April 12





FRANCE:

Holocaust memorial in France defaced with swastikas--Hunt for vandals who
scrawled Nazi graffiti at Drancy, wartime camp from where 63,000 Jews went
to their deaths


The government of France vowed yesterday to hunt down the vandals who
scrawled anti-semitic graffiti on the country's chief Holocaust monument.
Large, black swastikas were painted on to the memorial at Drancy, the site
of the second world war deportation camp from where tens of thousands of
Jews were sent to their deaths.

Local authorities said one of the people behind the defacement was
captured on surveillance cameras and was believed to be a man in his 20s
"of European origin".

The train carriage that was once used by the Nazis for deportations, and a
stone pillar, were daubed with swastikas. Shopfronts in the towns of
Drancy and Bobigny were also attacked, according to the police.

In a statement, the interior minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, said:
"Everything is being done to identify those responsible for these
unspeakable acts and to bring them to justice."

The vandalism, in the middle of the Passover celebrations, sparked anger
and unease among France's Jewish population, the largest in western
Europe.

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions said such acts were
indicative of a prejudice "deeply engrained" in French society. In a
statement, the umbrella group condemned the graffiti at Drancy, denouncing
it as an "insult to the whole of France".

The statement said: "Those responsible wanted to spit on the Jews deported
from Drancy to death camps insult the Jews who are celebrating Passover,
the Jewish Easter and dirty the town of Drancy."

Raphael Chemouni, responsible for the upkeep of the memorial, said it was
the first time since the inauguration in 1976 that it had been daubed with
swastikas. "Until now there has been a very great respect for this
monument," he said.

Situated on the north-eastern outskirts of Paris, the internment camp was
the site to which French Jews were taken on route to concentration camps
in eastern Europe. By the time the camp was liberated in 1944, 65,000
people had been deported on board its trains, 63,000 of whom died.
Although under overall control of the occupying Nazis, the day-to-day
running of the camp was the responsibility of the Paris police force.

Lucien Tismander, from the Auschwitz Memorial Association, said this
weekend's vandalism was particularly hurtful because of Drancy's symbolic
importance in the history of France. "This monument is in a sense the tomb
of the 76,000 French deportees and it has been sullied," he said.

(source: The Guardian)


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

New book lays bare French collaboration with the NazisMatthew Campbell,
Paris
AN unusual history of the Nazis in France has trampled on one of the
countrys most painful taboos by focusing on women who slept with the enemy
during the occupation.

Flouting a long-running convention of silence on what he calls horizontal
collaboration, Patrick Buisson, the author, describes the Nazi occupation
as the golden age of the French brothel, chronicling a dramatic growth in
prostitution to satisfy German demand.

The book, 1940-1945, Erotic Years, is the second hefty volume in a
wide-ranging sexual history of the occupation that one critic last week
described as a magisterial provocation because of its assault on the myth
that life under the Nazi boot was all resistance, hardship and suffering.

Brothels that had been on the verge of closure before the war, as the
abolitionist league gained force, enjoyed a dramatic revival as German
soldiers poured into France.

Some of the so-called maisons closes were reserved exclusively for
officers, whose good looks and gallantry they would bring chocolates and
flowers won them admirers in a country whose natives were rather less
charming with prostitutes.

Im almost ashamed to say it, Fabienne Jamet, a madame at one of the top
addresses, is quoted as saying, referring to debauched, champagne-drenched
soires, but Ive never had so much fun in my life. Those nights of the
occupation were fantastic.

Seldom has a book delved as deeply into what is regarded by many as a
source of national shame: far from being forced into bed with the invaders
through economic hardship (as the official history would have people
believe), thousands of French women fell in love with German soldiers and
it is estimated that 200,000 children were born to Franco-German couples
during the war.

That the departure of the Germans caused thousands of women deep
affliction . . . is one of those facts that political necessity commands
us to ignore, writes Buisson, director of Frances History Channel and a
presidential adviser.

Members of the artistic and literary elite were particularly sensitive to
the seductiveness of the enemy, the author says. He describes a string of
romances between German officers and such iconic figures as Coco Chanel,
the fashion designer, Mistinguett, the singer, Colette, the writer, and
Arletty, the pseudonym under which Lonie Bathiat, the actress and star of
Les Enfants du Paradis, was known.

Arletty later justified her affair with a dashing young Luftwaffe captain
by saying: My heart is French but my body is international.

The aristocracy also showed a fondness for les boches and many of the most
famous Parisian hostesses, including Countess Marie-Laure de Noailles,
allowed themselves to be occupied by the invaders.

Their [the elites] behaviour helped to take away the sense of culpability
of women of more humble station who felt the same fascination or
attraction [for the enemy], the author writes.

Many, inevitably, sought favours from the Germans and there were an
estimated 100,000 occasional prostitutes working in Paris five to six
times more than before the war. Women began dyeing their hair black in the
belief that it would make them seem exotic because the wives of their
Teutonic clients were more likely to be fair-haired.

In less than an hour, writes Buisson, a girl who sells her charms to the
occupier can earn up to three times the daily allowance that was given to
the wives of French prisoners of war in 1941.

Brothels, many of which were requisitioned for the exclusive use of the
Germans, became a booming industry, upon which the collaborationist Vichy
government imposed taxes. The business was tightly monitored by the
occupiers, who imposed three stringent weekly medical examinations on
women to prevent disease in the ranks.

The 15 doctors in charge of these inspections were obliged to sign a form
in which they acknowledged that any negligence on their part would be
considered by the Wehrmacht to be an act of sabotage.

Never have the brothels of France been better maintained than in their
presence, said Jamet, who ran a club called One Two Two. The working girls
were just as grateful. Everything indicates that the new clients of the
summer of 1940 were given a favourable form of treatment that the
seductive power of the [deutsch-mark] alone could not entirely account
for, writes the author.

Officers seemed often to regard the brothel as a home from home: They were
a substitute for the warmth of a distant hearth, convivial places where
you would go for a drink, to listen to music, to dance with the women
without necessarily going upstairs with one at the end of the evening.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 was a distressing
event for Parisian brothel owners, Buisson relates, because so many of
their youngest and most vigorous clients were redeployed to the eastern
front.

Women ended up paying for their betrayal: thousands had their heads shaved
to shame them after the liberation the revenge of the French male,
Buisson says.

(source: The Sunday Times)





USA:

Stolen Nazi art: Boynton Beach man, family getting paintings back----
Boynton man satisfied valued paintings are coming back to family


At 73, Peter Bloch's memories of his grandparents are faint. The Boynton
Beach retiree last saw them in Germany in 1940, when he was 5 and they
were about to be interned in a Nazi concentration camp.

But Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer will be indelible in Bloch's mind today
during ceremonies in Sacramento, Calif., when Italian Renaissance
paintings that the Nazis looted from the couple prior to World War II are
returned to his family. For decades the three works have hung on the walls
of the state-run Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

The art is valuable, if not priceless. But, said Bloch, "I think the other
aspects are more important to us than monetary value. There is great
satisfaction to be able after so many years to recover a work of art taken
during a terrible period of history."

In granting ownership to Bloch and eight other Oppenheimer heirs,
California officials acknowledge the artworks' past. The wealthy Jewish
art dealers were forced by the Nazis to liquidate their Galerie van Diemen
in Berlin in 1935.

Denounced as "Jewish capitalists" by the Nazis, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer
fled to France in 1933. He died in Nice, France, in June 1941. His wife
was arrested in France by the Germans and sent to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, where she perished in November 1943. Proceeds from the
many valuable paintings in their gallery went to pay "flight taxes" and
other fees levied on Jews who left Germany, according to historians.

Bloch and his parents fled Germany in 1940. He retired in 2002 as food
service director at John Knox Village, a Pompano Beach retirement
community.

Efforts to recover Oppenheimer treasures began about 20 years ago, Bloch
said.

The family's Paris-based attorney, Eva Sterzing, struck a deal with the
state of California several months ago, after San Simeon curators agreed
the paintings were Oppenheimer holdings sold at a Judenauktion, a coerced
auction of Jewish possessions.

The three works were acquired by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst
for his 165-room, hilltop castle in 1935. "He was unaware of their
history," said museum director Hoyt Fields.

In recent years museums have shown a renewed interested in returning
looted art to the rightful owners, according to Erik Ledbetter, the head
of international programs and ethics for the American Association of
Museums

Twenty-five U.S. museums have negotiated settlements over Nazi-looted art
in the last 10 years.

"Our museums want no looted artwork hanging on our walls," Ledbetter said.

In a statement, Ruth Coleman, director of California State Parks, which
runs San Simeon, said, "It isn't often that we get the chance to right
such terrible wrongs. But today, we willingly and humbly do so with the
greatest amount of respect and reverence for the pain and hardships
endured by this family."

Under the family's agreement with the state, one of the pieces Venus and
Cupid, by a student of Venetian painter Paris Bordone will remain at the
castle so it can be used to educate visitors about the Holocaust.

Bloch said Sotheby's will auction off the other two works, one a portrait
by a student of Jacopo Tintoretto, the other by a Venetian artist thought
to be Giovanni Cariani.

Fields declined to speculate on what the works might sell for. He said
when Hearst acquired the paintings in 1935, they were accompanied by
certificates of authenticity attributing them to Tintoretto, Cariani and
Bordone. But those certificates have disappeared, he said.

Sale proceeds will be divided among the heirs, including Bloch's two
sisters, in New Jersey and Atlanta, and cousins in Argentina.

"My thoughts [today] will go to the horror of what happened and to those
who perished, including my grandparents and a couple of uncles," Bloch
said Thursday as he prepared to board a flight to California. "My parents
would have been delighted to have known that some of these artworks are
returned.

"I am sorry they are not alive to witness that."

(source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel)


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


Nazi suspect's deportation appeal rejected


A federal immigration board rejected an emergency appeal Friday for a
stay of deportation filed by the lawyer for Nazi war crimes suspect
John Demjanjuk.

Demjanjuk is sought by Germany for alleged killings at a Nazi camp.

The decision by the Department of Justice's Board of Immigration Appeals
in Falls Church, Virginia, clears the way for Demjanjuk's deportation to
Germany, where he is being sought for his alleged involvement during World
War II in killings at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland.

The deportation of Demjanjuk would close a chapter in one of the
longest-running pursuits of an alleged Holocaust perpetrator in history,
while also paving the way for an extraordinary German war crimes trial.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement are now free to pick up
Demjanjuk at any point and take him into custody for transport to
Germany, a board official said.

The appeals board rejected Demjanjuk's emergency stay request because it
concluded "there is little likelihood of success that his pending motion
to re-open the case will be granted," according to board officials.

The pending motion argues that a deportation of Demjanjuk, 89, to Germany
would constitute torture.

"In the four years since his deportation was [initially] ordered, his
health has seriously deteriorated," Demjanjuk's attorney, John Broadley,
told CNN in a recent telephone interview.

Broadley said Demjanjuk suffers from pre-leukemia, kidney problems, spinal
problems and "a couple of types of gout."

The board, however, has already signaled that argument will be rejected.

Demjanjuk may make an additional expedited appeal for an emergency stay to
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, though his chances of getting the
board's ruling overturned are believed to be slim, according to Justice
Department officials.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center found irony in Broadley's
argument for his client.

"He wants to plead the sense of fairness that he regularly denied all of
the victims at Sobibor," Hier said.

Hier called Demjanjuk's comparison of his planned deportation to torture
"preposterous coming from a person that served the [Nazi organization]
S.S. in a death camp. It is a preposterous argument and insulting to the
survivors of the Holocaust."

Hier said that 250,000 Jews were killed at the camp, and that none of the
guards who worked there was blameless. "You were there for one job: kill
the Jews," he said. "And that's what they did full-time."

He called the evidence against Demjanjuk "overwhelming."

German authorities issued an arrest warrant for Demjanjuk on March 10,
accusing him of being an accessory to 29,000 counts of murder as a guard
at the death camp from March to September 1943.

They studied an identification card provided by the U.S. Office of Special
Investigations, and concluded it was genuine, before issuing the warrant.

Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker living in Cleveland, Ohio, has been
fighting charges of Nazi war crimes for more than two decades. He was
previously extradited from the United States to Israel, where he was
convicted in 1986 of being "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at the notorious
Treblinka extermination camp. The conviction was overturned by Israeli
courts on appeal, and he returned to the United States.

The United States filed new charges against him in 1999, again alleging
that he had been a concentration camp guard. He was stripped of U.S.
citizenship and has been awaiting deportation since 2005, despite fighting
his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian, says he fought in the Soviet army and later was a
prisoner of war held by the Germans.

(source: CNN)



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

Holocaust auction offers glimpse of Swedes heroic bid



One of the few precious freedom passes given to Jews fleeing the Holocaust
by Swedish World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg is up for auction in New
Hampshire this week, a reminder of the bravery so many showed battling
Nazi evil.

Word of the sale - by RR Auction in Amherst, N.H. - was intriguing news to
Robert Baron, 65, of East Dennis. His late father, Alexander, received a
similar pass from Wallenberg in 1944, helping him to escape the death
camps and raise a family in America.

"My father had no way to keep many of his documents during the times he
was trying to simply survive," said Baron, whose father authored Rainbows
Among the Ruins, a wartime memoir, in part to honor Wallenberg's heroics.

"You use documents while they help you and discard them when they may
endanger you," he said.

The document up for bid, a "schutzpass," or protective passport, was
signed by Wallenberg and issued to Mrs. Julius Heller on Aug. 23, 1944.
It bears her picture.

She is thought to be the sister of one of the many Jews Wallenberg
employed to make thousands of the passes. Bobby Livingston, sales manager
for the auction house, declined to comment on the Israeli man who
consigned the item for sale, citing confidentiality.

Livingston brought the pass to Barons Cape Cod house on Friday, granting
the appreciative son a chance to marvel at the folio of flimsy paperwork
that meant life to Hungarian Jews like his dad.

His father had already suffered Nazi depravities, but when he "ended up
getting a piece of paper with Raoul Wallenberg's signature on it, it meant
that he was protected by the Swedish government, and the Nazis couldnt
take him."

The pass is a rare item and is expected to fetch some $10,000, Livingston
said. He said the online auction, which ends Wednesday, is most likely to
attract collectors.

Diane Blake, director of research for the U.S. Raoul Wallenberg Committee
in New York, said, As the population that held onto the passes all these
years ages, I think we are going to start seeing even more of them.

"People can't hold onto them forever," she said. "We would love to have
one in our collection. I wish we could afford to bid on this one."

Wallenberg's bravery still stirs hearts. In mid-1944, the 23-year-old
businessman, born to privilege in Sweden, dared to confront the Nazi death
machine by creating a diplomatic haven for Jews.

"He must have had such an aura about him," Baron said. "My father was
very, very fortunate. Wallenberg actually saved him at least twice that
he talked about with those passes. He would just shove past all of the
Nazi captains."

Wallenberg was last seen alive in Hungary in 1945. He is believed to have
been imprsioned by the invading Soviet army.

"Wallenberg volunteered to walk into that hell," said Blake said. "He was
Swedish. His country was neutral in the war. He had no reason to be there
or care. But he went. No one really knows what motivated him to do it,
except that's just the kind of man he was."

(source: Boston Globe)



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


Holocaust Memorial Story Comes To Temple Beth David



The New Haven Holocaust Memorial was the first such monument to be placed
on public soil a lasting tribute to the six million Jewish victims who
were killed during World War II by the Nazi regime.

Dedicated in 1977, its simple design is meant to evoke a quick and
immediate response from all those who look upon it, even if they happen to
be passing by in their car.

For 30 years, the memorial has been a place where individuals could go for
solemn reflection and to honor the dead, and that memorials roots stem all
the way back to Cheshire, where two local businessmen designed the
monument that stands there today. And now, more than 30 years later, an
exhibit honoring their work, and the work of hundreds who have looked to
maintain that site and restore it to its original vigor, has come to
Temple Beth David.

"We are the first synagogue in the entire state to have the exhibit
brought here," said Maddy Tannenbaum, a trustee for Temple Beth David, who
chaired the committee charged with bringing the exhibit to Cheshire. "We
are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. We are not a young
synagogue anymore. We are middle aged and we thought it was about time to
bring in an exhibit like this."

The exhibit is relatively simple in design. A set of cubicle-like walls
are arranged in a circular pattern, with each wall displaying a different
aspect of the history of the memorial, from its initial conception all the
way through the restoration process that has taken place over the last few
years. Intertwined are the stories of the people who made the memorial
possible, with memorable quotes from a variety of individuals displayed.
Outlining the entire display are pieces of what look to be barbed wire,
which criss-cross each other at each corner of the walls, representing the
real barbed wire that was used at concentration camps.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Temple Beth David will also highlight
their Adopt a Survivor youth program, which has asked students in the
synagogues religious school to each interview a Holocaust survivor and do
a project based on their life.

The survivors are all dying off, said Tannenbaum. We told the students
that they have an awesome responsibility to never forget and to say never
again.

Surrounding the exhibit are numerous poster boards, each one with a
picture of a Holocaust survivor interviewed by a student and a synopsis,
including pictures and drawings of that persons experiences.

"We wanted to make this a family-centered activity because that is when it
becomes real," said Jane Kessler, the principal at the religious school.
Kessler stated that the exhibit was a perfect addition to the project for
her students; most of whom came on the first day it was open at the
temple.

"They were awed," said Kessler. "You can get a sense with kids as to when
they are really paying attention to something and this, they were paying
attention to."

One of the reasons why the story of the exhibit appeals to both young and
old residents alike, Tannenbaum pointed out, is that the entire project
has its foundation in Cheshire.

In the 1970s, local businessmen Marvin Cohen and Gus Franzoni spearheaded
the design and construction of the memorial. Cohen, at the time, owned the
Cheshire Nursery Garden Center and Franzoni, an architect working out of
New York, had an office in town.

In 1977, Cohen was approached by the New Haven Jewish Federation about
coming up with a landscape design for the memorial. Initially, the design
was going to be a grove of trees, but after Cohen brought his friend,
Franzoni, in on the design of the project, it was decided that more was
needed.

From that initial idea sprung the memorial that today stands in Edgewood
Park on Whalley Avenue.

"It was something that was very important to me and is still very
important to me," said Cohen, now in his late 70s. "I think we are all
proud of what we did and proud to have been a part of the entire thing."

Franzoni called the memorial one of the best things I have ever done, and
stated that it was a project in which he took great pride.

"It's a place where people can go an important place and having been a
part of that means a lot," said Franzoni. "It means a lot that people are
learning about what it took to get it going. What they are doing now (with
the exhibit) really means a lot."

The exhibit will be open to the public from now through the end of April.
Viewing times are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and
Tuesday and Thursday, 5 to 8 p.m. There will be a closing reception for
the exhibit on April 26 at 6:30 p.m. The reception is free, but Temple
members ask that those interested in attending respond beforehand. For
more information, call (203) 272-0037.

(source: Cheshire Herald)




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

Opera banned by Nazis revived in L.A.

(Review: L.A. Opera's "Recovered Voices" restores "The Birds."----By
TIMOTHY MANGAN)

The history of music of all the arts, really belongs to the innovators,
the rebels and the revolutionaries. Those that follow in their path, no
matter how skilled or gifted, are for the most part forgotten. Which is to
say that conservative artists, those that look back instead of forward,
rarely get a fair shake.

The German composer Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) didn't get a fair shake.
Los Angeles Opera tried to do something about that Saturday night when it
revived his rarely heard opera from 1920, "The Birds," as part of the
company's "Recovered Voices" project. Spearheaded by music director James
Conlon, the project unearths music banned by the Nazis, including that
written by victims of the Holocaust. Now in its third season (and long may
it continue), "Recovered Voices" has already hit gold with performances of
operas by Viktor Ullmann and Alexander Zemlinsky.

Braunfels is a special case. Half Jewish, but converted to Catholicism, he
seems to have run afoul of the Nazis not for racial reasons, but for his
criticism of them in the 1920s and for his refusal to write the group an
anthem. When, in the 1930s, the Nazis banned performances of his music and
designated it "degenerate," Braunfels' career was essentially over, though
he survived the war and continued to write music. By the time his music
was again performed after 1945, it was considered old-fashioned. Music
history had moved on.

But "The Birds" was already old-fashioned in 1920. The premiere in Munich
proved hugely successful and the opera was eventually performed throughout
Europe. A tried and true conservative as a composer, Braunfels drew on the
great German tradition of Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss for his
musical idiom. "The Birds" is supremely crafted music, even inspired at
times. But hearing it for the first time Saturday night, one had the
inescapable feeling of having heard it before. It's hard to imagine the
work surviving even without the Nazi ban. Little or nothing else written
in so conservative a style during this radical period in music history
has.

Braunfels himself wrote the libretto, basing it on the Aristophanes play
(c. 406 B.C.) of the same name. Two city dwellers named Good Hope and
Loyal Friend escape to the kingdom of the birds in search of a better
life. Loyal Friend convinces the birds to build a citadel in the sky and
in doing so they run afoul of the gods. Good Hope falls in love with the
Nightingale. Zeus blasts away the bird kingdom with a storm, the birds are
repentant, and Good Hope and Loyal Friend return to city life, each
learning their own lessons from the experience.

The opera opens with the Nightingale singing, in a recollection of
Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony. The Straussian touch is especially
evident throughout ("Der Rosenkavalier," "Till Eulenspiegel," "An Alpine
Symphony"), as well as Wagner (King Marke's declamation from "Tristan")
and Mozart (the regal choruses from "The Magic Flute"). Make no mistake,
it's all very well pulled off, beautifully orchestrated and eminently
lyrical and charming, but we've been here before. An impressive stretch of
inspiration beginning with the entrance of Prometheus in Act Two and
stretching through the storm to near the end shows Braunfels at his best.

The performance was good, not great. The unit set places the action in the
clouds and treetops. The birds are dressed in shimmering (ancient) Greek
robes, with wings, and director Darko Tresnjak and choreographer Peggy
Hickey have them prancing and fluttering about as if in a high school
play. Conlon led the orchestra in a competent run-through, but there were
few sharp corners or contrasts the music hadn't settled in yet.

Italian soprano Dsire Rancatore provided the chirping Nightingale, pearly
and at ease in the coloratura acrobatics, drab and narrow-voiced
elsewhere. Tenor Brandon Jovanovich introduced a stentorian Good Hope who
seemed to sing everything fortissimo. Martin Gantner gave a pleasing,
veteran turn as Hoopoe; James Johnson managed a burnished Loyal Friend,
but failed to project the buffoon in the character.

Arriving as Prometheus partway through the second act, Brian Mulligan
nearly stole the show with his deep, dark and urgent warning. He seemed to
dig, where the others had merely sketched. Even the old-fashioned must be
made anew.

(source: Orange County Register)






SCOTLAND:

Revealed: the Scots pensioner and the Nazi war crimes investigation


FOR more than 60 years Steven Brandon has lived peacefully in rural
Berwickshire, an ordinary existence in stark contrast to his life as
Istvan Bujdosoin in war-torn Hungary during the Second World War.

At his modest prefab bungalow in the small village of Earlston, the
elderly Hungarian spoke about his police service in his homeland and
recalled the most tumultuous period of his life to refute what he views as
a grossly unfair and baseless accusaADVERTISEMENTtion.

A small, thin man with sharp features and large round glasses, Brandon is
remarkably sprightly and sharp-minded for his age and remains proud of his
wartime role as a police sergeant in the Hungarian gendarmerie.

"I was a driver in the army, then joined the gendarmerie, where I was also
a driver. I have never committed any crime, and for Dr (Efraim] Zuroff to
suggest otherwise is offensive. There were thousands of police officers in
Hungary. Are we all war criminals?" he said.

The 88-year-old is a well-known and respected figure in the locality who
came to the Borders in 1948. There he married a Selkirk girl, raised a
family and worked as a mill mechanic. He is popular with the Hungarian
community in Scotland and for some years now has organised events to
celebrate Hungary's national day. A Hungarian patriot, he has erected
plaques at hotels in Selkirk and Galashiels to commemorate the visit of
the famous Hungarian leader, Lajos Kossuth, who visited the area in 1856.

"He (Kossuth] was a great man and is a hero in Hungary who fought for
freedom and democracy," Brandon said, while showing a photocopy of an old
article from the Kelso Chronicle detailing Kossuth's visit.

Inside his home, he has one room where he keeps memorabilia, including a
large Hungarian flag which he unfurled and posed beside. One wall in the
room is covered in photos and letters, and it was here that an
investigator came across a grainy sepia photograph in 2005 that resulted
in Nazi hunters tracing a man ranked as one of the world's most wanted
Second World War criminals.

That man is Dr Sandor Kepiro, 94, a former Hungarian police captain
currently living in Budapest. He is fourth on Nazi hunter Dr Efraim
Zuroff's wanted list, after concentration camp doctor Aribert Heim, whose
personal papers were recently found in Egypt, SS camp guard John
Demjanjuk, known as Ivan the Terrible and living in the US, and Alois
Brunner.

Brandon served under Kepiro and they remain close friends. It is this
relationship that prompted Zuroff to call for an investigation into the
former's role during the spring of 1944.

An investigator visited Brandon, spotted the photograph of Kepiro and from
there Zuroff and his team traced Kepiro to Budapest, where he lives across
the street from a synagogue.

Kepiro was one of several gendarmerie officers prosecuted in Hungary for
their role in the mass murder in 1942 of 1,200 men, women and children in
Novi Sad, Serbia. The victims were mostly Jews, but included Serbs and
Gypsies.

Kepiro was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for his role in the
murders, but the Nazis, who occupied Hungary shortly thereafter, annulled
his conviction in 1944 and returned him to service. Zuroff said that after
the war in 1946, Kepiro was again prosecuted for war crimes and convicted
in absentia, but by this time had disappeared to South America. Serbia is
currently trying to extradite Kepiro who denies committing war crimes to
stand trial for his role at Nova Sad.

But Brandon robustly defended both himself and Kepiro and said that
neither of them had committed any offences during their service in the
gendarmerie.

"Kepiro was my captain. I joined the police in 1943 and was posted to
Miskolc in November 1943," Brandon said. "I was there until December 1944.
I was Sandor's driver and we became good friends. We were there for
traffic control and to keep order among the population. We became known as
the 'peace guards'. We were not involved in the transportation of Jews and
I never saw anyone mistreat Jews in Miskolc. Hungarian soldiers and German
soldiers rounded up the Jews, not the police. I thought that what happened
to the Jews was terrible, really terrible. We actually believed at that
time the Nazis were taking them to Palestine. What you have to bear in
mind is that the situation back then was very difficult for many people.
The Nazis forced people to do things, as it was in Holland and Belgium.
People sometimes had no choice."

As the Allies approached Hungary towards the end of 1944, Brandon said the
Nazis forced him and Kepiro to flee to Austria so he left Miskolc with
Kepiro and drove him in an Opel Kadett car to the city of Linz in Austria,
where they stayed until 1947.

"I worked on a farm and Sandor worked on a railway. It was on the farm
that I first learned about the concentration camps. It was an SS officer
who told me. I could not believe what they had done," Brandon said.

In 1947, Kepiro left Austria for South America while Brandon came to
settle in Britain and build a new life. He moved to Hampshire before
relocating to Scotland, where he has lived happily ever since. In 1957, he
changed his name from Istvan Bujdoso to Steven Brandon. He explained that
he did so over fears that his young children would be bullied at school.

Brandon remains friends with Kepiro and insists that his associate played
no part in the killings at Nova Sad and that the truth has been distorted.

"He (Kepiro] was there but did not kill anyone and was appalled at what
happened. He reported his fellow officers for breaching an order not to
shoot and was charged with disloyalty. That was the crime he was convicted
of and that conviction was later revoked."

Nothing and no one can shake Brandon's belief in himself or the nation of
his birth. Even above his front door a small flag has been painted in the
colours red, white and green.

Hungary's chilling role in mass murder

HUNGARY'S role in the darkest events of the 20th century is not widely
known, and it is a chilling story.

During the 1930s the central European country became more dependent on
trade with Germany to help alleviate the effects of the Great Depression.
Hungarian politics drifted strongly to the right and the nation adopted
foreign policies which were supportive of Nazi Germany under Hitler and
Mussolini's Fascist Italy.

Following pressure from Germany, Hungary officially joined the Axis powers
in 1940 and the following year its forces joined the Wehrmacht in its
invasion of the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa.

In July 1941, the Hungarian government transferred responsibility for
18,000 Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenian Hungary to the German armed forces.
These Jews without Hungarian citizenship were sent to a location near
Kamenets-Podolski, where, in one of the first acts of mass killing during
the Second World War, all but 2,000 were shot.

Hungary then passed the 'Third Jewish Law' in August 1941, prohibiting
marriage and sex with Jews.

Six months after the mass murder at Kamenets-Podolski, Hungarian troops
killed 3,000 Serbian and Jewish hostages near Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, in
reprisal for resistance activities.

In March 1944 Nazi troops occupied Hungary and deportations of Jews to
death camps in Germany and Poland began. The infamous SS colonel Adolf
Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee deportations. Between May 15 and July
9, Hungary deported 437,402 Jews; all but 15,000 went to
Auschwitz-Birkenau. One in three Jews killed there was a Hungarian
citizen.

Of the 800,000 Jews residing within Hungary's expanded borders of 1941,
only 200,000 around 25% survived the Holocaust.

In December 1944 the Red Army encircled Budapest and the Nazis were
expelled. A few pro-Nazi Hungarian units left with the Germans and fought
until the end of the war. In Landsberg in Bavaria, where Hitler had
written Mein Kampf, it was a Hungarian garrison which stood in parade
formation to surrender as US forces.


Most wanted: the Gecas case

THE most wanted Nazi war criminal to have lived on Scottish soil was Anton
Gecas.

The innocuous looking pensioner ran an Edinburgh guest house for many
years. But his sedate existence in the capital masked a horrific past.

Gecas was wanted by Nazi hunters for his part in the execution of 34,000
Jews, Soviet citizens and prisoners of war while with the 12th Lithuanian
Police Battalion. Although the then Justice Minister, Jim Wallace,
authorised extradition proceedings, Gecas was deemed too ill to face trial
and died in Edinburgh in 2001, aged 85. Lithuanian prosecutors had asked
the Scottish authorities to help them in their bid to bring the butcher to
justice.

Sixteen witnesses identified Gecas as playing a crucial role in 11
massacres in Lithuania and Belarus during the Second World War. Far from
just obeying orders, the evidence shows Gecas volunteered to lead shooting
parties and on at least five occasions was seen shooting Jews himself.

The number of suspected war criminals in Scotland is unknown. In 2006
there were reports that two men, believed to live in the Central Belt,
were the subject of a probe by the Crimes Against Humanity Unit, the
department of the Metropolitan Police that took over the case load.

The 1991 War Crimes Act allows British courts to try anyone living here
for crimes abroad in the Second World War.

(source: Scotland on Sunday)