January 2, 2010
GERMANY----book review
Utopia or Auschwitz: Germanys 1968 Generation and the Holocaust by Hans
Kundnani: review
Sukhdev Sandhu is fascinated by an account of German Sixties radicals who
turned to violence
By Sukhdev Sandhu
Published: 5:00AM GMT 02 Jan 2010
Utopia or Auschwitz by Hans Kundani: review
Karl Marx once claimed that shame was a revolutionary feeling. The
generation of West Germans who came of age in the Sixties, and whose
political struggles are brilliantly brought to life in Hans Kundnanis
Utopia or Auschwitz, certainly felt ashamed. Since the start of that
decade, when news broadcasts of the Eichmann trial had punctured the
culture of silence that had developed around the Holocaust and brought
into peoples living rooms an endless litany of the foul crimes committed
in their name, it seemed to many that post-war German society was built on
top of a pile of corpses.
A blunt question, asked by the philosopher Theodor Adorno in 1966, was
whether, after Auschwitz, you can go on living. He went on to argue that,
faced with the infernal immensity of what had gone on in the death camps,
mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois
subjectivity, without which there could have been no Auschwitz; this is
the drastic guilt of him who was spared. This drastic guilt led younger
West Germans to fear that, deep within themselves, there existed the demon
seed of fascism.
Katyn, reviewIn order to exorcise these traces of little Hitlerism they
embarked on a radical reassessment of the moral hygiene of the
increasingly prosperous state in which they lived. Socially conservative,
increasingly bureaucratic, authoritarian by instinct: the Federal
Republic, they decided in what Kundnani calls the continuity thesis
shared the same mindset as pre-War fascism. This perception drove a
growing body of college students, Leftists and activists to embark on a
movement that was at least as moral as it was political, less a version of
the utopian projects being hatched in Paris or Berkeley than a last-ditch
salvage operation to save Germany from itself.
This position was sometimes couched in melodramatic and even self-pitying
terms. It wasnt unknown for radicals to describe young West Germans as the
new Jews. It also led to a good deal of reading: Kundnani portrays them as
anxious worrywarts who spent all their free time poring over Habermas and
Marcuse. But it also led to a siege mentality, a sense of apocalyptic
survivalism even, such that the idea of using violence against the state
its officials, military centres, media representatives became
commonplace.
Kundnani is very acute on the international contexts for this bloody turn.
West Germans, used to seeing the United States as their protector, were
appalled by the nightly carnage in Vietnam carried out in the name of
anti-Communism. They sought inspiration from global resistance movements,
publishing translations of American Black Power texts, looking up to
non-aligned regimes in Albania and China, drawing on the Maoist notion of
the Long March through the institutions to explain their decision to use
university campuses as pivotal sites for intellectual regime change,
modelling themselves on the urban guerrilla tactics of the Tupamaros in
Uruguay.
Just as important as Vietnam was Israel. The Six-Day War, and its quashing
of Arab nationalist aspirations, made many young Germans turn against the
Jewish state, which they regarded as being almost as imperialist as the
US. One of the most discomfiting, but also valuable, aspects of Utopia or
Auschwitz is its refusal to whitewash the recurring strains of
anti-Semitism evident among sections of German radicals. Bombs were
planted at Jewish community centres in Berlin, graveyards desecrated, old
peoples homes set on fire. Support for Palestinian liberation soon curdled
into support for hijackings and the assassination of selected Jewish
passengers on an Air France flight held at Entebbe in 1976.
Perhaps it was that moment, even more than the prison suicides of Andreas
Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in 1977, that catalysed German radicals into
rethinking their goals and strategies. The second part of Kundnanis book
traces the steady emergence of constitutional patriotism among
intellectuals and the challenges they faced in trying to adapt their
political beliefs to better suit the emergence of the Green movement.
Reunification too, when it arrived, brought East Germans who werent
Left-wing insurgents in waiting, but were keen to embrace consumer
capitalism.
Auschwitz or Utopia is a timely publication. The success of The Baader
Meinhof Complex film, together with a broader resurgence of interest in
Left-wing radical groupings of the Sixties and Seventies, has created an
appetite for such exemplary syntheses of high-end political journalism and
academic scholarship. Its a narrative that, given the comparative
sturdiness of the German economy in the face of global recession, Kundnani
might easily have portrayed in triumphalist terms. Instead, he points out
that Joschka Fischer, photographed attacking a policeman in Frankfurt in
1974, has recently been inveighing against the state of emergency created
by a new terror movement: radical Islam.
Utopia or Auschwitz: Germanys 1968 Generation and the Holocaust by Hans
Kundnani
320pp, C Hurst, 16.99 T 14.99 (PLUS 1.25 p&p)
(source: The Telegraph)
USA//NEW YORK:
Holocaust Survivor Celebrates 100th Birthday in Brooklyn----Family and
Friends Gather at Retirement Home
It probably never occurred to Jafa Wallach that she would live to be 100
years old.
In the summer of 1944, she didnt know if she was going to live another
minute.
To avoid capture by the Nazis, she, her husband Natan and his two brothers
were hidden in a 6- by 4-foot hole beneath basement floor boards in a
mechanics workshop in southwestern Poland.
During the last desperate days of the war, the Gestapo, in search of
ammunition, radios, anything of use, were digging in the basement where
the Wallachs were hiding, a mere 6 feet away from them. The tension in our
hole was indescribable, says Jafa.
Ultimately, the soldiers gave up, throwing down their shovels with the
words zum Teufel (to the devil). Shortly thereafter, Jafa and her
companions were finally able to emerge into the sunlight when the Russians
retook the area. It was some time before she could walk again. They had
been hiding for 22 months, in a space too small for them to stand or walk.
Of the 30,000 Jews in the Galicia region of Poland, they were among 80
that are estimated to have survived.
And Jafa survives still, along with her daughter Rena, who, during the
war, hid under the guise of being the Christian niece of a forest watchman
in Bezmiechowa until she was reunited with her parents in 1944.
On Monday, Jafa Wallach celebrated her 100th birthday at the Ateret Avot
retirement home in Midwood.
Jafa survived, but she also thrived, said Ateret Avot Recreation Director
Alan Magill, who estimates that between one-third and one-quarter of
Ateret Avots residents are Holocaust survivors. Brooklyn is believed to
have the largest population of Holocaust survivors in the country, with
approximately 29,700 as of 2002, according to a United Jewish
Appeal-Federation of New York survey.
Surrounded by her daughter, grandson, great-grandchildren, cousins and
nephews, Jafa sat beaming from her wheelchair on Monday, festooned with
balloons, flowers and a piece of birthday cake as big as her head.
Its an honor to know Jafa, because in this world where there is still so
much conflict and hatred, I know that there is light, said her
great-granddaughter, Brianna, 20. Its an honor to know a woman of such
grace, dignity and truth.
Jafa is also a published author. Her memoirs, Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a
Holocaust Survivor, were published in 2006, though they were written
shortly after she and her family arrived in New York in 1947. Her daughter
Rena, who was the driving force behind getting the book published,
contributed an essay to the book detailing her own haunting experience
during the war.
Rena now often speaks at schools, museums and civic organizations, and in
2007 won the Hannah L. Goldberg Award for Jewish Education for her
Celebration of Life project, which brought Bitter Freedom to 20 School
Districts throughout New York State. The book has been published in Hebrew
and will soon be released in Polish.
Polish Neighbor Saved Family
It was the selfless bravery of mechanic Jzef Zwonarz that saved the
Wallachs. It was he who hid them under his workshop and found a home in
which to hide Rena. Jafa and her husband stayed in touch with him until
his death in 1984, and advocated for his receiving an award from Israels
Center for Holocaust Remembrance, Yad Vashem, in 1980.
Jzefs grandson, who recently converted to Judaism and lives in Israel,
sent his birthday wishes to Jafa on Monday, which elicited more enthusiasm
from her than everything else.
It always nice to celebrate a 100th birthday ... but we also celebrate the
conversion, said Jafa.
In addition to much of her extended family, Jafa lost her father,
stepmother, a brother and three sisters in the Holocaust. Her husband
Natan, who passed away in 1995 at the age of 90, lost his entire nuclear
family his parents and three sisters.
Love prevails, Jafa said on Monday, with her memoir on her lap and her
daughter at her side.
Shes one of the most optimistic people Ive ever met, said Rena.
To learn more about Bitter Freedom, visit www.bitterfreedom.com
(source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
*********************************************
Dec. 29
USA:
US Appeals Court Nixes Vatican Bank Holocaust Suit----US appeals court
upholds dismissal of Holocaust survivor lawsuit against Vatican Bank
An American appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust
survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of
their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court
ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the
1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign
countries from being sued in U.S. courts.
Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia had filed suit
against the Vatican bank in 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered
the looted assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who were killed
or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia.
They sought an accounting from the Vatican, as well as restitution and
damages.
The court didn't rule on the allegations. In its decision, the court said
the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of
Religion, or IOR, was a sovereign entity entitled to the protections of
the foreign sovereign immunities act, and that therefore U.S. courts had
no jurisdiction.
The pope himself has been granted such protections in U.S. courts hearing
clerical sex abuse cases.
Jeffrey Lena, who represented the Vatican Bank in the case, said he was
gratified with the ruling since the court decided not only that the IOR
was a sovereign entity but that as such it was immune from U.S.
jurisdiction.
"In defending the lawsuit, the IOR did not challenge the allegations of
the plaintiffs that they had suffered terrible losses at the hands of the
Ustasha," he told The Associated Press. "Rather the challenge was simply
to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts over the IOR."
Jonathan Levy, who represents the survivors, said he thought he had
sufficiently shown that the Vatican bank engaged in commercial activities
in the United States, which can serve as an exemption to the protections
granted by the immunities act.
"The reason we're disappointed is the court found that dealing in gold
teeth from concentration camps was not a commercial act," he said.
In its ruling, the court said that the Vatican banks' U.S. commercial
activities were "too tangentially related to their legal claims to be
considered the basis for the suit."
Levy said he didn't plan to appeal the judgment. The victims are also
suing the Franciscans, the Roman Catholic order, on identical charges, and
that portion of the lawsuit is going ahead, he said.
The survivors filed suit against the Vatican Bank a year after Swiss Banks
agreed to pay some $1.25 billion to Nazi victims and their families who
accused the banks of stealing, concealing or sending to the Nazis hundreds
of millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings.
Many of the survivors named as plaintiffs in the suit live in the United
States.
The Vatican bank was famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of
Italy's Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s. Roberto Calvi, the head of the
Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in
1982. The circumstances remain mysterious.
More recently, Italian news reports said last month that Italian financial
police were scrutinizing tens of millions of euros worth of Vatican bank
transactions to see if they violated money laundering regulations.
(source: Associated Press)
************************************************
Dec. 21
POLAND:
Auschwitz Sign Thieves Arrested
Polish police say the five men arrested in connection with the theft of
the Auschwitz sign have no known neo-Nazi links. The sign, which had been
cut into three pieces, was recovered late on Sunday night. The museum at
the former death camp has welcomed the return of such an important symbol
of the Holocaust.
Polish police have said that the men arrested in connection with last
Friday's theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Auschwitz are not
neo-Nazis.
On Monday, Polish police told reporters that the arrested men, aged
between 25 and 39 had no known neo-Nazi links. "From the information we
have none of the five belong to a neo-Nazi group, nor hold such ideas,"
Andrzej Rokita, police commander for the southern Krakow region said. He
added that they had previous criminal records for theft or violence.
"Their intent was undoubtedly robbery-related. We will be able to decide
later whether the crime was ordered or whether they acted on their own
initiative."
After a three-day intensive man hunt the five suspects were arrested late
on Sunday night. The sign was found near the home of one of the men in
northern Poland, hours away from the southern Polish town where the former
concentration camp is located. Police said that the 5-meter (16-foot) sign
had been cut into three pieces.
The 'Most Important' Symbol of the Past Century
Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum, said that the
recovery of the sign was an "enormous relief." He told the Agence France
Presse news agency that "this symbol, probably one of the most important
of the past century, can be put back in its place."
The theft, perpetrated during the early hours of Friday morning, provoked
an international outrage. The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free"
topped the entrance to the gate of the Auschwitz camp which was
established by the Nazis in occupied Poland during World War II and was
liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. It was one of the many
extermination camps in which the Third Reich murdered 6 million Jews
during the Holocaust.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called on Poland to act to
find "these twisted criminals that desecrated the place where over a
million Jews were murdered." He added that the sign is "of deepest
historical importance to the Jewish people and the whole world, and is a
tombstone for more than a million Jews."
(source: Der Spiegel, Dec. 21)
VATICAN CITY:
Pope says visit to Holocaust memorial 'upsetting'
Pope Benedict XVI on Monday described a visit to Israel's Holocaust
memorial as a disturbing encounter with hatred, days after his decision
to move the controversial World War II-era pope closer to sainthood
angered Jewish groups.
The German-born Benedict signed a decree Saturday on the virtues of Pope
Pius XII, who has been criticized for not doing enough to stop the
Holocaust. The decree means that Pius can be beatified - the first major
step toward possible sainthood - once a miracle attributed to his
intercession has been recognized.
The decision sparked further outrage among Jewish groups still incensed
over his rehabilitation earlier this year of a Holocaust-denying bishop,
Richard Williamson.
Nevertheless, a planned visit by Benedict to Rome's main synagogue,
scheduled for Jan. 17, is still on, said Ester Mieli, spokeswoman for Rome
chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni. She dismissed a report in a Rome newspaper
that the visit was in doubt following the Pius decision.
Benedict, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth and deserted from the
Nazi Army, has repeatedly spoken out against the horrors of Nazism and
anti-Semitism, but his efforts to improve relations with Jews have not
always been smooth.
On Monday, he recounted his May trip to the Holy Land in a speech at the
Vatican.
"The visit to the Yad Vashem has meant an upsetting encounter with the
cruelty of human fault, with the hatred of a blind ideology that, with no
justification, sent millions of people to their deaths," he said.
Yad Vashem is "first of all a commemorative monument against hatred, a
heartfelt call to purification and forgiveness, to love," he said.
Benedict's speech during his Yad Vashem visit drew criticism in Israel,
with some faulting the pope for failing to apologize for what they see as
Catholic indifference during the Nazi genocide. Others noted that he
failed to specifically mention the words "murder" or "Nazis."
Some Jews and historians have argued Pius, who served as pontiff from
1939-1958, should have done more to prevent the deaths of 6 million Jews
by the Nazis and their collaborators. A caption of a photo of Pius at Yad
Vashem's museum says he did not protest the Nazi genocide of Jews and
maintained a largely "neutral position."
The Vatican insists Pius used quiet diplomacy to try to save Jews and
didn't lash out at the Nazis for fear that such a public denunciation
would only result in more deaths.
Jewish groups have argued that Benedict shouldn't have made any moves on
Pius' beatification process until the now-closed Vatican archives of his
pontificate are opened to outside researchers.
A Yad Vashem spokeswoman, Iris Rosenberg, said it was "regrettable" that
the Vatican had acted before documents are made available.
The World Jewish Congress called any beatification of Pius "inopportune
and premature" until consensus on his legacy is established, the World
Jewish Congress said in a statement.
"There are strong concerns about Pope Pius XII's political role during
World War II which should not be ignored," said Ronald Lauder, the
president of the group. He called on the Vatican to immediately open all
archives on Pius era and show "more sensitivity on this matter."
The European Jewish Congress argued that some Catholics are also opposed
to beatification and urged the pontiff's advisers to persuade him to
suspend the process.
"This is not just about Catholic-Jewish relations, but about the abuse of
Holocaust memory and history," the group's president, Moseh Kantor, said
in a statement.
The Vatican says its archives on the Pius era - about 16 million files -
won't be opened to outside historians until 2014 at the earliest.
"It's not a matter of secrecy," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico
Lombardi was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera. "Everything there is
to know is already known."
Benedict has already visited two synagogues - in Germany and the United
States.
(source: Associated Press, Dec. 21)
GERMANY:
Demjanjuk says in pain, Holocaust survivors testify
John Demjanjuk complained of back pain while Holocaust survivors on
Monday recalled the horrors of Nazi Germany at his trial on charges of
helping to force 27,900 Jews into gas chambers in 1943.
The court rejected a defense motion to suspend the trial, upholding the
confinement of a man who once topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of
most-wanted war criminals.
German state prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk of assisting in killings at the
Sobibor death camp in Poland, where prosecutors say at least 250,000 Jews
were killed.
Early in the day, the 89-year-old sat silently in his wheelchair and
showed no emotion as 12 plaintiffs, some of them with tears in their eyes
and their voices breaking, described how they had survived the Holocaust
while their relatives perished.
After a recess, officials set up a bed in the courtroom for Demjanjuk,
after a doctor said had complained of back pain.
A prison official quoted in Tuesday's edition of the Tageszeitung
newspaper said Demjanjuk regularly took breaks in the prison yard, either
in his wheelchair or with the assistance of a walker. He also had been
reading Ukrainian newspapers and preparing meals of salad, the official,
Michael Stumpf, added.
Demjanjuk denies he was involved in the Holocaust and his family insists
he is too frail to be standing trial.
"UNHEALED WOUND"
One of the plaintiffs, 87-year-old Philip Jacobs had to be helped onto the
witness stand, where he said he felt guilty to have survived the Holocaust
while his parents and fiancee perished.
"Sobibor is an unhealed wound," the former pharmacist said.
Another plaintiff, Robert Cohen, 83, whose brother and parents were killed
at Sobibor, described his experiences at Nazi death camps including
Auschwitz.
"We didn't know what was going on," the Amsterdam-born pensioner told the
court during the morning session. "We thought we had to work."
Due to Demjanjuk's frailty, hearings are limited to two 90-minute sessions
a day. His case is likely to be Germany's last major Nazi-era war crimes
trial.
Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine and fought in the Soviet army before being
captured by the Nazis and recruited as a camp guard. He emigrated to the
United States in 1951.
In May, he was extradited from the United States where he had lived in a
suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.
Demjanjuk has acknowledged being at other camps but not at Sobibor, which
prosecutors say was run by between 20 and 30 members of the Nazi SS and up
to 150 Soviet former prisoners of war.
In the Sobibor gas chambers, Jews died within 20 to 30 minutes after
inhaling a toxic mixture of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide,
prosecutors said. Groups of about 80 were forced into gas chambers
measuring about 4 by 4 meters (13 ft by 13 ft).
The trial is scheduled to continue on Tuesday.
(source: Reuters)
**********************************************************
Dec. 18
POLAND:
'An Abominable Act'--- -Outrage at Theft of Auschwitz Sign
The theft of the 'Arbeit macht frei' sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz
concentration camp on Friday has provoked international outrage,
particularly in Israel. It is not yet clear if anti-Semitism was the
motive behind the crime and, so far, there is no trace of the
perpetrators.
The thieves came in the early morning hours. And they were well-prepared.
Amid freezing temperatures, they managed to take down the top part of the
entrance gate to the former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland,
which bore the infamous phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Will Set You
Free"). They then got the iron sign through a hole in the fence and drove
it away.
So far, there has been no trace of the perpetrators.
The poor lighting at the memorial site, including some original fixtures
from the 1940s, probably made the theft easier. A security camera was
taking images, but they were not recorded, according to Polish TV channel
TVP.
The police are working on the assumption that there were three thieves, as
one or even two perpetrators were unlikely to have managed the audacious
robbery by themselves. So far there is nothing to indicate anti-Semitism
as a motive for the crime.
"This is not a theft, this is a desecration of this place," museum
spokesman Pawel Swicki said. The sign was quickly replaced on Friday with
an exact replica made when the original was restored several years ago.
The theft has provoked outrage, particularly in Israel. Silvan Shalom, one
of Israel's deputy prime ministers, called it an "abominable act that
amounts to profanation." He said it demonstrated "hatred and violence
against Jews."
'Tasteless and Shocking'
Meanwhile, Avner Shalev, the president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial in Jerusalem, said that the theft was a "declaration of war." "We
don't know the identity of the perpetrators, but I assume they are
neo-Nazis," he added.
The German government has also expressed its concern. "We hope that this
crime will be solved quickly and that the damage to the memorial can be
quickly repaired," said Andreas Peschke, a spokesman for the German
Foreign Ministry.
Dieter Graumann, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany,
described the theft as "tasteless and shocking." He said that the theft
would cause "great pain" to the survivors of the Holocaust and their
relatives. He assumed that the Polish authorities would catch the
perpetators and that they would make sure that "nothing like this happens
again."
The Polish police have positioned officers on the streets near Auschwitz
and are checking all large cars and vans. The tapes from the security
cameras at the memorial are being assessed. Officials are also offering
5,000 zloty (around 1,200, or $1,700) for any information leading to the
arrest of the thieves.
The "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign was erected by Polish prisoners around six
months after the camp was established by the German occupying forces in
June 1940. The letter "B" was place upside down in a concealed act of
defiance by the team of prisoners, lead by Jan Liwacz.
Today, the sign is widely regarded as a symbol of the suffering of the
millions of people who died in the Nazi concentration camps under the
Third Reich. In Auschwitz and an adjoining camp, Birkenau, the National
Socialists murdered more than 1.1 million people, the vast majority of
which were Jews.
(source: Der Spiegel, Dec. 18)
