February 5, 2010
Rebuffing Scholars, Germany Vows to Keep Hitler Out of Print
By NICHOLAS KULISH
MUNICH — In Germany, an author is granted an ironclad copyright for 70 years after his death, apparently even if he is subsequently regarded as one of the greatest mass murderers in history and a dark stain on the national character.
Hitler’s copyright on “Mein Kampf,” in the hands of the Bavarian government since the end of the Nazi regime, has long been used to keep his inflammatory manifesto off the shelves in Germany. But with the expiration date looming in 2015, there is a developing showdown here over the first German publication of the book since the end of World War II.
Experts at the respected Institute of Contemporary History in Munich say they want to prepare a critical, annotated version of the book for release when the copyright expires 70 years after Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin bunker.
“We hope to prevent neo-Nazi publications by putting out a commented, scholarly edition before that,” said Edith Raim, a historian at the institute. “‘Mein Kampf’ is one of the central texts if you want to explain National Socialism, and it hasn’t been available in a commented edition at all in Germany.”
But the Bavarian government opposed the idea, citing respect for victims of the Holocaust. In a statement Thursday, the Bavarian Finance Ministry said that permits for reprints would not be issued, at home or abroad. “This also applies to a new annotated edition,” said the statement, adding that the state would use “all means at its disposal to proceed against any violations.”
There was also disagreement as to whether the book might be banned as Nazi propaganda. The Bavarian government said that even after expiration of the copyright, “the dissemination of Nazi ideologies will remain prohibited in Germany and is punishable under the penal code.”
But Ms. Raim said that diaries by prominent Nazis like Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler were already available.
Unofficial copies of “Mein Kampf” are easily accessible on the Internet already, and the book is legally published abroad, including in the United States.
Hitler wrote the book, which detailed his hatred of Jews, his desire for revenge against the French and the need for more space or “Lebensraum” in the east for Germans, while in Landsberg prison in Bavaria after the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The first volume of the book was published in 1925 and the second the next year.
More than 12 million copies of “Mein Kampf” were in circulation by 1945. The cities of Munich and Nuremberg, among others, gave it away to young couples as a wedding present, according to the Bavarian state library.
Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Berlin, said the publication of “Mein Kampf” continued to split the Jewish community in Germany, with many Holocaust survivors opposing its publication. “I have the highest respect for this opinion, but on the other hand I’m saying very openly: The copyright is going to be waived anyway. It’s a matter of time before the book is available in shops and libraries,” Mr. Kramer said.
Mr. Kramer said that with the book available on the Internet, it was important to have the work put in context by a responsible group like the Institute of Contemporary History. “Those who are already on the wrong side already have the book and already read it from their own point of view,” he said. “Let’s get it out there, and let’s get it out there with a commentary.”
Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2010
Friday, August 28, 2009
Auschwitz blueprints given to Bibi
From left, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Kai Diekmann, editor of Bild, and Avner Shalev, chairman of Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial, looking at plans for Auschwitz.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Spy fired shot that changed Germany
This photograph of Benno Ohnesorg being cradled by a woman after he was shot during a demonstration in West Berlin in 1967 is among the most iconic images in Germany
It was called “the shot that changed the republic.”
The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.
Now a discovery in the archives of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, has upended Germany’s perception of its postwar history. The killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, though working for the West Berlin police, was at the time also acting as a Stasi spy for East Germany.
If there is one country in Europe that is enigmatic, Germany is it.
It is as if the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard had been committed by an undercover K.G.B. officer, though the reverberations in Germany seemed to have run deeper.
I beg to differ; perhaps if the shooter had been a Confederate agent, were America two countries, each half of one. KGB was a Soviet agency. Still, even if overstated, a point is made.
For the left, Mr. Kurras’s true allegiance strikes at the underpinnings of the 1968 protest movement in Germany. The killing provided the clear-cut rationale for the movement’s opposition to what its members saw as a violent, unjust state, when in fact the supposed fascist villain of leftist lore was himself a committed socialist.
Again, I differ: Kurras was a committed communist, loyal to a totalitarian regime.
The East German Communist Party membership card of Karl-Heinz Kurras, a former West Berlin police officer who also acted as a Stasi spy for East Germany.
The most insidious question raised by the revelation is whether Mr. Kurras might have been acting not only as a spy, but also as an agent provocateur, trying to destabilize West Germany.
The historians who unearthed the 17 volumes of files that revealed Mr. Kurras’s double life say there is no evidence to support the theory that the Stasi was behind the killing. Berlin officials have resisted public calls from victims’ groups and others to retry Mr. Kurras. He was acquitted in 1967, the year of the shooting, of manslaughter charges and was later allowed to rejoin the police force after the verdict was upheld.
In an interview with the Bild, Mr. Kurras, 81, confirmed that he had been in the East German Communist Party. “Should I be ashamed of that or something?” Mr. Kurras was quoted as saying. As for the Stasi, he said, “And what if I did work for them? What does it matter? It doesn’t change anything,” the paper reported.
Huh?
Mr. Kurras does not deny that he shot the demonstrator, Benno Ohnesorg, in the back of the head, but has said the shooting was an accident. He denied records showing he had been paid by the security service, and said the agents who had put those details in his file must have been lining their own pockets.
He was a Stasi agent, working as a West German cop, and he claims he did nothing wrong. Must've been somebody else.
Mr. Kurras was born in East Prussia and volunteered for military service in 1944 when he was 16 years old. He was imprisoned not long after the war by the Soviets at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three years. He was known to be an enthusiastic gun collector and an excellent marksman.
In a concentration camp until 1947, two years after the War ended.
Mr. Ohnesorg’s death had a powerful mobilizing effect. The photograph of a woman cradling his head as he lay on the ground is among the most iconic images in Germany. Average students who might never have joined the 1968 protest movement were moved to action. And on a darker note it became the chief justification for violent action by terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction and the Second of June Movement, which even took its name from the day of Mr. Ohnesorg’s killing.
Ironic? The radicals wanted to bring down what they called the fascist state (never mind the absurdity of calling it such after the Nazis), yet it was a communist agent that pulled the trigger, accidentally ahem).
It was called “the shot that changed the republic.”
The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.
Now a discovery in the archives of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, has upended Germany’s perception of its postwar history. The killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, though working for the West Berlin police, was at the time also acting as a Stasi spy for East Germany.
If there is one country in Europe that is enigmatic, Germany is it.
It is as if the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard had been committed by an undercover K.G.B. officer, though the reverberations in Germany seemed to have run deeper.
I beg to differ; perhaps if the shooter had been a Confederate agent, were America two countries, each half of one. KGB was a Soviet agency. Still, even if overstated, a point is made.
For the left, Mr. Kurras’s true allegiance strikes at the underpinnings of the 1968 protest movement in Germany. The killing provided the clear-cut rationale for the movement’s opposition to what its members saw as a violent, unjust state, when in fact the supposed fascist villain of leftist lore was himself a committed socialist.
Again, I differ: Kurras was a committed communist, loyal to a totalitarian regime.
The East German Communist Party membership card of Karl-Heinz Kurras, a former West Berlin police officer who also acted as a Stasi spy for East Germany.
The most insidious question raised by the revelation is whether Mr. Kurras might have been acting not only as a spy, but also as an agent provocateur, trying to destabilize West Germany.
The historians who unearthed the 17 volumes of files that revealed Mr. Kurras’s double life say there is no evidence to support the theory that the Stasi was behind the killing. Berlin officials have resisted public calls from victims’ groups and others to retry Mr. Kurras. He was acquitted in 1967, the year of the shooting, of manslaughter charges and was later allowed to rejoin the police force after the verdict was upheld.
In an interview with the Bild, Mr. Kurras, 81, confirmed that he had been in the East German Communist Party. “Should I be ashamed of that or something?” Mr. Kurras was quoted as saying. As for the Stasi, he said, “And what if I did work for them? What does it matter? It doesn’t change anything,” the paper reported.
Huh?
Mr. Kurras does not deny that he shot the demonstrator, Benno Ohnesorg, in the back of the head, but has said the shooting was an accident. He denied records showing he had been paid by the security service, and said the agents who had put those details in his file must have been lining their own pockets.
He was a Stasi agent, working as a West German cop, and he claims he did nothing wrong. Must've been somebody else.
Mr. Kurras was born in East Prussia and volunteered for military service in 1944 when he was 16 years old. He was imprisoned not long after the war by the Soviets at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three years. He was known to be an enthusiastic gun collector and an excellent marksman.
In a concentration camp until 1947, two years after the War ended.
Mr. Ohnesorg’s death had a powerful mobilizing effect. The photograph of a woman cradling his head as he lay on the ground is among the most iconic images in Germany. Average students who might never have joined the 1968 protest movement were moved to action. And on a darker note it became the chief justification for violent action by terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction and the Second of June Movement, which even took its name from the day of Mr. Ohnesorg’s killing.
Ironic? The radicals wanted to bring down what they called the fascist state (never mind the absurdity of calling it such after the Nazis), yet it was a communist agent that pulled the trigger, accidentally ahem).
Friday, April 24, 2009
Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow
It's a simple bracelet -- a string of white plastic beads. Every time Mary Etta Madison puts it on, she recalls her days as a young student at a black college in Alabama, and the German-Jewish professor who gave it to her as a gift 57 years ago. Mrs. Madison, 78, a retired school teacher, says the Talladega College professor, Lore Rasmussen, gave her the confidence to pursue her own teaching career.
"I felt very close to her through the years," Mrs. Madison says.
Friendships like these had a cost in the segregated South. One night in 1942, Prof. Rasmussen and her husband were arrested for dining with an African-American in a blacks-only cafe.
There wasn't just segregation that kept blacks apart from whites; it was illegal for the races to mix.
Two jail receipts for $28 each from that night, along with Mrs. Madison's bracelet and dozens of other artifacts, photographs, documents, and paintings are part of an exhibit set to open next week at the Museum of Jewish Heritage -- A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York's Battery Park City. The exhibit illuminates a period during and after World War II when scores of German-Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany found havens teaching in small black colleges throughout the South.
The Jewish scholars who had fled the Nazis and the young black students facing the hardships of the segregated South forged bonds that in many cases lasted long after the students had graduated and the professors had left the South for other posts.
A bond forged out of being victims of hatred.
The exhibit, called "Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges," draws on a book of the same name published in 1993 by a German-Jewish refugee, Gabrielle Edgcomb, as well as on research by the museum. A documentary based on the book aired on PBS in 2000.
[Google Books shows: From swastika to Jim Crow : refugee scholars at Black colleges
By Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb.Edition: illustrated. Published by Krieger Pub. Co., 1993
Original from the University of Michigan.Digitized Nov 5, 2008
ISBN 089464775X, 9780894647758. 144 pages]
The exhibit includes a couple valuable artworks, such as "The Gleaners," a large canvas painted in 1943 by John Biggers, showing a group of African-American men and women foraging for coal on a railroad track. Mr. Biggers, a black painter, had an influential German-Jewish mentor, the art educator Viktor Lowenfeld, with whom he studied in the early 1940s at the Hampton Institute, a black college in Virginia.
HWPL owns two books on John Biggers:
Black art in Houston : the Texas Southern University experience : presenting the art of Biggers, Simms and their students. [ART] Q 700.8996 B
Biggers, John Thomas, 1924-
College Station : Texas A & M University Press, c1978. 106 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm.
The art of John Biggers : view from the upper room. [Art] Q 759.13 Biggers W
Wardlaw, Alvia J. Houston : Museum of Fine Arts, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
184 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm.
A centerpiece of the exhibit chronicles the extraordinarily close bond forged by a former German-Jewish judge and professor, Ernst Borinski, with his students at Tougaloo College , a historic black college in Jackson, Miss. Dr. Borinski had worked as a magistrate in Germany, but fled in 1938. He joined Tougaloo as a sociology professor in 1947, and remained there until his death in 1983. One of his students was Donald Cunnigen, now a sociology professor at the University of Rhode Island. He recalls how Dr. Borinski once penned 27 letters of recommendation to help him obtain a place in a prestigious graduate program.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Bourke-White: 1945
Margaret Bourke-White: German civilians made to face their nation's crimes, Buchenwald, 1945
Monday, March 31, 2008
Cambodia's Killing Fields
One of the sorriest chapters of modern human history were the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Awful enough that 2 million people were murdered in a country as small as Cambodia, the double tragedy was that merely a half century after the Nazis the Khmer Rouge showed that genocide coul dindeed happen again. Not many years later Rwanda proved it again.
Dith Pran was the Cambodian man whose reporting, along with Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, became the basis for the movie The Killing Fields. I remember seeing it nd being emotionally decimated by the tragedy and the evil.
[Schanberg and Dith] were in Cambodia in 1975 to report the fall of Phnom Penh to Khmer forces. Mr Dith was not allowed to leave, and had to endure four years of torture and starvation before escaping to Thailand.
Dith Pran was the Cambodian man whose reporting, along with Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, became the basis for the movie The Killing Fields. I remember seeing it nd being emotionally decimated by the tragedy and the evil.
[Schanberg and Dith] were in Cambodia in 1975 to report the fall of Phnom Penh to Khmer forces. Mr Dith was not allowed to leave, and had to endure four years of torture and starvation before escaping to Thailand.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Austria remembers Nazi annexation
"80,000 candles will be lit outside parliament, where Austrians cheered Hitler's arrival 70 years ago." Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer told parliament that no pay-off could undo what had been done. "I can only humbly beg survivors and their relatives to accept this gesture for what it is: a trifling acknowledgement of the injustice that was done to you," he said.
 |   |
"On Tuesday, Vienna's Jewish community formally re-opened the Hakoah sports club complex which had been confiscated by the Nazis in 1938."
More than France has done, surely; Austria is publicly agonizing over its role in the Holocaust. France hasn't even acknowledged its role. It revels in the myth of its resistance, and ignores its Vichyism.
"Mr Gusenbauer also announced that the government would build a Simon Wiesenthal Centre in honour of the Nazi hunter who died in 2005.""The anniversary of the Anschluss has revived debate among Austrians about whether they were victims or supporters of the Third Reich.
Otto von Habsburg, 95, the son of Austria's last emperor, told a commemorative meeting that no state in Europe had "a greater right than Austria to call itself a victim".
But the president of the lower house of parliament, Barbara Prammer, told Wednesday's session that Austrians were complicit in Nazi crimes.
She said any suggestion that they had been forced to commit atrocities was a "fiction of history"."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Austria still haunted by Nazi past
Several youngsters were in today asking where to find books on the Holocaust. As the Holocaust is broad topic, my job as a librarian is to ask questions in order to narrow down the topic; in libraryspeak that is called conducting a reference interview. This reference interview is one skill I learned about in library school, and it is very useful.
Two high school student were together, and I drilled down to what they were looking for - not easily, of course, because in their minds they knew precisely what they wanted, and to them it was "the Holocaust". One wanted books on Jewish resistance against the Nazis; that one was easy for me. I asked him if the Warsaw Ghetto fit his needs, and he agreed it would. The other one wasn't as easy, but we got there.
Just before they showed up I had started to read this story on BBC News, of how Austrians feel about the Nazism in their past. After finishing with the two students I went back and finished reading the story. I thought it might be of help to them, so I printed a copy, walked over to the 940s (the Dewey Classification number for European history), found them, and gave them the printout.
Another high schooler (and his mother) came in later, looking for books on Jewish resistance to Hitler before the Holocaust. With a little effort, I found some books for them, gave them the call numbers, and, with thanks, they left to go to the 940s. After they left I kept investigating a little more, found two other books that I thought fit their needs; I printed out the appropriate pages, and walked over to the 940s. I gave them the printouts, and they gave me their thanks.
One college student was looking for information on the development of Jewish academies in Babylonia before the Middle Ages. Whew. She did have key words that helped get started on the search, but she gave them to me reluctantly. I asked if academies were the same as yeshivas, and she said yes, but that she used the word academies instead of yeshivas because this was a public library. I chided her mildly, saying we could handle all terms. I do confess I knew nothing about this topic. She used the words Pumbedita and Sura and that eventually did help me get sources for her. An electronic database search turned up articles in the Encyclopedia of Religion and The Encyclopedia Judaica, both of which my library, Hewlett Woodmere Public, owns in print, She read those. She'd also given me the title of a book and its author. No library in Nassau County owns it. I went beyond the limit I was trained to observe, and conducted a FirstSearch on the book. Not only was she not a district resident, she didn't even have a library card! I gently chided her about that, too. I found the book in the Queens College catalog; she's a student at Queens College. So she could have found valuable resources if she'd done the research herself, in her own college library; but she relied on the library to do the research for her.
That's the essence of librarianship, and I so enjoy it. A patron comes into the library knowing precisely what she wants, and asks the librarian a question based on her thoughts; it is the librarian's job to interpret the question, or ask the patron questions, to get to the specific topic that she wants to research. The librarian uses human relationship skills, knowledge accumulated over a lifetime of reading, intelligence, deduction, and arrives at an answer. Then, if possible, the librarian adds an extra piece. In my case, it was the printout that might not have served the high school students, the additional search that will help the college student; what matters is making the extra effort.
Two high school student were together, and I drilled down to what they were looking for - not easily, of course, because in their minds they knew precisely what they wanted, and to them it was "the Holocaust". One wanted books on Jewish resistance against the Nazis; that one was easy for me. I asked him if the Warsaw Ghetto fit his needs, and he agreed it would. The other one wasn't as easy, but we got there.
Just before they showed up I had started to read this story on BBC News, of how Austrians feel about the Nazism in their past. After finishing with the two students I went back and finished reading the story. I thought it might be of help to them, so I printed a copy, walked over to the 940s (the Dewey Classification number for European history), found them, and gave them the printout.
Another high schooler (and his mother) came in later, looking for books on Jewish resistance to Hitler before the Holocaust. With a little effort, I found some books for them, gave them the call numbers, and, with thanks, they left to go to the 940s. After they left I kept investigating a little more, found two other books that I thought fit their needs; I printed out the appropriate pages, and walked over to the 940s. I gave them the printouts, and they gave me their thanks.
One college student was looking for information on the development of Jewish academies in Babylonia before the Middle Ages. Whew. She did have key words that helped get started on the search, but she gave them to me reluctantly. I asked if academies were the same as yeshivas, and she said yes, but that she used the word academies instead of yeshivas because this was a public library. I chided her mildly, saying we could handle all terms. I do confess I knew nothing about this topic. She used the words Pumbedita and Sura and that eventually did help me get sources for her. An electronic database search turned up articles in the Encyclopedia of Religion and The Encyclopedia Judaica, both of which my library, Hewlett Woodmere Public, owns in print, She read those. She'd also given me the title of a book and its author. No library in Nassau County owns it. I went beyond the limit I was trained to observe, and conducted a FirstSearch on the book. Not only was she not a district resident, she didn't even have a library card! I gently chided her about that, too. I found the book in the Queens College catalog; she's a student at Queens College. So she could have found valuable resources if she'd done the research herself, in her own college library; but she relied on the library to do the research for her.
That's the essence of librarianship, and I so enjoy it. A patron comes into the library knowing precisely what she wants, and asks the librarian a question based on her thoughts; it is the librarian's job to interpret the question, or ask the patron questions, to get to the specific topic that she wants to research. The librarian uses human relationship skills, knowledge accumulated over a lifetime of reading, intelligence, deduction, and arrives at an answer. Then, if possible, the librarian adds an extra piece. In my case, it was the printout that might not have served the high school students, the additional search that will help the college student; what matters is making the extra effort.
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