24 Sept 2015
Dachau concentration camp being used to house refugees
On the site of former Nazi concentration camp Dachau, outbuildings that used to belong to the complex's herb garden are now being used to house refugees. Once a place of fear and death, children can now be seen playing on the site where inmates were forced to spend hours toiling in the cold and rain to cultivate plants intended for use in medicine.
"The buildings belonged to the former plantation, to the herb garden, which was one of the worst labour detachments of Dachau concentration camp, where especially Jewish and religious prisoners were working in order to make the soil arable and to plant medicinal herbs. It was one of the worst labour detachments because the work was mostly outside, and the death rate was immense. And as such it was a place of death and terror," head of Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site Gabriele Hammermann said.
The garden complex does not belong to the official memorial site, but is being used by the city authorities to house the homeless and asylum seekers whose applications have been recognised, giving them a home to start their new lives in Germany.
31 Jul 2015
Refugees from Syria claim racism in Germany is so bad they want to GO HOME
Refugees from war-torn Syria claim racism in Germany has become so extreme they want to go home as a growing anti-Muslim movement sees soaring attacks on foreigners. The nation has been gripped by a spate of anti-foreigners rallies, violence and arson attacks against refugee homes or would-be shelters as hundreds of thousands seek refuge in the country. This year has already seen about 200 arson and other attacks against refugee housing while support for anti-Muslim movement, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), has been growing. The growing tensions between citizens and refugees mean some asylum seekers are so scared of attacks they are considering going home.
Germany is currently struggling to cope with a record influx of refugees with 500,000 expected this year, fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, African nations and recession-stricken Balkan countries. The country has a generous asylum system originally meant to help atone for its Nazi past which has opened the gates to Europe's biggest influx of refugees - sparking ugly reactions that recall Germany's darkest days. At the end of last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to call on Germans to turn their backs on the growing anti-Muslim movement which she condemned as racist and full of hatred, and said Europe's biggest economy must welcome people fleeing conflict and war.
9 Nov 2014
6 Oct 2014
Ethnic Germans: A Forgotten Genocide
A forgotten genocide: the ethnic German cleansing. Germans migrated down the Danube in three major waves beginning more than 700 years ago, and settled in mountainous areas of Bohemia and Moravia. These Ethnic Germans became very prosperous and those in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia were known as Danube Swabians.
1939 the Czech President expelled German minority to be executed with utmost brutality resulting 1 million sudeten Germans losing their lives.
16 Sept 2014
Germany charges 93-year-old with at least 300,000 counts of murder
Germany charged a 93-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen-SS on Monday with at least 300,000 counts of accessory to murder over his time at the Auschwitz death camp.
The charges relate to the around 425,000 people believed to have been deported to the camp in occupied Poland between May and July 1944, at least 300,000 of whom were killed in the gas chambers.The accused helped remove the luggage of victims so that it was not seen by new arrivals, said prosecutors in the northern city of Hanover.
"The traces of the mass killing of concentration camp prisoners were thereby supposed to be covered for subsequent inmates," prosecutors said in a statement. Prosecutors said the accused was aware that the predominantly Jewish prisoners deemed unfit to work "were murdered directly after their arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz".
A regional court must now decide whether the accused will go on trial. The German office investigating Nazi war crimes last year sent files on 30 former Auschwitz personnel to state prosecutors with a recommendation to bring charges against them. The renewed drive to bring to justice the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust follows a 2011 landmark court ruling.
30 Jul 2014
4 May 2014
27 Apr 2013
Report Reveals Derrick Actor Horst Tappert Was an SS Member
He was known far beyond Germany's borders for his portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick on television. On Friday, information emerged suggesting actor Horst Tappert served as a member of the notorious Waffen-SS and hid the fact for years.
The German television show "Derrick" was one of the most successful crime show exports in the country's history, with broadcasters in 102 countries running it in syndication over the years. It emerged on Friday that the actor who played the enormously popular television detective, Horst Tappert, had a secret. He served as a member of the SS during World War II. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday that Tappert was a member of an SS anti-aircraft group (SS-Flakabteilung), in Arolsen, Germany, that was under the command of the notorious Waffen-SS. Later he joined 14. SS-Panzergrenadierregiment 1 "Totenkopf".
Sociologist Jörg Becker uncovered a document showing Tappert had been a member of the SS while conducting research at the German agency WASt -- which maintains records of members of the former Wehrmacht, the German military under the Nazis -- for a memoir he is writing about another person. Becker told the newspaper the document shows that Tappert became a member of the Waffen-SS as a low-level grenadier by March 1943 at the latest, at the age of 19.
10 Apr 2013
Greece Says Germany Owes It €162 Billion In War Reparations
Greece is considering slapping a €162 billion invoice on Germany as compensation for the Second World War. Athens has compiled a top-secret report that says the cash - enough to solve the Greeks' debt crisis - is owed in war reparations, Der Spiegel reported.
But the Greeks are said to be reluctant to take on mighty Germany over the debt, for fear of antagonising its Eurozone paymaster. The Greek media is said to be more bullish, with the To Vima newspaper headlined: "What Germany Owes Us". It set out a number of possible ways that Germany could repay the cash, after a panel of experts spent months preparing the 80-page classified report.
15 Feb 2013
Amazon 'used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control' in Germany
Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers.
Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres. The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said.
The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls.
12 Sept 2012
Greek plea for Nazi damages
Greece has dramatically revived demands for billions in war damages from Germany as the euro crisis deepens. Ministers have set up a working party to add up how much Germany owes them for crimes committed after Hitler invaded Greece in 1941.
The Greek National Bank was also forced to lend the Nazis 476 million reichsmarks interest-free during World War Two — worth £8.7billion today. Greeks claim they were forced to accept “unfavourable” reparation payments in the 50s. Deputy finance minister Christos Staikouras said: “The matter remains pending — Greece has never resigned its rights.” He insisted the investigation would be “realistic and cool-headed”.
The move comes as opposition grows in Germany to handing out more bailouts to Greece. And it risks inflaming anti-German feelings in Greece, where newspapers regularly depict Chancellor Angela Merkel as a Nazi. Germany’s constitutional court is due to rule today on whether Berlin should hand more cash to Athens.
1 Aug 2012
Germany admits NATO favouring Al Qaeda in Syria
German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question.
In response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified "by reason of national interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence.
Meanwhile, at least three major German newspapers - Die Welt, the FAZ, and the mass-market tabloid Bild - have published reports attributing responsibility for the massacre to anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most probable scenario.
7 Jul 2012
Iran blames France, Germany for hits on nuclear scientists
Iran’s spy chief accused German and French intelligence agencies on Friday of involvement in assassinations of its nuclear scientists, sticking to a hard official line as sanctions imposed over its disputed atomic ambitions bite harder. The Islamic Republic has previously accused Israel, the United States and Britain of plotting the killings to set back its uranium enrichment program, which Western powers suspect is being used to develop nuclear weapons capability.
Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi spread the blame to France and Germany, after days of hawkish rhetoric and missile tests by Tehran that helped push benchmark Brent crude oil prices above $100 for the first time since June.
“In these two networks (involved in the assassinations) we saw connections with the information services in Germany, France, Britain, Israel, the United States and regional intelligence agencies,” the state news agency IRNA quoted Moslehi as saying. He did not name the other countries. In Berlin, a German government spokesman said: “We decline to comment on such fanciful accusations.”
At least four scientists associated with Iran’s nuclear program have been assassinated since 2010, most recently in January this year. Washington has denied any role in the killings, while Israel has declined to comment.
The nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran.
19 May 2012
Police detain 400 "Blockupy" activists in Frankfurt
German police said they detained 400 anti-capitalist protesters in Frankfurt on Friday for defying a ban on demonstrations against austerity policies implemented to tackle the intensifying euro zone debt crisis.
The demonstration in the German financial capital was part of a four-day-long "Blockupy" protest, due to run until Saturday, against capitalism and austerity measures. "Hungry? Eat a banker," read one banner protesters held up outside the Messeturm skyscraper housing Goldman Sachs' offices. Reuters' Frankfurt office is also in the building.
Police closed several main roads in Frankfurt - including a main artery into the city that passes by the Messeturm - and flooded the center with officers. There was no violence. The protesters are angry at the misery they say governments are inflicting on people with their response to the crisis, which has intensified since inconclusive elections in Greece this month fuelled concerns about its future in the euro zone.
4 May 2012
A People Uncounted
People Uncounted tells the story of the Roma, commonly referred to as Gypsies—a people who have been both romanticized and vilified in popular culture. The Roma have endured centuries of intolerance and persecution in Europe, most notably the Holocaust genocide where an estimated 500,000 were murdered. A People Uncounted documents their culturally rich yet often difficult lives, and demonstrates how their present state has been deeply shaped by the tragedies of the past. - Film Website
4 Apr 2012
Nobel Laureate Grass Attacks Israel in New Poem
Günter Grass, Germany's most famous living author and the 1999 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparked outrage in Germany on Wednesday with the publication of a poem, "What must be said," in which he sharply criticizes Israel's policies on Iran.
"Why did I wait until now at this advanced age and with the last bit of ink to say: The nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile?" Grass writes in the poem. The 84 year old also criticizes the planned delivery of submarines "from my country" to Israel, a reference to Germany's plan to deliver Dolphin-class submarines to Israel that are capable of carrying nuclear-armed missiles. At the same time, Grass also expresses his solidarity with Israel.
In the poem, published by Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and other European dailies on Wednesday, Grass also calls for an "unhindered and permanent monitoring of Israel's nuclear potential and Iran's nuclear facility through an international entity that the government of both countries would approve." It is widely believed that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, although it has never been proven.
12 Mar 2012
ODESSA and the Fourth Reich
If you're not familiar with the Vatican ratlines, ODESSA, or the Rise of the Fourth Reich then this video will lead you right up to the rabbit hole. Be careful you don't fall in.
If you ARE familiar with the organizations that were formed around helping SS officers and other high Nazi functionaries to escape JUSTICE after the war, then this video will be equally entertaining if you like taking note of omissions and distortions.
The ODESSA (from Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen) on Wikipedia - Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II, more on Wikipedia.
7 Mar 2012
The Role Ex-Nazis Played in Early West Germany
After World War II, West Germany rapidly made the transition from murderous dictatorship to model democracy. Or did it? New documents reveal just how many officials from the Nazi regime found new jobs in Bonn. A surprising number were chosen for senior government positions.
Ten days before Christmas, the German Interior Ministry acquitted itself of an embarrassing duty. It published a list of all former members of the German government with a Nazi past. The Left Party's parliamentary group had forced the government to come clean about Germany's past by submitting a parliamentary inquiry. Bundestag document 17/8134 officially announced, for the first time, something which had been treated as a taboo in the halls of government for decades: A total of 25 cabinet ministers, one president and one chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany -- as postwar Germany is officially known -- had been members of Nazi organizations.
20 Oct 2011
World War II: The Holocaust
One of the most horrific terms in history was used by Nazi Germany to designate human beings whose lives were unimportant, or those who should be killed outright: Lebensunwertes Leben, or "life unworthy of life". First applied to the mentally impaired, later to the "racially inferior", or "sexually deviant", or merely "enemies of the state" both internal and external. From very early in the war, part of Nazi policy was to murder civilians en masse, especially targeting Jews -- which later in the war became Hitler's "final solution", the complete extermination of the Jews. Beginning with Einsatzgruppen death squads in the East, killing some 1,000,000 people in numerous massacres, later in concentration camps where prisoners were actively denied proper food and health care, and ending with the construction of extermination camps -- government facilities whose entire purpose was the systematic murder and disposal of massive numbers of people.
Lt. Col. Ed Seiller of Louisville, Kentucky, stands amid a pile of Holocaust victims as he speaks to 200 German civilians who were forced to see the grim conditions at the Landsberg concentration camp, on May 15, 1945.