Feb. 14




EGYPT/GERMANY:

DEATH ON THE NILE----A Nazi War Criminal's Last Years in Cairo

Aribert Heim, a former concentration camp doctor, apparently received
support from his family in Germany as he hid for decades in Egypt. His
family allegedly visited him without attracting the attention of
authorities and kept mum about his death for 16 years.

Ataba is a neighborhood in Cairo where tourists rarely go astray. This was
probably precisely what made it such a perfect hiding place for the tall
German man. Abd al-Hakim Duma remembers the slim, athletic man well.
Everyone in the neighborhood called him "the foreigner."

Duma's father owned the Hotel Kasr al-Medina on Port Said Street. The
foreigner lived in a plain room on the eighth floor, directly adjacent to
the Duma family. "He often came to our apartment for lunch," Abd al-Hakim
Duma recalls. After converting to Islam, the German, who spoke fluent
Arabic, took the name Tarek Hussein Farid. He was like an uncle to the
children, often taking them along on his walks. He cited "problems with
his family" at home in Germany as the reason that he emigrated to Egypt.

But his problems were of a more existential nature. The hotel in Cairo was
apparently the last refuge for Aribert Heim, who is believed to have
committed atrocities and murder at the Mauthausen concentration camp in
1941 and had been sought by police since 1962. Last week the New York
Times and Germany's ZDF television network aired some of the mysteries
surrounding the former Nazi's fate. According to their accounts, Heim died
of cancer in Cairo on Aug. 10, 1992, at the age of 78. Several witnesses,
including Heim's son Rdiger, and file full of documents allegedly
described his life in hiding.

The news of this death on the Nile marks the preliminary end of a
decades-long hunt around the globe. But the details also attest to the
embarrassingly lax work of the German investigators, who searched for Heim
around the world after he had fled Germany in 1962. As far back as 1965
and 1967, the investigators had uncovered clues that Heim was living in
Egypt. The German officials mailed friendly requests to the Egyptian
authorities, and when they were unable to contribute in a substantive way,
the Germans let the matter drop. They failed to notice the regular trips
family members were apparently making between Germany and Egypt at the
time.

According to information SPIEGEL has obtained, Rdiger Heim was not the
only one to visit the convert with a Nazi past in his new home on the
Nile. His sister, his Frankfurt attorney and his mother-in-law are also
believed to have met with Heim. Of all his relatives, he could rely most
on his sister Hertha.

According to information recently uncovered, she was the one who brought
cash to Switzerland in a suitcase and transferred it to Egypt from there,
using Heim's only slightly modified name (he simply used his middle name,
Ferdinand, as his first name). Heim used the money to buy more than just
chocolate cake, too. Using a middleman, he bought property, including the
Hotel Baghdad and an apartment in Alexandria. Investigators at the time
also completely missed the flow of money to Egypt, which was only
moderately concealed. Heim's sister, who had always held a protective hand
over her brother and his memory, died in 1997. Shortly before her death,
she told an acquaintance in Vienna that her brother had died of cancer.
But she lied about the place of his death, telling her friend that Heim
had passed away in South America. His other confidants remained
tight-lipped. Only six months ago, Heim's son Rdiger said: "If he is dead,
I don't know where he is buried."

Investigators suspected for years that Rdiger Heim knew more than he was
saying. They questioned him repeatedly, even after they had received new
clues about Egypt in 2004. This time they had a contact make inquiries
locally, although he was unable to find a single one of the numerous clues
that have now emerged.

The investigators are irritated by the revelation that Heim's family,
living in the southwestern German city of Baden-Baden, had not reported
the fugitive's death in the last 16 years. Their doubts are also fueled by
a current clue, unearthed in late January, that Heim supposedly lives in
Spain and still receives money from family and friends. For this reason,
the investigators are not yet prepared to close the case. Experts are
still perplexed by the missing body and the strange role played by Heim's
son Rdiger. He claims to have been by his father's side when he died, but
that he knows nothing about the whereabouts of the body. The Stuttgart
investigators' next step is to search for DNA evidence in Cairo.

A fully packed briefcase belonging to Haim, which has now surfaced, closes
some gaps in information about the suspected war criminal's spectacular
run from the law. One of the documents is an eight-page letter to SPIEGEL,
dated March 19, 1979, as a "response" to an article the magazine published
about Heim's dark past. In the letter, which he never sent, Heim sets
aside suspicions that he had received an insider tip before his abrupt
disappearance in 1962. It was "pure coincide," Heim writes, "that the
police were unable to arrest me, because (I) happened to be away from my
house on business at the time."

(source: Spiegel Online)





USA----CALIFORNIA:

City planners recommend approval of Holocaust museum expansion


The Los Angeles Planning Department has recommended approval of the Museum
of Tolerance's controversial expansion, saying the benefits outweigh the
"significant unavoidable impacts."

A draft report by the planning staff, which was sent Friday to project
opponents, concludes that the plan should move forward even though the
28,000-square-foot expansion will worsen traffic, create construction
noise and contrast with the look of an adjacent neighborhood of
single-family homes.

The museum, the educational arm of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal
Center, plans to dramatically extend its hours and replace a Holocaust
memorial garden with multistory reception and banquet space that could
accommodate hundreds of guests until as late as midnight six nights a
week. The museum has asked the city to allow it to immediately extend its
hours and to rent out space for private gatherings.

The report says the museum project would maintain and enhance the economic
vitality of the area, attract new visitors to Los Angeles, create
high-paying construction jobs and allow the museum to expand its
educational and training programs.

Museum officials could not be reached for comment Saturday. It was not
known whether they received a copy of the report.

Opponents of the expansion say the increased noise and traffic will ruin
the quiet ambience of their neighborhood, a small pocket just west of
Beverlywood. Among other concerns, they fear that museum patrons will
usurp curbside parking on residential streets.

"This is an absolute travesty," said Susan Gans, an attorney who owns a
house in the neighborhood and has led the opposition. "This report
indicates that the city planners are nothing more than a rubber stamp, and
citizens feel absolutely helpless." She said opponents hope to raise
enough money to take the matter to court.

The museum project has had the strong support of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa and City Councilman Jack Weiss, whose district includes the
Pico Boulevard institution.

Although the project still must win the approval of the Planning
Commission and the City Council, Gans said the staff report "suggests that
the developer is entirely in control of the process.

"Are we spinning our wheels on something that is a foregone conclusion?"

She and other opponents plan to make their case at a hearing Wednesday,
where they intend to show a video of Frances Simon, an 83-year-old
Holocaust survivor who lives nearby and is against the expansion.

Founded in 1993, the museum challenges visitors to confront bigotry and
racism and to understand the Holocaust. Each year it welcomes more than
300,000 visitors.


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


Living, under many names


In his 89 years, Sol Berger has gone by many names.

He started life in Poland as Salomon Berger, then became Jan Jerzowski.
Then he was Ivan Marianowicz Jerzowski, then Shlomo Harari, then Sol.

During World War II and its aftermath, the names kept him safe, protected
him from the concentration camps and eventually allowed him to seek refuge
in the United States.

But the names also forced Berger, a young Jew, to live in constant fear as
he assumed identities that included a Polish partisan fighter and a
Russian lieutenant. With each name, and each life story he had to
remember, a little more of the real man was kept hidden.

After the war he settled in Los Angeles and began to build a new life,
this time as Sol Berger. For decades he never spoke about what he endured
as Jan, Ivan and Shlomo.

But as Berger came to discover, those identities, though fake, were an
integral part of his life story. And to honor the memory of parents and
siblings who died in the war, he had to tell the world how and why he came
by so many names.

Salomon Berger (1940-1942)

Salomon was beaten badly.

"He's had enough today," he heard a Nazi say after two hours of
questioning. When his interrogators left the room, the 20-year-old Salomon
sensed his chance. Rail-thin at about 100 pounds, he eased himself through
a small window that had barbed wire attached to its frame and let himself
down from the second story.

Salomon had been arrested because he had refused to report for a forced
labor detail. After escaping, he hid in a nearby Jewish home but later
made the mistake of returning home to southeastern Poland. It was 1940,
the year after Germany invaded.

"I thought nobody was going to know who I am," he recalled decades later.
"I came back to Krosno after three weeks, and the Gestapo was waiting for
me."

Gestapo officers knew what Salomon looked like because they had been using
his family's tailor shop to clean and mend their uniforms. He was thrown
into a political prison with 10 Catholics, including a priest who said
Mass and lectured on Christianity daily. Salomon listened carefully. After
six months, his parents bribed officials for his release.

Life attained a kind of normalcy, but over the next two years rumors
trickled in of deportations and gas chambers.

The story of what happened next is based upon Salomon's recollections and
documents. Records maintained at Yad Vashem, an Israeli Holocaust museum,
verify that Sol and other family members lived in Krosno during the war.
Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles, says that key details of his accounts conform with the historical
record.

As Salomon remembers, and as Breitbart confirms, Krosno's Jewish community
received its "resettlement" orders on Aug. 9, 1942, and the town's 2,500
Jews reported to the marketplace at 9 the next morning. Salomon's father
was grouped with 500 elderly men and women and told to get on a truck.
Salomon started to cry.

"This is goodbye," his father said to Salomon and his three brothers. "I
know nobody is going to come back from these trips. But I want you to make
me a promise. You boys try to survive any way you can, to be able to tell
this story."

The trucks returned empty.

Salomon and his brothers -- Moishe, Michael and Joshua -- were among 600
others pressed into forced-labor crews in the area.

Three of his five sisters had already immigrated to the United States and
a fourth had died in anti-Jewish violence in Germany in 1938. But his
mother and remaining sister were still in Poland. Both were taken in
cattle cars to the death camp Belzec and gassed.

A portion of Krosno was blocked off as a ghetto. A month later, the
Gestapo took away another 100 people, including Michael and Moishe.

That left just Salomon and Joshua. Soon after, the pair found someone who
sold false identity papers. As Jan Jerzowski, a good Christian name,
Salomon left Krosno. The day after the brothers escaped, the ghetto was
liquidated.

Jan Jerzowski (1942-1944)

Jan was on a train headed to Eastern Poland when police asked for his
papers.

They lingered and asked if he took Communion. He assured them he did.
Still not satisfied, they asked him to say a prayer. Remembering what he
learned from the priest, Jan recited the Lord's Prayer.

The police let him go.

Joshua was not so lucky. The brothers had split up for the night, and
Joshua was never seen again.

Jan moved on to Niznow, where he found Tadeusz Duchowski, the husband of a
family friend who had helped him escape Krosno. Duchowski supervised a
construction crew on a bridge, and Jan joined the other workers, all of
them Christians.

Duchowski could not put Jan on the books -- listing an extra worker might
raise suspicions -- and he did not have money to pay for one more laborer.
But the work served as a cover. For money, Jan did tailoring on the side;
he had also squirreled away 30 American dollars, purchased on the black
market, by sewing them into his clothing.

One day, a member of the crew pulled him aside and said, "Let's go for a
walk." The man looked inquisitively at Jan. "Are you . . . . ?"

"No, I'm not," Jan said, cutting him off.

The conversation shifted to the war. And then the man gave him a few words
of advice.

"Let me correct you on two items," the man said. "When you drink tea and
you have cube sugar, put it inside [the cup], never bite it. And never
eat" sunflower seeds.

"Why?"

"Because Jews have the habit of this type of eating and drinking."

Then he pointed out a few words Jan spoke with "an accent." Jan never
admitted he was Jewish, but he listened carefully. At night he worried he
would give himself away by talking in his sleep.

After three months, the bridge was completed and Jan teamed up with Polish
partisans who fought the Germans by planting mines on railroad tracks and
committing other acts of sabotage.

One time he heard one of his comrades say that, although the Nazis were
horrible, "they killed the Jews for us."

He pretended to be a boisterous fighter. Some of his fellow partisans
spoke Russian, so he began to pick up the language. He would force himself
to down glasses of homemade vodka and then sneak away to vomit. When they
came upon a river and had a chance to bathe, Jan left his underwear on so
others would not see that he was circumcised.

Once, when questioned by a German officer while leaving a train on a
mission for the partisans, he replied in Polish, "I don't understand
German," even though he did. He knew that Christian Poles rarely spoke
German; Jews, with their Yiddish, were more likely to understand the
language.

The officer let him pass.

In March 1944 the Russians arrived in Poland, and Jan was forced into the
Soviet army. He was given new identity papers, now with an appropriately
Russian name. Because the father of Jan Jerzowski was listed as Marian, he
would now be Ivan Marianowicz Jerzowski.

Ivan Marianowicz Jerzowski (1944-1945)

Many Polish partisans and other newly enlisted Russian soldiers were sent
to the front lines, but Ivan did not want to die. He spotted a German
prisoner with a gold watch and took it, to barter for his life with a
Russian commander. Ivan could speak Polish, Russian and German, he noted.
Couldn't that be of use?

Ivan, now 25, was put to work in the interrogation department translating
the questioning of German prisoners. In April 1945 he took a leave from
the army and began searching for surviving family and friends. Along the
way, he learned that his brother Moishe had been hanged in Auschwitz.

For the last few years, Ivan had played with the idea of remaining a
Catholic. He had lived as one for so long, going to church every day, that
Christianity felt engraved in his mind -- and life was easier as a
Christian than as a Jew.

But once he reunited with other Jews in Krakow, he embraced his heritage.
"I don't want to live a life of lies," he said to himself. "I am born
Jewish, I survived, and that's what I'm going to be."

He sought out a Jewish committee that was helping concentration camp
survivors get false identity papers needed to travel to Palestine. At the
committee headquarters, he met a beautiful young Polish woman named Gusta
Friedman. She had survived the war posing as a Christian, using the name
Waldislava Urbanska.

Ivan introduced himself.

"I don't go out with Russians," she told him, eyeing his uniform. He was
really a Jew, he told her, and he would leave for Palestine the next day.
If she wanted to join, she should come to the headquarters at 10 a.m.

The next morning, she was there.

They planned to travel to Romania, where ships could be found for
Palestine. But Ivan heard that gaining entrance into the country would be
easier for people from southern Europe than for those from the north. It
meant another alias.

Shlomo Harari (1945)

He took off the Soviet uniform and put on a brownish green suit he had
bought in Krakow. He was bound for Romania via Czechoslovakia on an open
cattle car, one of millions of people crisscrossing Europe searching for
survivors and a new life.

"I became Shlomo Harari, a Greek going back home."

On May 7, 1945, the train pulled into Debracin, Hungary, and passengers
spent the night on the floor of a school. In the morning, Shlomo woke to
cheers and firecrackers. Germany had surrendered.

Two weeks later, Shlomo and Gusta married in the Romanian town of Klush.
But there was no honeymoon in Palestine. In Bucharest they learned there
were no ships available and instead made their way to a displaced persons
camp in Italy.

"And here I became back to Salomon Berger," he said decades later. "I knew
any place I wanted to go, I had to use a proper passport."

Sol Berger (1946-present)

While contacting his sisters in the U.S. for visa paperwork, Salomon
learned that his youngest brother, Michael, had survived Auschwitz and was
living in L.A.

It would take five years -- three in the displaced persons camp, where his
son Jack was born, and two years in England, before Salomon got the call
from the U.S. Embassy in London to come get the family's visas.

In June of 1950, he arrived at Union Station in Los Angeles. Michael told
him: "If they ask you how you survived, don't talk. Because these people
here . . . they say, if you suffered, we suffered here too. We had to stay
in line for gasoline. We had to be on a waiting list to get a car, and we
didn't get any steak. . . ."

Salomon lived in West Los Angeles, worked odd jobs and as a tailor and
opened a liquor store with Michael near the Coliseum. With his new life he
wanted a new name: Sol. It's the name on his citizenship papers.

At 57, he enrolled at West Los Angeles Community College and studied
business law, accounting and real estate. He became a top seller for Fred
Sands Realtors in Beverly Hills and prospered, even though he sometimes
battled depression, a consequence of the war.

Michael eventually decided that keeping silent about the war made no
sense, and he volunteered as a docent at the Museum of Tolerance. Sol,
however, still followed his brother's earlier admonition and never spoke
of those hard years.

In 1994, Michael, a chain smoker, was dying of lung cancer. As Sol
recalled, "He said to me, 'I want you to do me a favor, please. I want you
to tell the story of survival, and everything else you can.' "

After Michael died, Sol walked into the museum for the first time.

In the last 15 years, Sol has spoken to museum visitors up to three times
a week. At first it was difficult. He would often break into tears. But it
got easier, and telling his family's story and recounting his days as Jan,
Ivan and Shlomo provided a measure of therapy that helped him combat his
depression.

He cannot walk very well, but when he speaks, he stands for more than an
hour, white wisps of hair dancing on his balding head as he gesticulates
to illustrate points.

"This is my calling," he says.

He had once resolved never to return to Poland and its painful memories,
but last December he felt the need to visit Auschwitz, where his brother
Moishe died. He said Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, before a mass grave
near Krosno, where his father was buried.

He visited the former ghetto a block from where he grew up. There he met
Henryk Duchowski, the son of the couple who had helped save his life.
Duchowski calls him "Yashu," a nickname for Jan. But to all others he was,
and remains, Sol Berger.

(source for both: Los Angeles Times)





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



Feb. 10




USA----CALIFORNIA:

Neighbors oppose Museum of Tolerance expansion


Lest she forget, the tattooed A-11150 on Frances Simon's left arm reminds
her of the hardships she endured as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz,
Ravensbrck and Malchov.

Lest others forget, she has often taken friends and relatives around the
corner to the Museum of Tolerance, which challenges visitors to confront
bigotry and to comprehend the Holocaust.


What she can't abide, however, is the museum's plan to dramatically
extend its hours and replace a Holocaust memorial garden with multistory
reception and banquet space that could accommodate hundreds of guests
until as late as midnight six nights a week.

"The traffic, noise and music would disrupt the neighborhood," said Simon,
83. "It's like dancing on the dead people's memory."

Despite such criticism, the project has support from Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa, local rabbis, many residents and Councilman Jack Weiss,
whose district includes the Pico Boulevard institution. But long-running
disputes over the museum's operations, coupled with concerns about the
expansion, have pitted neighbors -- many of them Jewish -- against Rabbi
Marvin Hier.

Tagged last year by Newsweek magazine as the most influential rabbi in
America, Hier is founder and dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon
Wiesenthal Center, named for the famed Nazi hunter. The museum is the
center's educational arm, each year welcoming more than 300,000 visitors.

Hier wields considerable political power, counting Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger among his friends and donors.

Opponents contend that Hier is pushing hard to propel the project through
the city approval process before Weiss leaves the council in June.

"The [center] is making a desperate grab to railroad this project through
the planning process," said Susan Gans, an entertainment lawyer who has
led the opposition.

Susan Burden, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief administrative and chief
financial officer, countered that the museum has always had a much broader
mission than teaching about the Holocaust.

"The museum's real purpose is to challenge visitors to stand up to
hatred," she said. The museum features exhibits about slavery, bullying
and genocide.

"We're bursting at the seams," she said. "We've had to turn people away
because we didn't have the space."

The expansion would allow the building to accommodate as many as 800, well
above current levels. (The museum initially hoped to accommodate 1,200
guests at a time, but Burden said it reduced the number after neighbors
complained.)

The expansion and additional revenue from events, Burden said, would
enable the museum to serve double the current number of annual visitors.

The 28,000-square-foot expansion would bring the museum to about 97,400
square feet. That includes a 7,153-square-foot wing of the adjoining
Yeshiva University of Los Angeles Boys High School, a private Jewish
school that is connected to the museum by a bridge. (Although the center
long advertised the museum as having 80,000 square feet, Burden said an
architect's analysis for the environmental report computed the size at
about 69,500 square feet.)

Neighbors have other worries. The project does not provide for any new
on-site parking beyond the 200 or so existing spaces; rather, event
attendees would be encouraged to park nearby and walk or ride shuttles to
the museum. Residents say the available parking would be woefully
inadequate for big events, and some fear that guests would snag precious
curb parking on neighborhood streets.

In addition, the current mandated 100-foot noise "buffer" on the museum's
southern end, the site of the memorial garden, would be shortened to 20
feet.

Gans said that setback was negotiated in 1986 as the "quid pro quo" for
allowing the museum to have a fourth story, exceeding the 45-foot height
limit.

As for neighbors' concerns about late-night revelry, Burden said the
center plans to install 4-inch-thick glass so that noise would not escape.
"You're not going to have people having wild parties here, just like you
don't have wild parties at the Skirball" Cultural Center, she said.

At a Feb. 18 hearing, Gans and other opponents plan to argue against the
museum's efforts to change zoning and loosen conditions that were designed
to protect the community.

Opponents also plan to object to what the city's draft environmental
impact report, released in November, regards as "significant and
unavoidable" effects, among them increased traffic and the stark visual
contrast with the area's single-family houses. One portion of the planned
addition, which would feature a cafe and enclosed rooftop garden, would
rise to 63 feet.

Critics were dismayed to learn Friday that city planners had posted the
final EIR, less than a month after comments on the draft document were
due. In the final report, the center proposes that the city immediately
allow the museum to extend its operating hours and rent space for private
events, an idea that opponents vow to fight.

What's at stake, Gans says, is the quiet, pleasant character of her small
West Los Angeles community, just west of the Beverlywood neighborhood.

"If this project is approved, I won't be able to have barbecues or sit in
my backyard with a cup of coffee and a book," she said of her house, which
is in the midst of an extensive remodeling. "I'll never know what big
event the museum will be holding."

Opponents have succeeded in getting the ear of at least one high-profile
supporter: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Although the California Democrat
initially wrote a letter of support for the project, she has reconsidered
because of neighborhood unease. "She believes the leadership of the museum
must work with the city and the community to resolve concerns," said Gil
Duran, a Feinstein spokesman.

Gans and other neighbors say they admire the museum's mission. Over the
years, however, several have written or called to complain about what they
view as violations of the conditional-use permit that has governed the
museum since it opened in 1993.

After learning in late 2007 about the expansion plans, Gans distributed
"Stop the Museum of Tolerance Expansion" signs, many of which still dot
the neighborhood. On Roxbury Drive, along the museum's western side, a
large banner blares: "SHAME. . . . Help us protect the memories of the
Holocaust and Armenian genocide victims/families. . . . It is intolerable
to have weddings, parties and bar mitzvahs at a Holocaust museum."

Also troubling to some immediate neighbors is that YULA plans to seek city
approval for its own 17,122-square-foot expansion, which also would
require major changes to existing conditions. The enlargement would
include a new gym and library and "a Beit Midrash addition (religious
study hall)," according to a May 2008 document submitted to the city.

Opponents, noting that the Jewish Journal lists the school in its
"congregation directory," say they suspect the yeshiva intends to hold bar
mitzvah and wedding services, with guests then walking next door for the
parties.

Few details about the yeshiva project have emerged, and David J. Nagel,
the school's president and board chairman, did not return calls seeking
comment.

If the museum and the yeshiva get the city's OK, Gans said, "the burden on
this neighborhood is going to be huge."

"It will symbolize what's going on in the city," she added, "a complete
lack of compliance with zoning laws designed to protect communities."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

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


USA----WASH., DC


Nazi propaganda examined in D.C. exhibit

A new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.,
documents how Nazi propaganda fostered public indifference.


Wearing a black hat and a suit bearing the yellow Star of David, a man
recoils from a large finger pointing at him from above.

"He is to blame for the war," reads the poster caption.

Similar images, along with newspapers, speeches and broadcast clips, tell
the story of how Nazi Germany's propaganda machine cultivated hatred and
suspicion and portrayed Jewish people as the enemy in the new museum
exhibit State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda.

The exhibit opened Jan. 30 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and runs
through December 2011. It documents how propaganda fostered public
indifference as the government and its allies went from hostilities to
mass atrocities of the Holocaust, when millions of Jews and other groups
were killed between 1933 and 1945.

Museum officials hope visitors will become more critical of information
and more aware of anti-Semitism and intolerance. For instance, the exhibit
touches on the 1994 Rwandan genocide and Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's call to wipe Israel off the map.

"It's to alert people to the fact that hate speech and language like this
didn't go away when the Nazis fell," said Steven Luckert, the exhibit's
curator. "These are things that we have to be constantly aware of in our
own day."

Nazi leaders branded Adolf Hitler as a savior. The swastika logo became
instantly recognizable in posters and other marketing used to attract
votes from women, laborers and students as the Nazis rose from a
little-known party.

After coming to power in 1933, Hitler established a ministry of "public
enlightenment and propaganda." Visitors can use a touchscreen monitor to
see and hear examples of the ministry's work, including music they used.

Newspaper reports also played a role in gaining support for the Nazi
agenda. Curators said many Germans didn't share Hitler's desire to go to
war in 1939 so fabricated reports of countries such as Poland threatening
the country were printed to make it seem like an invasion was necessary.

At its core, the Nazi party promised to unite Germans under a national,
Aryan identity regardless of class, religion or region but excluded were
Jews, the mentally and physically disabled, gays and other groups
considered "impure."

Anti-Semitic propaganda accused Jews of conspiring to take over the world,
describing them as "aliens" and "parasitic."

A photo slide depicts a white woman with her arm around a black woman,
both smiling, warning: "Racial pride fades" with such friendship.

Films and other entertainment mocked those branded as the enemy. A movie
poster shows a thick-browed, grimacing Jewish caricature for The Eternal
Jew, a 1940 documentary-like film with footage of Jewish ghettos. The film
failed at the box office.

But another movie with famous actors and a well-known director, was more
subtle in its message. Jews were expelled at the historical drama's end.

Nazi propagandists spread radio broadcasts and news reels in dozens of
languages across Europe and overseas, including to the U.S., South America
and India. At the same time, they banned foreign news broadcasts.

Despite the demonizing rhetoric, curators said references to the
atrocities that were committed were rare. Officials focused on presenting
a positive image of Germany.

"I think that represents real danger," Luckert said. "That you could be so
swayed by something that seems so positive to you, that you neglect the
consequences that it has for somebody else."

Following World War II, the Allied forces that toppled the Nazis worked to
destroy the party's propaganda. They renamed streets, closed newspapers
and banned symbols. A 1945 photo shows an American soldier in Germany
searching for Nazi content in a large pile of books.

Kerry Overbeck, 19, a sophomore at American University, visited the
exhibit as part of her class on Holocaust history. The propaganda
targeting the youth especially shook her, she said.

"What people always ask is, 'Why learn about the Holocaust still?"' she
said. "But there's so much more to teach us, because it's an ongoing cycle
of hatred."

(source: Associated Press)





UNITED KINGDOM:

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP RICHARD WILLIAMSON
'I Will Not Travel to Auschwitz'


Bishop Richard Williamson's denial of the Holocaust has done serious
damage to the Catholic Church. In an e-mail and fax exchange with SPIEGEL,
the ultra-conservative bishop says that he is willing to "review the
historical evidence."

SPIEGEL: The Vatican is demanding that you retract your denial of the
Holocaust, and it is threatening to not allow you to resume your
activities as a bishop. How will you react?

Williamson: Throughout my life, I have always sought the truth. That is
why I converted to Catholicism and became a priest. And now I can only say
something, the truth of which I am convinced. Because I realize that there
are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must now
review the historical evidence once again. I said the same thing in my
interview with Swedish television: Historical evidence is at issue, not
emotions. And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that
will take time.

SPIEGEL: How can an educated Catholic deny the Holocaust?

Williamson: I addressed the subject in the 1980s. I had read various
writings at the time. I cited the Leuchter report (eds. note: a debunked
theory produced in the 1980s claiming erroneously that the Nazi gas
chambers were technically impractical) in the interview, and it seemed
plausible to me. Now I am told that it has been scientifically refuted. I
plan now to look into it.

SPIEGEL: You could travel to Auschwitz yourself.

Williamson: No, I will not travel to Auschwitz. I've ordered the book by
Jean-Claude Pressac. It's called "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of
the Gas Chambers." A printout is now being sent to me, and I will read it
and study it.

SPIEGEL: The Society of Saint Pius X has set an ultimatum for the end of
February. Are you not risking a break with the group?

Williamson: In the Old Testament, the Prophet Jonah tells the sailors when
their ship is in distress: " Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea;
so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great
tempest is upon you." The Society has a religious mission that is
suffering because of me. I will now examine the historic evidence. If I do
not find it convincing, I will do everything in my power to avoid
inflicting any further harm on the Church and the Society.

SPIEGEL: What does the repeal of the excommunication by Pope Benedict XVI
mean to you?

Williamson: We just want to be Catholic, nothing else. We have not
developed our own teachings, but are merely preserving the things that the
Church has always taught and practiced. And in the sixties and seventies,
when everything was changed in the name of this Council (eds. note: the
Second Vatican Council), it was suddenly a scandal. As a result, we were
forced to the margins of the church, and now that empty churches and an
aging clergy make it clear that these changes were a failure, we are
returning to the center. That's the way it is for us conservatives: we are
proved right, as long as we wait long enough.

SPIEGEL: People at the Vatican claimed that they didn't know you. Is that
true?

Williamson: Most contacts pass through Bishop Fellay and the General
Council, of which I am not a member. But three of us four bishops attended
a private dinner with Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos in 2000. It was more about
getting to know each other, but we certainly talked about theological
issues and even a bit of philosophy. The cardinal was very friendly.

SPIEGEL: The Second Vatican Council counts as one of the great
achievements of the Catholic Church. Why do you not fully recognize it?

Williamson: It is absolutely unclear what we are supposed to recognize. An
important document is called "Gaudium et spes," or Joy and Hope. In it,
the writers rhapsodize about the ability of mass tourism to bring people
together. But one can hardly expect a conservative society to embrace
package tours. It discusses fears and hardships. And then a nuclear war
between the superpowers is mentioned. You see, much of this is already
outdated. These Council documents are always ambiguous. Because no one
knew what exactly this was supposed to mean, everyone started doing as he
wished shortly after the Council. This has resulted in this theological
chaos we have today. What are we supposed to recognize, the ambiguity or
the chaos?

SPIEGEL: Are you actually aware that you are dividing the Church with your
extreme views?

Williamson: Only violation of the dogmas, that is, the infallible
principles, destroys faith. The Second Vatican Council declared that it
would proclaim no new dogmas. Today the liberal bishops act as though it
were some sort of all-encompassing super-dogma, and they use it as
justification for a dictatorship of relativism. This contradicts the texts
of the Council.

SPIEGEL: Your position on Judaism is consistently anti-Semitic.

Williamson: St. Paul put it this way: The Jews are beloved for the sake of
Our Father, but our enemies for the sake of the gospel.

SPIEGEL: Do you seriously intend to use Catholic tradition and the Bible
to justify your anti-Semitism?

Williamson: Anti-Semitism means many things today, for instance, when one
criticizes the Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. The Church has always
understood the definition of anti-Semitism to be the rejection of Jews
because of their Jewish roots. This is condemned by the Church.
Incidentally, this is self-evident in a religion whose founders and all
important individuals in its early history were Jews. But it was also
clear, because of the large number of Jewish Christians in early
Christianity, that all men need Christ for their salvation -- all men,
including the Jews.

SPIEGEL: The pope will travel to Israel soon, where he plans to visit the
Holocaust Memorial. Are you also opposed to this?

Williamson: Making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a great joy for
Christians. I wish the Holy Father all the best on his journey. What
troubles me about Yad Vashem is that Pope Pius XII is attacked there, even
though no one saved more Jews during the Nazi period than he did. For
instance, he had baptismal certificates issued for persecuted Jews to
protect them against arrest. These facts have been distorted to mean
exactly the opposite. Otherwise, I hope that the pope will also have an
eye and a heart for the women and children who were injured in the Gaza
Strip, and that he will speak out in support of the Christian population
in Bethlehem, which is now walled in.

SPIEGEL: Your statements have caused great injury and outrage in the
Jewish world. Why don't you apologize?

Williamson: If I realize that I have made an error, I will apologize. I
ask every human being to believe me when I say that I did not deliberately
say anything untrue. I was convinced that my comments were accurate, based
on my research in the 1980s. Now I must review everything again and look
at the evidence.

SPIEGEL: Do you at least recognize universal human rights?

Williamson: When human rights were declared in France, hundreds of
thousands were killed throughout France. Where human rights are considered
an objective order for the state to implement, there are constantly
anti-Christian policies. When it comes to preserving the individual's
freedom of conscience against the democratic state, then human rights
perform an important function. The individual needs these rights against a
country that behaves like a Leviathan. But the Christian concept of the
state is a different one, so that the Christian theories of human rights
emphasize that freedom is not an end in itself. The point is not freedom
from something, but freedom for something. For good.

SPIEGEL: Your statements and the lifting of your excommunication have
triggered protests worldwide. Can you understand this?

Williamson: A single interview on Swedish television has dominated the
news for weeks in Germany. Yes, it does surprise me. Is this the case with
all violations of the law in Germany? Hardly. No, I am only the tool here,
so that action can be taken against the SSPX and the pope. Apparently
Germany's leftist Catholicism has not yet forgiven Ratzinger for becoming
pope.

(source: Speigel)






VATICAN CITY:

Pope insists Church rejects anti-Semitism



Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday the Catholic Church is
"profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism."

The pope was meeting American Jewish leaders at the Vatican on the heels
of a controversy over Holocaust denial.

Last month the Vatican lifted the excommunication of a rebel bishop just
days after the broadcast of an interview in which he denied the existence
of gas chambers and said no more than 300,000 Jews had died in Nazi
concentration camps. Scholars have in fact documented approximately 6
million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust.

The Vatican has since ordered the bishop, Richard Williamson, to recant,
and has said the pontiff was not aware of Williamson's views on the
Holocaust when the excommunication was lifted. The excommunication was not
related to Williamson's views on the Holocaust.

On Thursday, Benedict XVI talked about his own visits to the sites of some
concentration camps.

"The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested
in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity," the pope said,
using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

He also reiterated his commitment to the groundbreaking Catholic rejection
of the centuries-old claim that the Jews killed Jesus.

"Nostra Aetate marked a milestone in the journey towards reconciliation,
and clearly outlined the principles that have governed the Church's
approach to Christian-Jewish relations ever since," Benedict said.

Jewish reactions to the pope's speech were broadly positive.

"Catholic-Jewish relations are on track," said Rabbi Arthur Schneier,
president and founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, who was
among the community leaders at the meeting with the pope. "We may have
some setbacks, but when you have that strong bond of trust and friendship
...Then we can face every challenge that comes our way."

The head of Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, also praised the pope's
statement.

"Yad Vashem places importance on the Pope's unequivocal statement
condemning Holocaust denial and any attempts to minimize the scope of the
Shoah," said its chairman, Avner Shalev. "The Church's clear public
denouncement of all types of anti-Semitism, during his meeting earlier
today with American Jewish leaders, is to be welcomed."

(source: CNN)