Two pieces of news from the Holocaust Orthodoxy crowd - in
case you haven't yet heard. The Zundelsite shames the current German
government for pimping for the Holocaust Enforcers by arresting Revisionist
leaders in other countries for Mannheim-based Stalinist-type show trials -
and salutes the Arolsen folks for finally yielding to truth-seeking pressure
from legitimate revisionist researchers all over the world.
Regarding these Arolsen archives - don't let yourselves be
fooled by comments like Sarah Bloomfield's of the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum - it was outfits like hers that blocked access to Arolsen all along!
At any rate, there's movement on the Big-H Front, some not
so good, some excellent:
2 charged for Holocaust denial
18/04/2006 22:26 - (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1918387,00.html
Berlin - German prosecutors say they have charged a
German far-right activist, extradited from the United States, and a
Belgian man, handed over by the Netherlands, with incitement for allegedly
denying the Holocaust.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western city of Mannheim
said Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke were accused of "systematically"
denying or playing down the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in documents
and on the internet, and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred.
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. It carries a
maximum sentence of five years imprisonment
Rudolf, 41, published a study claiming to prove that the
Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
He was deported to Germany from the US in November, to
serve a 14-month prison sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges.
Verbeke, 64, was arrested in the Netherlands and also
extradited to Germany in November.
Prosecutors in Mannheim are leading a similar, but
unrelated case, against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last
year.
Germany offers to help open records of Holocaust
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.holocaust19apr19,0,5482410.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
WASHINGTON // Germany said yesterday that it will help
clear the way for opening records on 17 million victims of the Nazis, a
major step toward ending a long battle over access to a vast and detailed
archive from that era.
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country
would work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives,
which are held in the German town of Bad Arolsen, and allow historians and
survivors access to 30 million to 50 million documents.
Until now, Germany had resisted providing access to the
archives, pointing to privacy concerns.
The announcement, made at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, came after a decades-long effort by Holocaust survivor groups and
several countries to gain wider access to the archives. In a meeting
yesterday, Zypries said Germany had changed its position and would
immediately seek revision of an 11-nation accord governing the archives.
The 10 other countries must also formally agree if the records are to be
opened, a process she said would take no more than six months.
Edward B. O'Donnell Jr., the State Department's special
envoy for Holocaust issues, said he was encouraged, but he added, "We
still have negotiations to do."
The next step is a meeting in Luxembourg on May 15, when
all 11 countries would have to reach a consensus. In some instances,
parliaments would have to approve the archives' opening as well.
Opening the archives would enable many survivors and
families of victims of the Nazis to find out with more certainty what
happened to their relatives.
"We are losing the survivors, and anti-Semitism is on the
rise, so this move could not be more timely," said Sarah Bloomfield,
director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
For 60 years, the International Red Cross has used the
archived documents to trace missing and dead Jews and forced laborers, who
were systematically persecuted by Nazi Germany and its confederates across
central and eastern Europe before and during World War II.
But the archives have remained off-limits to historians
and the public.
Speaking in German, Zypries said, "We now agree to open
the data in Bad Arolsen in Germany. We now assume the data will be
safeguarded by those countries that copy the material and use it, and now
that we have made this decision we want to move forward." Her remarks were
translated into English for reporters.
Germany's privacy law is one of the most restrictive among
the 11 countries, Shapiro said. Remaining safeguards, he said, might limit
duplicating a document or prevent using the name of someone mentioned
without the person's permission, he said.
Dissemination through the Internet also might be tightly
restrained. However, privacy laws of the other countries will now prevail,
he said. Most are less restrictive than Germany's.
Bloomfield called the decision "a great step, a really
important step." She said, "I will be completely thrilled when I get the
material in the archives."
"Overall, it makes it possible to learn a lot more about
the fate of individuals and to learn a lot more about the Holocaust itself
- concentration camps, deportations, slave-enforced labor and displaced
persons," Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's center for advanced
holocaust studies, said.
International Red Cross Committee spokesman Antonella
Notari said that body is not on the 11-member decision-making panel and is
not against opening the archives, but it believes personal information
needs to be treated carefully. The international body opened its own
archives a decade ago, she said.
"It should definitely be open for historical research, and
there are ways to do that with respect for personal data," said Notari,
who is chief spokeswoman of the ICRC in Geneva.
Besides Germany and the United States, the other countries
involved are Belgium, Britain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands and Poland.
