After the first bite from an original Lebkuchen for 45 years, Mr. Gray had only one word: “Delicious!”
(Photo: private)

 

Until recently, one of the most neglected aspects of the global economic crisis has been the breakdown of America’s supply with Nuernberger Lebkuchen (for non-experts: ginger bread from Nuremberg). When rijo detected the catastrophic scenario of the U.S. running out of these sweets instant intervention was a must.

By our tricky combined sea and air maneuver we may not have saved lives but hopefully the evening of Mr. Rick Gray (see picture above), 1962 through 1965 a member of the Aviation Company, 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed at Nuremberg’s Merrell Barracks and contributor to our bilingual book "transit nuernberg #4: USA!".

If there are more Merrell veterans out there in the west longing for the taste of the good old days in Germany they can apply for such an emergency delivery if they are willing to participate in our survey (see link below).

 

(Graphics: rijo)

 

A brief update about the state of lethal fundamentalist standup comedy on the Arabian peninsula (from: “A bloody border. Saudis and Yemenis versus jihadists” in The Economist November 7th 2009. p. 43):

[…] Saudi police […] stopped a suspicious vehicle, sparking a gunfight that killed two suicide bombers, disguised as women. […]

Claiming to have repented of past jihadism, [an al-Qaeda terrorist] said he […] wished to meet Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy minister of interior […]. Security screening failed to detect a bomb concealed in the man’s rectum, which exploded as the prince greeted him. The prince suffered minor injuries.”

Though previous religious fanatics of all stripes already showed a lot of crazy creativity, it’s a real innovation to blow off one’s ass in the name of god trying to kill others. At least this hero left a stinking mess adequate to the content of his skull. And for good reasons men in women’s clothing always were considered to be tough guys.

No, there is no limit to imbecility.

 

Page from the MoKo toys catalogue

 

 

Hans Kohnstam in his studio

 

Self portrait of Hans Kohnstam

(all pictures taken from Pieter Kohnstam's website)

Pieter Kohnstam was born in Amsterdam to Ruth and Hans Kohnstam, Jewish émigrés from Fuerth, in 1936. His father Hans had strong burgher roots in Germany, dating from 1651, and was heir to the internationally operating toy company MoKo, a 50 percent shareholder of Match Box cars. After 1933 the Kohnstams had to move from Fuerth to Amsterdam. When Nazi persecution of Jews in the Netherlands became intolerable, Pieter’s parents decided to flee Amsterdam. After a year-long trek through Belgium, France and Spain, they reached safety and freedom in Argentina.

Hans Kohnstam, an artist who had studied in Munich and at the Bauhaus in Dessau where he met Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, eventually returned to Germany. In 2001, over 1,200 of his paintings and drawings have been donated to the Munich City Museum. In 2007 his son Pieter published the Kohnstams’ story in a book titled “A Chance to Live. A Family’s Journey to Freedom”.

 

It has been an exceptionally good idea of the Jewish Museum in Munich to ask the American cartoonist Gorf for a contribution to its permanent exhibition to cope with the difficult subject of Jewish history and presence in Germany. The result is a strip featuring characters from Gorf’s “Everything’s Relative” series visiting Munich which conveys insights into the complexities of the past loaded with the burden of the Holocaust, and the revival of Jewish life in this country as seen from the point of view of a Jewish American.

In the context of the museum Gorf’s work adds dimensions of emotion and reflection to the presentation otherwise impossible to be displayed by conventional means. Anyone interested may check the online version at the artist’s website to find out that “Zayde’s Story” simply is a well drawn and structured cartoon which says more about the topic than many elaborate textbooks.

 

Welcome back!

(Graphics: rijo)

 

Merrell Barracks, Soldiers Field, AFN Nurnberg & Christkringle Market: If those expressions ring a bell in your memory you are our man (or woman, of course). We are looking for former G.I.s who on their tour of duty were stationed in Nuremberg between 1945 and 1995 to learn about their experiences overseas. For this purpose we have prepared a questionnaire and would be most grateful for any other piece of information (written recollections, photos, military post or unit periodicals, documents) you can provide.

An important aim of our activities such as our book transit nuernberg #4: USA! (see link below), online feature stories, guided city tours in English and German to places preserving traces of the American presence or eyewitness talks is to reconnect our hometown to a group of people who conscientiously or not by merely serving here coined many aspects of postwar culture in Nuremberg. As far as we know, on the other hand the assignment in Germany played a role often remembered positively in the lives of many young Americans being their first stay abroad.

Basically we think that more should be done to preserve this common German-American history. At best our projects will contribute to renew those ties even physically because we are willing to assist veterans in organizing a trip to Nuremberg to revisit the sites of their service with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 16th Field Hospital, the 130th General Hospital or any other military unit.

We are looking forward to your feedback.

 

Mr. Glaser delivering his speech on June 6, 2009. His comment on the fact that he had to do it sitting because the organizers did not want him to stand: "ha, ha."

(Photo: private)

 

Mr. Glaser with a friend and co-veteran at the breakfast table in the mess of an Ottawa regiment strengthening himself with the dish of the champions: "Ruehreier & Bratkartoffeln" (scrambled eggs & fried potatoes)

(Photo: private)

 

The three speakers at the commemoration representing the Army (Mr. Glaser), the Air Force and the Navy. The ladies from the Department of Veteran Affairs coordinated the event.

(Photo: private)

Mr. Willie Glaser, Fuerth born WW2 veteran, frequent rijo guest author and friend of ours, was honored by addressing the some 600 people audience at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa during the commemorative event for the Allied landing in Normandy 65 years ago. Based upon his own biography he succeeded in causally linking the military action he was part of with the Holocaust in which his parents and three of his siblings perished. The Q&A period after his speech had to be extended due to the request of people seeking additional pieces of information from him. To us this shows the importance of eyewitnesses for the translation of historical facts and Mr. Glaser’s special abilities both as a youthful personality and a self-trained expert for this demanding task.

 

Sharpening the farsightedness of his students: Harald T. Leder pointing out Nuremberg’s sites from the imperial castle

(Photo: Gerhard Jochem)

 

A LSU student lecturing in front of his attentive fellows at the memorial for Nuremberg’s liberal synagogue

(Photo: Gerhard Jochem)

 

Harald and Susanne (the lady with the shades) listening

(Photo: Gerhard Jochem)

 

Learning about the gothic style: the group at St. Lawrence Church

(Photo: Gerhard Jochem)

On June 1, 2009, we had the pleasure to welcome to our home turf a group of American students participating in the „LSU in Germany“ program of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Our role was to assist the group’s leader, our friend Harald T. Leder, Ph. D., in passing on some basic facts about the local Jewish history. Some course members were also asked by Harald to read out their lectures on general subjects such as the renaissance and gothic style or the “Night of Broken Glass.”

What impressed us most regarding the American youngsters was their sincerity and attention during our walk through the old town of Nuremberg. Obviously they were eager to learn about things which must be as remote to them as pre-Columbian history is to us - not only because their knowledge is frequently tested during their stay in Europe which includes among others also trips to Munich, Berlin and Vienna.

It has been the fourth time that we were involved in LSU’s visiting program and we hope for meeting again, not only in a couple of days in Munich where we will join the group for another tour of the city.

 

 

Just recently there were many more or less cheerful anniversaries to celebrate, for instance the foundation of NATO on April 4, 1949, the declaration of the German constitution on May 23, 1949, or the allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Though the historical consequences are not yet as clear as in the cases mentioned above, ten years ago an endeavor took off which in the meantime could be established by its die-hard initiators and the help of many friends as a source of solid information, new ideas, well founded opinion and applied satirical science (drum roll - fanfare): our own rijo website! (applause, hoorays and flying hats, answered by multiple deep bows).

Cautiously estimated rijo and its offspring - teribloG, testimon Publishers and transiturs City Tours Nuremberg - Munich - until now reached more than 100,000 people around the globe. Not bad, we say, given our starting position in a media hub such as Nuremberg and our constant lack of resources being somewhat professional but honorary pastime researchers, writers and webdesigners (please allow us this piece of ironic self-pity and incense). For those reasons our ultimate demands from the readers of these lines are:

1) Unleash your enthusiasm for our jubilee by spoiling us with your congrats, reports, stories, pics or (wo)manpower! If you have no other way to express your empathy we even accept money for our various projects.

2) Keep up your favorable view of our work!

3) But first and foremost: Don’t let the bastards grind you down - never ever!

 

Beware of this dangerously blindfolded anti-capitalistic green dreamer and his newfangled ideas on a fair society!
(Photo: USIS)

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919, Republican U.S. President 1901 - 1909)

 

 

1) Every state is obliged to protect its citizens against aggression.

2) In a war it is impossible to avoid civilian victims when the enemy is hiding behind his women and children.

3) Who reneges the right of other nations to exist is a potential mass murderer (see German history 1933 - 1945).

4) Who launches rockets indiscriminately into another country is a terrorist.

5) As long as terrorism is sponsored by some governments in the middle east, there will be no peace.

6) No ideology or fate justifies the loss of one single innocent human life.

 

 

This is what the dust cover has to say about the contents of the book:

When the Nazis marched into the tiny village of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, on March 19, 1944, the day after Magda Segelbaum’s fifteenth birthday, life for her and her family was irrevocably changed.

In this extraordinary, moving account, Magda tells of an unforgettable odyssey of survival in Auschwitz and the labor camps at the Siemens factory in Nuremberg - where, from the depths of despair, her artistry was born.

Magda entered the Auschwitz death camp as the spunky daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family and emerged, on the cusp of womanhood, facing the unpredictable forces of fate. Alone in the turmoil and uncertain landscape of post-war Europe, she encountered love and sexuality, motherhood and, yet again, starvation - only surviving on her wit, courage and chance.

Her journey continued to the shores of “the land of milk and honey,” the fledgling state of Israel, which she embraced as home - but where hunger pursued her and her young family, and where the struggle for survival was not yet done.

About the author: Magda Watts is an artist and doll maker who lives in Eilat, Israel, with her husband, Benny Barnea, her children, Angelo and Hannah, and her beloved dogs and cats.

I devoured “Dafka” without an interruption from cover to cover and though I already knew certain parts of the story from the German translation of Magda Watts’ recollections in our magazine “transit nuernberg” in 2007, it made a gripping read.

Of course there are the ruthless murders of her parents and siblings by the Nazis and the unspeakable sufferings inflicted upon her as a young girl which have to be remembered forever as the worst crime in men’s history and in no more lasting way than by the accounts of survivors like Magda.

“Dafka” still goes beyond this like no other book I know does by telling - disarmingly honest, sometimes even painstakingly - also Magda’s adventurous life after liberation, her traumas and will to survive, both emerging from the experiences in Auschwitz. As a result the narrative is full of scenes of darkest sadness, sparkling joy or a tragicomic quality, almost too many lives for one woman, even if she has been an orphan, teenage gun moll, mother, cook, hotel manager and artist successively.

Knowing Magda Watts personally I have the chance to compare the picture as drawn in “Dafka” and the real person. No doubt: This is her, always head on, never compromising or lukewarm, vulnerable, romantic, funny - a unique personality.

Reading “Dafka” is contagious and inspiring.

 

(collage: rijo)

 

 

 

Although Henry Kissinger’s connections with Germany are manifold, they had so far escaped comprehensive historiographical examination. The Jewish emigrant from Nazi Germany returned to his native country as an American soldier. As a scholar of the Vienna Congress he advised Kennedy during the Berlin crisis in 1961. As the National Security Adviser to President Nixon, bound to extricate the United States from Vietnam and to enter into an “era of negotiations” with the USSR, Kissinger had to deal with the Eastern policy of the Brandt-Scheel government. And, among other things, as the first immigrant to become Secretary of State, he retained a lasting love for German soccer.

Based on extensive research on both sides of the Atlantic and newly declassified documents, this international history of Kissinger’s relationship with Germany integrates his views, contacts, and policies into the context of the larger trends in German-American and also investigates the German agency in shaping the various dimensions of this multifaceted connection. While Kissinger constantly tried to further the transatlantic dialogue during the Cold War and beyond, it was first and foremost his understanding of U.S. interests that determined his approach toward the German question. The deeply felt concern over a possible re-emergence of the unpredictable force of German nationalism had an impact upon Kissinger’s image of Germany as much as his respect for Bonn’s successful reconstruction efforts within the Western community of nations. In particular, this book sheds new light on how this inherent tension influenced the way Kissinger engineered the American response to Ostpolitik.

The author: Dr. Holger Klitzing studied History, Political Science, and Economics in Heidelberg and Chapel Hill, NC. After attaining his doctorate in History from the University of Heidelberg in 2006, he joined the German Foreign Service.

 

 

Hysterical funny!

 

 

Nuremberg - a city associated with Nazi excesses, party rallies and the extreme anti-Semitic propaganda published by Hitler ally Julius Streicher - has struggled since the Second World War to come to terms with the material and moral legacies of Nazism. Haunted City explores how the Nuremberg community has confronted the implications of the genocide in which it participated while also dealing with the appalling suffering of ordinary German citizens during and after the war.

Neil Gregor’s compelling account of the painful process of remembering and acknowledging the Holocaust offers new insights into post-war memory in Germany and how it has operated. Gregor takes a novel approach to the theme of memory, commemoration and remembrance, and he proposes a highly nuanced explanation for the failure of Germans to face up to the Holocaust for years after the war. His book makes a major contribution to the social and cultural history of Germany.

Bibliography

Neil Gregor: Haunted city: Nuremberg and the Nazi past. New Haven & London: Yale University Press 2008. xvi & 390 p., ISBN 978-0-300-10107-2.

 

At the VIP table (from right to left): Frank Harris, Willie Glaser and his sister Lotte

(Photo: Willie Glaser)

 

Encounter of the generations - as always in the center Frank Harris with his wife Beri (left)

(Photo: Willie Glaser)

 

From great grandparents to toddlers: the participants in the 2008 Reunion taking their farewell luncheon

(Photo: Willie Glaser)

 

Frank Harris saying goodbye to his guests on the last day of the Reunion

(Photo: Willie Glaser)

Though we were not able to attend, our own photo correspondent Willie Glaser (Canada) provided us with these nice snapshots from the 9th reunion of former Nuremberg-Fuerth families since 1978 which brought together four generations from seven countries and 18 U.S. states.

For 32 years now it has been Frank Harris’ self-chosen vocation to reunite and keep in touch people around the globe who were forced to flee from their Franconian hometowns by individual correspondence, a voluminous newsletter and get-togethers. Most astoundingly, this sense of shared roots not only extends to the immediate survivors but also to their families molding a unique community without being a formal association.

Of course in such an effort Frank Harris needed staunch supporters of his vision, in first place his wife Beri. As an encouraging sign there are also people from the second generation who engage unselfishly in the purpose such as Sue Herz and Stephen Daniel together with Bill Mohr and Michael Heiman who organized the event in the Catskills for three years and compiled a program which contained among other features panels about global human rights, Germany root trips and Holocaust literature and education.

With their very special personal approach they contribute to the aim as expressed by Prof. Elie Wiesel in his written address to the attendance of the Reunion:

“After all the survivors are gone, it is our children and our grandchildren - now even our great grandchildren - who will bear witness in our name.”

 

The Nazi party rally grounds and Nuremberg’s long-serving (1957 - 1987) lord mayor Dr. Andreas Urschlechter
(collage: Gerhard Jochem)

Dr. Neil Gregor, Reader in Modern German History at the University of Southampton who contributed the article “Als die Nazis (wieder) nach Nuernberg kamen: das Reichsparteitagsgelaende und die NPD in den 1960ern“ (When the Nazis returned to Nuremberg: The Party Rally Grounds and the NPD in the 1960s) to the second edition of our magazine transit nuernberg, has been awarded the prestigious Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History by the Wiener Library in London, one of the world’s leading archives on the Holocaust and the Nazi era, for his book “Haunted city: Nuremberg and the Nazi past.”

The Fraenkel Prize, sponsored by Mr. Ernst Fraenkel OBE, joint President of the Library, is awarded for an outstanding work of twentieth century history in one of the Wiener Library’s fields of interest - the political history of Central and Eastern Europe; Jewish history; the two world wars; anti-Semitism; and the ideologies and movements of political extremism and totalitarianism. It has two categories, one for established writers and one for first-time writers. Dr. Gregor has become the first person to win both prizes, after winning the first-time writers’ award in 1996 for “Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich.”

Dr. Gregor comments: “I am honored to receive this award, and especially to gain recognition for my work from an institution that has survivors and refugees from the Holocaust at the core of what it does.”

We congratulate Dr. Gregor on this well deserved honor.

(Source: Press release University of Southampton October 08, 2008)

 

 

transit nuernberg # 2 at the newsstand (in hot competition)

Oups, we did it again - and publicized the second edition of our magazine transit nuernberg. For most of its contents being in German that may be no major news for the English speaking world but because of our global approach we want to share the essential information (and fun parts) with all of you poor people out there who do not command the mother tongue of Goethe and Arnold Schwarzenegger. To this purpose we included English abstracts of the essays (as we already did in #1) and lots of pictures with bilingual comments showing folks from Finland to Australia posing with transit nuernberg. Wanna have a free glimpse at both? Then just click on the link below and enjoy!

 

Howdy!

 

Recent German history has to be rewritten (again): In The Story of Nazi Bear we give undisputable photographic evidence of the crucial role a polar bear from Nuremberg, incidentally the grandfather of our own Manny® (see links below), played in the fascists’ rise to vast popularity among the German people by spectacular public relations activities such as inventing the “Who wears the silliest uniform?” parade and introducing the “Walk like an Egyptian” salute. His breathtaking career took him to the echelons of fame and made him Hitler’s competitor, but finally he had to choose between good and evil which meant the love of an Eskimo lady and the ruthless breed of penguins who collaborated with the Nazis.

The Story of Nazi Bear - more griping than “Casablanca”, funnier than “To be or not to be”, sweeter than “Bambi”!

 

Right at the center - that's where we are!
(source: The Economist)

After the A-rating of Nuremberg’s public lavatories (see link below) the London weekly “The Economist” gave local patriotism another boost: In an article about the dire outlook of the eternally ruling conservative CSU party in Bavaria, the inset above displayed a map indicating the region of Franconia with its capital Nuremberg. Wow! Finally the worldwide readership of this most reputable newspaper knows (if it has acknowledged the text and graphics) where we live and that - still after more than 200 years since the annexation of the Franconian territories by the Bavarian crown - there are traditional differences between the parts of the country north and south of the Danube river. Thus it is significant that the current Bavarian prime minister is the first Protestant Franconian at this post since 1945.

This kind of publicity is especially important for the region because it’s no political entity but divided into the three districts of Upper, Lower and Central Franconia for which reason outside its boundaries only people with special interest have an idea of the meaning of the name.

Anyway: With this article the “Economist” people have earned themselves a free pint of real beer (cold and with foam on top) or Franconian wine and three fried sausages in a roll (a special Nuremberg dish) when they come to town again. Just write us an email and you will get your prize.

 

(photo: Jerry Nothman)

When our American friend Mr. Jerry Nothman sent us this picture from British Columbia we were dazzled by it for various reasons:

1) Are the Canadian wildlife authorities serious about advice such as hunters to carry bells?
2) Where are the warning signs for bears who encounter humans, describing their “fresh activity”?
3) What about the poor squirrels?
4) How to reach the eyes of a standing Grizzly with your “Pepper Spray” if there is no ladder at hand?
5) What is this stupid Smiley supposed to mean? “Don’t panic, the bear only wants to play with you.”?

Anyway: We are happy to dwell in a Central European city where the meanest wild creature one may run into is a pigeon with rabies.

 

We are glad to announce the upmentioned first novel by Mrs. Murray Goldsmith, author of books on the 18th century and wife of the late Ernest Goldsmith, a former Nuremberger who had to emigrate to the UK.

About the Book: Magda Senger is eleven on July 4, 1932. It is a glorious summer’s day and all her friends come to the best birthday party she has ever had in the big garden of her home in Nuremberg. By January 1933 Hitler has come to power. Everything changes. Magda and her cousin Fritz think of themselves as German but they are also Jewish. The book tells the story of what happens to them as they grow up under the Nazis who say Jews are vermin - rats to be got rid of. Finally, after “Kristallnacht” Magda and Fritz must start for a desperate and dangerous journey across Europe, looking for a country that will take them in.

In our opinion Magda and the Rat Catchers is particularly recommendable to young readers because the author succeeds splendidly in restoring the atmosphere of the time by using the recollections of friends and acquaintances who witnessed the evolving persecution of Jews in Germany. By doing so Mrs. Murray Goldsmith offers an emotional approach to the subject easier accessible than writings in the factual style of a textbook.

Bibliography:

Magda and the Rat Catchers by Netta Murray Goldsmith
260 pages; paperback (softcover); ISBN 1-4251-5854-4
US$19.14, C$22.01, EUR14.92, £9.89

 

(photo: M. Bouréima Uro-ogon - Merci beaucoup!)

As we all know, even the last domains of the western world thought to be secure are under relentless pressure from globalization. Our West Africa correspondent Dr. Wolfgang “Stanley & Livingstone” Oppelt with the help of domestic informants now obtained the indubitable photographic evidence for this conspiracy from the ski-runs at the periphery of Mali’s capital Bamako: Not only that the local youth is preparing to take over Europe’s hegemony in six-men-bobsleighing with a steering barrel following their idols from Jamaica. In the background there are easy to see the until now secrete sites of the future ski-jump (left arrow) and the ice stadium under construction (right arrow) as part of the government’s plan to make Bamako the stage of the Olympic Winter Games in 2014 latest. For this plot the Malians count as well on the Sahara turning into a glacial region as a consequence from global climatic change, as the influence of international sports goods companies from Adidas to Nike over the IOC to open Africa as a new mass market for winter sports equipment.

One does not need to be a cultural pessimist to foresee the Babylonian confusion such developments will lead to: African coaches for clumsy German soccer players, Muslim medal winners in synchronized swimming, dromedaries with Bedouin jockeys at Ascot. Inevitably: Europe is lost.

 

testimon proudly presents: Mr. Jerry Nothman
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

 

 

After the reading: shake-hands with the author ...
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

 

... and a chat between experts on the U.S.A.
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

 

Jerry Nothman signing a copy of Lucky Me
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Exactly one year after testimon publishers, our German printing alter ego, have launched the magazine transit nuernberg, we organized a bilingual reading by Jerry Nothman from his autobiography Lucky Me, which was hosted by Susanne Rieger in Nuremberg’s Hotel Victoria.

Although the book has not been published by us, the event matched our credo to the point: We want to give people connected to Nuremberg (Jerry Nothman is a U.S. citizen born here) who either by experience or expertise have something to say a public stage. And after 90 minutes none of the participants had any doubt that Jerry’s life between Nuremberg, Sweden, Australia and the U.S.A. could be the plot for more than just one book. For them it was a special experience to meet the man in person whom this odyssey with a happy ending shaped to be a charming and humorous storyteller and who does not hide his sentiments.

It was a pleasant evening which gave us and hopefully also our attendance an appetite for more.

Bibliography
Jerry Nothman, Lucky Me, 2007. For how to obtain a copy of the book, follow this link.

 

Among the eight students murdered by a Palestinian terrorist at the “Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook” in western Jerusalem on March 6, 2008 was Jochai Lifschitz.
His Nuremberg-born great-grandfather Kurt Kellermann wrote in his introduction to the supplement to the Memorial Book for Nuremberg’s Victims of the Shoah (Nuremberg 2002, p. XI f.):

“Where there is altruism, hatred is neutralized. Facts prove that where hatred rules his consequence is murder.”

No aim can justify the killing of innocent people. Every ideology based on hatred is bound to fail eventually.

History will not repeat herself, but this is no consolation for the individual grief of the families.

 

(collage: rijo)

As the local press reported on March 12, an association of until now seven Muslim and Jewish members was founded in Nuremberg in order to foster the dialogue between the two religions by get-togethers, concerts, mutual visits of services and lectures. The association is headed by two Muslim and two Jewish chairmen.
Nurembergers of any denomination can be proud that this bold initiative, allegedly the first of its kind in Germany, takes place in their city. Maybe sometimes a calm provincial place is a better cradle for new ideas than vibrant but irritable metropolises. If these modest beginnings turn into a broader movement which makes use of the opportunities of a free western society to talk to each other, not only the two minorities involved will gain from the results, but the country as a whole - and maybe even more.

Contact:
Juedisch-islamische Gesellschaft in Deutschland e.V.
Gugelstrasse 92
90459 Nuernberg
Germany

 

 

You will love him or you will hate him, but you cannot ignore him: Read all about Manny®, the only real Nuremberg polar bear cub!

 

(photo: Susanne Rieger)

As fervent patriots our minds almost blew when we found in the „Pocket World in Figures 2008 Edition”, published by the British newspaper “The Economist”, that Nuremberg with 104.2 points ranks comfortably before e.g. Honolulu (103.3), Paris (102.7) and London (101.2) in the “Quality of life index” (p. 24, figures of Nov. 2006). Of course we never doubted that Nuremberg is a better place to live than, say, Yokohama (a paltry 101.7 points) or Lisbon (don’t mention their poor 101.1 quotient) but the confirmation from an independent source, “based on 39 factors from recreation to political stability”, converts our belief into scientifically proven facts.
Yet we have to confess that though Nuremberg outdoes any US city within the top 47 (greetings also to San Francisco, Boston and Chicago - just be good losers!) and New York whose value equals the 100 points meridian of the survey, it is only the fifth German city in this chart. It hurts most to see Munich way ahead with 106.9 points ranking as # 8. But after all there are also limitations to this kind of statistics - or is there really anyone who wants to seal his fate in the fascinating metropolis of Dusseldorf (107.3) or top-notch swinging Zurich (108.1)?

Nuremberg has another ace up its sleeve showing that its global appeal is neither an accident nor the result of arbitrary juggling with numbers: In the “City health and sanitation index” (p. 104, New York Nov. 2006 = 100) our hometown is the only German contestant among the top 18 cities sharing rank 10 or 123.7 points with prominent sisters like Geneva and Montreal. Well, this time Honolulu beats us (130.7), but the title of national capital of mental health and sanity, pardon, sanitation is one sure thing to be proud of. On a broader scale such honors make us think about the condition of public lavatories in the rest of Germany and the world if you can win this race with exemplary installations like the one pictured above …

 

(collage: Gerhard Jochem)

 

On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi, the personification of non-violence, found his violent end by the bullets of a religious fanatic: For those who think about successfully proven alternatives to the brutal mess going on maybe an occasion to reconsider his ideas and aims. It doesn’t sound stupid after all: The way to individual freedom begins with seeking the truth. By such simplicities he got millions in motion, entirely without money, arms or manipulation.
Sixty years later truth is still worth fighting for - even if one does not wear diapers instead of more decent clothes.

 

Tony Platt in Nuremberg
(photo: private)

After retiring from full-time teaching since 1966, Tony Platt started a new writing project, tentatively titled Life After Death. It is about aging, health, and the medical system, dealt with in the manner of creative non-fiction, based on research and investigation, and will include some of his previous snapshots as well as new materials.

He is posting the results at his blog http://GoodToGo.typepad.com

“When liberals put the case for civil liberties, they sometimes claim that obnoxious measures do not help the fight against terrorism anyway. The Economist is liberal but disagrees. We accept that letting secret policemen spy on citizens, detain them without trial and use torture to extract information makes it easier to foil terrorist plots. To eschew such tools is to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind your back. But that - with one hand tied behind their back - is precisely how democracies ought to fight terrorism.”
The Economist Sept. 22, 2007, Leaders: Civil liberties under threat. The real price of freedom. It is not only on the battlefield where preserving liberty may have to cost many lives.

On behalf of the German President the Boston Consul General bestowed the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on Dr. Arthur S. Obermayer in recognition of his merits in fostering German-Jewish-American relations on September 6, 2007 at the Temple Shalom, Newton (MA). The Order of Merit is the highest tribute Germany can pay to individuals. In addition to many other Germany related activities Dr. Arthur Obermayer, a third-generation American of German descent, established an award that honors the volunteer efforts of non-Jewish Germans, whose grassroots work ensures that the culture of German Jews will not be forgotten. The Obermayer Award, which rijo received in 2003, links the past with the future by recognizing these Germans and their endeavors. The awards are co-sponsored among others by the German Jewish Community History Council and the German Jewish Special Interest Group of JewishGen, the leading worldwide Jewish genealogy organization on the Internet. Dr. Arthur Obermayer’s activities have drawn attention to a new Germany where local initiatives want to remember and learn from their country’s long Jewish history. His efforts had a significant impact in creating a deeper understanding and fostering German-Jewish-American relations.

In his reply to the Consul General’s presentation speech, Dr. Obermayer explained his motives as follows:

“When I initiated the awards in Berlin, I had three objectives. The first was to honor Germans who had done such extraordinary work on a volunteer basis to preserve the Jewish history and heritage of their own local communities. My second objective was to have their good works recognized by their families, their communities, and their country. My third objective was to demonstrate to Jews throughout the world that Germany today is very, very different from the Germany of Hitler’s era. It is high time that we no longer hold a prejudice against the current Germans and appreciate them for the values they have today. All three of my objectives have been reached, far beyond my expectations. […]
My experience with the awards […] has had a profound effect on me. A mission of mine is to help Americans and Jews in particular understand the new Germany. To me the prejudice against Germans today is just as intolerable as the prejudice in this country against blacks, homosexuals or women. Receiving this award this evening encourages me to continue my efforts with even more vigor.”

 

Willie Glaser with his medals of honor from WW2
(photo: private)

As covered by the local newspaper “Fuerther Nachrichten” in its issue of July 6, 2007, our most faithful and productive guest author Mr. Willie Glaser from Canada participated in an oral history project of Leopold Ullstein Junior High School in his hometown Fuerth during a recent visit to Germany.

The contact for a meeting between the students and the astonishingly active 86 years old gentleman had been made by the Jewish Congregation of Fuerth, giving the participants one of the increasingly scarce chances to learn first hand about the events during the Third Reich in their hometown and the deadly danger which could emerge from racism and discrimination: Of the Glaser family only Willie and one sister survived the Holocaust. Concerning the role Mr. Glaser sees for today’s youths, the newspaper quotes him as follows: “They are the guardians of freedom. They have to watch out that what happened then will not happen again.”

In spite of his tight schedule, Mr. Glaser found also the time to meet us in Nuremberg - not at least to talk about forthcoming online projects such as the “Fuememor” list of Fuerth’s victims of the Shoah which he initiated in 2001 at rijo as the first database of its kind available on the internet. We hope that Willie will never lack new ideas nor the energy to realize them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. Steinberger's autograph

 

Don't expect to understand everything: one of the figures in the book

 

Newspaper Clipping from “Fürther Nachrichten”, issue May 24, 2006: Prof. Steinberger meeting students of Heinrich Schliemann High School after visiting the Jewish Museum in Fürth

The publishers advertise Jack Steinberger’s recollections with the following text: “Embedded in an autobiographic framework, this book retraces vividly and in some depth the golden years of particle physics as witnessed by one of the scientists who made seminal contributions to the understanding of what is now known as the Standard Model of particle physics. Well beyond a survey of interest to historians of sciences and researchers in the field, this book is a must for all students and young researchers who have learned about the theoretical and experimental facts that make up the standard model through modern textbooks only. It will provide the interested reader with a first hand account and deeper understanding of the multilayered and sinuous development that finally led to the present architecture of this theory.”

In fact, if one does not happen to be a physicist, he should not expect to understand everything of the book’s contents. Though “Learning About Particles” still is the best way to approach the personality and thinking of the Nobel Prize Laureate of 1988 who was born in Bad Kissingen (Lower Franconia) in 1921 because his life and work are intertwined indissolubly.

I was lucky to meet Prof. Steinberger and his wife in 2006 in Nuremberg, where his mother was born, during one of their trips to Bavaria. This encounter left a deep impression upon me for the clarity of thoughts and conclusions both from his work and personal experiences. The range of his world from the smallest building parts of matter to the basic rules of the universe is as breathtaking as the conclusion that after all everything converges into a simple harmony if it is correctly understood. No wonder that Prof. Steinberger’s love also belongs to music. Sitting at a coffeehouse table with him made me feel like the smallest wheel in a gigantic and very complex machine, at the same time safe being part of it.

 

Clipping from "Bildzeitung" with Susanne's photo of Ernest Lorch and his wife Ellen

 

In its issue of November 16, 2005, the Nuremberg edition of Germany’s biggest daily, “Bildzeitung”, dedicated an entire page to the biography of rijo’s guest author and friend Ernest Lorch (USA). Under the headline “Er fuhr Nazi-Verbrecher nach Nuernberg” (He brought the Nazi criminals to Nuremberg) the newspaper, connected by us to Mr. Lorch, emphasized his crucial role as the officer in charge of most of the defendants’ transport to the war crimes tribunal in 1945.
If you want to read his lifetime story yourself in English, please use the link below.

 

 

In 1967, journalist-psychologist Michael Bernet (born 1930 in Nuremberg) wrote The Time of the Burning Sun, an account of the fears and hopes engendered among Jews and Arabs alike by Israel’s Six Day War. This updated reissue, subtitled Six Days of War, Twelve Weeks of Hope includes maps and other material.

The Six Day War of 1967 is viewed as a pivotal event shaping the troubled world of today, but the real story is often forgotten: it was not a war of conquest, nor did Israel initiate it. Michael Bernet interviewed scores of Jews and Arabs from all walks of life to record those six days of destiny. Palestinians, almost without exception, welcomed the end of a harsh occupation by their Jordanian and Egyptian neighbors, and looked forward to an honorable peace with their Jewish cousins and neighbors. Twelve weeks later, in Khartoum, their hopes were dashed when the Arab nations vowed never to negotiate with Israel, make peace, nor recognize the Jewish state.

From the Epilogue to the second edition (June 2004), p. 310 f.:

At 7:45 A.M. (local time) on Wednesday, June 5, 2002, the 25th day of the Month of the Burning Sun in the Hebrew year 5762, a stolen Renault driven by Hamze Samudi of the Palestinian city of Jenin, raced alongside intercity bus 830, bound from Tel Aviv to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. As Samudi’s car overtook the bus in Megiddo (known as Armageddon in Revelations 16:16) the driver set off a 100-kilo bomb that turned his car into a ball of fire and blasted the bus off its wheels. The bus, its gas tank aflame, rolled over twice, its skeleton ending up against a guardrail nearly 100 yards away. Seventeen of the passengers were killed, many of them incinerated. Forty-seven others were injured.

The bus driver, Micky Harel, managed to drag some passengers to safety before the flames beat him back. He escaped with a few cuts and bruises. It was the fourth time he had escaped terrorist attack along the same route in northern Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for this massacre. When the bus exploded, the Six Day War was already thirty minutes into its thirty-sixth year. With the bombing, four hundred and eighty victims on the Israeli side had lost their lives to Arab insurgency since the second intefaddah had erupted against Israel, on September 28, 2000; nearly fourteen hundred Palestinians had lost theirs.

Since then, the number of Israeli dead has risen to nearly a thousand: the number of Palestinian dead has risen much more. Is there any way out? Is there any solution? Can the carnage ever be stopped? It doesn’t look it. Terrorism and terror now grip almost every country in the world. There are no political solutions, and no military solutions.

Maybe, maybe, there is yet a solution. Maybe if we can better understand the values, the culture, and the psychology of societies in which killing and dying are the only acceptable responses to perceived humiliation … maybe if we can remove some of that felt sense without surrendering our own lives and our own values … maybe if we can help others turn killing and dying into the ultimate source of shame and humiliation, if opposing death can become the ultimate source of honor and glory … maybe we can turn the tide.

Maybe.

Article from Nuernberger Nachrichten about the auction of a looted
painting by Hendrick Goltzius in New York, February 27, 2010

Only very slowly the German public, politicians and the people at museums, libraries and archives were willing to acknowledge that the topic of restitution is far from being settled by Bundesentschaedigungsgesetz. As in many other fields the carelessness of the fathers in undoing Nazi wrongs still is a boomerang for their sons and daughters: The priority of the federal compensatory law and its execution had not been to search, find and return the property stolen in Germany between 1933 and 1945, but to get rid of the skeletons in the cabinet as quickly as possible by paying money. This may sound a fair deal as long as one does not look into the details of the legal procedures in individual cases when claimants had to fight for every single silver spoon finding their claims being turned down with the argument of missing evidence.

Another sin of the past not only on the German side but also by the allied military government and international organizations involved was the lack of willingness to find former owners of pieces obviously stolen by the Nazi state. Thus a strange alliance formed exposing individuals seeking their or their family's property to multiple hindrances.

Under these circumstances only the obstinate or people who could afford to hire good lawyers and researchers succeeded in gaining back such items, often after decades of attritional quarrels with the authorities. This insistence evoked the good old schemes of awkwardness, greed and vindictiveness. To put it sarcastically, German postwar compensation for looted assets so far was a tit for tat deal: one side was compensated, the other allowed to foster its prejudice.

Maybe now it is the time to look anew into this anything but glorious chapter starting in 1933 but lingering on until today. To us it is essential that the approach must not equal a poker game, but the complete openness of all sources of information instead. With the following list we try to contribute to this aim.

 

Our guests in front of the court building where the Nuremberg Trials took place (from left to right): Hilde Hines, Eric Yondorf, Susan Sinclair, Ernest Lorch, Lisa Yondorf (Eric's wife), Ellen Lorch (Ernest's wife), Bella Uhlfelder, Ludwig Berlin

(photo: Susanne Rieger)

For the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Nazis’ seizure of power, two main events took place in May and June 2003 to whom rijo contributed substantially by using our multiple connections: From May 27 to June 15 the exhibit "’Der Dank des Vaterlandes ist Euch gewiss’ - Dokumente zum Holocaust aus der Sammlung Herbert Kolb" had been shown at Kuenstlerhaus K 4 (Koenigstrasse 93, exhibition area; admission free). Its title is an allusion to a German patriotic slogan from WW1, its contents are documents related to the Shoah in Nuremberg and elsewhere from the collection of Herbert Kolb. One week after the opening, to be exact on Thursday, June 5, 2003 the next event followed: Nuremberg City Archives’ second contemporary witnesses panel, again at Kuenstlerhaus K 4. As last year the panel was presented by the renown historian Prof. Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center for Research on anti-Semitism of Berlin’s Technological University. Its participants who were invited to share their experiences before and after emigration from "the city of the Reich’s party rallies" with the audience, comprised:

Mrs. Susan Sinclair (UK)
Mrs. Bella Uhlfelder (USA)
Mr. Ludwig Berlin (UK)
Mr. Ernest Lorch (USA)
Mr. Eric Yondorf (USA)

Our guests were accompanied by Mrs. Hilde Hines (Australia, formerly of Nuremberg), Mrs. Ellen Lorch (USA, formerly of Duesseldorf), Mrs. Lisa Yondorf (USA) and Mr. Peter Sinclair (UK, formerly of Munich). We are deeply indebted to our friends for their participation in the project.

Tag: #Obermayer_Award_2003

 

The text of the memorial plaque reads: "In memoriam of Leo Katzenberger, head of Nuremberg’s Jewish community, November 25, 1873 - June 3, 1942, arrested and indicted because of the ‘Nuremberg racial laws’ in a propaganda trial at Nuremberg Special Court, sentenced without guilt and executed as a victim of the Nazis’ racist justice."

 

Lord mayor Ludwig Scholz unveiling the plaque. To his left municipal construction counselor Prof. Anderle.

The photos for this report were kindly provided by Mr. Joach Freimann.

On November 2, 2001 the solemn unveiling ceremony of the bronze memorial plaque for Leo Katzenberger, head of Nuremberg’s Jewish community and victim of the Nazis who killed him under the pretext of "racial disgrace".

Several members of the Katzenberger family attended lord mayor Ludwig Scholz' inauguration of the plaque at the memorial for Nuremberg’s destructed main synagogue. On behalf of the family, Katzenberger’s grandnephew Mr. David Seldner of Karlsruhe (Germany) expressed the gratitude of the descendants but also admonished the people of Nuremberg and Germany to search for the traces of the past and to keep them for future generations.

Mr. Joach Freimann of Maccabim (Israel), grandson of Leo Katzenberger, summarized his impressions of the trip to Nuremberg as follows:

"I am very satisfied with the memorial plaque. The unveiling ceremony was dignified and very moving. Many people came to pay their respects. Mayor Scholz held a speech, David Seldner spoke in the name of the Katzenberger family members, and I said ‘Kadish’.
I would really like to thank all the good people from the Office for International Relations, especially Mrs. Christina Plewinski and Mrs. Margot Lolhoeffel, for the warm welcome, love and sympathy they showed us during our whole visit, also to Christiane Kohl and Mrs. Lauterbach who initiated the street-naming in the first place, and to everyone who helped realize this project.
When I first started writing to the municipality of Nuremberg in this matter, about a year ago, I must say it was with mixed feelings. Now, after our visit and seeing the results of our cooperation, I feel that a great deal has been done by the city to rectify the veil doings of the past and to recreate a mutual relationship based on trust and hope. The young generation has a chance to learn about the injustice and cruelty of the Nazi regime, and to understand the importance of safeguarding democracy and liberalism."

 

Magda and Benny taking a break
(photo: Monika Wiedemann)

 

Magda delivering her personal remarks at the opening on Sep. 13, 2001
(photo: Monika Wiedemann)

 

George, Magda and Benny dressed up for the awarding ceremony of Nuremberg's International Human Rights Award which they attended on Sep. 16, 2001 (photo: Susanne Rieger)

 

Monsieur George Beeston, former forced laborer from Belgium and also guest of honor of the City of Nuremberg at the opening (photo: Susanne Rieger)

For the opening of the exhibition Trauma and Dreams. The Nuremberg Experience of Former Forced Laborers and Their Dealing with It the Israeli dollmaker Magda Watts revisited for the first time after 56 years the city where she, as a young Jewish girl from Hungary, had been deported to in order to work for the Siemens-Schuckert company.

In her entourage there were not only her husband Benny, friends and family, but also a bunch of her little people conquering the hearts of the visitors almost as swiftly as their mistress did with anyone she met.

Though the weather was simply fubar and the ruthless terrorist attacks in NYC and Washington DC just two days before the opening overshadowed the visit, Magda's personality and her art brought some Israeli-Hungarian warming light to a wet and cold mid-September Nuremberg.

rijo wants to thank Magda, George and all the others who made this week a special one for us.

In August 2001 Margaret Marketa Novak donated 34 copies of her autobiography One Left, Just One to schools and libraries in Nuremberg as her very personal contribution to Holocaust education: Mrs. Novak was a slave laborer at the local Siemens-Schuckert plant.

Upon the author's wish free copies of her touching book were handed out by the municipality to all high schools as well as to the city library and the libraries of the local universities.

Hopefully the story of Mrs. Novak's life before, during and after the Shoah will find numerous young readers.

(graphics: rijo)

Ryszard K is used to think in global dimensions. As a former CEO of an internationally operating shipping company he has a lot of experience regarding organization and efficiency, qualities almost proverbially connected to Germany and its inhabitants. For both knowing the Germans and how to run an enterprise, Ryszard K becomes ironic when he is asked to summarize his impression of what is going on since August 2000, when the German federal parliament passed the compensatory law in favor of former forced laborers during World War 2: German efficiency cannot always be described as an exemplary performance.

The former manager encountered German efficiency first in November 1939, when he and his family were deported from their hometown of Gdynia in western Poland to the central region of the country, called Generalgouvernement by the Germans. Seventeen years old Ryszard and his parents were stranded in Tarnobrzeg, where his father succeeded in starting up a new business though having lost most of his assets in Gdynia.

One and a half years later Ryszard K experienced another variety of the gigantic and murderous migration of nations triggered by the Nazis: During a trip to the district town of Rzeszów where he wanted to purchase a wristwatch, he got into a raid of the German occupants supposed to supply their domestic economy with the working force urgently needed. After being beaten up, he and hundreds of Polish men and women were shipped by train to Nuremberg, the city famous for its medieval center and infamous for being the site of the annual Nazi party rallies.

In a 20th century version of slave market Ryszard was lucky enough not to be handed over to one of the numerous armament factories running their own camps for foreign laborers with ever decreasing standards of housing and nutrition in the course of war. By chance he ended up in the lion's pit, assigned to Nuremberg police's equipment store as a transportation worker.

For those who got into the grinding mills of German forced labor, it became a cynical game of their new masters what happened to them, often making the difference between life and death. A couple of months after Ryszard K, twenty years old Feodosija R from the Ukraine arrived in Nuremberg. At first she hid when the manhunt reached her hometown in the Khmelnyk region, but finally she turned in herself as the Germans threatened to kill her parents and burn down their house.

After an endless ride frightful Dosija and her companions in misfortune arrived in Nuremberg. Right at the station the owner of an ammunition factory selected her and several other young Ukrainian women to work for him. Here Dosija, poorly trained on the job, made a mistake and was beaten up terribly by the German foreman. It was a time when potentially any German had been given the power over life and death of the workers from Poland or the Soviet Union, simply because by Nazi definition he belonged to a superior race.

For weeks the young woman suffered from her injuries. She thought that she would have to die but recovered, only to be sent to the Arbeitserziehungslager (correctional working camp) Langenzenn, a small town in the vicinity of Nuremberg.

These euphemistically named scenes of horror are less known to the public than the concentration camps. Unlike them they were not run by the SS, but by the Gestapo as penitentiaries for allegedly criminal foreign workers like Feodosija R, who never learned about the crime for which she had been incarcerated without legal procedures. Most likely the Nazis took her mistake for an act of sabotage.

Living on a cup of dirty brownish liquid called coffee and one beet a day the male and female prisoners there were exposed to hazardous heavy work and torture. In the postwar trial against the Gestapo officers of the Langenzenn camp, staff members of the Nuremberg prison hospital testified about the camp inmates delivered to their facility: I have seen women completely lice-ridden in a condition I cannot describe. A young Pole had been brought to us hardly able to walk anymore. Another young man had been beaten off half of his buttocks, others arriving at the hospital smeared with their excrements, the tampons rotten, worms creeping out of their purulent wounds.

Feodosija R unlike many others survived the camp and was freed by the US Army in April 1945. She returned to the Ukraine and today is one of the few still alive and both physically and mentally ailing from the chronic illnesses contracted in Germany. According to the German compensatory law Mrs. R is entitled to receive up to 7,500 US$ because she had to live under conditions similar to detention or comparably particular bad conditions. This amount equals almost one thousand times her monthly pension of 40 Ukrainian Griwna (7.20 US$), maybe even sufficient to purchase regularly the expensive medication she needs - if she meets the requirements of the application procedure.

Ryszard K had been spared from such atrocities as Feodosija R, though he also got acquainted with one particular brilliant representative of the German master race, the janitor of the police equipment store, a sociopath who drained his uncontrollable reservoir of aggression by violent outbursts against the foreign laborers of the installation.

The pensioner is in the favorable situation that the compensation for his 3 years of forced labor in Germany has a more symbolic than financial meaning to him, an aspect of the issue emphasized frequently by German politicians during the negotiations. Using all information available and his multiple language skills he started his quest for compensation almost five months ago when the law came into power. Ever since his reaction to the outcome of his efforts oscillates between annoyance and black humor about the incompetence and the lack of efficiency displayed by the agencies involved. Until now he wasn't even able to obtain a form for his application. He wrote many letters, among others to the heads of the German compensatory foundation in Berlin. Their reply is more of a prophecy than a fact sheet: Hopefully, presumably and it is to be expected are the most frequently used phrases in the letter.

Nevertheless Ryszard K also received mailings from Germany with very concrete contents, e.g. from an organization asking him for a contribution to increase the chances of his application. Until now I was just confused. Now I am still confused but on a much higher level, K comments sarcastically.

Though he made no effective progress, Ryszard K is in a pole position compared to many of the other participants in this humiliating virtual steeple chase for seniors, because he has got evidential documents for his stay in Germany during the war. In particular the returnees to the Soviet Union were taken away any piece of paper they brought with them from Germany by the KGB. Some of these records got into the holdings of regional archives, others disappeared without a trace. For this reason many of the applicants from Russia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine have to rely on the documents kept by the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen (Germany) or German municipal and state archives. Individual requests to the ITS take an incredible average of 3 years to be answered, so applicants are encouraged to leave the ordeal of finding evidence for their term of forced labor to the respective national partner organization which is in charge of dealing with the applications and disburse the money. Many experts have well-founded doubts about the results from this contradictory double competence as judge and attorney of former forced laborers at the same time. There are reports that applications were turned down by local representatives of these partner organizations with the simple remark you went to Germany voluntarily, an assertion which in most of the cases neither can be approved nor disapproved due to the lack of documents.

The situation would make an excellent plot for a novel by Franz Kafka: Elderly people, anything but law experts or in any of the respective countries an influential pressure group facing a monstrous and unfathomable German and domestic bureaucratic machinery, the latter backed up by their governments surely not willing to put at risk their hoped for membership in the European Union for a conflict with Germany over the claims of their 70+ aged citizens.

At least for those former forced workers who manage to be alive long enough in 2001 when the first rate of compensatory payments is likely to be disbursed, there is a vague chance to experience the much belated regret of the German people. But there are others whose sufferings do not match the criteria of the law, for example the victims of German occupation of Slovenia. What happened there starting in the spring of 1941 had been an attempted ethnical cleansing of those parts of the country which were incorporated immediately into the territories of the axis' powers Germany and Italy: 150,000 Slovenian nationals were driven out of their homes, deported and dislocated all over Germany or shipped to the Serb border only with what of their belongings they could carry with themselves. Not only active members of the guerilla were killed by the German army, but also according to an order by Heinrich Himmler, every adult male of a family suspicious of providing shelter or food to the freedom fighters. The children of those families had to be separated from their mothers to prevent them from becoming a new generation of enemies for the Germans and after being racially evaluated by the SS were given to German adoptive parents.

Since 1997 the Slovenian Association of the Victims of Occupation 1941 - 1945 with its headquarters in Kranj is fighting for an individual compensation. The German government is denying constantly any obligation referring to an agreement between Germany and communist Yugoslavia in the 1970s. Of course not a penny of the then paid amount made its way into the pockets of a person affected.

During the negotiations about the compensatory law the German side ignored all requests by the victims' association to include the characteristics of the regime of terror in Slovenia into the rulings. Thus most of the crimes committed there are not covered by the law. German officials did not pay any attention to the fact repeatedly invoked by the Slovenians, that since the Nuremberg Trials war crimes are considered not to be in lapse at any time.

So is the collective memory of those countries which inhabitants passed on their wartime experience to the next generations. The European house cannot be built upon denial and bitterness, in many cases literally above mass graves. It is a mandatory gesture of sincerity and respect towards the people in Central and Eastern Europe to deal with their claims honestly.

In the session of November 10, 2000 the council of Wilhermsdorf in Middle Franconia decided on the naming of roads in the development area Breiteschbach. The majority of the council's members voted for Justin Neuburger as one of the personalities who will be commemorated by a road's name.

This idea came from a letter I wrote to the mayor in August 1999 after compiling the presentation Chronologie zur Entwicklung der juedischen Gemeinde in Wilhermsdorf with the appendix Biographische Bruchstuecke on rijo website. In the course of the research for this feature I learned about the salesman Justin Neuburger, born in Wilhermsdorf August 13, 1882, who in December 1929 had been elected a member of the town council by a majority of 57 percent. On July 20, 1937 Justin and his wife Babette moved to Nuremberg, from where they were deported to Riga November 29, 1941. Most likely they where among the victims of the mass execution in the woods of Bikernieki.

No other fate seemed to me more exemplary to remind today's town folks of both the important role Jews played in the development of the community and what injustice and suffering their fellow countrymen inflicted upon them. Now, after more than 60 years, at least Justin Neuburger's name will return into the conscience of the local public becoming a part of the community's life again. The road's naming also is supposed to be a constant reminder to all the victims of the Shoah from Wilhermsdorf.

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