March 19



USA:

US deports former Nazi camp guard


A FORMER Nazi concentration camp guard who served at death camps in
Poland, France and Germany, has been deported from the United States to
Austria.

The US Justice Department said it deported Josias Kumpf, 83, who worked as
an armed SS guard at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany and
at the Trawniki Labour Camp in Poland.

Kumpf, who was born in Serbia, emigrated from Austria to America in 1956,
acquired US citizenship in 1964, and settled in Racine, Wisconsin.

US officials said he took part in heinous acts during the Second World War
that contributed to the death of thousands of civilians.

Prisoners under his watch at slave labour sites in Nazi-occupied France
were forced to build launching platforms for German missile attacks on
Britain.

While a guard at Trawniki, he participated in a November 3, 1943, mass
shooting in which Jewish 8000 men, women and children were murdered in a
single day.

Kumpf helped guard the prisoners - including approximately 400 children -
who were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki. According to Kumpf, his
assignment had been to shoot to kill any survivors.

"Josias Kumpf, by his own admission, stood guard with orders to shoot any
surviving prisoners who attempted to escape an SS massacre that left
thousands of Jews dead," Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin
said.

"His court-ordered removal from the United States to Austria is another
milestone in the government's long-running effort to ensure that
individuals who participated in crimes against humanity do not find
sanctuary in this country," she said.

The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations - the US office
tasked with locating and prosecuting or repatriating Nazi war criminals
hiding out in the United States - has won cases against 107 individuals
since it began operations in 1979, the office said.

(source: Agence France-Presse)









GERMANY:

Alleged Nazi camp guard charged 29,000 times

Retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk was charged Wednesday with 29,000
counts of acting as an accessory to murder while working as a guard at a
Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. The arrest warrant could move the
30-year global legal battle over his fate closer to conclusion.

The warrant by a Munich court seeks the deportation or extradition of
Demjanjuk, who lives in a Cleveland suburb and denies involvement in the
deaths at Sobibor. His family says he is too sick to travel.

The U.S. Justice Department says Demjanjuk, 88, was a Nazi guard and can
be deported for falsifying information on his entry and citizenship
applications in the 1950s.

The U.S. Supreme Court chose last year not to consider Demjanjuk's appeal
against deportation, clearing the way for his removal. But it had been
unclear until Wednesday which country would take him his native Ukraine,
Poland or Germany.

German Justice Ministry spokeswoman Eva Schmierer said it was not clear if
the U.S. would automatically deport Demjanjuk, or whether Germany would
have to formally seek his extradition.

The case that led to Wednesday's arrest warrant is based partly on
recently obtained transport lists of Jewish prisoners who arrived by train
at Sobibor during Demjanjuk's tenure at the camp from March to September
1943.

"In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least
29,000 people of the Jewish faith," said the Munich prosecutor's office,
which is handling the case because Demjanjuk spent time at a refugee camp
in the area after the war.

His son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in an e-mail to The Associated Press
that his father is innocent, and is suffering from a blood disorder and
acute kidney failure that makes him unfit for international travel.

"Whatever the Germans decide to do, we will continue to fight for justice
in this sad case as there has never been any credible evidence of his
personal involvement in even one murder, let alone thousands," Demjanjuk
Jr. said. "He has never hurt anyone before, during or after the war. He
is a good person as his family, grandchildren, friends and neighbors have
always maintained."

Demjanjuk has said he served in the Soviet army and became a prisoner of
war when he was captured by Germany in 1942.

He emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958 but was
extradited to Israel in 1986 after the U.S. Justice Department said it
believed he was a sadistic Nazi guard at the Treblinka death camp known as
Ivan the Terrible.

Demjanjuk spent seven years in custody before the Israeli high court
received evidence that the Nazi guard was in fact another Ukrainian, and
freed him.

Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998, but the U.S. Justice
Department renewed its case, saying he had indeed been a Nazi guard and
could be deported for falsifying information on his U.S. immigration
paperwork.

A U.S. court ruled in December 2005 that he could be deported to Ukraine
or to Germany or Poland. Demjanjuk spent several years challenging that
ruling, until the Supreme Court decision last year.

"We hope that the process can be expedited to ensure that this Holocaust
perpetrator will finally be appropriately punished," Efraim Zuroff, the
top Nazi hunter at Israel's Simon Wiesenthal Center Zuroff told the AP by
phone from Jerusalem. "We're on our way to a victory for justice today."

Munich prosecutors said Demjanjuk will be formally charged in front of a
judge once he is extradited to Germany.

(source: Associated Press)






VATICAN CITY:

Pope Acknowledges Problems in Holocaust Denial Controversy



Pope Benedict XVI has made a rare admission of a "mishap" in the Vatican's
handling of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson. A cardinal partly
to blame for the debacle has been stripped of his power, and the pope says
the Vatican ought to make better use of the Internet -- to inform itself
about crises more quickly.

An unswerving principle of infallibility has traditionally applied at the
Vatican, in particular when it comes to questions of doctrine: Popes don't
make mistakes. Benedict XVI has shattered this principle with a letter
dated March 10, addressed to his "dear brethren in the Episcopal
ministry." He mentions a "mishap which I sincerely regret." And he
mentions the consequences -- a reorganization of decision-making bodies
that will end the career of a powerful cardinal.

What does he mean by mishap?

The Ecclesia Dei Pontifical Commission, which was responsible for the
Richard Williamson case, is being dissolved and will be merged with the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a control authority headed for
years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- before he became Pope Benedict XVI.
Now the pope believes it should take on more authority.

As a result, Cardinal Daro Castrilln Hoyos, who triggered the Williamson
debacle in mid-January, has been deprived of his power and, at almost 80,
will slip into a well-earned retirement. "Now that was quite a crash," a
prelate who witnessed the events said on Wednesday afternoon.

So much self-criticism is rare from a pope. A convoluted sentence in his
letter even suggests a sensation for the Catholic Church, though it's
easily to overlook at first glance. The Vatican, with its petrified
hierarchy, could be shaken by this obscure remark: "The collegial organs
through which the Congregation works on the questions arising (especially
the regular assembly of the Cardinals on Wednesday and the General
Assembly every one or two years) guarantee the involvement of the prefects
of various Roman congregations and of the worldwide episcopate in the
decisions to be made."


What does it mean? Benedict is referring to a meeting of decision-makers
in the Vatican that is not part of any established council. With "the
regular assembly of cardinals on Wednesday," he apparently wants to
install a kind of political cabinet of cardinals -- which has never
existed in this form and which was proposed weeks ago by Father Eberhard
von Gemmingen, the editor-in-chief of Radio Vatican's German department.


Defending the Society of Saint Pius X

The controversy over Williamson, a known Holocaust denier who belonged to
a group of four bishops excommunicated in the 1980s for defying the
Vatican, belonged to a larger effort by Benedict to bring the fractious
and ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) back into the fold.
In his letter, the pope uses plain figures to explain why he wants to heal
the rift with the SSPX. "Can a community leave us totally indifferent in
which there are 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2
university institutes, 117 brothers, 164 sisters?" he writes. "Should we
really calmly leave them to drift away from the Church? I am thinking, for
example, of the 491 priests. The plaited fabric of their motivations we
cannot know

"Should we simply exclude them," the pope goes on, "as representatives of
a radical marginal group, from the search for reconciliation and unity?"

He also takes his critics to task. "It has saddened me that even Catholics
who could have known better have thought it necessary to strike at me with
such ready hostility," writes the Holy Father. Even within the church, the
dispute over the SSPX was waged with "a vehemence we have not experienced
for a long time."

The 82-year-old Benedict's letter contains another message that is
unusual for a pope. In the future, he writes, the Vatican should follow
more than just news in the printed media. The controversy over Williamson
was fired by an interview he conducted with a Swedish television, widely
available on YouTube, as well as swift commentary on the Web. "I
understand that following the news available on the Internet would have
made it possible to obtain knowledge of the problem in time," writes the
pope. "I learn from this that we at the Holy See have to pay more careful
attention to this news source in the future." In plain language, the pope
is telling his clergy: Do more research online!

Will the letter put an end to miscommunications at the Vatican? At the
very least, it heralds a new orientation in Rome, combined with a
self-critical pope. These two changes could lead to a new climate both
within the Vatican and in its relationship with bishops around the world.

Whether the pope's letter will lead the church to a new beginning or back
to its old ways, however, only time will tell.

(source: Spiegel Online)

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

Pope to skip Holocaust museum on trip to Israel, envoy says

In Jerusalem, he'll visit Yad Vashem's memorial section, will skip museum

Pope Pius XII criticized for WW II actions; Vatican says he acted behind
the scenes


Pope Benedict XVI will not visit Israel's Holocaust museum when he makes
his first trip to the region as pope in May, though he will visit a
memorial that is part of the site, his ambassador to Israel said Tuesday.

Pope Benedict XVI, shown at the Vatican during a prayer Sunday, has spoken
out forcefully against the Holocaust.

He will also become the first pontiff to visit the Dome of the Rock, one
of the holiest sites in Islam, said the envoy, papal nuncio Antonio
Franco.

Foreign heads of state normally visit the Holocaust museum, which is part
of the Yad Vashem complex in Jerusalem. But it includes controversial
wording describing the role of Pope Pius XII during World War II, which is
why Pope Benedict balked, an Israeli official said.

Critics have accused Pope Pius of doing too little to prevent the mass
murder of European Jews by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler. A caption in the
museum says he maintained a neutral position during the years of mass
extermination of Europe's Jews.

The Vatican defends him and is gradually opening its archives in an effort
to show that he acted behind the scenes.

Franco gave the news of Pope Benedict's visit to Yad Vashem at a news
conference in Jerusalem.

Pope John Paul II also did not visit the museum section on his historic
pilgrimage to Israel in 2000, Father Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman,
said as he confirmed that Pope Benedict will not do so.

An official with Israel's Foreign Ministry said the decision was made
jointly because of the sensitivity of the matter. Yigal Palmor conceded
that there is an argument over the wartime pope's actions during the
Holocaust and noted that the museum has a sign stating that the facts are
in dispute.

He said that Pope Benedict may visit other parts of the Yad Vashem
complex, which is divided into several compounds, and that the pontiff
will lay a wreath at the site's Hall of Remembrance, which is part of the
protocol for visiting heads of state.

The announcement that Pope Benedict will visit only part of Yad Vashem
also follows international outrage over his rehabilitation of a rebel
bishop who denied the Nazis systematically murdered 6 million Jews in the
Holocaust.

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

Pope Benedict, who was born in Germany and forced to join the Hitler Youth
as a teenager, has spoken out forcefully against the Holocaust on a number
of occasions, including on a visit to the site of the Auschwitz
concentration camp.

Pope Benedict will make his pilgrimage to the Holy Land May 8-15 with
stops in Amman, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, according to the
itinerary released by the Vatican.

He will be celebrating Mass in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, the city
where Christians believe Jesus preached and lived. Some 50,000 pilgrims
are expected to attend that event, the bishop of Nazareth said.

In Jerusalem, a city holy to all three of the major monotheistic faiths,
Pope Benedict will visit the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site,
and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which Catholics believe is the site
of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The pope will also meet Israel's chief rabbis and enter the Dome of the
Rock with the chief Muslim cleric in the Holy Land, the grand mufti of
Jerusalem.

He will also meet Jordan's King Abdullah and Israeli President Shimon
Peres, as well as Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian
Authority, Franco said.

(source: CNN)



ISRAEL:

YAD VASHEM TO STUDY PIUS XII----To Join With Salesians for 2-Day Work
Session

The International Institute for Holocaust Research of the Yad Vashem and
a Salesian study institute will join to evaluate the investigation on
Pope Pius XII and the Shoah.

The Studium Theologicum Salesianum will join with the research group from
Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial for two days of research this Sunday and
Monday.

Salesian Father Francesco De Ruvo told ZENIT that "historians will come
together who will share the results of their investigations to respond to
a series of questions that affect the current controversy."

Yad Vashem has a caption regarding Pius XII that attributes to the Pope
"silence and the absence of guidelines" during the Holocaust, something
which many historians, including Jewish ones, say is blatantly false.
The study session will occur as Benedict XVI prepares his May visit to the
Holy Land and a stop at Yad Vashem.

"In recent years, many books and new articles have been published, and as
a result, new material has been presented that permits bringing to light
new aspects, which should be looked at and synthesized to see if there are
novelties and if something should be revised," Father De Ruvo explained.
Among the themes to be considered are the period before Pius XII's papacy,
relations with the German bishops, Pius XII and the Holocaust, the
situation of Italy during the Holocaust, and the period following the
Holocaust.

Those who will participate include Sergio Minerbi, Paul O'Shea, Michael
Phayer, Susan Zuccotti, Thomas Brechenmacher, Jean-Dominique Durand,
Grazia Loparco, Matteo Luigi Napolitano and Andrea Tornielli.

"For some," Father De Ruvo noted, "[Pius XII] has been an indifferent
spectator of the Holocaust who, with his silence, became an accomplice of
the tremendous tragedy that was occurring. Other investigators and
historians, on the other hand, have affirmed for some time now a totally
different thesis, which offers a positive evaluation of the work of Pius
XII: He worked to limit with every possible means the effects of the
Holocaust, sometimes achieving efficacious results."

This latter position, the Salesian continued, "is based on archived
historical documents and spoken and written testimonies of the
protagonists. The historians who exalt the action of Pius XII in the
saving of the Jews propose their conclusions regardless of their ethical
or religious belonging. Among them there are many Jewish scholars."

Father De Ruvo said that "a climate of cordial and respectful listening
has been maintained till now among the institutions involved in this
initiative which, as everyone hopes, will lead to an understanding of the
current text that can be seen in the Yad Vashem."

(source: Zenit News)