Eideard

Former prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp return on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Click here for the series of photos published by the Telegraph.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish demonstrators look at a boy (low L) wearing a cloth cap and a yellow Star of David inscribed with “Jude”, Jew, in German, sewn on his jacket as he raises his hands during a protest in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighbourhood December 31, 2011. The demonstrators caused outrage on Sunday by dressing children as Holocaust victims to protest against what they see as persecution of devout Jews seeking gender separation in Israel.

Not much different from priests equating gay rights parades as equivalent to KKK marches.

Charges were filed Tuesday against 17 people accused of taking more than $42 million from programs established to help Holocaust survivors, authorities said.

“The alleged fraud is as substantial as it is galling” said Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, calling it a “perverse and pervasive fraud committed against a not-for-profit organization of historic significance.”

Over a period of almost 16 years, millions of dollars intended for Holocaust survivors “instead found its way into the pockets of corrupt employees of the Claims Conference and an elaborate network of fraudsters,” Bharara told reporters.

The money came from two funds managed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, a nonprofit that was established almost 60 years ago to assist those harmed by Nazis. The Claims Conference distributes more than $400 million a year from funds provided by the German government to victims of the Holocaust.

Bharara said conference officials first noticed the fraud and went to the FBI in December 2009…

Six of the 17 people charged Tuesday with fraud and conspiracy are former and currant employees of the Claims Conference, according to Bharara. He called Semen Domnitser the “ringleader” of the fraud, saying that for more than 10 years he served as the director and oversaw both the Hardship Fund and the Article Two Fund…

The Claims Conference issued a statement saying that since discovering the fraud, it had implemented numerous steps to strengthen its safeguards.

“We are outraged that individuals would steal money intended for survivors of history’s worst crime to enrich themselves,” said Julius Berman, chairman of the Claims Conference.

Generally, I oppose the death penalty. Though, like the Chinese, I consider economic crimes especially worthy of an ultimate penalty.

For these crooks, I’d consider bringing back the guillotine.

Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks have lost a bid to get the Supreme Court to rule on whether New York City must provide a proper burial for material taken from the World Trade Center site, because it could contain the ashes of victims.

The justices declined on Monday to hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling in a suit brought by relatives of some of the people killed when the twin towers collapsed. Lower courts dismissed the suit against the city, saying it acted responsibly in moving materials from the site in Lower Manhattan to a landfill on Staten Island and then sifting through the material for human remains.

The plaintiffs wanted the ashes buried in a cemetery after they were sifted again. None of the remains of roughly 1,100 of the people who were killed in the attacks have been found.

I realize the cumulative loss is enormous. Americans should also look around at the world and the miserable history of our species killing large numbers of each other.

I am not surprised that Americans feel themselves more special than all those others. Still doesn’t justify the demand.

Jewish groups in Montreal are denouncing a curiosity shop where a bar of soap allegedly made from Holocaust victims’ fat is for sale.

The beige bar of soap, in a store on Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal, is inscribed with a swastika and displayed in a glass case with a card that says “Poland 1940.”

The store owner – who is Jewish – claims the soap was “made out of people … the fat of people,” but he wouldn’t grant an interview about his stock, explaining he thought it was important to display and sell such items to remember the Holocaust.

Fake or real, the soap is outrageous, and “this individual, and others like him, are not preserving history in any way,” said Alice Herscovitch, director of Montreal’s Holocaust Centre. “The sale of objects which glorify Nazism and hatred, to me, do nothing. They certainly don’t help us remember…”

Most Jewish historians and Holocaust experts say stories about mass-produced soap using human remains are untrue, even though there is evidence Nazis experimented with saponification during the Second World War in European concentration camps.

The purchase or sale of items with swastikas is not illegal under Canadian law, but selling soap made with human remains is, explained B’nai Brith Canada’s chief legal counsel, Anita Bromberg.

And claiming it is – if it isn’t – is also illegal because it is fraud, she added.

I can’t describe in a few words the disgust and contempt I feel for a creep like this. Whatever the rationale overlaid to aid defenders of this slimy business – feeding a morbid interest in the era of Naziism is despicable.

Thieves have stolen the infamous sign at the entrance of Poland’s Nazi-era concentration camp, Auschwitz, … police and museum staff reported Friday.

“The inscription was stolen early this morning,” museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfeld told AFP.

“It’s a profanation of the place where more than a million people were murdered. It’s shameful,” he added.

Whoever did it must have known what he was stealing and how to do it, he added.

The forged iron inscription was not hard to unhook from above the large gates at the entrance, “but you needed to know how,” he said.

Frackin unbelievable.

I have a feeling we’ll all know soon.

UPDATE: Police in Poland have arrested 3 young men who had the sign – cut into pieces – in their possession. No details, yet.

UPDATE: Swedish police have at least one Nazi terrorist in custody.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Denis Avey is a remarkable man by any measure. A courageous and determined soldier in World War II, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a camp connected to the Germans’ largest concentration camp, Auschwitz.

But his actions while in the camp – which he has never spoken about until now – are truly extraordinary. When millions would have done anything to get out, Mr Avey repeatedly smuggled himself into the camp.

Now 91 and living in Derbyshire, he says he wanted to witness what was going on inside and find out the truth about the gas chambers, so he could tell others. He knows he took “a hell of a chance”…

“You wouldn’t think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me.”

He arranged to swap for one night at a time with a Jewish inmate he had come to trust. He exchanged his uniform for the filthy, stripy garments the man had to wear. For the Auschwitz inmate it meant valuable food and rest in the British camp, while for Denis it was a chance to gather facts on the inside…

He talked to Jewish prisoners but says they rarely spoke of their previous life, instead they were focused on the hell they were living and the work they were forced to do in factories outside the camp…

“There were nearly three million human beings worked to death in different factories,” says Mr Avey. “They knew at that rate they’d last about five months.

He says he would ask where people he’d met previously had gone and he would be told they’d “gone up the chimney”.

Part of the historic record so rarely taught in detail, nowadays.

RTFA. Imagine a little of what Denis Avey saw and experienced.

Daylife/AP Photo

The Pope has admitted making mistakes over the lifting of the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, saying the church will make much greater use of the Internet in the future to help avoid such controversies.

In a letter to church leaders, Pope Benedict XVI says the church should have been aware of the views of Bishop Richard Williamson.

“I have been told that consulting the information available on the Internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on.

“I have learned the lesson that in the future the Holy See will have to pay greater attention to that source of news…”

Uh, how much of that excuse do you think is pure bullshit?

Internet or not, are we supposed to believe the Pope didn’t have easy access to the statements from a leading light of the most reactionary wing of Roman Catholicism?

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Bishop Richard Williamson, who last month denied the existence of the Holocaust in an interview with Swedish television, has been ordered to leave Argentina within 10 days, the Ministry of Interior said.

“The bishop has repeatedly forged the true motive for his stay in the country, having declared that he is an employee of ‘La Tradicion’ Civil Society when, in reality, his true activity was as priest and seminary director of the Society of Saint Pius X in the neighborhood of Moreno,” Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said in a written statement.

“Williamson has had public notoriety following his anti-Semitic statements to Swedish media in which he questioned whether Jewish people were victims of the Holocaust,” Randazzo continued.

“For these reasons, along with the strong condemnation from the Argentine government of how statements like these harm Argentine society, the Jewish community, and all of humanity by trying to deny a historic truth, the national government has decided to demand that the Bishop leave the country or be expelled.”

Williamson…made headlines in January when he and three other ultra-conservative bishops were welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church, more than 20 years after Pope John Paul II excommunicated them on a theological question unrelated to the Holocaust.

The rehabilitation of Williamson sparked condemnation from Israel, American Jewish leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others.

Williamson apologized for “distress” his remarks caused the pope, but has not retracted them.

I know it’s difficult for some priestly types to face this – but, he might consider getting an honest job.

The Pope is no less ridiculous – hoping he could sneak Williamson’s reinstatement through the throng of watchers. “The whole world is watching” grows more eyes and courage every day.

“Bacon sandwiches for everyone!”
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The Vatican said the pope issued a decree lifting the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops who were thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church in 1988 for being ordained without Vatican permission.

The four bishops lead the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which has about 600,000 members and rejected modernizations of Roman Catholic worship and doctrine…

One of the four bishops, the British-born Richard Williamson, has made a number of statements denying the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, as accepted by mainstream historians.

In comments to Swedish television broadcast Wednesday, he said “I believe there were no gas chambers” and only up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, instead of 6 million…

Pope Benedict has already made several gestures of reconciliation to the schismatic group, including allowing the unconditional return of the old-style Latin Mass.

That move also angered Jews because the ceremony includes a Good Friday prayer for their conversion.

The rationales for Williamson’s bigotry and foolishness are the same as for any similar sophistry denying historic fact and record. The crime now extends to a Pope who would rather have his followers paying dues – than leading anyone to an understanding of horrific crime.