BERLIN – The confessed perpetrator in the attack in Norway that killed at least 76 people espoused a right-wing philosophy against Islam that also purports to be pro-Zionist.
Anders Behring Breivik is charged with detonating a car bomb outside Oslo’s government headquarters, which houses the office of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, that killed eight people and of shooting and killing at least 68 mostly young people at a political summer camp on nearby Utoya Island. The July 22 massacre reportedly was the the worst attack in Norway since the end of World War II.
In numerous online postings, including a manifesto published on the day of the attacks, Breivik promoted the Vienna School or Crusader Nationalism philosophy, a mishmash of anti-modern principles that also calls for “the deportation of all Muslims from Europe” as well as from “the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”
BERLIN – Aviv Russ stands behind a console with his headphones on and speaks into a large microphone.
“We’re here: ‘Kol Berlin,’ the German-Israeli radio program. Shabbat shalom!” says Russ, 34, an Israeli expatriate.
Russ has been on the radio in Berlin nearly every Friday for about three years hosting an hourlong program in a melange of Hebrew and German that offers an often irreverent take on being Israeli in Germany.
BERLIN – The guilty verdict pronounced May 12 against John Demjanjuk in a Munich courtroom was a long time coming.
Following a trial that lasted a year and a half — capping more than three decades of legal drama — the 91-year-old former Ohio autoworker is now officially recognized as a war criminal. He was found by the court to have been complicit in at least 27,900 murders at the Sobibor death camp, one of the most horrendous killing grounds in the Nazi genocide against the Jews.
BERLIN – The face, with its twisted mouth, receding hairline, and dark-framed glasses, is familiar around the world today.
But 50 years ago, when Adolf Eichmann — former head of the Nazi Department for Jewish Affairs — first sat in a Jerusalem courtroom to face war crimes charges, his visage was known to very few.
Television changed that. For West Germans, the impact was profound. Twice a week, for four months, entire families — and sometimes neighbors, too — gathered in living rooms to watch the reports from Jerusalem.
BERLIN – When Yuri Rosov immigrated to Germany from Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 1997, the city in which he ended up, Rostock, had no synagogue, no infrastructure, and virtually no money.
Rosov now heads that Jewish community in the former East Germany, which has about 700 members, nearly all of them Russian speakers.
“We have a synagogue and a strong community,” said Rosov, 50, who works for the Maccabee sports association.
In recent years, however, a new challenge has emerged that threatens the future of the Rostock Jewish community and many other similar ones across Germany populated mostly by Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants and their families: Young people are leaving.
BERLIN – Geert Wilders, the rock star of European politics, is riding the crest of a populist tsunami.
The pro-Israel founder of Holland’s Party of Freedom shouted that Islam is a threat to Germany’s identity, democracy, and prosperity, while his audience of 500 reacted with evangelical zeal, offering big-time applause and standing ovations.
“Stand by the side of those who are threatened by Islam, like the State of Israel and its Jewish citizens,” he exhorted the crowd.
This was not a Jewish event, though former Israeli Knesset member Eli Cohen of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party was a guest speaker.
BERLIN – The image of Hitler is still arresting, 65 years after his suicide and the end of World War II.
Now the German Historical Museum has dedicated an exhibit to the fascination Hitler held for the “Volk,” the ordinary German citizen.
It marks the first time a German museum has ventured into such territory, and the curators say they have taken great care to avoid glorifying the man behind the Third Reich, which in Germany would not only be distasteful but illegal.
BERLIN – Yochanan Asriel stood at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Franzoesicherstrasse in Berlin last week next to a small brass plaque newly set into the sidewalk. On it was the name of his father: Davicso Asriel, born 1882, deported Jan. 26, 1942, murdered in Riga.
“I am here today,” said Asriel, 85, “to leave a bit of my family behind.”
Now living in Haifa, Asriel was part of the last official group of former Berlin Jews to be hosted formally by the city as part of a program to sponsor their visits back to their native city. With the number of survivors dwindling, the 41-year-old Invitation Program for Former Persecuted Citizens of Berlin came to an end with last week’s trip.
BERLIN – It isn’t easy facing the cold stare of a Nazi perpetrator, even in a photo. Increasingly, however, memorial sites in Germany are making the confrontation possible, opening a door that long has been sealed.
A new exhibit at the former Ravensbrueck women’s concentration camp in the ex-East German state of Brandenburg is the latest example.
“The Fuehrerhaus: Everyday Life and Crimes of Ravensbrueck SS Officers,” opened March 20, allowing a glimpse into the life of camp commandant Max Koegel and his SS underlings through informational panels arranged in his former villa, steps away from the barracks that once housed thousands of prisoners.
OSWIECIM, Poland — Eva Kor believes in forgiveness.
Kor says she has forgiven Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on her and her twin sister, Miriam, at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Last week, Kor led 55 American teachers and students on a trip to her former place of torment, where she was liberated exactly 65 years ago.
“Here I am, this little guinea pig from Auschwitz, and I have the power to forgive Josef Mengele! And he can’t do anything about it,” the diminutive, energetic woman who turned 76 on Saturday said last week at Auschwitz. “I stopped being a victim, and that makes me a very powerful person.”
