Oct. 29




GERMANY:

SSPX Controversy----German Court Fines Bishop Williamson 12,000 Euros for
Denying Holocaust


Richard Williamson, the British bishop who caused an international by
denying the Holocaust in a media interview last year, has been fined
12,000 by a German court for his comments. His lawyer has indicated he
will contest the ruling.

A German court has fined British bishop Richard Williamson 12,000
($17,800) for denying the Holocaust in an interview he gave to Swedish
television last year that caused outrage around the world.

The Regensburg district court said Williamson, a member of the Society of
Saint Pius X (SSPX), an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group, was
being fined for incitement and that he had two weeks to appeal against the
ruling.

Williamson's German lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told the Tagesspiegel
newspaper that Williamson had been ordered to pay 12,000. The report said
Williamson looks set to fight the ruling. "There are certain things that
must be contested," it quoted Lossmann as saying.

The court has jurisdiction because Willamson gave the interview in
Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime. Speaking on the sidelines
of a consecration ceremony in the town of Zaitzkofen, the bishop had
claimed that historical evidence indicated there were no gas chambers
during the Nazi period, and that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had been
murdered, not the figure of 6 million generally accepted by historians.

Vatican Talks

Meanwhile, the Vatican began talks on Monday with the SSPX with the aim of
re-integrating it fully into the Church. Vatican officials and SSPX
leaders discussed "doctrinal differences still outstanding" between the
group and Rome, a Vatican statement said.

The traditionalists reject many of the reforms of the 1962-1965 Second
Vatican Council, which modernized the Catholic Church. The SSPX has
several hundred thousand members and insists that it represents the true
faith.

Last January German Pope Benedict XI tried to start bringing SSPX back
into the fold by lifting the excommunications of four of its bishops,
including Williamson. That decision coincided with reports about
Williamson's comments on the Holocaust and prompted international
criticism of the pope.


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


War Crimes----Nazi Assassin Goes on Trial in Germany


Heinrich Boere, 88, a former member of Hitler's SS, goes on trial in a
German court on Wednesday charged with murdering three Dutch citizens
during World War II. It will be one of the last Nazi war crimes
prosecutions, along with next month's trial of John Demjanjuk.

Nazi hunter Ulrich Maass is a satisfied man. The assassin he has been
chasing for years is going to stand trial at last. In the western German
city of Aachen on Wednesday, Maass, a German state prosecutor from the
city of Dortmund, will deliver his opening arguments in what will probably
be the last trial against a Dutch war criminal from World War II, and one
of the last Nazi war crimes trials.

Former SS member Heinrich Boere (88) is accused of the murders of three
Dutch citizens: Fritz Bicknesse, Teun de Groot and Frans Kusters. The son
of a Dutch father and a German mother, Boere was a member of the SS
Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, which killed more than 50 Dutch citizens
between September 1943 and September 1944 in retaliation for anti-German
actions by the resistance.

At the beginning of this year it looked like Boere had slipped through
Maass' fingers. The court in Aachen ruled that Boere was physically unable
to stand trial. But Maass appealed the verdict, and Germany's highest
court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karslruhe, overruled the
decision, clearing the way for Boere's trial. Maass is asking for a life
sentence.

Boere was sentenced to death in the Netherlands in 1949 for his part in
the murders -- in absentia. He had escaped in 1947 from a mine in the
southeast province Limburg where he had been sentenced to forced labor,
and fled to Germany. Because he had a German mother, Boere qualified for
German citizenship, and since Germany doesn't extradite its own citizens,
he was out of the reach of the Dutch courts.

No Remorse

But in 2000 a Dutch documentary filmmaker, Rob van Olm, tracked Boere down
in Aachen. In the film Boere showed no sign of remorse. "I don't feel
guilty. That's why I have always made sure they couldn't catch me," he
said.

Boere served for two years with an SS division on the Eastern Front. It
had made him indifferent to violence, he said. "We would eat our lunch
sitting on top of dead Russians. The resistance to me were the enemy."

After the documentary was broadcast, Dutch and German authorities became
interested in Boere again. German authorities have in recent years stepped
up their efforts to track down and prosecute the last living Nazi war
criminals. In August, Josef Scheungraber was given a life sentence for 14
murders in Italy. John Demjanjuk, who is charged with complicity in 28,000
murders in the concentration camp Sobibor, was recently extradited from
the US and faces trial in Munich in November.

Maass took Boere's Dutch court file from 1949 to the court in Aachen. The
court initially adopted the Dutch guilty ruling, but that was overturned
by an appeals court in Cologne because Boere did not have legal
representation at the time. As a result Maass now has 13 court days to
construct his case against Maass from scratch.

He is not expecting any major problems. "After all, Boere has confessed.
Now it is up to me to prove the murders were malicious, otherwise the
statute of limitations on them has expired." Maass also has to prove that
Boere's life would not have been in danger if he had refused to follow
orders. "Many war criminals have hidden behind that excuse in the past,
but times have changed. Judges no longer just accept this argument," said
Maass.

Germany allows relatives of victims of war criminals to become
co-plaintiffs in their trials. They have the right to enter evidence and
to question the accused. One co-plaintiff, Teun de Groot, plans to sit in
the front row at the Aachen court house on Wednesday to get a good look at
the man who murdered his father on Sept. 3, 1944.

Too Little too Late

De Groot's father helped people hide from the Germans, but that was not
the reason he was killed, says his son. "If the Germans had known this
they would have arrested him much sooner. It was well-known that my dad
was anti-German. The NSB (the Dutch Nazi party) had staged a demonstration
outside his bicycle repair shop. The Nazis wanted to send a signal:
actions by the resistance would be reciprocated with extreme violence."

After the war, De Groot heard that Boere had been sentenced in absentia,
but he didn't hear any more about him until 2000. When the documentary
aired it made him very angry. "He didn't show the least bit of remorse. I
hope he gets a life sentence, life with interest, for every day he has
evaded justice."

In preparing for the trial De Groot was assisted by German historian
Stephan Stracke, who wrote his doctoral dissertation about the treatment
of Nazi war criminals. Stracke says it is "a disgrace" that Boere is only
now facing trial. "We began protesting outside his door and that of
Herbertus Bicker ten years ago," he says. Bicker, also known as the
Butcher of Ommen, was another Dutch war criminal living in Germany; he
died last year at 93 without ever having stood trial.

Stracke is not impressed by Germany's newfound zeal in bringing war
criminals to justice. "Now that there are only a few them left they are
suddenly being put on trial. If they had done this 10 years ago it could
have been hundreds. Those old Nazis have long been protected by friends in
high places. Now they are finally gone, but a lot of people have escaped
justice because of them. At least Boere will get what he deserves."

[this item is from Oct. 27]

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


Nazi Crimes----SS Assassin Stands Trial in Germany


SS assassin Heinrich Boere shot dead three innocent Dutch civilians in
World War II -- and has never been punished. The trial of the 88-year-old
started on Wednesday in the German city of Aachen. The justice system is
still struggling with the case it shunned for decades.

The man in the dock is old and pale and gray. Heinrich Boere, 88, is in a
wheelchair. His short hair contrasts with the casually unbuttoned collar
of his blue shirt. He looks around curiously.

The former SS man, once an assassin carrying out Hitler's orders, is
sitting behind bullet-proof glass, flanked by two defense attorneys. A
doctor and a nurse are sitting behind him. The courtroom is packed with 60
journalists from Germany, the Netherlands and Britain and an equal number
of spectators, not to mention two state prosecutors, two attorneys for
co-plaintiffs, the son of one of the men Boere shot dead, an interpreter,
a court stenographer, and several police officers and guards.

All because of him.

'A Fanatic'

Heinrich Boere, born in 1921 in Eschweiler near the western German city of
Aachen and still resident there in a retirement home, is accused of having
murdered three innocent and defenseless civilians in 1944 when he was a
member of the "Germanic SS in the Netherlands."

According to the charges, Boere, 22 at the time, shot dead pharmacist
Fritz Bicknese in Brese on July 14, and bicycle shop owner Teunis de Groot
in Voorschoten and Frans-Willem Kusters in Wassenaar on Sept. 3.

Boere, the son of a Dutch father and German mother, was "a fanatic," he
told SPIEGEL ONLINE in August 2007. He reported to the Waffen-SS, the
elite military arm of the SS, in late 1940 when he was 18, and he fought
on the Eastern front for two years. In 1942 he returned to the
German-occupied Netherlands where he was assigned to the 15-man SS special
command "Feldmeijer."

This unit had the direct order from Hitler to break any signs of
resistance in the country through arbitrary shootings of civilians
regarded as anti-German.

Whenever there were attacks on German troops or people who collaborated
with them, senior SS and police commander Hanss Albin Rauter dispatched
his killing squad by issuing the codeword "Silbertanne," which means
"Silver Fir." At least 54 Dutch citizens are believed to have been
murdered by these SS hitmen.

"We didn't know the men. The Security Service of the SS gave us the names
and we got going," Boere told SPIEGEL ONLINE in 2007. "They told us they
were partisans, terrorists. We thought we were doing the right thing." So
he pulled the trigger.

What makes this different from other war crimes trials is that Boere never
denied the three executions. He admitted to them in several interrogations
as early as 1946. The former SS trooper was also convicted of the murders,
in October 1949, by a special court in Amsterdam. But by that time Boere
was back in Eschweiler, a few kilometers beyond the Dutch border, and
German authorities didn't extradite him.

'It's Far Too Late for Justice'

That is why many observers watching this trial in the Aachen courtroom on
Wednesday were asking themselves what the case was about.

Justice?

"It's far too late for that," says even Wolfgang Heiermann, the lawyer
representing the sons of the murdered pharmacist Bicknese who are
co-plaintiffs in the case. Boere, who has health problems, will probably
never have to serve a prison sentence.

Is it about truth then?

"We want a German court to finally rule that it was murder," says Detlef
Hartmann, the lawyer for another co-plaintiff, the 77-year-old son of the
bicycle dealer Teunis de Groot. His client had "greatly loved and
respected" his father and had kept the bullets with which he was killed in
1944. He wants a clear statement. The trial should make clear "all the
things Boere did in the war," says Hartmann. That should include his time
on the Eastern Front, he adds.

That may be expecting too much.

For decades the German justice system refrained from prosecuting the
assassin Boere. The responsible central office for Nazi crimes based in
Dortmund closed an investigation into him in the early 1980s on the
grounds that his actions were justified under international law as
repressive measures by an occupying force. Not until 2007 did the Nazi
hunters dust off their files on Boere and re-open the case.

Defense 'Tricks'

And now, on this Wednesday, it doesn't look as if the trial will live up
to the high hopes of the co-plaintiffs. It started at a snail's pace and
judge Gerd Nohl adjourned the trial after just one-and-a-half hours and
three interruptions. He even cancelled the next trial date. Not even the
charges were read out.

Boere's defense attorneys can be satisfied. Their strategy to start out by
asking for prosecutor Ulrich Maass to be recused seems to have been
successful for now.

Defense attorney Gordon Christiansen argued that the prosecutor had given
the impression that he disregarded Boere's fundamental right to a fair
trial. Boere, he said, had made clear in many media interviews that he
wanted a conviction at any cost. The prosecution has until Monday to
respond.

"I'm angry at the tricks of the defense," said Teun de Groot, one of the
co-plaintiffs. He said he had wanted to make a statement to Boere, but
that his lawyer will now read it out on the next trial day. He said he did
not intend to return to the court.

And what about the man this is all about?

Heinrich Boere sat motionless as the trial was adjourned. A nurse put a
black leather jacket on his shoulders and he was pushed out of the
courtroom. He said hardly anything on this first day. Asked to state his
citizenship, he curtly replied: "Stateless." Then, after a brief pause, he
said: "German." But no one seemed to have heard it.

[this item is from Oct. 28]

(source for all:  Spiegel)

Oct. 10


GERMANY:

Hitler's Jaws of Death

THE assertion by American researchers that Hitler might have escaped from
Berlin because a skull fragment in a Moscow archive was not his but a
young womans is rich in paradox. Stalin went to great lengths in 1945 to
conceal the fact that Hitler's body had been identified by pathologists
working for Smersh, the Soviet military counterintelligence agency.
Stalin even misled his own commander in chief, Marshal Georgi Zhukov,
demanding to know why he had failed to find Hitler's corpse. And Pravda
declared that rumors of the discovery of Hitler's body were a fascist
provocation.

Stalin ruled by creating fear and uncertainty among both subordinates at
home and among his Western allies abroad, who were of course seen as
potential enemies. Even after Hitler's jaws, with their distinctive
bridgework, had been identified by the assistant to the Fuhrer's personal
dentist, the Soviet authorities nurtured rumors that Hitler was hiding in
Bavaria. As Bavaria was part of the American zone of occupation, the
implication was that the Americans had concealed him and were somehow in
league with the Nazis. Now, 64 years later, an episode of the History
Channel series MysteryQuest - with the outrageous title of Hitler's Escape
has distorted the revelation of the skull to scare up a similar fugitive
ghost, to the furious exasperation of the Russian authorities.

On May 2, 1945, members of the Smersh detachment of the Soviet Third Shock
Army, having heard of Hitler's suicide two days earlier, sealed off the
Reich Chancellery garden and Hitler's bunker there as they searched for
the body. All those on the Smersh team were sworn to secrecy and warned
that any mention of their work would be treated as treason. Even Marshal
Zhukov was refused entry to the bunker during the search on the ground
that it wasn't safe down there.

All members of Hitler's household who had been identified were held in the
Reich Institute for the Blind, on the Oranienstrasse. One after another
they were interrogated by a major known to history only as Bystrov. Stalin
was so desperate for news that a general from the N.K.V.D., the K.G.B.'s
predecessor, was sent to supervise the interrogations. He was given a
secure line with a scrambler so that he could report back to Moscow after
each interview.

On May 5, Smersh operatives finally discovered Hitler's body along with
that of Eva Braun in the chancellery garden; the two corpses had been
doused in gasoline and set on fire by SS aides, in accordance with Hitlers
orders, and then buried in a shell crater. The Soviets smuggled the
remains to an improvised morgue in Buch, a suburb of Berlin. Hitler's body
was too badly burned to be recognizable, so the jaws were removed since
they offered the best means of identification. The assistant to Hitler's
dentist was tracked down and brought to examine them.

Yelena Rzhevskaya, the interpreter with the Smersh group, later recounted
how on the evening of May 8, when Soviet troops prepared to celebrate the
German surrender, she was given a box covered in red satin and told to
guard it with her life. She described it as the sort used for cheap
jewelry. The box held Hitler's jaws. Rzhevskaya was given it because, as a
woman, she was considered less likely to get drunk that night and lose it.

The skull and the jaws are still separate because Smersh hung on to its
precious evidence. The cranium, recovered later, allegedly at the same
site, was taken by the N.K.V.D., and that is why it has been in the State
Archive of the Russian Federation since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The jaws are almost certainly still held in the Lubyanka, the Moscow
headquarters of the Russian secret police, along with other prizes
retrieved by Smersh from the garden, like Hitler's Nazi party badge, which
was taken from the body of Magda Goebbels.

Although we have been subjected over the last few months to a barrage of
disinformation from the Russians about the start of World War II
including attempts to blame the Poles and the British for its outbreak  I
would tend to believe their version in the case of its ending. Even if the
cranium is not Hitlers but some unknown womans, the jaws are almost
certainly genuine. The Russians could end speculation and ridiculous
conspiracy theories by allowing an international team to carry out DNA
tests on them.

In any case, Stalin was obsessed with every detail about his archenemy
Hitler, whom he both feared and admired in a distorted way. The
investigations of his death were meticulous, as the Smersh reports show.
Witnesses to the suicide and the burning of the bodies were interviewed
again and again by Smersh and the N.K.V.D., and some by the British  in
fact, by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who wrote The Last Days of
Hitler.

There were no major discrepancies in any of the accounts, so suggestions
that Hitler did not commit suicide and had escaped from Berlin represent
nothing but gratuitous sensationalism. It is just another attempt to
exploit the nightmare conspiracy theory that the source of unparalleled
evil lived on somewhere, in secret.

(source:  Op-Ed, New York Times--Antony Beevor is the author of D-Day: The
Battle for Normandy and The Fall of Berlin 1945.)



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


Murder in Hitler's Bunker----Who Really Poisoned the Goebbels Children?


To this day, the murder by poisoning of the six children of Nazi
propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels remains a mystery. Newly discovered
records show that a doctor confessed in the 1950s to having been an
accomplice, but that the judges in the case let him go unpunished.

These are the last days of their lives, but the children don't know it.
There is 12-year-old Helga, who has the eyes and dark hair of her father,
Joseph Goebbels. There is Hilde, 11, who is more of a brunette; anyone
looking at her quickly realizes that she is about to blossom into a true
beauty. And then there are eight-year-old Holde, six-year-old Hedda and
the youngest of the girls, four-year-old Heide.

H for Hitler. The name of each child evokes the name of the Fhrer, for
whom Goebbels works as propaganda chief. The family's only son is named
Helmut, a slightly languorous nine-year-old.

Berlin, the end of April 1945, the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's bunker,
deep underground beneath the Chancellery, is a place of gray concrete,
narrow passageways, iron doors and cold light. It isn't a welcoming place,
particularly not for children who, only a few weeks earlier, were living a
seemingly carefree and innocent life, playing with cats and dogs on a farm
far away from Berlin.

Russian soldiers are only a few hundred meters away, and everyone in the
bunker is urging the parents to finally take the children to a safe place.
Hanna Reitsch, a celebrated German aviator, says: "My God, Mrs. Goebbels,
the children cannot stay here, even if I have to fly in 20 times to get
them out."

But the Goebbels remain unyielding.

"It is better for my children to die than to live in disgrace and
humiliation," says their mother, Magda. Their father fears that Stalin
could take the children to Moscow, where they would be brainwashed into
becoming communists. "No, it's better that we take them along."

Unpunished Crime

On April 30, at about 3:30 p.m., Hitler shoots himself in the head, and
his companion Eva Braun dies with him. The double suicide is a signal for
the others. By the next day, the six Goebbels children are also dead.
After receiving morphine injections to render them unconscious, they are
poisoned with cyanide, a substance that causes rapid death by suffocation.

Six dead children, and yet the act was never punished. Astonishingly, no
historian has ever truly delved into this tragic crime, which was part of
the final act of the Third Reich. To this day, the episode remains the
subject of speculation and misinterpretation.

However there was a remarkable judicial sequel in the late 1950s,
involving a case that was heard by a regional appeals court in the western
German city of Hamm. The case files are stored at the national archive in
nearby Mnster. They have remained unnoticed until now, even though they
highlight the "leniency and questionable argumentation with which the
courts addressed Nazi crimes at the time," says chief prosecutor Maik
Wogersien, who recently stumbled upon the documents, more or less by
accident. Wogersien is conducting research on precisely this subject at
the Legal Academy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the documents, the judges who prosecuted the Goebbels case
were former members of the Nazi Party, as was so often the case in trials
dealing with Nazi crimes in the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany.
For example, the judges managed to disregard a completed indictment for
infanticide, using incorrect and possibly even illegal arguments. The
defendant was acquitted.

The newly discovered records now make it possible, for the first time, to
reconstruct what actually happened.

Fateful Moment

The man who is the focus of all the documents was Helmut Kunz, who was
born in the southwestern town of Ettlingen in 1910. After studying law, he
went on to obtain a doctorate in dental medicine, writing a doctoral
thesis titled "Studies of Dental Caries in Schoolchildren as Related to
Their Feeding in Infancy." In 1936 he opened a dental practice in Lucka,
south of the eastern city of Leipzig. Kunz was also a member of the Sturm
10/48 unit of the SS.

When Hitler began the war, Kunz served as a medical officer in the SS's
notorious Totenkopf (Death's Head) division. He was seriously wounded in
1941, and after his recovery he was transferred to the medical unit of the
Waffen-SS, the SS's combat arm, in Berlin. In April 1945, at the rank of
Sturmbannfhrer, Kunz was transferred again, this time to the Reich
Chancellery. For Kunz, who a confidant of Hitler had described as having
an "erect soldierly bearing," it was to become a fateful moment.


Orders from Hitler


It was April 22, and the Goebbels were ready. It was too dangerous for the
family to remain in their apartment in Berlin's Hermann-Gring-Strasse, and
so their suitcases were packed and the children were dressed and told to
put on their coats and hats. It was also a final goodbye for Kthe Hbner,
their governess, nicknamed "Hbi." "We're going to stay with the Fhrer in
his bunker now," said little Helmut. "Are you coming with us?" The young
woman stayed behind, looking on as Magda Goebbels voluntarily followed the
Fhrer "into his hopeless situation."

Magda Goebbels became Kunz's first patient at the Reich Chancellery after
she developed an abscess under a bridge in her lower jaw. Magda Goebbels
saw herself as a model mother and a kind of first lady. Even Hitler
addressed her respectfully as "madam." This status alone made Magda
Goebbels, a woman who could be very gentle at times but at other times
strident, into a person of authority.


In late April, she took Kunz aside and literally asked him to "help with
the killing of her children," as the dentist would later testify. Kunz,
however, claimed: "I refused and told her that I was simply incapable of
doing it."

He told her that he had just lost his two daughters a few months earlier
during an American air ride on Lucka, and that he couldn't do it "for that
reason alone." His daughter Maike was five when she died in the wreckage,
and the other daughter, Maren, was barely a year old.

But Magda Goebbels insisted and is believed to have said, a short time
later, that it was "no longer a request" of hers, "but a direct order from
Hitler," according to Kunz's recollection of what Goebbels said during the
argument. "She asked me if it was sufficient that she was delivering the
order, or whether I wished to speak with Hitler in person."

Kunz allegedly replied: "That's sufficient for me." He reportedly
attempted to escape a short time later, to the nearby Hotel Adlon, where
one of his fellow SS members was believed to have set up a sick bay. But
Magda Goebbels apparently ordered him brought back, threatening that if
her husband found out about his attempted escape he would be "a dead man."

'Don't Be Afraid'

May 1, 1945, in the evening. The daughters and the son were already in
bed, but were not asleep yet. "Don't be afraid," their mother said. "The
doctor is going to give you a shot now, one that all children and soldiers
are getting." She left the room, and Kunz injected the morphine, "first
into the two older girls, then the boy and then the other girls." Each
child received a dose of 0.5 cc. It "took eight to 10 minutes."

When the children had fallen asleep, Magda Goebbels went into the room,
the cyanide pills in her hand, as Kunz testified. She returned a few
seconds later, weeping and distraught. "Doctor, I can't do it, you have to
do it," she said. The dentist replied: "I can't do it either." "Then get
Dr. Stumpfegger," she said. Ludwig Stumpfegger, who was slightly younger
than Kunz, had been one of SS chief Heinrich Himmler's personal doctors.

A week later, Russian coroners performed autopsies on the bodies of the
children and concluded that their deaths had "occurred as a result of
poisoning with cyanide compounds." The Goebbels themselves had committed
suicide outside the bunker, and Stumpfegger died while attempting to break
through the Russian lines in Berlin.

Kunz, however, survived. He was both a witness and a perpetrator, someone
who could incriminate others and exonerate himself. Someone who could also
give false testimony.

Back in Office

On July 30, 1945, the Russians flew Kunz to Moscow, where he joined
hundreds of thousands of other German prisoners of war. He was imprisoned
for six-and-a-half years. In February 1952, he was put on trial for being
a member of the Nazi Party and the SS and, as Kunz would later claim, also
for the death of the Goebbels children.

At the time of Kunz's trial in Moscow, several years had passed since the
Allies had conducted the Nuremberg trials. At first, West German courts
had also made a concerted effort to quickly convict Nazi war criminals.
But soon, says German historian Norbert Frei, there was a "conspicuous
decline in the level of enthusiasm for bringing people to justice." That
development was triggered by a ruling that interpreted Article 131 of West
Germany's new constitution, two years after it was passed in 1949, in
favor of former civil servants. The new provision permitted the rehiring
of civil servants who had been let go "on grounds other than bureaucratic
or wage-related reasons" -- for example, reasons related to their Nazi
past.

In other words, people who had been judges or prosecutors during the Nazi
regime were in all likelihood serving in the same positions once again,
officially rehabilitated and "less and less prepared to carry out a
reasonable administration of justice," according to Frei.

In addition, the young Federal Republic of Germany had declared generous
amnesties, the first in 1949, the year of its establishment, and a second
one in 1954, which only crippled the process of justice even further. The
intention of the new amnesty law was to provide immunity from prosecution
for "certain crimes from the Nazi era," or at least to deal with them
leniently if mitigating circumstances could be found.

Almost all the people who were now thinking about possible mitigating
circumstances had connections to the Nazis in some way or another: as
employees in Hitler's justice ministry, as wartime judges or as judges on
special tribunals. And they were particularly eager to ensure that
sympathetic sentences were passed relating to "acts that occurred during
the collapse" -- namely from October 1944 through the end of the war in
Europe on May 8, 1945 and until July 31, 1945 -- if they had been
committed "under the assumption of an official or legal obligation,
especially on the basis of an order."

The law came into effect on July 18, 1954. It would be of particular
importance for one man: Helmut Kunz.


Judicial Scandal


After Kunz had spent 10 years in Russian captivity, the Kremlin finally
released him on Oct. 4, 1955. A short time later, the death of the
Goebbels children became a case for the public prosecutor, but only
because the district court in the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden was
conducting obligatory proceedings to verify Hitler's death. One of the
many witnesses was Harri Mengershausen, a former assistant inspector and
SS official, as well as a former prisoner of war.

Mengershausen first testified about Hitler's suicide, and then the judge,
Heinrich Stephanus, began to probe into the Goebbels case: "The death of
the children is still a complete mystery. We don't know who did it and
what exactly was done Dr. Kunze was once mentioned in this context."
Neither the judge nor the witness knew Kunz's correct name.


"Dr. Kunze refused three times to poison the children," Mengershausen
said, "and then Goebbels  pointed out to him that he still had the power
to issue orders, and that he (Dr. Kunze) could be punished for disobeying
a order. After that, he administered the injections"

"But you only know this from hearsay?" Stephanus asked.

"I know it because he told me himself," Mengershausen replied.

Six Counts of Murder

By that point, Kunz had settled in the northwestern German city of Mnster,
where he was working as a "voluntary assistant" at the university dental
clinic, and as a contract physician with the new German armed forces, the
Bundeswehr. Chief prosecutor Theodor Middeldorf launched a preliminary
investigation against Kunz for six counts of murder, under case No. 6 Js
1041/56.

During the coming months, Middeldorf examined many witnesses who had
persevered until the end in the Fhrer's bunker -- Hitler's last
confidants. They included his secretary Traudl Junge, his valet Heinz
Linge, his driver Erich Kempka and his chief pilot Hans Baur.

Some had never heard of Kunz, while others were familiar with him and his
story. But Middeldorf had, in fact, no need for a classic incriminating
witness. In the first hearing, the dentist confessed that he had
administered morphine to the children, and he stated that his fellow
doctor, Stumpfegger, and Magda Goebbels had been alone in the room. When
Goebbels emerged from the room, Kunz testified, she was weeping and said:
"Everything is over now!"

In January 1959, the public prosecutor's office in Mnster brought charges,
not for murder, but for aiding and abetting a homicide "through six
independent actions." From the very beginning, the prosecutors had ruled
out the possibility that the 1954 amnesty law could be applied in the Kunz
case.

First, they argued, the "request to participate in the killing of the
children" was not a "binding order" for Kunz, even if Magda Goebbels had
insisted that it had come directly from either her husband or Hitler. And
even if Kunz had believed Magda Goebbels, he ought to have refused, the
prosecutors argued, because "killing the children was nothing but a
crime."

Members of the Nazi Party

After examining the records for only three weeks, the First Criminal
Chamber of the Mnster State Court closed the proceedings, at the
government's expense. "Anyone who incurred guilt in a situation which was
not under their control should, as a rule, receive immunity from
prosecution," the court suggested.

And this was to apply to a doctor who felt threatened by the regime in the
form of the wife of a minister? The immunity law had not been enacted for
a case like Kunz's, no matter how it was interpreted. Perhaps that was why
the judges wrote, in the grounds for their decision, that it was time to
finally draw a line "under the confusing circumstances."

Three months later, the regional appeals court in Hamm upheld the lower
court's decision, while emphasizing how dangerous the situation had been
for Kunz. Magda Goebbels, the court argued, had "made it clear to him that
he would be killed if he refused to perform the task that was intended for
him."

Describing the act of being an accomplice to the killings of six children
as a "task that was intended for him" is a bitter way of phrasing it.
These are the words of lawyers, and it is hardly surprising that both the
presiding judge, Gerhard Rose, born in 1903, and the president of the
regional appeals court, Gerhard Ahlich, born in 1905, had been members of
the Nazi Party. Rose's membership number was 4 413 181, and Ahlich's was 4
079 094. Both men had joined the Nazi Party on May 1, 1937.

Coincidentally, it was the same day Kunz joined the party.

Scattered in the Elbe

The dentist died in Freudenstadt in southwestern Germany in 1976. He had
been highly regarded in the community and had kept working until his
death. He is buried in the municipal cemetery, division R, double grave
10/11.

According to the Russian account, after the autopsies the bodies of the
children, as well as those of their parents and of Hitler and Eva Braun,
were hastily buried near Buch in northeastern Berlin. They were moved
again twice before the politburo in Moscow ordered their "final"
destruction, "under strict orders of secrecy," because the Russians wanted
to avoid attracting attention. The KGB was instructed to perform the
clandestine mission, code-named "Operation Archive."

According to a secret document, on the night of April 4-5, 1970, a KGB
unit disinterred "skulls, bones, ribs, vertebrae and so on." The agents
threw everything they found onto a bonfire, and the "remains" were "burned
completely" and "together with pieces of charcoal, were pounded into
powder."

The ashes were scattered in the Elbe River.

(source:  Spiegel)





THE NETHERLANDS:

BOOK REVIEW

'Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife' by Francine Prose
Considerations on the lasting legacy of the diary and its author.
  By David L. Ulin


Last week, a video went up on YouTube that shows the only motion picture
images ever taken of Anne Frank. It's just a quick glimpse, a few seconds
of film.

A newlywed couple leaves an Amsterdam apartment building. People hover on
the sidewalk, watching them go. Then the camera pans upward -- and there,
gazing down from a balcony, is Anne Frank.

The date is July 22, 1941. She's 12 years old. It's a year before she and
her family will go into hiding, less than four years before she will die
of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in the waning days of World War II. We watch
her watching, watch her look back over her shoulder, quick and coltish, as
if in response to someone inside.

"As familiar as we are with images of Anne Frank," Francine Prose writes
in her provocative "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife," "as
inured as we may think we are to the sight of her beautiful face, the film
pierces whatever armor we imagine we have developed. . . . It's less like
watching a film clip than like having one of those dreams in which you see
a long-lost loved one or friend. In the dream, the person isn't really
dead. You must have been mistaken. You wake up, and it takes a few moments
to understand why the dream was so cruelly deceptive."

Frank would have turned 80 this year, had she remained among the living;
in another image available on the Internet, a forensic pathologist has
created a projection of how she might have looked. It's as shocking, in
its way, as that YouTube video, for all these years later, Frank seems
fixed to us: as entrenched in our imaginations as the girl in the secret
annex, accessible and inaccessible all at once.

She's the "Jewish Joan of Arc," a secular saint whose most famous
utterance -- "in spite of everything I still believe that people are
really good at heart" -- was taken out of context, "torn out of its bed of
thorns," in Cynthia Ozick's electric phrase. Prose quotes the entire
passage in "Anne Frank," and part of it is worth repeating because of what
it says about the line between illusion and reality, between how we think
of Frank and who she was:

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they
seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in
spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion,
misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a
wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us
too, I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the
heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end,
and that peace and tranquillity will return again."

For Prose, that's a key moment -- in terms of both Frank's diary and our
ability to read it plain. Here, we see realism collide with romanticism,
despair intermingle with hope.

What makes Frank so essential, Prose argues, is precisely such a tension,
her "sensibly and understandably mixed view of human nature." Her diary is
not, as we have come to think of it, a universal story, but first and
foremost a particular one. "I had become increasingly impatient with the
notion of Anne Frank as the perky teenage messenger of peace and love . .
. ," Prose writes. "Such a misreading of Anne's book and her 'message,'
I'd thought, constituted a denial of what happened to her after the diary
ended, and of the cruel fates that befell millions of equally innocent men
and women and children."

With "Anne Frank," then, Prose means to remove Frank from the wistful
amber of her posthumous celebrity and reveal her to us in a more realistic
light.

This, of course, is what Frank's writing has always seemed to offer, the
direct expression of "a girl who kept a diary for the last two years of
her life." In Prose's penetrating analysis, however, the book is less the
serendipitous reflection of a precocious adolescent than the intentional
work of a young author who tailored her material very much for effect.

Although she'd kept the diary since 1942, it was only in March 1944, after
a radio broadcast in which Gerrit Bolkestein, who was "minister of
education, art, and science in the exiled Dutch government, called for the
establishment of a national archive to house the 'ordinary documents' --
diaries, letters, sermons, and so forth -- written by Dutch citizens
during the war," that Frank began to think about her writing in a new way.
She revised the manuscript, giving it a title, "Het Achterhuis"
("literally, 'the house behind' or 'the annex' "), clarifying, cutting,
changing things around.

"Anne intended 'Het Achterhuis' to begin with the June 20, 1942, entry,"
Prose tells us, "in which she . . . wonders who will be interested in the
'unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.' The passage was composed
at some point during the spring of 1944." What Frank is doing there is
"putting herself in her state of mind of two weeks before she went into
hiding" -- in other words, constructing a narrative in the most conscious
sense.

The notion of consciousness permeates "Anne Frank," pushing us to rethink
both the diary and what it means. There's no criticism, Prose argues, in
calling Frank's book crafted; if anything, the opposite is true.

Over the years, her father, Otto, who alone among the family survived the
war and prepared the diary for publication, was taken to task for editing
passages on his daughter's sexuality or her conflicts with his wife. "In
fact," Prose writes, "what seems most probable is that his editing was
guided by the instincts of a bereaved father wanting to give the reader
the fullest sense of what his daughter had been like."

Such a statement sits at the center of Prose's argument -- because of what
it says not just about the book but about the life. It's hard to remember,
with Anne Frank now a symbol of human perseverance, that there was nothing
inevitable about her diary, that she was a person responding to events.
It's hard to remember that the Franks were caught, and Anne died horribly,
naked, lice-ridden, starving, racked by disease.

Even that YouTube video, so idyllic on the surface, portrays a world
already past the tipping point, with Jews "forbidden to frequent parks,
zoos, cafes, museums, public libraries, and auctions." In such a
landscape, Prose insists, "neither . . . the will to survive with the
maximum humanity and the will to extinguish with the maximum brutality . .
. makes sense without the other," which is the true, discomforting legacy
of Anne Frank and her book.

(source:  Book Review--New York Times)

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


Anne Frank has channel on YouTube


Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who detailed her thoughts and her
family's life while hiding in an attic from the Nazis in Amsterdam,
can now be seen in rare video that has been posted on the Internet.

Anne Frank got a diary as a gift shortly before her family went into
hiding from the Nazis.

The only known footage of Frank, who died in a concentration camp weeks
before World War II ended, can be seen on a special YouTube channel run by
the Anne Frank Museum.

The channel manager, Ita Amahorseija, said the virtual museum was created
"to not only give back to the people who know the story of Anne Frank, but
to trigger people to want to know more about her story."

In the silent black-and-white footage, the 12-year-old diarist can be seen
as she leans out the window of her home to watch her newly married
neighbor leave the apartment building on July 22, 1941. Watch the
video<http://www.youtube.com/user/AnneFrank#p/u>

That newlywed couple gave the film to Anne's father after the war.

Other videos show the chestnut tree that Anne
<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Anne_Frank> saw every day from her
window and the church bells that rang while she was in hiding. She
mentions both of these in her diary.

Otto Frank can be heard on the site, talking about his daughter's diaries
in a video excerpt made in the late 1960s before his death. He said she
talked about and criticized many things, but he learned her real feelings
only by reading her diary.

"I was very much surprised about deep thoughts Anne had, a seriousness,
especially her self-criticism. It was quite a different Anne I had known
as my daughter. She never really showed this kind of inner feeling," Otto
Frank said.

The video of the happy young Anne has had more than 2 million page views
since its posting a week ago.

That expansive reach has led other museums to use YouTube to reach a
broader audience and to offer a taste of what's available on their Web
sites.

(source:  CNN)




POLAND:

Auschwitz survivor honours heroism of Jewish rebels


I am 86 years old, Catholic and one of the two still-living eyewitnesses,
who as members of the Auschwitz Prisoners Fire Brigade, were sent to
extinguish the fire of the crematorium buildings set by the rebelling Jews
in the wooded part of Auschwitz called Birkenau.

This happened on Saturday, Oct. 7, 1944.

This year, the 65th anniversary of this little-known event, it is my
sacred duty to remember these Jewish heroes. They sacrificed their lives
in the uneven battle with the SS guards.

They killed three SS officers and burnt to the ground crematorium and gas
chamber No. 4 and destroyed and made unfit crematorium and gas chamber No.
2.

We, the 65,000 prisoners still in Auschwitz at the time, were elated. It
was unbelievable and fantastic news.

These Jewish prisoners of Hungarian and Russian origins lifted our
spirits. They proved that the SS were not invincible and that a day of
reckoning was coming for their crimes.

Sigmund Sobolewski, Fort Macleod

(source:  Letter to the Editor, The Calgary Herald)




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


Auschwitz memorial launches on Facebook
Hopes to reach a younger audience


The memorial museum at Auschwitz has launched a Facebook page, hoping
that the popular social networking site will help it reach young people
around the globe and engage them in discussions about the former Nazi
death camp and the Holocaust.

The site, which opened earlier this week, already has more than 1,800
"fans" who have subscribed, with the number growing by the hour  some 500
signed up Thursday morning alone. Many have left messages in English,
Hebrew and Polish, the majority expressing the sentiment: "Never again."

"This is a kind of an experiment," memorial spokesman Pawel Sawicki told
The Associated Press on Thursday. "Facebook is the tool that young people
are using to communicate, so if we want to reach them, we should be using
their tool."

The museum already launched a Polish-language page on YouTube at the end
of 2008 and an English-language page two months ago. Some 22,000 people
have viewed the films so far.

Between 1940-45, some 1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed or died
of starvation, disease and forced labor at the camp, which the Nazis built
in occupied Poland. Sawicki said the memorial's 1 million annual visitors
are primarily students and other young people.

The Auschwitz memorial is not the first Holocaust-related organization to
venture onto Facebook: The Simon Wiesenthal Center counts more than 2,000
"fans" on its site and has also used Twitter. There is an unofficial
Facebook page dedicated to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, which
says it plans to launch an official page in the coming weeks.

Facebook, which turned 5 this year, counts more than 175 million users
worldwide.

The Anne Frank memorial has a YouTube channel, as does Yad Vashem, which
offers information in English, Hebrew, Spanish and Arabic.

"Everyone's using the Internet and trying their best to reach out to as
many people as possible, and obviously one of the best ways of reaching
young people is through the modern use of technology," said the Wiesenthal
Center's Efraim Zuroff in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Though the Internet is also rife with far-right sites that attempt to
distort or deny the Holocaust, Zuroff said that was no reason for others
to dismiss using the Web.

"The vehicle depends on the content," he said. "If the content is helpful,
if the content is educational, there's no reason not to use the vehicle."

There are also already scores of Facebook groups dedicated to Auschwitz
started by individuals, but the Auschwitz page  found by searching the
site with the keywords "Auschwitz Memorial"  lets people participate in
discussions moderated by the memorial's staff.

So far, the site has seen no postings by Holocaust deniers, Sawicki said.

If they do show up, they will be quickly removed, Sawicki said, saying
that to engage Holocaust deniers in dialogue is "a waste of time."

"I think we have more important things to do than try to convince a very
small group of people" that the Holocaust happened, he said.

(source:  Associated Press)

Oct. 4



USA//NEW YORK:

MOVIE REVIEW | 'AS SEEN THROUGH THESE EYES'----Art From the Holocaust,
Behind the Barbed Wire


Hilary Helstein
s nobly intended Holocaust documentary, "As Seen Through These Eyes,"
begins with the dubious suggestion that Hitler's monstrous behavior was
really just an extended hissy fit after his rejection from art school in
Vienna.

In the film's grating introduction, its narrator, Maya Angelou, recites
part of her famous poem "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," then bluntly
voices the filmmakers' theory. "His failure as an artist drove him to
refocus his passion for painting onto a new art form," she states. "His
paints were propaganda speeches. He transformed his obsession with art
toward the creation of destruction. His first victims were the artists he
once so tried to emulate."

Later in the film, Ms. Angelou declares in prose most purple, "No one was
safe from his sweeping paintbrush of death and destruction."

The narration's overbearing tone helps make the 70-minute film, produced
in association with the Sundance Channel, feel like a glib, streamlined
examination of a painful, complicated subject: art made by
concentration-camp prisoners as a psychic survival tool.

Art executed under the most excruciating conditions deserves a far more
searching study than this too short film, which has the structure of a
hurried checklist. Even so, a lot of the art shown in the documentary,
often side-by-side with photographs of the same places and events, is
compelling. Many of the mostly expressionist paintings and drawings convey
a depth of suffering beyond any cameras ability to capture it. Those
artists who drew on whatever scraps of material they could scavenge risked
immediate execution if their work was discovered.

The movie jumps back and forth between visual artists and musicians. Ela
Weissberger recalls life in Terezin, the bogus "model ghetto" used by the
Nazis for propaganda to demonstrate their humane treatment of prisoners.
Playing the Cat onstage in a camp production of the childrens opera
"Brundibar," she was briefly distracted from her miserable circumstances.

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt survived Auschwitz after she was chosen by the
death camp doctor Josef Mengele to paint portraits of Gypsies. Karl
Stojka, a Gypsy who avoided execution by running errands for Mengele, went
on to paint more than a thousand canvases depicting his experiences.
Samuel Bak, an artistic child prodigy, recalls the days when the Vilna
ghetto was considered the "Jerusalem of Lithuania." Judith Goldstein's
painting "The Death Pits at Ponar" remembers the slaughter of half that
ghettos Jewish population.

Simon Wiesenthal, who later became famous as a Nazi hunter, shows some of
his drawings. Henry Rosmarin recalls his miraculous salvation when the
camp commandant ordered him to play the harmonica for the SS in the mess
hall, and it became his job through the end of the war.

Alfred Kantor shows paintings and sketches of concentration-camp life
later collected and published in "The Book of Alfred Kantor." Frederick
Terna explains how creating secret artworks gave him a sense of control.
He is the closest thing to a philosopher of art in this film.

AS SEEN THROUGH THESE EYES

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Hilary Helstein; narrated by Maya Angelou; edited
by Sean Hubbert and Tanya Phipps; music by Lawrence Brown; produced by Ms.
Helstein, Michael Rosendale and Amy Janes; released by Menemsha Films and
Parkchester Pictures. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street,
Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. This film is not
rated.

(source:  New York Times)





USA//CALIFORNIA:

Preserving the faces of the Holocaust



Artist Robert Sutz took pictures of Gloria Lyon, who sat patiently in her
San Francisco home. With her strawberry blond hair pulled in soft curls up
and off her face, Lyon had a sweet smile that belied the words she would
speak.

"I was 14 when I was sent to Auschwitz in 1944," Lyon began. "We had to
line up without any clothes on and stand in front of Dr. Josef Mengele for
selection. He had this little baton, and he wore a white glove. He
indicated with that baton whether you should go to the left or to the
right, to extermination or to work. I worked behind the gas chamber."

The next day, Sutz photographed Herman Shine, sitting shirtless in his
kitchen in San Mateo. Still fit at 86, Shine is one of the few people to
ever escape from Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.

"I am alive thanks to not one but to a dozen miracles," said Shine, his
left forearm bearing the faded black concentration camp tattoo of 70196.
His shirt was off so the plaster bandages could go on his neck and face.

Shine and Lyon are among dozens of Holocaust survivors from across the
country who have let Sutz create three-dimensional life masks of them -
masks that will serve as another form of documentation to the murder of
Jews by the Nazis. Last month marked the 70th anniversary of the start of
World War II.

"My documentation is a little bit different," said Sutz, 79, who has
completed the masks and heard the stories of 62 survivors, with dozens
more interviews planned. "Future generations will be able to see what
these survivors really look like."

Video Interview

With each mask, Sutz - whose father's family perished in Auschwitz and
Treblinka - does a video interview.

"I've heard the worst stories imaginable," Sutz said. "Many told me of
scenes where they were lined up in the morning and had to stand for hours.
Every 10th person would be shot. The next day, it would be every eighth
person killed by dogs.

"I've heard many stories, too, of wintertime in the camps," he continued.
"A survivor told me of a prisoner who was caught sneaking bread back into
the camp. The prisoner was stripped naked and put in a barrel. All of the
other prisoners had to shovel ice in until he died."

The common thread among survivors, Sutz said, is "pure luck" - and "a
tremendous desire to live to tell."

Lyon, whose family name is Hollander and who was born in Czechoslovakia,
said she and her family had no idea what was happening when they were
rounded up the day after Passover in 1944 and transported to camp.

"One day I was singled out by Mengele and put on a truck with 30 women,"
Lyon said. "We were all without clothes. The driver, who was Hungarian and
sympathetic, told us that we were going to the gas chamber, and that if we
wanted to jump into the ditch on the way, to try to escape, that we should
do so, but he said if we gave him away, he would die, too."

So on that dark and cold night in late December 1944, Lyon, without
clothes or shoes, was the only woman to jump.

"I thought, the only way I will get out of here otherwise is coming out of
that chimney as smoke," she said, her voice far away, back in the memory
of that night.

Lyon spent the next 24 hours freezing in the ditch before sneaking back
into a girls' barrack. The next morning, in another stroke of luck,
everyone in the barrack was loaded on a train for another Nazi camp,
Bergen-Belsen. That camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. Both of Lyon's
parents and three of her four siblings survived. One brother was beaten to
death in Auschwitz three days before liberation.

Lyon said she was proud to spend a recent morning sitting for Sutz's
portrait.

"What an interesting way of honoring those who are no longer here," Lyon
said. "And I'm honored that my face will be one of the faces of the
Holocaust."

Keeping the story alive

Herman Shine, the Auschwitz escapee, says he has not stopped talking about
what happened since the day he was liberated by the Russians.

As Sutz prepared his plaster bandages and plaster mix, Shine spoke of his
life and escape. His wife, Marianne, whom he met in Auschwitz when he was
17 and she was 15, was nearby.

"I was born in Berlin in 1922," Shine said. "My mother was German, my
father was Polish. One day in September 1939 - two weeks after the start
of war - I was told to report to police headquarters to register for the
war. I was put on a transport truck. I never saw my mother, father,
brother and sister again."

First at Sachsenhausen and later at Auschwitz, Shine worked construction,
building barracks. When he learned through a source that the camp was soon
to be "liquidated," as the Russians were moving closer, he and a friend
plotted their escape.

"They were going to mow all of us down with special machine guns," he
said.

He and his friend Max Drimmer - who now lives close by in Burlingame -
escaped in September 1944. They spent three days hiding in a hole in the
ground before walking 18 miles to a hiding place established for them by a
Polish Catholic. They were on the run for 10 months, finally liberated on
Jan. 30, 1945.

As the tape went on his face for the mask, Shine was instructed by Sutz
not to talk.

"There are still deniers of the Holocaust," Shine said, getting in a few
last words before the plaster went on. "Fortunately, we are around to
repudiate them. But there will come a time when all of the survivors are
gone. That's why everything has to be written, documented, painted and
spoken of."

Robert Sutz, an artist who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., was in the Bay Area
in September interviewing Holocaust survivors and doing their life masks.
His work has been shown in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Michigan, and is
being organized for a new traveling exhibition. For information on Sutz
and his work, go to his Web site at www.robertsutz.com.

(source:  San Francisco Chronicle)




USA//FLORIDA:

Grayson Regrets Comparing Health Care Crisis to Holocaust


Florida Rep. Alan Grayson vowed not to use the term again in a letter he
sent Friday to the Andrew Rosenkranz, Florida regional director of the
Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish organization that fights
anti-Semitism.

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, who has drawn fire for saying Republicans want
Americans to "die quickly" if they get sick, expressed regret Friday for
comparing the health care crisis to a "holocaust."

Grayson vowed not to use the term again in a letter he sent Friday to the
Andrew Rosenkranz, Florida regional director of the Anti-Defamation
League, a prominent Jewish organization that fights anti-Semitism.

Grayson evoked the Holocaust during a speech on the House floor Wednesday
even though he wasn't referring to the genocide of European Jews in Nazi
concentration camps during World War II.

"I call upon all of us to do our jobs for the sake of America, for the
sake of those dying people and their families," Grayson said. "I apologize
to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this
holocaust in America."

Grayson, who is Jewish and says he has relatives who died in the
Holocaust, said he wrote the letter to address the concerns his comments
caused.

"In no way did I mean to minimize the Holocaust," Grayson wrote in the
letter obtained by FOXNews.com. "I regret the choice of words, and I will
not repeat it."

Grayson added that he is a "staunch" supporter of Israel and has
repeatedly called for action against Iran to avoid another Holocaust.

Rosenkranz told FOXNews.com Grayson was responding to a letter he sent him
stating the group's position that led to a phone conversation between the
two on Thursday.

"It's an improper use of Holocaust imagery," Rosenkranz said he told
Grayson. "It should never be used. A civil discourse regarding the health
debate is one thing but comparing it to perhaps the world's worst atrocity
in the history of mankind is unfortunate and after speaking with him, he
said he regrets making the remark."

Rosenkranz said it didn't make a difference whether Grayson was using the
broader definition of "holocaust."

"I think it's important to note that when you hear the word 'holocauast'
today, most people think of the genocide of six million Jews and that was
never a point of contention between the two of us."

Grayson still refuses to apologize for his "die quickly" comments that he
made on Tuesday. His re-election campaign poked fun at the GOP for
demanding an apology.

"Congressman Grayson's re-election campaign wishes to thank all of the
Republican hypocrites who attacked Grayson," the Florida Democrat's
campaign wrote in an e-mail.

"As soon as the Republican hissy fits began, contributions began to pour
in to Grayson's campaign," the e-mail read. Grayson's campaign invited
Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., to serve as finance director.

Price is planning to introduce a resolution of disapproval as payback for
Democrats succeeding in voting to reprimand South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson
last month for shouting "You lie!" at President Obama during his address
to Congress.

Republicans are pressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to "rein in" Grayson.

(source:  Fox News)






SPAIN:

Spain demands extradition of 3 Nazi death camp guards


A Spanish judge announced indictments on Thursday afternoon against three
former Nazi death camp guards for genocide and crimes against humanity.


The three men - Johann Leprich, Anton Tittjung and Josias Kumpf - were
charged in absentia for their participation in the killing of Spanish
prisoners during World War II.

Judge Ismael Moreno of the Spanish National Court issued international
arrest warrants for Leprich and Tittjung, both living in the United
States, and Kumpf, who currently resides in Austria, demanding their
immediate extradition to face war-crime prosecution in Spain.

Moreno will charge the 84-year-old men under Spain's observation of
universal jurisdiction. This principle allows for Spain to claim criminal
jurisdiction over the men, regardless of their nationality or country of
residence, even though the crimes occurred outside of Spain.

Cases of universal jurisdiction usually occur for crimes such as genocide,
crimes against humanity, torture, terrorism and forced disappearances.

Moreno concluded that the three men had indeed been members of the Nazis'
Totenkopf SS and had served as armed guards in the concentration camps of
Mauthaussen and Sachsenhausen. According to the Spanish judge,
approximately 4,300 of 7,000 Spaniards incarcerated in Mauthaussen died.

The case began on June 19, 2008, when a criminal lawsuit was presented to
the National Court by two Spanish World War II survivors. The case was
focused on bringing four Nazi SS guards to trial for their crimes. The
fourth guard, retired Detroit auto worker John Demjanjuk, will not be
included, as he has already been charged and was extradited by Germany in
May.

"This is an amazing turnabout for Spain... the court deserves major
credit," remarked Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
office in Jerusalem.

Zuroff pointed out that Spain had once been a haven for Nazi
war-criminals. The first change in Spanish policy regarding attempts to
track down Nazi criminals was with Nazi physician Dr. Aribert Heim in
2005. Heim murdered prisoners at the Mauthaussen camp and was thought to
be hiding in Spain. After an international warrant was issued for his
arrest, the Spanish authorities made a concerted effort to hunt him down.
While the authorities did not find him, the current case demonstrates that
Spain is continuing to pursue prosecution of genocide and war crimes
against Spaniards, Zuroff said.

Zuroff expects the men to be extradited to Spain quickly, and that the
trial for their crimes will commence by the beginning of 2010.

"Each country has an interest in extraditing them, due to the fact that
both the United States and Austria face limitations of prosecution," said
Zuroff.

Austria cannot charge Kumpf due to a statute of limitations clause, since
the crimes occurred too long ago, and the United States is unable to
prosecute him because it does not adhere to universal jurisdiction.

Zuroff noted that "the United States has been trying for 60 years to
deport all four individuals for lying on their immigration papers
regarding their Nazi past, although no country has been willing to accept
them."

According to an article in the Detroit News by Charlie LeDuff on September
3, Leprich has managed to avoid deportation for almost 50 years.

Despite having already been ordered deported by the US for lying about his
Nazi past, Leprich originally entered the country illegally in 1952 and
was given American citizenship in 1958. LeDuff discovered that Leprich had
his citizenship stripped in 1987 by a Detroit immigration judge for
dishonest representation of his personal history as a Nazi death camp
guard. However, immigration authorities released him, and he subsequently
fled. Soon thereafter, he returned to his normal Michigan lifestyle,
despite the possibility of domestic arrest or foreign extradition and
prosecution.

Sixteen years later, federal agents again arrested Leprich and held him
for three years, waiting for any country to request his extradition. No
such requests came, and Leprich was again released in 2006.

Two weeks ago, with the Spanish indictment and arrest warrant looming,
LeDuff discovered that Leprich had long since disappeared from his home in
Clinton Township, Michigan, with neighbors claiming they had not seem him
around for months.

Tittjung lives in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, and Kumpf made his home in Racine,
Wisconsin, but has apparently since disappeared to Austria.

(source:  Jerusalem Post, Sept. 18)





HUNGARY:

Hungary questions accused Nazi collaborator


In Budapest, Hungarian state officials questioned and confiscated the
passport of an alleged Nazi collaborator.

Tuesday's questioning of Sandor Kepiro by the Hungarian State Prosecutor
Service may mark the start of the first major war crimes trial in Hungary
since the collapse of Soviet administration 20 years ago.

Kepiro, 95, who has lived openly in Hungary for the past three years, is
accused by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of involvement in the murder of
some 1,200 Jews, Serbs and Gypsies by the wartime Hungarian Gendarmerie at
Novi Sad in 1942.

He was found guilty on charges arising from the massacre shortly after the
event by an independent Hungarian court, but his sentence was quashed
after the invasion of the country by Nazi Germany in 1944.

Gabriella Skoda, a specialist spokesperson for the prosecution service,
said Tuesday that the files are being reopened on the strength of fresh
documentary evidence supplied by Serbia.

As many as 20 important surviving Nazi war criminals of Hungarian origin
are still to be brought to justice, according to Peter Feldmajer, chairman
of the Alliance of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities.

After the World War II, Kepiro escaped first to Austria and then
Argentina, eventually returning home on the assumption that his case would
not be reopened in the absence of fresh evidence. He now lives in an
elegant district of Buda across the street from a thriving synagogue.

Kepiro was discovered in Budapest in 2006 by Ephraim Zuroff, the
American-born Israeli historian, Nazi hunter and director of the
Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem.

Anxious to prosecute the case, the city of Novi Sad has granted Zuroff
honorary citizenship.

(source:  JTA)

Sept. 15


BALTICS:

Project to survey Holocaust-era mass graves


A new project will survey mass graves and Jewish cemeteries in the Baltic
states where Jewish communities were largely destroyed during World War II.

The aim is to identify and repair the neglected sites from the Holocaust
era, which often are the last reminder of once-vibrant Jewish communities,
according to a statement released Monday by Lo Tishkach-Do Not Forget, a
project coordinated by the Conference of European Rabbis, the continent's
main Orthodox rabbinical association, and sponsored by the Conference for
Jewish Material Claims against Germany.

Youth groups in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will begin a training
program this fall. They will conduct surveys of hundreds of local sites
starting in early spring.

The groups will assemble geographical data, take photos and report on the
condition of the sites. Of particular importance for the program is
assessing the need for fences or demarcations in keeping with Jewish law.
Local governments will be encouraged to contribute financially to the
protection and improvement of the sites, the statement said.

The identification and protection [of the cemeteries] is fundamental to
the battle against Holocaust denial, Lo Tishkach Executive Director Philip
Carmel said.

The Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Claims Conference are supporting
the project. Lo Tishkach was launched in early 2008.

(source:  JTA)






GERMANY:

The Demjanjuk Case----Court Re-Examines War Crimes Suspect's Alleged SS ID


A crucial piece of evidence in the trial of suspected concentration camp
guard John Demjanjuk was re-examined by a Munich court on Monday in the
run-up to what could be the last major Nazi war crimes trial.

Munich's Higher Regional Court on Monday re-examined John Demjanjuk's SS
identification papers -- key evidence in the upcoming trial against the
man accused of having served as a Nazi guard and helping to herd tens of
thousands of Jews to their deaths in World War II.

On Monday, the judges, prosecutors and defense examined the documents --
although the court said no public statement would be made about the
findings.

The documents is question are SS identification papers that include
information about his transfer from the Trawniki concentration camp to the
Sobibor death camp, where he is accused of having aided in the murder of
at least 27,000 Jews.

A historian with the United States Office of Special Investigations (OSI)
delivered the documents, which had been held in a safe at the Justice
Department in Washington. The documents were examined by specialists from
the Bavarian state criminal office in February, but the inspection was
said to not be thorough enough to eliminate the possibility of doubts
about their authenticity.

Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who moved to the United States after World War II,
was convicted by an Israeli court of crimes at the Treblinka concentration
camp in the present-day eastern Poland in 1988, but was acquitted in 1993
after doubts arose as to whether he had actually served there.

New documents have surfaced over the past year, which appear to place
Demjanjuk at Sobibor -- another concentration camp in present-day Poland
-- at the height of the Holocaust.

Awaiting Trial

In March, the Bavarian state public prosecutor's office issued a warrant
for Demjanjuk's arrest following a 2005 ruling by a US immigration judge
that he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

Demjanjuk long fought being sent to Germany for trial, and in April a US
appeals court issued a temporary stay based on the pensioner's poor
health, despite criticism in Germany that age and health should not stop
justice.

In May, the alleged criminal eventually landed in Germany and was put in
remand inside the medical facility of a Munich prison, where he is
currently awaiting trial. Several expert opinions have concluded that
Demjanjuk is fit to be kept in prison and capable of going to trial to a
limited extent.

An appeal by his consulting attorney, Ulrich Busch, to release Demjanjuk
because of his health, was recently overruled and his trial is due to
begin in November. Busch is now considering appealing the case to the
Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's highest. But an appeal would
unlikely slow down the start of his trial.

Demjanjuk has refuted the charges from the outset. He insists that he
never worked for the Germans as a guard at a death camp and he is expected
to maintain his silence in court.

"My client will not admit to the charges," Busch said.

(source:  Spiegel)




USA:

Rights Group Assailed for Analysts Nazi Collection


A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst
following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.


The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support
behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out
last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him
with pay, "pending an investigation," said Carroll Bogert, the group's
associate director.

"We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to
know," she said.

The suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between, on one side,
the new Israeli government and its allies on the right, and the other
side, human rights organizations that have been critical of Israel. In
recent months, the government has pledged an aggressive approach toward
the groups to discredit what they argue is bias and error.

Injected suddenly into that heated conflict, word of Mr. Garlasco's
interest seemed startling to many. The disclosure ricocheted across the
Internet: Mr. Garlasco, an American, was not only a collector, he has
written a book, more than 400 pages long, about Nazi-era medals. His
hobby, inspired he said by a German grandfather conscripted into Hitlers
army, was revealed on a pro-Israel blog, Mere Rhetoric Mere Rhetoric,
which quoted his enthusiastic postings on collector sites under the
pseudonym "Flak88" - including, "That is so cool! The leather SS jacket
makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!"

It was a Rorschach moment in the conflict between Israel and its critics.
The revelations were, depending on who is talking, either incontrovertible
proof of bias or an irrelevant smear.

The Mere Rhetoric posting said Mr. Garlasco's interests explained
"anti-Israel biases."

The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also weighed in,
but its views on groups like Human Rights Watch were already clear. Mr.
Netanyahu's policy director, Ron Dermer, told The Jerusalem Post in July,
"We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups; we
are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for the human rights groups to
shoot at us with impunity."

After the report about Mr. Garlasco came out, Mr. Dermer called it perhaps
"a new low."

At first, Human Rights Watch, a global organization with headquarters in
New York, issued an unequivocal statement of support for Mr. Garlasco,
saying he "has never held or expressed Nazi or anti-Semitic views."

Ms. Bogert at the time said his work has been "extensively reviewed,
lawyered, scrutinized, pulverized by our program and legal staff, and we
have not in six years ever had cause to question his professional
judgment."

Mr. Garlasco, who worked at the Pentagon helping to target bombs in the
second Persian Gulf war, has since traveled the world for Human Rights
Watch, investigating and writing reports of the alleged use of white
phosphorus munitions in Gaza, cluster munitions in Russia and Georgia, and
other military practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Ms. Bogert called the attacks on Mr. Garlasco and her group "a distraction
from the real issue, which is the Israeli governments behavior."

But some who firmly support Human Rights Watch were left unsettled by the
researchers extracurricular activities.

Helena Cobban, a blogger and activist who is on the groups Middle East
advisory committee, asked on her blog, Just World News, if Mr. Garlasco's
activities were "something an employer like Human Rights Watch ought to be
worried about? After consideration, I say Yes."

Other groups say they have felt more heat from the Israeli government and
its allies. "Recently we have seen a new attitude, a stepping up," said
Sari Michaeli, press officer for the group BTselem, which recently came
under harsh criticism from the Israeli military for a report that
concluded that civilians made up more than half of the Palestinian
casualties in the Gaza offensive.

Mr. Garlasco declined to be interviewed. But on Friday he posted an essay
with the Huffington Post in which he called the Nazis "the worst war
criminals of all time," explaining that he was simply "a military geek"
whose interest grew out of his own family's history.

"I've never hidden my hobby, because theres nothing shameful in it,
however weird it might seem to those who aren't fascinated by military
history," he wrote. "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were
evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and
colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things."

Yaron Ezrahi, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, said he did not believe that Mr. Garlasco's interest in
memorabilia could support allegations of "premeditated bias." He said,
however, that Human Rights Watch's credibility might have been wounded
because Mr. Garlasco's hobby has "armed the right-wing fanatics" who "work
day and night to demonize any individual or organization that raises
questions about the military practices of Israel when they end up even
with unintended civilian casualties."

And that is one thing that seems to especially trouble Ms. Cobban, who
said in an interview that the controversy played into the hands of the
government and its helpers in the fight.

"They have been given this deus ex machina gift," she said, "about the
discovery of Garlasco and his out-of-hours hobby."

(source:  New York Times)






SWEDEN:

Jewish Heirs, Sweden Settle 7-Year Feud Over Nazi-Looted Nolde
Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Catherine Hickley

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Swedens Moderna Museet and the heirs of a Jewish
businessman forced to flee Germany before World War II settled a
seven-year dispute over a Nazi-looted Emil Nolde painting in the museums
collection.

Under the terms agreed between the museum and the heirs, a private
European collector whom they declined to name has purchased the painting
and will loan it to the Moderna Museet for up to five years. After that
time, the museum will receive further paintings on loan for another five
years, according to a joint statement sent by e-mail by the museum and the
heirs lawyer, David Rowland of Rowland & Petroff in New York.

Otto Nathan Deutsch fled to Amsterdam in late 1938 or early 1939, leaving
behind his possessions. He never got them back. The painting Blumengarten
(Utenwarf) (Flower Garden (Utenwarf)) surfaced in Switzerland in 1967 and
was sold to the Moderna Museet, according to the Stockholm museum. The
statement did not specify how much the collector paid nor how much the
heirs received, though Rowland previously put the works value at about $4
million.

Both the Deutsch heirs and the Moderna Museet are satisfied with the
outcome of the matter, the parties said in the statement, adding that they
agreed no further comment will be made.

Altogether, the Nazis stole about 650,000 works, the New York-based Jewish
Claims Conference estimates. Sweden is one of 44 governments that agreed
on the 1998 Washington principles on Holocaust-era assets. Under that
non-binding accord, nations agreed to achieve a just and fair solution
with the prewar owners of art seized by the Nazis that was never returned.

Concentration Camps

In a report published at a Prague conference in June to review how far the
Washington principles had been implemented, the Claims Conference included
Sweden in a list of countries that do not appear to have made significant
progress.

It noted that though the Moderna Museet does not dispute that a painting
by Emil Nolde that it holds was looted, it has not to date restituted the
painting.

The heirs first contacted the Moderna Museet in 2002. Two of the claimants
were imprisoned in concentration camps as children and are now more than
80 years old, according to Rowland. One of the heirs, Ricardo
Lorca-Deutsch, asked Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth to
intervene and return the painting in a March 12 letter.

The Deutsch heirs are still searching for other artworks, Rowland said.
When he fled Germany, Deutsch arranged for his possessions, including two
works by Nolde) and three or four more paintings, to be shipped to him in
Amsterdam, Rowland said.

They never arrived and Deutsch died in poverty, of natural causes, in
1943. Informed by the shipping company that Deutschs possessions had been
bombed and destroyed in the war, the heirs accepted a small amount of
damage compensation from Germany in 1962 for the loss, Rowland said.

Two paintings by Nolde (1867-1956) that were among Deutschs missing assets
re-emerged at Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer in Stuttgart, and were sold
at auction in Lugano, Switzerland, a few years later, Rowland said.

The Swedish government bought Blumengarten (Utenwarf), while Mohn und
Rosen (Poppy and Roses) was sold to a private buyer, he said.

(source:  Bloomberg News)

Sept. 10



USA:

Court: Holocaust survivor can sue for painting


An elderly Holocaust survivor from San Diego can continue his legal
battle against a Spanish museum to reclaim a valuable painting he
says was taken from his grandmother by the Nazis, a federal appeals court
ruled Tuesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that 88-year-old Claude
Cassirer's case against the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid and the
Spanish government can go forward.

Cassirer claimed his grandmother was forced to sell the 1897 painting by
French impressionist Camille Pissarro for what was then $360 to get a visa
to escape from Nazi Germany in 1939. He filed suit in California's Central
District in Los Angeles in 2005, and the defendants appealed in June 2006.

The painting, "Rue St.-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie," depicts a
Parisian boulevard lined with dark carriages, a few bare trees and a
scattering of people braving the weather. Its value is estimated at $20
million.

The painting apparently changed hands several times after World War II,
and its whereabouts were a mystery to the Cassirer family until a friend
spotted it in the Madrid museum in 2000.

The Spanish government bought the painting as part of the Baron
Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza's collection, which was worth $327
million. It has been on display at the famous government-owned museum
since 1993.

Baron Thyssen bought the painting from a New York art dealer in 1976.
Cassirer tried to negotiate its return through Spain's Ministry of
Culture, but his request was denied.

Tuesday's opinion was written by Judge N. Randy Smith with a partial
dissent by Judge Sandra Ikuta.

The ruling means the district court will have to determine whether
Cassirer has exhausted all other legal options outside U.S. courts, said
his attorney, Stuart Dunwoody.

"We're confident we can do that, but it's another step which slows things
down, and a point upon which they can appeal," Dunwoody said. "He hopes to
see justice in his lifetime. He's 88 years old, so we need to keep things
moving along."

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation responded to the judge's ruling by
calling the claim "totally baseless."

"The painting was acquired legitimately by the foundation in 1993, along
with the rest of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection," it said in a
statement issued Wednesday.

The foundation has previously said it possesses documents that prove Baron
Thyssen was the legitimate buyer in 1976.

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow Los Angeles resident Maria
Altmann, 88, to sue the government of Austria to retrieve $150 million
worth of Gustav Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis. The five Klimts were
handed over by Austria in January to Altmann and other family members
following a seven-year legal battle.

An estimated 600,000 works of art were looted by the Nazis during Adolf
Hitler's rule in Germany.

(source:  Associated Press)






ISRAEL:

Most Israeli Jews satisfied with Germany's attitude towards Holocaust:
poll


A majority of Israeli Jews believe that Germany takes a proper attitude
towards its past, according to a survey published Thursday on local daily
The Jerusalem Post.

The poll, conducted by Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the German
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, showed 61 percent of Israeli Jews are
satisfied with the level of responsibility taken nowadays by Germany for
its role in the Holocaust during World War Two.

Meanwhile, only 5 percent of Israelis are still boycotting German
products sold in Israel, according to the poll.

"The poll's findings showed that the feelings of the Jewish public in
Israel towards Germany are not only neutral, but are even sympathetic,"
Moshe Zimmerman, head of Hebrew University's Koebner Minerva Center for
German History, was quoted by Israeli news service Ynet as saying.

The poll, with a representative sample of 1,200 Jews and 500 Arabs,
also said 52 percent of Israeli Jews view German's political involvement
in the Middle East in a positive manner, while 27 percent of Arabs in
Israel take the similar position.

(source:  Xinhua News)




Sept. 5, 2009



CZECH REPUBLIC:

Revenge on Ethnic Germans----Czech Town Divided over How to Commemorate
1945 Massacre


More than six decades after the end of World War II, long-suppressed
information about a massacre of around 2,000 Sudeten Germans in June 1945
is dividing the Czech town of Postoloprty. Supporters of a memorial to the
incident are clashing with those who want to forget all about the murders.

Nobody could really say why the five boys had joined the fatigue party of
men on that fateful summer's day in 1945. Some thought they were hungry,
others that they were trying to flee the wrath of the Czechoslovakian
army.

Hundreds of Germans had been herded together on the parade ground in the
Czech town of Postoloprty (known in German as Postelberg) on June 6, 1945,
just a month after the end of World War II in Europe. They could clearly
see the fatigue party heading off. The five boys who had hidden among the
men were discovered and led back.

"Mr Marek wanted the boys to be flogged," recalls 81-year-old Peter
Klepsch, an eye-witness. "But Captain Cerny, the commander of the Czech
troops, said the boys should be shot."

The boys' names were Horst, Eduard, Hans, Walter, and Heinz. The oldest
was 15, the youngest 12. They were flogged and then shot dead -- in full
view of the others, who were held back at gunpoint. The Czechs didn't use
machine guns, but their rifles, so it took a long time to kill all five.
"One of the boys who hadn't been mortally wounded by the gunfire ran up to
the marksmen begging to be allowed to go to his mother," recalls
80-year-old Heinrich Giebitz. "They just carried on shooting."

A Series of Tragic Events

Fully 64 years later, Czech prosecutors have now pinned the blame for this
terrible atrocity on policeman Bohuslav Marek and Vojtech Cerny, an army
captain. The two men are long dead, so the boys' murders will remain
unpunished. And yet this was only one chapter in the brutal massacre of
some 2,000 Sudeten Germans in the space of a few days in 1945 in
Postoloprty and nearby Zatec, about 60 kilometers northwest of the
capital, Prague. "This was undoubtedly the worst in a series of tragic
events that took part in Bohemia in May and June 1945," wrote Czech
historian Tomas Stanek in the mid-1990s.

The truth was long in coming to light, and even cautious attempts to look
into the crimes by legal means proved fruitless. The matter was only
addressed in earnest in 2007 when prosecutors in the Bavarian town of Hof
asked their Czech colleagues for assistance in investigating the killing
of the five boys.

Survivors, bereaved family members, and conscientious Czechs now want to
erect a monument to the victims of this post-war massacre -- but are
meeting stiff resistance from many of Postoloprty's 5,000 inhabitants.
"Most of the locals are completely opposed to it," says historian Michal
Pehr, a member of a German-Czech committee set up by the municipal
authorities. The committee was supposed to put forward its suggestions for
a compromise this week. "The entire story was taboo for many people for
decades," Pehr says.

'Let Nobody Survive'

It all began in the weeks and months after the end of the war. It was the
time of the so-called "wild expulsions," when ethnic Germans were being
hunted down in various parts of Czechoslovakia. The fascists had been
beaten. Now the Czechs wanted to rid themselves of their despised
countrymen as quickly as possible. Though most of the Nazi perpetrators
had long-since fled, the rage and the lust for revenge knew no bounds.

Ethnic Germans had lived on the Czech side of the border for centuries, so
when Hitler annexed the area in 1938, they had lined the streets to cheer
the soldiers. The rest of Bohemia and Moravia was soon a brutal Nazi
protectorate, and in the years that followed more than 300,000 Czechs died
at the hands of their German overlords. Theresienstadt concentration camp
and the village of Lidice, which was burnt down by the SS, will forever
serve as symbols of Nazi barbarism.

At the Potsdam conference in August 1945, the Allies authorized the
expulsion of more than 3 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia,
albeit on the proviso that "any transfers that take place should be
effected in an orderly and humane manner." But by that time people had
already taken matters into their own hands in many areas.

As early as October 1943, Edvard Benes, who would become the president of
Czechoslovakia after the war, had threatened from exile in London that
"what the Germans have done in our lands since 1938 will be revenged on
them multifold and mercilessly." And speaking during a radio broadcast in
November 1944, Sergej Ingr, the commander-in-chief of Czech forces in
England, issued his fellow countrymen with the following order: "Beat
them, kill them, let nobody survive."

Forced to Run and Sing

Demands such as these were eagerly received in places like Postoloprty and
Zatec. When the Soviet army pulled out of the newly-liberated area,
soldiers of the 1st Czechoslovakian Corps moved in and immediately set
about "concentrating" the region's ethnic German population.

On Sunday June 3, 1945 the army ordered some 5,000 ethnic German men in
Zatec to assemble on the market square, from where they were marched the
15 kilometers to Postoloprty to a hail of threats, beatings, and gunfire.

"On Monday evening we were all forced to run around the square and sing
Nazi songs or whatever passed as such," Peter Klepsch recalls. "All those
who didn't run or sing right were flogged."

The next night he saw a group of men being led off for execution. It
wasn't to be the last. He also repeatedly heard volleys of gunfire during
the day.

Made to Dig Their Own Graves

Klepsch, who had opposed the Nazis and finished the war in prison for
trying to help three Frenchman flee, was eventually permitted to leave the
scene of the atrocity on the fifth day. An unknown number of men remained
behind. Most were methodically and systematically shot dead, many near the
barracks, others by the local school.

The largest mass grave, containing almost 500 bodies, was later discovered
in the Pheasant Garden, a former pheasant farm out of town.

"Two hundred and fifty men were taken one day, another 250 the next, and a
layer of earth was thrown in between," a policeman told a parliamentary
inquiry in 1947. "They weren't all executed in a single night, but rather
in stages." Often enough the condemned men were given a pick and shovel,
and made to dig their own graves.

The perpetrators didn't have many scruples. After all, they were sure they
had high-level military backing. Jan Cupka, the head of the defense
intelligence service, remembers General Spaniel, the commander of the 1st
Czechoslovakian Division, recommending they "clean" the region of its
ethnic Germans. "The general told us, 'The fewer of them that remain, the
fewer enemies we'll have.'"

'I Gave the Order'

But enough people survived to tell the world about the massacre. Survivors
exiled to Germany reported what they had witnessed, and even in
Postoloprty and Zatec the stories and rumors about the horrific goings-on
refused to go away.

In July 1947 the Czech parliament in Prague felt obliged to launch an
official inquiry into the matter. Countless soldiers and local residents
were interviewed, including Captain Vojtech Cerny, who immediately assumed
responsibility for the killing of the five boys on the parade ground. "I
gave the order for their execution," he declared.

The statements from witnesses were all documented together with the
findings of an Interior Ministry delegation, which investigated on site
and promptly declared that "members of the army were primarily to blame
for this bestiality and these executions." However it added that the
soldiers' actions had met with widespread approval from the local
population, who considered them "justified retribution for German
brutality."

The officials sent a report back to their minister recommending that the
bodies be exhumed and burnt so that "Germans should have no memorials to
which they could point as a source of suffering by their people."

In a top-secret operation in August 1947, several mass graves were dug up,
and 763 bodies were removed, most of which were then cremated. There is
little doubt that there were more victims whose bodies were never found.

Asked to Drop the Story

Meanwhile, the official documents about "the events in Postoloprty" were
classified as confidential and disappeared into the Interior Ministry
archives.

That suited the postwar residents of Postoloprty and Zatec, who now lived
in the houses of the killed or displaced former inhabitants. They weren't
the only ones who feared a reassessment of the past. Quite a few
non-Germans first willingly collaborated with the occupying forces, only
to then reinvent themselves as the great avengers of Czech maltreatment
when the time was right. Silence therefore became the order of the day.

As a result, it was only by chance that Czech reporter David Hertl
stumbled upon the crime in the mid-90s when he and a colleague were
putting together a series of portraits of local towns for his regional
newspaper. The plan was to write about past and present-day life in these
communities, but when they got to Postoloprty, they hit a brick wall.

"People either didn't know anything about their past or didn't want to
talk about it," Hertl says. "And when we asked them about the Germans,
they simply said they'd ended up in the Pheasant Garden."

Their suspicions aroused, the two reporters began investigating -- and met
mainly with opposition. "If at all, people would only speak to us
anonymously," Hertl says. "They were afraid, and asked us to drop the
story."

'You're Going to Hang for This'

When the regional newspaper printed a couple of articles on the matter,
with headlines such as "Where are the thousands of Germans from Zatec and
Postoloprty?" and "We know the names of the murderers," the threats
started pouring in. Anonymous letters with swastikas scrawled across them
arrived at the editorial offices, and every morning the answering machine
was full of insults like "You're going to hang for this, you swine."

Some things have changed in the time since then, Hertl says today. "More
people now know that this crime really took place. Nonetheless most still
believe the Germans deserved it."

People would prefer this dark chapter of their past to finally be
forgotten once and for all. After all, what if the former inhabitants
began returning and claiming their houses back? Hertl calls this fear "a
kind of paranoia." Yet it persists -- which is why the project to erect a
monument is such a touchy issue.

Split over Wording

"We already decided against building a monument four years ago," says
Ludvik Mlcuch, a communist member of the Postoloprty town council. "I see
no reason to change our minds. End of story."

Petr Riha runs a small electrical goods store in Postoloprty. He has
nothing against a monument. "The important thing is what's on the
inscription," he says. Riha would like a memorial to all the victims of
the Nazi era and its aftermath, not just to the Germans.

"That wouldn't be enough for me," says Walter Urban, who was born in
Postoloprty in 1942 and is one of the few ethnic Germans still living
there. His house is in the side street on the edge of town that leads
toward the Pheasant Garden. Urban doesn't know whether his father was
killed there, by the barracks or by the school. All he wants is a memorial
where he can lay some flowers. And that's what he's been doggedly
promoting in the small committee that must now present its proposed
compromise to the municipal authorities in Postoloprty.

Everyone agrees that the town needs a monument. But the committee is split
on the wording for the plaque.

Opponents of a memorial to the murdered Germans always point to the
context, namely that the postwar excesses would not have happened were it
not for the Nazi terror that preceded them.

"That may be true, but every crime has its origins and its causality,"
says Otokar Lbl, president of Friends of the Town of Saaz/Zatec, a
Frankfurt-based association that has long campaigned for an investigation
of the crime. "However it's also true that most of the Germans living in
Zatec at the time supported the Nazis." Even so, their murder was a crime
that should not only be acknowledged as such but for which people must
also accept responsibility.

'A Mental Balancing Act'

Lbl comes from a Jewish German-Czech family. His father's family was
killed in a concentration camp. Lbl was born in Zatec in 1950, but left
the country in 1970 following the Soviet Union's crushing of the Prague
Spring. He has long campaigned for better understanding between Germans
and Czechs, and he is the initiator of the "Saaz Way," a declaration of
reconciliation signed by people from both sides.

"No future without the past" is the motto of the Saaz Way. It's a
statement that Peter Klepsch wholeheartedly agrees with. Klepsch now lives
in Spalt near Nuremberg, where he chairs the Heimatkreis Saaz, an
association for Sudeten Germans from Zatec. The association's Web site
contains the formerly confidential reports and statements of the 1947
parliamentary inquiry.

Once or twice a year the Czech exile travels to his former home, an
activity he describes as "a mental balancing act." "People often ask me if
we've come to take their houses away from them," Klepsch says. "But I
could never expect anyone to leave their home."

His family's former home is now used by the criminal investigation bureau;
the same police department that has now finally solved the case of the
murder of Horst, Eduard, Hans, Walter, and Heinz on the parade ground in
Postoloprty on June 6, 1945.

(source:  Spiegel)

Sept. 9



GERMANY:

65 years after WWII, German parliament overturns all Nazi-era treason
convictions



Germany's parliament unanimously passed a blanket measure Tuesday
overturning Nazi-era verdicts convicting people of treason, nearly
65 years after the end of World War II.

Treason convictions carried the death penalty and were handed down in Nazi
Germany for any act deemed harmful to the nation or helpful to the enemy.
Under that umbrella, people were convicted of treason for political
resistance, aiding Jews, helping prisoners of war, selling products on the
black market and scores of other acts.

"By rehabilitating all so-called war traitors, we restore the honor and
dignity of a long forgotten group of victims of the Nazi justice system,"
Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said. "This is also an important signal
for the relatives."

Since the end of the war in 1945, challenges to treason convictions had to
be handled on an individual basis with a prosecutor weighing whether each
one should be overturned.

"The people who were convicted of treason are dead, that is true, but it
is important that they will be rehabilitated and remembered," said
Christine Lambrecht, a lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party who
supported the measure.

Some members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian
Democrats and the Bavarian-only sister Christian Social Union had
initially been against a blanket measure overturning the convictions,
arguing some of those sentenced may have harmed comrades in arms.

But after a study concluded it was impossible to determine whether the
acts for which people were sentenced "harmed a third party," they
supported the legislation.

Recent research by the military historians Wolfram Wette and Detlef Vogel
has shown that ordinary soldiers were often sentenced to death for
treason.

"Even if not all of those who were sentenced to death as war traitors were
political resistance fighters, they definitely all were victims of a
criminal justice system that killed in order to maintain the Nazi regime,"
Zypries said.

It is not clear exactly how many people were convicted of treason during
World War II, but tens of thousands Germans were sentenced to death for
desertion, troop demoralization or treason.

Even though most of the convictions are today considered wrongful, those
who survived them were often ostracized after the war.

"When we began to fight (for rehabilitation), the overwhelming majority of
Germans were against us," Ludwig Baumann, the head of the group lobbying
for the blanket rehabilitation, told reporters last month. "We were called
cowards and criminals."

Baumann, who was convicted of desertion, not treason, was exonerated by a
2002 measure that rehabilitated deserters and homosexuals criminalized by
the Nazis.

"I have been so humiliated," Baumann said. "For me this is a late
fulfillment."

(source:  Associated Press)





UKRAINE:

Last Witnesses of the Holocaust----A Priest's Search for Mass Graves in
Ukraine


A French priest and his team are searching in Ukraine for the last
witnesses of the Holocaust. They have already found hundreds of mass
graves of Jews murdered by the Nazis. But time is running out.

Patrick Desbois has developed a keen eye for Ukrainian pensioners. The
French priest -- a diminutive man dressed in black -- is standing on a
village street and looking at two women walking by. They are the right
age. "Go over there, quickly, and ask them," Desbois says to his colleague
Andrej Umansky, a law student from Cologne. Both men have just arrived in
Yaktorov by minibus.

"Did you live here during the war?" Umansky asks the women. That's always
the first question.

One of the women nods.

"Did you see how the Jews were shot?" asks Umansky. When someone has
answered the first question with "yes," this is always the second one.

The woman nods again.

She is another contemporary witness of the Holocaust in Ukraine who
Desbois and Umansky have found. This has taken them one step further in
their work: documenting the mass murder of Jews in this region.

For the past six years, the priest, the student and the others in their
small team have been traveling through Ukraine and looking for old people,
men and women over the age of 70.

An estimated 1.5 million Jews were murdered by German occupying forces in
the area that constitutes today's Ukraine. Some of these people were
deported to extermination camps in what is today Poland. However, most of
the victims were shot by the occupiers in mass executions throughout the
country.

Retracing the Steps of the Perpetrators

One of the largest massacres was in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev. On two
days in September 1941, more than 33,000 Jews were shot dead. This
massacre has been investigated; there are books and films about it, and
there is also a memorial there. Before the priest and his team arrived,
not much was known about the many other killings. There were hardly any
memorials; hundreds of thousands of dead had been forgotten.

The researchers retrace the steps of the perpetrators. Traveling from
village to village, they conduct interviews with eye witnesses, find
locals who will show them the sites of atrocities, search fields for spent
cartridges, shoot films, take pictures and note down everything. They are
usually on the road for a number of weeks in a row, traveling in teams of
10.

Over the past six years, they have questioned over 800 people in 330 towns
and villages, and discovered hundreds of mass graves. This autumn their
organization, Yahad-In Unum, will open a documentation center in Paris in
collaboration with the Sorbonne University. The German Foreign Ministry
has just made 500,000 ($717,000) available to allow them to continue their
search.

The old woman in Yaktorov is prepared to answer additional questions. Her
name is Anna; she is 82 years old. In the afternoon she is sitting at her
living room table -- a tiny woman wearing a headscarf and a knit jacket,
despite the heat.

Over the years, Father Desbois has developed a system that they now use to
conduct all interviews. They inquire about a large number of details to
refresh the witnesses' memories. What was the weather like on that day?

The weather was beautiful, says Anna, a sunny day.

It is important to ask the questions calmly. No interrogative tones, no
judgments, no emotions.

"I was walking with my cows on the meadow in front of the village," says
Anna. She was a young girl back then, 16, the daughter of simple farmers.
Her answers are brief, and she glances mutely at the priest after each
response.

It Was Much Worse for the Others

She had heard shots in the forest behind the meadow, and when it was quiet
again, she went to have a look. She saw three pits with corpses lying in
them. The pits were nearly filled with dead people, says Anna. She only
remembers male corpses, and she can't say whether they were naked or
clothed. A boy from the village was also there and they both stared into
the pits. She only glanced for a moment, and then she ran away.

Patrick Desbois became a Holocaust researcher because of his grandfather,
who was a prisoner of war held by the Germans in a camp in Galicia, in a
small town called Rava-Ruska. When he later told his grandson about his
internment in the camp, he said: It was much worse for the others. The old
man never said who the others were, and his grandson didn't dare ask. When
he later found a book with photos of Jews in a concentration camp, he
realized what his grandfather had been talking about.

Desbois lived in Africa and India before joining the Catholic priesthood
and becoming the secretary to the French Conference of Bishops for
Relations with Judaism. He started to study the Holocaust, and visited Yad
Vashem and Auschwitz. Nine years ago, he visited Ukraine for the first
time and saw the town where his grandfather had been held.

During a second visit to Rava-Ruska, he asked about the other places.
Thousands of Jews had been murdered in the town. But where? No one could
tell him. Desbois refused to believe it at first, and then he simply could
not accept it. He decided to look for the graves of the dead himself -- in
a country that he hardly knew, and whose language he didn't speak. It
would take two, perhaps three trips, he thought. He was furious,
determined and far too optimistic.

Many eyewitnesses were children, younger than Anna, when the Jews were
murdered in their towns and villages. The youngsters were curious and went
to where the people had been shot. Others were enlisted by the Nazis to do
manual labor. They had to fill in the pits or collect the clothing of the
victims. These children were often plagued by guilt later on. Now many are
recounting what they experienced for the first time.

Bones Lie Beneath the Meadows

Most of the mass graves are in western Ukraine, in the Galicia region.
Galicia is also home to the village of Yaktorov, near the city of Lviv,
where the Germans administered the region after they invaded the Soviet
Union in 1941. The occupiers confined the Jews to a labor camp near
Yaktorov. In the summer of 1943 the camp was closed and all prisoners were
shot.

On the spot where the camp was located, Father Desbois is standing next to
another witness and waiting for the old man to return to the present.

The priest rubs his eyes; he is exhausted. Desbois is 54 years old and
constantly traveling to conduct research, attend conferences, or present
the book that he has written about the project.

The old man yells disjointed words in German -- "Schweine, weg, weg" (or
"get out of here you pigs") -- and holds an imaginary rifle in the air.
Then he throws himself down in the grass, seemingly oblivious to the fact
that he is wearing a light-colored, carefully ironed shirt. Flowers are
blooming on the meadow, yellow and purple, and under the meadow lie the
bones of the dead.

'Where Did the Marksmen Stand?'

A memorial stone to the murdered Jews has stood for a number of years on
one edge of the former camp compound. That is inconclusive proof, as far
as Desbois is concerned. The stones often stand at the wrong location.

The old man jumps up and straightens his white hair. The witnesses often
slip back into the past when they return to the sites of the atrocities,
says Desbois.

The man's name is Bogdan and he was eight years old when he observed a
number of shootings from a distance. When they brought the Jews to the
pits, a German played on his harmonica, and afterwards the earth was
drenched in blood, he says.

"Where did the marksmen stand?" the priest asks him.

The old man points to the right-hand side, where the meadow gently slopes
upward. It is not the side with the memorial stone.

Andrej Umansky, the student from Cologne, runs to get the team's
ballistics expert -- a large, taciturn Ukrainian with a crew cut who
everyone calls Misha -- and walks with him up the small hill. Misha moves
a metal detector back and forth over the ground. After 30 seconds, they
make their first discovery, a cartridge case. "German" Misha yells. It is
possible to recognize the ammunition based on stamped numbers and letters.
They find a second and a third German-made cartridge. The killers have not
eliminated their traces. Then the metal detector emits another sound,
indicating a lighter metal. This leads them to a clump of earth, and
Umansky and Misha begin to scrape around it. In the soil they find a Star
of David made of silver. It is a pendant as large as a one-euro coin.

Umansky fetches plastic bags from the bus to pack up the cartridges and
pendant. Later on, he will take notes on the location of the evidence.

Andrej Umansky was born in Ukraine and came to Germany as a child with his
family. He was spending a voluntary year performing social services in
France when he heard that a priest was looking for interpreters for a trip
to Ukraine. Umansky volunteered. His father comes from a Jewish family in
Kiev that was evacuated to the non-occupied zone of the Soviet Union
before the massacres.

'We Could Stop Anywhere and Find a Mass Grave'

Umansky, 26, still has a somewhat boyish appearance. He always first flips
to the sports section in the newspaper. But when he talks about his work,
he sounds like a veteran historian. Following his first trip, he began to
research the occupation in German archives. Meanwhile his travels to
Ukraine have been eclipsed in number by his trips to Ludwigsburg, Germany
-- to the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist
Crimes, where he pours over the postwar investigation reports. At student
parties back in Cologne he tries to avoid the issue.

Evening has fallen and the men are sitting in the bus back to Lviv.
Umansky opens his backpack and pulls out his laptop where he has saved
databases, records, historical maps and satellite images of Galicia.

Father Desbois gazes out the window at the flat, expansive land in the
twilight, and the horse carts that the minibus passes. "It's beautiful
here, isn't it?" he says. "We could stop anywhere here and find a mass
grave."

Umansky looks up from his laptop and says: "Durchgangsstrasse IV." That's
what the occupying Germans called the road that they are driving on. It
extends from Krakow south into Ukraine. It was along this road that the
Germans established camps for the Jewish forced laborers. They drove along
this road to the villages to shoot the Jews. "We are taking the same trips
as the perpetrators," says Desbois.

The longer he does this work, the more it weighs on him. When he returns
to Paris after a trip, he often spends time alone in his apartment to
gather his thoughts.

A Posthumous Victory by the Perpetrators

By now they have located hundreds of mass graves. It is difficult to give
an exact figure because they have found numerous execution sites with
several death pits in most of the villages. In some of them they suspect
that there are hundreds of bodies, in others the remains of perhaps one
family. What should happen to these sites? This question preoccupies the
priest. He also reflects on the well-kept cemetery for Wehrmacht soldiers
near Rava-Ruska, with its large tombstones engraved with thousands of
German names. It seems to him like a posthumous victory by the
perpetrators.

The bones of the Jews may not be disturbed. The Jewish faith forbids it.
Only once have the researchers opened a mass grave under the supervision
of a rabbi. Some graves, however, have already been plundered by robbers
looking for dental gold. The Jewish mass graves must be covered with
concrete and marked by memorial plaques, says Desbois. It would be a new,
enormous task, "but first we have to make headway with this one."

So many villages have yet to be investigated in Ukraine. In addition, they
have started to look for eyewitnesses in Belarus, where over 700,000 Jews
were shot. They have just returned from their fourth visit there, and they
have been to Russia once. Things will have to move quickly now.

"We have at the most five or six years before the witnesses disappear."

(source:  Spiegel Online)




USA----MASSACHUSETTS:

Harvard Crimson says Holocaust denial ad published by accident

Student newspaper spokesman says ad "fell through the cracks"

Ad was rejected by newspaper over the summer

Historians say between 11 million and 17 million people were killed by the
Nazis



Harvard University, one of America's premiere academic institutions, is
coming under fire for running an advertisement in its campus newspaper
questioning the reality of the Holocaust.

The former Birkenau death camp in Germany. It is widely accepted that
about 5.7 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Recently named for the second straight year as the No. 1 school in U.S.
News & World Report rankings of American colleges, Harvard is known for
its rigorous scholarly standards and prestigious reputation.

On Tuesday, however, The Harvard Crimson, in what it said was an error,
ran the Holocaust-questioning advertisement, which had been rejected by
the paper over the summer.

In response to the commotion created by the ad, Crimson President Maxwell
L. Child released a statement Wednesday citing three weeks of summer
vacation between the submission of the advertisement and the publication
of the paper as the explanation for why the ad "fell through the cracks."

"We want to stress that we do not endorse the views put forth in any
advertisement that runs in The Crimson, and this case was no different,"
Child said in a letter to Crimson readers. "We will work hard to avoid
such lapses in communication in the future, and hope our readers will
accept that yesterday's error was a logistical failure and not a
philosophical one."

The ad, paid for by Holocaust denier Bradley R. Smith and his Committee
for Open Debate on the Holocaust, primarily raises questions about
then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's account of World War II and the existence of
Nazi gas chambers.

It is widely accepted that approximately 5.7 million of Europe's 7.3
million Jews perished during the war. In total, historians say, between 11
million and 17 million people were killed by the Nazi regime, including
religious and political opponents, ethnic Poles, Romani, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, homosexuals and people
with disabilities.

Smith said he is not surprised by the reaction because "it's taboo, and
has been taboo from the beginning. When you break a culture-wide taboo,
supported in theory and practice by the state, the university and the
press, you create a fuss."

Smith said that he made the deal with the Crimson in July, but was never
made aware of any plan by the newspaper to cancel his ad. While he has not
yet received a refund for his pulled notice, he said he expects the paper
to "do the right thing about the money."

Bernie Steinberg, president and director of Harvard Hillel, a Jewish
campus organization, said on Wednesday that the advertisement was
"obviously a shock to see."

But the group's students reacted appropriately, he said, and the incident
should be seen as an example of "extraordinary mature student leadership
in response to an unfortunate situation."

The Crimson was very responsive after many people in the Harvard
community, including numerous members of Harvard Hillel, contacted the
paper expressing their concerns, he said.

Harvard Hillel's student president, Rebecca Gillette, circulated a letter
saying she thought the situation was being appropriately addressed. "The
fact that organizations and individuals like that publicized in this
advertisement still exist today is frightening and disturbing, but
unfortunately it seems that Holocaust denial will persist for years to
come," she said.

Robert Trestan, civil rights counsel for the Anti-Defamation League of New
England, said Smith and his organization have placed ads in approximately
15 college papers around the country so far this year. He said he finds it
shocking that such an advertisement would fall through the cracks, as
Child said.

"Would an ad that questions whether the world was flat or that slavery
never happened in America have fallen through the cracks?" he asked.

He said his organization will continue to work with college newspaper
editors to educate schools that they don't have an obligation to publish
questionable advertising.

Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, billed on its Web
site as "a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of
journalism," said he hopes this will become a "teachable moment."

"It seems to be a big mistake and obviously nothing meant to offend
anyone," he said. Because student publications are meant to be teaching
tools, "the key is not to not make mistakes, the key is how they respond
to mistakes in a forthcoming and transparent manner," he said.

He recommended that the Crimson return any money associated with the
advertisement.

Child's statement in the Crimson said that was being done.

(source:  CNN)

September 3




GERMANY:

Television Treasure----Art Stolen By Nazis Found On German 'Antiques
Roadshow'


Many of the tens of thousands of valuable artworks stolen by the Nazis are
still missing today. Police are now investigating one painting that
recently surfaced on Germany's version of "The Antiques Roadshow," but the
show is refusing to identify the painting's owner.

It is the moment that anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow," or
one of it's many imitators around the world, has dreamed of. The moment
you present the old painting you found behind some shelves in the garage
and you are told by experts it is a long lost cultural treasure, worth
hundreds of thousands.

This is exactly what happened recently on German television show "Kunst
und Krempel" -- literally "art and junk" -- which estimates the value of
antique items found by Germans. Only the news wasn't all positive. After
watching the show in November, a viewer from Munich called the local
police to tell them that he thought he had seen some stolen art appear on
the show.

He had recognized a piece of art, valued at up to 100,000 ($143,000) that
had once been stolen by the Nazis. The last known owner was most likely
Adolf Hitler himself.

The art in question was a 17th century painting, named "Sermon on the
Mount" by the Flemish baroque painter Frans Francken the Younger. And this
week, Munich's State Office of Criminal Investigation announced that it
was officially looking into the case. It was calling on members of the
public who might know how the valuable piece ended up on TV to come
forward.

Bayrischer Rundfunk (BR), the state public broadcaster that airs the
program -- which can best be described as part treasure hunt, part reality
TV, part history lesson -- has refused to give any information about the
person who brought the painting to the show. They are claiming a
journalist's right to refuse to give evidence in order to protect a
source.

What is not being disputed however, is that Francken belonged to one of
the most celebrated artist families of the 17th century and that the
painting, which is less than a meter long and just 33 centimeters wide,
had been missing since Hitler's Munich headquarters, the Fhrerbau, were
plundered in 1945.

Missing Masterpieces

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they seized millions of pieces of
art. Hitler himself was an aspiring artist and intended to build the
world's finest art museum in Linz, Austria. He planned to keep the pieces
he had obtained safe in storage until after the war.

Tens of thousands of paintings are still thought to be missing today --
despite a 1998 agreement between 44 countries, including Germany, that
committed signatories to make efforts to identify and return cultural
assets stolen during the Nazi era.

In 2000, Germany also launched an online database listing thousands of
works plundered by the Nazis. Investigators now believe that "Sermon on
the Mount" was one of the paintings intended for Hitler's planned museum
in Linz but that officials had not had time to stow it away before the
American troops seized the building in 1945. It had been missing ever
since.

This is not the first time that stolen art has shown up on Antiques
Roadshow-style series around the world. In 2007, in the US, a painting
found in the garbage in New York was identified as a stolen masterpiece by
Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo worth $1 million after it featured on the
American version of the show. And in the Britain, a Sotheby's auction of a
painting, by American artist Winslow Homer, first spotted on "Antique
Roadshow" was called off in May this year. This was due to a dispute over
whether the artwork, valued at around 100,000 (114,000), was stolen or
not.

(source:  Spiegel)





USA----TEXAS:

In recognition of the 70th anniversary of World War II, The Dallas
Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance is collaborating with
universities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on a series of programs and
seminars called "Holocaust Legacies: Shoah as Turning Point." The programs
will explore topics ranging from music composed by Holocaust prisoners to
the theological implications of the Holocaust. Two photography exhibitions
are also planned as part of the series. All events are free and open to
the public. The kick-off event is September 9th. Southern Methodist
University's Human Rights Department is the series' host. Other SMU
organizations--Perkins School of Theology, Dedman's History Department,
Meadows Art History and Music Departments--will participate in the series
along with The University of Dallas and Texas Christian University.

The program's title combines the English and Hebrew scriptural words,
Holocaust and Shoah, both synonymously representing the horrific events,
between 1943 and 1945 that Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, coined as
"genocide" in 1943.

(source:  Religion blog----Dallas Morning News)






SPAIN:

AJC Protests Spanish Newspaper's Portrayal of Holocaust Denier as 'Expert'


AJC protested the decision of El Mundo, one of  Spain's leading
newspapers, to publish an interview with the notorious British Holocaust
denier David Irving  this weekend, as part of its coverage of the 70th
anniversary of the  outbreak of the Second World War.

"David Irving has made a career out of lying," said AJC Executive Director
David Harris. "For El Mundo to bill a Holocaust denier as an 'expert'  and
'innovative thinker' heaps shame upon that newspaper."

Following his unsuccessful libel action against American historian Deborah
Lipstadt in 2000 in a British court, Irving was described by Mr. Justice
Gray in his  landmark ruling as a "Holocaust denier." Justice Gray also
deemed Irving to be "anti-Semitic  and racist. . .he associates with
right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

"Justice Gray's ruling is the definitive guide to understanding who Irving
really is," said  Harris. "Disturbingly, El Mundo appears content to
allow Irving to lie about both the Holocaust and  himself in the name of
'free speech.'"

In February 2009, AJC condemned El Mundo for publishing an openly
anti-Semitic column by columnist Antonio Gala which identified "Jewish
greed" as the cause of the persecution of Jews throughout history.

According to the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Spain has the highest
level of anti-Semitism in Europe, with more Spanish respondents holding
negative than positive views about Jews.

(source: PR Newswire // American Jewish Committee)





UKRAINE:

Ukraine mayor accused of anti-Semitism


Jewish leaders in Ukraine and Russia on Thursday condemned the mayor of a
Ukrainian city who called a presidential hopeful "an impudent little
Jew," and Russia's chief rabbi said he would travel there in a show of
support for the local Jewish community.

The incident was a worrying sign of persistent anti-Semitism in a country
that lost hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, but also
evidence of a heated presidential election campaign in a politically
chaotic country and Ukraine's tense relations with neighboring Russia.

Prosecutors have charged Serhiy Ratushnyak, the mayor of the western city
of Uzhhorod, with hooliganism, abuse of office and xenophobia, said
Viktoriya Popovych, a spokeswoman for the regional prosecutor's office.
The investigation was opened after Ratushnyak assailed former parliament
speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk and attacked one of his campaign workers last
month.

Popovych would not provide further details.

Yatsenyuk accuses Ratushnyak of attacking and injuring a young woman who
campaigned for him in Uzhhorod on Aug. 6. The mayor threw himself at the
woman, grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground, causing
bruises and a concussion, according to Yatsenyuk's office.

Later, Ratushnyak called Yatsenyuk "an impudent little Jew" and said the
politician was confusing the January presidential vote in Ukraine with
small town elections in Israel, according to Yatsenyuk.

Yatsenyuk has been vague about his heritage, saying both of his parents
are Ukrainian.

Ratushnyak denied he attacked the campaign activist, calling the incident
a "myth." He did, however, confirm his remarks regarding Yatsenyuk but
said he believed they were not offensive.

"Is everybody obliged to love Jews and Israel? If I don't like Jews and
Israel, does that make me an anti-Semite?" he told The Associated Press in
a telephone interview.

Ratushnyak said that Yatsenyuk has no business running for president of
Ukraine.

"Do you think a Ukrainian would go there (Israel) ... set up tents there
and run for president, and do you think he would not be called an impudent
Ukrainian?" the mayor said.

"So they are allowed to do everything and I  on my own land  am being told
which word to use and which word not to use. This is what Zionism is."

Jewish leaders said anti-Semitism should have no place in Ukraine, which
lost some 1.4 million of its 2.4 million Jews during the Holocaust, many
of them in western Ukraine, and which strives to integrate with the
European Union.

Russia's chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, said he would visit Uzhhorod near the
Hungarian border on Monday to support the local Jewish community.

Ukraine's chief rabbi, Yakov Blaikh, also condemned Ratushnyak's actions.

"There is no place for him in modern day Ukraine," Blaikh told the AP. "He
is missing the point of multinational Ukraine."

The dispute illustrates the tense relations between Kiev and Moscow.
Russian leaders have fiercely opposed Ukraine's efforts to throw off
Russian influence and join NATO, and have not missed a chance to criticize
Ukraine for domestic problems and a lack of tolerance.

Blaikh said that Lazar was always welcome in Ukraine, but added that he
believed anti-Semitism was more widespread in Russia than in Ukraine.

"Plenty of anti-Semites in Russia can use the help of Berel Lazar before
he worries about anti-Semitism in Ukraine," he said.

(source:  Associated Press)




AUSTRIA:

Austrian Wehrmacht deserters campaign for justice
By Gabrielle Grenz (AFP)  21 hours ago

VIENNA  In Austria and Nazi Germany during World War II, any soldier who
deserted Hitler's army and was caught faced execution.

"At the front, a man can die, as a deserter he must die," Adolf Hitler
wrote in his epic "Mein Kampf", and the Nazis put around 15,000 deserters
to death, including between 1,200-1,400 Austrians.

One who escaped was Lance Corporal Richard Wadani, now 87, who deserted a
number of times before eventually fleeing to France where he joined the
British allies.

And he recalled how he was received on his return to Austria after the war
ended.

"When I turned up at the employment agency wearing my British army
uniform, I was turned away with the words: 'How could you dare serve in a
foreign army?'," Wadani said.

Some 70 years after the outbreak of World War II, Austria's deserters like
Wadani are still fighting against being branded as cowards and traitors.
An exhibition opened in Vienna this week to once again call attention to
their plight.

Anonymous letters that Wadani received, including a card written in 1988
in which his "neighbours" accused him of being a coward and bombarded him
with insults, form part of the display.

So, too, is a video in which Helga Peskoller Emperger recalls how she and
her mother were arrested by the Gestapo on November 11, 1944, in Villach
in the southern province of Carinthia for sheltering members of the
resistance.

Emperger was just 16 and imprisoned until April 1945. Her mother Maria was
executed on December 23, 1944.

The exhibition, being shown in the Nestroyhof, a former Jewish theatre
shut down by the Nazis after the annexation of Austria in 1938, is
entitled, "The law as it was back then: soldiers and civilians in the
courts of the Wehrmacht."

The WWII deserters "are at the very crux of Austria's post-war lie,
because if the country was, as is still officially claimed, the first
victim of Hitler's Germany, then the Wehrmacht would have been an
occupying army and desertion an act of civil obligation," said Thomas
Geldmacher, organiser of the exhibition and head of a group campaigning
for justice for the deserters.

"We're calling for the annulment of the verdicts of the Nazis' military
tribunals, the rapid settlement of deserters' claims for aid as victims
and a sign of respect for the deserters in the form of a memorial," he
said.

By contrast, many of those who supported the Nazi regime are no longer
stigmatised today.

Photographs showing parades of former Wehrmacht soldiers who still hold
regular reunions in Austria, proudly wearing their uniforms and their Nazi
medals, are also part of the exhibition, a version of which has already
toured several German cities.

Leopold Breitler, who was appointed judge of the Nazi military tribunal in
Vienna in 1944, sentenced 20 soldiers to death for mutilating each other
in order to avoid being sent into battle.

The youths were all executed by firing squad in Kagran, north of Vienna.
The site, now a park, contains no plaque or other sign in memory of their
fate.

But Breitler, who was suspected of participating in crimes against
humanity, merely faced a month's detention after the war. Then in 1946, he
opened a law practice where he worked until he retired in 1963.

Breitler "wasn't a member of the Nazi party, but he helped radicalise
military justice at the time," Geldmacher said.

While Germany is considering a bill to rehabilitate deserters from
Hitler's army and those who refused to serve in the final throes of the
Nazi regime, Wadani says Austria has still not fully come to terms with
its wartime past.

"There was a Recognition Act in 2005 rehabilitating the victims of the
Nazi regime, but not a word was said about deserters."

(source:  Agence France-Presse)





BRITAIN:

UK documents reveal hunt for Hitler's deputy


It was one of the greatest mysteries of the collapse of the Third Reich.
As Russian tanks moved into Berlin and Adolf Hitler committed suicide in
his bunker, his brutal and feared private secretary, Martin Bormann,
simply vanished.

Early reports indicated he had been killed by Russian shells, but rumors
persisted that he had fled abroad, and files released by the National
Archives on Tuesday show Britain's security services carefully tracking
possible sightings.

A file from October 1946 notes "reliable reports" that Bormann, the man
held responsible for organizing the logistics of the Holocaust, was
sighted in the Schaffhausen area of Switzerland. Bormann was never found
in Switzerland, but security services continued to be bombarded with
information about possible sightings.

Bormann had been tried and sentenced to death in absentia at the Nuremberg
war crimes tribunal in 1945-46, and security services were growing more
exasperated with people claiming to know Bormann's whereabouts.

"The late but peripatetic Herr Bormann is currently being seen in
Switzerland (the most persistent locale), Bolivia, Italy, Norway and
Brazil in the last country sitting in state on a high mountain beside his
pallid Fuerer," writes one frustrated official in 1947. "The press ... is
doubtless waiting to break the silly season scoop, that he has been seen
riding the Loch Ness monster. That ought to fetch some dollars, or
something."

Historian Andrew Roberts said authorities were desperate to find Bormann
as he was so closely involved in the workings of the Third Reich.

"Bormann was intimately involved in passing orders regarding the Holocaust
from Hitler to Heinrich Himmler," he said. He was the link man between
them and could have given invaluable information about the Fuerer's direct
responsibility in the greatest crime against humanity.

Roberts said Bormann, if captured, would also have proved invaluable in
tracking down other Nazi war criminals. "Nobody in Hitler's close inner
circle knew the Fuehrer as well as Bormann did. He was there every night
taking down Hitler's phrases and words and thoughts, and would have been
extremely helpful to anyone who captured him," he said.

The media helped fuel the mania for sighting Bormann. In 1951, London
correspondent Arthur Veysey for the Chicago Tribune contacted British
police to say he had met a German man claiming to be Bormann who had asked
him to send some documents to the U.S. through a personal courier. Police
were convinced it was a hoax, but asked Veysey to arrange to meet him
again. The meeting never took place, leading police to complain that while
"Veysey is not anti-British, he has the usual 'let the police get on with
it' attitude of the average American."

The mystery behind Bormann's fate settled in 1972 when construction
workers in Berlin dug up a skeleton. Experts concluded the remains were
Bormann's after a five-month examination that included making X-rays of
the bones, studying the teeth, and using the skull as a model to
reconstruct what its face would've looked like. The specialists also
determined that the man had probably died in May 1945, possibly by biting
onto a cyanide capsule. Some still remained unconvinced, but West German
authorities officially declared him dead in 1973.

(source:  Associated Press)

Sept. 1





EASTERN EUROPE:

Project to properly bury Holocaust victims is planned


An international initiative to give Holocaust victims interred in mass
graves a proper Jewish burial will be launched in Eastern Europe.

The Dignity Return project is being organized by Yuri Kanner, president of
the Russian Jewish Congress, in cooperation with Rabbi Marc Schneier,
chairman of the World Jewish Congress American Section.

The project's mission is to bury the remains of victims of mass execution
from  Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia in
a manner acceptable under Jewish law.

Kanner and Schneier expect the initiative to inspire thousands of
volunteers from around the world, according to a joint news release.

As we move further away from the Shoah, the number of those who can share
a personal experience from this atrocity grows smaller," Schneier said in
the statement.  "As a result, it is increasingly up to those who were born
after the Holocaust to preserve and protect their stories and these sites
so that Holocaust revisionists will be unable to change history, and our
call of Never again will continue to resonate from one generation to the
next.

The founders of the Dignity Return initiative will present details of the
project on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27.

(source:  JTA)







GAZA:

Hamas Objects to Possible Lessons on Holocaust in U.N.-Run Schools in Gaza


The prospect of United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip teaching
children about the Holocaust has sparked fierce resistance this week from
leaders of the Palestinian Hamas movement and forced international
officials to confront a situation fraught with political risk.

U.N. officials, who say they are only discussing changes to a school
program on human rights, have not commented directly on whether any new
curriculum will reference the Holocaust. But Hamas leaders, saying any
such reference would "contradict" their culture, are moving quickly to
head off the possibility.

"Talk about the holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is
against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and
religion," Jamila al-Shanti, a Hamas legislative official, said in a
statement distributed Tuesday after a meeting among elected leaders of the
radical Islamist group and the head of the Hamas-run Education Ministry in
Gaza.

Hamas Education Minister Muhammad Askol used similar language in
criticizing the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, saying it was not
respecting Hamas's "sovereignty" over Gaza. He said he planned to ask for
a meeting with agency officials to "assure the necessary coordination."

His remarks came a day after Hamas spiritual leader Yunis al-Astal said
teaching children about the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II
would be "marketing a lie." He characterized the possible introduction of
the subject into Gaza schools as a "war crime."

UNRWA provides food, education and other services for about half of Gaza's
population, including about 200,000 children. It has clashed previously
with Hamas on a variety of issues, including whether to support
mixed-gender summer camps.

In the latest dispute, the agency risks being caught between its usual
practice of deferring to local officials on school curriculums and
overlooking central facts about world history.

There is currently no mention of the Holocaust in schools run by UNRWA in
Gaza, according to Karen AbuZayd, the agency's commissioner general.

UNRWA follows the curriculum set by local officials but has been
supplementing it with lessons on human rights it developed on its own,
according to an agency official. AbuZayd said a program on the details of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being developed for Gaza
middle schools. Though still in draft form, the lesson "will go into some
history," she said.

The Universal Declaration was issued by the United Nations in December
1948, in the aftermath of World War II and in recognition of Nazi
atrocities.

"It is very much a draft," AbuZayd said, adding that before its
introduction into classrooms, it would be circulated among community
groups for reaction.

The content of school curriculums is a volatile part of the Arab-Israeli
conflict and has taken on a heightened pitch in recent months. Israeli
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu considers Israel's historical claims
central to reaching a peace agreement and has said he would support
creation of a Palestinian state only if Palestinian leaders acknowledged
Israel as a legitimate Jewish homeland.

Israeli Arabs have complained about recent moves by the country's
Education Ministry to remove the word "naqba" -- or catastrophe -- from
lessons taught in Arab schools about the events surrounding Israel's
creation, while Jews feel that the texts prepared by the more moderate
Palestinian Authority still diminish the Jewish experience.

Palestinian Authority textbooks, used in the occupied West Bank, refer to
Nazi massacres and anti-Semitism as part of high school lessons about
World War II but do not go into detail about the scope of the genocide,
according to Israelis and Palestinians familiar with the texts.

On both sides, "there is really no mention of the other story -- of how
the other side sees it," said Gershon Baskin, co-chief executive of the
Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, a think tank that
has examined textbooks. Baskin is on an advisory panel for a U.S.-funded
study, announced on Tuesday, in which Israelis and Palestinians will
review each other's textbooks, while U.S. experts perform a computer
analysis of the language used in them.

Although both Palestinian and Israeli schools could do a better job,
Baskin said, Hamas's outright denial of the Holocaust, as well as
opposition to its mention in Gaza schools, is "a step beyond."

(source:  Washington Post)






USA:

Holocaust suspect could be deported


A retired Troy autoworker who authorities say persecuted Jews in wartime
Ukraine could end up in legal limbo because it's unclear to which country
he belongs, his attorney said Monday.

The U.S. Justice Department has begun deportation proceedings against Jon
Kalymon, 88, who was stripped of his citizenship by a federal judge in
Detroit in 2007. But the government has not said to which of three
possible countries -- Ukraine, Poland or Germany -- it wants to send
Kalymon.

William Kenety, a trial attorney with the Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations in Washington, D.C., said in an e-mail Monday no
decision has been made.

A scheduling hearing on the deportation proceedings is set for Oct. 13.

"We might have a situation where Mr. Kalymon is ordered removed, yet he is
in legal limbo because no one has agreed to take him," said Kalymon's
attorney, Elias Xenos.

After a trial in federal court, U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani
determined that while Kalymon was a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary
Police stationed in L'viv between 1942 and 1944, he fired shots during
operations to round up and remove Jews. He also misrepresented his wartime
activities when he entered the United States in 1949 and obtained U.S.
citizenship in 1955, Battani found.

Kalymon, who denies the wartime allegations, cried on his front porch
Monday after a reporter from the Associated Press knocked on his door.

"I love this country because it's my country. I'm going to die here," he
said.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an
international Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, said
Kalymon's comments are typical "for someone whose cover is finally blown."

Thousands of Jews were killed amid unspeakable cruelty during the
operations in which Kalymon participated, Cooper said.

(source:  The Detroit News)





POLAND:

Poland angry at Soviet war role



Polish President Lech Kaczynski has voiced his anger at the Soviet role in
World War II at commemorations marking the beginning of the global
conflict.

In front of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other world leaders,
Mr Kaczynski said the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact had divided
Europe.

At an earlier event in the port city of Gdansk, he had described Russia's
actions as a "stab in the back".

Mr Putin said all pacts with the Nazis were "morally unacceptable".

The day of ceremonies began at the exact time and location where, on 1
September 1939, a German battleship fired at a Polish fort on Westerplatte
peninsula - the first shots of World War II.

Speaking at the dawn ceremony, Mr Kaczynski, referring to the occupation
of eastern Poland by Soviet forces a fortnight later, said: "On 17
September... Poland received a stab in the back... This blow came from
Bolshevik Russia."

Later, Mr Kaczynski used the occasion of the wreath-laying ceremony to
again criticise Moscow for its war, which focused on what he called the
tragic occupation Poland endured under the Nazis following its military
defeat.

Relations between Poland and Russia are currently thorny, partly because
of differing historical interpretations of events at the start of the war.

Mr Kaczynski said the Soviet-German pact, signed a week before the first
shots were fired, had divided Europe into areas of influence and had
preceded a conflict which caused the deaths of 50 million people.

He also recalled the Katyn massacre of 1940, in which 20,000 Polish
officers were killed by Soviet secret services, saying it was an act of
chauvinism and in revenge for Polish independence.

For 50 years Moscow blamed the Nazis and only admitted responsibility in
1990, but Russian courts have ruled it cannot be considered a war crime.

Improving relations?

Mr Putin, in his speech after Mr Kaczynski, said all pacts between
European states and Nazi Germany were "morally unacceptable," including
the 1939 Nazi-Soviet accord.

"All attempts to appease the Nazis between 1934 and 1939 through various
agreements and pacts were morally unacceptable and politically senseless,
harmful and dangerous," Mr Putin said.

"We must admit these mistakes. Our country has done this."

He also said that improved relations between Germany and Russia since the
war should be an example for improving Russian-Polish relations.

"We sincerely want Russian-Polish relations to get rid of the accumulated
legacy of the past... and to develop in the spirit of good-neighbourliness
and co-operation - that is to say, to be worthy of two great European
peoples," Mr Putin said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke of the "immeasurable suffering"
which began with Germany's invasion of Poland.

"No country suffered from German occupation as much as Poland.

"Here at the Westerplatte, as German chancellor, I commemorate all the
Poles who suffered unspeakably from the crimes of the German occupying
forces."



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


In quotes: Poland WWII anniversary


The leaders of European nations gathered in Poland to mark the 70th
anniversary of the outbreak of war


As Europe marks the outbreak of World War II, world leaders have spoken
about the events of the past and issues faced in the future. Below are
some of their comments.


GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL
I remember the 6 million Jews and all others who suffered, who died a
terrible death in German concentration and extermination camps.

I remember the many millions of people who had to lose their lives in
their fight and in the resistance against Germany.

I remember all those, those innocents who suffered, who died from hunger,
cold and disease, from the violence of war and its consequences; I
remember the 60 million people who lost their lives through this war that
Germany started.

There are no words to adequately describe the suffering of this war and
the Holocaust.

I bow to the victims.


RUSSIAN PRIME MINISTER VLADIMIR PUTIN
The victory in the fight against Nazism was gained at an immense price,
with truly irretrievable losses.

For the liberation of Gdansk alone, more than 53,000 Red Army soldiers and
officers gave their lives.

There are 600,000 of my compatriots lying in the Polish soil, who brought
the victory over Nazism nearer. Six-hundred thousand!

Altogether, of [those] killed in World War II, more than half - more than
half - were citizens of the USSR.


POLISH PRIME MINISTER DONALD TUSK
We meet here to remember who started the war, who the culprit was, who the
executioner in the war was and who was the victim of this aggression.

We meet here to remember this, because we Poles know that without this
memory - honest memory about the truth - about the sources of World War
II, Poland, Europe and the world will not be safe.


US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
The first day of September 1939 was a black day in history, and the events
it ignited brought years of tyranny and despair to Poland and other
European countries.

On behalf of the American people, I wish to join the voices commemorating
this anniversary today, and express admiration and gratitude to those who
stood on the side of freedom and hope, giving an example of spiritual
superiority over tyranny.

Today, we live in a different era in which the United States and Poland
are close allies, partners in meeting global challenges to our security
and prosperity, in supporting fundamental human rights around the world.


BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY DAVID MILIBAND
We have a duty to remember the sacrifices, including of Poles fighting in
and alongside British forces, and to learn the right lessons - about
confronting racism and xenophobia, about standing up against tyranny, and
about building international co-operation.

In that context, Poland's entry into the EU in 2004, alongside other
countries from the former eastern bloc of Europe, represents a huge step
towards the final closing of of a terrible set of chapters of European
history.

(source:  BBC)

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


Gergiev to Lead Krakow Concert in Remembrance of Nazi Attack



Adam Neuman-Nowicki was only 13 years old when Hitler's Nazis invaded
Poland 70 years ago and turned his life into a nightmare. Now he is
returning to his home country from the U.S. to hear his grandson play for
the first time in one of the world's most original orchestras.

The World Orchestra for Peace, established in 1995 by the Hungarian
conductor Georg Solti, assembles musicians from more than 70 orchestras
around the globe who waive their fees to play at events designed to bring
harmony to peoples traditionally hostile to each other. Famous musicians
must put questions of prestige aside, as roles are rotated and so the lead
flautist on one piece will be preceded by a colleague on another.

This evening's concert, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World
War II, will open with the world premiere of Prelude for Peace by
Krzysztof Penderecki, Polands best- known living composer, who composed
the piece specially for the event. The orchestra will go on to play
Mahler's fifth symphony.

The invitation-only performance, conducted by Valery Gergiev, is set to
begin at 7 p.m. local time at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in
Krakow. It will be broadcast to the public on a city square and on Polish
television. It also will be streamed live on CNNs Web site.

"This concerts special for me -- I feel like Im saying somehow you didnt
succeed in doing what you wanted to because my grandfather survived the
Holocaust, and I'm here to prove it," says Doron Alperin, a viola player
in the orchestra and Neuman-Nowickis grandson, addressing an imaginary
Nazi.

Global Ensemble

Alperin, 30, and the orchestras other 92 players are drawn from places as
disparate as Manchester in the U.K., Novosibirsk in Russia and Pittsburgh
in the U.S. Alperin himself plays each year with Daniel Barenboims
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which uniquely brings together Israeli and
Arab musicians and, according to Alperin, aims to perform in all the
countries from which the players are drawn.

"If the World Orchestra for Peace is really about promoting peace, it
would play in places where there is conflict now, like in North and South
Korea," he says.

Alperin echoes Charles Kaye, the orchestras director, who says the players
mixed background as well as the beauty of the music they perform should
serve as an example to the leaders of countries mired in conflict.

"We're making a powerful international statement," he says. "We think of
ourselves as ambassadors for peace: We talk to each other, listen to each
other, understand and feel for one another."

Conductors Pal

Gergiev, who has been the orchestras conductor since Soltis death in 1997,
is seen by some as an ambiguous peace representative. A close acquaintance
of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he conducted a concert in South
Ossetia in August 2008 shortly after Russia and Georgia fought a five-day
war over the breakaway district. Gergiev is from Ossetia.

Putin is in the Polish city of Gdansk today to take part in the political
commemorations of the outbreak of war. Poland and other central European
countries view Russias intentions with distrust after spending more than
four decades under Soviet rule. Poland and its powerful eastern neighbor
have clashed in recent years over energy policy and potential NATO
membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

"I think if Mr. Putin didnt want to contribute to peace, he wouldn't have
come," Gergiev told reporters yesterday.

Orchestra Motto

The World Orchestra for Peace cites on its Web site the United Nations
Charter, which was written after World War II ended in 1945: Since wars
begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that defenses of
peace must be constructed.

Neuman-Nowicki, even after his experience at the hands of the Nazis and
also some of his compatriots, is certain of one means to avoid the events
he lived through being repeated.

Generalizations always lead to prejudice and hatred, he says. Ive always
been against radicalism -- and maybe thats a way in which music can help
to contribute to bringing peace.

(source:  Bloomberg News)





GERMANY:

Film portrays athletics gender row in Nazi Germany


A new film soon to hit screens in Germany tells the true story of a
female Jewish high-jumper whom the Nazis excluded from the 1936 Berlin
Olympics, picking instead a man in drag -- who came fourth.

By a quirk of the calendar, the film -- "Berlin 36" -- premiered just days
after a row over the gender of Caster Semenya, a South African 800m
runner, marred the World Athletics Championships held in the very same
stadium.

"Berlin 36" tells the story of Gretel Bergmann, a record-breaking German
high-jumper who fled Nazi Germany but was forced to return to "prove"
Hitler was allowing Jewish athletes to compete in the 1936 Games.

Exiled in Britain, Bergmann became national high-jump champion there in
1934 but soon found herself a pawn in Hitler's bid for international
respectability.

Concerned the United States might boycott the Olympics, the Nazis
pressured Bergmann to compete, making it clear her family left behind in
Germany would suffer the consequences if she refused.

She returned from Britain and duly broke the German high-jump record in
the run-up to the 1936 Games.

But when the Nazis were sure the ship bearing the US athletes had already
left dock, Bergmann was spectacularly dropped from the team, with
so-called "Aryans" Elfriede Kaun and Dora Ratjen chosen instead.

Bergmann received a letter from Germany's Athletics Association saying:
"Based on your recent performances, you will yourself not have thought you
were going to be selected."

Ending the letter "Heil Hitler," the association offered her a place in
the stands at the Olympic Stadium -- scant reward for years of training.

Elfriede Kaun and Dora Ratjen came third and fourth respectively in the
high jump. Only one problem: "Dora" Ratjen later turned out to be
"Heinrich", who had grown his hair long and shaved his legs for the
occasion.

In 1938, his performances were expunged from the records and he was
eventually packed off to the front as a soldier.

It is not clear whether the Nazis knew Ratjen was in fact male. Bergmann,
now 95 and living in the United States, said she herself had had no idea.

"I never suspected anything," she told Der Spiegel news weekly.

"We all wondered why she never appeared naked in the shower. To be so shy
at the age of 17 seemed grotesque. But we just thought: well, she's weird,
she's strange."

"There was a door to a private bathroom but we were not allowed in there.
Only Dora could go in. But for years, I never had any suspicions," she
said.

But she is in no doubt that Hitler stole from her an Olympic gold medal.

"I would have won gold, nothing else," she said. "I wanted to show to the
Germans and to the world that Jews were not these terrible people, not
fat, ugly and disgusting as we were portrayed."

"I wanted to show that a Jewish girl could beat the Germans. In front of
100,000 people."

While she was livid at her exclusion, she was not surprised.

"I knew from the beginning, from 1934, that they would find a way to
exclude me, to shut me out and I was scared day and night," she told the
Tagesspiegel daily.

"Would they break my legs? Murder me?" she added.

The only consolation to her exclusion was that she was released from the
agony of deciding whether to perform the Nazi straight-arm salute on the
podium, she said.

Eventually, she emigrated to New York in 1937 with the equivalent of four
dollars in her pocket.

As poverty loomed, she postponed her athletics career and took a job doing
odd jobs. That year, she met and married Bruno Lambert and became Margaret
Bergmann-Lambert.

She was not long out of the athletics vest, though, and she scooped the
United States shot put and high-jump championships in 1937, winning the
latter event again the following year.

She swore never to return to Germany again, nor to speak the language.
Only more than 60 years later did she step on German soil, to attend the
inauguration of a stadium named after her in her southern hometown of
Laupheim.

She said she was a fan of the film, in which her story is played by German
actress Karoline Herfurth, praising both her acting and sporting skills.

"I enjoyed the film. I hope it shows that such a thing should never, ever
happen again."

And she is not slow to note the ultimate irony of the story. The gold was
eventually won by a Hungarian athlete, Ibolya Csak.

"A Jew," she pointed out.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)





ENGLAND:

Children who escaped Nazis retrace 1939 journey to Britain



A steam train carrying 22 of the 669 Jewish children who escaped the
Holocaust thanks to a British man dubbed the "English Schindler" left
Prague on Tuesday on a four-day journey to mark the 70th anniversary of
the evacuations.

The train will trace its 1939 route via Germany and the Netherlands to
London where it will be met by Nicholas Winton, now aged 100, the man who
organised the children's safe passage out of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

"I feel a little sentimental and a little sad, because that was the last
time I saw my mum," said Hana Franklova, one of the former evacuees who is
making the trip, as she set off.

Between March and September 1939, Winton saved the nearly 700 children
from almost certain death by arranging for them to be hosted by British
families, then negotiating their departure with the Nazis -- a mission
many had thought impossible.

Winton has been called the "English Schindler," in reference to Oskar
Schindler, who saved hundreds of Polish Jews and whose actions were
immortalised in Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List."

Winton's story only came to light by chance 50 years later when his wife
found papers relating to it in a battered briefcase in his attic.

"We had no idea (about Winton)," added Franklova, who was eight-years-old
when she left Prague. She spent the war in Stoke-on-Trent in central
England.

The commemorative train journey is one of a string of Czech tributes to
the modest Englishman including a statue, unveiled on Tuesday, at Prague's
main railway station from where the children set off.

The train is carrying 174 people including 22 survivors of the original
journeys and 64 family members. A further five so-called Winton children
will join the train at Harwich, a port town on England's east coast.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)

Aug. 24




LITHUANIA:

Lithuanian to consider restitution to Holocaust survivors


In Vilnius, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite on Monday promised
descendants of the country's Jewish community that they would receive
restitution for property seized during World War II.

Addressing an international congress in Vilnius of 'Litvaks,' as
Lithuania's Jews are known, Grybauskaite said the Baltic state had spent
the 20 years since it regained its independence from the Soviet Union
trying to correct 'historical errors' that saw Jews dispossessed of their
property and other assets when their community was almost entirely
liquidated during World War II.

'This autumn the government and parliament will consider a Restoration of
Property Act. I am very glad that a historical injustice which was not
[perpetrated] in today's Lithuania will be corrected, and you'll get
justice,' she told delegates at the Third World Litvak Congress.

Under a draft law prepared by the Lithuanian government, restitution
payments totalling 113 million litas (47 million dollars) would be paid in
instalments between 2112-2023. In addition, the remaining Jewish community
would be provided with a museum and library.

Michael Schneider, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, said
restitution would be welcome and was badly needed.

'The reason that we are pressing for restitution is certainly not to
revenge what happened in the past ... The money needs to be used in order
to rebuild the Lithuanian Jewish society and also to help those people who
survived the Holocaust,' he told a press conference.

Yuli Edelstein, Israel's minister of information and diaspora, told the
conference restitution issues needed to be brought to a swift conclusion.

'The population of needy Holocaust survivors is old and rapidly passing
away. Therefore, whatever can be done to help them and future Jewish
generations must be done now,' he said.

From the 13th century onwards, Litvaks played a central role in the life
of Vilnius, eventually accounting for nearly half of the population and
earning Vilnius a reputation as the 'Jerusalem of Lithuania' and a centre
of Jewish scholarship, with more than a hundred synagogues.

During some of the most brutal scenes of the Holocaust following the Nazi
invasion of 1941, German troops and local collaborators virtually wiped
out the Jewish population.

At Paneriai, just outside Vilnius, around 70,000 Jews were killed with the
liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto. Other mass murders were committed at
200 different sites around Lithuania. Only 4,000 Jews survived the
holocaust from a pre-war population of around 150,000.

Lithuania's attempts to reconcile the Jewish past remain problematic
partly because the question of restitution remains unresolved.

Jewish organizations have objected to plans to build apartment blocks on
top of part of the former Snipiskes Jewish cemetery in Vilnius and have
warned of a revival of anti-Semitism in all three Baltic states.

(source:  Middle East News)




CZECH REPUBLIC:

Czechs commemorate Romani Holocaust victims


Some 50 people attended a meeting and mass in memory of the victims of
Romani Holocaust on the site of former wartime internment camp for Czech
Romanies in Hodonin u Kunstatu Sunday.

Almost 1400 Romanies went through the Hodonin internment camp during World
War Two (in operation from August 1942 to December 1943). Over 200 died
there and more than 800 were sent to the extermination camp in Oswiecim
(Auschwitz) where most of them perished, said historians from the Museum
of Romani Culture that annually organises the commemorative event.

This year it was for the first time held in the complex of the former
internment camp that now serves as a recreational facility.

The Czech state is negotiating with the private owner of the complex about
its purchase.

The Museum of Roma Culture would like to establish the Romany Holocaust
educational centre and a memorial on the premises.

However, museum director Jana Horvathova said the Culture Ministry
abandoned the talks over the lack of finances, so the museum was looking
for a new form of the planned centre's operation.

The meeting is annually staged in Hodonin u Kunstatu to commemorate the
second transport from the camp to Auschwitz on August 21, 1943.

Another Nazi interment wartime camp for Romanies in the Czech Lands was
built in Lety, south Bohemia.

At present a pig farm is on the site, which has been repeatedly criticised
by Romanies and human rights activists. The European Parliament has also
called on the Czech Republic to remove the pig farm.

The Czech state plans to purchase the surrounding plots from the
municipalities and establish a place of commemoration in Lety.

The Culture Ministry will submit an updated plan of adjustments of the
commemorative place to the government next week, ministry spokeswoman
Viktorie Plivova told CTK Sunday.

The government in May decided to increase the budget of the Culture
Ministry for 2009 by some 21.5 million crowns to cover the costs of the
building of access roads, a parking lot and pubic conveniences for
visitors and adjustments of the whole Lety memorial. The reconstruction
works should be completed by 2010.

The Lety memorial would be administered by the Memorial of Lidice, central
Bohemia, a village razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1942.

Nevertheless, the government decision does nor solve the problem of a
private pig farm on the site of the Lety camp.

Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities Kocab said previously the removal of
the pig farm from Lety would be one of his priorities. But later he said
it would not be suitable if the state bought out the pig farm as in the
times of the economic crisis the pig farm secures jobs.

Over 1300 Romanies were interned in Lety during the German Nazi
occupation, 327 of whom perished in the camp and over 500 were sent to
Auschwitz.

(source:  Czech News Agency)






GLOBAL---new book


Hunting Evil----A fascinating history traces the mundane lives of Nazi war
criminals


If there's anything people love more than a mystery, it's a conspiracy.
Blend them together and spice with top Nazi war criminals, and you have a
shelf of sensational paperbacks, many of them selling in the hundreds of
thousands. Guy Walters's book about the hunt to bring the war criminals to
justice is different. While not sparing us details of their atrocities, it
is not sensationalist. It is very thoroughly researched. And rarer still
of all, it is true.

More than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, there are still
Nazi mass murderers and concentration camp guards among us who have
escaped real justice. Over a bottle of red wine, Walters interviewed Erich
Priebke, a sprightly nonagenarian living in a comfortable Rome flat, who
in 1944 helped gather together 335 Italians for a reprisal killing, after
33 German policemen had been killed by a bomb the day before. Priebke
collected the men and checked them into a cave where SS men shot them in
the back of the head. As the bodies mounted, victims were forced to climb
the bleeding pile to be added to it. Erna Wallisch, formerly a guard at
the death camps of Ravensbrck and Majdanek, was the seventh most wanted
Nazi war criminal on the Wiesenthal Centre's list: she had beaten women
and children towards the gas chambers. She lived peacefully in Vienna
where she was protected by a statute of limitations. Protected by her
neighbours too, since Austria, which in 1986 elected as its president a
former Nazi officer complicit in genocide, has taken a more liberal view
of these matters. Walters could only take her picture before she slammed
her door.

But this is predominantly a book about the ones who got away and the
people who helped them. It reveals how strong was the feeling of revenge,
or at least of thwarted justice, that Hitler's closest henchman Martin
Bormann and the Auschwitz doctor of death, Josef Mengele, were widely
thought to be living in South America long after their actual deaths.
Bormann was reported dead by the Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, who
escaped with him from Hitler's bunker and saw Bormann dead, probably shot
in the back. Yet nobody believed it. The Americans claimed he was in the
hands of the Russians; the Russians accused Britain and the US of holding
him. The corpse of the Gestapo chief Heinrich Mller, a bullet in his back,
was found with his identity papers near the Reich Chancellery and buried
in a mass grave in Berlin, yet my Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich
(2002) still claims that "the mystery of his disappearance remains." It
took Bormann's skeleton and teeth, and Mengele's reconstituted skull, to
bury the conviction that they were still alive.

Mystery and conspiracy. One of the lasting services done by Walters is to
thoroughly scotch the belief that any vast and powerful organisation such
as Odessa existed outside the imagination of novelists and the tall
stories of Simon Wiesenthal. A virtually one-man escape operation run by
the charismatic Otto Skorzeny enjoyed a brief existence, but nobody seems
to have heard of it, and it had fizzled out by the early Fifties. The
closest equivalent was the highly efficient and effective Spanish network
run from Madrid by a spinster in her late forties, who from 1944 onwards
helped thousands of war criminals to escape.

Thousands more war criminals escaped because their records no longer
existed or they simply couldn't be found in the chaos of Germany Year
Zero. From today's perspective it might sound almost like connivance, but
in 1944 the Allies were simply shattered; there was no great lust for
revenge except, understandably, among the Jews. The overriding priority
was to curb anarchy; besides, Churchill was not alone in fearing that the
pursuit of evil might draw attention to evils committed by the pursuers
themselves. Britains War Crimes Investigation Unit was hopelessly
undermanned and underfunded. Thousands of war crimes suspects were simply
let go, on the grounds that their jailers were now needed to confront
Stalin.

Many more were protected by the Allies because their knowledge might be
usefully turned against Russia. Horst Kopkow, who was responsible for the
deaths of some 300 Allied spies, brutally torturing agents such as
Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan before sending them to death camps,
was kept in Germany for interrogation. When pressure to bring him to trial
intensified, MI6 announced his death from pneumonia, and kept him employed
covertly as an agent until the late Fifties. The fiendishly brutal Gestapo
officer in Lyon, Klaus Barbie, was protected by the Americans for years,
despite high-level requests from Paris. The most murderous criminal in
these pages - more even than Adolf Eichmann because he not only created
the framework for Hitler's genocide operations but was active in the death
camps and the extermination commandos - was the monstrous Dr Friedrich
Buchardt. Instead of hanging from a noose, he was employed by the British
and later by the Americans, and died in his bed in 1982.

Walters reels in his big fish - Stangl, Eichmann, Mengele and Barbie -
turn by turn. Franz Stangl, a career policeman who was responsible for
800,000 dead at Treblinka, walked out of his open prison after the war
and took the same route as countless others: south to Rome, where he was
welcomed at the Santa Maria dellAnima by Bishop Hudal and given a Red
Cross passport and an exit visa.

Eichmann eluded the authorities for four years and then took a similar
escape route via Genoa, also helped with documents from a Roman Catholic
priest. He arrived in Argentina, where the dictator Juan Pern actively
sympathised with the Nazi cause.

Mengele, whose name had already become synonymous with the evils of
Auschwitz, also went via Austria and Genoa, courtesy of the same churchmen
whose desire to help their fellow Roman Catholics outweighed their
knowledge of the world. Walters scrupulously documents their humdrum lives
and their menial jobs - all but Barbie whose skills at interrogation won
him money and power under the Bolivian dictator Barrientos, until he too
met belated justice, dying in a French prison in 1991.

Walters's most personal hunt is not about crimes but about lies.
Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter, was instrumental in helping to get the
Holocaust properly recorded. He also brought a few Nazis to justice,
though no famous ones. But as Walters devastatingly exposes, Wiesenthal's
life was built on lies and fabrications. Briefly he was a stand-up
comedian when he was young, he could not help but put himself in the
middle of every successful Nazi hunt, taking credit when it was mostly
undeserved. That could not be said of Hunting Evil. It is gripping and
well documented, and deserves a lasting place among histories of the war.

Hunting Evil: the Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Hunt to Bring
Them to Justice

by Guy Walters 528pp, Bantam, 18.99

(source:  The Telegraph)


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

As prey die, what next for Nazi hunters?


Earlier this summer, 650 kilometres from downtown Washington, a
Gulfstream IV jet carrying one of the country's most infamous accused war
criminals prepared to take flight as U.S. Justice Department prosecutors
watched a live television feed.

The target of their rapt attention: One-time Nazi concentration-camp guard
John Demjanjuk, 89, who had outlasted a generation of American lawyers
vying to deport him from the U.S. for allegedly lying about his role in
the Holocaust.

One department attorney in the elite Office of Special Investigations died
from cancer, another perished in an airplane crash and still more had
retired from public service in the nearly three decades since the
investigation began.

"Even as the plane took off, I thought, `Something's going to happen,'"
recalled OSI Director Eli Rosenbaum.

"Because that was the case for so many years where if something could go
wrong, it did go wrong."

On that day in mid-May, Rosenbaum tracked the plane's ascent from a
Cleveland airport on a journey that would deliver Demjanjuk to Germany to
face charges. But as employees in the Justice Department office basked in
the afterglow of one of their largest victories, their anxieties turned to
a question: What next?

The subjects of their life's work  people with ties to the Nazis who lied
on citizenship forms to enter the United States after World War II  are
dead or dying. Current and former employees of the OSI say the unit is
racing against the clock to extradite the few elderly Nazis still residing
on American soil. Jonathan Drimmer, the lead trial lawyer in the
government's case against Demjanjuk, said Demjanjuk's expulsion is "a coda
on a generation of work to bring major Nazi war criminals to justice."

Since the OSI began operations in 1979, it has won deportation orders
against 107 people and prevented 180 more from entering the United States
through its watchlist program. Yet it remains to be seen how the
close-knit group of lawyers and historians, accustomed to combing
document-rich archives in Europe's former Eastern Bloc for clues, will
recast its mission from capturing Nazis to catching criminals who fled
murderous conflicts in such diverse places as Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia.

The OSI focuses on revoking the citizenship of Americans who entered the
country on false pretenses by lying about their involvement in war crimes,
rather than targeting criminals based overseas.

The office continues to rack up international accolades for its work on
the defining battles of the 20th century. "It's been the most important
instrument in trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," said Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust
survivor who was hidden as a youth by a Catholic nun.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the OSI an "A" for its efforts and
concluded in a report last winter that it had "conducted the most
successful program of its kind in the world."

But its staff levels have settled around 28 employees after peaking in the
1980s at nearly double that. And many of the tools that served the unit so
well are no longer available to its history detectives. Scrupulous
recordkeeping practices, characteristic of the Nazis, largely do not exist
in the modern conflicts.

Nonetheless, OSI leaders say they are aggressively shifting their focus to
fresh cases, which now make up the bulk of the workload.

So far, the unit has filed court charges in a half-dozen new war crimes
cases, led by an effort this year to revoke the citizenship of Lazare
Kabaya Kobagaya, 82, of Topeka, Kan., who allegedly took part in the 1994
Rwandan genocide.

Nearly 80 similar episodes involving modern war crimes remain under the
office's investigation.

Rosenbaum, who joined the unit as an intern three decades ago, asserted
that "unless mankind stops perpetrating these crimes, we will exist for
the foreseeable future."

(source:  The Toronto Star)






USA:

Original German Rocket Team member Walter Jacobi dies at 91


Walter Jacobi, an original member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's rocket team
that came to America at the end of World War II, died today.

Jacobi played an invaluable role in designing the structure and components
of America's Cold War rockets that were developed by the Army on Redstone
Arsenal and later NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center, close friends told
The Times.

"Walter was one of those extremely friendly guys and very low key, and I
never heard a cross word uttered by him," said Brooks Moore a retired
Marshall Space Flight Center engineer who knew Jacobi. "He was really
involved in our retired engineers events over the past decade, and,
frankly, I'm shocked to hear of his death."

Today, Hans Fichtner, Dieter Grau, Rudolph H. Schlidt, Oscar Holderer are
among the last of the original 118 scientists who came to America as part
of Operation Paperclip - the American intelligence program that salvaged
as much of Germany's V-2 rocket research and engineers as possible.

(source:  The Huntsville Times)





ISRAEL/NORWAY:

Israel chides Norway for celebrating Nazi sympathiser


Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has reproached Norway for
commemorating its Nobel Prize winning novelist Knut Hamsun who
sympathised with the Nazis, a newspaper reported on Monday.

"I was shocked to discover that the Norwegian government had decided to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Hamsun, who was an admirer
of the Nazis," the ultra-nationalist minister said.

Hamsun, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920, sent the medal to
Hitler's propaganda chief Josef Goebbels in 1943 and "even wrote a eulogy
to Hitler saying he was fighting for humanity," Lieberman said.

Norway issued a stamp and inaugurated a museum in honour of Hamsun to mark
the anniversary of his birth on August 4, 1859, even though he was
disgraced for his Nazi sympathies.

In July, Norway's foreign ministry issued a statement making it clear that
they had not forgotten the writer's controversial political beliefs.

"Hamsun's Nazi sympathies are a sordid part of his life. He received
massive condemnation for them after the war, and they have been debated in
Norway for many years.

Lieberman also charged that Norway was one of the few countries which did
not walk out of a UN racism conference in Geneva in April during a speech
by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Israel considers Iran its greatest foe after Ahmadinejad's repeated
diatribes calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map and
questioning the Holocaust.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)

Aug. 23



USA:

Appeals court overturns Holocaust looted-art law, but Norton Simon suit
continues


A federal appeals court today struck down as unconstitutional a 2002
California law giving owners and heirs to artworks looted by the Nazis
extra time -- until the end of 2010 -- to sue for their return.

But the 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco did not settle the specific case at hand:

Does the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena really own one of the most prized
works hanging in its galleries, Lucas Cranach the Elder's  depiction of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, moments before the Fall -- or should
the paintings on two wood panels be handed over to the daughter-in-law of
a Jewish art dealer who left the panels in Holland when he fled the
invading Germans in 1940?

The German artist painted them around 1530, and they were valued at $24
million in 2006, when the museum had them appraised for insurance
purposes.

Under the appellate ruling, Connecticut resident Marei Von Saher no longer
can take advantage of the special law -- now overturned. But the appeals
panel still opened a door for her to proceed -- if she can convince the
trial judge who previously dismissed her case that she sued in time to
satisfy California's regular statute of limitations, which gives victims
three years to sue for the return of property, starting from the date they
learn the lost items' whereabouts.

The appeals court agreed with John F. Walter, the U.S. District Court
judge in Los Angeles who threw out Von Sahers suit in October 2007 that
California officials overstepped their authority when they passed the
state's Holocaust art-restitution law, because they intruded on what is
strictly a federal government prerogative to shape policies on war and
foreign affairs.

But the appeals court ruled that Walter should not have dismissed the case
altogether, and needs to reconsider whether Von Saher has a right to sue
under the regular statute of limitations, whose cutoff date in her case is
unclear. Although the Norton Simon Art Foundation bought the Cranach
panels from a Russian owner in 1971, the appellate court said the statute
of limitations clock would not have begun to run on Von Saher until she
discovered or reasonably could have discovered" that she had an ownership
claim to the Cranachs," and that they were hanging at the Norton Simon
Museum. "It is not clear that the statute of limitations has expired,"
they said -- and that's now an issue for the two sides to argue, and for
Walter to decide.

Von Saher's father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, bought the life-size nudes
of Adam and Eve in 1931 when they were put up for auction in Berlin by
Josef Stalin's financially hard-pressed Soviet regime. When Goudstikker
fled Holland, his firm sold the paintings to the Nazis under duress.

After World War II, Goudstikker's family reached a settlement with the
Dutch government that left the Cranachs in Dutch hands. The Dutch
government then transferred ownership to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, an
heir to an old Russian family, who said the Bolsheviks had confiscated the
paintings from his forebears during the Russian Revolution.
Stroganoff-Scherbatoff subsequently sold them to Norton Simon, the Los
Angeles industrialist who established the Norton Simon Museum.

In her 2007 suit against the museum, Saher said that she learned in late
2000 that the Cranachs were at the Norton Simon Museum; the museum
contended that she first came forward with her claim in 2001. Mediation
sessions in 2005 and March 2007 failed to resolve the dispute, according
to a suit the Norton Simon Foundation filed in May 2007 asserting its
right to the Adam and Eve paintings.

In a prepared statement, the Norton Simon Art Foundation said Wednesday
that its legal title to the Cranachs is unassailable and that it will
defend ... vigorously its right to keep them.

We are satisfied with todays ruling and look forward to a quick resolution
to this matter, Norton Simon officials added.

Von Saher's lawyer, Lawrence Kaye, said that she "is certainly gratified
that ... she will have her day in court using the three-year statute of
limitations. He said its too early to say whether Von Saher will appeal to
preserve the broader deadline she clearly had met under the now-overturned
state law. In its written opinion, the Ninth Circuits panel of judges
noted that Norton Simon attorneys already have submitted news clippings
and other published items to show that the Adam and Eve paintings were
famous attractions at the museum decades before Von Saher came forward
with her claim -- evidence that the museum can use to argue that Von Saher
came forward far too late to satisfy the standard, three-year statute of
limitations that she must now meet.

One of the three appellate judges, Harry Pregerson, dissented from the
legal opinion by Dorothy W. Nelson and David R. Thompson. Pregerson argued
that the state law extending the statute of limitations for claims on
Nazi-looted art does not mean California is butting in on a federal
prerogative  setting policies for war reparations  but serves the states
legitimate interest in regulating museums and galleries.

The state attorney general's office filed a friend-of-the-court brief in
the Von Saher case, taking no position on whether the museum should turn
over the paintings to her, but arguing to uphold he California law
extending the statute of limitations for claims seeking the return of art
allegedly looted during the Holocaust.

Antonette Cordero, the deputy attorney general who wrote the brief, said
it would be up to Von Saher whether to appeal today's decision to a
larger, 15-member panel of the Ninth Circuit appeals court -- and then to
the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cordero said three other California laws on Holocaust redress also have
been found to be  unconstitutional intrusions into foreign affairs: in
2003, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Holocaust Victims' Insurance
Relief Act, which required insurers to disclose information about policies
they sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945, and the Ninth Circuit court of
appeals invalidated a law extending the statute of limitations for claims
for payment for slave labor. In 2005, the California Court of Appeal found
that an extension of the statute of limitations for Holocaust-era
insurance claims was not valid.

(source:  Los Angeles Times)




RUSSIA:

Soviet-Nazi pact revisited 70 years later


Seventy years ago today, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi
Germany that gave dictator Josef Stalin a free hand to take over part of
Poland and the Baltic states on the eve of World War II.

Most of the world now condemns the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but Russia has
mounted a new defense of the 1939 treaty as it seeks to restore some of
its now-lost sphere of influence.

"This is all being rehabilitated because this is now a very lively issue
for Russia," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "This is not about
history at all."

The pact, formally a treaty of nonaggression, was signed Aug. 23, 1939, in
Moscow by Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign
ministers of the two countries.

In addition to the pledge of nonaggression, the treaty included secret
protocols that divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of
influence.

On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland - thus igniting World War II - and
within weeks the Red Army had marched in from the east. After claiming
its part of Poland, the Soviet Union then annexed part of Finland, the
Baltic states and the Romanian region that is now Moldova.

Molotov's grandson and namesake, Vyacheslav Nikonov, said his grandfather
saw a deal with Nazi Germany as the only alternative after a failure to
reach a military agreement with Britain and France.

The Soviet government was convinced that a Nazi attack on Poland was
imminent and "we needed to know where the Germans were going to stop,"
Nikonov said. The pact also bought needed time for the country to prepare
for war, he said.

He said his grandfather later criticized aspects of Stalin's leadership,
including the purges, but he stood by the pact for the rest of his life.

"He said there were many, many mistakes done by the Soviet leadership, he
regrets many lives," said Nikonov, who was 30 when his grandfather died in
1986 and knew him well. "Molotov never considered Molotov-Ribbentrop as
something he would regret."

The Soviet Union officially denied the existence of the secret protocols
for decades. They were only formally acknowledged and denounced in 1989.

But as the 70th anniversary of the treaty has approached, some Russian
historians have stepped up to vociferously defend the Soviet Union's
decision to expand its territory at the expense of its neighbors.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, once part of the KGB, published a book
of declassified intelligence reports in an effort to make the case that
the nonaggression treaty and its secret protocols were justified and
essential to the victory over the Nazis.

Retired Maj. Gen. Lev Sotskov, who compiled the book, said the pact
allowed the Soviet Union to "move its borders with Germany" to the West.
This prevented the Baltic states of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia of
becoming a staging ground for an attack, he told journalists.

Even so, when Nazi Germany did attack in June 1941, all the territory the
Soviet Union had gained was lost in a matter of weeks.

At the end of the war, however, U.S. and British leaders accepted the
borders of the Soviet Union as defined by the treaty with Germany. This in
effect restored the borders of the Russian Empire.

The Allied leaders also allowed Stalin to extend the Soviet Union's sphere
of influence throughout much of eastern and central Europe.

The current attempt to justify the carving up of Europe during World War
II comes as Russia once again is trying to establish its sphere of
influence.

After last year's conflict with Georgia, a U.S. ally, President Dmitry
Medvedev asserted Russia's right to intervene militarily in what it
regards as its zone of "privileged interests" along its borders.

The war stripped Georgia of pieces of its territory, which are now under
the control of Russian-backed separatists.

"In his understanding of Realpolitik, Vladimir Putin does not diverge from
the line set by Josef Stalin," military analyst Alexander Golts wrote in
the online Yezhednevny Zhurnal. "Military force decides everything and if
there is an opportunity to grab a piece of someone else's territory then
it should be taken."

Moscow has insisted it should have a dominating influence over countries
that were once part of the Soviet Union. But Washington has continued to
encourage the NATO ambitions of Georgia and Ukraine, and has made clear
that it will accept no claims of a Russian sphere of influence over former
Soviet republics that are now sovereign states.

Russians' defense of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also is being used to
bolster the Kremlin's push for the creation of a new collective security
system to replace NATO, embracing all of Europe, the United States and
Canada.

Sotskov said the Soviet Union had to sign the 1939 treaty with Germany
because efforts to create "a system of collective security" with Britain,
France, Poland and the Baltic states had failed. The Soviet leadership
believed the West was hoping to turn Adolf Hitler's armies east against
Russia.

(source:  Associated Press)







USA//LOUISIANA:

Traveling exhibit on Nazi book burnings will open at State Library Aug. 27


On May 10, 1933, just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power in
Nazi Germany and a full six years before World War II, German university
students carried out an "Action Against the Un-German Spirit."

They targeted authors ranging from Helen Keller and Ernest Hemingway to
Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Their orchestrated book burnings across
Germany would come to underscore German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine's
19th century warning, "Where one burns books, one soon burns people."

The State Library of Louisiana, 701 N. 4th St., will host a special
traveling exhibition, Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi
Book Burnings, organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. The exhibit opens with reception at 6:30 p.m. Thursday,
Aug. 27.

Fighting the Fires of Hate provides a vivid look at the first steps the
Nazis took to suppress freedom of expression, and the strong response that
occurred in the United States both immediately and in the years
thereafter. The exhibition focuses on how the book burnings became a
potent symbol during World War II in America's battle against Nazism, and
concludes by examining their continued impact on our public discourse.

Covered widely in the media, the Nazi book burnings provoked immediate,
strong reactions in the United States among writers, artists, scholars,
journalists, librarians, labor unions, clergy, political figures and
others.

Newspaper editorials and political cartoonists denounced the bonfires.
Newsweek called it a "holocaust of books;" Time a "bibliocaust." American
writers including Helen Keller, Lewis Mumford and Sinclair Lewis - some of
whose books had been consigned to the flames - wrote open letters
condemning the book burnings.

The American Jewish Congress organized massive street demonstrations in
more than a dozen U.S. cities to protest Nazi persecution of Jews, using
May 10 and the book burnings to broaden the coalition of anti-Nazi groups.

"Today, mass book burnings bring to mind almost nightmarish images, said
State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton. "To destroy a book is an attempt to
destroy a peoples culture and freedom of thought. This exhibition brings
to life the horrors that eventually became one of the most gruesome
examples of a government's attempts to purify a society into its own
vision of perfection - The Holocaust."

"Americans were deeply offended by the book burnings, which were a gross
assault against their core values," said Edward Phillips, exhibitions
director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Their response was
intense, in fact so strong that throughout the war the government used the
book burnings to help define the nature of the enemy to the American
public."

The exhibition also focuses on how organizations ranging from the Library
of Congress, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers
Association, the National Council of Women to the Writers War Board, the
Council on Books in Wartime and the Office of War Information used the
1943 10th anniversary of the book burnings to rally Americans around the
war effort.

It documents how the importance of books and the free marketplace of ideas
were given currency through the slogan "Books Are Weapons in the War of
Ideas," which appeared in posters, proclamations, radio broadcasts and
scores of other outlets.

The exhibition concludes with the postwar years, exploring how the Nazi
book burnings have continued to resonate in American politics, literature
and popular culture. It features post-war evocations of book burnings,
including a McCarthy-era speech in which President Eisenhower urged
Dartmouth graduates, "Don't join the book burners;" films such as
Pleasantville, Field of Dreams, episodes of The Waltons and M*A*S*H, the
death threats against Salman Rushdie, and the public burning of J.K.
Rowling's Harry Potter books.

"Appropriately enough, the exhibition precedes Banned Books Week, which is
recognized from Sept. 27 through Oct. 3," Hamilton said. "Closely after
that on Oct. 17, we strike quite a different note with the 2009 Louisiana
Book Festival where we celebrate and give honor to all books."

Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings will run
through Sept. 20, then continue its nationwide travel. It includes
displays of period artifacts, documents and news coverage, along with
film, video and newsreel footage.

Library hours are 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The exhibit is
free.

For more information on the exhibition, call (225) 219-9503 or visit
http://www.state.lib.la.us or http://www.ushmm.org.

(source:  The Advocate)


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


Nazi imagery offensive?in health care debate


Recently, President Barack Obama was in New Hampshire to hold a town hall
meeting on the proposed health-care legislation.

While opinions seem to vary about how to resolve our heath-care crisis,
one thing is clear: Nazi terminology and images of swastikas hold no place
in this debate.

Following a health-care town meeting in Georgia, a swastika was painted on
the door of Rep. David Scotts office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that town hall protesters were
"carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health
care."

Rush Limbaugh compared the logo of the DNC's "Organizing for Health Care"
logo to the Nazi's Parteiadler (party eagle) symbol.

Rhetoric of this type has no place in the health-care debate. Use of this
language is an insult to Holocaust victims, survivors and their families.

It is important to learn about and remember the Holocaust to confront
hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity and strengthen democracy.
We should not debase this memory by using these terms inappropriately.

Our policy makers, media commentators and participants in the health-care
debate need to come up with new terms with which to conduct their debate.

K. Jeff Fladen, Executive Director Jewish Federation of New Hampshire

(source:  Letter to the Editor, Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph)

Aug. 20


USA:

As Nazis Die Off, Their Hunters Widen Net----Justice Department Unit Now
Focusing on Perpetrators From Other Atrocities


Earlier this year, 400 miles from downtown Washington, a Gulfstream IV jet
carrying one of the country's most infamous accused war criminals prepared
to take flight as Justice Department prosecutors watched via a live
television feed.

The target of their rapt attention: onetime Nazi concentration-camp guard
John Demjanjuk, 89, who had outlasted a generation of American lawyers
vying to deport him from the United States for allegedly lying about his
role in the Holocaust. One attorney in the department's elite Office of
Special Investigations died of cancer, another perished in an airplane
crash and others had retired from public service in the nearly three
decades since the investigation began.

"Even as the plane took off, I thought, 'Something's going to happen,' "
recalled OSI Director Eli Rosenbaum. "Because that was the case for so
many years, where if something could go wrong, it did go wrong."

On that day in mid-May, Rosenbaum tracked the plane's ascent from a
Cleveland airport on a journey that would deliver Demjanjuk to Germany to
face criminal charges. But as employees in the Justice Department office
basked in the afterglow of one of their largest victories, they wondered:

What next?

The subjects of their life's work -- people with Nazi ties who lied on
citizenship forms to enter the United States after World War II -- are
dead or dying. Current and former OSI employees say the unit is racing to
extradite the few elderly Nazis still residing on American soil. Jonathan
Drimmer, the lead trial lawyer in the government's case against Demjanjuk,
said that Demjanjuk's expulsion is "a coda on a generation of work to
bring major Nazi war criminals to justice."

Since the OSI began operations in 1979, it has won deportation orders
against 107 people and prevented 180 more from entering the United States
through its watch list. Yet it remains to be seen how the close-knit group
of lawyers and historians, accustomed to combing document-rich archives in
the Eastern Bloc for clues, will recast its mission from capturing Nazis
to catching criminals who fled murderous conflicts in such diverse places
as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The OSI focuses on revoking the
citizenship of Americans who entered the country on false pretenses by
lying about their involvement in war crimes, rather than targeting
wrongdoers based overseas.

The office continues to rack up international accolades for its work on
the defining battles of the 20th century. "It's been the most important
instrument in trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," said Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust
survivor who was hidden as a boy by a Catholic nun. The Simon Wiesenthal
Center gave the OSI a grade of A for its efforts and concluded in a report
last winter that it had "conducted the most successful program of its kind
in the world."

But its staff levels have settled at around 28 employees after peaking in
the 1980s at nearly double that number. And many of the tools that served
the unit so well are no longer available to its history detectives.
Scrupulous recordkeeping practices of the Nazis, including a handwritten
1942 ammunition order that prompted a court to revoke the citizenship of a
Michigan man last year in what OSI lawyers call the "ultimate cold case,"
largely do not exist in the modern conflicts. Instead, the Justice
Department must rely on cooperating witnesses, whose languages, cultures
and motives may be difficult to translate.

Nonetheless, OSI leaders say they are aggressively shifting their focus to
fresh cases, which now make up the bulk of the workload. The French
historian is reading about Africa; investigators who studied Hungarian are
practicing Balkan languages; and plans are afoot to hire a Swahili
linguist. They are all scouring government records, diplomatic cables,
refugee statements and truth commission reports for leads on alleged
perpetrators from every part of the world who may have relocated to the
United States.

So far, the unit has filed charges in half a dozen new war crimes cases,
led by an effort this year to revoke the citizenship of Lazare Kabaya
Kobagaya, 82, of Topeka, Kan., who allegedly took part in the 1994 Rwandan
genocide. Kobagaya, a member of the Hutu ethnic group, incited villagers
gathered at a marketplace to torch homes owned by rival Tutsis and urged
others to kill Tutsis by making threats, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors assert that Kobagaya lied on his citizenship application and
in an interview with U.S. immigration authorities.

Nearly 80 similar episodes involving modern war crimes remain under the
office's investigation. Congress formally expanded the OSI mandate in late
2004 to cover people who misrepresented their involvement in a wide array
of genocides and human rights violations in order to enter the United
States. But navigating sensitive diplomatic and political straits in
international conflicts that are still "simmering under the surface,"
Deputy Director Elizabeth White said, requires careful evaluation.

Director Rosenbaum, who joined the unit as an intern three decades ago,
said that "unless mankind stops perpetrating these crimes, we will exist
for the foreseeable future."

The job is "obviously suffused with sadness," he said. "Meet surviving
victims, and it just demolishes you. One of our attorneys spent weeks in
Rwanda and was very badly shaken. We had a visit here recently from the
human rights ombudsman in Guatemala. There's just no end, no end."

The emotional pressure and shared sense of mission have fostered tight
bonds among OSI lawyers and investigators. Veterans of the office say that
competition with other elements of the government, including the
Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and several U.S. attorneys'
offices, however, could grow more intense as they vie for a chance to
prosecute the modern genocide cases.

In January, the Justice Department's domestic security section scored
international headlines when it won a 97-year prison sentence for Charles
Taylor Jr., the son of Liberia's former president, for his role in a
paramilitary group that doled out electric shocks, cigarette burns and
buckets of scalding water to its political opponents.

Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the department's criminal
division, left open the possibility of a merger between OSI and the
domestic security section, which brings prosecutions for torture, rather
than the OSI approach that generally homes in on residency status.

"There are certain acts, and obviously the Nazi prosecutions are an
example where we have a moral and ethical imperative to bring them to
justice," said Breuer, whose 89-year-old mother survived the Holocaust and
resettled in Queens. "There has to be a component of the criminal division
that deals with human rights violations, no matter how much time passes."

(source:  Washington Post)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust survivor now lives on Tel Aviv park bench


For the last eight months, a 71-year-old Holocaust survivor has been
sleeping on a bench in a downtown Tel Aviv park.

Yevgeny Bistrizky was three years old when he was taken to the killing
fields at Babi Yar. His father was murdered. His mother was shot before
his eyes, but survived. He has no recollection of how they escaped; he
only knows that no one else from his family did. He remembers the long
march through the snow, the hunger, the bodies piled up all around him.
But he survived, married, had a family, earned a living.

And now, at age 71, he is homeless again.

Every night, after finishing his job as a janitor, he comes to the park in
the luxury Beeri Nahardea housing project, not far from Ichilov Hospital,
to sleep. Early each morning, he leaves. He said he chose this park
because of its ritzy location: Should anyone attack him, he said, the
neighbors would surely call the police.

All his belongings are in one satchel - a rolled-up mattress, two shirts,
two pairs of pants. In a plastic bag, he has soap and some food. It is
very important to him that he not look like a bum: He shaves every day;
his shirt is neatly tucked in. He washes himself and his clothes at a tap
in a nearby building.

"It will be harder in the winter," he says. "In the summer, everything
dries instantly."

Yevgeny moved to Israel in 1993 with his wife and daughter. He lived and
worked in Ariel, but then the factory that employed him closed. Then he
found work in Tel Aviv, so the family moved there.

Two years ago, he was fired from that job, and after that, everything fell
apart. He separated from his wife; his daughter went to study in Germany.
He returned to Ariel, but no one would rent an apartment to an unemployed
senior citizen with no collateral or guarantors. He found an abandoned
Amidar apartment (public housing) that had no electricity or running
water, but eight months ago, he was evicted.

Officials in Ariel advised him to go to Tel Aviv, saying its welfare
department was excellent. He did, but got no help.

He found a cleaning job that pays NIS 2,000 a month, and he also has his
Israeli old-age allowance and the monthly 270-euro pension that he has
received from Germany for the last three years. But he still cannot find
anyone willing to rent him an apartment, given his age and his lack of
collateral and guarantors. So he sleeps in the park.

His has not told his daughter about his plight. When she calls his cell
phone, he describes a very different life.

Yevgeny speaks very little Hebrew. But this week, one couple managed to
communicate with him and promptly called Latet, a nonprofit that helps the
needy. The organization has helped more than 1,200 Holocaust survivors
over the last three years, but Yaron, who is helping Ivgeny, is
dumbfounded by this case.

For four solid hours, he called the emergency hotlines of various towns in
the center of the country, but at each, got only a recorded announcement
saying they were on vacation. The same was true of the towns' welfare
departments. Finally, he reached someone in Tel Aviv's welfare bureau, who
directed him to a homeless shelter in Jaffa. But after seeing it, they
took the advice of the drug addict at the door and returned to the park.
It was no place for a drug-free 71-year-old.

The Ariel municipality said Yevgeny is not eligible for government housing
until his divorce is finalized - which he lacks the money to do, quite
aside from the fact that it usually takes months.

Finally, a pre-army academy in Tel Aviv agreed to give him a room for a
few days. On Wednesday night, he slept there, and could not stop gushing
over the clean sheets. The question is what will become of him tomorrow.

(source:  Ha'aretz)






AUG. 21


GERMANY:

The Fhrer's Obsession with Art----'Hitler Considered Himself an Artistic
Genius'


Art historian Birgit Schwarz talks to SPIEGEL about why Adolf Hitler saw
himself as a genius and how his obsession with art affected his political
views.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Schwarz, countless books and academic papers have been
written worldwide about Hitler, the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Now you
are claiming that it's time to correct our image of Hitler. In what sense?

Birgit Schwarz: In my opinion, people have underestimated the notion that
Hitler considered himself an artist, in fact, an artistic genius, and that
much can be deduced from this self-image, this overheated artist's ego.
However, this has hardly played a role in the research to date. That's the
starting point, from my perspective, because it can help us gain a better
understanding of Hitler as a person, as well as his system of power.
Hitler's deluded view of himself as a genius is based on the confused
system of thought emerging in the late 19th century, which centered on the
idea that a genius -- a strong personality who outshone everything else --
could do anything and could do anything he pleased.

SPIEGEL: That sounds like a debatable view. Historians will complain.

Schwarz: Perhaps. But I believe that it's important to amend the history
of his personality. Aside from that, I'm looking forward to the debate.

SPIEGEL: Hitler's relationship with art is well-documented. He earned
money with his watercolors and wanted to become a painter. Later he became
an insatiable collector, a passion which turned into the most brutal art
theft of all time. All of this is well known. What, then, is supposedly
incorrect about the current image of Hitler?

Schwarz: There is a widespread view that he was not truly fascinated by
art, and that although he collected art and used it to cultivate his
image, he then hid it away in basements and mines. Someone like Gring was
constantly bragging about his collection, but many believe that Hitler
wasn't actually that interested. But it was very deeply ingrained in his
personality.

SPIEGEL: What makes you so certain?

Schwarz: The previously underestimated observations of his contemporaries,
for one. For example, there was the Italian archeologist and art historian
Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an accomplished expert who was not on
Hitler's side. He became one of Italy's great intellectuals after the war.
In 1938, Bianchi Bandinelli was asked to play the role of tour guide
during one of Hitler's state visits, and Hitler spent hour after hour
admiring paintings. According to Bianchi Bandinelli, it was evident in
Hitler's body language that he was truly entranced by the art.

SPIEGEL: But Mussolini was simply annoyed by the time Hitler spent looking
at art.

Schwarz: Yes, but sources like Bianchi Bandinelli's account show that
there is something important missing from our picture of Hitler, something
we still need to understand and that hasn't been taken into account until
now. In fact, a very different image was built up over decades, namely of
Hitler and his fight against so-called degenerate art.

SPIEGEL: But that too is an important part of his relationship with art.

Schwarz: Of course, and it was probably fueled by real hatred. At the same
time, art was very important to him throughout his entire life.

SPIEGEL: Doesn't the perception of Hitler as an artist make him seem less
evil?

Schwarz: No. In fact, his love of art led directly into the heart of evil.
But neither is it the root of everything else. His fanatical pursuit of
his own cause, and his self-image as a genius, contributed to his powers
of persuasion and, therefore, his success. Art was part of his life until
his last hours, even playing a role in his private will, in which he
mentions his collections. This was someone who issued the so-called Nero
Decree (Ed's note: Hitler's Nero Decree, issued in March 1945, ordered the
destruction of any infrastructure which could be of use to the Allies.)
while at the same time making sure art treasures were rescued. But no one
is willing to admit to his obsession with art.

SPIEGEL: But the story of how Hitler flew to occupied Paris and visited
the main sights at dawn is legendary.

Schwarz: This obsession with art was interpreted as nothing but a
cultivation of his image and propaganda. When you look at his biography,
you understand that art was vitally important to him much earlier, and
that he needed it for self-affirmation.

SPIEGEL: Prominent historians, particularly the brilliant Ian Kershaw, see
the young Hitler primarily as a failed painter. He wanted to study
painting, but he was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts twice, in
1907 and 1908. Why don't you accept this interpretation?

Schwarz: Of course, being turned down was a fundamental shock to him. But
the Hitler research community believes that he accepted his failure, and
that he gave up the artistic world. But in reality he always retained his
self-image as an artist and as someone obsessed with art. The rebuff from
the academy was probably what prompted him to consider himself a genius.

SPIEGEL: In your opinion, he saw himself as someone who had been
underestimated. But where is the difference between "failed" and
"underestimated," which is so critical to understanding Hitler?

Schwarz: If he had seen himself as failed, he would have had to abandon
his idea of being an artist. That's what Ian Kershaw, for example, claims.
And (German historian and Hitler biographer) Joachim Fest didn't take
Hitler's self-image as a genius seriously enough. Many believe that
Goebbels didn't start consistently referring to Hitler as a genius until
later on.

SPIEGEL: And that was indeed the case.

Schwarz: But for Hitler it was more than a propaganda strategy. He
seriously believed he was a genius, long before Goebbels referred to him
as such. And it makes sense that Goebbels constantly described him as a
genius. A genius shouldn't refer to himself as a genius. He needs a
community of admirers. His conviction that he was a genius, in my
interpretation, was at the center of his entire worldview.

SPIEGEL: For a time, Hitler survived by painting watercolor scenes of
Vienna. He was apparently fired by an architecture firm where you believe
he worked, because his performance wasn't good enough. He then moved to
Munich, where he hung around in cafs. That doesn't sound like someone with
the creative urges of a genius.

Schwarz: On the contrary. Let me give you an example. A competition for an
imposing building project of the late Kaiser period was announced in
Berlin. The opera house was going to be rebuilt. We don't know if Hitler
attempted to officially enter the competition -- in fact, it's unlikely --
but it appears that he did draw some of his own designs. He believed that
he could hold his own with the most famous architects.

SPIEGEL: Why didn't he seek public attention?

Schwarz: A genius can shine in secret, hoping that he will make a big
splash one day.


'The Genius Was Allowed to be Above Morality'


SPIEGEL: Could Hitler seriously have considered himself a genius? His
talent as a draftsman was moderate at best.

Schwarz: He apparently felt differently, and it was important for his ego
that he was self-taught. After the humiliation of being rejected by the
academy, he developed an aversion to all professors, and to all academic
study. He referred to himself once as a minor painter, but that was at a
time when he believed he was a great architect. On the whole, he saw
himself as a creative genius. You mustn't forget that the concept we have
today of a genius is so much more harmless than it was back then.

SPIEGEL: In what sense?

Schwarz: We define a genius on the basis of his talent. At the time,
talent was not the main focus. A genius had to have a strong personality.
He was a larger-than-life talent who was permitted to do anything,
including evil things. The genius has outstanding ideas, and they must be
implemented, even if they are completely amoral. Hitler admired the work
of dour philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. One
important aspect is often overlooked, namely that the concept of genius
had long been colored with racism. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a Briton
by birth who had married into the family of Richard Wagner, was a
significant figure. He published his views in a book, which became a
bestseller. Chamberlain, who promoted the great Aryan personality, was a
key figure for Hitler.

SPIEGEL: Are you going so far as to draw a line between the concept of
genius and the Holocaust?

Schwarz: Let me say it one more time: The genius was allowed to be above
morality. The amorality of the Nazis represents taking this position to
its unthinkable extreme. Goebbels wrote the brutal sentence: "Geniuses
consume people." Part of Hitler's concept of a genius was the image of an
enemy. In his case, it even needed to be a mortal enemy.

SPIEGEL: But his worldview was strongly influenced by World War I and his
own drastic experiences at the front.

Schwarz: Naturally that was a turning point. However, he believed that the
world war proved that it was possible to overcome all odds. But I don't
see an absolute shift in his life. Even before World War I, he had the
self-image of a genius, and he kept it up after that. That's continuity.
In the early 1920s, he even declared that what was needed was "a dictator
who is a genius." Of course, the population also yearned for a genius.

SPIEGEL: But shouldn't the word "genius" be replaced with "Fhrer"
("leader")?

Schwarz: No. The Fhrer concept arose from the genius concept in the first
place. Once again, too great a distinction has been drawn between Hitler
the artist and Hitler the politician until now. The research describes
Hitler as a man who was a failure during his first 30 years before
suddenly, as if in a new life, managing to captivate the masses as a
politician. It's a divided biography, in other words. But the question is:
Where did he get his self-confidence, and the certainty that he was an
exceptional figure?

SPIEGEL: Hitler himself described a split in his biography, "Mein Kampf,"
in which he famously wrote: "But I decided to become a politician."

Schwarz: It wasn't a split, but a development. His career as a politician
doesn't contradict his self-image as a genius by any means. And that was
what he considered himself to be, first an artist, and then a politician
and strategist. But without the self-image as an artist, he would never
have been able to see himself as a genius. That's why he constantly had to
reaffirm his love for art.

SPIEGEL: You describe which paintings Hitler hung, re-hung or removed in
his private and official rooms, including works by the Swiss painter
Arnold Bcklin and the German painter Carl Spitzweg. These two painters
represent very different styles: overblown and aggressive versus detailed
and contemplative, respectively. And then there were the neo-classical
portraits of women by painters like Anselm Feuerbach. How does all this
fit together?

Schwarz: It doesn't fit together at all. I have reconstructed his
collection of paintings, including the ones in his private rooms. Hitler's
taste cannot be pinned down. There is no aesthetic lowest common
denominator. But what his favorite painters do have in common is that
Hitler saw them as misunderstood geniuses.

SPIEGEL: Does a genius need a muse? If so, was Hitler's muse Eva Braun --
or perhaps his favorite architect, Albert Speer?

Schwarz: Perhaps an artist needs a muse, but a genius doesn't, because a
genius's creative strength comes from within. And a genius, as Hitler
explained to his secretary, could not have any children. However, he did
have role models, including Frederick the Great, who became increasingly
important to him. Hitler felt that he was an incarnation of this
art-loving ruler, who was both a collector and a military strategist. He
imitated everything about him, including his love for dogs and, later, his
shuffling walk and stained uniform. It was even obvious to the terribly
banal Eva Braun, who chided him for his excessive efforts to imitate
Frederick. In the end, he insisted on having a portrait of the king nearby
at all times, even in the bunker. Academics are familiar with this
adoration and with how alarmingly deep it went, but it probably hasn't
been adequately studied.

SPIEGEL: In the end, how much did he retain of his belief that he was a
genius?

Schwarz: It was everything at the end. In fact, Hitler, in his delusions
of being a genius, is best understood by studying the last months of his
life. The period in the Fhrer's bunker is very illuminating. It was only a
few steps from his quarters to the cellar of the New Reich Chancellery,
where the model of his architectural plans for Linz was displayed. He had
to reaffirm his status as a genius, and he could only do so through his
close connection to art and architecture. These final attempts at creating
a certain image for himself had a fatal effect. He made a strong
impression on many of the people around him. Many believed that Hitler
would succeed in the end, just as his role model and supposed fellow
genius Frederick the Great managed to win certain battles, even emerging
from wars as the victor despite having suffered military defeats.

SPIEGEL: So art never opened Hitler's eyes -- he saw only what he wanted
to see?

Schwarz: That was always his intention, right from the start.

SPIEGEL: Ms Schwarz, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Ulrike Knfel

(source:  Spiegel)

August 19

LIECHTENSTEIN:

Liechtenstein prince angers German Jews _ again


Liechtenstein's reigning prince has angered German Jews by invoking the
Holocaust to defend his country's banking secrecy laws, drawing sharp
reactions Monday.

The latest flare-up of fractious relations between the tiny Alpine
principality and its much larger neighbor to the north stemmed from
comments in a weekend interview Prince Hans-Adam II gave for
Liechtenstein's national holiday.

The prince took aim particularly at Germany, which has been pressuring
Liechtenstein to clamp down on confidential banking practices that it
claims allow wealthy Germans to evade taxes.

"We and Switzerland saved many people, especially Jews, with banking
secrecy," Hans-Adam II told the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt. "Germany
should clean up its own act, and think about its past."

The prince noted how some Jews were able to buy their safety during the
Holocaust by using money they had safely deposited in Switzerland or
Liechtenstein. Secrecy rules also helped people persecuted by communist
governments and "continues to save life ... in Third-World countries run
by bloodthirsty dictators," he said.

"Beyond that, Germany and many other countries have an unbelievable mess
with their state finances," Hans-Adam II said, referring to a traditional
argument here that poor governance and high taxes lead to tax evasion, not
banking secrecy. "These must first be put in order. They have been
unsuccessful until now in doing this. The financial crash basically goes
back to this alarming disability."

The comments were met with harsh criticism from Germany's Jewish
community, which also slammed Hans-Adam II last year for describing
modern-day Germany as a "fourth" Reich.

"The comments are a mockery of the Holocaust and its survivors," Stephan
Kramer, general secretary of the German Central Council of Jews, told Bild
newspaper. "It is historically incorrect for him to portray Liechtenstein
as a merciful helper of the Jews. His highness would be better off
retiring."

The Central Council did not answer a request for comment, while the
Liechtenstein royal family's press office declined to respond to the
criticism.

The prince, 64, has waged numerous legal battles in Germany to recover
artwork he claims was looted from his family by the Nazis during the
Second World War. More recently, Liechtenstein has been embroiled in a
spat with Berlin over rich German citizens that have evaded taxes through
the principality's banks.

Last year, German authorities paid a former employee of Liechtenstein's
LGT bank to obtain the names of about 1,400 alleged tax cheats. The
seizure provoked an angry response from the bank, which is wholly owned by
the prince and his family, but also pushed the country toward reforming
its financial sector.

Hans-Adam rejected the idea that his country was prospering because of tax
evasion.

"What is demanded is high quality performance, and now we are offering
that," he said in the interview. "There are clients who deposit money here
completely legally, because they value our good service."

Still, he warned that Liechtenstein faced contraction over the next two or
three years as "the market crash is hitting far more negatively than the
whole tax debate."

(source:  Associated Press)





USA//TEXAS:

Holocaust exhibit sheds light on story of unlikely rescuers



Photographer Norman H. Gershman's "Besa: A Code of Honor" exhibit
chronicles one of the more unusual -- and less-known -- stories from the
Holocaust.

Its 30 black-and-white photos tell the stories of some of the more than
20,000 Albanian Muslims who rescued Jews from the Nazis during World War
II.

"There is no evidence of any Jew being turned over to any Nazi," said
Gershman, who is Jewish, from his home in Basalt, Colo. "Seventy percent
of the people in Albania are Muslims."

Muslims rescuing Jews seems improbable in today's world. Gershman hopes
the exhibit, which will open a five-week run Aug. 23 at the El Paso
Holocaust Museum and Study Center, will help chip away at ethnic and
religious stereotypes.

"Our purpose is really to inform the West of what Muslims did," he said.
"These are Muslims. They did it in relation to their religion. They
primarily did it without compensation or want of any."

The six-year project took Gershman, who turned 77 on Friday, to the
southern European country and to neighboring Kosovo, where he met with
some of the people (or their families) who helped spirit Jews out of the
country.

"In many cases, Jews were arrested or were refugees, and those (Albanians)
living there would give them false passports and dress them in Islamic
garb," Gershman said. "In many cases, the Albanian rescuers never even
knew their real names."

The Albanian people were practicing a centuries-old code of conduct called
besa.

"There's a culture of besa. It's thousands of years old. It's a code of
honor," he explained. "It's inconceivable for an Albanian to turn their
back on someone that needs help, to the point where they will lay their
lives down for them."

The people he photographed and interviewed -- Gershman also produced a
book of photographs and stories -- had integrated besa into their
religion.

"One said, as an example, that there is no Quran without besa, no besa
without Quran," Gershman recalled. "They said, 'We were saving God's
children,' 'If you save a life, you to go paradise,' 'Jews and Muslims are
cousins,' and on and on."

When Gershman asked one man why his family risked their lives for the
Jews, he replied, " 'Any Albanian would have done it. It's nothing
special.' "

But it's a pretty special story to Gershman, one that's received very
little publicity, largely due to more than four decades of oppressive
communist rule at the hand of Enver Hoxha. The stories began circulating
after Hoxha's death in 1985 and the election of a non-communist regime in
1992, Gershman said.

"I'd never heard of it, either. I'm learning about this along with
everybody else," said Maribel Villalva, executive director of the El Paso
Holocaust Museum and Study Center. "I'm surprised. People who are scholars
on the Holocaust are hearing about this for the first time, too. It took
Mr. Gershman to discover this story and put it out there."

The show consists of about 30 16-by-20-inch black-and-white portraits,
some straightforward, others emotional. Each is accompanied by explanatory
text. Gershman chose to shoot in black and white because, he said, it
gives the portraits a more "timeless" look.

"There are wonderful stories of courage," Villalva said. "Some are really
sad, but the common theme in all of them is this is what they had to do --
it didn't matter if these people were Jewish or Christian. It was simply
because they were human."

It's also an inspiring story, she added. "It's very easy to get caught up
in the horrors and the sadness of the Holocaust," Villalva said. "What
this exhibit does is showcase the courage of the people who did everything
in their power."

The exhibit was organized by the Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute
of Religion Museum. It has been displayed at Yad Vashem, Israel's
Holocaust museum, as well as the United Nations and the Council of
European Nations.

It has been endorsed by Presidents Clinton and Carter, Holocaust survivor
and activist Elie Wiesel, and Jehan Sadat, the widow of Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat.

Villalva said the exhibit has been making the rounds of Holocaust museums
and is showing concurrently at the Holocaust Museum Houston. It will head
to Nashville after its El Paso run ends Sept. 27.

Gershman's project is also the subject of a documentary, "God's House,"
which will be released in 2010. He's been interviewed about it on radio's
Voice of America and Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network. He will be
featured on future editions of "CBS Sunday Morning" and NPR's "Weekend
Edition."

Villalva said the exhibit serves as a powerful reminder of what people of
various ethnic and religious backgrounds can do together. The message is
particularly timely in the post-9/11 world, where racial and ethnic
stereotypes have worsened.

"You hear a lot about the strife between Muslims and Jews. This highlights
a time when people of both faiths coexisted during one of the most
horrible times in our history," she said.

Gershman said he really wasn't sure what the project was going to become
when he started digging around six years ago. But he believes he chanced
upon an inspiring, if little known, part of our history.

"I had no idea why I was doing it," he said, "but I knew I had to do it."

(source:  El Paso Times)






GERMANY:

New book reveals horror of Nazi camp brothels


In 1942, the Nazis decided that forced labourers in concentration camps
would work harder if they were promised sex -- so they made female
prisoners work in brothels for them.

The brothels form the subject of "Das KZ Bordell" (The Concentration Camp
Brothel) by Robert Sommer, a book that has been hailed as the first
comprehensive account of a little known chapter of Nazi oppression in
World War Two.

Sommer's 460-page work, due to be presented at the Berlin state parliament
on Wednesday, explores the origins, structure and impact of the
"Sonderbauten" (special buildings) run by Heinrich Himmler's SS in Germany
and Nazi-occupied Europe.

"In the collective memory and written history of World War Two, the camp
brothels were for a long time taboo," the 35-year-old Berliner told
Reuters. "The former prisoners didn't want to talk about it: it was a
difficult subject to handle.

"It didn't fit so easily into the postwar image of the concentration camps
as monuments to suffering."

Beginning with the Austrian camp at Mauthausen in 1942, the SS opened 10
brothels, the biggest of which was in Auschwitz, in modern Poland, where
as many as 21 women prisoners once worked. The last opened in early 1945,
the year the war ended.

The chapter is separate from the annals of the Holocaust of European Jews.
Jewish women were not recruited as prostitutes, and Jewish men were not
admitted to the brothels.

Sommer estimates around 200 women inmates in total were forced to work in
the brothels -- initially offered the prospect of escaping the brutality
of the concentration camps.

"They were promised release after half a year if they served in the
brothel. But the promises were never honoured," he said. "Later, the SS
just selected women they felt were suitable."

"Jews were not allowed in. Neither were Soviet prisoners of war," he
added. "Jewish women did not serve as sex workers."

Tens of thousands of captured soldiers, political prisoners and people
branded socially undesirable by the Nazis, including Roma and homosexuals,
were held in camps alongside the millions of Jews who died in the
Holocaust.

"The idea behind the brothels was to raise productivity by providing
forced labourers with added incentive," said Sommer. "Yet from what I
found, it didn't work at all. Only a few people were actually in a
physical condition to go to them."

According to Sommer, the use of prisoners to provide sex to other
prisoners was purely a Nazi phenomenon in the war.


NO COMPENSATION

The prostitutes, most in their early 20s, received more food and were
treated less harshly than other women inmates.

In return, they had to provide sex to selected prisoners every evening
between 8 and 10 p.m., and on Sunday afternoons.

"The brothels show another dimension to the Nazi terror, where victims of
the Nazis were made into perpetrators against the women," said Sommer, who
grew up in communist East Germany.

After the war, the women -- many of whom had been interned by the Nazis on
the grounds they were "asozial" or anti-social -- remained stigmatised
despite their ordeal, Sommer said.

The brothels were strictly regulated, charging a fixed sum. The idea of
providing material incentives for prisoners was borrowed from Soviet
gulags, where inmates' behaviour could determine the size of their food
rations.

"The Nazis even imposed race laws inside the brothels," said Sommer.
"Germans who wanted to go to a brothel could only go to a German woman.
And a Slavic prisoner only to a Slavic woman."

Only privileged prisoners like Kapos (camp supervisors) had the means to
afford frequent visits, and Sommer estimates less than 1 percent of the
camp population ever went to the brothels.

Once the SS had issued a brothel permit, men were assigned a woman and
medically examined. If their name was read out in an evening roll call
they were marched to the building and had a medicinal cream applied to
their genitals by a doctor.

Even the act of intercourse was supervised, as detailed SS logs of the
brothels testify.

"The SS had spy-holes to check up on them," said Sommer. "Only 15 minutes'
sex and the missionary position were allowed."

To research the book, Sommer visited all 10 camps -- which included Dachau
and Buchenwald -- and interviewed 30 former prisoners, among them a number
of men who used the brothels.

However, nearly all the women forced to work there are now dead, and those
that remain are reluctant to talk.

"We don't know of any who were compensated for what they went through,"
Sommer said. "It's important that these women are given back some of their
dignity."

(source:  Reuters)

Aug. 15



VATICAN CITY:

Vatican rejects apology in Holocaust case ---- Controversial bishop did
not repudiate views, church says


An apology from a bishop who denied the Holocaust wasn't good enough, the
Vatican said yesterday, adding that he must repudiate his views if he
wants to be a Roman Catholic clergyman.

The statement by Bishop Richard Williamson "doesn't appear to respect the
conditions the Vatican set out for him," said Rev. Federico Lombardi, a
spokesman for the Pope.

In an interview broadcast last month on Swedish state television and in
previous letters and speeches, Bishop Williamson denied that six million
Jews were killed in the Holocaust, saying about 200,000 or 300,000 were
murdered. He said none was gassed.

Bishop Williamson apologized for his remarks on Thursday upon his arrival
in his native Britain after being ordered to leave Argentina. He said he
would never have made them if he had known "the full harm and hurt to
which they would give rise."

But he didn't say he had been wrong or that he no longer believed what he
had said.

Yesterday, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said Germany could
issue a European-wide arrest warrant on hate-crimes charges for Bishop
Williamson since the Swedish TV interview was conducted in Germany.

State prosecutors in Regensburg, Germany, have opened a preliminary
investigation into whether Bishop Williamson broke German laws against
Holocaust denial.

His remarks prompted widespread outrage among Jewish groups and others.
They also embarrassed the Vatican since they were broadcast only days
before the Holy See announced it was lifting Bishop Williamson's
excommunication and that of three other bishops.

The four, members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, had been
excommunicated after being consecrated as bishops without papal consent in
1988.

Bowing to the criticism, the Vatican on Feb. 4 demanded that Bishop
Williamson "absolutely and unequivocally distance himself from his remarks
about the Shoah if he is to be admitted to episcopal functions in the
church." Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

The German-born Pope Benedict XVI also met with Jewish leaders at the
Vatican and told them it was unacceptable for anyone - particularly a
clergyman - to deny or minimize the Holocaust.

In his statement yesterday, Father Lombardi noted that Bishop Williamson's
comments were not addressed to the Pope.

Rather, Bishop Williamson issued a statement that was carried by the Zenit
Catholic news agency and posted on the society's British website and its
news agency.

In it, Bishop Williamson said he was only giving the opinion of a
"non-historian" during the Swedish TV interview. He said that opinion was
"formed 20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available, and rarely
expressed in public since."

"To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I
apologize."

Jewish groups were not impressed.

T"his is another sham statement that doesn't recant any of his earlier
remarks about the Holocaust," said Abraham Foxman, national director of
the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor. "Bishop Williamson
must unequivocally acknowledge the full extent of the Holocaust and
recognize the fact of the existence of the gas chambers."

The American Jewish Committee praised the Vatican for demanding more.

"Until he explicitly says otherwise, he remains in the camp of the
Holocaust deniers," said American Jewish Congress executive director David
Harris. "He is not fooling anyone, least of all the Vatican."

(source:  Associated Press)

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

Vatican newspaper says Allied governments did little to stop Holocaust


In a lengthy article, the Vatican newspaper said the U.S. and British
governments had detailed information about the Nazi plan to exterminate
European Jews during World War II, but failed to act for many months and
even suppressed reports about the extent of the Holocaust.

The newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, contrasted Allied inaction with the
quiet efforts undertaken by Pope Pius XII to save as many Jews as possible
through clandestine assistance.

The article, published Aug. 13, reviewed historical information in support
of an argument frequently made by Vatican experts: While critics have
focused on Pope Pius' supposed "silence" on the Holocaust, little
attention has been given to documented evidence that the U.S. and British
governments ignored or minimized reports of extermination plans.

The article quotes heavily from the diary of Henry Morgenthau Jr., U.S.
secretary of the treasury during the war, who said that as early as August
1942 administration officials "knew that the Nazis were planning to
exterminate all the Jews of Europe."

Morgenthau cited a telegram dated Aug. 24, 1942, and passed on to the
State Department, that relayed a report of Hitler's plan to kill between
3.5 million and 4 million Jews, possibly using cyanide poison. The Vatican
newspaper reproduced a copy of the telegram.

Eventually, in early 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the
War Refugee Board that was credited with saving tens of thousands of
Jewish lives. But for 18 months before then, despite increasingly alarming
reports, U.S. officials "dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated
when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed
information about atrocities," Morgenthau wrote.

The Vatican newspaper article also cited a series of State Department
orders apparently aimed at preventing reports on Nazi atrocities from
reaching the public, which would have increased pressure on the
administration for action.

When the U.S. government was finally convinced to begin some efforts to
rescue and relocate European Jews, the British government stalled, the
article said. It cited a British Foreign Office cable that warned of "the
difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they
be rescued from enemy occupied territory" and advised against allocating
any funds for the project.

Morgenthau described this message as "a satanic combination of British
chill and diplomatic double talk, cold and correct and adding up to a
sentence of death."

The Vatican newspaper said that, while all this was going on, in
Nazi-occupied Rome Pope Pius was carrying out "the only plausible and
practical form of defense of the Jews and other persecuted people" --
hiding them in various church-run institutions. In the end, although more
than 2,000 Jews were deported from Rome and killed, about 10,000 Jews of
Rome were saved, it said.

(source:  Catholic News Service)





GERMANY:

German holocaust-denier's jail term upheld


An appeals court has upheld the February conviction of Horst Mahler,
reaffirming his 6-year jail sentence.

A former member of Germany's national Democratic Party is to serve 6
years in prison for denying the Holocaust.

A federal court in Germany has rejected an appeal by the former member of
Germany's national Democratic Party, saying he must serve his sentence for
denying the Holocaust.

The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe recently reaffirmed the six year
sentence of Horst Mahler.

Mahler was last tried in a Munich state court in February.

He has been found guilty for posting videos on the internet denying the
Holocaust and distributing CDs promoting anti-Jewish hatred.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany.

(source:  Press TV)

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

LOST IN TRANSLATION----English Nazi Slogans Are Legal, German Court Rules


Using Nazi symbols and slogans is a punishable crime in Germany. But now
neo-Nazis may have more leeway after a federal German court ruled that
slogans are not illegal if they are translated into another language.

Is a Nazi slogan still a Nazi slogan if it is uttered in English instead
of German? Not necessarily -- at least according to Germany's Federal
Court of Justice.

In a landmark decision Thursday, the Karlsruhe-based court ruled that
using Nazi slogans translated into a language other than German would not,
in general, be a punishable crime.

The ruling is linked to a case in which a neo-Nazi was prosecuted and
fined 4,200 ($6,000) in 2005 for distributing clothing and merchandising
bearing the slogan "Blood and Honour," written in English. With the
ruling, the court overturned the verdict against the neo-Nazi, who was not
named, but said it could still be possible to prosecute him under other
laws relating to right-wing extremism.

Although "Blood and Honour," which is also the name of a banned far-right
organization, alludes to the Hitler Youth motto "Blut und Ehre," the court
ruled that translating the words represented a "fundamental change" in the
slogan, meaning its use was no longer punishable under German law. The
judges said that Nazi slogans were characterized not only by their actual
meaning but also by the fact that they were in German.

Senior judge Jrg-Peter Becker said that the court "is aware that its
decision gives neo-Nazis a degree of leeway to translate their chants and
slogans." However, he added that legislation by itself is not enough to
eliminate Nazi ideas from public discourse.

Giving the Hitler salute or using symbols or slogans associated with
"unconstitutional" organizations such as the Nazi party is a serious crime
in Germany, punishable by up to three years in prison. In 2008, police
launched an investigation after a senior member of the far-right National
Democratic Party (NPD) draped a banned swastika flag across a coffin at a
funeral.

(source:  Spiegel)


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


Passage of time helps last Nazis


The trial of a former German infantry commander for Nazi war crimes took
11 months, and ended in what is nowadays a rare conviction.

Josef Scheungraber has been jailed for life after being convicted of the
murder of 10 civilians in an Italian village during World War II.

A Munich state court sentenced the 90-year-old German after a type of
trial that is now quite rare.

The passage of time since the war and the patchy record of governments in
pursuing Nazis and their collaborators mean that, while many Nazis have
faced justice and been convicted, far more have slipped through the net.

In the 1950s and 1960s, German judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer estimated
there were 100,000 Germans responsible in one way or another for mass
killings of Jews during the war. Other estimates suggested a figure as
high as 300,000.

The judge also said fewer than 5,000 people had been prosecuted and, while
there have been many convictions, there has not been a significantly large
addition to that number in the years since.

Late efforts

Serge Klarsfeld pursued several Nazis and collaborators after WWII,
including Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier. He runs an
organisation called Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France.

While welcoming Tuesday's guilty verdict, he expressed doubt that
Scheungraber would ever actually be jailed.

   "This reinforces the message that the passage of time in no way
diminishes the crimes of the perpetrator"----Dr Efraim Zuroff, Simon
Wiesenthal Center

"It's good to have such decisions because it helps the families in Italy
and it's a solution to their pain," he said.

"But he will not go to jail, he is too old.

"Today's tendencies are that we can pursue these people because they are
old and they will not go to jail, even if convicted.

"If, decades ago, Nazis had been pursued, they would have been younger and
would have had to be sent to jail. Prosecutors do not want to send old men
to jail."

Nazi trials

Mr Klarsfeld's argument is borne out to some extent by cases such as that
of French Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon.

He was famously convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity for his
role in the collaborationist Vichy government, and sentenced to 10 years
in a French prison in 1998.

But he served only three, on grounds of ill health, and was released in
2002.

Lithuanian Algimantas Dailide was convicted in 2006, aged 85, of
persecuting and arresting two Poles and 12 Jews while a member of the
Nazi-backed police in WWII.

But the judge at his trial in Vilnius did not give him a jail term, saying
he was too old and "no longer a threat to society".

Dr Zuroff says Nazis should be pursued regardless of their age

Erich Priebke, aged in his eighties, was jailed for life in Italy in 1998
for his role in the massacre of 335 Italians in 1944.

But in 1999 he was given leave to serve the remainder of his sentence
under house arrest in his lawyer's home, on grounds of ill health.

He was also later briefly allowed to work at his lawyer's offices in Rome,
before his work permit was cancelled following furious protests.

Mr Klarsfeld does welcome current attempts by Germany to bring Nazis to
justice - the cases of John Demjanjuk and Heinrich Boere are due to be
heard in Germany within months, for example.

But he says these efforts should have been exerted much sooner.

"Germany's efforts today are something that is positive, but at the same
time the same prosecutors should have pursued Nazis 20 or 30 years ago,
because now they are only able to go after people who were often nothing
more than guards and had little responsibility.

"But their superiors, who had more responsibility, were not pursued and
now they are dead."

'No excuse'

Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is based
in Jerusalem, said he was "very pleased" with Scheungraber's conviction.

"This reinforces the message that the passage of time in no way diminishes
the crimes of the perpetrator.

"It's important to bring these people to justice because they are guilty
and deserve to be punished," he said.

"Old age is no excuse for murder."

Dr Zuroff also acknowledged that there had been a "recent distinct
improvement in the efforts made by the German judiciary, which is better
late than never".

"There's a realisation that we're in the final phase of bringing Nazis to
justice. These trials will not be possible in five or seven years' time.
It's important that this is done while it can be done."

However, Dr Zuroff believes there is still enough time for several more
alleged Nazis to be put on trial before their age takes them beyond the
reach of the courts.

"We will see several additional trials, with more non-Germans such as John
Demjanjuk placed on trial.

"We encourage the German judiciary to do as much as they can to bring
these people to justice."

(source:  BBC News)

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


Demjanjuk lawyer calls for case to be closed


John Demjanjuk's attorney asked Munich's state court on Friday to close
the case against his client, arguing that Israel has already tried
him on accusations of being a guard at the Nazi's Sobibor death camp.

Demjanjuk has been in German custody since May, when he was transferred
from his home in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, after losing a court battle to
avoid deportation from the United States.

Munich prosecutors formally charged him last month as an accessory to the
murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp. The Munich court has
yet to decide whether to accept the charges and set a trial date.

Demjanjuk's attorney Ulrich Busch filed a motion arguing that the German
charges should be dropped, citing a 1993 ruling by the Israeli Supreme
Court overturning a 1988 conviction and death sentence in Israel for being
a Nazi guard known as Ivan the Terrible who operated the gas chamber at
the Treblinka death camp.

Munich prosecutors said in their indictment that the Israeli case did not
focus on Demjanjuk's alleged activities at Sobibor. They could not
immediately be reached for comment on Busch's motion.

The Israeli Supreme Court had said in reviewing the Israeli case that
there was strong evidence Demjanjuk had served as a guard at another death
camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Sobibor.

But Israel's attorney general at the time would not prosecute Demjanjuk on
the Sobibor accusation, saying it could violate the ban on double
jeopardy, or trying him a second time on the same charges.

"Common sense alone should cause anyone interested in this case to wonder
why the Israelis would have let my father return to the USA upon his
acquittal if it were possible to fairly try him again," Demjanjuk's son,
John Demjanjuk Jr. said in an e-mail from the U.S. to the Associated
Press.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk denies any wrong doing. He maintains that he was
a Red Army soldier who was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

Busch has also filed several other motions asking for the case to be
dismissed, but they are still pending and it was not clear when they would
be heard.

(source: Associated Press)





AUSTRALIA:

Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben jailed in Australia ----Fredrick Toben, an
Australian man who was convicted earlier this year of publishing
anti-Semitic material on the internet, has started a three-month jail term
after his appeal was quashed.


Toben who is wanted in Germany on charges of denying the Holocaust was
found guilty in May of 24 counts of contempt of a 2002 court ruling that
barred him from publishing anti-Semitic material on the website of his
organisation, the Adelaide Institute.

The material found to be in breach of the order included suggestions that
the Holocaust did not happen, that questioned whether there were gas
chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, and that challenged the intelligence
of Jews who questioned Holocaust deniers' beliefs.

In their verdict, the judges of the Federal Court said the case was not
about the Holocaust but about whether Toben had complied with orders of
the court.

"Obedience to the court is not optional," they said in their ruling.

The judges said Toben, 64, had a disregard for the orders of the court and
had acted to undermine the authority of the court.

The 2002 case against Toben stemmed from a discrimination case against him
by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian
Jewry.

Toben participated in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2006
conference called to debate whether the Second World War genocide of Jews
took place, where he argued that the Auschwitz death camp was too small
for the mass murder of Jews to have been carried out there.

He suggested only 2,007 people could have been killed at the camp.

(source:  The Telegraph)

Aug. 14



Police Confirm Cairo Link to Fugitive Nazi


The German police confirmed Thursday that a briefcase filled with
documents discovered in Cairo belonged to the Nazi fugitive and
concentration camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim. The police
could not confirm that he had died in Egypt in 1992 as witnesses there and
in Germany said.

Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi (February 5, 2009) Experts
working for the police in the German state of Baden-Wrttemberg found
evidence showing that the bag and the papers inside it, including personal
letters, financial documents and medical records, must have been in a
North African country for many years.

Analysis of dust in the old leather briefcase, handed over to The New York
Times and the German television station ZDF by the Egyptian family Dr.
Heim lived with at the time of his death, included a particular form of
lime that is found in Egypt, as well as the presence of certain
micro-organisms supporting its authenticity. Handwriting experts also
compared documents from the briefcase with other samples of Dr. Heims
handwriting.

"The extensive criminal technical analyses of the documents from the
briefcase lead us to the conclusion that it actually came from Aribert
Heim," said the police in a statement.

German investigators traveled to Cairo in July to meet with their Egyptian
counterparts, who confirmed the veracity of documents showing that Dr.
Heim entered Egypt in 1963, months after he fled Germany as the police
there prepared to arrest him.

Dr. Heim was accused of killing inmates at the concentration camp of
Mauthausen in grisly fashion by performing unnecessary fatal operations on
prisoners without anesthesia and injecting poison, including gasoline,
into the hearts of others.

He took the name Tarek Hussein Farid after converting to Islam, according
to witnesses and documents found in the briefcase. Officials in Cairo
issued a certified copy of a death certificate under that name, but
according to the statement, the police have been unable to confirm that it
is one and the same person. German investigators have not had the
opportunity to question witnesses in Egypt.

"At what point concrete results can be expected is not yet clear," the
police statement said. Unresolved remains the question of where Dr. Heim's
body was buried. Witnesses said that he was interred in a mass grave after
a failed attempt to donate his body for use in scientific research.

"I'm glad that it has been confirmed that my father lived in Egypt and I'm
very optimistic that there will be an official confirmation of his death
in the near future," said his son, Rdiger Heim, in an interview on
Thursday. "Aribert Heim will never come back because he is dead," said Mr.
Heim, who has said he was with his father at the time of his death.

In February the police in Baden-Wrttemberg said they had information "from
the personal circle" of Dr. Heim, who would now be 95, indicating that he
died of rectal cancer in Cairo in 1992. Dr. Mohsen Barsoum, one of the
doctors whose names appeared on the medical files found in the briefcase,
recalled that he had treated the man he knew as Tarek Hussein Farid and
that he suffered from an advanced form of the disease.

Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said
that he had no doubt that Dr. Heim had lived in Egypt, but continued to
question whether he had died there as well. "What's missing for me is
really the forensics on the body, this is the problem," said Mr. Zuroff
in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, where he is based.

(source:  New York Times)

July 26


LATIN AMERICA:

Latin American Jews contend with spike in anti-Semitism----Derogatory
political statements and attacks on synagogues have increased since
Israel's January war in Gaza.


A Sunday afternoon, the perfect family day.

Hordes of Jewish families in Buenos Aires headed downtown to celebrate the
61st anniversary of the state of Israel, an event sponsored by the city.

But the afternoon, in May, was interrupted when about 30 young men and
women began wielding sticks amid the dancing and singing, leaving 10
wounded and the Jewish community shocked.

"If it happened once, it can happen again," says Jorge Elbaum, the
executive director of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations,
which includes schools, synagogues, and social clubs. He has called off
all public events until further notice.

Across Latin America, Jewish leaders say they are contending with a new
level of anti-Semitism that heated up after Israel's military operation in
Gaza in December.

From La Paz, Bolivia, to Panama City, political expressions have turned
increasingly derogatory, with graffiti and banners equating the Israel
conflict with Nazism. There have been bomb threats in synagogues
throughout the region.

Venezuela saw the worst attack: A synagogue was desecrated Jan. 31 and
Jewish leaders there have even condemned President Hugo Chvez of
tolerating, and even fomenting, anti-Semitic sentiment.

"There is a new current of anti-Semitism in Latin America, connected to a
discourse of anti-Zionism," says Sergio Widder, the director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center for Latin America in Buenos Aires.

Onslaught in Venezuela

Nowhere does the Jewish community in Latin America feel more under attack
than in Venezuela, as the country's leader, his cabinet, and
pro-government media have launched a steady barrage of condemnation toward
Israel. That rhetoric sometimes seeps over into anti-Semitic behavior, say
Jewish leaders.

An article on the pro-government media site Aporrea in January, for
example, wrote that society should publicly demand "that any Jew on any
street, commercial center, or public square take a position shouting
slogans in support of Palestine and against the abortion-like state of
Israel." It was later taken off the site.

In late January, the Mariperez synagogue in Caracas was broken into  an
act seen by many in the Jewish community as the greatest anti-Semitic
attack in Venezuelan history.

Fifteen people, including several policemen, were arrested after they
broke into the synagogue, taking off with money and scrawling anti-Jewish
graffiti such as "Damn the Jews," "Jews out of here," and "Israel
assassins" on the walls.

They also took out the Torah from its storage place and threw sacred cups
on the floor. The government claims the incident was a robbery
masquerading as an anti-Semitic attack.

Levi Benshimol, a communications consultant and former president of the
National College of Journalism in Caracas, says Mr. Chvez has encouraged
fundamentalist factions within his movement for "21st-century socialism"
by failing to distinguish sufficiently between Israel's policies and the
practice of the Jewish faith, despite several statements issued by Chvez's
government condemning the desecration.

"I have the impression that the president hasn't been able to
differentiate between the Israeli state and the Jewish religion, and in
that lack of semantic differentiation of not making it clear what is a
state and what is a religion, he creates confusion in the people as well
as confrontation in fundamentalists," says Mr. Benshimol.

Chvez has been a fierce critic of Israeli foreign policy. In January, he
expelled Israel's ambassador and called Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza
a "holocaust." And Chvez's friendship with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, a professed Holocaust-denier who famously said Israel would
collapse, has also made Venezuela's Jewish community uncomfortable.

The rhetoric reverberates as far as Argentina, says Mr. Widder, turning on
a video documenting Chavez's most recent statements condemning Israeli
action in the Middle East.

Argentina has Latin America's biggest Jewish population with 230,000
residents, and even though a 1994 bomb attack at the Israelite Mutual
Association that killed 85 is etched in the public memory, many say it is
a tolerant society  much more than in decades past.

Venezuela, too, which has had less influence than its neighbors from the
Roman Catholic Church, has historically been tolerant of religious groups.
Julio Schlosser, secretary-general of the Argentine Israelite Mutual
Association, says that most of the recent attacks here are coming from
fringe radical groups, mostly on the left.

Anti-Zionism turns to anti-Semitism

Yet anti-Zionism has given anti-Semitism a new voice in Latin America. "It
is politically incorrect to be anti-Semitic," says Mr. Elbaum, "but it is
politically correct to be anti-Zionist."

Jewish leaders agree that the right to express views on the Israeli
conflict is guaranteed, but say that political expressions have turned
more personal. In January, protesters congregated outside a hotel owned by
Eduardo Elsztain, a prominent Jewish businessman, claiming he is financing
movements in the Middle East.

"We have always had protests against the Israeli Embassy but this was
against an Argentinian citizen," Widder says. "What we do not know is if
this was an isolated case or a precedent."

It was followed by the attacks at the anniversary celebration in May. At
least five people, from a group identified as the Front for Revolutionary
Action, a leftist radical group, were arrested on charges including
violation of antidiscrimination laws. Their supporters, who have protested
their arrest, say that the case criminalizes criticism of Israel.

Marches throughout the region have used incendiary rhetoric and symbolism,
in some cases superimposing the Star of David with a swastika.

"It is not criticism of Israel," says Michael Salberg, director of
international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League in New York. "It is
pure and simple anti-Semitism."

(source:  Christian Science Monitor)


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

August 1


CALIFORNIA----obituary

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt dies at 86; Auschwitz survivor fought to regain
portraits she painted there

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, an artist who had been forced to paint portraits
of fellow prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp and later sought
to recover the artworks from a museum there, died Wednesday in Northern
California.

Babbitt, 86, died of cancer at her home in Felton, near Santa Cruz, her
daughter Michele Kane said.

Babbitt's long and unsuccessful campaign to retrieve the seven paintings
of doomed Gypsy prisoners from a Polish state museum at Auschwitz became a
rallying point for many other artists and Holocaust survivors. Although
the museum recently sent Babbitt reproductions in what Kane acknowledged
as "a kind gesture," that was not enough, Kane said.

Babbitt "was terribly sad and upset and so despondent that she never got
her pictures back. 'Heartbroken' is the right word," Kane said.

The family pledged to continue fighting for the paintings, which Babbitt
said helped save her life.

From her childhood in a Czech-Jewish family to her later success as a
Hollywood animator, Babbitt was a witty, upbeat woman whose personality
belied some of the tragedies she endured, said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley,
the Nevada Democrat and Babbitt family friend who worked on her cause.

"For her to continue this quest took not only a certain strength of
character, but a very optimistic view of life, rather than a pessimistic
view," Berkley said Friday.

Babbitt's wry humor was evident during a 2006 interview, when she showed
the forearm scar where her concentration camp number had been tattooed.
(She had it removed during an unrelated surgery.) The number, 61016, had a
symmetry that she sometimes used to play the California Lottery. "It
doesn't work," she quipped.

A young art student when she was deported to Auschwitz, Babbitt drew a
"Snow White" scene on a wall of a children's barracks to help soothe the
youngsters. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed hideous
experiments on prisoners, heard of her talents and ordered her to paint
portraits as mementos for his racist theories.

Babbitt said she told Mengele she would rather die if her mother was not
also let out of a group of Jews scheduled to be gassed. Her mother was
allowed to live. Her father and her fiance died elsewhere in the
Holocaust.

Babbitt said she wanted to briefly hold the paintings, which bear her
signature, and then lend them to a museum of her choice. "I wouldn't be
alive if it hadn't been for those paintings, and my kids wouldn't be
here," said Babbitt, who is also survived by another daughter, Karin
Babbitt, and three grandchildren.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum insists it is the rightful home
of the paintings, which it says it bought from camp survivors in the 1960s
and '70s. Artifacts proving Holocaust history should be in their original
setting, museum officials say.

Babbitt and her mother managed to survive Auschwitz and evacuation
marches. After liberation, Babbitt went to Paris and became an assistant
to American cartoonist Art Babbitt, one of Disney's "Snow White"
animators. They married and moved to Hollywood and later divorced. Dina
Babbitt worked in animation at various Hollywood studios.

Then, out of the blue in 1973, the Auschwitz museum notified her that it
had the paintings. An official had noticed that the signatures matched
those on Babbitt illustrations in an unrelated book. Stunned, she began
her campaign, traveling to Poland and winning a supportive U.S.
congressional resolution.

Babbitt's efforts represented "an important aspect" of Holocaust
survivors' struggles for restitution and to regain property stolen from
them, said Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for
Holocaust Studies, a Washington-based organization active in her cause.

Medoff and celebrated comic book artist Neal Adams helped produce a
six-page cartoon version of Babbitt's life that was published this year.
Adams said Babbitt symbolized the struggle of an individual against an
immoral state. "Now the woman has died and she doesn't have her paintings.
That's the very worst part," Adams said.

After cremation, private services for Babbitt were held Friday and plans
are pending for a public memorial.

(source:  Los Angeles Times)



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


August 3

USA--NEW YORK:


A Bronx woman has been charged with murder and robbery in the death of an
89-year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor, and police said a man is
still being sought in connection with the death.

Felix Brinkmann dances at a 2008 birthday party. "He was not the kind of
guy who had enemies," his son says.

Angela Murray, 30, was arrested Saturday, according to the Manhattan
district attorney's office, and is accused of strangling Guido
Felix Brinkmann on Thursday in his Upper East Side apartment.

Murray was arraigned Sunday and charged with one count of murder in the
second degree and three counts of robbery.

Brinkmann, a native of Latvia, was a Holocaust survivor who escaped death
for a year while he was in the Mauthausen, Ebensee and Auschwitz camps. He
had been slated for the gas chambers five times, but each time, he used
his fluency in German to talk his way out, said his son, Rick Brinkman,
who spells his last name differently.

After the war, he was stunned to discover his wife, who had also been
shipped to Auschwitz, alive and well in Poland.

The Brinkmanns immigrated to America, where Brinkmann spent years in the
bar and nightclub business, co-founding the Adam's Apple disco in
Manhattan in 1971.

In recent years, he had been the real estate manager of a mixed-use
building in the Bronx, working "seven days a week, without fail," Rick
Brinkman said.

On Thursday, the building's superintendent grew concerned when Brinkmann
did not show up for work. He notified Brinkmann's son and received
permission to enter the father's apartment, where he had lived alone since
his wife died last year.

Brinkmann was found face-down in his bedroom, his hands bound behind his
back and his body showing blunt-force trauma wounds, police said.
Brinkmann's blue 2009 Honda Civic had been stolen, along with one of two
safes in his apartment, police said. The vehicle was later recovered in
the Bronx.

Rick Brinkman speculated that the killing was random. "Anybody who knew
him really liked him," the son said. "He was not the kind of guy who had
enemies."

(source:  CNN)



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


August 10

USA:

Ex-homeless woman leaves $150,000 to Hebrew University


A Jewish Holocaust survivor who later lived on the streets of New
York City has left half of her $300,000 estate to Hebrew University, the
school said Monday.

"It moved us very much," university spokesman Yefet Ozery said in a
telephone interview from Jerusalem, where the school is based.

"Hebrew University has many, many donors and benefactors and supporters
and many people remember us in their will, but I haven't come across such
a person that lived actually as a poor woman who would give half of her
bequest to Hebrew University," Ozery said.

The woman, who died two years ago in her 90s, has not been identified
publicly at the request of her estate's executor, he said.

"He didn't want her name to be remembered as a homeless" person, Ozery
said.

The woman, who had no known relatives, survived a concentration
camp and was living on the streets of New York's Upper West Side several
years ago when a Jewish accountant befriended her, Ozery said.

"He and his wife adopted her pretty much to their home and supplied her
with basic needs," which included finding her public housing, he said.

In return, the woman moved the couple's car from one side of the street to
the other so that it would not be ticketed, he said.

At the time, they had no clue to her net worth, Ozery said.

"When the woman told him and his wife that she would be leaving a will,
they thought to themselves that there would be nothing there because they
knew her as owning nothing," he said.

It was only when the woman died that the couple learned of her wealth,
which she had kept in a bank.

"They were very surprised to find out that she left this amount and that
half of it went to Hebrew University, Ozery said.

How she accumulated the money, the balance of which went to other causes
and to her friends, is not known, he said.

Her executor -- the accountant who befriended her -- told school officials
of the gift three months ago, but they did not learn the circumstances
behind it until last week, Ozery said. There was no obvious connection
between her and the school.

A friend of the accountant took the first check to the school last week
and told administrators the story behind it.

"Everybody was moved and excited," Ozery said. "This was a special story
and a special gift."

In keeping with the woman's wishes, the money is to be spent on medical
research and scholarships for researchers, he said.

(source:  CNN)


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



August 11



GERMANY:

PUNISHMENT FOR 1944 MASSACRE----German Court Sentences 90-Year-Old War
Criminal to Life



In one of the last Nazi war crimes trials, a court in Munich has sentenced
former Wehrmacht lieutenant Josef S., 90, to life imprisonment for
ordering the execution of 10 Italian civilians in June 1944.

A 90-year-old German man who served as an officer of the Nazi- era German
armed forces, the Wehrmacht, during World War II has been sentenced to
life imprisonment for ordering the execution of 10 Italian civilians in
1944.

In one of the last Nazi war crimes trials, a Munich court on Tuesday found
Josef S. guilty of murder for ordering the killings in the Tuscan village
of Falzano di Cortona, located between Arezzo and Perugia, in revenge for
an attack by partisans on German troops in which two German soldiers were
killed.

The former company commander had denied the charges throughout the
11-month trial and had made a statement denying all knowledge of the
events. But a former employee who worked in a carpentry business run by
Josef S. testified that his boss had bragged about being present during
the killings.

Josef S., a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht's Mountain Pioneer Batallion 818,
was found guilty of having ordered two punitive operations at the end of
June 1944. He told his men "to systematically search the area and arrest
several persons, primarily males," said state prosecutor Hans-Joachim
Lutz. Anyone resisting arrest was to be shot dead on the spot, and the
arrested people were to be brought to a central location and killed. Josef
S. was 25 at the time.

An Italian court had already sentenced Josef S. to life in absentia in
2006. He had lived in the town of Ottobrunn near Munich for decades.

Germany will hold another Nazi war crimes trial in October when
Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk will face charges of being an accessory to
27,900 counts of murder at Nazi death camps.

(source:  Der Spiegel)





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


August 13



GERMANY:

After latest sentence, Germans eager for Nazi trials' end----Former
officer Josef Scheungraber will face life in prison, a court ruled
Tuesday. The next trial, of John Demjanjuk, may be the last for Nazi
crimes in Germany.



When Germany hosted and placed third in the World Cup three years ago,
fans draped themselves in the German flag, waved the flag from cars, and
unfurled it from living room windows. Sixty-four years after the end of
World War II, it finally felt acceptable to be German again.

Well, almost.

In one of the last Nazi trials to take place, a German court Tuesday
sentenced Josef Scheungraber to life in prison. He was convicted of
ordering the murder of 10 Italian civilians while serving as a Nazi
officer in Tuscany, a revenge crime for the murder of two German troops in
June 1944. Gino Massetti, who survived the massacre as a boy, testified at
the trial.

Now, the final chapter of living Nazi history is being written. The last
trial in Germany for alleged Nazi crimes is expected to begin in October
for John Demjanjuk, who was deported from the United States in May to face
charges he was a guard at the notorious Treblinka concentration camp. He
is alleged to have helped operate its gas chamber.

For many Germans, the trials can't be finished soon enough.

"We hear about the trial every day on TV, we read about it every day in
the newspaper, politicians make sure it is as the top of the agenda," says
Ursula Weber-Kelke, a retired schoolteacher from Darmstadt. "We are
fatigued from the constant attention to it. It never stops.

"We are not saying justice shouldn't be carried out. These men committed
crimes and need to be punished. Only that this horrible era continues to
chase us. And it's time to move on."

A recent poll suggests that is exactly what's happening. The Identity
Foundation in Dusseldorf reports that 73 percent of Germans classify
themselves as "proud to be German" today, more than twice as many who felt
that way less than 10 years ago.

"I think we are ready to say the past is the past," says Heiko Topp, a
German graphic designer now living in Northern Ireland. "When I was
traveling in Israel, I often had the question about how I feel about what
happened. I can only say that I cannot undo the past. If I could, I would.
But it is also not healthy to constantly be wrapped up in it. We need to
evaluate what happened, but we also need to live in the world today."

More and more Germans are feeling less personal shame about the Nazi era,
and are viewing it as a historical event. The number of visitors to
Hitler's Munich apartment and his bunker is on the rise.

"I talk to my daughter about the war. Whatever questions she has, I answer
openly. She needs to be educated about it," says Mr. Topp.

Topp grew up in East Germany, and says he can see how far the country has
come.

"I don't say we are patriotic like Americans are patriotic, but this
generation is not ashamed to be German. The Nazi era was a very, very long
time ago. Most of us were not even born then."

(source:  Christian Science Monitor)

July 31




NEW YORK:

Nazi concentration camp survivor, 90, found strangled


A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor was found strangled Thursday in his
Upper East Side apartment, a spokeswoman for the New York City medical
examiner said Friday.

Felix Brinkmann, a native of Latvia, escaped death for a year while he was
in the Nazis' Mauthausen, Ebensee and Auschwitz concentration camps. Five
times he had been slated for the gas chambers, but each time he used his
fluency in German to talk his way out.

After the war ended, he was stunned to discover that his wife, who had
also been shipped to Auschwitz, was alive and well in Poland.

The Brinkmanns immigrated to America, where Felix spent years in the bar
and nightclub business, co-founding in 1971 Adam's Apple disco in Manhattan.

In recent years, he had served as the real estate manager of a mixed-use
building in the Bronx, working "seven days a week, without fail," said his
son Rick Brinkman, who spells his last name differently than his father.

On Thursday, the building's superintendent grew concerned when Brinkmann
did not show up to work. He notified Brinkmann's son and received
permission to enter the father's apartment, where he had lived alone
since his wife died last year.

Brinkmann's body was found lying face down in his bedroom, his hands
bound, his body showing blunt-force trauma wounds, police said.
Brinkmann's blue 2009 Honda Civic may have been stolen and a safe in his
apartment tampered with, police said.

A police spokesman said authorities were looking for "a man and a woman"
in connection with the homicide.

Rick Brinkman speculated that the killing was random in nature. "Anybody
who knew him really liked him," the son said. "He was not the kind of guy
who had enemies."

(source:  CNN)

July 31




Horrors Of Camps Overshadow Killings By German SS


Before the Jews of Western Europe were transported to camps, where many
eventually died, the special forces of the German SS, known as
Einsatzgruppen, roamed through Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, murdering an
estimated 1.5 million Jews and partisans.

This little-known part of history is the focus of Hitler's Hidden
Holocaust. a new TV documentary series by National Geographic that starts
Sunday.

"The shooting operations were very much in-your-face killings," historian
Peter Black of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says in the documentary.
"They were not by remote control the way gas chamber operations were."

Historian Timothy Snyder of Yale University, who wrote an essay in the
July 16 issue of The New York Review of Books called "Holocaust: The
Ignored Reality," says the documentary sheds light on an important aspect
of World War II.

"It performs the very important service of forcing our eyes to the East,
to realizing the Holocaust begins not when Auschwitz begins to take
transports from Hungary or from Western Europe, which is very late in the
war," he tells Robert Siegel.

He says, however, that the documentary sheds light only on the
Einsatzgruppen, leaving the question of how 2,000 people could shoot
millions of Soviet citizens.

"The next thing that one has to see is that the Einsatzgruppen were not
acting alone," he says, adding that they received considerable help from
the German police and army.

Snyder says that by the time Auschwitz was operational, about 70 percent
of the Jews who were going to be killed in the Holocaust were already
dead. Many of those were the Jews of the Soviet Union, who were targeted
by the Einsatzgruppen, the German police, the German military and their
helpers.

"The farther east you go, in general, the less Americans, the less West
Europeans think about [the killings]," he says. "And so, the
Einsatzgruppen, who were active ... farther east, are indeed part of the
Holocaust that we know the least about."

Snyder says the knowledge of the horrors of Auschwitz warps public
understanding of the Holocaust.

"It's as though once we know about Auschwitz there couldn't be anything
worse, and that's a very understandable perspective," he says.

Snyder says the reason there is awareness of what went on in Auschwitz is
that it was a labor camp as well as a death facility. Three other
facilities  Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec  served only as death camps and
killed more people than Auschwitz.

But "because there was no labor component to those camps, there were
effectively no survivors. ... So there was no one to tell the tale,"
Snyder says.

Another reason not much is known about the eastern deaths, he says, is
that many of those stories disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. After
World War II, the Soviets did not want to discuss the fact that Jews were
killed in the Holocaust, counting their numbers with other Soviet
citizens.

Soviet leader Josef Stalin, Snyder says, tried to create the myth that the
Russians suffered the most and died the most in World War II. He says that
though Russians did suffer and die in horrible numbers, Ukrainians,
Belarussians and Jews fared worse.

"Stalin was very keen to deny the special character of German policy
toward the Jews because that would have displaced the Soviet people and,
in particular, the Russian people, from the story of suffering and victory
that he wanted to tell," Snyder says.

(source:  National Public Radio)





AUSTRIA:

Fate of Holocaust institute teeters amid dispute


The future of an Austrian institute for Holocaust studies was in
doubt Tuesday over a dispute with the city's Jewish community.

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies began provisional
operations in January after being stymied for years by funding problems.

Its aim, among other things, is to give scholars from around the world the
possibility to carry out research projects using the roughly 8,000 files
of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and parts of a vast archive
belonging to the Jewish Community Vienna.

Last week, the institute's seven-member executive committee resigned in
protest, asserting that the Jewish community was blocking access to its
archive, the Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" reported on its Web site
late Monday.

When asked for confirmation, Anton Pelinka, the institute's chairman, said
in an e-mail to The Associated Press: "Yes, we have resigned. And it is up
to the Jewish Community to decide whether the Wiesenthal Institute can
survive."

Numerous Austrian organizations are involved in the project, including the
Jewish Community Vienna.

The disputed archive is made up of thousands of unevaluated administrative
files, correspondence, card indexes and books and is the largest preserved
archive of any Jewish community worldwide, according to the institute's
Web site.

Jewish community president Ariel Muzicant denied that his group was
blocking access to the archive, saying the lending issue was addressed in
a detailed and carefully prepared contract submitted to the institute's
lawyer on July 17.

"The accusation that access to the archive of the IKG Wien (Jewish
Community Vienna) is being denied to the VWI (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute)
does not conform to the facts," Muzicant said.

But a person familiar with the issue said it was precisely the contract
that triggered the executive board resignations.

"The conditions contained in the contract are completely unacceptable,"
the person said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of
the matter.

Among other things, the community wants users to request permission for
each piece that is used and reserves the right to remove pieces at will,
the person said. It was also unclear what exactly would be made available.

Pelinka, when asked to comment on the statement, said Muzicant had reneged
on his promise, articulated in a letter dated June 10, that the institute
would get the same access to the files as the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.

The draft contract was "a complete break of this promise," he said in an
e-mail.

Pelinka appeared pessimistic when asked if the institute could do without
the archive  if need be.

"The institute would become a different (much smaller) one and I am not
sure if the members would agree on that," he wrote.

Wiesenthal, who lived in the Austrian capital and died in his Vienna home
in September 2005 at the age of 96, was personally involved in planning
the center.

Wiesenthal helped find hundreds of war criminals, including one-time SS
leader Adolf Eichmann, who organized the killing of millions of Jews.

(source:  Associated Press)





USA:

Lawsuit over seized German art is dismissed



A federal judge in Nashville has dismissed a lawsuit by a Holocaust
survivor and his family against the German government over an
extensive art collection seized by the Nazis.

Retired Vanderbilt University economics professor Fred Westfield sought
unspecified damages for some 400 pieces of lost art including paintings by
El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens. The 82-year-old Westfield claimed the
paintings were owned by his family and were seized by the Nazis and sold
at auction during World War II.

U.S. District Court Judge Todd J. Campbell, in dismissing the suit, ruled
Tuesday that the seizure of the art collection was not a commercial act.
The judge also said Westfield should seek damages elsewhere than a U.S.
federal court.

(source:  Associated Press)


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

National Geographic special on Nazi crimes not so special


Though nearly seven decades have passed, the Holocaust remains the pivotal
event in recent world history. The lessons of that cataclysmic crime can
never be taught enough.

Unless those lessons are taught poorly.

A new National Geographic special, Hitler's Hidden Holocaust, attempts to
recount in 45 minutes the history of the Einsatzgruppen. Beginning in
1941, these Nazi marauders fanned out across Eastern Europe, wiping out
entire Jewish communities, one person, and one bullet at a time.

More than 1.5 million Jews died at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen, but
the Nazis decreed that wasn't enough, and thus the more efficient death
camp concept was born.

While images of slaughter and ruin in the documentary certainly sear the
viewer, due to inept storytelling, Hitler's Hidden Holocaust fails as a
documentary.

Starting with the title.

An Einsatzgruppen soldier guns down a mother and child in Ukraine,
1942.There was nothing hidden about the Einsatzgruppen. Their actions have
been well documented since the end of the war. Yad Vashem has an entire
room dedicated to their crimes.

Like similar documentaries, this one brings in historians to unpack
events. Michael Berenbaum and Peter Black of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum offer historical context, yet one can feel the filmmakers unseen
hand tugging on them to lay the emotion on thick.

It's as if the filmmakers don't trust their audience to comprehend the
monstrosity of it all.

In scene after scene, the filmmakers hammer home that the Einsatzgruppen
killed Jews one at a time (and in case you still don't get it, close-up
shots of bullet casings remind you).

The emotion runs to ghoulish extremes with the testimony of Zvi Michaeli,
a survivor of a 1941 Einsatzgruppen massacre in Latvia. Michaeli tells his
story with such breathless agony, it looks as if he might pass out from
horror right there on camera. This sequence comes dangerously close to
exploitation.

The film then bounces from one gruesome tale to the next, including a
fascinating analysis of a two-minute film fragment depicting a mass
shooting, a bit about the Nuremberg trials and a look at the work of
Patrick Debois, a French priest researching the killing fields of Eastern
Europe.

The part about Debois proves to be the most riveting sequence in the film,
and deserves a documentary all its own. Debois' research, as described in
his book 'Holocaust By Bullets,' truly did uncover a hidden Holocaust.

The film does a few things right, especially in terms of the cinematic
techniques used to augment that grainy film fragment. Coupled with insight
from historians, the viewer comes to understand much about the banality of
evil.

Similarly, morphing old photos of long-lost shtetls and showing those same
locales today, absent their former Jewish residents, emphasizes, as only
cinema can, a vanished world.

But it's not enough for 'Hitler's Hidden Holocaust' to have its intended
impact on viewers. No one could fault the filmmakers for wanting to expose
the Einsatzgruppen for the monsters that they were. But ginning up the
emotion is not necessary when simple storytelling will do.


'Hitler's Hidden Holocaust' airs 10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2 on the National
Geographic Channel.

(source:  Jewish Weekly)


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


Holocaust denier David Irving to take message to New York City

Notorious Holocaust denier David Irving has added New York to the list of
cities where he plans to spew his noxious notions about what the Nazis did
to the Jews.

"In the fall, I'll be in the New York area," said Irving, when reached on
his cell phone Friday. "I won't go into specifics."

That's probably because Irving, who once claimed that Adolf Hitler knew
nothing about the slaughter of 6 million Jews, is not likely to get a warm
reception.

"Let's put it this way, if he comes to New York, he will be confronted by
truth and justice," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American
Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants. "That's how
you deal with hate and provocation."

A British professor who recently served a year in an Austrian jail for
violating that country's law about denying the Holocaust, Irving has
quietly been criss-crossing the country and speaking to small groups.

Irving, 71, was in Chicago and preparing to give a lecture claiming that
the number of Jews who went to the gas chambers is overblown when he was
tracked down by a Daily News reporter.

The author of nearly 30 books, Irving has contended that most of the Jews,
Poles and others who died in the German concentration camps were killed by
diseases such as typhus.

(source: New York Daily News)








POLAND:

Polish comic books cover Nazi camps


A Nazi death camp may not seem a fit topic for comic books but a
new series with real-life stories from Auschwitz has come out in Poland --
in Polish and English -- to teach youngsters about the Holocaust.

The drawings, at times as raw as the reality, are offset by the humanity
of real, historically documented prisoners -- and jailers -- like the
doomed, young lovers in the first adventure, "Love in the Shadow of
Death".

The creators Beata Klos and Jacek Lech said they mulled over the idea for
years and the format -- 40-page, soft-cover comic books -- was deliberate.

"We think the history of the death camps isn't sufficiently taught to the
younger generations and rarely in a way that would draw their interest,"
Klos told AFP.

The illustrations in the series, called "Episodes from Auschwitz", do not
spare readers from what their website calls "the nightmarish depravity of
Auschwitz".

A proviso recommends the comics not be read by youngsters under 16.

More than one million, mostly European Jews perished in Auschwitz -- in
the notorious gas chambers or worked to death as slave labourers -- during
the German Nazi occupation of Poland, and the first book shows piles of
naked corpses and sadistic camp guards.

One page has dramatic frames of the heroine on the ground, kicked and
beaten with a pole by uniformed guards before being hauled off to a death
whose details were never known.

The book says it's a story that "became legendary in the camp", that of
Edward Galinski, nicknamed Edek, a non-Jewish Pole and one of the first
prisoners sent to Auschwitz in 1940, and Mala Zimetaum, a Polish Jew
arrested in Belgium in 1942.

Mala's knowledge of languages saved her from the gas chambers and got her
a "good" job, allowing her to help others.

A third figure, Nazi SS officer Edward Lubusch, an ethnic German who grew
up in Poland, helped the couple escape on June 24, 1944, but they were
caught 12 days later and executed -- she only 26, he 21.

"These three people behaved in such noble manner!" said Auschwitz
historian Adam Cyra, who acted as a consultant along with camp survivor
Kazimierz Smolen.

"The publishers did well to learn from eye-witnesses who survived," said
Smolen in comments on an independent website.

Defiant to the end, Mala slashed her arms and gave her executioner a
bloody slap. "Mala did it her own way," the blurb reads.

So did Edek. Standing at the gallows before other prisoners forced to
watch, he thrust his own head into the noose and jumped -- shocking the
hangmen who forced his body back onto the platform. "At the end Edek
surprised them once again," a blurb says, when he shouted something --
"perhaps it was 'Long live Poland' or the beginning of our national
anthem".

A frame shows prisoners removing their striped caps in respect, further
irking angry guards.

"They probably started to regret that it was a public execution," reads a
blurb.

The work, with a print run of 2,000 copies in each language, was published
in May, and has been applauded by both the official Auschwitz museum and
Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.

A second comic, on Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, is
due out in August and a third "most likely" in September, Klos said.

"The entire story is based on completely authentic facts (...) a lot of
testimony from former prisoners. This is exactly why we agreed to
distribute it," Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywinski told AFP.

"Seventy percent of our visitors are youngsters" but "it's difficult to
get them interested (in Auschwitz) using thick history books," he said.

Rabbi Schudrich, who is American, told AFP "the important thing is it
engages young people," noting "this is a problem in an age where often you
don't catch young people in the first few seconds in the world of instant
everything".

He hailed the work's "educational" message in not only helping teenagers
"to understand what the Nazi genocide against the Jews meant" but in
showing that the Nazis were also targetting others, including non-Jewish
Poles, gypsies and political opponents.

"Many people don't realise that more or less as many non-Jewish Poles were
murdered as were Jewish, it's the percentages that were different: it was
90 percent of Polish Jewry and 10 percent of the general Polish
population," the rabbi said.

The Nazis ran Auschwitz-Birkenau, near the southern Polish town of
Oswiecim, from 1940 until it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27,
1945, three months before Nazi Germany was defeated by the Allies.

It was among the most notorious facilities in Adolf Hitler's plan of
genocide against European Jews, six million of whom perished at the hands
of the Nazis during World War II.

The website for the series is www:episodesfromauschwitz.pl.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)


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


Warsaw, Poland Marking Iconic 1944 Revolt Against Nazis


Ageing Second World War Polish resistance veterans gathered this week in
the country's capital for emotional commemorations of their ill-fated 1944
Warsaw uprising against occupying Nazi Germany.

"This 65th anniversary is exceptional. Many of us won't be around for the
70th," said Zbigniew Scibor-Rylski, 92, head of an ex-combatants'
association.

The number of veterans of the two-month revolt, launched on August 1,
1944, has dwindled to 3,500.

The uprising was launched by the Home Army -- commanded by Poland's
London-based government-in-exile -- which secretly deployed around 50,000
fighters in Warsaw.

Around 18,000 Polish fighters died. Nazi losses were around 17,000.

(source:  Canwest News Service)

July 27




MOROCCO:

Morocco challenges Mideast Holocaust mind-set


From the western edge of the Muslim world, the King of Morocco has dared
to tackle one of the most inflammatory issues in the Middle East conflict
the Holocaust.

At a time when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the
Holocaust has made the biggest headlines, King Mohammed VI has called the
Nazi destruction of the Jews "one of the most tragic chapters of modern
history," and has endorsed a Paris-based program aimed at spreading the
word among fellow Muslims.

Many in the Islamic world still ignore or know little about the Nazi
attempt to annihilate the Jews during World War II. Some disbelieve it
outright. Others argue that it was a European crime and imagine it to be
the reason Israel exists and the Palestinians are stateless.

The sentiment was starkly illustrated in March after a Palestinian youth
orchestra performed for Israeli Holocaust survivors, only to be shut down
by angry leaders of the West Bank refugee camp where they live.

"The Holocaust happened, but we are facing a similar massacre by the Jews
themselves," a community leader named Adnan Hindi said at the time. "We
lost our land and we were forced to flee."

Like other moderate Arab leaders, King Mohammed VI must tread carefully.
Islamic fervor is rising in his kingdom, highlighted in 2003 by
al-Qaida-inspired attacks in Casablanca on targets that included Jewish
sites. Forty-five people died.

The king's acknowledgment of the Holocaust, in a speech read out in his
name at a ceremony in Paris in March, appears to further illustrate the
radically different paths that countries like Morocco and Iran are taking.

Morocco has long been a quiet pioneer in Arab-Israeli peace efforts, most
notably when it served as a secret meeting place for the Israeli and
Egyptian officials who set up President Anwar Sadat's groundbreaking
journey to Jerusalem in 1977.

Though Moroccan officials say the timing is coincidental, the Holocaust
speech came at around the same time that Morocco severed diplomatic
relations with Iran, claiming it was infiltrating Shiite Muslim
troublemakers into this Sunni nation.

The speech was read out at a ceremony launching the "Aladdin Project," an
initiative of the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah
(Holocaust) which aims to spread awareness of the genocide among Muslims.

It organizes conferences and has translated key Holocaust writing such as
Anne Frank's diary into Arabic and Farsi. The name refers to Aladdin, the
young man with the genie in his lamp, whose legend, originally Muslim,
became a universally loved tale.

The Holocaust, the king's speech said, is "the universal heritage of
mankind."

It was "a very important political act," said Anne-Marie Revcolevschi,
director of the Shoah foundation. "This is the first time an Arab head of
state takes such a clear stand on the Shoah," she said in a telephone
interview.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often aggravates Arab sentiment
toward Israel, Morocco has a long history of coexistence between Muslims
and Jews.

The recent Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip has further
inflamed resentment at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. But Ahmed
Hasseni, a Casablanca cab driver, echoes a widely held view that it
shouldn't affect relations with Morocco's Jews.

"We're not dumb," he said. "We don't confuse the Israeli army with the
Jewish people," he said.

Jews have lived in Morocco for 2,000 years. Their numbers swelled after
they were expelled from Spain in 1492, and reached 300,000 before World
War II, when yet more fled the German occupation and found refuge in
Morocco, then a French colony.

Today they number just 3,000, most having emigrated to France, North
America or Israel, but they are free to come back to explore their roots,
pray at their ancestors' graves and even settle here.

Simon Levy heads the Jewish Museum in Casablanca, a treasure trove of old
Torah scrolls, garments and jewelry illustrating the rich culture of
Moroccan Jewry.

"That I still run the only Jewish museum in the Arab world is telling," he
said.

Andre Azoulay, a top adviser to the current king, is Jewish and one of six
members of the king's council in a monarchy that oversees all major
decisions. Considered one of Morocco's most powerful men, he views his
country as "a unique case" for the intensity of its Jewish-Muslim
relations. "We don't mix up Judaism and the tragedy of the Middle East,"
he told The Associated Press in an interview.

A founding member of the Aladdin project, Azoulay says part of the
program's goal is to show the West that Muslims aren't hostile to Jews,
and that Morocco was among countries that resisted Nazi plans to
exterminate their Jewish populations. He points to king Mohammed V, the
current ruler's grandfather, who is credited with resisting French
colonial anti-Semitic policies.

Such actions were rare, but not unique in North Africa during World War
II. In Tunisia, the late Khaled Abdelwahhab hid Jews from the Nazis on his
farm, and was the first Arab to be nominated as "Righteous Among the
Nations," a title bestowed by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, on
those who risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust. His case is
still under study.

The Aladdin project is only just beginning. Its work has yet to reach
schools or bookstores in Morocco, although the Shoah foundation's
Revcolevschi said Anne Frank's diary is among Holocaust memoirs available
in Arabic and Farsi on the Internet, and is being sold under the counter
in Iran.

"People speak of a clash of civilizations, but it's more a clash of
ignorance," she said. "We're countering this."

Hakim El Ghissassi, an aide to the senior Islamic Affairs official who
delivered Mohammed's speech, said the king is uniquely positioned to
promote Islam's dialogue with Judaism, because his titles include
"Commander of the believers"  meaning he is the paramount authority for
Moroccan Muslims.

"What the king has said on the Holocaust reflects our broader efforts,"
said El Ghissassi, listing such reforms as courses to reinforce Morocco's
tradition of tolerant Islam by familiarizing local imams with Jewish and
Christian holy books.

"We want to make sure everybody can differentiate between unfair Israeli
policies and respect for Judaism," he said.

(source:  Associated Press)






GERMANY:

Word of ex-Nazi guard to play crucial role in Demjanjuk trial


The words of former Nazi guard Ignat Danilchenko will haunt John Demjanjuk
one last time.

Danilchenko's decades-old statements to Soviet investigators provide what
are considered the most detailed - and controversial - allegations of
Demjanjuk's work as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied
Poland.

German prosecutors this month listed Danilchenko as a witness at
Demjanjuk's war-crimes trial in Munich, which could begin in October. The
listing was an error, as Danilchenko died in 1985, but his state- ments
are expected to play a key role in the case.

Last week, the 89-year-old Demjanjuk, formerly of Seven Hills, was
formally charged with being an accessory to murder in the deaths of
27,900 people at Sobibor in 1943.

His family denies the allegations, saying he spent most of World War II as
a German prisoner, not a Nazi guard.

He was deported in May after years of fighting over his past. U.S. judges
found he served as a Nazi guard and lied about it on his immigration
papers in 1951, when he entered the country.

Ulrich Busch, one of Demjanjuk's German attorneys, said Demjanjuk is too
weak to stand trial, despite the opinions of doctors who say he is
healthy.

Demjanjuk was born as Ivan Demjanjuk in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet
Union.

He was drafted into the Soviet army during the war and captured by the
Germans in 1942.

Demjanjuk says he remained a prisoner of the Germans throughout the war,
but prosecutors have argued - and judges ruled - that Demjanjuk agreed to
work as a guard for the Nazis in exchange for favorable treatment.

His name was first linked to the Germans in 1949 when Danilchenko told the
KGB that he "met and first got to know Ivan Demjanjuk in March 1943 at the
Sobibor death camp."

In 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a sadistic
guard at the Treblinka death camp, and was deported to Israel. Two years
later, the KGB interviewed Danilchenko again, and he provided them a much
more detailed version of Demjanjuk's duties as a guard, including herding
Jews into the gas chamber.

The 1949 statement was used against Demjanjuk during his trial in Israel,
linking him to Nazi camps in Sobibor and Flossenburg, but not Treblinka.
The second statement was not turned over to defense attorneys, and
Demjanjuk's lawyers argued the document and others that were withheld
could have helped him prove his innocence.

An appeals court later criticized prosecutors over the move.

The retired autoworker was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to hang for his
role at Treblinka.

In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction, based on
new, conflicting evidence that pointed to another man as being Ivan the
Terrible.

The Israeli Supreme Court said there was evidence that Demjanjuk served at
Sobibor and other camps, but Demjanjuk was charged only with being the
guard from Treblinka. He was released and returned home to Seven Hills.

Ten years ago, federal prosecutors in Cleveland accused Demjanjuk of
serving at Nazi camps in Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenburg, the
allegations that led to his deportation. Again, the Danilchenko statements
were brought up, offering that Demjanjuk carried a rifle and patrolled
several parts of the camp.

"Demjanjuk, like all guards in the camp, participated in the mass killing
of Jews," Danilchenko's statement said. ". . . Demjanjuk was considered to
be an experienced and efficient guard. For example, he was repeatedly
assigned by the Germans to get Jews in surrounding ghettos and deliver
them in trucks to the camp to be killed."

Defense attorney Busch said the statements are important, but he said
that, unlike witnesses, they cannot be cross-examined, and Danilchenko
can't be questioned. He stressed that he does not trust the KGB, which he
said tortured former Nazi guards and made them lie to get others. For
years, Demjanjuk's family claimed his guard pass was a Soviet forgery.

It is unclear how German prosecutors will use the statements or how a
Munich court will allow them to be entered into evidence.

What is clear is that Demjanjuk will have to face the allegations, again.

(source:  Cleveland Plain Dealer)

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

Jewish group sues Amazon over 'Nazi' books


The American Jewish Committee said on Friday it was suing the German
branch of online retailer Amazon for selling books which it said
questioned the Holocaust and "trivialised" the Nazis.

According to AJC research, around 50 works including "Der Auschwitz-Mythos
Legende oder Wirklichkeit ("The Auschwitz Myth  Legend or Reality") by
Wilhelm Staglich were on sale on Amazon.de this month.

Some of these books, the AJC said, were classified by the German
authorities as being unsuitable for under-18s.

It is unacceptable that books are for sale on Amazon.de that normally are
only available under the counter in far-right extremist shops," the AJC
said in a statement.

"We cannot let the spread of internet sales erode laws that ban Holocaust
denial and incitement to hatred of minorities in Germany," it added.

A spokeswoman for Amazon Germany said that "of course" it did not sell any
books that were banned or classified as unsuitable for under-18s.

She added that in the interests of freedom of speech, it was not keen on
stopping selling certain titles.

"We think that the best response to questionable literature is not
removing them but more discussion," a spokeswoman told AFP.

She added that the company had recently tightened up its rules regarding
books that glorify or trivialise the Nazis and that certain books had been
withdrawn from sale as a result.

(source:  Daily Telegraph)



FRANCE:

Chanel And The Nazis ----The story not found in the major movies, but in a
film on the net


There are two major feature films released this year about the life of
legendary fashion designer, Coco Chanel. But neither concerns itself with
the most controversial, dramatic time in her life.

The only place you'll find this incident portrayed is in a new animated
short on the net, called 'CHANNEL untold'. It can be seen at
www.callousproductions.com.

During World War Two, Coco Channel lived mostly in The Ritz hotel, where
the Nazis had made their headquarters in Paris. She also took a senior
Nazi party official, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, as her lover.

When the war came to an end, Chanel was arrested by the Committee For
Public Morals. But she was soon released and never faced the punitive head
shaving of other 'collaboratrices horizontales' - or sexual collaborators.
She escaped, it's thought, because of her connections with the Duke Of
Westminster.

The wartime period of Coco Channel's life reveals a lot about her
character,' says the film's director, Hardy Capo. Her troubled early life,
including being left at an orphanage by her father, had turned her into a
survivor. However, this made her so hard-nosed that she was either
unaware, or didn't care, what other people thought of her actions during
the war.

Does this make her any less of a genius? She revolutionised women's
clothing. Freed them from corsets. But I don't believe we should forget
her activities during the war. It's a cautionary tale of how expediency
can lead you down a rocky, amoral road.

Chanel had to leave France for Switzerland after the war and didn't return
till 1954. Following poor reviews for her first collection after her
homecoming, it was only the demand for her clothes in the United States
that saved her business.

The other films released this year are 'Coco Before Chanel', starring the
face of Chanel, Audrey Tautou, This movie features the early life of Coco
Chanel. And there's 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky', a film part-fact,
part-fiction, about the affair between the designer and the composer.

"CHANEL untold CREDITS

Coco Chanel....... Simone Schleu

Officer Schwarz........Jorge Campos

Hans Gunther von Dincklage..... Hardy Capo

Written & Directed by....... Hardy Capo

Produced by Callous Productions.

www.callousproductions.com

(source:  MR Press Release)

July 22


GLOBAL:

Stop personal attacks on Claims Conference leaders


The recent international Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in Prague
highlighted the plight of needy Holocaust survivors throughout the world.
For the first time, 46 states endorsed the conclusion that It is
unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of
their lives should live under impoverished circumstances at the end, and
that a high priority must be to address the social welfare needs of the
most vulnerable elderly victims of Nazi  persecution -- such as hunger
relief, medicine and home care as required, as well as measures that will
encourage intergenerational contact and allow them to overcome their
social isolation. These steps will enable them to live in dignity in the
years to come.

The conference at the end of June also dealt with other pressing
unresolved issues arising out of the Holocaust, including the restitution
of communal and private Jewish real property, looted Judaica and Jewish
cultural property, Nazi-confiscated and looted art, the preservation of
Jewish cemeteries and burial sites, the need to maintain the integrity of
the sites of mass annihilation, and a categorical, unambiguous repudiation
of Holocaust denial and trivialization.

The declaration issued at the end constitutes a comprehensive road map of
the final phase of the complex Holocaust reparations and restitution
process. Its adoption was due primarily to the tireless efforts of Stuart
Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation; J. Christian Kennedy, the State
Departments special envoy for Holocaust issues; and a group of dedicated
professionals who ensured that experts and stakeholders alike had genuine
input into the conference proceedings. Among the critical catalysts in the
latter category are the members of the senior staff of the Conference on
Jewish Material Claims against Germany, popularly known as the Claims
Conference.

Without question, the Claims Conference is the single most important and
effective body providing assistance to Holocaust survivors throughout the
world. It also is frequently under attack by individuals and groups that
take issue with its process of allocating funds.

No organization should be immune from criticism. However, some of the
charges directed against the Claims Conference are out of control. Among
the most commonly heard accusations are that the organizations leadership
is somehow hostile to Holocaust survivors. This canard must finally be
laid to rest.

First, prominent Holocaust survivors are integral members of the Claims
Conference and its committees. Roman Kent, chairman of the American
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, serves as
the Claims Conference treasurer and has been a key figure in its
negotiations with Germany together with Holocaust survivors Noach Flug
from Israel and Ben Helfgott from England.

Sam Bloch, the president of the American Gathering, is a member of the
Claims Conference Executive Committee, and American Gathering Senior Vice
President Max Liebmann has been appointed as one of a number of ad
personam members of the Claims Conference board.

Three organizations of Holocaust survivors are full members of the Claims
Conference, and survivors are prominently represented on all of the
organizations committees.

More importantly, while one may certainly disagree with individual
allocations and actions of the Claims Conference, the integrity of its
leaders and their dedication to the needs and welfare of Holocaust
survivors is beyond question.

Rabbi Julius Berman, the chairman of the Claims Conference, is a highly
respected attorney in New York, a former chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and past president of
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America. In the interest of
full disclosure, I once worked closely with Julie for several years at his
law firm, Kaye Scholer LLP, and have always found him to be a man of the
highest integrity who devotes himself wholeheartedly to Jewish causes,
including the plight of needy Holocaust survivors.

Reuven Merhav, chairman of the Claims Conference Executive Committee, was
born in Haifa shortly after his parents had immigrated to Palestine from
Nazi Germany. He is a former director general of Israels Foreign Ministry
and played a key role in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews.

In the late 1930s Merhavs father, Walter Markowicz, lacked the 500 pounds
of sterling to purchase a certificate to enable his own father, Reuven's
grandfather, to escape Germany and settle in Palestine.

"I am with the Claims Conference because I have been scalded personally,"
Merhav has explained. "My father never talked about it at home, but we
knew he had not succeeded in getting Grandpa out. In April 1942, Grandpa
was transported from Breslau to Theresienstadt and perished there half a
year later.

Eizenstat, the Claims Conferences special negotiator responsible for the
German negotiations since earlier this year, served as U.S. ambassador to
the European Union, under secretary of commerce for international trade,
under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs,
and deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.

Throughout that period, he also obtained more than $8 billion in
compensation and restitution for Holocaust survivors, including payments
to slave and forced laborers, the return of thousands of Jewish communal
and private properties, the payments of tens of thousands of previously
undisclosed bank accounts, the recovery of hundreds of pieces of looted
art, and the payments on thousands of insurance policies.

Indeed, it is thanks to his selfless dedication and tireless efforts that
the issue of providing a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors more
than half a century after the end of World War II has been placed at the
forefront of the international communitys agenda.

This year alone, the negotiations spearheaded by Eizenstat and Kent
resulted in 13,000 survivors who previously had been turned down becoming
eligible for reparations for the first time, and in the improvement in
existing pension payments to survivors totaling more than $50 million.

I am not suggesting that legitimate criticisms of the Claims Conference
should not be aired, but it would behoove all involved to focus on
constructive solutions that benefit the survivors rather than engaging in
disingenuous personal attacks.

(source:  op-ed, JTA----Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the son of two survivors of
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is vice president of the American Gathering
of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants and adjunct professor
of law at Cornell Law School. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to
the June 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets.)

July 22


GLOBAL:

Stop personal attacks on Claims Conference leaders


The recent international Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in Prague
highlighted the plight of needy Holocaust survivors throughout the world.
For the first time, 46 states endorsed the conclusion that It is
unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of
their lives should live under impoverished circumstances at the end, and
that a high priority must be to address the social welfare needs of the
most vulnerable elderly victims of Nazi  persecution -- such as hunger
relief, medicine and home care as required, as well as measures that will
encourage intergenerational contact and allow them to overcome their
social isolation. These steps will enable them to live in dignity in the
years to come.

The conference at the end of June also dealt with other pressing
unresolved issues arising out of the Holocaust, including the restitution
of communal and private Jewish real property, looted Judaica and Jewish
cultural property, Nazi-confiscated and looted art, the preservation of
Jewish cemeteries and burial sites, the need to maintain the integrity of
the sites of mass annihilation, and a categorical, unambiguous repudiation
of Holocaust denial and trivialization.

The declaration issued at the end constitutes a comprehensive road map of
the final phase of the complex Holocaust reparations and restitution
process. Its adoption was due primarily to the tireless efforts of Stuart
Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation; J. Christian Kennedy, the State
Departments special envoy for Holocaust issues; and a group of dedicated
professionals who ensured that experts and stakeholders alike had genuine
input into the conference proceedings. Among the critical catalysts in the
latter category are the members of the senior staff of the Conference on
Jewish Material Claims against Germany, popularly known as the Claims
Conference.

Without question, the Claims Conference is the single most important and
effective body providing assistance to Holocaust survivors throughout the
world. It also is frequently under attack by individuals and groups that
take issue with its process of allocating funds.

No organization should be immune from criticism. However, some of the
charges directed against the Claims Conference are out of control. Among
the most commonly heard accusations are that the organizations leadership
is somehow hostile to Holocaust survivors. This canard must finally be
laid to rest.

First, prominent Holocaust survivors are integral members of the Claims
Conference and its committees. Roman Kent, chairman of the American
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, serves as
the Claims Conference treasurer and has been a key figure in its
negotiations with Germany together with Holocaust survivors Noach Flug
from Israel and Ben Helfgott from England.

Sam Bloch, the president of the American Gathering, is a member of the
Claims Conference Executive Committee, and American Gathering Senior Vice
President Max Liebmann has been appointed as one of a number of ad
personam members of the Claims Conference board.

Three organizations of Holocaust survivors are full members of the Claims
Conference, and survivors are prominently represented on all of the
organizations committees.

More importantly, while one may certainly disagree with individual
allocations and actions of the Claims Conference, the integrity of its
leaders and their dedication to the needs and welfare of Holocaust
survivors is beyond question.

Rabbi Julius Berman, the chairman of the Claims Conference, is a highly
respected attorney in New York, a former chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and past president of
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America. In the interest of
full disclosure, I once worked closely with Julie for several years at his
law firm, Kaye Scholer LLP, and have always found him to be a man of the
highest integrity who devotes himself wholeheartedly to Jewish causes,
including the plight of needy Holocaust survivors.

Reuven Merhav, chairman of the Claims Conference Executive Committee, was
born in Haifa shortly after his parents had immigrated to Palestine from
Nazi Germany. He is a former director general of Israels Foreign Ministry
and played a key role in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews.

In the late 1930s Merhavs father, Walter Markowicz, lacked the 500 pounds
of sterling to purchase a certificate to enable his own father, Reuven's
grandfather, to escape Germany and settle in Palestine.

"I am with the Claims Conference because I have been scalded personally,"
Merhav has explained. "My father never talked about it at home, but we
knew he had not succeeded in getting Grandpa out. In April 1942, Grandpa
was transported from Breslau to Theresienstadt and perished there half a
year later.

Eizenstat, the Claims Conferences special negotiator responsible for the
German negotiations since earlier this year, served as U.S. ambassador to
the European Union, under secretary of commerce for international trade,
under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs,
and deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.

Throughout that period, he also obtained more than $8 billion in
compensation and restitution for Holocaust survivors, including payments
to slave and forced laborers, the return of thousands of Jewish communal
and private properties, the payments of tens of thousands of previously
undisclosed bank accounts, the recovery of hundreds of pieces of looted
art, and the payments on thousands of insurance policies.

Indeed, it is thanks to his selfless dedication and tireless efforts that
the issue of providing a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors more
than half a century after the end of World War II has been placed at the
forefront of the international communitys agenda.

This year alone, the negotiations spearheaded by Eizenstat and Kent
resulted in 13,000 survivors who previously had been turned down becoming
eligible for reparations for the first time, and in the improvement in
existing pension payments to survivors totaling more than $50 million.

I am not suggesting that legitimate criticisms of the Claims Conference
should not be aired, but it would behoove all involved to focus on
constructive solutions that benefit the survivors rather than engaging in
disingenuous personal attacks.

(source:  op-ed, JTA----Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the son of two survivors of
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is vice president of the American Gathering
of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants and adjunct professor
of law at Cornell Law School. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to
the June 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets.)

July 22




GERMANY:

REPRIEVE FOR SATIRE----German Gnome Permitted to Give Hitler Salute


The creator of a garden gnome that gives the Hitler salute will not be
prosecuted for displaying banned symbols, prosecutors in Nuremberg have
decided. They agree with the artist that the sculpture is intended to make
Nazis look ridiculous.

The creator of a "Nazi" garden gnome can breathe a sigh of relief after
prosecutors decided to halt an investigation into his satire of the banned
Hitler salute.

The public prosecutor's office in Nuremberg announced on Wednesday that it
was not pursuing an investigation into the artist Ottmar Hrl and the
gallery showing his work. Although the display of any symbols associated
with banned organizations -- such as the Nazi Party -- is expressly banned
in Germany, this does not constitute an offence if it "shows opposition to
the organization and fights against its ideology."

After interviewing both the artist and the gallery owner, the authorities
concluded that neither had used any symbols of banned organized in the
past.

The probe was launched after an anonymous letter arrived at the
prosecutor's office complaining about the 40-centimeter sculpture which
had been on display in a gallery window. Hrl, an art professor who is
president of the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts, protested that the work
was clearly meant as satire.

The prosecutors agreed that the intention had been to make the Nazis look
ridiculous. Hrl had made it clear to them that the sculpture had been
created for an exhibition aimed at criticizing the far-right in Belgium.
And the gallery owner confirmed that he had assumed he was selling a piece
of work that was attacking right-wing extremism.

(source:  Der Spiegel)


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

Court ups compensation for Nazi victims


A German appeals court has ordered greater compensation for the
American heirs of a Jewish businessman forced to sell his company stock
under the Nazis' "Aryanization" program  a ruling that could set a
precedent for dozens of others, their attorney said Wednesday.

The Federal Administrative Court ruled July 17 that the heirs of
businessman Bernhard Hirschmann should be compensated based on the fact
that he and his brother lost their company, not just shares, said Berlin
attorney Robby Fichte, who represented Hirschmann's heirs.

The ruling increases the compensation about 20-fold to some euro700,000
(nearly $1 million), Fichte said.

"I'm happy that after so many years at least the material consequences of
the injustice can be mitigated," heir Peter Fenner of Ohio said in a
statement. Fenner  a grandson of Bernhard  brought the suit with his
sister, Ruth Fenner-Barash of New York state.

The federal court confirmed the ruling but said no details would be
released until the full written verdict is delivered in six to eight
weeks.

The defendant in the case, Germany's Federal Office for Central Services
and Unresolved Property Issues, said it could not comment on how many
other cases could be affected by it until it saw the entire written
decision.

"We lost, but we don't know why yet," said spokeswoman Ellen Haendler. "So
I can't say anything more until we have the ruling."

Fichte estimated the number in the dozens, however.

"It definitely sets a precedent  that's why we had the opportunity to
appeal to the Federal Administrative Court; we are one of many cases, but
it's the first to be decided," he told The Associated Press. "The
authorities haven't decided many cases yet because they were waiting to
see what to do."

Under the Nazi program to strip Jews of property, Hirschmann and his
brother were forced in 1935 to sell their stock in the former Deutsche
Kabelwerke AG, a wire and cable manufacturing company that they founded in
the late 1890s, to Dresdner Bank. Both brothers fled Germany.

The bank then sold the shares at a profit to a company deemed to be
"Aryan" by the Nazis.

At the end of the war, the company  based in Berlin with factories in the
surrounding region of Brandenburg  was nationalized by communist
authorities.

While people in similar circumstances with assets in West Germany received
compensation in the 1950s and 1960s, the Hirschmann family only received a
payment of 125,000 German marks per brother from the Dresdner Bank  a mere
fraction of what their holdings in the company were worth, Fichte said.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the family began pursuing full
compensation.

Based on a formula that calculated compensation for having lost stocks
under the Nazis, the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved
Property Issues ruled that the claim was worth euro40,000 for each brother
less than Dresdner Bank had already paid.

But the federal appeals court ruled that the compensation had to be based
on a different formula to pay for the two brothers having lost their
company, not just the stocks, Fichte said.

The federal appeal's court ruling awards Bernhard Hirschmann's heirs
euro700,000, or about euro980,000 with interest, Fichte said.

The money will come from funds set aside by Germany to compensate Nazi-era
victims.


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


Buchenwald gate part of Bauhaus display


The iron gate at the entrance to Buchenwald has been temporarily removed
to form the centerpiece of an exhibit in tribute to its designer, who was
forced to come up with the concept while an inmate at the Nazi
concentration camp.

Franz Ehrlich, a German Communist Party member and activist, was arrested
in the early 1930s and spent several years at Buchenwald, near the eastern
city of Weimar.

In 1938, SS officials at the camp forced Ehrlich, a designer and
architect, to come up with the design of the gate, which carries the
cynical slogan "Jedem das Seine" or "To Each His Own."

In a subtle act of defiance, Ehrlich used a typeface for the lettering of
the slogan designed by one of his teachers at the Bauhaus school, which
was shut down by the Nazis in 1933. Ehrlich died in 1984.

President Barack Obama used the gate as the backdrop for a news conference
in June after visiting the camp with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
saying that more than a half a century later "our grief and our outrage
over what happened have not diminished." Some 56,000 people died at the
hands of the Nazis at Buchenwald.

The gate, which was removed Monday, will be on display at Weimar's Neues
Museum from Aug. 2 to Nov. 11. A copy will be in its place at Buchenwald
in the meantime.

It is one of several exhibitions being organized to celebrate the 90th
anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus school of design, architecture
and applied arts in 1919.

The Bauhaus school was formed immediately following World War I to
transcend the divisions that had separated arts and crafts and emphasize a
new modern aesthetic that could also be mass-produced.

In Berlin, the Martin Gropius Bau museum on Tuesday opened an exhibition
called "Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model," bringing together items from
collections in the cities where the school was located over its 14-year
history  Weimar, Dessau and Berlin.

(source for both:  Associated Press)

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


German court rules Nazi Boere fit for trial


A German court has ruled that another former Nazi SS officer is fit to
stand trial for war crimes.

Tuesday's decision by the regional high court in Cologne regarding
Waffen-SS member Heinrich Boere, 88, comes shortly after a German Supreme
Court decision that Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, 89, is fit to face charges
of assisting in the murder of more than 29,000 Jews. His trial is expected
to start in the fall.

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said it
was urgent to try Boere quickly, given his age. Boere is charged in the
murders of three Dutch resistance fighters.

Boere told Focus magazine in April that it had been easy to shoot the
three. He also said he was following orders.

"It was not difficult," he said in the interview. "You just had to bend a
finger."

Boere, who had Dutch citizenship, fled to Germany and adopted German
nationality after being found guilty in Holland. A death sentence ordered
in absentia was later commuted to a life sentence. Germany could not
legally extradite him nor have him serve the sentence in Germany.

Attempts to bring Boere to trial in Aachen, Germany, failed in 2008, after
the court declared him unfit. The Cologne court reveresed the decision
after reviewing reports from additional witnesses, including one from
Boere's nursing home.

According to news reports, there will be pauses in the trial, and a doctor
will be present. The court also said that the trial was likely to be less
stressful because Boere would not have to face many living witnesses.

His trial, and that of Demjanjuk, is among the last trials of alleged Nazi
war criminals. Josef Scheungraber, 90, is now facing charges in a Munich
court of having ordered the killings of 14 civilians in Italy in June
1944.

(source:  JTA)




LITHUANIA:

Lithuania to stick to compensation plan


Lithuania will not amend a plan to compensate the loss of Jewish property
seized during World War II, despite criticism from Jewish organizations
that it fails to repay the properties' full value, the Baltic state's
justice minister said Tuesday.

"It is very hard, if not impossible, to restore all property rights after
more than half a century, a war and two occupations," the minister,
Remigijus Simasius, told The Associated Press.

"Most of the Jewish population was killed, their ancestors scattered
around the world, and many properties do not have legitimate owners," he
said, referring to buildings that were once owned by Jews but were not
inherited by relatives because of the war.

According to the ministry's plan, which still needs parliamentary
approval, Lithuania will pay 128 million litas (euro37 million, $53
million) to Lithuania's 5,000-strong Jewish community. Part of the payment
will include the return of two buildings, though most of compensation will
comprise cash payments.

Negotiations on the compensation package lasted nearly a decade. Payments
are expected to begin in 2011 with 3 million litas ($1.2 million) to be
paid to Holocaust survivors, and compensation for stolen property to begin
in 2012. A non-governmental organization will be established to distribute
the funds over several years.

The local Jewish community has rejected the proposal as too small, saying
it represents a "mere fraction" of the value of Jewish property seized in
World War II.

"Jewish communal property has to be returned, just like this was done with
property of other communities, including the Catholic Church," said Simon
Gurevichius, executive director of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. "The
present plan is insufficient and unacceptable."

The minister emphasized that the offer would not be reconsidered. He said
Lithuania completed its program of property restitution in 2000, and that
the government would not reopen it. "There will be no additional
restitution process," he said.

Parliament is expected to review the proposal this fall.

Some 95 percent of Lithuania's prewar Jewish population of 220,000 people
was killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.
Jewish properties were seized and never returned.

After it was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1940, Lithuania was invaded
by Nazi Germany in 1941, and then again by the Soviets in 1944. The Baltic
state remained under Soviet occupation until 1991.

(source:  Associated Press)




GLOBAL:

BACKGROUND: The 10 most wanted Nazi war criminals


The 10 most wanted Nazi war criminals as listed by the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre in Jerusalem:

1. Ivan (John) Demjanjuk (US): Born in Ukraine. Believed to have
participated in mass murder of Jews in Sobibor death camp; also served in
Majdanek death camp and Trawniki SS training camp. He was indicted for
murder by German prosecutors on Monday.

2. Sandor Kepiro (Hungary): Hungarian police officer suspected of
involvement in mass murder of more than 1,200 civilians in the Serbian
city of Novi Sad. He was exposed as living in Budapest in 2006, but
although convicted in Hungary in 1944 and apparently in absentia in 1946,
he is still free.

3. Milivoj Asner (Austria): Police chief of Slavonska Pozega, Croatia
throughout World War II. Played active role in persecution and deportation
to death of hundreds of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. Austria refuses to
extradite him to Croatia to stand trial.

4. Soeren Kam (Germany): Former SS man accused of responsibility for death
of Danish journalist. Stole list of Jewish residents in Denmark, enabling
them to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. Charged in Denmark, but
German court refused to extradite him.

5. Klaas Carl Faber (Germany): Served in the Nazi SS intelligence service
in the Netherlands. He was sentenced to death in Holland for murders of
prisoners at the Westerbork transit camp and Groningen prison in the
autumn of 1944. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1948,
but he escaped from prison to Germany in 1952.

6. Heinrich Boere (Germany): Member of SS unit unit serving in the
Netherlands. Sentenced to death in absentia by Dutch court in 1949 for
murder of three civilians. German court charged him with the killings in
April 2008.

7. Karoly (Charles) Zentai (Australia): Participated in manhunts,
persecution, and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944. Hungary has asked
Australia to extradite him.

8. Mikhail Gorshkow (Estonia): Said to have participated in murder of Jews
in Belarus. Lost his US citizenship. Under investigation in Estonia.

9. Algimantas Dailide (Germany): Arrested Jews, who were later murdered by
Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators. Deported from US and convicted by
Lithuania, but has not started prison sentence.

10. Harry Mannil (Venezuela): Arrested Jews and Communists who were
executed by Nazis and Estonian collaborators. Cleared by investigation in
Estonia, but is barred from entry to US.

The Wiesenthal Centre also placed Alois Brunner and Aribert Heim, who had
in the past topped the list, in two separate categories, because they are
believed, but not proven dead.

Alois Brunner: A key operative of Adolf Eichmann allegedly responsible for
the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews from Austria, Greece, France
and Slovakia to Nazi death camps. For decades he had been living in Syria,
which did not cooperate with prosecution efforts despite his conviction in
absentia in France. Last sighting of him was 2006 in Damascus.

Aribert Heim, also known as 'Dr Death': Served as a physician in
Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. He allegedly
murdered hundreds of camp inmates by lethal injection in Mauthausen. New
evidence suggests he may have died in Cairo in 1992, but the Wiesenthal
Centre said it had 'serious doubts' regarding these findings.

(source:  Monsters and Critics)

July 20




GERMANY:

Germany remembers Hitler plotters----A defence ministry building in Berlin
is the site of a memorial to the plotters


Germany has marked the 65th anniversary of the failed attempt by a group
of officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and drive the Nazis from power.

The 20 July Plot saw Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg plant a bomb
under a table inside the "Wolf's Lair", Hitler's command post in East
Prussia.

But through a series of lucky circumstances Hitler was only slightly hurt,
and the conspiracy was exposed.

The assassination attempt is one of the proudest traditions of the German
army.

During a ceremony in Berlin on Monday, hundreds of young recruits to the
force took their ceremonial oath to a democratic Germany.

For many Germans, Von Stauffenberg is a hero - one of the few officers who
chose to follow his conscience rather than orders, says the BBC's Oliver
Berlau.

The plot in which he participated was the closest Hitler's opponents
within the German armed forces ever got to killing him.

The attempted coup, which would have seen the establishment of a
conservative military regime in Germany which was willing to negotiate an
honourable peace, was led by senior military leaders like Field Marshal
Erwin von Witzleben and Gen Ludwig Beck.

Col Von Stauffenberg was convinced Hitler had to be removed from power
As had been planned, Von Stauffenberg placed a briefcase containing
explosives under the table next to Hitler inside the Wolf's Lair. After he
left the building, he heard the bomb explode and assumed the German
dictator was dead.

But an officer had moved the briefcase behind a sturdy leg of the table,
and Hitler suffered only minor burns and concussion.

Unaware, Von Stauffenberg flew to Berlin to join Von Witzleben and Beck
and to take over using the German Home Army. However, they had hesitated
and failed to take over the communications network.

Once it became known that Hitler was still alive, the plot crumbled.

Von Stauffenberg and several of his co-conspirators were shot the same
night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, a building in Berlin which is
still part of the defence ministry and the site of a memorial.

Dozens of others were later humiliated in a show trial and executed,
hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks. Their deaths were filmed and shown
to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

(source:  BBC News)





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


THE LAST NAZI TRIAL----Demjanjuk Case To Start in October


A district court in Munich is preparing for the planned October start of
what could be the final Nazi war crimes trial in Germany. The leading
judge in the case has already approved eight joint plaintiffs, and
prosecutors have secured 22 witnesses they hope will prove John
Demjanjuk's guilt.

Following a lengthy deportation process to bring him back to Germany from
the United States, Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk's case is
expected to go to trial in mid-October. The 89 year old, who stands
accused of being an accessory to 27,900 counts of murder at Nazi death
camps, will be tried before a Munich district court.

A large contingent of prosecutors and witnesses are set to take part in
the trial. The judge presiding over the jury court, Ralph Alt, has already
approved eight joint plaintiffs, whose families or relations were killed
between April and July 1943 at the Sobibr concentration camp. Public
prosecutors claim Demjanjuk, born in Ukraine, was a guard there during
that time.

The joint plaintiffs, who will be represented by five attorneys, are from
the Netherlands, the US and Germany. Some of them experienced the
atrocities of the death camps firsthand as young men.

With the help of 22 witnesses, the prosecution is aiming to prove that
Demjanjuk is guilty of being an accessory to murder in at least 27,900
killings at the camp. The exhaustive 86-page document detailing the
charges challenges the defense's argument that, as a Nazi prisoner of war,
the defendant had no choice but to comply with orders.

The prosecution maintains that Demjanjuk, who has so far remained silent
in the face of allegations made against him, was in a position to have
fled the camps. It has compiled a list of cases in which foreign Nazi
henchmen were able to escape from camps in Trawniki, Lublin, Treblinka and
even Sobibr.

(source:  Spiegel)


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


German who gave inside view of Nazi camps dies at 91


Isa Vermehren, a German entertainer who wrote one of the first post-war
accounts of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, has died at 91,
her Catholic order of nuns said Monday.

Vermehren, a singer and accordionist at a Berlin nightclub before the War,
was thrown into Ravensbrueck concentration camp after her diplomat brother
defected.

Her 1946 book, 'A Voyage through the Last Act,' described the humiliations
and executions in the camps to readers who were still unwilling to believe
the Nazis had been evil.

Vermehren, the daughter of an upper-class lawyer, had performed at
Katakombe, a Berlin club where the acts satirized the Nazis. The Gestapo
closed it early in the War.

The entire Vermehren family were thrown into concentration camps in
revenge when her brother, Erich Vermehren, a German diplomat in Istanbul

, defected to Britain with secrets in February 1944. All survived.

She wrote her book, acted in a film and then became an irrepressible nun,
using her talents as a stage entertainer to become the big-hearted
headmistress of girls' schools and a television personality.

Her boldness, whether she was dealing with a Nazi or a bishop, seemed
echoed in Whoopi Goldberg's role in the 1992 movie comedy Sister Act.
Vermehren retired in 1983.

The Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus convent in Bonn said she died in
the city on Wednesday last week but this was not made public at the time.

(source:  Monsters and Critics)






UKRAINE:

Holocaust monument dedicated in western Ukraine


A monument to Nazi victims was dedicated in western Ukraine.

The memorial in Elyhovichi village in the Zolochev district of the Lvov
region, was dedicated July 15. The commemoration ceremony included local
officials, rabbis, representatives of the Jewish community, and guests
from Israel and the United States who were born in the region.

The memorial was built on the initiative of American and Israeli
organizations, and personally on the initiative of Roald Hoffmann, a
chemist and Nobel Prize winner who was born in Zolochev and survived the
Holocaust with help from Ukrainian neighbors.

More than 3,000 Jews in Elyhovichi were killed by the Nazis, and more than
14,000 in the Zolochev district in 1941-42.

(source:  JTA)





THE NETHERLANDS:

Fire destroys Anne Frank barrack


A suspicious fire destroyed the wooden barrack that Anne Frank stayed in
while detained in a Dutch work camp.

The fire Saturday night in northeast Holland destroyed two barracks from
the Westerbork work camp, where Frank stayed before being deported to
Auschwitz in 1944.

Her barrack, number 57, was set to be moved back to the site of the work
camp as part of a Holocaust memorial center.

The cause of the fire is unclear, according to reports.

The barracks had been sold in 1957 to a nearby village and were used to
store farm equipment.

(source:  JTA)





USA:

300 Nazis still go free in America


300 Nazis are living in plain sight in the United States, according to
the world's preeminent Nazi-hunting organization.

Although the case against John Demjanjuk, the former Ohio auto worker
formally charged with war crimes in Germany last week, is being called the
last great Nazi war-crimes trial, Efraim Zuroff told The Post there are
hundreds more suspects to be brought to justice.

"We don't have much longer," said Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
in Israel. "We have to go after them or they will be too sick to bring to
trial."

Many of the Nazis still here are elderly men who worked and raised
families in the United States and whose neighbors were unaware of their
past, including:

* Johann Leprich, a retired tool-and-die worker from Michigan, who was a
"Death Head" guard at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, where inmates
were used as slave laborers in a quarry and tortured and killed by
gassing, hanging and electric shock.

* Mykola Wasylyk of upstate Ellenville, who ran a Catskills bungalow
colony renting cabins to Jewish visitors. He served as a perimeter guard
at the Trawniki labor camp in Poland. He proclaimed in a 2002 letter to
the US attorney that he was forced into Nazi service and that he had been
"an exemplary and law-abiding citizen" for the last 54 years.

* Jakiw Palij of Queens, who quietly tends his flower garden every morning
outside his Jackson Heights home. He was a guard at Trawniki and found to
have helped keep prisoners from escaping the camp where 6,000 people were
shot to death in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.

* Elfriede Rinkel, who lived such a seemingly ordinary life as a San
Francisco furrier that her Jewish husband knew nothing about her past.
Rinkel worked as a guard at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for women
in Germany, where guards were known for forcing malnourished inmates to
march to slave-labor sites daily and then kept in check by attack dogs.

The number of Nazis who came to the United States after World War II has
been estimated from a few hundred to several thousand. Hundreds of
thousands of Nazis are thought to have survived the war, many of them
staying in the countries where they committed their crimes.

Since 1979, 107 Nazis have been prosecuted in the United States and at
least 60 have been deported. Eleven suspected Nazis are now being
prosecuted, and another 30 are under investigation.

Such investigations can take years.

Demjanjuk was stripped of his US citizenship in 1981, when he was believed
to be "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at Poland's Treblinka death camp. He
was sentenced to death in Israel, but that country's Supreme Court threw
out the case, saying he was the wrong man.

US prosecutors began a new case in 1999, accusing Demjanjuk of working as
a guard at a different Polish camp. He was finally deported to Germany in
May.

"These are the ultimate cold cases," said Eli Rosenbaum, the director of
the US Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, which
hunts Nazis and other human-rights abusers.

Cooperating witnesses were either murdered by the Nazis or have since
died, and most of the criminals were not known by name to their victims,
Rosenbaum said.

"The Nazis destroyed much of the incriminating documentation in the
closing months of the war when they realized that an Allied victory was
imminent, [and] the bulk of the surviving documentation is scattered in
archives in many countries and remains poorly indexed," he said.

The DOJ usually snares Nazis on immigration violations, contending they
lied about their past when they entered the United States, and by proving
their underlying criminal conduct during the war.

Five Nazis brought to justice and stripped of their US citizenship are
stuck in a deportation limbo with no countries agreeing to take them.

Among them is Palij, 85, whose citizenship was revoked in 2003.
Prosecutors found that he lied when immigrating to the United States in
1949.

Germany, Poland and Ukraine have all refused to accept him.

Wasylyk is also awaiting deportation after four countries refused to take
him.

Many of the Nazis have been found by governmental officials poring over
immigration documents and comparing them with a list of 70,000 war
criminals culled from countries around the world. The collapse of the
former Soviet Union in 1989 brought more information to light.

In Israel, Zuroff spends much of his time persuading countries in Europe,
the former Soviet Union and Australia to prosecute Nazis.

While Israel was the site of probably the most important Nazi war-crime
trial, that of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the country has recently shied away
from accepting other Nazis prosecuted on immigration issues in the United
States.

Zuroff said in order to try these Nazis in Israel, a case would have to be
brought on criminal charges, which would be difficult to prove since so
much time has elapsed.

(source:  New York Post)






ROMANIA:

Romanian mayor and son parade as Nazis


A Romanian city mayor outraged Jewish and pro-democracy groups after he
goose-stepped with his son in World War Two German uniforms during a
weekend fashion show.

Wearing Nazi uniform is illegal in Romania, which denied participating in
the Holocaust until 2004 when it accepted the findings of international
commission that Romanian authorities killed up to 380,000 Jews in
territories under their control.

The Centre for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism sent a letter Monday
to the country's general prosecutor urging an investigation of Radu
Mazare, 41, mayor of Black Sea city port Constanta, for breaking the law
and instigating a child to follow his example.

Mazare said the uniform had no swastikas and was the uniform of a German
infantry general and nothing to do with the SS.

"I was inspired from the Valkyrie movie ... I wanted to dress like a
Vehrmacht general because I've always liked this uniform, and admired the
rigorous organisation of the German army," newspaper Evenimentul Zilei
quoted him as saying.

Under pro-Nazi Marshal Ian Antonescu, Romania became a German ally in 1940
but switched sides just before war ended.

(source:  Reuters)

July 10


GERMANY:


Demjanjuk Trial to Break Legal Ground in Germany


The trial against suspected concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk is a
legal first for Germany. For the first time, a person who was low on the
chain of command is to be indicted, even though there is no proof of his
having committed a specific offence. Other alleged henchmen have gotten
off far more lightly.

The court stipulated that they were not to mention so much as a word about
the case. Instead, Vera Demjanjuk, 84, told her husband John, 89, what she
had planted in their garden at home. The telephone conversation, which
lasted 20 minutes, was the only conversation to date between the
Stadelheim Prison in Munich and Cleveland, Ohio. An official interpreter
listened in on the conversation. "She hopes and believes that he will
somehow return home," says John Demjanjuk, Jr., the couple's son.

That is unlikely to happen. His father is being detained in Bavaria,
waiting for his trial to begin. US authorities deported Demjanjuk in early
May, when he was flown to Munich on a chartered flight. When he arrived, a
German investigating judge handed Demjanjuk the arrest warrant, which
stated that the accused was "under strong suspicion" of aiding and
abetting the murders of at least 29,000 people.

Demjanjuk is alleged to have worked in 1943 as a guard in the Sobibor
death camp, and to have helped the Nazis commit mass murder against
thousands of Jews. He has repeatedly denied the charges, and his family
insists that it is the victim of a prosecution-obsessed justice system.

On July 3, prosecutors said that doctors had determined that Demjanjuk,
who has been held in custody in Munich since May 12, was fit to stand
trial. However, they imposed one condition, saying that his court
appearances be limited to two 90-minute sessions a day. State prosecutors
said that formal charges could be expected this month and that a trial
could commence as early as the autumn.

The case against this alleged member of the SS is a first for the German
legal system. For the first time, a foreign henchman from the lowest rung
of the chain of command will be prosecuted, not because of his
particularly gruesome behavior as a perpetrator of so-called "excessive
acts," but because he helped keep the killing machinery running smoothly.

That won't be easy. Will the prosecution in the case, the Munich public
prosecutor's office, be able to provide sufficient proof of his guilt? Can
it demonstrate that he participated voluntarily in the campaign of murder?

A number of documents suggest that Demjanjuk was part of a group of about
5,000 foreign helpers -- people from the Baltics, Ukrainians and ethnic
Germans living in other countries -- who the Nazis trained at the Trawniki
training camp, east of the Polish city of Lublin, to commit mass murder in
occupied regions. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Demjanjuk killed
out of murderous intent or greed. Instead, he was probably an ordinary
henchman, like thousands of others. But German courts have been extremely
lenient in the past when it has come to putting these Nazi helpers on
trial. In fact, even their superiors almost always got off lightly.

In other words, the judiciary is planning nothing less than a radical
break with a decades-long practice which was often perceived as offensive.

Responding to a complaint against Demjanjuk's detention filed by his
attorney Ulrich Busch, the Munich Regional Court explained that the
established practice of German courts in cases relating to SS overseers
and guards in extermination camps "does not create a precedent." In the
arrest warrant, it states that Demjanjuk, as a guard, was not compelled to
participate in mass murder. "He could have deserted, as many other
Trawniki men did," is the argument in the warrant.

For Demjanjuk's defense attorney, this line of argument "upends the entire
postwar legal practice in Germany." The court must conduct its proceedings
on the basis of evidence, and yet it presumably also wants to avoid being
accused of inaction or perhaps even leniency toward former Nazis. All of
this creates the impression that the German judiciary is using the
Demjanjuk case, which has become well-known because of its previous
history, to make up for past omissions.

Relatively Safe

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, is not the first presumed Nazi helper that
the United States has deported to Germany. More than 100 men have had
their US citizenship revoked for concealing their Nazi past, and 27 of
them ended up in Germany.

Dmytro Sawchuk, for example, traveled to Germany voluntarily in 1999 when
he was about to be deported. US investigators accused the man, born in
Poland of Ukrainian parents, of having participated in brutal ghetto
evacuations after being trained in Trawniki, and of having supervised
Jewish forced laborers in the Belzec extermination camp as they dug up
thousands of bodies and incinerated them. The public prosecutor's office
in Heidelberg, to which the case was assigned, terminated the proceedings
against Sawchuk after three years, arguing that Germany could only
prosecute the case if the "Republic of Poland, as the criminal
investigation authority principally responsible for criminal prosecution,"
dispensed with extradition. Poland investigated the case itself, but later
suspended its investigation. Sawchuk died in 2004.

Liudas Kairys, who also trained at Trawniki and was a senior guard at the
Treblinka camp, was a rank above Demjanjuk's presumed rank in Sobibor.
There was a lot of evidence against him from survivors and documents. He
was sent to Germany in 1993, as he had hoped, after US authorities revoked
his passport. From Kairys's perspective, it was the right decision.
Investigation proceedings launched against the native Lithuanian in 1993
for murder were suspended six years later by the prosecution in the
western city of Darmstadt. Kairys had died in the meantime.

In February 1982, the US attorney general asked his counterpart in Bonn
for a stronger commitment. He wanted Germany to petition for the
deportation of Nazi collaborators from Lithuania, Ukraine and Latvia who
had been tracked down in the United States, and put them on trial in
Germany.

But Bonn's justice minister turned down the request, arguing that
deportation was only allowable in the case of crimes "that had been
committed on the territory of the country submitting the request." And
because of the statute of limitations, he argued, only murder cases could
be prosecuted anyway.

The former Trawniki men living in Germany could also feel relatively safe,
as long as there was no evidence of their having been Exzesstter, in other
words, people who committed excessively cruel acts. One such Exzesstter
was Treblinka guard Franz Swidersky, who was sentenced to a seven-year
prison term in Dsseldorf. Another former guard in Belzec, who had held the
rank of Zugwachmann, or platoon member, is spending his retirement in an
idyllic village in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He had
testified about the Nazi death camps in two trials, but he was unwilling
to talk about his experiences with SPIEGEL.

Those at the lower ends of the chain of command, and their supervisors,
invoked the principle of Befehlsnotstand, a legal term applied to those
who carried out a criminal command because they would otherwise have
endangered their lives. The historian Jochen Bhler characterizes the
defense as being the justice system's "top favorite for acquittals":
Almost all of the accused alleged that they would have suffered if they
had refused to follow orders -- and that they had only killed on command.

Sadists or Pitiful Old Men?

In the trials conducted in Hagen, West Germany, in 1965-66, against former
SS men who had served at Sobibor, only one defendant was given a life
sentence: Karl Frenzel, the camp director, a gruesome sadist who had
whipped a dying prisoner and shot him personally. Five defendants received
prison terms of between three and eight years, and five others were
acquitted.

Karl Streibel, the commandant of the Trawniki training camp, was tried in
a Hamburg court from 1972 to 1976. He and five other defendants, all
senior members of the camp administration, went unpunished. The judges
argued that the Trawniki trainers had not been aware of the purpose for
which they were training the foreign workers -- a somewhat dubious
interpretation of their tasks.

If it was already so difficult to bring to justice the men who had been
higher up the chain of command, how are the courts expected to deal with a
man like Demjanjuk, a captured member of the Red Army who was apparently
recruited by the SS in 1942?

The Trawnikis -- as the men trained at the camp of that name are known --
were undoubtedly among the "most notorious offenders of World War II,"
says Hamburg historian Frank Golczewski. Many profited shamelessly from
the death camps, using money and gold taken from the murdered prisoners to
pay for sex with women in the surrounding villages.

And yet, says Peter Black, chief historian at the Holocaust Museum in
Washington, DC, one cannot conclude that these men volunteered to commit
mass murder. The conditions in the Nazi prisoner-of-war camps were so
horrific, according to Black, that the men "had limited options." The
non-German volunteers were at the lowest end of the hierarchy. If they
refused to cooperate, says Black, "they could be shot on the spot," at
least until the spring of 1943.

Helge Grabitz, a well-known Hamburg criminal prosecutor who has since
died, also believed that the Trawnikis were "coerced." They volunteered,
according to Grabitz, "to escape certain death from starvation, freezing
to death or epidemics in the camps." The "proven inhuman atrocities" could
hardly be attributed to individual offenders, she wrote, making criminal
prosecution "relatively difficult."

Neither Canada nor Britain nor Australia managed to convict former
Trawnikis who had immigrated to those countries.

In the Demjanjuk case, Germany now hopes to improve on that record, while
at the same time establishing stricter benchmarks.

Decades of Failure

Nevertheless, investigators are dealing with a case overshadowed by 30
years of failure on the part of jurists on several continents. "Germany
stumbled into these matters," says Demjanjuk's son, John Jr. The senior
Demjanjuk has been "paraded through a variety of countries like a dancing
bear," says Ed Nishnic, Demjanjuk's former son-in-law. Nishnic fears that
the German proceedings will amount to a "show trial," as has already
happened once before.

In 1987, Demjanjuk was put on trial in Israel after being extradited by US
authorities. Survivors of the Treblinka death camp had recognized him in a
photograph and identified him as a guard nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible."
Even in Treblinka, a hellish place where 900,000 people died, the guard
had stood out as a monster. He used his bayonet to slice off the breasts
of doomed women, and he started the motor from which the exhaust gases
were piped into the gas chambers.

But the case ended in an acquittal on appeal, after a lower court had
already sentenced Demjanjuk to death by hanging. A TV reporter for the
American CBS network tracked down a woman in a village near Treblinka who
admitted to having been a lover of Ivan the Terrible. The woman claimed
that the sadistic guard's surname was Marchenko, and both guards and
survivors from the camp later confirmed that this was true. The Israeli
prosecutor Michael Shaked found evidence in Russian and German archives
that destroyed his own case. The survivors had been mistaken. Demjanjuk
was not Ivan the Terrible.

In 1993, after several years in solitary confinement, he was acquitted and
returned to the United States, which reinstated his citizenship, setting a
precedent in the history of American public administration.

It was a bitter setback for the US Justice Department. Its Office of
Special Investigations (OSI), created in 1979 "to investigate and
prosecute participants in World War II-era acts of Nazi-sponsored
persecution," had spearheaded Demjanjuk's extradition to Israel. Now the
OSI investigators were forced to admit, in a court investigation, that
they had "acted on a preconception" and had "deceived" the courts by
withholding two pieces of testimony and a list of camp guards that
documented the true identity of Ivan the Terrible.

But the OSI won the next round in the decades-long legal battle, and
Demjanjuk lost his US passport once again. Ukraine and Poland refused to
accept Demjanjuk. But then the Germans stepped in. A few months later,
investigators in the southwestern city of Ludwigsburg began conducting
their research.

The prosecution in Munich has now inherited a host of old files containing
contradictory opinions and snippets of source materials that have been
analyzed again and again. The allegations are based exclusively on
documents; potential witnesses are long dead. The only man still alive who
believes to have identified Demjanjuk claims that the two men worked as
guards together at the Flossenbrg concentration camp in Bavaria.

Although inmates there also died horrible deaths, Flossenbrg is
unimportant to the prosecution. They are focusing on Sobibor, which was
purely an extermination camp. Anyone who was assigned to Sobibor, the
prosecutors argue, was automatically an accessory to murder.

The pieces of evidence of Demjanjuk's presence in Sobibor are long known.
Chief among them is his SS identification card, which bears the number
1393. And then there is the testimony of Ignat Danilchenko, a Soviet
Trawniki who is now dead, who testified against Demjanjuk in 1949 and
1979. Danilchenko claimed that he had seen Demjanjuk, an "experienced and
efficient guard," driving Jews into the gas chambers at Sobibor, and that
this was his "daily work." Demjanjuk's name also appears on a roster of
guards being transferred from Trawniki to Sobibor.

The defense, which will attempt to call the documents into question, sees
an abundance of potential holes in the prosecution's case. For instance,
the Munich public prosecutor's office neglected to have the SS
identification card, which has already been examined multiple times,
subjected to forensic analysis one more time in Germany. In March, experts
with the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation concluded, after
a relatively superficial examination of the document, that it is
"possible" that the ID card is genuine. This weak conclusion will hardly
suffice to conclusively discredit theories that the card was forged.

Demjanjuk's defense attorney has uncovered a third statement by the
witness Danilchenko that contradicts his other testimony. In 1947,
Danilchenko claimed that he had spent most of the war in a German hospital
near Rivne in western Ukraine. There is no mention of Sobibor, although by
mentioning Sobibor Danilchenko would also have incriminated himself.

This example illustrates the back-and-forth of petitions and defense pleas
that will likely dominate the coming days and weeks. Nazi war crimes
trials tend to be exhausting and drawn-out affairs -- as well as being a
delicate issue. The defendants can easily be portrayed as pitiful old men
who are being mercilessly pursued.

This effect could also materialize in the Demjanjuk case, the more it
becomes evident that he is to atone for a crime for which many others
escaped punishment. Even the investigators now concede that "Demjanjuk was
unlucky."

That is one side of the truth. But German historian Norbert Frei points to
another side of the truth that prosecutors can hardly ignore, despite
their justifiable objections. "The Germans owe it to the victims and the
survivors, but also to themselves, to prosecute Demjanjuk," he says.

(source:  Der Spiegel)






July 12



GERMANY:

Music In and Out of Harmony With Nazi Ideals


Richard Wagner is the classical composer most associated with the Nazis,
but Johann Sebastian Bach was the one the party dubbed "the most German
of Germans" and whose music was played at rallies to stir up nationalist
zeal.

The Nazis praised Bach for his "racially pure" family tree dating to the
11th century and for the "German" discipline of his baroque-style music.
Felix Mendelssohn, on the other hand, who revived Bach's concertos and
overtures in modern concert halls, was scorned by the Nazis for his Jewish
roots.

This complex relationship between Bach's and Mendelssohn's works during
the Third Reich is the focus of an exhibit called "Blood and Spirit,"
which runs through Nov. 8 at the Johann Sebastian Bach Museum in Eisenach,
the eastern German town where the composer was born in 1685.

It examines the treatment and abuse of both composers' music under Hitler
and how their works shaped the Nazis' idea of "Germanness," museum
director Jrg Hansen said.

"We had a lot of positive reactions," said Hansen, who said that around
15,000 visitors, among them many foreign tourists, have seen the show
since it opened in May.

"Most visitors are very surprised, because they didn't know about Bach's
[music's] role under the Nazis," Hansen said. "They had no clue, for
example, that he was played at Nazi party rallies."

Visitors entering the show are confronted with a cacophony of the
composer's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 interspersed with the staccato voice
of chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels coming from a documentary
playing in the gallery.

Bach's pieces were performed by members of the Hitler Youth and played
almost daily on the radio. In 1935, festivals were organized in several
cities across Germany to mark the composer's 250th birthday, peaking in
the "Reich Bach Festival" in Leipzig, attended by Goebbels and Adolf
Hitler himself.

"The Fuehrer followed the austere music of Bach seriously. . . . It is a
music in harmony with his spirit -- austere, disciplined to its core, and
German through and through," a newspaper reported from the festival.

Mendelssohn, whose discrimination under the Nazis is examined in a second
gallery, was considered "unbearable for a cultural movement based on
race," as one Nazi musicologist put it.

His romantic compositions "utterly failed to speak in the great German
language of feeling and form" and "possessed too much that was unreal and
sentimental," Third Reich-era music critics quoted in the exhibit wrote.

In part of the anti-Semitic push, a statue of the classical composer in
the city of Leipzig vanished overnight in 1936. It proved more difficult
to remove Mendelssohn's music from the country, where it was extremely
popular with the German public.

While there was no formal ban on his work, the Nazis forbade male choirs
to sing popular songs by the composer at party events. They hired several
Nazi-friendly composers to rewrite and "Aryanize" some of Mendelssohn's
"Midsummer Night's Dream," with its famous Wedding March. Composer Carl
Orff, who wrote "Carmina Burana," was among them.

The exhibition also confronts visitors with a piece of German postwar
history that is often overlooked: Many of the musicologists who wrote
anti-Semitic pamphlets during the Third Reich, and helped shape the two
composers' public reception at the time, became prominent academics after
the war.

"One often says that we've dealt with our Nazi past in every way, but that
did not really happen," Hansen said.

(source:  Associated Press)






July 13




GERMANY:

Prosecutors Charge Alleged Nazi Camp Guard Demjanjuk


German prosecutors have formally charged John Demjanjuk with helping to
kill almost 28,000 Jews during the Holocaust. A court in Munich announced
the charges on Monday but has yet to confirm when the trial will commence.

German prosecutors have formally charged John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts
of being an accessory to murder. The charges relating to the murder of
Jewish inmates in a Nazi death camp during World War II were filed at a
court in Munich on Monday.

The path had been cleared for the charges earlier this month after doctors
declared that the 89-year-old retired auto worker, who was deported from
the United States in May, was fit to stand trial. However, their one
condition was that there would only be two 90-minute court sessions on
each day of the proceedings.

German prosecutors allege that the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk served as a
guard in the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War
II. He denies the charge, claiming he had been a Red Army soldier and then
a prisoner of war who never hurt anyone. However, documents obtained by US
justice authorities and shared with their German colleagues seem to
identify Demjanjuk as an SS-trained guard at Sobibor.

Prosecutors could not say when the trial, which is likely to be the last
big Nazi war crimes trial in Germany, would take place.

Efraim Zuroff of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the
filing of formal charges on Monday. "This is obviously an important step
forward," he told the Associated Press. "We hope that the trial itself
will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the
appropriate punishment."

Demjanjuk had topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of the 10 most
wanted suspected Nazi war criminals. The organization says Demjanjuk
pushed men, women and children into the gas chambers at the Sobibor camp.

(source:  Spiegel)




JULY 17


GERMANY:

GARDEN NAZI----Hitler-Saluting Gnome Sparks Outrage


Great art or bad taste? A "Nazi" garden gnome in Nuremberg has prompted a
public investigation and a renewed debate on what constitutes art.

The humble garden gnome is usually associated with quaint tradition rather
than progressive art. Nonetheless, a gallery owner in the German city of
Nuremberg has caused controversy by displaying in his window a golden
gnome making the Nazi salute.

The public prosecutor's office in Nuremberg has launched an investigation
following an anonymous letter of complaint regarding the Nazi gnome.
Spokesperson Wolfgang Trg explained to the German press agency DPA that
the display of the symbols of organizations which are banned under
Germany's constitution -- such as the Nazi party -- is only lawful if the
organisation is being overtly criticized. "We are currently deciding
whether the case of the garden gnomes is as clear cut as placards with
crossed-out swastikas."

The creator of the exhibition, art professor Ottmar Hrl, told DPA of his
shock at the reaction to his work. "I am completely stunned," he said. "In
1942 it would have been the Nazis massacring me because of this piece." He
argued that "presenting the master race as garden gnomes" clearly
constitutes satire.

Still, it is possible that both Hrl and the owner of the gallery could
face punishment for their association with this provocative piece of art.
The public prosecutor's office is currently giving Hrl time to make a
statement in response to the furore.

Earlier this year, Hrl, who has been president of the Nuremberg Academy of
Fine Arts since 2005, displayed 700 of the Nazi gnomes in the Belgian city
of Gent -- where they were seen by over 40,000 people -- and the Italian
region of South Tyrol. The exhibition, entitled "Dance with the Devil,"
received no official complaints in either country and garnered postive
feedback from the Jewish community.

(source:  Der Spiegel)





ISRAEL:

Fight Holocaust Denial In Israel
July 17, 2009

New York
Kenneth Bandler
JTA Wire Service


The last place one might expect to find Holocaust deniers is in Israel.
Yet a new University of Haifa survey shows that an astonishing 40.5
percent of Israeli Arabs say the Holocaust did not happen.

The finding is in the latest index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel, an
annual survey conducted by Professor Sammy Smooha since 2003. When he
first posed the Holocaust question in 2006, 28 percent of Arab citizens
doubted its authenticity.

Holocaust denial is prevalent across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Irans
regime, especially President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made questioning the
Holocaust a centerpiece of its ideology, rarely missing an opportunity to
proclaim falsehoods about one of the most thoroughly documented periods in
history.

In Gaza and West Bank schools administered by the Palestinian Authority,
the Nazi campaign to murder 6 million Jews still is not taught. Here, as
with the Iranian regime, truth is debunked to advance political goals.

Israeli Arabs, comprising 20 percent of the population, do learn about the
Holocaust in school. They live in a country where the premier Holocaust
memorial and remembrance institution, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, is
frequented by school groups and dignitaries visiting from around the
world. And in Israel, anyone is likely to encounter in the public space
older Jews with numbers on their arms. So how can a significant percentage
of Israeli Arabs be so unaware?

It is important that Arab students visit Yad Vashem to be exposed to the
scale of the tragedy, Ali Haider, co-director of Sikkuy, a leading
nonprofit advocating for greater equality between Israels Jewish and Arab
citizens, told me.

With all the resources readily available in Israel, why even three years
ago did more than a quarter of the countrys Arab citizens doubt the
Holocaust? What underlies the surge of 12 percent reflected in the new
survey? Further, according to Smooha, 37 percent of Arabs with higher
education are among the deniers.

Do they honestly believe the Holocaust is a fraud, or is the reaction
politically motivated?

It can be seen that some of the frustration experienced by the Arab
citizens from the failure to achieve equality engenders a resistance to
recognizing the Holocaust, said Haider.

The observation has validity for Smooha, who says, When they say there was
no Holocaust, they are protesting. They are saying I am not giving
legitimacy to the Jewish state.

The survey also found a significant drop in the percentage of Israeli
Arabs who recognize Israels right to exist as an independent state, from
81.1 percent in 2003 to 53.7 percent in 2009.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have long been complicated. Arab citizens
enjoy the fruits of Israeli democracy, including the right to vote and
serve in the Knesset. But longstanding economic and social inequities,
notably unequal budgets allocated to Jewish and Arab communities, have
dampened their aspirations of becoming full participants in Israeli
society.

Frustrations are deepened by political developments, including the impasse
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the 2006 Lebanon War, the governments
failure to implement recommendations of the Orr Commissioncreated in the
wake of the police shootings of a dozen Arab citizens in 2000and, most
recently, Avigdor Liebermans Yisrael Beiteinu partys efforts to introduce
legislation aimed at the Arab minority.

Israeli Arabs understandably are unlikely to embrace Hatikvah and other
symbols as the Jewish majority does, but disputing a historical foundation
of the state is troubling.

Refuting Israels legitimacy by denying the Holocaust must be emphatically
countered. Israels Arab citizens presumably could help. After all, Israeli
Arabs, especially the younger generations who grew up in Israel and are
fluent in Hebrew, are best positioned of any Arabs to understand the
Jewish psyche.

On the other hand, Israeli Arabs know which emotional buttons to press if
some choose to hurt the Jewish majority without using violence. Responding
to a survey questioner is one tactic and, in this instance, led to
headlines emphasizing the hurtful result on the Holocaust.

None of this can fully explain or excuse the evidence of Holocaust denial
in Israels Arab community. Can it be dismissed as a form of protest by a
minority seeking to improve its lot in Israeli society? Or is it more
ominous, a worrisome trend aimed at allying with forces seeking to
deligitimizeand ultimately eliminateIsrael?

The kernel of doubt, if nurtured, can grow into a mighty myth and expand.
What Smoohas survey has revealed needs urgent attention by Arabs and Jews,
working in their own communities as well as together.

(source: Kenneth Bandler is director of communications for the American
Jewish Committee; JTA)





DENMARK----film review

Danish Nazi movie an irresistible thriller


From the opening black-and-white footage of Nazis invading Copenhagen,
"Flame & Citron" draws you into its doom-laden atmosphere and keeps
ratcheting up the tension.

This searing, stylish account of World War II heroism from Denmark's Ole
Christian Madsen avoids period realism, conveying the story of two heroes
of the Danish resistance as a noir thriller, complete with shadowy alleys,
double-crosses galore and the requisite femme fatale.

Beneath its stylized surface, "Flame" is also a provocative film of ideas,
exploring the notion of heroism. Although based on true events, it
unspools like a fever dream, circling back to the hero's opening
voiceover, which at the end takes on new poignancy.

This icy portrait of two assassins shooting Nazis point-blank offers no
Hollywood-style uplift to mollify mainstream viewers. But "Flame" should
pull in a niche group of World War II connoisseurs and will delight
art-house and fest audiences with its innovative mix of drama and history
filtered through genre. The IFC Films release opens in New York on July
31, then in L.A. and a other markets August 14.

It's 1944 and Copenhagen is occupied by Nazi forces. Two resistance
fighters with the noms de guerre of Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron
(Mads Mikkelsen) work undercover for the Holger Danske Group,
assassinating Danish turncoats. They also itch to off the German invaders,
in particular the silver-tongued Hoffman, head of the Gestapo in Denmark.
Flame and Citron take orders from the well-fixed Aksel Winther (Peter
Mygind), who in turn receives orders from London.

Known for his red hair and fearlessness, Flame, barely 20 and the younger
of the duo, has become notorious throughout Copenhagen and carries an
inflating price on his head. He acquires Ketty (Stine Stengade), a femme
fatale in a Veronica Lake blonde wig, who works for the underground as a
courier.

Following the loss of two comrades in the cell, it becomes apparent
there's an informer in their midst. Now all loyalties appear murky. To the
film's credit, it captures the confusion among the renegades -- call it
the fog of resistance -- keeping the viewer as off-balance as the
fighters.

Winther, it turns out, may be using his position as a front to protect
financial interests tied to the Germans. Meanwhile, Ketty, though
seemingly in love with Flame, may be a double -- or triple -- agent.
Disillusioned with their self-seeking superiors, Flame and Citron become
resistance "outlaws," pursuing their own vendetta to its inevitable bloody
denouement.

It helps that the vendetta is carried out by two gorgeous, charismatic
actors. Lindhardt, with his orange shock and milky skin, makes a riveting
screen presence. Despite the film of cold sweat over his grizzled face and
unflattering glasses, Mikkelsen's sculpted, exotic beauty pierces through.

The Occupation literally makes Citron sick to his stomach, leaving him
with no choice but to fight it. Though more wed to battle than family
life, he also loves, in his fashion, his wife and child. In a wrenching
scene, he clumsily comes on to his wife, his need for her palpable, but
she knows that at heart he's a rootless wanderer.

Flame, from a privileged background, developed his hatred of Fascists
after witnessing anti-Semitism in Germany. Through Flame the filmmaker
looks deep into the character of a hero, suggesting that he loses some of
his humanity to the Cause and risks resembling the enemy he fights.

In a telling face-off, Flame visits his hotelier father, owner of the
mountain retreat favored by Nazi bigwigs, who simply wants to get by. The
film indirectly challenges viewers to ask what they might do in a like
situation.

For "Flame's" bravura style, credit goes to below-the-line contributors.
Cinematographer Jorgen Johansson favors overhead shots of figures in
fedoras and stormtrooper uniforms fanning out or closing in like pawns
directed by a higher force. Production designer Jette Lehmann has
contrived a palette of gunmetal grays and livid whites daubed with red
velvet, especially striking in the barny backrooms of cafes.

In its tough-mindedness "Flame" owes much to Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army
of Shadows." Avoiding the docu-style string of anecdotes of many
fact-based films, it offers the shapeliness and irony of classic drama.
For beneath his stony exterior, it's Flame's romantic soul that will prove
his worst enemy. This masterful film is at once a portrait of wartime
heroism and a poignant journey into a boy's secret heart.

(source:  Reuters)




July 18



AUSTRALIA:

Holocaust denier Toben banned from attending exhibition


A FEDERAL Court judge has forbidden Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben from
going to an exhibition on people who risked their lives to save others
during the Holocaust, after concerns were raised that he would offend
survivors.

Toben, 65, who is appealing against his three-month jail sentence for
contempt of court, had planned to take advantage of a relaxation of his
bail conditions to attend the opening of the Courage to Care exhibition in
Horsham, Victoria, on Monday.

Justice Anthony Besanko yesterday ruled it was not appropriate after a
motion to restrict Toben was brought forward by Jeremy Jones, the former
president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

"I don't consider it appropriate that that liberty be exercised for the
purpose of attending the exhibition," Justice Besanko said, ordering Toben
not to attend the exhibition "or any similar event".

Toben foreshadowed that this could be problematic, saying he had been
invited to speak at an event in Adelaide next month.

"'Similar' is a problem for me," he said, but the judge said he was not
prepared to ban Toben from speaking at all public meetings.

Robin Margo SC, for Mr Jones, said his client would not have previously
consented to a loosening of bail if he had known Toben's intentions.

"This is a confrontational visit by Dr Toben to an organisation ... to
confront a Holocaust survivor, Mr Harry Better," Mr Margo said. "There's
no evidence that he was invited to this.

"It was clearly implied firstly that the undertaking was varied for the
purpose of Dr Toben travelling on compassionate grounds."

Toben announced his plan to attend the exhibition -- aimed at high school
students -- earlier this week, specifically saying he wanted to meet Mr
Better, who spent his wartime childhood living with a Catholic family
while his mother went to Auschwitz.

Toben -- speaking to the court on his mobile phone from Victoria -- said
the order not to attend the exhibition "smeared" him.

"It implies that I do not know how to behave in public," he said. "I know
how to behave. I'm a civilised person. I see no reason why I should not be
there. I will not be saying anything."

Justice Besanko raised the possibility of activating a warrant for Toben's
imprisonment, which is on hold until the appeal decision, but Mr Margo
said his client did not want to threaten the appeal procedure.

"We wouldn't want him to serve even a week if the sentence was put aside,"
Mr Margo said.

Toben may now only leave South Australia to visit his lawyer in Melbourne,
or for compassionate visits during July, seeing ill supporters.

His appeal is due to be heard next month. He has been given a three-month
sentence for repeatedly breaching court orders not to publish certain
offensive material about the Holocaust and Jews on his website.

(source:  The Australian)

Feb. 14


IRELAND:

Museum to ask retired judge to investigate Nazi art claims


The Hunt Museum in Limerick is to ask a retired senior judge to lead an
investigation into claims that some of its collection may have been looted
by the Nazis.

The judge will be asked to consult with the International Council of
Museums, a UNESCO-backed body, to decide who should carry out detailed
investigative work.

The inquiry follows allegations by the Simon Wiesenthal centre that the
couple who amassed the collection, the late John Hunt and his late wife,'
Gertrude, had business relationships with major dealers in art looted by
the Nazis. These were raised in a letter to the President, Mrs McAleese.

The museum board held a special meeting yesterday after the Minister for
Arts, Mr O'Donoghue, asked it to take action about the allegations
"insofar as they relate to the collection".

The museum chairman, Mr George Stacpoole, who last week dismissed the
Wiesenthal allegations as "hearsay", said yesterday that the concerns must
be given serious consideration.

A senior academic and a museum professional from outside Ireland will be
asked to assist the judge. The museum director, Ms Virginia Teehan, said
she hoped to announce the names of the team within a week.

The board will also ask the Society of Archivists to nominate a
professional expert to compile a detailed list of its archive.

Ms Teehan said the investigation was supported by the Hunts' children,
John jnr and Trudi, who have rejected the allegations.

The museum wanted to address the allegations "in a spirit of co-operation
and professionalism", she said.

But while Ms Teehan said the appointment of a judge would give the inquiry
"the appropriate level of objectivity that it deserves", a museum
consultant who claims to have linked the Hunts' business associates to art
agents for Hitler and Gring said she would not co-operate with the
inquiry.

Ms Erin Gibbons, a Dublin-based museum consultant and archaeologist, said
it was inappropriate to have the judge report directly to the museum.
"This museum is funded by the public purse and some of the collection it
holds was acquired by the State," she said. "The Government should
establish an independent investigation immediately."

The Wiesenthal centre's international liaison director, Dr Shimon Samuels,
said the process "seems to be moving ahead". However, Dr Samuels wants the
board to allow a nominee from the centre to join the investigation.

Ms Teehan said this would have to be considered by the museum board. She
hoped those with information would co-operate.

(source: The Irish Times)




UNITED KINGDOM:

Scramble begins to own the last Nazi treasure


It has belonged to one of Germanys most notorious Nazi leaders, the
British Royal Family and the man who perpetrated the Hitler Diaries hoax.

A gift to Hermann Goering, supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, the
luxurious yacht named after his first wife hosted some of the most
chilling meetings of the Third Reich.

After the Second World War it came into the hands of the British monarchy
who used the yacht for 15 years before handing it back to Goerings family.

It was later bought by Gerd Heidemann, a German journalist who fooled the
world with what he claimed to be the Fhrers diaries.

Now, the Carin II is up for sale again at an auction in the Netherlands.

The boat was a present from the German motor industry in 1937 to mark
Goerings marriage to his second wife, Emmy, but was named after his first
spouse, Carin, who had died of tuberculosis six years earlier.

The 90ft-long Carin II was described by one newspaper as "a symbol of
German shipbuilding supremacy, a floating embassy for the state".

Hitler was a frequent visitor, as was Nazi propaganda minister Josef
Goebbels, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and his security police leader,
Reinhard Heydrich.

Goering stored the finest wines and cognac aboard, hosted lavish dinners
and shot ducks from a specially constructed platform on the bow.

During the summer of 1940 Goering would sit on the green leather sofa in
the boats splendid wood panelled salon - which remains unchanged to this
day - and study Battle of Britain operational maps on the burr walnut
table.

In 1942, Himmler, Adolf Eichmann and Rudolf Hess, head of the Auschwitz
death camp, met on board a few days after the infamous Wannsee Conference
which drew up plans for the "Final Solution".

The Carin II survived the collapse of the Third Reich virtually unscathed
and was found, moored off Hamburg, by Field Marshal Montgomery who
requisitioned it as Nazi treasure for George VI and his family as a spoil
of war.

The boat was first renamed the Royal Albert and then in 1952, four years
after Prince Charless birth, named after the young Royal in the year
Elizabeth II became Queen.

For 15 years it provided a holiday home for the Royal Family with visits
by the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Prince of Wales.

But eventually the Royals became nervous about using the boat, partly
because of its history and partly over fears that cavorting on a luxury
yacht during a period of post-war austerity was bad for their public
image, and it was handed over to the Goering familys lawyers in 1960.

The family sold the yacht to Gunther Knauth, a Bonn printer, who renamed
it Theresia and kept the boat for 12 years before selling it to Heidemann.

An unashamed Nazi sympathiser, he restored the name Carin II and
entertained numerous prominent Nazis on board, including Karl Wolff,
former head of the SS in Italy and Himmlers liaison officer with Hitler,
and SS General Wilhelm Mohnke, the last commander of the garrison
defending the Reich Chancellery in 1945.

As the yacht became increasingly expensive to maintain, Heidmann persuaded
his employers, Stern magazine, to advance him cash to acquire instalments
of more than 50 volumes of Hitlers diaries, valued at 2.5 million.

All were forgeries, but ones which managed to fool both the Sunday Times
and the distinguished British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.

In 1983, Heidemann went to prison for his part in the con and Carin II was
put up for auction, eventually being sold to Egyptian-born Mostafa Karim
and his wife, Sandra Simpson.

Still its adventures were not over - in 1987 the couple were caught in a
force-ten gale and washed up on the shores of Libya.

Locked up by Colonel Gaddafi for four months, the couple were eventually
allowed to leave after covert negotiations conducted by the US.

After a series of Mediterranean voyages, the Carin II was sailed to Egypt
and its berth in the Abydos Bay, some 350 miles from Cairo, where it has
remained ever since.

Mrs Simpson, now remarried following her husbands death - values the boat
at 650,000 and wants to bring it to England as a floating museum.

An approach to enquire whether the Prince of Wales might like to purchase
the yacht which once bore his name has been turned down.

Now the boat will go up for auction in the Netherlands.

And so the scramble begins between well-heeled neo-fascists, genuine
historical buffs and the merely rich to own the last complete possession
of a major figure of the Third Reich.

(source: The Scotsman)

July 3



POLAND:

Cornerstone laid for Museum of Polish Jews


The cornerstone of the long-awaited Museum of the History of Polish Jews,
a major step towards reviving Poland's Jewish heritage after the
Holocaust, was laid in Warsaw on Tuesday, organisers said.

In the works for a decade, the long-awaited multi-million dollar,
multi-media facility is expected to open its door in 2011.

"Prior to the Holocaust, the Shoah, Warsaw was one of the world's main
centres of Jewish life where politics, culture, publishing and Jewish
theatre thrived -- in fact it was the leading centre, surpassing other
cities in the US and Europe," project director Jerzy Halbersztadt told
guests at the site.

During the Holocaust, the district was inside the infamous Warsaw Ghetto,
where all told Nazi Germany imprisoned more than 400,000 Polish Jews, many
of whom died of starvation or disease or were sent to death camps.

The bricks used as the cornerstones came from the World War II-era
foundations of the last headquarters of the Council of Jews of the Warsaw
Ghetto, the scene of a famous wartime uprising, Halbersztadt said.

"So we have come full circle and beginning the construction of the museum
is also an element of closing this circle," he added.

Led by the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB), the doomed World War II
rebellion was among the first armed insurgency by partisans against the
Nazis in all of occupied Europe.

The museum will face the imposing monument dedicated to those who died in
the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Cantors, or Jewish liturgical singers, from around the globe sang at the
foot of the black marble monument Tuesday as part of the ground-breaking
ceremonies.

"It's surreal to be here -- this (Warsaw) was the epicentre of cantorial
music in the early 1930's and 40's," president of the international
Cantors Assembly, David Propis, from Houston, Texas, told AFP.

Around a hundred cantors from the United States, Canada, various European
states and Israel will sing in the Polish National Opera in Warsaw Tuesday
evening, reviving the art of Jewish liturgical song nearly wiped out in
Poland by the Holocaust.

Designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamaeki and Ilmari Lahdelma, the
faade of the future museum will be symbolically ruptured, opening onto
undulating walls in an allusion to the Biblical parting of the Red Sea.

The museum's virtual arm -- the "Virtual Shtetl" web portal was launched
in June -- is aimed at giving it a head start online before its doors
open.

Prior to World War II, Poland was home to some 3.5 million Jews, roughly
10 percent of it's pre-war population with nearly a millennium of Jewish
settlement within its borders.

Some three million Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust which claimed six
million of pre-WWII Europe's estimated 11 million Jews.

A third -- 350,000 -- of Warsaw's pre-war population was Jewish. Today,
out of an overwhelming Roman Catholic population of 38 million, various
sources peg Poland's Jewish population at just 3,500 to 15,000.

Slated to cost a total 144 million dollars (102 million euros), the museum
is being co-funded by the Polish government, the city of Warsaw and funds
raised from private and institutional donors world-wide.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)

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


At age 88, Mich. man forced to deal with war past


An 88-year-old man living in Michigan who is now the subject of a
criminal investigation in Poland into allegations he shot Jews while
working in a Nazi-controlled police unit during World War II insists he
did nothing wrong.

Polish officials are investigating what happened nearly 70 years ago in
what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. The U.S. Justice Department has
also agreed to help by questioning John Kalymon about murder, death camps
and other atrocities against Jews there in 1942.

"I don't feel guilty," the white-haired, retired auto engineer told The
Associated Press during a brief visit Monday to his suburban Detroit home.

His lawyer is resisting the investigation.

"He guarded a stack of coal from looters. He didn't expend any rounds of
ammunition and didn't commit any atrocities," Elias Xenos said of his
client's work for the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police when Kalymon was in his
early 20s. "He's disappointed that one or more governments are still
trying to pursue him based on flimsy evidence."

The U.S. government became aware of Kalymon after the fall of the Soviet
Union in 1991. World War II-era archives that had been inaccessible
revealed people who may have concealed their Axis allegiance when they
entered the United States decades ago.

In 2007, after a civil trial, a federal judge in Detroit stripped Kalymon
of his citizenship, saying his two years in the Ukrainian police resulted
in the persecution of civilians.

The government produced a handwritten document in which "Iv Kalymun"
reported firing four shots, killing one Jew and injuring another. Kalymon
admits he spelled his last name both ways when he was a young man but says
he did not go by "Kalymun" when he was a Ukrainian officer. He denied
shooting Jews and claimed the record was a forgery.

Lviv was part of Poland until 1939. In May, the Justice Department
disclosed that Poland's Commission for Prosecution of Crimes Against the
Polish Nation wanted U.S. prosecutors to interview Kalymon.

The commission's questions are numerous: Where was the Jewish ghetto
located in 1942? Who was the commander? Did Kalymon witness murders? If
so, how many and who were the killers? Can he remember the names of other
officers?

In Poland, prosecutor Grzegorz Malisiewicz said the commission was
investigating the role of Ukrainian police in the deaths of Jews.

"The crimes include murder of at least 39 Jews and attempted murder of
another 17 Jews, detaining and bringing to a gathering point at least
3,458 Jews and convoying an unspecified number" to a labor camp,
Malisiewicz said.

He declined to say whether Poland wants to file charges against Kalymon. A
Justice Department spokeswoman, Laura Sweeney, said she was not aware of
other pending court cases in which the government is helping Poland with a
war crimes investigation.

Xenos, Kalymon's lawyer, said he would ask U.S. District Judge Marianne
Battani to quash a subpoena for his client's testimony. If that fails,
Kalymon has a right under Polish law to remain silent.

Kalymon entered the United States in 1949 after being classified as a
"displaced person" following the war. He said he lied about his police
work because he feared being sent to the Soviet Union.

Kalymon became a naturalized citizen in 1955 and worked as an engineer at
Chrysler. Xenos said he has an award from auto icon Lee Iacocca on the
wall of his ranch-style house.

Kalymon told the AP he has physical problems and can't walk without
assistance. "I'm forgetting a lot of things. I let my lawyer handle all
this," he said, declining further comment.

His wife said Kalymon has told her that his best friends in Europe were
Jews.

"They're accusing him of murder  it's not true," said Luba Kalymon, 83.
"Is he worried? Who wouldn't be?"

(source:  Associated Press)








GERMANY:

ALL CLEAR FOR NAZI WAR CRIMES CASE----Doctors Declare Demjanjuk Fit to
Stand Trial


Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk has been deemed fit to stand
trial by doctors in Munich. The 89-year-old could appear in court as early
as this autumn in what will most likely be Germany's last big Nazi war
crimes trial.

The final hurdle to what is expected to be the last major Nazi war crimes
trial in Germany has been cleared. On Friday prosecutors said that doctors
had given the all clear for John Demjanjuk to stand trial on charges
related to the deaths of 29,000 Jews in a World War II death camp. The
retired auto worker had recently been deported to Germany from the United
States after his family failed to prove that he was too frail to stand
trial.

The doctors determined that Demjanjuk, who has been held in custody in
Munich since May 12, was fit to stand trial. However, they imposed one
condition -- saying that his court appearances be limited to two 90-minute
sessions a day. State prosecutors said Friday that formal charges could be
expected this month and that a trial could commence as early as the
autumn.

The 89-year-old, who was born in Ukraine, had fought bitterly to stay in
his home in Ohio despite the fact that he had already been stripped of his
US citizenship. His health became a key issue after images taken by the US
government showed him walking unaided to his car even though he had
claimed to be too ill to travel. In May he was finally put on a plane to
Germany by US immigration officials and was arrested on his arrival. He
has since been held in the Stadelheim prison in Munich, where Adolf Hitler
served time after his failed 1922 coup.

Demjanjuk claims that he was drafted into the Red Army in 1941, became a
German prisoner of war and never harmed anyone. However, documents
obtained by the US justice authorities and shared with the German
prosecutors include a photo ID that seems to identify him as a guard at
the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
welcomed the doctors' decision that should pave the way for a trial. "This
has been a very complicated case," he told the Associated Press. "But it
is important that Demjanjuk, who actively participated in the
implementation of the Final Solution, finally receive an appropriate
punishment." Demjanjuk has been at the top of the Wiesenthal Center's list
of 10 most wanted war criminals involved in the Holocaust, in which the
Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. The Jerasulem-based center claims that he
pushed men, women and children into the gas chambers at Sobibor.

In the 1970s Demjanjuk was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a
notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp. He was extradited
to Israel and sentenced to death but the conviction was then overturned
when new evidence pointed to another man's guilt.

(source:  Spiegel)



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


Suspected Nazi Said Fit to Stand Trial


John Demjanjuk moved one step closer to another trial after German
prosecutors said Friday that doctors had deemed the 89-year-old fit
to go to court on charges of being accessory to murder at the Sobibor Nazi
death camp.

A Dutch group representing members of victims' families who hope to serve
as co-plaintiffs in the trial welcomed the decision to try the retired
auto worker, who was recently deported from his suburban Ohio home. They
expressed hope in a statement that "the truth is found and justice is
done."

Munich prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk of being a guard at the death camp in
Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. They allege that he was an
accessory to murder in 29,000 cases and said they expect formal charges
later this month.

But his son, John Demjanjuk Jr. vowed to "vigorously dispute" the
doctors' decision, saying they have given him only 16 months to live, due
to his incurable leukemic bone marrow disease.

"This has nothing to do with bringing anyone to justice or fitness for
trial. My father will not live to fairly litigate the matter as (he) has
successfully done before," Demjanjuk Jr. said in a statement.

Prosecutors said that Demjanjuk's time in court must not exceed two
90-minute sessions daily.

"We are very pleased that this will pave the way for him to be prosecuted
in Germany," said Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon
Wiesenthal Center.

"This has been a very complicated case, but it is important that
Demjanjuk, who actively participated in the implementation of the Final
Solution, finally receive an appropriate punishment," Zuroff said by
telephone from Jerusalem.

Demjanjuk has been in custody in Munich since arriving there May 12 after
losing an extended court battle to stay in the United States when his
citizenship was revoked. His health was a key issue in that battle.

Photos taken in April showed Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) wincing
as immigration agents removed him from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio,
during an earlier aborted attempt to deport him to Germany.

Images taken days before his deportation and released by the U.S.
government showed him entering his car unaided.

Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who spent World War II as a Nazi
prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by U.S. justice authorities and shared
with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a
guard at the Sobibor death camp and say he was trained at an SS facility
for Nazi guards at Trawniki, also in Poland.

The more than 30 potential co-plaintiffs in the Netherlands said in the
statement released through the secretary of their advisory group that they
hoped the trial would serve to bring attention to Sobibor and other death
camps.

"It is less important for them whether he goes to jail," Johannes
Houwink ten Cate, said.

Efforts to prosecute the Ukrainian native began in 1977 and have involved
courts and government officials from at least five countries on three
continents.

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of up to 15 years
in prison in Germany.

(source:  Associated Press)





USA//MISSOURI:

Holocaust denier in town for fundraising talk


The world's most notorious Holocaust denier kicks off his U.S. tour in the
Kansas City area tonight.

On his Web site, British writer David Irving has announced a month-long,
17-city tour of the West and Midwest, during which he will speak on the
topic "Hitler, Himmler and Enigma, Rewriting WW2 History using Nazi
Messages Decoded by the British Secret Service."

The first stop is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, July 3, at an (sic) hotel
by the airport in Kansas City, Mo., according to an e-mail from Irving,
who promised to inform those who paid the $15 reservation fee the exact
location of the meeting shortly before it occurred.

Despite his having authored many books, Irving's reputation as a historian
was shattered when he lost his libel suit against "Denying the Holocaust"
author Deborah Lipstadt in 2000. Lipstadt had identified Irving in her
1994 book as a denier, and he objected, hoping to use Britain's stricter
libel laws against the American academic.

But Irving lost, big time. The judge ruled he has for his own ideological
reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated
historical evidence;  that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is
anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists
who promote neo-Nazism.

Lipstadt's book about the case, "History on Trial," (HarperCollins, 2005)
was optioned as a major motion picture by the producers of The Soloist,
Variety reported April 23.

Political Prisoner

Since 2000, Irving has led a peripatetic existence, including a nearly
year-long incarceration in an Austrian jail in 2006 for having violated
that country's law against trivialising, grossly playing down and denying
the Holocaust. He tempted fate by traveling to Austria, knowing he was
wanted on charges first leveled in 1989.

At tonight's event in KC, Irving will no doubt hawk copies of his latest
self-published book, a memoir of the Austrian episode: "Banged Up:
Survival as a Political Prisoner in 21st Century Europe."

It's not known whether he'll shill for any of Hitlers bones, as U.K. press
reports had him doing back in March. The London Telegraph quoted Irving as
saying his online store is the only way he can make money after being
declared bankrupt in 2002.

Items up for sale on the site include Hitler's walking stick - and a
goblet and spoon given as a christening present by Heinrich Himmler to
Hermann Goering's daughter - Irving authenticates the goods, which are
offered by other sellers, and takes a 15 per cent commission. The
70-year-old says he is currently trying to confirm the authenticity of
bones said to be from Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun. Strands of the
Fuhrers hair are also expected to go on sale.

First visit to KC

Kenneth S. Stern, the American Jewish Committees New York-based expert on
extremism and anti-Semitism, said Irving does fund-raising tours of the
U.S. from time to time.

"This guy was discredited years ago," Stern said. "Everybody understands
he
lies about history to promote Holocaust denial."

Stern, an attorney, was a key member of Lipstadt's defense team in the
British libel case. Irving figures prominently in the chapter about
Holocaust denial in Stern's most recent book, "Anti-Semitism Today: How It
Is Different, How It Is the Same, and How to Fight It" (AJCommittee,
2006).

Kansas Citian Leonard Zeskind, author of the new book "Blood and Politics:
The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the
Mainstream" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), said Irving has never before
visited the Kansas City area. He suspects members of the local National
Socialist Movement chapter have invited Irving.

"I hear that attendance at some of his events lately has been very small
20 or 30 people," Zeskind said. "But he's the highest-status guy who has
come into Kansas City from the white-nationalist, anti-Semitic world in
some time - since Bo Gritz came here in the middle of the militia
madness."

In the 1980s, Irving established formal connections with the American
fountainhead of Holocaust denial, the Institute for Historical Review  a
pseudo-scholarly body based in California. The IHR was controlled by the
late Willis Carto, who is a major figure in Zeskind's book.

Jean Zeldin, executive director of the Midwest Center for Holocaust
Education, issued the following written statement:

"David Irving may present himself as a general historian of the WW II era,
but courts in the United Kingdom have ruled on this matter and found him
to be simply another Holocaust denier. Speaking for the community of
Holocaust survivors and MCHEs educational program, we know that the truth
is the truth and cannot be trifled with, no matter what the propagandists
have to say."

(source:  KCJC News)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust scholar says Yad Vashem divided over commemorating Bergson Group


The refusal of Yad Vashem to commemorate in its museum Americans who
helped save Jews from the Holocaust is creating an internal rift in the
ranks of the museum's leadership, according to a leading Holocaust scholar
from the U.S. This rift, according to Rafael Medoff, director of the David
Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington D.C., concerns the
honoring of the Bergson Group.

Under the leadership of Hillel Kook, a Revisionist Zionist politician also
known as Peter Bergson, the ten members of the group pressured the U.S.
administration to save 200,000 Jews in the 1940s. All 10 members belonged
to the Irgun, a right-wing underground movement operating in pre-state
Israel.

Unlike the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., Yad Vashem's
permanent display bears no mention of the Bergson Group. Medoff says that
Yad Vashem has until now largely ignored its efforts. Yad Vashem denies
ignoring the Group, noting that it is honored in non-museum activities.
Mentioning it in the permanent display while "ignoring context and other
influences, would be misleading, exaggerating and out of proportion,"
according to Yad Vashem.

But while on a visit to Israel last month, Medoff told Anglo File that
some of Yad Vashem's top figures have been warming up to the idea of
honoring its members, known as "Bergsonites." This has caused Yad Vashem
to speak with "two voices," according to Medoff.

He says the inauguration of Rabbi Israel Meir Lau in November as chairman
of the Yad Vashem's council has brought new hope for recognition of the
Bergsonites - who in 1943 formed the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of
European Jewry to lobby the president and Congress to save the remnants of
Europe's Jews from the Nazis.

"Lau tells us privately that he's sympathetic to our cause," Medoff said.
In contrast with his predecessor, Lau has begun mentioning the Bergson
Group in speeches, most recently before the UN General Assembly in
January.

Public pressure and political lobbying by the Bergson Group begot a
proposal to admit more refugees into the U.S., which the Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations ratified. This, in turn, compelled President Franklin
Roosevelt to order the establishment of the War Refugee Board, which in
1943 took in 200,000 European Jews.

"The speeches [by Lau] are an important and positive development," said
Medoff, who recently delivered a lecture on the matter at the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs. "But Yad Vashem's ongoing refusal to add the
Bergsonites to the permanent display is unacceptable."

While Lau praises the Bergsonites, other prominent figures from Yad Vashem
- including chief historian Yahuda Bauer and editor-in-chief David
Silberklang - have downplayed its significance. Bauer is quoted as saying
in 2005 in Yad Vashem that Kook "saved no one."

This duality, according to Medoff, indicates Yad Vashem is experiencing
-an internal debate. Ultimately, he says that Yad Vashem "will not be able
to ignore the Bergson Group because their actions are just too important,
and because not mentioning them is telling only a part of the story of the
reaction to the Holocaust in the Free World."

Yad Vashem spokesperson Iris Rosenberg commented that Medoff has a
-fundamental misunderstanding of what Yad Vashem is - because
commemoration at Yad Vashem is done through a myriad of ways. Rosenbeg
noted that Yad Vashem translated and published David Wyman's book
highlighting the Group's activities. "Yad Vashem has employed such means
to discuss the group's activities."

(source: Ha'aretz)





FRANCE----new book

'Do not cry over me'  ----By Gaby Levin

(Letters from the Drancy Camp), edited by Antoine Sabbagh, with an
introduction by Denis Peschanski (translated into Hebrew from the French
by Adina Kaplan); Matar Publishing House, 292 pages, NIS 89

--

There was seemingly nothing that destined Drancy to become the site of the
terrible drama that began in the summer of 1941 and ended in August 1944.
The La Muette neighborhood, only four kilometers from Paris, was supposed
to be a modest residential quarter along the lines of those "garden
neighborhoods" that popped up in the early 1930s in the suburbs of other
large French cities.

But in September 1939, when World War II broke out, construction had not
been completed yet on the housing complex intended for gendarmes and their
families - four high-rise buildings surrounding a lower, horseshoe-shaped
structure. The fact that several families of gendarmes had already taken
up residence in the towers aided the decision to turn the U-shaped
structure, which remained without doors and windows, into a detention
camp. It was easy to surround the structure with double barbed-wire fences
and guard towers.

One hundred and thirty letters from inmates at the Drancy transit camp
appeared in a collection published in France in 2002, and were recently
translated into Hebrew. The letters call forth 130 chilling voices that
express astonishment, anxiety, courage and the hope of returning home,
mixed with a naivete that is surprising in view of the determination of
the killing machine that would soon destroy them. The selection of letters
was edited by Antoine Sabbagh, a professor at the Sorbonne and acting
director of the National Archives of France. The letters were somehow
preserved by the families and later entrusted to the Center of
Contemporary Jewish Documentation (founded in 1943 and today part of the
Shoah Memorial, a Paris Holocaust museum). The book's introduction,
placing Drancy in the context of the period, was written by Prof. Denis
Peschanski, an expert on 20th-century social history.

Only 2,500 survived

The first transport left for Auschwitz-Birkenau in the spring of 1942,
carrying 1,112 prisoners. Under the command of Heinz Rothke, Dannecker's
former assistant, Drancy became France's primary concentration camp, to
which prisoners were shipped from elsewhere. Between 1942 and 1944, 67
transports departed from Drancy, taking 76,000 Jews to their deaths.

In July 1943 the camp came under the command of Alois Brunner - an
enthusiastic disciple of Adolf Eichmann's - but his eagerness to speed up
the pace of transports was thwarted by a wartime shortage of trains. On
August 16, as the Allied forces advanced, Brunner set fire to the camp and
sent another 51 inmates to their deaths, although 39 managed to escape
(including the aviation industrialist Marcel Dassault and the businessman
Jean Frydman).

Out of some 80,000 Jews who were sent from France to the death camps, only
2,500 survived. Simone Veil, later one of France's most outstanding
politicians and the first elected president of the European parliament,
was a 16-year-old girl when she was brought from Nice to Drancy with her
family. She was taken to Auschwitz together with her mother and sister;
her father and brother were sent to Kaunas (Kovno) in Lithuania, where
they were murdered. Veil's mother did not survive the death march. Veil
went on to become one of the most prominent figures in France, heading a
Holocaust survivors organization and becoming honorary president of the
Shoah Memorial Foundation.

There were indeed inmates who managed to secure their release thanks to
connections. Such was the case with the writer Tristan Bernard, who had
claimed before his detention that "they don't arrest someone whose name
appears in the encyclopedia," and who was freed with the help of his
friend and fellow playwright Sacha Guitry, who was said to have "warm"
relations with the occupation authorities.

A jar of preserves

The letters, which are arranged chronologically, contain numerous details
about living conditions in Drancy: the hunger, the cold and the
intolerable hygiene. Most inmates took advantage of their right to request
goods in return for coupons. One woman asked her sister to send her a jar
of preserves, in a letter describing the circumstances of her arrest on
July 16, 1942 - the first day of the Paris roundups of Jews who held
French citizenship, which came to be known as "La Rafle du Vel d'Hiv"
("The Great Raid of the Velodrome d'Hiver," a winter cycling stadium in
Paris).

There are also letters of another sort in the collection, from individuals
outside Drancy. The wife of a French soldier imprisoned in Germany, for
instance, wrote in April 1942 to the Vichy commissioner for Jewish
affairs, Xavier Vallat, to suggest that Jews be sent to the camps in
Germany in exchange for her husband. A letter signed "M.D." and dated
September 10, 1941, instructed Marshal Petain: "Sentence them [the Jews]
to eternal hard labor, under the conditions of an animal, obedient,
submissive, without money ... Confiscate all of their property for the
poor!" But there is also a letter from a French Catholic demanding that
Petain stop persecuting Jews and free those who had been arrested.

The style of inmates' letters varies according to the period of
incarceration, since those who were brought to Drancy in 1941 did not know
what those arrested in 1943 could already guess. They filled pages from
school notebooks in cramped handwriting, using every inch to convey
messages, sometimes in code.

It is heartbreaking to read the letter of a 12-year-old boy who asks the
director of the prisons organization for a little bread in exchange for
the coupons entitling him to receive packages, since he no longer has
parents to send him packages. The boy and the three younger siblings left
in his charge were later killed in the gas chambers.

Another boy, identity unknown, wrote on July 18, 1942: "Dear Marshal of
France, don't let them take my mother. I am a small boy of 10 and today is
my birthday. I am French and a Catholic, my mother's parents were Jews. I
salute you as though I were your soldier."

In the collection's final letter, Marc Moise Blum writes to his family on
August 11, 1944: "Dear ones, I am on the Vittel train to where? I do not
forget you ... Courage and faith. I shall see you all God willing ... Vive
la France."

(source: Ha'Aretz)

June 25





GERMANY:

CONCENTRATION CAMP BORDELLOS----'The Main Thing Was to Survive at All'


Concentration camp brothels remain a hushed-up chapter of the Nazi-era
horrors. Now a German researcher has probed the dark subject -- and has
revealed the meticulous cruelty of the so-called "special buildings."

Kicking them with his boots, the SS soldier drove Margarete W. and the
other women prisoners out of the train and onto a truck. "Move the
tarpaulin, put the flap down. Everyone get in," he yelled. Through the
plastic window in the truck's canvas side, she watched as they drove into
a men's camp and stopped in front of a barracks with a wooden fence.

The women were taken into a furnished room. The barracks were different
from the ones Margarete W., then 25, knew from her time at the Ravensbrck
women's concentration camp. There were tables, chairs, benches, windows,
and even curtains. The female overseer informed the new arrivals that they
were "now in a prisoners' brothel." They would live well there, the woman
said, with good food and drink, and if they did as they were told, nothing
would happen to them. Then each woman was assigned a room. Margarete W.
moved into No. 13.

The prisoners' brothel at the Buchenwald concentration camp opened on July
11, 1943. It was the fourth of a total of 10 so-called "special buildings"
erected in concentration camps between 1942 and 1945, according to the
instructions of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. He implemented a rewards
scheme in the camps, whereby prisoners' "particular achievements" earned
them smaller workloads, extra food or monetary bonuses.

Himmler also considered it beneficial to "provide the hard-working
prisoners with women in brothels," as he wrote on March 23, 1942, to
Oswald Pohl, the SS officer in charge of the concentration camps.
Himmler's cynical vision saw brothel visits increasing the forced
laborers' productivity in the quarries and munitions factories.

"Especially Perfidious"

It remains one of the lesser known aspects of Nazi terror that
Sachsenhausen, Dachau and even Auschwitz included brothels, and that
female concentration camp prisoners were forced into prostitution.
Berlin-based cultural studies scholar Robert Sommer, 34, has scoured
archives and concentration camp memorial sites around the world and
carried out numerous interviews with historical witnesses over the past
nine years. His study, which will be published this month, provides the
first comprehensive, scientific survey of this "especially perfidious form
of violence in the concentration camps." His research has largely informed
a traveling exhibition "Camp brothels -- forced sex work in Nazi
concentration camps," which will tour several memorial sites next year.

Sommer delivers plenty of evidence to counter the legend that the Nazis
forbade or resolutely fought prostitution. In fact, the regime enforced
total surveillance of prostitution, both in Germany and its occupied
territories -- especially after war broke out. A comprehensive network of
state-controlled brothels covered half of Europe during that period, which
Sommer says consisted of "civil and military brothels, as well as those
for forced laborers, and at the same time they were even part of the
concentration camps."

Austrian resistance fighter Antonia Bruha, who survived the Ravensbrck
camp, reported years ago that, "the most beautiful women went to the SS
brothel, the less beautiful ones to the soldiers' brothel."

And the rest ended up in the concentration camp brothel. In the Mauthausen
camp in Austria, in the 10 small rooms of "Barrack 1," the very first camp
brothel began operation behind barred windows in June 1942. At that point
there were around 5,500 prisoners in the Mauthausen work camp, hammering
out stone in granite quarries for Nazi buildings. By the end of 1944, over
70,000 forced laborers lived in the entire camp complex.

The SS had recruited 10 women for Mauthausen, following the government
security agency's guidelines for erecting brothels in forced labor camps.
This meant between 300 and 500 men per prostitute.

Altogether some 200 women shared the fate of the Mauthausen prisoners in
the camp brothels. In particular healthy and good-looking women prisoners
between the ages of 17 and 35 caught the eye of SS recruiters. More than
60 percent of them were of German nationality, but Polish women, those
from the Soviet Union and one Dutch woman were transferred into the
"special task forces." The Nazis didn't allow Jewish women for "racial
hygiene" reasons. First the women were sent to the camp hospital, where
they were given calcium injections, disinfection baths, better food and a
stint under a sunlamp.

Between 300 and 500 Men Per Prostitute

Just under 70 % of the female forced laborers who were coerced into
prostitution had originally been imprisoned for being "antisocial." In the
camps, the women were labeled with a black triangle symbol. They included
former prostitutes, whose presence was supposed to guarantee the
"professional" running of the camp brothels, especially at the start. It
was very easy for a woman to be judged as "antisocial," for example if she
failed to comply with instructions at work.

To what extent the women knowingly volunteered for these "special task
forces" is debated. Robert Sommer cites Spanish resistance fighter Lola
Casadell, who was brought to Ravensbrck in 1944. She said the head of her
female barracks threatened: "Whoever wants to go to a brothel should come
by my room. And I warn you, if there are no volunteers, we'll fetch you
with force."

Historical witness Antonia Bruha, who was made to work in the hospital
area of the concentration camp, remembers women "who came in voluntarily,
because they'd been told they would be set free afterwards." That promise
was rejected out of hand by Himmler, who complained that "some lunatic in
the women's concentration camp, while selecting prostitutes for the camp
brothels, told the female prisoners that whoever volunteered would be
released after half a year."

The Last Hope of Survival

But for many of the women living under the threat of death, serving in a
brothel was their last hope of survival. "The main thing was that at least
we had escaped the hell of Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrck," said Lieselotte
B., who was a prisoner at the Mittelbau-Dora camp. "The main thing was to
survive at all." Whatever made them go along with the regime, the
suggestion that they did so "voluntarily" is one reason "why the former
brothel women are still stigmatized today," explained Insa Eschebach, head
of the memorial site at Ravensbrck.

In keeping with the Nazi's racist hierarchy in the camps, first it was
only Germans were allowed to visit the brothel, then foreigners as well.
Jews were strictly forbidden. It was predominantly foremen, heads of
barracks and other prominent camp occupants who were given this "bonus."
And they would first have to have the money for a ticket which cost two
Reichsmarks. Twenty cigarettes in the canteen, meanwhile, cost three
Reichsmarks.

Brothel visits were regulated by the SS, as were the opening hours. In
Buchenwald, for example, the brothel was open from 7 to 10 p.m. They
remained closed at times of water or electricity shortages, air raid
warnings or during the transmission of Hitler's speeches. Edgar
Kupfer-Koberwitz, a prisoner at Dachau, described the system in his
concentration camp journal: "You wait in the hall. An officer records the
prisoner's name and number. Then a number is called, and the name of the
prisoner in question. Then you run to the room with that number. Each
visit it's a different number. You have 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes."

Privacy was a foreign concept in the concentration camps -- and the
brothels. The doors had spyholes and an SS soldier patrolled the hall. The
prisoners had to take off their shoes and were to speak no more than
absolutely necessary. Only the missionary position was allowed.

Often it didn't even get as far as intercourse. Some men were no longer
physically strong enough, and according to Sommer, "some had a greater
need to talk with a woman again, or to feel her presence."

The SS was very afraid of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The
men were given disinfectant ointments in the hospital barracks before and
after each brothel visit, and doctors took smear samples from the women to
test for gonorrhea, and tested their blood for syphilis.

Contraception, on the other hand, was one aspect that the SS left up to
the women. But pregnancies rarely occurred since many women had been
forcibly sterilized before their arrest and others had been rendered
infertile through their suffering in the camps. In the event of an
"occupational accident," the SS would simply replace the woman and send
her to have an abortion.

Those who withstood the hardship of brothel life did have more chance of
escaping death in the camps, according to Sommer's research. Almost all
the women in forced prostitution survived the Nazis' terror regime. It is
largely unknown what became of them or whether they were ever able to
recover from their traumatic experience. Most of them remained silent
about their fate for the rest of their lives.

Robert Sommer's book, "The Concentration Camp Bordello: Sexual Forced
Labor in National Socialistic Concentration Camps," is scheduled to be
published in German ("Das KZ-Bordell") by Schningh Verlag, Paderborn, in
July. 492 pages; 39.90.

(source:  Der Spiegel)



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


"Hitler's Stealth Fighter" Re-createdBrian Handwerk


ON TV-- Hitler's Stealth Fighter airs Sunday, June 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on
the National Geographic Channel.

Top stealth-plane experts have re-created a radical, nearly forgotten Nazi
aircraft: the Horten 2-29, a retro-futuristic fighter that arrived too
late in World War II to make it into mass production.

The engineers' goal was to determine whether the so-called stealth fighter
was truly radar resistant. In the process, they've uncovered new clues to
just how close Nazi engineers were to unleashing a jet that some say could
have changed the course of the war.

To replicate the Ho 2-29 late last year for a documentary premiering
Sunday, a team from the Northrop Grumman defense-contracting corporation
used original Nazi blueprints and the only surviving Ho 2-29, which has
been stored in a U.S. government facility for more than 50 years.

The all-wing Ho 2-29 looked more like today's U.S. B-2 bomber or
something from a Star Wars preQUEUElthan like any other World War II
aircraft. Made primarily of wood and powered by jet engines, the
plane was designed for speeds of up to 600 miles an hour (970 kilometers
an hour).

Armed with four 30mm cannons and two 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bombs, the
planned production model was also meant to pack a punch.

(source:  National Geographic)





AUSTRIA:

Heirs race to find Nazi-looted art before time runs out


Eighty-one-year old Thomas Selldorff, who fled Austria with his family
before it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, hopes an upcoming
international conference will bolster efforts to return Nazi-looted art.

The Nazi's seized over 200 artworks owned by his grandfather, an avid art
collector, as part of a policy of seizing Jewish property. So far,
Selldorff has been able to retrieve only two of the lost paintings.

"I want to be able to pass these things on to my family ... I want them to
have the link and an appreciation for some of the things my grandfather
was involved with," said Selldorff, who lives in the United States and
wants to exhibit the altar pieces by Austrian baroque artist Kremser
Schmidt in a museum.

Some 65 years after World War Two, experts say thousands of artworks
confiscated by the Nazis, including masterpieces by art nouveau master
Gustav Klimt and expressionist Egon Schiele, still need to be restituted
to their rightful owners.

Government officials from around 49 countries, dozens of non-governmental
groups and Jewish representatives will meet in Prague this week to review
current practices. They are likely to sign a new agreement to step up
restitution efforts.

Some participants hope the conference will lead to the creation of a
central body responsible for publishing updates on countries' progress,
which could prompt them to do more.

The task of restituting Nazi-looted works is an epic one. The Nazis formed
a bureaucracy devoted to looting and they plundered a total of 650,000 art
and religious objects from Jews and other victims, the Jewish Claims
Conference estimates.

Artworks were auctioned off, handed over to national museums or top Nazi
officials, or stashed away for a Fuehrer museum Adolf Hitler was planning
to build in the Austrian town of Linz, where he spent a part of his youth.

"This is one way that Jews were made to pay for their own elimination,"
said art restitution expert Sophie Lillie.

At the end of World War Two, some works were returned but many continued
to circulate on the international art market or stayed put in museums, and
it was only in the 1990s that there was a new burst of Holocaust
restitution.

PATCHY RECORD

Austria is considered among the leaders of art restitution efforts,
putting its larger neighbor Germany to shame. The Alpine Republic in 1998
passed a law governing art restitution and has since returned over 10,000
artworks.

"There are a handful of countries that have achieved a lot," said Anne
Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, citing
Austria, Holland and Britain.

Austria's Belvedere Gallery has had to restitute 10 paintings by Gustav
Klimt, including two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which are among the
artist's most famous works.

"Most countries have not even undertaken the work which was endorsed in
Washington in 1998," said Webber, referring to the non-binding Washington
Principles agreed by 44 countries in 1998 as the framework for returning
looted art.

Under the Washington Principles, countries agreed to identify stolen art,
open up archives, publicize suspicious cases and "achieve a just and fair
solution" for the Nazi-persecuted pre-war owners or their heirs.

Lawyers and experts say many countries have not enforced the principles
and hope they will agree at the Prague conference on a transparent way to
report on progress.

One of the main obstacles to art restitution is the difficulty in tracing
the provenance and proving the ownership.

Gunnar Schnabel, a German lawyer and author of 'Nazi Looted Art' said
museums often "hold back any information they might have" about the murky
war-time past of some of their works.

The unique nature of the Nazi regime also makes it difficult to legally
define which art was looted or not.

"The Nazis were very inventive, and thought up lots of ways to expropriate
someone of their belongings," said Christoph Bazil, head of the Austria's
art restitution committee.

For example, Jews sometimes were coerced to sell their art to Nazis and
their sympathizers, or they had to sell paintings to fund day-to-day
living because they were forced out of work or because they had to pay
discriminatory taxes.

Some people argue that in cases where the original owners of the artworks
received money for them, it was a legally valid transaction, while others
say the discriminatory Nazi policies imposed on Jews mitigates that
validity.

Even when claimants are successful at proving their ownership of an
artwork, they have often been unable to retrieve the work of art due to
rigid export bans on cultural patrimony.

A Jewish American heiress won a court battle with Hungary in 2000 for the
return of art looted by Nazis, including works by Cranach, Van Dyck and El
Greco. But the outcome was a Pyrrhic victory, as the works were not
allowed to leave the country.

BACKLASH

As art restitution speeds up and returned works of art fetch record sums
at auctions and private sales, there is a beginning of a backlash against
the claimants who some say are tracking down their inheritance to sell for
profit.

One of the five Klimt artworks returned to the Bloch-Bauer family a few
years ago was sold for $135 million, believed to be the highest price ever
paid for a painting.

Yet art restitution experts say most looted artworks are worth more
sentimentally than financially and they are in some cases the only
remaining possessions of murdered relatives.

"The few examples of restituted paintings then sold at auction are of
course the ones that everyone talk about, but there are many that stay in
the families," said Monika Tatzkow, 54, historian and provenance
researcher.

Some say it is time to close the chapter on looted art.

Norman Rosenthal, a former curator at London's Royal Academy of Arts whose
own family fled Nazism, has suggested that the issue of Nazi-looted art
must now be confined to history, just as with other cases of looted art,
during the Bolshevik Revolution for example, or the Napoleonic Wars.

Supporters of art restitution, however, say Nazi-looted art is unique
because it was part of the process of genocide, starting with the
elimination of peoples' professional existence and their possessions, and
ending with their murder.

Expert Lillie argues museums that benefited from Jewish expropriation and
then dragged their feet on art restitution for decades have a moral
responsibility to address the issue.

"This is their last chance to try to atone for past wrongs."

(source:  Reuters)






USA//NEW JERSEY:

Lawyer for Holocaust victims disbarred in NJ


A lawyer who won judgments for Holocaust survivors and victims of South
African apartheid has been disbarred in a second state.

The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed that Edward Fagan knowingly misused
client and escrow trust funds.

He was disbarred in New York in December for similar offenses.

Last week, Fagan told New Jersey's Supreme Court that he did not
misappropriate any client money. He did not deny that he had taken more
than $80,000 from a Holocaust survivor. But he said he was entitled to
that money for legal work.

Fagan got international attention in the 1990s for his work for Holocaust
survivors. In 1998, he got Swiss banks to settled with thousands of
survivors for $1.25 billion.

(source:  Newsday)






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



June 26





CZECH REPUBLIC:

Holocaust assets conference opens in Prague


Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and experts gathered in Prague on
Friday to assess efforts to return property and possessions stolen by the
Nazis to their rightful owners or heirs.

The five-day conference, which brings together delegates from 49
countries, is a follow-up to a 1998 meeting in Washington that led to
agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis.

Stuart Eizenstat, head of the U.S. delegation, called it the most
ambitious international meeting ever on the recovery of such stolen
possessions or compensation for their loss.

One goal is to produce international guidelines on this, but they would
not be compulsory for the governments involved.

"There's no political will to have a binding treaty," Eizenstat
acknowledged.

But he said the voluntary principles that were approved in Washington are
having an impact. "We have hundreds of pieces of art that have been
returned," he said.

During the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and his followers killed 6 million Jews
and seized billions of dollars of gold, art and private and communal
property across Europe. But while countries such as Austria have stepped
up restitution in recent years, critics claim some Central and Eastern
European states still have a long way to go.

"Many governments in Central and Eastern Europe have not found a way to
implement a process to resolve outstanding real property issues that is
both consistent with national law and incorporates basic principles such
as nondiscriminatory treatment of non-citizens and a simple, expeditious
claims and restitution process," said conference delegate Christian
Kennedy, the U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

Kennedy said the U.S. wants the meeting "to provide an impetus for an
expansion in social welfare benefits to survivors and lay the framework
for further real property compensation."

The Czech Republic, host of this week's meeting, and other countries, have
come under fire for legal hurdles and a lack of political will that
critics claim make property restitution in some cases practically
impossible.

For example, attempts by Maria Altmann of California to reclaim a castle
north of Prague that once belonged to her uncle, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer,
proved futile since she is not a Czech citizen.

"As far as I know, there is no legal method for obtaining any recovery
there at this time," Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, said in an
e-mail. Altmann had waged  and won  a seven-year legal battle in
neighboring Austria for the return of five paintings by Gustav Klimt.

Efforts by the daughter of wealthy Jewish banker Jiri Popper to recover a
building he once owned in Prague also have stalled.

Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes gave the building, which currently
houses the Russian Embassy, to the Soviet Union in 1945. Last year,
Popper's daughter filed lawsuits against both the Czech Republic and
Russia demanding restitution, but no trial date has been set because Czech
authorities said they have failed so far to formally inform Moscow about
it, said Irena Benesova, the family's lawyer.

While the Justice Ministry declined to comment on the matter, Russian
Embassy spokesman Alexandr Pismenny said Moscow was the "honest owner."

Both Schoenberg and Benesova wanted to make their case at the conference
but were turned away by organizers who said they did not want discussion
of individual cases. The Holocaust Survivors' Foundation claims that
others also have not been allowed to have their say in setting the agenda
for the conference.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated June 19, the
group expressed concern about "the lack of survivor involvement on the
planning, priority setting and policy making roles in the conference."

Still, the Czech Republic does appear to be taking some steps in the right
direction.

A government fund created nine years ago with 300 million koruna (US$15.9
million) has paid out 100 million koruna (US$5.3 million) to 516 out of
1,256 requests from 27 countries. The requests came from people whose
restitution claims did not meet the criteria set by law.

The country also has set up the Documentation Center of Property Transfers
of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, an institution that identifies artwork
and other items in Czech collections and museums that were seized from
Jews during the Nazi occupation.

According to Director Helena Krejcova, some 7,000 paintings and other
works of art that originally belonged to Czech Jews have been found, and
another more than 1,000 stolen pieces are believed to be abroad.

"There's still a lot of work ahead of us," Krejcova said, adding that
sometimes efforts to restitute items are stymied by a lack of cooperation
from other states and a change to that is nowhere in sight.

Case in point: Czech authorities have been waiting five years for a reply
from Russia after Krejcova's team traced a valuable collection of 500
porcelain pieces once owned by Holocaust victim Hans Meyer to St.
Petersburg.

On the Net:
Holocaust Era Assets Conference: http://www.holocausteraassets.eu

(source:  Associated Press)

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

Summit addresses Nazi-looted art


Much of the art stolen by Nazis has already been returned to its owners
Jewish groups and representatives of 49 countries are gathering in Prague
for talks on returning art and possessions stolen by the Nazis.

The five-day conference in the Czech capital will also aim to increase
Holocaust awareness and education.

The Nazis stole an estimated 650,000 religious items and works of art from
European Jews during World War II.

While much of the art been returned, a great deal remains in museums and
private collections.

The BBC's Rob Cameron in Prague says there has often been considerable
reluctance on the part of those in possession of the looted art to return
it.

Steps have been taken in countries such as Austria to make it easier for
owners to claim back looted art.

But the US Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Christian Kennedy,
attending the conference, said many central and eastern European countries
had not yet found a way to implement a restitution process.

He said any such process would have to be consistent with national law
while also ensuring non-citizens seeking to reclaim property were given
equal treatment.

Delegates from the 49 states will be asked what progress they have made in
returning looted Jewish property since the 1998 conference in Washington.

That meeting introduced ground-breaking principles for dealing with such
items.

The Prague conference, the last major event of the Czech Republic's
European Union presidency, is aimed at reinvigorating that process, says
our correspondent.

(source:  BBC News)








USA//NEW YORK:

Project Finds Holocaust Survivors In Poverty ----Experts Believe 100,000
Holocaust Survivors Remain Alive In United States; 30 Percent Living In
Poverty Reporting


Long Island eighth grader Joe Klein recently completed the videotaping of
an eye-opening school project.

His class thesis, titled "Surviving, Surviving," sought to document
Holocaust survivors in New York City; though Klein found these were not
always the easiest subjects to track down.

"I worked the phones," he said. "I had to keep on asking and keep on
asking."

Bucking the naysayers, including his teacher, and relying on some help
from his parents, Klein eventually found four survivors to profile.

But along the way, he discovered a startling statistic  one that is often
swept under the rug.

Experts told him that a whopping 30 percent of the 100,000 Holocaust
survivors still believed to be alive in the U.S. are reportedly living in
poverty. Many find themselves alone, forgotten and too ashamed to ask for
help.

Klein's parents, Harold and Nan, long ago instilled in him the motto "we
may not all be guilty but we are all responsible." Nan believes it played
a role in inspiring her son to film the documentary.

"Joe is disappointed that the community is not aware of this very sad
situation," she said.

Klein added it's almost impossible for typical New Yorkers to identify
with the predicament many survivors find themselves in.

"Some people (today) get a $4 cup of coffee," Klein said. "That's lunch
for these people."

Harold filmed his son's interviews, which featured survivors from Queens,
Brooklyn and Manhattan. He believes the experience will stay with him for
the rest of his life.

"It haunted me because of my background," Mr. Klein said.

Harold's father, Nufteli, was a Holocaust survivor, and the documentary
was created in his memory.

"Knowing people could exist like this, it doubly haunted me because people
don't know about it," he added.

But Joe feels "Surviving, Surviving" can correct the problem.

"Maybe this exists because it gives us another chance to help these
people," he said.

People interested in aiding suffering survivors can contact one of the
Holocaust support agencies located in the Tri-State area; where groups
such as Blue Card, Self Help and iVolunteer estimate there are roughly 50
thousand.

Fifteen thousand people are said to be living in poverty.

(source:  WCBS TV)






RUSSIA:

Russia won't participate in Jewish documents suit


Russia told a U.S. court on Friday that judges have no authority to tell
the country how to handle sacred Jewish documents held in its state
library that were seized by the Nazi and Soviet armies.

The documents are at the center of a lawsuit brought by members of
Chabad-Lubavitch, which follows the teachings of Eastern European rabbis
and emphasizes the study of the Torah. The group is suing Russia in U.S.
court to recover thousands of manuscripts, prayers, lectures and
philosophical discourses by leading rabbis dating back to the 18th
century.

The case is being handled by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in
Washington, Royce Lamberth, who in January ordered Russia to preserve the
documents over Chabad's fears they are not being properly cared for and
could be sold on the black market.

But Russia said in its filing Friday that even though it respects the U.S.
court, it would not participate in the litigation to protect its
sovereignty. Russia said the United States should use diplomatic channels
to address any concerns it has about the collection and that Chabad can
pursue claims in Russian courts.

"This court has no authority to enter orders with respect to the property
owned by the Russian Federation and in its possession, and the Russian
Federation will not consider any such orders to be binding on it," said
the Russian filing.

Lamberth agreed to take the case in U.S. court because he said both the
Nazi seizure and the Russian government's appropriation of the collection,
which Chabad says totals 12,000 books and 50,000 rare documents, violated
international law.

The collection was formerly held by Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, a
leader of Chabad-Lubavitch who was born in Russia but forced by the
Soviets to leave in 1927. He took the documents to Latvia and later
Poland, but left them behind when the Nazis invaded and he fled to the
U.S. The collection was seized and taken to Germany, then recovered by the
Soviet Army in 1945.

Attorneys representing Chabad at the law firm Bingham McCutchen said after
five years of litigation, Russia "is now acting like a child who has lost
the game and wants to start all over on its home court."

"Obviously, Russia cannot justify why it has refused to return Jewish
manuscripts which were stolen by the Nazis and then looted by the Soviet
Army during the Second World War," the attorneys said in a statement. "The
plundering of religious texts during war is contrary to the Hague
convention and the norms of any civilized society."

On the Net:  Chabad-Lubavitch: http://www.chabad.org

(source:  Associated Press)





ISRAEL/HUNGARY:

Bringing Sandor Kepiro to trial

This week's visit by Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Banjai is an
excellent opportunity to focus on one of the most important and
interesting cases of a Nazi war criminal who can still be brought to
justice. I am referring to Dr. Sandor Kepiro, who served as a gendarmerie
officer during World War II and was among the key organizers of the mass
murder of at least 1,250, but probably as many as 3,000 men, women and
children (mostly Jews, but also Serbs and Gypsies) in the Serbian city of
Novi Sad on January 23, 1942.

Until now, Israel has done relatively little to press Hungary to prosecute
Kepiro, so Banjai's visit might well be the last opportunity of its kind
for the government to send a clear-cut message to the Hungarians that
their failure to bring Kepiro to justice is incomprehensible and
unacceptable.

The Kepiro case has special significance for several reasons. First and
foremost is the scope of the massacre in Novi Sad, which was the largest
single action of its kind against Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust, and
besides the murders carried out by Hungarian troops in Kamenetz-Podolsk,
was the worst case of the mass murder of civilians carried out by
Hungarian forces during World War II. Another important point is that if
Kepiro is brought to trial in Budapest, he will almost certainly be the
first Hungarian Nazi collaborator to be prosecuted since the country
became a democracy. Like all the post-communist states of Eastern Europe,
Hungary conducted many trials of Nazi collaborators in the immediate
aftermath of World War II, but none since the transition to democracy.
This would be particularly significant in a country like Hungary, which is
only beginning to honestly confront its crimes during the Holocaust, which
included mass murder.

THERE ARE ALSO several unique aspects to the Kepiro case which add to its
significance. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only case of
Holocaust crimes carried out by the forces of a country allied with Nazi
Germany, in which the perpetrators were actually prosecuted by their own
government in the course of World War II. In December 1943, the 15
officers who organized and carried out the mass murder in Novi Sad were
put on trial in Budapest. Not for murder, but rather for violating the
code of honor of the Hungarian forces, since the operations they carried
out in the Voivodina province had not been approved by their superiors.
All of them, including Kepiro, were convicted and sentenced either to
death or to lengthy prison terms.

The convicted officers, however, never served their sentences since
shortly after the end of the trial and before they could be implemented,
Nazi Germany occupied Hungary and pressured the Hungarians to cancel the
convictions and the punishments. Thus Kepiro's identity and participation
are not in doubt, having already been duly confirmed by a Hungarian court.
In fact, Kepiro himself admits his participation in the Novi Sad
operation, but simply denies having committed any "war crimes."

In that context, a fascinating aspect of Kepiro's behavior in Novi Sad
came to light during his 1944 trial. When Kepiro was briefed on his
assignment before the roundups and murder took place, he asked for the
orders in writing. Already a lawyer, he apparently immediately recognized
their immorality and consequent illegality. His superior responded,
however, that orders of this kind were only transmitted verbally, and
Kepiro carried them out loyally.

Ironically, this behavior prompted the Hungarian court to reduce his jail
sentence, but in theory they should have done the opposite, since Kepiro
was, in essence, the worst type of Holocaust perpetrator, an intelligent
and educated professional who clearly understood that what he had been
told to do was totally reprehensible, yet did it anyway. He was obviously
a person who was more concerned about his alibi than about the fate of his
innocent victims, and thus someone undeserving of any sympathy.

ON AUGUST 1, it will be three years since I initially notified the
Hungarian authorities that Kepiro was alive and living in Budapest. (After
the war, he had escaped to Austria and from there to Argentina, where he
lived for 48 years.) At that time, the prosecutors assured me that if he
had committed war crimes (which obviously was the case), they would
immediately implement his original sentence, but six months later I was
informed that this was not possible since a Hungarian court had cancelled
his conviction.

Instead, prosecutors launched a new investigation against Kepiro, which in
theory should have long ago resulted in a trial. But the wheels of justice
for a Hungarian Nazi war criminal turn incredibly slowly and without
external pressure it appears very doubtful whether Kepiro will ever be
punished for his crimes. In the meantime, he is conducting an active legal
battle against his prosecution and giving numerous interviews in which he
protests his innocence, while admitting his presence in Novi Sad on
January 23, 1942.

In these days in which the nationalist extremist Magyar Garda march in the
streets of Hungary in black uniforms with symbols reminiscent of the
wartime fascist Arrow Cross, and the racist and anti-Semitic Jobbik party
garnered 15 percent of the votes in the recent elections for the European
Parliament, the fate of an elderly Hungarian Nazi war criminal may not
seem particularly pressing. The fact is, however, that precisely by
mustering sufficient political will to bring to justice people like
Kepiro, the government will be sending an unequivocal and necessary
message to Hungarian society and especially to the ultranationalists that
the days of Arrow cross terror, anti-Semitism and racism are long gone
never to return and that democratic Hungary will not countenance their
revival.

Now if only Prime Minister Banjai's hosts in Jerusalem will make sure to
deliver the message loud and clear.

(source:  Op-Ed, Jerusalem Post----The writer, Efraim Zuroff,  is director
of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center)

June 20


USA//NEW YORK:

Judge Slams MoMA, Guggenheim on Secret Holocaust Art Agreement

A memo by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff lambasting a secret settlement
involving New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum has become the talk of the Holocaust restitution community.

The museum's announced a confidential pact with a German historian named
Julius H. Schoeps and his relatives on Feb. 2, the day a trial was to
begin to determine the ownership of two Picasso paintings. Seven weeks
later, in a six-page written judicial opinion tinged with sarcasm, Rakoff
questioned the motives of both sides.

The museums initiated the legal action "to clear their names (or so they
said)," Rakoff, 65, wrote.

As for Schoeps and family, "for reasons wholly unexplained and seemingly
no more compelling than concealing the amount of money going into their
pockets, they remain opposed to making the settlement public," he wrote.

Thaddeus Stauber, a Los Angeles-based lawyer with Nixon Peabody LLP, said
Rakoff's March 23 written opinion represents a rare public rebuke by a
judge to participants in a confidential art agreement. Stauber
successfully represented the Toledo Museum of Art and the Detroit
Institute of Arts in a 2006 restitution case.

"He's using the mechanism of a written order to take them out to the
backyard and browbeat them," Stauber said.

The judge said that "it baffles the mind and troubles the conscience that
Schoeps and his relatives would believe that it's in the public interest
to keep the settlement secret, given that they repeatedly sought to clothe
themselves as effectively representatives of victims of one of the most
criminal political regimes in history," he wrote.

Sparking Debate

Stauber said the judge's condemnation will spur discussion about
transparency at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague later this
month. The event is a forum for scholars, museum officials and
auction-house staffers to debate legal issues.

In a joint statement prepared for Bloomberg News, Glenn Lowry, MoMA's
director, and Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong said that the museums
take restitution issues extremely seriously.

"Our provenance research made clear from the beginning that the museums
are the proper owners of these works, and that the claims had no merit.
It was a prudent decision -- we settled simply to avoid the costs of
prolonged litigation, and to ensure the public continues to have access
to these important paintings."

John J. Byrne Jr., a lawyer for Schoeps, said in an interview that "we do
not believe we have shortchanged history."

Aid to Victims

Byrne said the case dramatically expands the potential opportunities of
Holocaust victims and their heirs to recover property wrongfully taken.

He cited a preliminary Jan. 27 ruling by Rakoff. According to Byrne, it
said that victims of Nazi persecution have a viable judicial remedy to
reclaim their property without establishing that Nazi authorities seized
it directly or ordered the sale.

In 2007, lawyers for Schoeps contacted MoMA and the Guggenheim to demand
the return of the Picassos. They said the works were sold before World War
II under duress from Nazi persecution according to court records.

The 1906 "Boy Leading a Horse," now at MoMA, and the Guggenheims 1900 "Le
Moulin de la Galette" had been in the private collection of Paul von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker who died in 1935. Schoeps's
grandmother was a sister of von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

Valued at $150 Million

Both paintings were later acquired by the museums and are highlights of
the collections. Dealers said MoMA's Picasso is valued at over $100
million and the Guggenheim's could command more than $50 million.

The museums jointly filed a complaint in federal court in 2007, asking
that the courts affirm their ownership. They argued that the paintings
were not sold on account of duress; instead they were given by von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to his wife and were sold by 1935 to Galerie
Thannhauser, which had branches in Berlin and Lucerne, Switzerland,
according to the museums' complaint.

Last year, in a motion to dismiss the complaint, Schoeps accused MoMA and
the Guggenheim of being "knowing possessors of art coerced from Jewish
victims in Nazi Germany." He said they employed "blitzkrieg tactics
against Holocaust victims and their heirs" calculated to "deflect
attention from the many serious breaches of fiduciary duty" that the
museums committed by keeping the paintings.

'Without Merit'

The museums originally insisted that Schoeps's claim was "without merit,"
and the museums were prepared to have all factual and legal issues
resolved by the court. The museums "are and remain committed to
transparency in their actions," their lead lawyer, Evan Davis, wrote in a
Jan. 15, 2009, letter to the judge, according to Rakoff.

After the settlement was announced, at Rakoff's urging, the museums said
they were prepared to make the provisions public, according to the memo.
Schoeps refused.

Rakoff wrote that the confidentiality is "against the public interest and
a troubling reversal of the parties' previously stated positions on this
issue."

"It is hard to see why institutions that proclaim their public status and
that seek to receive public support should view themselves as not owing a
similar obligation to New York City or state agencies that are accountable
to the public," he said.

Rakoff placed a sealed copy of the agreement in the court docket in the
hope, he wrote, that Schoeps "may yet move to unseal it."

The New York Times reported on Rakoff's memo the day it was filed.

'Harsh' Opinion

Stephen G. Crane, a retired New York judge and mediator, said the written
opinion is "harsh and seems somewhat unbalanced."

"He doesn't recognize that there is a public interest in settling civil
disputes and another public interest in enforcing confidentiality in the
mediation of disputes," he said.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said a press challenge to
the confidentiality of the settlement could take years and would likely
fail, based on precedent in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New
York.

"I think it's bad public policy to seal the settlement," she said. "You
can tell Judge Rakoff really, really wants to release this stuff."

(source:  Bloomberg News)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust denial in Israel needs urgent attention


The last place one might expect to find Holocaust deniers is in Israel.
Yet a new University of Haifa survey shows that an astonishing 40.5
percent of Israeli Arabs say the Holocaust did not happen.

The finding is in the latest index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel, an
annual survey conducted by Prof. Sammy Smooha since 2003. When he first
posed the Holocaust question in 2006, 28 percent of Arab citizens doubted
its authenticity.

Holocaust denial is prevalent across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Irans
regime, especially President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made questioning the
Holocaust a centerpiece of its ideology, rarely missing an opportunity to
proclaim falsehoods about one of the most thoroughly documented periods in
history.

In Gaza and west bank schools administered by the Palestinian Authority,
the Nazi campaign to murder 6 million Jews still is not taught. Here, as
with the Iranian regime, truth is debunked to advance political goals.

Israeli Arabs, composing 20 percent of the population, do learn about the
Holocaust in school. They live in a country where the premier Holocaust
memorial and remembrance institution, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, is
frequented by school groups and dignitaries visiting from around the
world. And in Israel, anyone is likely to encounter in the public space
older Jews with numbers on their arms. So how can a significant percentage
of Israeli Arabs be so unaware?

"It is important that Arab students visit Yad Vashem to be exposed to the
scale of the tragedy," Ali Haider, co-director of Sikkuy, a leading
nonprofit advocating for greater equality between Israels Jewish and Arab
citizens, told me.

With all the resources readily available in Israel, why even three years
ago did more than a quarter of the countrys Arab citizens doubt the
Holocaust? What underlies the surge of 12 percent reflected in the new
survey? Further, according to Smooha, 37 percent of Arabs with higher
education are among the deniers.

Do they honestly believe the Holocaust is a fraud, or is the reaction
politically motivated?

"It can be seen that some of the frustration experienced by the Arab
citizens from the failure to achieve equality engenders a resistance to
recognizing the Holocaust," said Haider.

The observation has validity for Smooha, who says, "When they say there
was no Holocaust, they are protesting. They are saying 'I am not giving
legitimacy to the Jewish state.'"

The survey also found a significant drop in the percentage of Israeli
Arabs who recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent state, from
81.1 percent in 2003 to 53.7 percent in 2009.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have long been complicated. Arab citizens
enjoy the fruits of Israeli democracy, including the right to vote and
serve in the Knesset. But longstanding economic and social inequities,
notably unequal budgets allocated to Jewish and Arab communities, have
dampened their aspirations of becoming full participants in Israeli
society.

Frustrations are deepened by political developments, including the impasse
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the 2006 Lebanon War, the governments
failure to implement recommendations of the Orr Commission - created in
the wake of the police shootings of a dozen Arab citizens in 2000 - and,
most recently, Avigdor Liebermans Yisrael Beiteinu partys efforts to
introduce legislation aimed at the Arab minority.

Israeli Arabs understandably are unlikely to embrace Hatikvah and other
symbols as the Jewish majority does, but disputing a historical foundation
of the state is troubling.

Refuting Israel's legitimacy by denying the Holocaust must be emphatically
countered. Israels Arab citizens presumably could help. After all, Israeli
Arabs, especially the younger generations who grew up in Israel and are
fluent in Hebrew, are best positioned of any Arabs to understand the
Jewish psyche.

On the other hand, Israeli Arabs know which emotional buttons to press if
some choose to hurt the Jewish majority without using violence. Responding
to a survey questioner is one tactic and, in this instance, led to
headlines emphasizing the hurtful result of the questions on the
Holocaust.

None of this can fully explain or excuse the evidence of Holocaust denial
in Israel's Arab community. Can it be dismissed as a form of protest by a
minority seeking to improve its lot in Israeli society? Or is it more
ominous, a worrisome trend aimed at allying with forces seeking to
delegitimize - and ultimately eliminate - Israel?

The kernel of doubt, if nurtured, can grow into a mighty myth and expand.
What Smoohas survey has revealed needs urgent attention by Arabs and Jews,
working in their own communities as well as together.

(source:  Opinion; Kenneth Bandler is director of communications for the
American Jewish Committee--The New Jersey Jewish Standard)






VATICAN CITY:

Vatican slams priest's comments on wartime pope


The Vatican has condemned as "unjustified and inopportune" a claim by a
church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the
beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't
do enough to stop the Holocaust.

The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit who is spearheading Pius' cause,
said at a conference in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI was "impressed" by
warnings that relations with Jews would be ruined if he put the World War
II pontiff on the road to sainthood.

Some historians and Jewish groups say Pius didn't do enough to prevent or
limit the scope of the Holocaust - the murder of 6 million Jews by the
Nazis and their collaborators. The Vatican insists Pius used quiet
diplomacy to try to help Jews.

The ANSA news agency quoted Gumpel as saying that in recent meetings
Jewish leaders had told Benedict that "relations between the Catholic
church and Jews would be definitively and permanently compromised" by
Pius' beatification.

The Vatican quickly issued a statement, saying that it is "exclusively" up
to the pope to decide on a beatification, which is the last step before
sainthood, and that Benedict "must be left completely free in his
considerations and decisions."

"If the pope thinks that the study and the reflection on Pius XII's cause
should still be prolonged, this position must be respected without
interfering with unjustified and inopportune statements," the Vatican
said.

A phone number for Gumpel rang busy Friday evening.

Jewish leaders also criticized the priest's comments, with Rome's Chief
Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni denying that Jews were responsible for any delay.

Pius' beatification "is first of all an internal problem of the church,"
Di Segni told ANSA. "It is clearly a complex matter that divides the
church itself."

Last year, Jewish leaders asked the pope to speed up the opening of the
Vatican's secret archives on Pius' papacy to settle the issue of what he
did or didn't do to save Jews.

According to participants in the October meeting, Benedict said he would
give "serious consideration" to their request to freeze the sainthood
process until the archives were opened.

The Vatican later rejected the request for quick access to the archive,
saying it would take another six years for experts to catalog the 16
million documents on Pius' 1939-1958 papacy.

(source:  Associated Press)


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

Vatican promises inquiry on Jewish children adopted by Catholics to escape
Holocaust


The Vatican has responded to a demand by a Jewish group for information
about hundreds of the Jewish children-- mostly orphans-- who were taken
into Catholic families or institutions during World War II to protect them
from the Nazi Holocaust. Yad L'Achim, an organization that opposes any
effort to convert Jews, had asked the Vatican to identify the Jews who
were adopted during that era, and inform them of their Jewish origins.

Archbishop Antonio Franco, replying to the group's request, said that Pope
Benedict was aware of the "very delicate" issue and had already begun
looking into it. The archbishop, who is the apostolic nuncio in Jerusalem,
promised to "provide more precise information and see if an appeal like
the one you propose could be made.

(source:  Catholic Culture)






GERMANY:

German prosecutors call for life in Nazi war crime trial


Josef Scheungraber has been on trial since September on charges of
ordering killings in a Tuscan village during World War II in retaliation
for an attack by Italian partisans that killed two German soldiers.
Related ArticlesGermany seeking twilight justice for Nazi criminals


German prosecutors called on Thursday for a 90-year-old to spend the rest
of his days in jail for atrocities committed in Italy in World War II, in
one of the last cases of its kind.

Josef Scheungraber has been on trial since September on charges of
ordering killings in the Tuscan village of Falzano on June 26, 1944 in
retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans that killed two German
soldiers.

The court in Munich, southern Germany, where he is being tried said in a
statement that Scheungraber has been charged with 14 counts of murder and
one of attempted murder.

Scheungraber, at the time the 26-year-old commander of mountain infantry
battalion, Gebirgspionierbataillon 818, was sentenced in absentia in
September 2006 to life imprisonment by an Italian military tribunal in La
Spezia.

A spokeswoman for the Munich court, Margerete Noetzel, told AFP that the
90-year-old, who lived as a free man in Bavaria after the war, was present
on Thursday as prosecution lawyers delivered their final arguments.

Christian Stuenkel, one of three lawyers representing Scheungraber, told
AFP that the defence team would make its final statement when the trial
resumes next Wednesday.

"It depends on what happens with the defence arguments, but assuming
everything runs to plan, there should be a verdict on July 3," the court
spokeswoman said.

Wearing a traditional Bavarian suit with his thick white hair brushed
back, Scheungraber pleaded innocent when the trial kicked off last
September.

Back then he appeared sprightly and alert as he walked with a cane into
the courtroom, although bad hearing meant he had to follow the proceedings
with headphones.

Scheungraber's men are alleged to have shot dead a 74-year-old woman and
three men in the street. They then crammed 11 males aged between 15 and 66
into the ground floor of a farmhouse which they then blew up.

Only the youngest, Gino Massetti, survived, but with serious injuries. Six
decades later and an old man himself, Massetti testified during the
Italian trial.

After the war, Scheungraber lived in Ottobrunn outside Munich, sitting on
the town council and running a furniture shop.

He regularly attended marches with fellow wartime veterans and recently
received an award for municipal service. He has not been in custody during
the trial.

The military tribunal at La Spezia has tried several former Nazis for
crimes committed in Italy during World War II but none of the defendants
have been brought to justice.

In 2005 it handed life sentences to 10 elderly former SS soldiers for the
massacre of 560 Italian civilians including 120 children in 1944 in the
Tuscan town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

At least two of the Germans have died since then.

Another two were handed life imprisonment in September 2006 for the
Falzano massacre and 10 others in January 2007 for a bloodbath in
Marzabotto in September 1944 that left 955 dead.

Germany as a rule does not extradite its citizens without their consent
and has not received a formal request from Italy to jail Scheungraber
here.

One other case pending is that of John Demjanjuk, a former Nazi death camp
guard deported in May from the United States to Germany for allegedly
herding over 29,000 Jews to their death.

The 89-year-old, born Ivan Demjanjuk in Ukraine in 1920, is currently in a
prison hospital in Munich where doctors are assessing whether he is fit to
stand trial.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)

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

Nazi hunters appeal German prosecutors' decision


The Simon Wiesenthal Center is appealing a Berlin prosecutors' office
decision to drop an investigation into whether the family or attorneys of
Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim lied about whether  he was dead, the
agency's top Nazi-hunter said Wednesday.

The SS concentration camp doctor's son, Ruediger Heim, claimed in a
February television interview that his father died in 1992 in Cairo. But
in 2001 Heim's attorneys told a court that they were still in regular
contact with him.

The Wiesenthal Center in March asked prosecutors in Berlin to investigate
the discrepancy, but in a June 5 letter to Efraim Zuroff, director of the
center in Jerusalem, the office said the case had been shelved. The
prosecutors' office said the court remarks from Heim's attorneys were not
witness statements, so there was no perjury case to be pursued, and that
there were "many statements" over the past decades  including unconfirmed
sightings  that indicate Heim could be alive.

The Wiesenthal Center filed an appeal Tuesday to Berlin's attorney
general, asking for the decision to be reconsidered, Zuroff told The AP in
a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

"We think the decision is really ludicrous, frankly," he said. "This is an
opportunity to provide some clarity on whether or not Heim actually died
in Cairo, or if he was still alive in 2001."

Heim, who will be 95 this month if he is still alive, was the Wiesenthal
Center's most-wanted Nazi war criminal for years before being placed into
a special category by Zuroff in April after the reports of his possible
death surfaced.

Heim was a doctor at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in
October and November 1941. Witnesses have said he was involved in gruesome
experiments, such as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners'
hearts to see which killed them the fastest.

In early February, the German television station ZDF and The New York
Times reported that they had found documents in a Cairo hotel, where Heim
allegedly lived out the final years of his life before dying of intestinal
cancer, indicating that the notorious doctor had died in the city in 1992.

The papers  personal musings, official documents and other items that
allegedly belonged to Heim  have been turned over to the Baden
Wuerttemberg state police office that has led the manhunt for the former
Nazi for decades.

The process of trying to determine their authenticity is still ongoing,
spokesman Ulrich Heffner said.

At the time ZDF reported on the documents, the television station quoted
Ruediger Heim as confirming the pseudonym Tarek Hussein Farid as his
father's assumed name and the documents as belonging to him. Heim said he
visited his father regularly in Cairo and had taken care of him after an
operation related to his cancer in 1990.

ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo,
where graves are reused after several years "so that the chance of finding
remains is unlikely."

Heffner's office has been trying to get permission to come to Egypt to
look for the body themselves, and also to help determine the authenticity
of the documents, but have not yet heard back from Egyptian authorities.

The 2001 statement by Heim's attorneys came in a tax case centered around
some euro1 million in a Berlin bank account that belongs to Heim.

Each year up until 1998, Heim was taxed on the interest made by the money,
but then German finance authorities returned the funds to his account
because he had been declared as living permanently abroad. In 1999, the
tax authorities questioned the repayments, saying they needed proof that
Heim was not living in Germany.

In a 2001 ruling, the judges wrote that "according to the testimony of the
attorney of Dr. Heim ... the holder of Heim's power of attorney Dr.
(Fritz) Steinacker has regular contact with Dr. Heim, who is abroad."

The attorney who argued the case, Berlin's Michael Hoepfner, has said he
never made such a claim in the court, while Steinacker told the AP that he
had not had been in contact with Heim for nearly four decades.

(source:  Associated Press)





SERBIA:

Serbia set to prosecute former Gestapo member


Last year, prosecutors asked for a probe into Egner on the grounds that as
a member of the Gestapo during World War II, he had organised the
execution of Jews and other civilians at a camp in Belgrade and another in
a suburb of the city.

Serbia's prosecutor for war crimes said Monday that measures were in hand
to strip a former Gestapo member, Peter Egner, of US nationality so that
he could be prosecuted for Nazi war crimes.

"The procedure to deprive Peter Egner of his American citizenship is under
way," prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told journalists. "After that, we will
take steps to have him extradited."

The US Ambassador to Serbia, Cameron Munter, told a joint press
conference, "American authorities are working with Serb authorities in the
way mentioned by Mr Vukcevic."

At the end of last August, Vukcevic asked for a probe into Egner, 87, on
the grounds that as a member of the Gestapo during World War II, he had
organised the execution of Jews and other civilians at a camp in Belgrade
and another in a suburb of the city.

He is also suspected of participating in building several concentration
camps in Belgrade in 1941 and 1942.

According to the Serbian media, Egner is allegedly responsible for the
deaths of about 17,000 people.

More than 24,000 died in the Staro Samjiste concentration camp in Belgrade
during the Nazi occupation of the city, and almost 80,000 were executed at
Jajinci in the suburbs of the capital.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)






EGYPT:

Nile Nazis: Egypt haven for German war criminals

Arab nationalists trying to break free from the yoke of British
colonialism found a natural backer in Nazi Germany, who gave the
nationalists money to fight British occupiers during the war.


Wanted German war criminal Aribert Heim, also known as Doctor Death, was
not the only Nazi to have found refuge in Egypt after the Second World
War.

Heim, reported to have died peacefully in Cairo in 1992 after 30 years on
the run, is one of many Nazis to have converted to Islam and settled in
Egypt.

Alliances between Egypt and Nazi officials were initially forged during
World War II.

Arab nationalists trying to break free from the yoke of British
colonialism found a natural backer in Nazi Germany.  The Nazis invested
money in men such as future Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in order for
them to fight the British occupiers during the war.

And in the turbulent post-war atmosphere, many Nazis came to Egypt where
they benefited from "high ranking" friendships within the entourage of
British-backed King Farouk, according to historians.

Future Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat's predecessor, deposed
Farouk in 1956. He then employed several Nazis to generate propaganda
against Israel, which was established in 1948 following a war with several
Arab armies.

The ODESSA network, which was reportedly set up after World War II to help
wanted Nazis escape Germany and Austria, extended to Argentina, Syria and
Egypt.

Johann Von Leers, close to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, came to
Egypt in the 1950s, converted to Islam and became head of the
"anti-Zionist propaganda service" at the foreign ministry.

According to historian of the Nazi era, Kurt Tauber, Egypt's post-war
ministries of information and defense employed former SS and SA officers,
such as Louis Heiden, Walter Bollmann and Wilhelm Bocker.

A former Nazi's son who worked in Egypt as a financial manager told AFP on
condition of anonymity how his family traveled to Egypt having first
sought refuge in Switzerland.

"My father was a Nazi spy in the Balkans, a liaison agent with Serb
nationalists, he said. We came thanks to relations with Farouk's court.
Then he worked in the armaments industry under Nasser."

With the arrival of Russian engineers to construct the Aswan High Dam in
1960, Moscow insisted that Nazis be purged from Egypt's military apparatus
but tolerated their continued presence in ideological jobs, a Western
journalist who has lived in Egypt for more than 50 years told AFP.

It is unknown exactly how many Nazis came to Egypt, and Egyptian
authorities would rather not discuss the matter.

Heim "was unknown to us, it would have been too dangerous, said Germany's
ambassador to Cairo, Bernd Erbel. I don't think he was a German citizen
any more but became an Egyptian. They certainly weren't going to tell us
they were here, and I have no details on them. To know more, I sometimes
go to the Google search engine."

List of fugitive Nazi war crime suspects

Following claims that Aribert Heim, alias "the Butcher of Mauthausen,"
died in Egypt in 1992, here is a list of other wanted Nazi war crimes
fugitives, drawn up by Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Center:

-- John Demjanjuk, originally from Ukraine, fled to the United States
after World War II. He was sentenced to death in 1988 in Jerusalem for the
killing of Jews in concentration camps. While a guard at the Treblinka
camp in Poland, Demjanjuk was known as "Ivan the Terrible." In 1993, he
was acquitted on the benefit of doubt; the United States later withdrew
his citizenship.  Demjanjuk was recently deported to Germany.

-- Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian police officer accused of killing more than
1,200 civilians in Serbia. He was convicted in 1944 and 1946 by a
Hungarian court, but never did time. Kepiro returned to Hungary in 1996
after decades in hiding in Argentina. He denies allegations made against
him, but an investigation has been reopened.

-- Milivoj Asner, former Croatian police chief, who actively participated
in the deportation of Serbs, Jews and Roma. He lives in Klagenfurt,
southern Austria, but authorities refuse to extradite him to Croatia based
on medical expert advice that he is unfit to be questioned or stand trial.

-- Soeren Kam, ex-member of the elite SS brigade, is accused of killing a
Danish journalist in 1943. Now living in Germany, the courts have refused
to extradite him to Denmark, citing a lack of evidence. Danish authorities
say they will reopen an investigation into Kam's role in deporting Danish
Jews.

-- Heinrich Boere, a former SS commando, was sentenced to death in
absentia in the Netherlands in 1949 for having killed three Dutch
civilians. Germany, where he lived in hiding, has refused to extradite
him, citing objections to the death penalty. Dortmund prosecutors launched
new charges in April 2008 for the same three murders.

-- Charles Zentai, a former Hungarian soldier alleged to have participated
in the persecution and killing of Jews in Budapest. Hungary is seeking his
extradition from Australia, where he now lives.

-- Mikhail Gorshkow, a former Gestapo interpreter, who is suspected in the
murder of Jews in Belarus. The United States stripped him of his American
citizenship, while Estonia, his country of birth, is investigating his
actions during the war.

-- Algimantas Dailide, former police officer from Lithuania, who took part
in the transport of Jews during the war who were then executed by the
Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. Extradited by the United States
to Germany in 2003. A Lithuanian court found him guilty but said he would
not need to serve his jail sentence.

-- Harry Mannil, a former Estonian police officer suspected of assisting
in handing over Estonian Jews to the Nazis. An investigation into his
conduct concluded in 2005 that he was not guilty of crimes against
humanity, citing a lack of proof. He now lives in Venezuela.

(source:  Agence France-Presse)





USA//COLORADO:

Finding the history left behind in boxes


It was the sight of the swastika that caused Andrea Sears-Van Nest to
feel sick.

"It made me go cold. I immediately said, 'There is no way I am going to
bring this into my house,'" she said.

But she kept looking inside the boxes left behind in her mother's house
shortly after her mother passed away last year. There were papers and
pictures and letters.

"Everything was paper-clipped. There were mounds and mounds of
paperclips," she said.

At that moment, she says she knew she had stumbled upon something truly
remarkable.

"I realized I couldn't throw anything away," she said.

The boxes belonged to her father who died in 1964. Sears-Van Nest knew
quite a bit about her father, but the boxes proved that she didn't know
everything.

Edwin Sears, who was Jewish, escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. In 1943, he
became a law professor at the University of Denver. In 1946, he returned
to Germany to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

It turns out those boxes were filled with paperwork and pictures and
letters that gave a first-hand account of what Sears' life was like during
that tumultuous time.

There are a number of pictures of Sears at Nuremberg.

"There he is at the podium," Sears-Van Nest said, "interrogating, I would
think."

There are correspondences written by such infamous Nazi leaders as
Heinrich Himmler. His autograph is clearly visible on one. Documents
laying out Sears' case against Nazi business leaders are numerous.

There are also a few letters written by Albert Einstein. Sears had been a
secretary for Einstein in the 20s and had petitioned the famed scientist
for help to get to the United States in the late 30s.

The collection was officially turned over to the University of Denver's
Penrose Library on Friday.

"It is a unique window into the past," said Professor Jeanne Abrams.
"Sears said many times that he didn't go to Nuremberg to extract
vengeance, but really to carry out justice."

Sears-Van Nest says her mother might not have even known exactly what was
in all of those boxes.

"I have to say I wonder if mom ever went through any of this. I have a
feeling even looking at it was too painful," she said.

Vera Sears died last year at the age of 95.

"There are sometimes hidden treasures in our own homes that we are unaware
of," Abrams said.

She says she's glad this collection has been turned over to DU.

Sears-Van Nest says the collection has made her even more proud of her
father. He provided an important voice during a very difficult time, and
for that she says, he should be remembered.

(source:  9News)

June 19




ISRAEL:

Israel to replace representative at Holocaust claims summit


Following complaints about conflicts of interest, the Foreign Ministry is
considering sending a minister to represent Israel at the Prague
conference on Holocaust assets, instead of a Claims Conference
representative.

Reuven Merhav had been expected to serve as Israel's top delegate to the
forum.

The June 26 Prague event will bring together delegates from 50 countries
to assess progress in recovering looted property. This is a follow-up to a
1998 Washington summit.

Currently, East European countries like Poland and Ukraine are refusing to
divulge compensation statistics for heirless Jewish property, which is
estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars.

"Israel's position in Prague is unlike that of other countries," Deputy
Foreign Ministry Danny Ayalon told the Knesset plenum on Wednesday. "I
certainly am considering the option of appointing a minister to represent
Israel."

Merhav himself proposed that a minister lead Israel's 12-man team, Ayalon
said.

Ayalon was replying to a query by MK Zevulun Orlev, who said that while
Merhav was "a worthy man beyond reproach," his nomination was "a conflict
of interest."

Merhav currently holds a senior, non-salaried position with the Conference
on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the world's richest restitution
body, which represents world Jewry in compensation talks with Germany.

The Claims Conference is currently under review by a parliamentary
committee of inquiry, over accusations that it has withheld funds from
survivors and heirs.

Politicians, prominent restitution figures and the Movement for Quality of
Government complained that Merhav's nomination could render heirs of Jews
who were murdered in the Holocaust "voiceless" at what may be the last
international conference on restitution, citing the Claims Conference's
"problematic record" in transferring funds to heirs.

The Claims Conference denies withholding funds from eligible heirs.

Ayalon noted that Merhav - a former Mossad and Foreign Ministry official -
was responsible for putting the issue of heirless property in Europe on
the agenda of the Prague Conference.

"The interests of the State of Israel and the Claims Conference are not
identical," Orlev said. "For example, the Claims Conference may be
concerned with commemoration, while Israel is focused on welfare," he told
Haaretz.

Ayalon said that the Ministry's legal department has found there was no
conflict of interest in Merhav's nomination.

"In my heart, I too have grievances with the Claims Conference," Ayalon
said. He also noted that "working together is a major interest for the
Claims Conference and Israel," and that the Prague Conference "could turn
over a new leaf in Israel's relationship" with the Claims Conference.

(source:  Ha'aretz)







LITHUANIA:

Baltic Ghosts, Lithuania is investigating Jewish Holocaust survivors as
war criminals


Lithuania is investigating Jewish Holocaust survivors as war criminalsand
using their own memoirs as evidence against them.


Yitzhak Arad escaped to the forest at the age of 16, days before the Jews
in his native Lithuanian village were massacred. He is proud he joined the
Soviet partisans to fight the Nazis and their collaborators. For a Jew,
just to survive the Holocaust was a victory, he says; to tell about it was
an obligation. That's why Arad wrote his memoir, The Partisan: From the
Valley of Death to Mt. Zion, published in English in 1979.

The book is a raw account of an orphaned teenager fighting the Nazis in
desperate conditions after the murder of 40 members of his family. Arad
describes his main activities with the Soviet partisans as blowing up
German military trains, and he also details some of the grislier aspects
of forest warfare. In one passage, he describes a "punitive" action
against the village of Girdan, where two partisans had been killed: "We
broke into the village from two directions, and the defenders fled after
putting up feeble resistance. We took the residents out of several houses
in the section of the village where our two comrades fell and burned down
the houses. Never again were partisans fired on from their village."

"It was a cruel war," the 82-year-old Arad recalled recently. "We did the
best we could to survive." He dedicated his memoir to those who fought
with him and died along the way--his "heroic friends."

But when Lithuania's chief war crimes prosecutor, Rimvydas Valentukevicius,
read Arads book, nearly 30 years after its publication, he didn't see a
hero. He saw a possible war criminal. And in September 2007, when the
prosecutors office publicly announced an investigation into Arad, it was
clear The Partisan would be Exhibit A against him. More war crimes
investigations of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors have followed, and in
each case, memoirs are playing a central role.

These events are all the more shocking to those who remember that the
country was once a sort of Jewish promised land. Lithuanias capital,
Vilnius, was known as the "Jerusalem of the North." About one third of its
population in the 1920s and 30s was Jewish. Yiddish was in the air then.
Synagogues welcomed the faithful. Cafes overflowed with young Jewish
painters, writers, and poets. Vilna, as the city is called in Yiddish, was
the seat of intellectual, spiritual, and artistic life for Eastern
European Jewry.

All of that is long gone, destroyed by the Nazi war machine with the
active assistance, in a dark chapter for Lithuania, of many local
collaborators. Vilnius today has only one synagogue. Lithuania's once
flourishing community of more than 200,000 Jews--over 90 percent of whom
were annihilated during the war--is now about 4,000. All that is left are
the Holocaust survivors stories, and now those, in the case of Arad and
several others, are being used against them.

How a country that was once a center of Jewish life has now begun
targeting the few remaining victims of history's worst crime is a story of
foreign occupiers, former Jewish partisans, and modern-day Lithuanian
ethnic nationalists. But more broadly, it is a story of books, memory, and
a small country's ongoing struggle to make sense of its tangled, bloody
historical narratives--a struggle facing all of Eastern Europe.

In a strange twist, this whole affair began with a good-faith effort to
heal those deep, lingering ethnic divisions. In 1998, President Valdas
Adamkus created a high-level commission to try to establish the
"historical truth" about Lithuanias horrific occupations during the 20th
century: first by the Soviets from 1940-41, then by the Nazis from
1941-44, followed again by the Soviets from 1944-90. The commission
attracted a prestigious collection of international scholars, including
Arad, who had gone on to become a brigadier general in the Israel Defense
Forces and director of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust remembrance center.
However, as the commission began excavating the layered narratives of
guilt and suffering from this period, ethnic tensions flared.

The biggest obstacle for Lithuanians in confronting their history is the
now well-established fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of Lithuanians
voluntarily participated in the Holocaust. Many of the country's Jews were
shot by local police and by a special unit of Lithuanian killers
incorporated into the Nazi SS. Since its independence in 1990, only three
Lithuanian collaborators have been charged with war crimes, and none was
punished.

"The genocide of the Jews is the bloodiest page in the country's history,"
said Saulius Suziedelis, a Lithuanian historian and member of the
presidential commission. "But for many Lithuanians," he said, "just to
mention that obvious fact turns them off because they want to talk about
their own victimization."

That victimization came during the brutal Soviet occupation. It was marked
by the repression of Lithuanian culture, the deportation of many thousands
of Lithuanians to Siberia, and the murder of Lithuanian independence
fighters. The Soviets strictly controlled information and wrote Lithuanias
history books. Today, as the country struggles to write its own narrative,
most Lithuanians see the Soviets as the real villains of World War II.
"The Spielberg view of the war is totally irrelevant to [Lithuanians]
because that was not their experience," Suziedelis said. Instead,
Lithuanian Jews, who allied with the Soviets to fight the Nazis, are
today often regarded as deserving of punishment for Soviet crimes.

This is certainly the view of many Lithuanian "ethno-nationalists,"
according to Antony Polonsky, professor of Holocaust studies at Brandeis
University. In 2006, after the presidential commission published interim
findings for a report that Polonsky called "a devastating account of the
Lithuanian involvement in the mass murder of the Jews," these firebrands
mobilized, he said. They took to the pink-tinted pages of the right-wing
Respublika newspaper--Lithuania's second-leading daily, which has been
sanctioned for running anti-Semitic material. Their target was Yitzhak
Arad. In an April 2006 article, Respublika published portions of his
memoir and denounced him as a murderer and war criminal. The following
month, Lithuanian prosecutors opened their investigation into Arad.

Some might dismiss this timing as coincidence. But not Rytas Narvydas,
head of special investigations for the Genocide and Resistance Research
Centre of Lithuania, which investigates and memorializes past state
crimes. He and the lead prosecutor, Valentukevicius, acknowledge that the
Arad investigation started in response to the Respublika article. When
asked whether anti-Semitic elements in Lithuania had manipulated the war
crimes prosecutors office, Narvydas conceded, "It does happen from time to
time."

Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Secretary Oskaras Jusys criticized the
prosecutor for getting pushed around by "outside" elements and said the
investigations never should have been opened. "The mistake was made by the
prosecutors office from the very beginning," he said. "Their mistake was
to go ahead without clear evidence."

The Arad case "created so much damage" for Lithuania, Jusys said,
referring to the significant diplomatic pressure imposed by the United
States, the European Union, Israel, and international Jewish groups.
Lithuania's foreign minister and president appealed personally to the
prosecutor to drop the Arad investigation, Jusys said, and in September
of last year the case was closed. But in the meantime, prosecutors had
opened investigations into several other Holocaust survivors. "We have
been able to clean one mess," Jusys said in frustration, "and now other
things are happening again."

The most public of the ongoing investigations involves Rachel Margolis,
an 87-year-old former biology professor living in Israel who joined the
Soviet partisans after escaping the Vilnius ghetto. Here, too, a book is
at the heart of the case. In Margolis's memoir, published in 2005 in
Polish (and later in Russian and German), she recounts a partisan raid on
the village of Kaniukai on January 29, 1944. Facts about the raid are
heavily disputed, including whether the villagers were acting in concert
with the Nazis, but the war crimes prosecutor alleges that 46 people were
murdered, 22 of them children.

According to Margolis's memoir, she did not take part in the Kaniukai
raid, but her longtime friend and fellow partisan, Fania Brancovskaja,
did. Now an 87-year-old librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute,
Brancovskaja was attacked in print last year by the ultraright-wing
nationalist newspaper Lietuvos Aidas. It labeled her a murderer, called
on investigators to charge her with war crimes, and demanded they summon
Margolis as a witness. And, last May, Lithuanian prosecutors publicly
announced they were seeking to question the two women.

The heightened scrutiny of these investigations clearly frustrates
Valentukevicius, the prosecutor, as does having to defend himself against
accusations of anti-Semitism. When asked about it recently, he raised a
copy of Lithuanias procedural code and said he's just doing his
job--investigating all war crimes allegations as the law requires. But
with dozens of potential cases of Lithuanian collaboration yet to be
examined, the decision to focus on Jewish Soviet partisans has attracted
suspicion.

So has the very public nature of the prosecutor's investigation. Faina
Kukliansky, Brancovskaja's attorney and an ex-prosecutor, complained that
the former partisans are being tried by "innuendo" in the court of public
opinion because prosecutors lack any evidence to try them in a court of
law. "Everything has been done with a wink and a nod," she said.

Many critics agree and say it is no coincidence that nationalists sought
out Margoliss memoir, a light seller at best. Prior to its publication,
Margolis had detailed aspects of Lithuania's history that many would
rather ignore. She helped publish works on the Holocaust, including the
diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz, a searing account of the heavy participation
of Lithuanians in the murder of 50,000 to 60,000 Jews in the Ponary forest
outside Vilnius. The 2005 English edition of the book, for which Margolis
wrote the foreword, was edited by Yitzhak Arad.

Margolis has not returned to Lithuania since prosecutors came looking for
her. Brancovskaja met with prosecutors last May to explain that she was
recovering from an operation at the time of the Kaniukai raid and had not
taken part in it. Margolis sent her old friend a letter backing up
Brancovskajas account, and said her memoir should be regarded as
literature, not historical fact. That may be true of all memoirs, but the
distinction takes on a special significance in the context of the
Holocaust, where survivors write to bear witness and deniers have long
seized on small inconsistencies to discount the larger event.

For his part, Arad stands by the accuracy of his account as vehemently as
he denies committing any war crimes. "I am proud of what I did during the
wartime," he said. "If I would feel I did something not to do, I wouldn't
write a memoir."

As during the Arad affair, the world is watching Lithuania's
investigations of the elderly Jews who fought with the Soviet partisans,
and Brancovskaja and the others will likely escape war crimes charges.
But charges may never have been the point. The prosecutor's simple act of
initiating the Arad investigation was enough to derail the half of the
presidential commission researching Nazi crimes and Lithuanian complicity
in them. It has not published anything since 2006. This may be the
investigation's most enduring harm.

"You have to do what's right, not what's easy," said David Crane, a law
professor at Syracuse University and founding chief prosecutor for the
U.N. war crimes court in Sierra Leone. "Some people in society may not
want these things found, and in the short term, that may seem like a
solution. But in the long term, 25 years from now, theyll still be
arguing about this."

Other consequences are more personal. The relationship between
Brancovskaja and Margolis, a friendship that started before the war, has
suffered. The two women have been divided by a 65-year-old memory and a
passage in a book. "It is very painful what they are doing," Brancovskaja
said, sitting in the Yiddish library surrounded by the many volumes she
tends. But then she added, "I have lived through so much. This is not the
worst."

(source: Daily PK)

June 12



GERMANY:

The day I held a sobbing WWII medic in my arms

Two-star general credits CNN's online reporting in preserving WWII legacy

CNN's Wayne Drash filed series of reports in recent months on slave camp
soldiers

350 U.S. soldiers were held at a Nazi slave labor camp in 1945

The Army had never recognized the men until last weekend


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents and
producers share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories
behind the events.


I'll never forget holding World War II medic Tony Acevedo in my arms. He
wept and convulsed for more than 10 minutes, his body constricting and
tightening in a way I'd never seen before. "I'm sorry," he said,
repeating, "I'm sorry. I want to say more, but I can't."

I held his hand and hugged him until he calmed. I had asked what I thought
was a simple question. "When I say the name Erwin Metz, what comes to your
mind?"

That's when the demons of 1945 took over.

Metz was one of the Nazi commanders who headed a slave labor camp known as
Berga an der Elster, where 350 U.S. soldiers -- 80 of whom had been
targeted for being Jewish -- were beaten, starved and forced to work in
tunnels at a secret V-2 rocket factory. They worked 10 to 12 hour days
with only 400 calories of food, mostly bread made from sawdust. More than
100 soldiers died at the camp or on a forced death march of more than 200
miles.

Other Berga survivors had described Metz: "A real bastard." "Butcher of
the Earth." They said he talked with a high-pitched lisp. Behind his back,
the soldiers called him Donald Duck.

But he wreaked hell on the men. He shot one soldier, Morton Goldstein,
through the head, execution-style, according to the survivors. Acevedo
described seeing Metz dump ice water on one emaciated soldier. The soldier
died of shock moments later.

Acevedo catalogued the atrocities in a diary he kept hidden in his pants,
using a Sheaffer fountain pen to record what he saw all around. When the
soldiers were on their forced death march, Acevedo asked to use his pen
for a tracheotomy to save a soldier named George Buddeski. Metz refused.
Flip through the pages of Acevedo's diary

"You're going to kill him then," Acevedo responded. Metz grabbed a rifle
from a guard and cracked the young medic across his face. Acevedo suffered
permanent nerve damage from the blow.

Buddeski died April 13, 1945, on the death march on what the soldiers call
Hell's Highway. The soldiers learned of another death that day: President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "Your Jew president has died," the Nazis said
mockingly.

There, in the middle of Germany, the American soldiers bowed their heads.
"We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul," Acevedo's diary
says. Amid the chaos and death all around them, these men -- these
soldiers who suffered so much -- took the time to stop and pray for their
president.

When CNN first reported Acevedo's story in November, I had no idea it
would lead to what I witnessed this weekend: The U.S. Army reversing
course on six decades of silence and recognizing the Berga soldiers for
what they went through.

Don't Miss
Army honors slave soldiers as 'national treasures'
In Depth: Scream Bloody Murder
Tony Acevedo's log (PDF)
Slave soldiers reunite after 64 years
It's always been a touchy subject for the Army. The U.S. government in
1948 commuted the death sentences of Metz and his superior, Hauptmann
Ludwig Merz. The men walked free in the 1950s, one of dozens of convicted
war criminals whose sentences were commuted as part of an effort to
bolster Germany, which was facing the threat of Soviet expansion.

In explaining its decision on the Berga commanders, the War Department
said, "Metz, though guilty of a generally cruel course of conduct toward
prisoners, was not directly responsible for the death of any prisoners
except one who was killed during the course of an attempt to escape."
Read the War Department's explanation for commuting their sentences

That prisoner was Goldstein, the one shot through the head.

When you read that document, it doesn't sit too easy. The government
excuses the killing of one soldier. Berga soldiers will tell you they were
never called to testify against Metz or Merz. They say they could've told
of many other atrocities.

When Metz and Merz were freed, the survivors felt the Army betrayed the
war ethos of "leave no soldier behind." They eventually got on with their
lives. Many went on to the top of their professions. They're all the most
patriotic Americans you'll ever meet.

As the survivors reached their 70s and 80s, many began wondering why the
government still refused to recognize them. It nagged them. It angered
some of them.

No ranking Pentagon official had described Berga as a "slave labor camp."

Heading into last weekend, the six Berga survivors present knew a two-star
general was being sent to meet with them. Many were skeptical: What can a
general do at this point to make us feel better? Surely, a two-star won't
call it a "slave labor camp" after all this time. Nah, he'll toe the
company line.

These were men who'd been disappointed before. They didn't want to set
expectations too high this time.

But there at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida, something magical
transpired.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles did a sit-down interview with me, while
six Berga survivors -- Samuel Fahrer, 86; Morton Brooks, 83; Sidney
Lipson, 85; Peter Iosso, 83; Wallace Carden, 84; and Edward Slotkin, 84 --
watched.

"It wasn't a prison camp. It was a slave labor camp," Boles said.  Watch
the general set the record straight after six decades

I was stunned in that moment. I'll even admit I got choked up. I knew
history had just been made, the legacy of the Berga soldiers preserved for
all time. The men looked on stoically and I knew what they were thinking:
"Drash, pull yourself together! We got a two-star in our presence!"

I was thinking about all that transpired in the last eight months.

I thought about Bernard "Jack" Vogel and Izzy Cohen, who were forced to
stand without food and water for days, pushed to their deaths. Cohen was a
32-year-old father of two young children. I had met with his 90-year-old
wife, Florence, and their daughter, Nomi, months before.

Florence is a diminutive woman, the epitome of class and grace. She told
me a story I'll never forget. When Izzy left for war, he kissed his family
goodbye at a train station in California. He looked at her and said,
"Whatever happens happens." Those were the last words he ever spoke to
her.

When she was notified Izzy was a prisoner of war on March 16, 1945, one
relative shouted, "That's just like Izzy to take the easy way out of war."
Izzy Cohen died three weeks later, a victim of the Holocaust. Tears filled
Florence's eyes as she spoke. She changed the family name, so her son
would never be targeted as a Jew.

I thought about Martin Vogel, the brother of the man who died with Izzy.
Martin called one day in November, crying his eyes out. "Are you the one
who did the story on the medic, Tony Acevedo?" he said, struggling for
words. "My brother is the one who died in his arms."

Martin Vogel adored his older brother. They were best friends. He entered
the Army so he could be just like his brother. They were 19 and 17. He had
searched for decades for answers to Bernard's death. "A month doesn't go
by that it doesn't come up in the course of my own thoughts," he said.
"But to me, it's always there."

At the time his brother died such a horrific death, Martin Vogel was just
a few hundred miles away. He was guarding a POW camp inside Germany where
U.S. troops treated their Nazi captives under the Geneva Conventions. To
this day, Martin, now 82, can't speak about his brother without crying.

More than a dozen other families of Berga victims have reached out. I've
listened to each one and put them in touch with Acevedo for answers about
their loved ones.

I'm not the first to report on Berga. Authors Mitchell Geoffrey Bard,
Flint Whitlock and Roger Cohen have written books on it. The late Charles
Guggenheim made a documentary about Berga.

But what happened in recent months, I can only attribute to the power of
online media and the ease of access to communicate. You can scroll through
Acevedo's diary and read the War Department document explaining why Metz
and Merz were set free. Millions of you read the pieces, e-mailed them
around and rallied around these weathered war heroes. It took on a life of
its own.

Hundreds of you lobbied Rep. Joe Baca, D-California, and Rep. Spencer
Bachus, R-Alabama. The two congressmen then pressed Army Secretary Pete
Geren to recognize the soldiers.

It was humbling when Boles, the two-star general, told me that my
reporting and my colleagues on CNN television preserved the men's legacy,
culminating with the Army recognizing them. That feels mighty good.

It was even more humbling talking with the fellas. They all survived the
Battle of the Bulge, when a million young men went head-to-head on the
battlefield. It was an honor to see the six survivors present in Orlando
receive flags flown over the Pentagon in their honor; Samuel Fahrer was
awarded the Bronze Star, one of the nation's highest medals.

"Just as they never left their fallen comrades, we will never leave them,"
Boles said. "You were good soldiers and you were there for your nation."

I wished the other Berga survivors were there, especially Acevedo.


But Acevedo didn't make the trip. His wife is ill. If he was going to
leave her side, he felt the right thing would be to get honored in
Washington. A soldier with pride. A medic to the end.

My final message is to my generation and the next. Don't be so quick to
shove grandpa and grandma into a nursing home. Sit down with them. Listen
to them. Hear their stories. The greatest generation. They're cut from a
different cloth and we're losing them too fast.

(source:  Wayne Drash, CNN)




THE NETHERLANDS:

Childhood friend recalls tragic diarist Anne Frank


Anne Frank would have celebrated her 80th birthday this week

Frank, 15, died at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland

Her diary is one of the world's mostly widely-read books

Like Frank, Eva Schloss and her family fled from Nazi persecution of the
Jews


She told stories, flirted outrageously with boys and was constantly
changing her hairstyle.

Anne Frank hid with her family in a secret room at her father Otto Frank's
office in Amsterdam.

It could be the description of almost any young girl growing up in
Europe. But this is how Eva Schloss remembers her childhood friend Anne
Frank, who had not died in a Nazi concentration camp, would have
celebrated her 80th birthday this week.

Schloss described Frank, whose account of hiding from Jewish persecution
in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is one of the world's mostly widely-read books,
as a spunky young schoolgirl with a passion for storytelling that often
got her into trouble.

"She got her diary in 1942, so obviously her father knew she was
interested in writing and I know she told stories," said Schloss.

"She talked a lot and she was called Mrs Quack Quack. Very often she used
to write hundreds of lines [at school] of 'I'm not going to talk so much,'
and so on -- but obviously she had a lot to tell."

In some ways the two friends lived parallel lives -- but tragically they
had very different outcomes.  Watch more about Schloss' story

Schloss and Frank both came from Jewish families who fled to Holland to
escape the wave of anti-Semitism spreading across Europe as the Nazis rose
to power in Germany ahead of the Second World War.

But while Schloss was more of an introvert, Frank loved the limelight.
Schloss said: "I was actually quite shy and she was the center of
attention. We had steps where we sat, and she had a crowd of children
around her.

"She was a big flirt -- she loved boys. She was always showing us who was
her boyfriend at that particular time. She was always interested in her
clothes. Her style, she always changed it. Sometimes she had curls, then
she had straight hair."

Schloss says they were unaware of the full scale of what was going on
around them as war escalated across Europe, placing their lives in
increasing jeopardy.

"Our parents really protected us so there was no talk about the horrendous
things which happened.

"You couldn't go out anymore after 8 o'clock, but for a 11 to 12 year old
it didn't matter so much. Or not going to the cinema -- we were upset
about those little things which we couldn't do, but we really didn't
really take it seriously at that time."

Like Frank, Schloss was also forced into hiding when the Nazis took
control of Holland.

Frank hid with her family in a secret room at her father Otto Frank's
office. But Schloss and her family had to split up. Schloss stayed with
her mother while her father and brother hid elsewhere. She and her mother
moved around, staying in seven different hiding places over a two-year
period.

Eventually both families were betrayed and were sent to concentration
camps, where Frank died at the age of 15.

Schloss said: "My father and brother were betrayed by a Dutch nurse who
was a double agent, and all four of us were arrested and taken to the
headquarters to be interrogated.

"I didn't know anything, which was a good thing. So eventually they
realized this and they gave up torturing me. Within two days we were put
on a transport to Auschwitz."

Of her family, only Schloss and her mother survived Auschwitz, one of the
most notorious concentration camps, located in southern Poland.

Today Schloss, who has just celebrated her own 80th birthday, has a
husband, three daughters and five grandchildren.

Schloss says it took her decades to rebuild her life, with the help of
Frank's father Otto, who also survived incarceration in a concentration
camp.

She met Otto in August 1945, when he showed her Frank's diary.

Schloss said: "He read a few passages but he always burst into tears. It
took me 20 years. I was really unhappy, but it was Otto who came to our
apartment to talk to us, and he helped me a lot. He had lost everybody.

"Her book, she [Frank] made people aware of what happened. There are many
messages. She believed in the goodness of mankind.

"People always ask me, what she would have done. I guess we will never
know. But I guess she would have gone into politics -- she was a fighter.
It's a pity, but also -- maybe her diary would have never been published."

(source:  CNN)


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


Holocaust museum slaying exposes the hate within


When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was being conceived and
built in the 1980s and 1990s, some critics questioned the need for such a
facility in this country. After all, there was no Holocaust here.

There are many reasons why that skepticism was misplaced. The museum in
Washington, D.C., was built so that new generations would learn of the
horrors of Nazi Germany, so that older ones would never forget them and so
that anti-Semites could not deny them. And it was built to honor the many
victims of the Holocaust and to research its causes.

Another answer was provided Wednesday when a deranged, 88-year-old
anti-Semitic gunman opened fire at the museum, killing a security guard
before being critically wounded himself, police said.

A burst of rage from a geriatric assassin hardly matches Adolf Hitler's
systematic slaughter of 11 million people, most of them Jews. But it is a
reminder of how pervasive hate remains in dark corners of America, where
the elections of the first African-American president and the first black
Republican Party chairman feed anger and paranoia on white supremacy
websites.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights law firm,
identified 926 hate groups in the USA in its most recent study this
spring.The numbers have been steadily edging up since 2000, when it
counted 602. The rise is driven, the group says, by the intense reaction
in some quarters to an influx of illegal immigrants.

The hate groups include neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan organizations and several
other categories. By the center's estimate, roughly 100,000 people
participate on a single Internet forum for white supremacists called
Stormfront.org.

This is, of course, a tiny fraction of the people involved in such groups
when bigotry was openly tolerated and segregation was imposed in Southern
states by force of law.

Even so, the shooting shows how bigotry continues to fester in the
shadows, only to emerge in a sudden act of violence. And it is reason to
be wary  more so now that the Internet gives formerly isolated racists,
whether individuals or small groups, a means to stoke one another's
smoldering anger. With the ready availability of weapons, even a single
person can do enormous harm.

There is something terribly self-reinforcing about someone killing at a
place designed to honor those who have died. It is almost as if the
accused killer, a convicted criminal named James von Brunn, who has spent
decades writing and publishing racist and anti-Semitic material and whose
hatred burned late in life, wanted to make a point that people like him
need to commit violence to get noticed.

(source:  Opinion, USA Today)





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


New York exhibit explores France under Nazi occupation


A landmark exhibition on Vichy France has opened at the New York Public
Library. Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life under
Nazi Occupation, guest-curated by award-winning historian Robert O.
Paxton, runs until July 25 at the library's headquarters at Fifth Avenue
and 42nd Street.

This rich and complex show explores one of the saddest chapters in the
history of France, the period between 1940 and 1944 when France succumbed
to the armies of the Third Reich.

Using rare journals, maps, letters and photos  including the original
manuscript of Irene Nemirovsky's bestselling novel Suite Francaise - the
exhibition probes some of the same issues that Paxton examined in his
groundbreaking 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944.

Paxton, one of the first historians to broach the issue of French
collaboration with the Nazis, was awarded the French Legion dhonneur in
April.

Free public tours and a series of films made in France during the Nazi
occupation accompany the exhibition. Admission is free.

(source:  Los Angeles Times)

June 5



UKRAINE:

A holy mission to reveal the truth about Nazi death squads

Father Patrick Desbois has spent the past decade piecing together the
horrific story of the Nazis' secret death squads. Jonathan Brown meets a
man who's rewriting history

Father Patrick Desbois is a man desperately racing with death. By his own
calculations he has six, perhaps seven years at the outside in which to
complete his work: a task, which until the reaper renders it impossible
some time in the not-too-distant future, is at once unimaginably chilling
in nature and nightmarishly ambitious in scale. For the 53-year-old French
priest, with an easy laugh and shining eyes, has made it his holy mission
to recall for the world the slaughter enacted by the Nazi mobile death
squads, the feared Einsatzgruppen, which roamed and murdered Jews and
Gypsies with impunity in the remote villages of the former Soviet Union
between 1941 and 1944.

It was, until the intervention of Father Dubois, a largely overlooked
episode in one of the grimmest chapters of the Second World War. But for
the last 10 years the priest and his helpers have painstakingly gathered
the testimony of the survivors of this period, travelling to some of
Europe's most abject places where, without judging, they have listened as
a procession of elderly men and women recalled  often for the first time
how, a lifetime ago, they became teenage helpmates to the Nazi killing
machine.

Today these witnesses have grown old and infirm and many are already dead.
Living in countries where the average life expectancy for a man is little
more than 60 years, those who experienced first-hand the Nazi genocide in
Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Ossetia are steadily dying out. When they are
gone, Father Desbois fears, so too will the memory of what they saw  and
with it a truth which exists only in the conscience of Europe's poorest
people.

During the course of the last decade, Father Desbois and his team from
Yahad in Unum, a French organisation dedicated to Christian-Jewish
understanding, have recorded conversations with more than 1,000 witnesses
to the mass murders on Hitler's Eastern Front. So far they have discovered
some 850 unmarked graves  the majority of them previously unknown
including a site at Bodgdanivka which contained the remains of some 42,000
Jews.

The oral histories they have gathered, along with detailed ballistic
evidence, could soon change the face of the study of the Holocaust,
pushing the final death toll upwards by as much as 500,000 victims. They
are also, he hopes, providing irrefutable proof in the face of
increasingly vocal Holocaust deniers, emboldened by the disappearance of
the generation still able to recall the horrors of the Third Reich as they
actually happened.

Father Dubois was invited to Britain by the University of Manchester's
Centre for Jewish Studies where last week he addressed academics and spoke
at the city's Anglican Cathedral. Though largely unknown outside Jewish
circles in the UK, he is a hero in Israel and the United States. Last
year, in his native France, he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by
President Nicolas Sarkozy, and sports the discreet red streamer proudly in
the buttonhole of his black priest's jacket. As he sits in the Victorian
splendour of Manchester's Palace Hotel, describing the detail of his
harrowing work, he displays a blistering sense of urgency at the looming
loss of the folk memory of the Nazi atrocities in the former Soviet Union.

"I am running against time," he says. "We have a maximum of six or seven
years if we take into account the age of the witnesses because they are so
old. Sometimes you arrive in the village and are told 'I'm sorry, Father,
but Madame Anna died just one month ago and she was the last witness. And
now nobody knows any more.' So I see time is short and we need to achieve
our goal as quickly as possible, which is why we must multiply our
energy," he says.

The reason for taking up this work is simple: to restore the dignity of
the uncounted and largely unmourned dead who were slaughtered and piled
into pits like animals, and to allow the Kaddish  the Jewish prayer of
mourning  to be recited over their final resting places. But there is
another reason too; to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust.

"You cannot leave Europe with thousands of unknown unmarked graves, or we
deny all our values," he says, his hands trembling slightly as he speaks.
"And what do we say to Cambodia or to Darfur if we do not bury correctly
the victims in our own continent? We are now 60 years after, and it is our
last chance to do it."

It is estimated that a minimum of 1.5 million Jews and Gypsies were killed
in Ukraine during the Second World War. The country was second only to
Poland for the number of Nazi murders on its soil. A further 500,000
perished in Belarus, while the exact numbers that perished in the vast
expanse of Russia, where the German army was encamped some 17 miles from
the Kremlin in the Moscow suburbs, or even in occupied Ossetia, can still
only be guessed at  until that is these territories, too, welcome in the
priest and his helpers to unlock the memories of survivors there too.

What made the slaughter in Eastern Europe so unimaginable is that it was
carried out not in the impersonal industrialised surrounding of the
concentration camps but by mobile units of individuals armed with
low-powered rifles. The policy laid down by Berlin was simple and based on
an evil economy to appease the army's concerns over dwindling resources:
"one bullet  one Jew; one Jew  one bullet".

The modus operandi of the Einsatzgruppen was as predictable as it was
murderous, explains Father Desbois. The mobile units were the precursors
of Heinrich Himmler's "Final Solution" policy. Composed primarily of
German SS and military personnel, they could draw on members of the
notorious German Gendarmerie, local police or even civilians  "anyone with
a carbine" explains the priest. Using the Soviet system of requisition
enacted on their behalf by compliant local mayors appointed by the Nazis,
the death squads were often staffed by gunmen plucked from everyday war
duties and left deeply traumatised by their actions. Their orders were to
kill those they were told were enemies of the Reich. Among the Jews,
Gypsies and communists were thousands of mentally and physically disabled
people, women and children.

Their approach was always the same, explains Father Desbois. First a
single uniformed officer, an expert in digging mass graves, would arrive
in a village. His initial stop would be the home of the local mayor, where
he would ask simply: "How many Jews?" Gauging who was and was not Jewish
in the Soviet Union was easy. Jews were considered one of the USSR's
national minorities and the information was recorded in official
documents. Having arrived at a figure and estimated the volume of the pit
required to hold the victims, the solider would order the mayor to round
up local teenagers, many of whom are now among Father Desbois's witnesses.
They would then be ordered to dig. Sometimes the pits were complex
structures, excavated deep into the ground with stairs to allow the soon
to be murdered to lie down "like sardines" before they were shot.
Sometimes they were little more than shallow holes. When the work was
complete, the call would go out to the regional headquarters seeking
gunmen from the surrounding countryside.

The day of the murders would have a chilling routine to it, says Father
Desbois. "They (the mobile units) would all gather together in the morning
of the killing and surround the village and then announce that the Jews
will be deported to Palestine. They are Soviets, so while an order like
this is not nice, it is not surprising to be deported," he explains. The
credulous victims would then begin to line up in the streets, assembling
in lines of five, carrying whatever belongings they could. Those less
credulous among them who refused to leave their homes were shot and their
bodies stacked up on horse-drawn carts. The "deportees" were ordered to
march to the waiting pit, strip and then, still five-a-breast, walk
straight into the bullets of the waiting gunmen.

Those who were left behind remember all too vividly what they saw, says
Father Desbois. "I met a witness who told me: I saw my neighbour. She was
in the line to wait and I was crying. She told me: 'Don't cry, we are
going to Palestine.' But I knew they were not going to Palestine because
early in the morning I was out with my cow and I saw the mass grave  I saw
it being dug by the children." As the victims were being mown down, the
Germans and their forced helpers set about the task of looting the
belongings of their victims. Clothes and jewellery were packed in boxes
while gold was prised from the mouths of the dead. The furniture was taken
from the now empty houses. The best was sent back to Germany while the
rest was sold off for cash. Meanwhile, the grim task of burial was being
completed by the same children who had dug the graves several days
earlier. Because of the "one bullet" policy, many of those inside the pits
were not dead. Children were dragged in by their falling parents or
propelled by the force of the advancing victims behind them. Others were
pushed in by gloved helpers. "In some cases there were Ukrainian girls,"
recalls Father Desbois. "I met one who was asked to walk on the corpses
between the shootings to make them flat. She said: 'The soldiers asked me
in the morning to come with my friends and between each of the shootings I
had to go down and walk on the corpses with my bare feet.'" Among the
victims were many friends and classmates, stripped naked and slaughtered
before her eyes. "They shot them and I had to walk on them like the
others," she recalled. Witnesses, little more than children, remembered
how the victims writhed "like flies and worms" as they died.

Sometimes some of those who were not dead would escape. More often they
would suffocate under the weight of the earth and bodies, but not before
they had endured further days of suffering, during which villagers watched
as the freshly dug earth heaved and fell under the agonized movements of
the victims below. It was as if the whole pit was breathing, according to
one onlooker.

"On the evening of the killing they would organise a party for the
shooters," says Father Desbois. There would be drinking, dancing and
prostitutes who travelled with the death squads as they moved from village
to village. The party was designed to ease the psychological guilt of the
killers, believes the priest, and bind the gunmen in the commonality of
their mass murder.

But while official records were kept detailing how many had been shot, it
is believed that up to 10 times that number were killed in Ukraine
unofficially. After the shootings each village would be declared
"Judenfrei"  free of Jews  putting them in good favour with the Nazi
authorities. Any Jews that escaped and returned were often killed to
prevent this status being lost. Many were forced into hiding in the
forests until the end of the war, only to emerge into the further terror
under Stalin. Others were not so lucky.

"In some villages they kept Jewish women to be sex slaves or forced
workers for the Gestapo," explains Father Desbois. "At the end of the war,
in many villages, they were pregnant, so they shot them just before
leaving the village. It is very difficult to find the mass graves of these
girls because no one wants to speak of that. All the village knew them
because they worked for the Gestapo so they saw them every time they went
to present their papers," he says.

Unlike the Holocaust in Central and Western Europe, where victims were
rounded up and deported, the genocide in Ukraine and Eastern Europe came
to the village squares, the gardens and farms of the survivors, and it was
among them that the bodies remained. Again, unlike Germany and Poland,
where the extermination camps stand testament to the atrocities that were
perpetrated within their walls, no symbols or memorials exist to the dead
Jews and Gypsies of the former USSR. Under Stalin, the victims, where they
were remembered, were considered to be fallen fellow-Soviets. All that
remains of this Holocaust by bullets are the cartridge cases discarded in
the dirt, each bearing a distinctive date and brand and each having
claimed the life of a human being.

It may seem strange that the task of remembering the millions of Jews and
Gypsies who died in Eastern Europe should fall to a Roman Catholic priest.
Father Desbois is neither a historian, nor an archaeologist. He is
certainly not a politician. It was through his family's wartime
experiences that he became involved in his present mission. The Desbois
family resisted the German occupation, hiding partisans on their farm in
eastern France. His grandfather (and other relatives) were imprisoned,
eventually being sent to the Ukraine, witnessing the horrors at Rawa-Ruska
where thousands of Jews died. He eventually told his grandson what he had
seen, as a way of downplaying his own suffering. It was during a visit to
the site of his grandfather's wartime incarceration that Father Desbois
posed the local mayor a simple question: "Where are the bodies of the
Jews?" The politician said he did not know  an answer the priest found
impossible to believe. Returning the next year, there was a new mayor, who
this time took the inquisitive Frenchmen out in to the forest where 100
villagers were waiting to tell him of the horrors they had seen played out
there among the birch trees.

The symbol of his authority is, he says, his clerical collar. Arriving
unannounced, he knocks on doors and listens  offering no comment or
judgment on actions which may have haunted a life for 60 years. Often, at
the end of a gruelling testimony he may pray with the witnesses, though he
does not offer absolution through confession. It is simply an opportunity
for someone to talk while another listens.

"These people, they may have seen on one day the killings of over 1,000
persons, and sometimes they say to me: "all my life I dreamt of finding
someone to tell them.'"

He recalls a recent interview in Brest, Belarus, when an elderly man was
describing how he would rest at night from packing away the belongings of
the slaughtered Jews as the German soldiers raped the surviving women. "At
the end of the interview I said: 'Of course you have spoken a lot of times
about that before?' He said: "No, it is the first time that I have spoken.
Who would be interested in all that?' These were poor people and no one
has ever paid any attention to them," he says.

Even today, conditions in the villages of the former Soviet Union are
harsh. There are often no roads; no running water and the weather is
bitterly cold. It is also an occasionally violent part of the world and
the priest, who has been shot at in the past, makes his five journeys a
year to the former killing fields in the company of armed bodyguards.
After enduring the horrors of the Nazis and Stalin during their lives, the
villagers have never posed themselves the kind of questions of guilt and
complicity that so often bedevil the conscience of the wealthier and more
privileged, believes Father Desbois.

As a former mathematics teacher in West Africa who became a priest after
working with Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta, he is not inured to
suffering. But he dismisses inquiries about how he or others "feel" in
relation to the atrocities as "typical Western questions". Under the
totalitarian regimes of the 20th century people simply had no choice  they
co-operated or they died. This leaves him free to concentrate on the task
in hand  logging the dead.

"My questions are who killed the Jews? Where are the corpses and how do we
establish evidence? I am completely concentrating on my goal and I try to
avoid the other questions or I might miss my goal," he says."

With the backing of the French government and Pope Benedict, Father
Desbois has become of the leading figures in the world of Jewish-Christian
relations. But he sees his role simply. "I am a very practical person and
I want to stay at this level. I am not an important person. I am only
doing some duty that has to be done. To bury the people is not an
important role  it is a simple role," he says. As for those who question
the existence of the Holocaust, whether they are politicians or within his
own church, he sees them as the direct inheritors of Himmler and Heydrich.
They are, he says, the "deniers of the inferno".

And at the heart of the unimaginable continent-wide tragedy can be found
individual human suffering and a timeless story and its still unanswered
questions dating back to the murder of Abel.

He says: "I don't work for millions. I am the disciple of Mother Teresa.
Everybody asked her: 'How can you stand in Calcutta with 13 million poor
people?' And she answered: 'I never saw 13 million, I only saw one.' It is
the same for me... it is people. I try to think really concretely of these
people not as a millions or just mathematics  I am looking for the tombs
of Isaac, Rebecca and Dora," he says. "We cannot build a safe Europe and a
modern world and ask people to keep silent. Otherwise we justify the next
genocide. It is the ultimate victory to Hitler if we don't bury the
victims."

(source:  The Independent)