May 15



GERMANY:

LEGENDS OF A MASS GRAVE----The Village and the Nazi Labor Camp


Jamlitz is a quiet German village like many others. But there is one
difference: It was also the site of a brutal Nazi labor camp. Hundreds of
corpses are thought to be buried in the soil here. But the search for the
mass grave has yet to unearth more than stories of wartime horror.

"Go ahead and write that we country bumpkins don't think much of this talk
of graves," said Heinrich Keritz, a Jamlitz local in his mid-50s, leaning
against the barbed wire fence holding a telescope. "All our taxes are
being used and, in the end, nothing will be found." Keritz looked angrily
at the piles of earth, meter-high weeds and the backhoe.

Heinrich Keritz is the stereotype of a morose backwoodsman. To understand
him, one has to know the story of his village. Jamlitz is a small town
with some 600 residents on the border of the Spreewald forest south of
Berlin. Tucked between rapeseed fields and a spruce forest, the village
only rarely sees an urban tourist. Jamlitz residents don't like the flurry
of publicity. The only feature setting this village apart from any other
is its proximity to the "camp."

That is how Jamlitz locals refer to the Lieberose camp, a satellite of the
Nazis' Sachenhausen concentration camp. At the end of 1943, some prisoners
from Sachsenhausen were transported to Jamlitz and forced to build a
training area for the SS division "Kurmark." There were more deaths in the
Jamlitz barracks than in similar labor camps. Every day, dozens of
prisoners were killed or died from exhaustion. Only 400 of a total 8,000
prisoners survived the war.

An Elusive Grave

Sixty years have now passed since the horrific crimes in the camp. But the
stories live on in Jamlitz -- about bones hidden in the forest, about
haggard camp victims, about people on a death march begging for water,
about SS men spending nights drinking and shooting. In 1971 builders
working in the neighboring settlement of Staakow stumbled upon remains of
nearly 600 prisoners from Lieberose, victims of a mass shooting in the
final days of the camp. The Stasi, the former East German secret police,
spent months interviewing people to try to identify those responsible for
the crimes. But the investigations were soon shelved.

Interest in the camp resurfaced in the mid 1990s. Many suspected that
victims from the mass shooting still lie buried in the ground. According
to old camp plans, the graves may lie in the center of Jamlitz. There are
thought to be remains from some 700 people, but there's no list of names.
"All we have to go on are numbers," said Gnter Morsch, director of the
Sachsenhausen Memorial Foundation and the author of a detailed report
about Jamlitz. Dozens of suspected sites were dug up in the years until
2004, but no evidence was found. The air force flew over the settlement
with their radar detection devices -- also without uncovering any sign of
the graves.

The list of suspected sites was eventually whittled down to just one
location, but the land owner blocked excavation work for more than a
decade. Last autumn an agreement was reached with a Brandenburg state
court, and Jamlitz's history was stirred up again. A team of archeologists
from the local authority dug up the soil, layer by layer, uncovering some
500 square meters of the overgrown land around an abandoned house.

But Heinrich Keritz turned out to be right, at least for the time being --
no human remains were found. The dig was completed on Tuesday, but the
search for traces of the murdered camp prisoners will continue.

"We cannot stop the search there, not after the findings of the latest
excavations," Brandenburg Interior Minister Jrg Schnbohm said on Thursday.
Some relics from the concentration camp were indeed found: cooking
equipment, glasses, canteen porcelain, building materials. These findings
"lead to the possibility that the victims do not lie far away," said
Schnbohm. "We were possibly never so near to the grave."

The results of the search are important for the Jewish community,
historians and the state of Brandenburg. However, they won't affect the
dark history of the village, nor change the facts of what happened during
the war right on residents' doorsteps. Before the first barracks were
built, Jewish prisoners were housed in a local guesthouse. Some families
put up the families of SS men; others hid people who had managed to escape
from the camp.

"People who live here know about the camp," said Christa Wiernowolski, a
woman living next door to the excavation site. When she and her husband
built their home in Jamlitz, both felt ill at ease. "It was clear what
sort of land our house was standing on," she said. When her husband dug a
hole to erect a fence, he stumbled upon two old SS steel helmets.
Neighbors found some teeth while digging in their garden.

Christa Wiernowolski was a young woman when she first heard stories of the
emaciated people driven through the villages and beaten on the streets.
The 56-year-old teacher speaks openly about the barracks. Her family
always talked about the camp, and the wife and baby of one SS soldier even
lived in her parents' attic during the war.

Today Jamlitz has a documentation site with information boards. But
eyewitness accounts and historical facts have long been merged with
fiction in the village. In the local bar people speculate that the corpses
are buried meters below the foundations of houses near the latest
excavation site. The state of Brandenburg shares this suspicion. The
government, according to Schnbohm, plans to dig up two neighboring plots
of land.

"But most people here don't want to talk about the camp," said Christa
Wiernowolski. "They simply want their peace and quiet." When the local
council held a meeting to inform people about the excavations, not a
single Jamlitz resident showed up.

(source: Spiegel)



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Nazi war crimes trial 'could be last of its kind'


Expert: Trial of Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk could be last of
its kind

Leading Nazis prosecuted at Nuremberg but many lesser Nazis escaped
justice

Struggle to prosecute Nazis influenced creation of International Criminal
Court

ICC has remit to probe war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity


The forthcoming trial in Germany of John Demjanjuk could be the last
occasion on which a Nazi war crimes suspect faces prosecution.

But the legacy of decades-old efforts to bring the perpetrators of World
War II atrocities to justice means that those who commit similar offences
in the 21st century will not be able to hide from their past so easily,
according to a leading war crimes prosecutor.

Many leading Nazis such as Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer
were prosecuted by the main allies -- the U.S., the Soviet Union and the
UK -- shortly after the end of the war at the Nuremberg Trials.

South African judge Richard Goldstone, formerly the chief U.N. prosecutor
for war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, told CNN that Nuremberg had been
the "first attempt of any importance to hold war criminals accountable"
and had laid the foundations for the development of modern humanitarian
law.

Yet many lower-ranking servants of the Nazi regime and its allies were
able to escape punishment for their crimes, assuming new identities,
fleeing Europe or even finding employment with Soviet or western security
agencies as determination to bring them to justice waned with the advent
of the Cold War, according to Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center.

"These murderers walked into small cities and killed men, women and
children and walked away without a trace," Hier told CNN.

"The sad thing is that had the world wanted to prosecute Nazi war
criminals after Nuremberg, and had (countries) put up the budget and the
resources then every one of these elusive criminals would have been
brought to justice."

But Goldstone said that the creation in 2002 of the International Criminal
Court marked a "very important step forward" to ensure that future
atrocities would not be so quickly forgotten.

While previous tribunals investigating crimes in Rwanda and Yugoslavia
were ad hoc creations set up by the U.N. Security Council, the ICC is a
permanent institution with a specific remit to investigate and prosecute
cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Goldstone said that developments in humanitarian law and the evolution of
international justice meant that modern institutions were more
sophisticated and fairer than Nuremberg had been, recognizing the rights
of victims to representation but also ensuring a fair trial for
defendants.

"Modern international law requires trials that are a lot fairer than the
trials that were put on at Nuremberg," he said.

The jurisdiction of the ICC is currently recognized by 108 countries --
though not by the U.S., Russia or China. But Goldstone said the court was
"moving quickly" towards universal ratification and said U.S. President
Barack Obama's new administration was likely to be more cooperative and
friendlier to the ICC than predecessor George W. Bush had been in office.

"I'd love to see the day when there is universal ratification because when
that happens there will be nowhere for war criminals to run to," he said.

Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old native Ukrainian deported from the U.S. this
week, is alleged to have been a guard at the Sobibor death camp in
Nazi-occupied Poland and is accused of being an accessory to the murder of
more than 29,000 people.

Hier said Demjanjuk's extradition marked the culmination of greater
efforts in the U.S. since the late 1970s to send suspected war criminals
to face trial.

An Office of Special Investigations was established in 1979 to hunt for
war criminals on U.S. soil, while legislation allowed even suspects who
had acquired U.S. citizenship to be extradited for lying on their
naturalization papers about their Nazi pasts.

But he said Demjanjuk's trial could be the last of its kind -- and not
just because of the age of suspected war criminals still at large.

"You can't just have a trial with documents. You have to have living
witnesses," Hier said. "Most of those witnesses are very old, most of them
are well into their 80s and beyond and they have to be in sufficient good
health that they can be questioned and travel to take part in the trial."

But Hier said it was very important that former Nazis were pursued to the
grave, living out their final years with the fear that their past crimes
could still catch up with them.

"(Nazi hunter) Simon Wiesenthal talked about two kinds of justice. There
is the justice of handcuffs and putting someone on trial. But there is
also a psychological fear of a knock on the door," he said.

"Every Nazi war criminal should live every night of his life with the
possibility that in his case there will yet be a knock on the door."

(source: CNN)















USA//CONNECTICUT:

A History of Infamy, Sold Off in Little Pieces


The items were sometimes delicate, often minimalist and always haunting:
a monogrammed silver matchbox; a gold locket with a butterfly design; a
letter-opener, its sturdy handle embellished with an eagle and a swastika.
Up for auction here on Thursday, the relics fetched record prices and even
spurred bidding wars, purely because of their history: They are believed
to be among items owned by Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

While the recession may mean that many Americans have been wrestling their
overworked credit cards back into their wallets and cutting back on
expenses large and small, some collectors have been paying record prices
for historic artifacts. At Alexander Autographs, a small auctioneer that
expected to generate about $800,000 in sales at its two-day auction, sales
reached nearly $600,000 on Wednesday. By Thursday, they were edging toward
$1 million.

A Congressional document signed by Thomas Jefferson, expected to fetch
$15,000 to $17,000, sold for $34,000. Seven documents signed by John Adams
surpassed their estimated sales prices.

But Bill Panagopulos, the company's owner, said buyers were once again
feeling more comfortable buying items that once belonged to historys
villains, too.

"When the towers came down, they wanted George Washington. They wanted
solid leaders," he said. "You couldn't give the bad guys away."

By Thursday's auction, those sentiments had clearly changed. The most
interest - and higher prices - went to the Nazi-related items once owned
by the collector John Lattimer: $4,000 for Brauns compact; $4,250 for
Hitler's teacup and saucer, with a rose and chestnut print; and $3,000 for
his dessert plate.

"This market didn't take the beating that the art market has taken, that
the rare furniture market has taken, that jewelry has taken," said Bill
Panagopulos, the company's owner.

As he spoke, a half-dozen workers fielded bids and munched on doughnuts
and sandwiches in a nondescript office near downtown. The room buzzed with
the steady rings of phones and the squawks of his two parrots.

The collectors who bought these items included Chuck Spielman, 66, a
Vietnam veteran and retired commercial real estate executive based in San
Diego. He was outbid on Hitler's dessert plate and his holiday card. But
he spent about $5,000 on Holocaust-related items, including stamps and
currency used in Jewish ghettos and photos of concentration camps, as well
as artifacts connected to Hiroshima.

He is building a memorial room for World War II veterans at a space where
he also restores classic cars.

"I never thought as a Jew that I would collect anything Nazi," Mr.
Spielman said. "But that is history. That's part of what went on during
the war. I figured it would be important for me to assemble that together
just so people wouldn't forget what happened."

That's not to say that the recession has spared the historical auction
business entirely. Alexander Autographs, originally planning to hold its
auction in February, delayed it several times. The better known auction
houses, like Christie's and Sotheby's, have faced disappointing sales
compared to recent years.

But there appear to be a steady number of military veterans and dealers
still eager to buy. Ray Zyla, owner of Mohawk Arms in Bouckville, N.Y.,
said sales were "solid" at his most recent auction in November, as buyers
continued to purchase items like Imperial Prussian helmets and German
daggers. "In the past year, and ever since our economic crunch, there
hasn't been any slowdown," he said.

He finds that veterans like to purchase these types of military items
especially German ones - "because they are trophies from the enemy that we
beat," he said, "and a lot of the veterans take pride in what we did."

Still, during the Alexander Autographs auction on Thursday, Mr.
Panagopulos looked disturbed when he pointed out that the infamous Nazi
doctor Josef Mengeles signature fetched $5,500, which was "unfortunately
almost bringing in as much as George Washington."

He sarcastically referred to the SS leader Heinrich Himmler, whose love
letter was auctioned off for $1,800, as a "charmer."

He also described as "awful" a so-called racial purity letter, a court
document that denied German nationality to a family deemed to have
considerable Polish ancestry. That sold for $2,000.

But he finds that in the recession, collectors are searching for more
secure investments. "They have nothing else left to buy," he said. "Stocks
are tanking. Real estate, while you can buy it, you have to hold it."

Mr. Panagopulos pointed out that Dr. Lattimer's pieces have better
retained their value because he was a respected collector.

Evan Lattimer, the daughter of Dr. Lattimer, said her family was selling
the items now because her father had died; she did not factor the
recession into her decision.

"It ought to go to someone who knows about it and appreciates it," she
said.

But even among the frenzied bidding, the history of the items stayed in
the minds of workers at Alexander Autographs.

As a pair of "Deaths Head" cufflinks owned by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was
executed as a war criminal, prompted a flurry of bids and ultimately sold
for $950, the room fell strangely silent. As the bidding closed, Mr.
Panagopulos tried to add some levity.

"I don't think you can wear them in polite company," he said.

(source: New York Times)