux pas and blunders show that he makes decisions on his own.
In theological terms, he lives in a separate world, the world of the old
church fathers who shaped him. This is why he barely notices the
historical and political context. He claims to serve the truth, which is
not incorrect. But he must combine it with a respect for other truths."

It is a weakness in his biography that Ratzinger has almost never left the
confines of a strictly clerical environment. His contact with the world
and other people was consistently kept to a minimum. His world is that
which exits inside the church, including its old traditions. In that world
all that counts is what can be read in books. Now, at his advanced age, he
is anxious to prevent this world from fracturing.

"His current life," says a German theologian, "is reminiscent of Louis
XVI. He hears snippets of what is happening in the world, signs something
here and there, performs his duties, studies documents and has generally
made a comfortable life for himself at court. But he is not the master of
the machine that surrounds him."

The Bavarian pope's lack of worldliness is at times oddly amusing and at
times horrifying. He wants to be a doctor of the church, most of all,
ceaselessly presenting the truths of the faith. But he has little interest
in how his church is positioned in this world. The theological pope
blossoms when he can work his way through the apostles, bit by bit, during
his Wednesday audiences, even discussing such unknown church fathers as
St. Andrew of Crete.

'Degeneration of the Liturgy'

Perhaps this explains the covert sympathy Benedict has for all the
ultra-purists, the brothers of St. Pius and other Don Quixotes of a
supposedly pure Catholicism. He resembles them in his deep pessimism about
the course of the world, in his almost entomological passion for minute
deviations from doctrine, and in his belief that the world is essentially
made up of dogmas.

In his autobiographical "Milestones," Joseph Ratzinger criticized the
Second Vatican Council. The hard break with traditions like the Tridentine
mass, the old-style Roman Rite Mass, was a mistake, he writes. "I am
convinced that the church crisis we are experiencing today is largely a
result of the degeneration of the liturgy."

Every brother of St. Pius will agree with this, and with the programmatic
address Ratzinger gave in April 2005, just before the conclave: "Having a
clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a
fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed
and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude
(acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of
relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has
as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

Perhaps the See of Rome is in fact the only job in which such beliefs can
still be reconciled with the job profile. If this is the case, however,
there are bound to be regular collisions with the real world that exists
outside the Leonine Wall surrounding the Vatican. The global,
media-dominated society hears everything, sees everything, knows
everything and forgets nothing. The Regensburg address made this clear, as
does the current Williamson affair. And no amount of prayer can change
this.

The Vatican must have known what kinds of thoughts the Lefebvre disciples
harbored. Bishop Williamson's followers in Sweden posted a presentation on
YouTube in which Williamson enthusiastically praises the so-called
Syllabus as a litmus test for true Catholicism. For non-Catholics, the
"Syllabus Errorum" is a list of the supposed fundamental errors of the
modern age. These include concepts like democracy, the rule of law,
freedom of religion, the separate of church and state, human rights,
liberalism and rationalism. (Gay marriage is not mentioned explicitly, at
least not yet.)

Evidence of a Certain Misbalance

Pope Benedict gets involved with backward-looking pious types, because he
sees himself as a servant of unity, as he explained last Wednesday. His
step, he said, should be understood as an "act of paternal mercy, because
these prelates had repeatedly manifested to me their deep pain at the
situation in which they had come." He wanted to overcome a schism within
the church, he said.

The SSPX consists of just 500 priests worldwide. In Germany it has chapels
and churches in more than 50 locations and about 10,000 members. There are
no precise numbers of worldwide membership, although it is estimated at
between 100,000 and 200,000, distributed across 30 countries around the
world. No more than 0.02 percent of all Catholics are members.

And yet Benedict seems willing to risk the reputation of his church for
this small group. A fundamental theologian like Joseph Ratzinger can
apparently put up with many things, just not secondary truths. "The pope
has placed the welfare of the church above respect for the truth and the
memory of the dead," says Vito Mancuso, a professor of Catholic theology
in Milan, Italy.

In fact, there is evidence of a certain imbalance. The pope routinely
blunders when it comes to the more liberal side of things, but never on
the conservative side. This is borne out by many examples. For instance,
at the opening ceremony for the Latin American Conference of Bishops in
Aparecida, Brazil, in May 2007, the Bavarian pope snubbed all indigenous
peoples when he said that their ancestors' conversion to Christianity did
not constitute forcing the religion on a foreign culture, but instead was
something the indigenous peoples had unconsciously desired.

"To say that the cultural decimation of our people constitutes a
purification is offensive and, to be honest, frightening," indigenous
representative Sandro Tux said at the time.


Killing Jews -- Praying for Jews


Benedict even manages to offend Protestants in his native Germany when he
discusses the legitimate teachings of his church. In July 2007, Benedict
authorized a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, which stated that Protestants did not form "churches in the real
sense." This was nothing new, from a Catholic perspective. For Rome there
is only one church, namely its own, the "Una Sancta Catholica Ecclesia,"
which goes back to the Apostles. Everything else, in the Vatican's view,
is nothing but sects, Christian communities or lay events.

In this respect, the pope is right. But was he well advised to point it
out once again? At any rate, he has inflicted damage on the relationship
among the denominations. "Some hoped that a pope who comes from Germany,
and as such is quite familiar with the Protestant Church, would improve
relations. These hopes have not been fulfilled," says Bishop Margot
Kssmann from the northern German city of Hannover. In fact, official
relations between Protestants and Catholics are relatively frosty at the
moment.

Last November, Benedict XVI wrote the foreword for a book by Marcello
Pero, a philosopher and former president of the Italian Senate. In it, the
pope praises the rejection of a "cosmopolitan" Europe. "You explain with
great clarity," Benedict writes, "that an interreligious dialogue, in the
narrow sense of the word, is not possible, whereas the intercultural
dialogue in which the cultural consequences of the fundamental religious
decision are examined becomes all the more urgent." There can be no "true
dialogue" about religion, Benedict continues, "without excluding one's own
faith."

What some critics of the pope dismiss as naivet and awkwardness in dealing
with the world is far more for others. For them, the series of mishaps
eventually turns into a pattern of stubbornness.

Praying for the Jews

The papal gaffes strike a particularly sensitive note in those who have
experienced too many supposed exceptions and blunder in their history, and
have done so for so long that they were almost wiped out: the Jews.

The extension of the pope's hand in blessing to the most right-wing fringe
of Christianity, an act of mercy for someone like Williamson, is "no
regrettable isolated incident," says Walter Homolka, rector of the Abraham
Geiger College in Potsdam outside Berlin. Instead, the rabbi sees it as "a
cascade of incidents," which can only lead to the conclusion that "the
Jewish-Christian relationship is of no value to the pope."

This statement is evidence of a deep bitterness. Joseph Ratzinger is
anything but an anti-Semite. The common origins of Judaism and
Christianity are at the core of his theological thought. In his
"Introduction to Christianity," he approvingly cites a sentence by the
"great Jewish theologian Leo Baeck," according to which all devout people,
not just the Israelites, will share "in eternal bliss."

However, one can accuse the pope of assigning greater importance to inner
unity of his church than to its relationship with other religions. This
became clear, once again, to Jewish religious scholars when Benedict
issued a so-called motu proprio document on the liturgy on July 7, 2007.

Since 1570, Catholics had prayed on Good Friday for the conversion of the
"faithless Jews," and that "they may be delivered from their darkness."
Catholics did this for 400 years, but their prayers never met with much
success. The rite was modified after the Second Vatican Council, and the
new version of the intercession read, somewhat more politely: " Let us
pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the Word of God, that they
may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his
covenant that they may reach the destination set by God's providence."

Step Backward

To the delight of traditionalists, Benedict's decree reinstated the
Tridentine Mass in a special form. That form included all of the passages
that were laid down in 1962, in the Roman Missal ("Missale Romanum"). But
did it include the intercession for the Jews?

Following a series of critical inquiries, the pope decreed, in early
February 2008, that from then on the following text was to be included in
the Good Friday prayer: "Oremus et pro Iudaeis ut Deus et Dominus noster
illuminet corda eorum ..."

It sounds festive enough in Latin, but only because no one understands it.
But the statement becomes more than clear in translation: "Let us pray for
the Jews. May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may
acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men. Almighty and everlasting
God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the
truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into
your church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."

For historian Michael Wolffsohn, the motu proprio was the "biggest
theological step backward in relation to Judaism since 1945." The Jewish
representatives in the Jewish and Christian working group within the
Central Committee of German Catholics then boycotted the Catholic
Assembly.

Benedict XVI's support for the process of beatification of Pope Pius XII
is also a serious problem for history-conscious Jews in Israel and in the
Diaspora. The Italian pope, for reasons of diplomatic caution or out of
sheer fear, remained publicly silent on the Holocaust.

Pogroms Became Commonplace

In September, Pope Benedict expressed his clear support for his "esteemed
predecessor." At a conference of the Jewish-Christian Pave the Way
Foundation, the pope spoke of Pius's "many interventions, made secretly
and silently, precisely because, given the concrete situation of that
difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the
worst and save the greatest number of Jews." The achievements of the
Pacelli pope were not always "examined in the right light."

Although Pius XII secretly saved the lives of many Jews, his name is still
mentioned at Israel's Yad Washem Holocaust Memorial as an example of the
failure of the church.

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga is not surprised by the
constantly recurring tensions. "We must not forget," he says, "that a
strong anti-Jewish feeling is rooted in Catholicism. And two popes --
Wojtyla and Ratzinger -- are certainly not enough to put an end to this."

Even the Apostle Paul wrote about the Jews "who killed the Lord Jesus and
the prophets, who have persecuted us, and who please neither God nor any
group of people." For Christians, the Jews were the supposed "murderers of
God" for almost two thousand years. Anti-Judaism permeates the history of
the church -- and it has often been bloody.

In the late 11th century, after Pope Urban II urged Christians to conquer
the Holy Land, thousands of crusaders in France and Germany followed his
call. But instead of traveling to Jerusalem, they first descended upon
their Jewish neighbors at home. On a single day, Christian mobs, chanting
"Let us avenge the blood of the Christ Crucified," murdered the entire
Jewish community of about 1,000 people in the western city of Mainz.

Pogroms became commonplace. In 1298, bands of "Jew killers" led by a
knight named Rindfleisch aus Rttingen traveled through the Franconia
region and murdered about 5,000 Jews. Life was especially dangerous for
Jews on Good Friday, when Christians, seized by their pious bloodlust,
pursued the "god killers." By the end of the 15th century, Christians,
through murder and forced displacement, had managed to wipe out the
majority of Jewish populations in Western and Southern Europe.

Even Martin Luther, the reformer, was no friend of the Jews. He
recommended: "First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury
and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again
see a stone or cinder of them. Second, I advise that their houses also be
razed and destroyed."

'Smoke of Satan'

During the course of the 19th century, anti-Judaism was replaced and
displaced by anti-Semitism, which was rooted in racism. According to
theologian Hans Kng, "National Socialism would have been impossible
without the centuries-old anti-Semitism of the churches." During Nazi
rule, conflicts quickly arose between Catholic doctrine and the
all-encompassing claim to power of party members. Although some bishops
were headed for a clear course of confrontation with the Nazis, the
annihilation of the Jews was by no means the German episcopate's greatest
concern.

It was only in 1965 that Pope Paul VI, in the "Nostra aetate" declaration
of the Second Vatican Council, rejected anti-Judaism once and for all. The
church, the groundbreaking document read, "decries hatred, persecutions,
displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by
anyone."

It is precisely this document that Lefebvre's followers have not
recognized to this day. The SSPX saw the Council essentially as a "fissure
in the church," through which the "smoke of Satan had entered the Church."


Benedict Bearing the Cross


The ultra-conservative group's representative in Germany is Father Franz
Schmidberger, the District Superior of the SSPX in Stuttgart. After some
hesitation, Schmidberger distanced himself from the statements of his
fellow SSPX member Williamson. "The downplaying of the murders of Jews by
the Nazi regime, and its atrocities, are unacceptable to us. I wish to
apologize for this behavior and distance myself from all statements of
this nature."

But shortly before Christmas, Schmidberger and his fellow SSPX members
wrote to German bishops to remind them of the supposed Jewish original
sin: "With the crucifixion of Christ, the curtain of the temple was torn
and the old alliance destroyed. But this does not just mean that the Jews
of today are not our older brothers in faith. Rather, they are complicit
in deicide, as long as they do not distance themselves from the
culpability of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ
and the baptism."

This age-old atavistic way of thinking, which defines Jews as being
spattered with guilt, has been part of the church once again since
Benedict's decree. This, in fact, is what happened on Jan. 24, 2009, and
it cannot be reversed with any declarations or visits to synagogues.

Dieter Graumann, the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in
Germany, calls it a "fiasco, an absolute disaster." A German, of all
people, says Graumann, set the Christian-Jewish dialogue back by decades.
"That's what makes it so bitter," says Graumann, "so sad, and so
incomprehensible."

'Obliteration of 50 Years of Church History'

Oded Wiener, who, as Director General of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, is
responsible for interfaith dialogue, says that there have been dramatic
telephone conversations between Jerusalem and Rome, as part of an effort
to salvage what can be salvaged. But there is a sense of deep
disappointment. Elia Enrico Richetti, Venice's chief rabbi, initially
terminated cooperation with the Catholic Church, because the pope lacked
"the most basic respect" for the Jews. Richetti sees the pope's actions as
the "obliteration of 50 years of church history."

Dialogue with the Jews was a central concern for Benedict's predecessor,
John Paul II. He had experienced the murdering of Jews as a young man in
Poland, and as pope he condemned anti-Semitism as a "sin against God and
man." For John Paul, the Jews were "our older brothers."

Before Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, Rabbi Walter Homolka spoke with
him about the Christian-Jewish dialogue. "He was in favor of it," Homolka
recalls, "but he didn't seem to feel very passionate about it." Homolka,
who is in charge of training rabbis in Germany, no longer believes in an
easing of tensions between Jews and the Catholic Church, as long as
Benedict XVI is its leader. "We are waiting for the next pope," he says.

How the Jews will cope with this serious affront by the Vatican depends
not only on the leadership in Rome, but also on the faithful around the
world. Central Jewish Council Vice-president Graumann wants to see
"Catholics stand up and show that they will not let down the Jews."

What next?

Jerusalem resident David Rosen is the chairman of the International Jewish
Committee for Inter-religious Consultations. He was in the audience when
Benedict gave a moving speech at the Auschwitz memorial, in which he said:
"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread
silence -- a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord,
did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then,
we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were
put to death here It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all
who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor
of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people."

No Permanent Damage?

The newly clear, though appallingly after-the-fact condemnation of
anti-Semitism by Pope Benedict XVI gives Rosen hope that permanent damage
has not been inflicted on the process of reconciliation between Jews and
Christians.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Rosen has canceled an annual meeting with
representatives of the Vatican scheduled for early March. "The church must
now determine," says the influential rabbi, "whether the brothers of St.
Pius share the teachings on anti-Semitism," such as John Paul II's
characterization of anti-Semitism as "a sin against God and man."

Experts on Catholic Church law also believe that the schism will only end
completely if the traditionalists clearly recognize the authority of the
pope and the resolutions of the Second Vatican Council. If not, says Peter
Krmer, an expert on canon law from the western German city of Trier, "the
suspension from office would remain in effect." This is the conclusion he
draws from Benedict's remarks on Wednesday.

"I hope," the pope said, "my gesture is followed by the hoped-for
commitment on their part to take the further steps necessary to realize
full communion with the church, thus witnessing true fidelity, and true
recognition of the magisterium and the authority of the pope and of the
Second Vatican Council."

There is at least one person who has so far shown no intention of
recognizing anything at all.

Bishop Williamson is sitting in his Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in
La Reja, a confident neo-Baroque building 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of
Buenos Aires, Argentina. Journalists are turned away. They are told that
this is a vacation period and that the bishop does not wish to see anyone.
But on the weekend, he referred to his comments on the Holocaust as
"imprudent" and said that he regretted having caused "unnecessary
concerns" for Benedict. But there was little remorse in his words.

Working in the Lord's Vineyard

Shortly before officials at the SSPX headquarters in Switzerland ordered
Williamson not to speak to the press, he wrote a letter to his loyal
supporters. Its tone was triumphant: "In my opinion this latter Decree is
a great step forward for the Church without being a betrayal on the part
of the SSPX And let us thank and pray for Benedict XVI and all his
collaborators who helped to push through this Decree, despite, for
instance, a media uproar orchestrated and timed to prevent it."

His words are clear. And the traditionalists are right in one respect:
They have reason to celebrate. They have successfully completed another
step back into the Unam et Sanctam, and have done so without making any
concessions whatsoever.

Joseph Ratzinger, the learned theology professor, apparently never wanted
this office. The Holy Spirit elevated him to the Holy See, he said after
the conclave, referring to himself as "a simple and humble worker in the
Lord's vineyard."

But his work in the vineyard has since turned into the way of the cross.

Despite all efforts to engage in dialogue with China, the churches of the
East, and Islam, this pope has repeatedly stumbled on the issue of the
Holocaust, as if he were condemned to do so. The affair over the
rehabilitation of the traditionalists is another station of the cross for
Benedict.

Benedict XVI will likely be the last pope to have consciously experienced
the nightmare of the Nazi era. Perhaps it is no accident, but an irony of
history, that Joseph Ratzinger, a former member of the Hitler Youth from
the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn, must repeatedly shoulder the burden of
this history -- whether he wants to or not.

By Stefan Berg, Christoph Schult, Alexander Smoltczyk, Michael Sontheimer
and Peter Wensierski

(source: Der Spiegel)


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

Holocaust Denier Is Ordered To Recant----Otherwise, Vatican Says, Cleric
Can't Come Back


The Vatican on Wednesday ordered a British bishop to publicly recant his
denials of the Holocaust, responding to an outcry over last month's
decision by Pope Benedict XVI to welcome the excommunicated cleric back
into the church.

In an unsigned statement, the Vatican said the formerly defrocked bishop,
Richard Williamson, would be barred from resuming life as a priest until
he admitted "in an absolutely unequivocal and public way" that he was
wrong in saying the Nazis did not kill any Jews in gas chambers during
World War II.

The Vatican said Benedict was not personally aware of the bishop's
repeated public comments denying the Holocaust until after the pontiff
decided to overturn a decision to excommunicate Williamson and three other
renegade clerics 21 years ago.

The Vatican previously had fended off criticism of Williamson's
rehabilitation even as church officials in Rome distanced themselves from
his views. On Tuesday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of
state, declared the matter "closed." Other Vatican officials said Benedict
had adequately addressed the controversy the week before by warning
against Holocaust revisionism and proclaiming his "full and indisputable
solidarity" with Jews.

But the Vatican's handling of the case continued to anger people inside
and outside the Roman Catholic Church who said Benedict -- a Bavarian who
was conscripted into the Hitler Youth as a teenager -- was underestimating
the importance of the issue.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday accused the Vatican of
"creating the impression that Holocaust denial might be tolerated" and
urged the church to "clarify" its position. Even some German cardinals and
bishops called on the Vatican to speak out more strongly against
Williamson and apologize to Holocaust survivors.

The Vatican's decision Wednesday to issue the new order was welcomed by
leaders of several Jewish groups, although they said Benedict needs to
confront other high-ranking clerics who have espoused extremist views
about Judaism.

"This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for," said Ronald S.
Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. "Anti-Semites should not
be allowed to have a say in the church."

The episode has caused a particular stir in Germany, where Holocaust
denial is a crime. Prosecutors in Bavaria have said they are investigating
Williamson's comments. The country celebrated in 2005 when Benedict became
the first German pope in five centuries, but many Germans are now
cringing.

"We Catholics are trying to be loyal to the Vatican and trying to
understand what happened behind the scenes," said Edmund Runggaldier, a
professor of religious philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin. "It's
horrifying because we all know what happened in Auschwitz, and we know
that the pope does, too. That's what makes it so embarrassing."

There was no word Wednesday from the bishop on whether he would agree to
the Vatican's demand. Williamson resides in Argentina and could not be
located for comment. He had previously apologized for causing the pontiff
"unnecessary distress" but did not recant.

Williamson is a member of the Society of St. Pius X, a Catholic sect that
rejects the reformist teachings of the Second Vatican Council. He and
three other clerics from the sect were excommunicated in 1988 after
becoming bishops without papal consent.

The Vatican announced Jan. 24 that Benedict had agreed to lift the
excommunication order as part of an effort to mend relations with the
Society of St. Pius X.

Two days earlier, Swedish public television station broadcast a
prerecorded interview with Williamson in which he insisted that no more
than 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps, "not one of them by
gassing in a gas chamber." Most credible historical accounts estimate that
6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

It was not the first time that Williamson had denied the extent of the
Holocaust. In 1989, during a speaking tour in Canada, he said Jews were
"the enemies of Christ" and had fabricated the Holocaust as part of a
Zionist scheme to found the state of Israel.

"What is particularly astounding is the Vatican assertion that they didn't
know about his Holocaust views," said Marvin Hier, a rabbi and dean of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "All somebody had to do was Google
him."

(source: Washington Post)



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


German investigators who have hunted Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim for
decades said Thursday that new information indicating the former
concentration camp doctor died in Egypt in 1992 appears credible and that
they will attempt to find his body.

The Baden-Wuerttemberg state police unit that investigates Nazi-era crimes
is preparing a request that Egyptian authorities allow them to pursue the
case in Cairo, unit spokesman Horst Haug said.

"We want to attempt to find the body," Haug told The Associated Press.
Heim was accused of taking part in experiments on Jewish prisoners at
Mauthausen camp in Austria, such as injecting various solutions into their
hearts to see which killed them fastest. He was indicted in Germany in
absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.

Heim's son Ruediger told Germany's ZDF television that his father fled to
Egypt after authorities tried to arrest him at his Baden-Baden home in
1962. The younger Heim contradicted previous statements that he had never
had any contact with his father since that time, telling ZDF that he had
met with him several times in Cairo, starting in the mid-1970s.

Asked about the discrepancies, Heim told the AP on Thursday that the ZDF
interview was the correct version of the story.

"You can trust this interview," he said.

Heim would not elaborate on why he decided to speak now, or why he kept
his silence for so long.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center's head Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said
Aribert Heim has previously been linked to Egypt, but the story raises
"more questions than it answers."

"There's no body, no corpse, no DNA, no grave - we can't sign off on a
story like this because of some semiplausible explanation," Zuroff told
the AP in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

"Keep in mind these people have a vested interested in being declared dead
- it's a perfectly crafted story; that's the problem, it's too perfect."
ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo,
where graves are reused after several years, and so it is unlikely remains
will be found.

Aribert Heim, born in 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, joined the local Nazi
party in 1935, three years before Austria was annexed by Germany. He later
joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria,
as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.

While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS
pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such experiments as the heart injections.
Karl Lotter, a non-Jewish prisoner who worked in the Mauthausen
concentration camp's hospital, said he remembered the first time he saw
Heim kill.

An 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation,
and Heim asked the boy why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a
soccer player and swimmer before he was imprisoned, Lotter said.

Lotter said Heim anesthetized the teenager and began operating on him, but
instead of treating the inflamed foot, he cut the young man open,
castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said.
The victim's head was then removed and the flesh boiled away so that Heim
could keep the head on display.

Lotter's account of the 1941 atrocity was in a witness statement he gave
eight years later, part of a 1950 Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest
uncovered by the AP last year. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr.
Heim was the most horrible," Lotter said.

In 1961, German authorities were alerted that Heim was living in
Baden-Baden and began an investigation, but when they went to arrest him
in September 1962, they just missed him.
Heim would be 94 today.

Last summer, Ruediger Heim tried to have his father declared legally dead
so he could take control of an estimated 1.2 million euros' worth of
investments in his name, saying that he would donate the money to charity.
ZDF, working with The New York Times, reported Wednesday that they had
found more than 100 documents left by Heim in a briefcase in the Cairo
hotel room where he lived under the name Tarek Hussein Farid. They
included a passport, an application for a residence permit, and personal
letters.

The report said Heim was living under the pseudonym and had converted to
Islam by the time of his death from intestinal cancer.

(source: NPR)


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


Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi


Even in old age the imposingly tall, athletic German known to locals as
Tarek Hussein Farid maintained the discipline to walk some 15 miles each
day through the busy streets of Egypts capital. He walked to the
world-renowned Al Azhar mosque here, where he converted to Islam, and
to the ornate J. Groppi Cafe downtown, where he ordered the chocolate
cakes he sent to friends and bought the bonbons he gave to their children,
who called him Uncle Tarek.

Friends and acquaintances here in Egypt also remember him as an avid
amateur photographer who almost always wore a camera around his neck, but
never allowed himself to be photographed. And with good reason: Uncle
Tarek was born Aribert Ferdinand Heim, a member of Hitler's elite
Waffen-SS and a medical doctor at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and
Mauthausen concentration camps.

It was behind the gray stone walls of Mauthausen, in his native Austria,
that Dr. Heim committed the atrocities against hundreds of Jews and others
that earned him the nickname Dr. Death and his status as the most wanted
Nazi war criminal still believed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to be at
large.

Dr. Heim was accused of performing operations on prisoners without
anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, then leaving them to die
on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the
hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a
souvenir. After living below the radar of Nazi hunters for more than a
decade after World War II much of it in the German spa town of
Baden-Baden where he had a wife, two sons and a medical practice as a
gynecologist he escaped capture just as investigators closed in on him in
1962.

His hiding place, as well as his death in 1992, have remained unknown
until now.

Investigators in Israel and Germany have repeatedly said that they
believed Dr. Heim was alive and hiding in Latin America, near where a
woman alleged to be his illegitimate daughter lived in Chile. Witnesses
from Finland to Vietnam and from Saudi Arabia to Argentina have sent tips
and reported sightings to investigators.

A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage
here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim's flight to the Middle East.
Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from
members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim
resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death,
in Egypt.

The briefcase contains an archive of yellowed pages, some in envelopes
that were still sealed, of Dr. Heims letters and medical test results, his
financial records and an underlined, annotated article from a German
magazine about his own manhunt and trial in absentia, even drawings of
soldiers and trains by the children he left behind in Germany. Some
documents are in the name Heim, others Farid, but many of the latter, like
an application for Egyptian residency under the name Tarek Hussein Farid,
have the same birthday, June 28, 1914, and the same place of birth,
Radkersburg, Austria, as Dr. Heim.

Although none of the 10 friends and acquaintances in Cairo who identified
a photograph of Dr. Heim knew his real identity, they described signs that
he might have been on the run. "My idea, which I've taken from my father
at that time, is that he was in dispute with maybe the Jews, but he took
refuge in Cairo at that time," said Tarek Abdelmoneim el Rifai, the son of
Abdelmoneim el Rifai, 88, Dr. Heims dentist in Cairo and close friend.

A certified copy of a death certificate obtained from Egyptian authorities
confirmed witness accounts that the man called Tarek Hussein Farid died in
1992. "Tarek Hussein Farid is the name my father took when he converted to
Islam," said his son Rdiger Heim. In an interview in the familys villa in
Baden-Baden, Mr. Heim, 53, admitted publicly for the first time that he
was with his father in Egypt at the time of his death from rectal cancer.

It was during the Olympics. There was a television in the room, and he was
watching the Olympics. It distracted him. He must have been suffering from
serious pain, said Mr. Heim, who is tall, like his father, with a long
mournful face and speaks softly and carefully. Dr. Aribert Heim died the
day after the Games ended, on Aug. 10, 1992, according to his son and the
death certificate.

Mr. Heim said he learned of his fathers whereabouts through his aunt, who
has since died. He said he did not come forward because he did not wish to
bring trouble to any of his fathers friends in Egypt. As the number of
surviving Nazi war criminals has dwindled, his father's case has grown in
prominence.

Shelter in the Middle East

Despite the newly uncovered evidence of Dr. Heim's time in Egypt, it is
impossible to definitively close his case, with the location of his burial
site still a mystery.

His death would be a significant but hitherto unknown milestone in the
winding up of the passionate and at times controversial hunt for Nazi war
criminals that led to the trial and execution of the Holocaust planner
Adolf Eichmann but never managed to catch up with Josef Mengele, the most
famous of the Nazi doctors, who died in Brazil in 1979, as forensic tests
later proved.

While the secret lives of Nazis in countries like Argentina and Paraguay
captured the popular imagination in books and films like The Odessa File
and The Boys From Brazil, the Heim case casts light on the often
overlooked history of their flight to the Middle East.

Until political winds shifted, ex-Nazis were welcomed in Egypt in the
years after World War II, helping in particular with military technology.
Rdiger Heim said that his father told him he knew other Nazis there, but
tried to steer clear of them.

Even so, how Dr. Heim was able to elude his pursuers for so long, while
receiving money from Europe, most notably from his late sister, Herta
Barth, and corresponding with friends and family in long letters, is
unclear.

The Arab world was an even better, a safer haven than South America, said
Efraim Zuroff, the Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had
been searching for Dr. Heim and traveled to Chile last July to raise
awareness about the case. Mr. Zuroff expressed surprise when informed of
Dr. Heim's apparent fate, saying the center had been about to raise the
reward for information leading to his arrest to $1.3 million from
$400,000.

A Trail Gone Cold

The only time Dr. Heim was ever jailed was after World War II when he was
held by the American military in Germany. But the military released him,
apparently unaware that investigators in Austria were building a case
against him. A United States war crimes team took testimony about his
crimes from Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, on Jan. 18, 1946,
less than a year after the German surrender.

Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates mouths to determine whether
their teeth were in impeccable condition, Mr. Kohl said, according to a
transcript of the interview. If this were the case, he would kill the
prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the
crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked
skull, and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration
for their desks.

Mr. Zuroff said that because Dr. Heim was at Mauthausen for a short time
early in the war, in the fall of 1941, he was aware of no people alive
today who suffered at his hands and can give first-hand testimony of his
crimes.

German investigators said that Dr. Heim was careful throughout the postwar
period when less-controlled people might have let down their guard.

Investigators noted that Dr. Heim, a talented ice hockey player, stayed
out of pictures when his hockey team posed for its group portrait, even
after they won the German championship. Dr. Heim owned an apartment
building in Berlin, which investigators said for years provided him with
income for his life incognito.

At the headquarters of the Baden-Wrttemberg state police in Stuttgart
today, small magnets freckle a map of the world, marking the spots where
clues or reports of sightings surfaced. Investigators said that they had
searched continuously since his disappearance in 1962, checking more than
240 leads and ruling out several people thought to be Dr. Heim. While they
never caught him, they appear to have come tantalizingly close to his
hiding place in the Middle East.

There was information that Heim was in Egypt working as a police doctor
between 1967 and the beginning of the 70s, said Joachim Schck, head of the
fugitive unit at the state police. This lead proved to be false.

According to his son, Dr. Heim had left Germany and driven through France
and Spain before crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt.
It was only sheer coincidence that the police could not arrest me because
I was not at home at the time, Dr. Heim wrote in a letter to the German
magazine Spiegel, after it published a report about his war-crimes case in
1979. It is unclear whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in
his files, many of which were written in meticulous cursive style in
German or English.

In the letter he also accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at
Mauthausen, of being the one who invented these atrocities. Dr. Heim went
on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added
that the Jewish Khazar, Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who
in 1933 declared war against Hitler's Germany.

The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim,
who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English
and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact,
he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin. Mr. Rifai
recalled that Dr. Heim had shown his family many different drafts of the
paper, which were among the papers found in the briefcase that The Times
and ZDF television obtained. A list also showed plans to send drafts of
the paper to prominent people around the world under the name Dr. Youssef
Ibrahim including the United Nations secretary general, Kurt Waldheim,
the United States national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and
Yugoslavias leader, Marshal Tito.

Life as Uncle Tarek

He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which
ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before
his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr.
Heim spoke Arabic, English and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma
said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German
that the Domas had ordered for him.

Mr. Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle
Tarek, whom he said gave him books and encouraged him to study. "He was
like a father. He loved me and I loved him."

He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the
hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until
sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heims good health began to fail him and his
illness was diagnosed as cancer.

After his death, his son Rdiger insisted that they follow his fathers
wishes and donate the body to science, not an easy task in a Muslim
country where the rules dictate a swift burial and dissection is opposed.
Mr. Doma, who wanted to put Uncle Tarek in the family crypt next to his
father, opposed the plan.

The two men rode in a white van with the body of Dr. Heim, which had been
washed and wrapped in a white sheet in accordance with Muslim tradition
and placed in a wooden coffin. Mr. Doma said they bribed a hospital
functionary to take the body, but Egyptian authorities found out, and Dr.
Heim was instead interred in a common grave, anonymously.

(source: New York Times)