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ISSN 1440-9828
August 2007
No 342
More on The Hitler Club
Nazi leader was >Hicks of his day< in the Barossa Valley.
The Australian, 8 June 2007
The men, dressed in suits buttoned against the cold weather, stand on either side of a gum tree, with the Nazi flag wrapped proudly around the trunk. Becker is believed to have been the man behind the camera.
Despite their limited influence, the Australian security service, justice system and media seemed determined to condemn him as the face of the war enemy, the book argues.
When war broke out in 1939, Becker, as a German national, was interned and, in 1947, made the headlines when he tried, unsuccessfully, to escape while being deported to Germany.
Newspapers at the time described him as >>Australia’s Public Enemy No 1<< and >>Australia’s No 1 Nazi<<.
Andrew Moore, associate professor of history at the University of Western Sydney, said Becker’s influence was much more limited than that of Colonel Eric Campbell, whose far-right New Guard numbered about 30,000 people at the same time.
>>The New Guard was very active in NSW in the 1930s,<< Professor Moore said. >>It was incipiently fascist, then it became explicitly fascist.<<
Like Johannes Becker, Campbell traveled to Germany in an attempt to meet Nazi party leaders. Unlike his contemporary, however, Campbell, a native Australian, was able to dodge the calls for his internment and build a career as a NSW country town solicitor.
***
Hitler Club | Book reveals war-time persecution
How our No. 1 Nazi was thrown out
Matt Williams|Rebecca Gill, The Advertiser, 9 June 2007
The life of a former South Australian MP’s father and his links with the German Nazi Party during the 1930s has been detailed in a book written by local magistrates Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig.
The Hitler Club, to be released next month, is the story of Dr Johannes Heinrich Becker – father of former state politician Heini – and other members of the former Nazi Party in SA.
Before World War II, a photograph was taken by the side of a road in the Barossa Valley, depicting eight men standing around a tree draped in a Nazi flag. Dr Becker is believed to have taken the photo.
The group became known as >>The Hitler Club<< and Dr Becker was known as >>Australia’s No. 1 Nazi<<.
The book follows the misguided witch-hunt that incarcerated, persecuted and deported them and many others.
Mr Becker yesterday said he had not seen the final manuscript of the book.
He clarified comments he made this week in another interview in which parallels were drawn between his father and the experience of David Hicks.
>>The point I was making was that I feel for young people like Hicks’s children, because I’ve been there, done that … Children are very cruel at school.<<
Mr Becker said children often relay what they hear their parents talk about.
He hoped the book would be recommended reading for Amnesty International and law students.
>>I think that with so much emphasis on world terrorism and whatever, and security, that files are being struck all over the place and no one has any recourse,<< he said.
>>I think that there ought to be a law where anyone who believes that they are subject to a security file should have the right to see their file and correct any errors in that file.<<
The book’s synopsis on the Pan Macmillan website states: >>It is a story of immigration, of an Australia in formation, of the complexity of loyalties and the juggling of the old and new,<<.
>>But most of all, in the hands of two South Australian magistrates, it is a story of injustice that must never be allowed to be forgotten.<<
In the 1930s, Dr Becker – who migrated to Australia in 1927 – attracted the attention of the public and Australia’s security services through his association with Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He joined the Nazi Party on March 1, 1932, and later became state leader for the South Pacific and head of the Tanunda branch.
Following the outbreak of World War II, Dr Becker was jailed at Loveday in SA and Tatura in Victoria.
After being paroled in 1946, he was discovered as a stowaway on a ship lying off Watson’s Bay, Sydney, bound for Panama in 1947.
The next month, he was deported to West Germany where his exoneration in December 1948, was assisted by the disappearance of a dossier on his Australian activities.
He was never allowed to re-enter Australia. He died in West Germany on February 21, 1961.
***
Still guilty of overreaction to radicals in our midst
Wartime Australia’s handling of the National Socialists has parallels to today, suggests Christine Winter, The Australian, 11 June 2007
The story of Australia’s reaction to the National Socialists has a number of lessons to teach, about staying calm in times of crisis, following due process, valuing democracy and the rule of law against political expedience, and protecting minorities and strangers in our midst instead of pushing them into the arms of radicals.
The Hitler Club, a new book on Johannes Becker, leader of the NSDAP – National Socialist German Workers Party – in Australia from 1933 to 1936, and his deportation from Australia after World War II, has raised a debate about whether Australia was – and still is – overreacting to radicals in its midst. Becker and his fellow Australian Nazis, the argument goes, numbered only a handful and had little influence. Still, they were singled out, interned, persecuted and victimized, and in some instances deported.
I am looking forward to reading the new book. The announcement that Becker’s >>is a story of immigration, of an Australia in formation, of the complexities of the juggling of the old and the new<< is intriguing. I have so far seen Becker’s tumultuous involvement with the DSAP as a typical story of Nazi infighting as well as a lesson in how fast allegiances shifted at the collapse of the Third Reich.
Becker did not vacate the leadership of the NSDAP in Australia in 1936 because of a change of heart. He was deposed because of personality clashes inside the Australian Nazi movement and, more importantly, a power struggle between the local party and the German consulate. Interned during the war in Tatura 1, the single men’s camp for German civilians in northwestern Victoria, he initially joined the Nazi elite that ran the internal organizations within the camp, before falling out with the party once more.
Towards the end of the war and afterwards, he informed Australian authorities about Nazi practices in the camp, including the beating of dissenters and declared his opposition to the Nazis. I once discussed Becker’s politics with a former hut-mate of his, a taciturn German with a dry sense of humour, who had been an ardent German patriot during the war and a non-party member. >>Well,<< he laughed, >>all I can tell you is that you played cards with Dr Becker at your own peril; he was a very good poker player.<<
However, Becker’s gamble, if it was one, of giving up his fellow Nazis in return for permission to stay in Australia, failed. Australia was playing a game of political expediency.
It is debatable whether Becker’s internment and deportation were unjust. Certainly Nazis with a lower profile than his received quite different treatment. My concerns are about Australia’s actions during the war and after, and the lesson for today we can learn from it.
Through its surveillance and internment practices Australia created radicals. Interning those who Australia regarded as potentially subversive paradoxically brought them under the immediate control and surveillance of the National Socialists with little or no space for dissent.
During the war, Australia tolerated two Nazi-controlled internment camps, and did little to protect non-Nazis in these spaces. For those interned, fear, pressure and the threat of being blackmailed to authorities in Germany created compliance with Nazi rule in the camps. Restriction orders and internment by Australia created resentment, alienation and a sense of not belonging to Germany.
Australia’s seeming lack of care was generated by a lack of in-depth analysis of German culture and politics at the time, as well as a lack of resources and manpower. It was convenient to allow the Nazis internal self-rule. Political priorities played their part, too. Germany had in September 1939 threatened to mete out any treatment of its nationals deemed unfair by the Reich to Australian and British internees and prisoners of war, and Australia decided pragmatically to allow alien internees political leeway rather than risk German retaliation.
National Socialism in internment camps only became a concern when the end of the war was imminent. Land Headquarters summed up the problem in a memorandum of April 26, 1945: >>The presence of such [Nazi] ringleaders in camps may further become a source of embarrassment after hostilities cease with Germany.<<
After May 8, 1945, the single men’s camp Tatura 1 and the Nazi family camp Tatura 3 – compounds a, b, c – were hastily de-Nazified, new camp leaders were elected, and a screening process put in place to investigate each internee’s character and loyalty and to determine their suitability for immigration. The interrogations of Becker and other Nazi leaders received considerable media attention. Becker’s deportation was not a matter of upholding democracy or keeping Australia safe, but a public relations exercise in placating public opinion.
At the same time other less high profile former Nazis were cleared and given permission to remain in Australia. Shortly after Australia’s postwar immigration policies and practices were being developed and implemented, which utilized Europe’s displaced people’s camps as recruiting grounds for >>new Australians<<, and brought former National Socialists and Nazi collaborators into the country, including war criminals.
In the new climate of the Cold War, Australia could be assured of these immigrants’ anti-communist pedigree. It just shows how yesterday’s enemies can become today’s allies and friends.
Christine Winter, a historian at the Australian National University in Canberra, is the co-editor of National Socialism in Oceania: a critical evaluation of its effect and aftermath, to be published by Peter Lange European Publishers later this year.
***
And now an item written by someone who fully accepts the false premise upon which the >Holocaust, story rests. There is no need to speculate what afflicts this persons’ thought processes because the underlying cry in her article is: >What about the Jews?< and >Jews are superior to Germans<. The various issues raised by The Hitler Club are much more profound than that, and they transcend her >moral equivalency< argument. Rebecca Weisser’s hatred of things German is all too transparent in that she blames the World War II tragedy squarely on Nazism/Germans alone – and that is an intellectually unbalanced approach, which leads directly into the conceptual prison that Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel, among others, are physically experiencing at this very moment. Let’s hope Australia will never adopt the machinations that are floating about in Weisser’s mindset. Her hatred of things German extends to a pettiness that prevents her from using the Dr-title when writing about Heinrich Becker.
***
Nazi internment made perfect sense
Jews in Australian camps opted for education, not radicalization, argues Rebecca Weisser
The Australian, 12 June 2007
Of all the people who might protest against wrongful internment, the last group that one would expect to complain about their treatment are Australia’s Nazis. Perhaps that is why it is only noe, 62 years after the end of World War II, that the case is being made that Australian Nazis were singled out, persecuted and victimized. For anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the history of the war, the notion of Nazis being persecuted in Australia could be dismissed as farcical if it were not for what it tells us about the scourge of moral equivalence afflicting contemporary thought.
Last week former South Australian Liberal MP Heini Becker expressed the hope that a new book, The Hitler Club, might restore the reputation of his father Johannes Becker, who led the National Socialist German Workers Party in Australia in the 1930s. Becker Sr had been made a scapegoat, he claimed, just like David Hicks.
Yesterday on this page historian Christine Winter argued that Australia was and still is >>overreacting to radicals in its midst<< and that the internment of National Socialists such as Becker had a lesson to teach about >>protecting minorities and strangers in our midst instead of pushing them into the arms of radicals<<; she claims that >>through its surveillance and internment practices, Australia created radicals<<.
There is no doubt that Australia interned many innocent and blameless people during the war, but it is odd that the present discussion on the plight of interned Germans has so far made no mention of the German and Austrian Jews who were interned at Hay in NSW and Tatura in Victoria. Perhaps it is because their case doesn’t fit the contemporary thesis that internment radicalized internees.
After all, when 2100 Jews, including my father, Mendel Weisser, were wrongly interned for almost two years, some for much longer, one could hardly mount the argument that they were pushed into the arms of radicals – that is, Nazis – or that their internment created resentment and alienation.
Completely to the contrary, in an appeal for release written to the minister for the army on November 26, 1941, the camp spokesman at No 4 Internment Camp, Section A, Oskar Seltmann, cited a resolution that had been passed unanimously: >>That inhabitants of this compound strongly oppose Nazism. If any camp inhabitant does not unconditionally support this declaration, we demand of him to apply for his transfer to another camp within one week.<<
German and Austrian Jews rightly feared Nazis and were concerned about their presence among them.
Discipline and camp rules for internees issued on march 1, 1941, by lieutenant-colonel W T Tackaberry, group commandant of the Tatura internment camps, prohibited >>the holding of political … meetings at which any political propaganda is used, or Nazi or Fascist principles recommended, advanced or urged … The Nazi and Fascist salutes will not be permitted. The exhibition of Nazi or Fascist emblems, signs or engravings within any compound is prohibited … The victimisation of any internee or prisoner of war holding anti-Nazi or [anti-] Fascist views, or for any other reason, is prohibited.<<
If there was Nazi organization or persecution in these camps, it was in clear contravention of the camp rules.
What did flourish among German and Austrian Jewish internees was their love of learning.
As The Australian Intercollegian reported in November 1941, the Collegium Taturense established by german and Austrian Jewish internees organised an average of 113 lectures a week that were attended by an average of 690 students in its first year of operation. Of 23 lecturers, 17 were highly qualified in the subjects they were teaching, resulting ina standard far above that to be expected under internment conditions.
The collegium endeavoured >>to be an academic institution and to forster the academic ideal. To keep alive the true spirit of European science and culture is our aim and for that we shall not cease to strive.<<
In summing up, the internees wrote: >>Today the Collegium Taturense may be justly proud of its accomplishments, and when one day peace reigns again on earth, we shall look back on our internment, remembering Goethe’s words: >part of that power, designing evil, yet creating good<.<<
Nazis interned in Australia suffered nothing more than cold nights, hot summers and dust storms while their counterparts in Europe inflicted incredible suffering, leading to the deaths of 60 million people, including six million Jews, amid barbarity on a scale that has not been seen before or since. When Australians were fighting the Nazis, internment in Australia was entirely justified.
For others who were wrongly interned then or today, it is an injustice that must be remedied, but, as Australia’s Jewish internees demonstrated, one that could bring out the best in humanity. They were wonderful, warm, witty men and after the war many of them were distinguished in their fields of endeavour, including anthropology, literature, art, music, mathematics, physics, and economics.
Those such as Fred Gruen, who stayed in Australia made a great contribution to public life. It is their legacy we should be celebrating, rather than fretting about the internment of Nazi sympathizers or drawing spurious moral parallels with contemporary events.
Rebecca Weisser is an editorial writer at The Australian.
***
The Editor
The Australian, Sydney
12 June 2007
Dear Sir/Madam
Is there a Jewish problem?
Articles like Rebecca Weisser’s about >Nazis< are getting a bit too much. Over many years I have collected thousands of them that all convey the same claptrap. Perhaps you would give me space to exhibit my collection.
Rebecca should have been wiser than to quote Wolfgang von Goethe, who was once quoted by the Hochschullehrerzeitung, as labelling the Jews of Pfaffenhofen as >Ein Gesindel< - rabble/vagabonds.
Houston Chamberlain quoted Goethe thus: >>A man as enlightened as Goethe asks how it is possible to let the Jews share our highest culture, when they deny its origin and source<<.
I wish you could for once print the proper interpretation of the forever abusive >>Nazi<< word, which is as follows:
>>In Hebrew the word >>Nazi refers to persons who are aware of their inner-self, are self-assertive, oppose the dogma of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees; oppose usurers, capitalists and financial manipulators. >Nazis< or >Nasis< as they are known in Hebrew, already existed in Palestine 2000 years ago. They were the individuals who turned against the bad leadership of their peoples, against falsehood, deceit and corruption. Though the place Nazareth was a mythological place, i.e. it did not exist at the time of Christ, in this sense, Jesus of Nazareth was indeed a Nazarean and a Nazi at the same time.<<
Just as Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple, so Hitler threw them out of Germany. This was Hitler’s greatest crime, and leaving the gold standard sealed his fate, and international finance manipulators declared war on Germany.
Sincerely
Werner Fischer, Adelaide
*
The Editor, The Advertiser, Adelaide
31 August 2005
Dear Sir
In today’s Editorial you used the words >>intolerable<< and >>offensive<< in regard to the proposed banning of headscarves by Muslim girls at public schools.
In the same article you consider the German migrants who developed the Barossa Valley in the 19th century as a good example of Australia’s tolerance towards people who were discriminated in their home country.
This should not give you the right to continually insult their former homeland, the land of their ancestors, fathers and mothers. It is downright despicable the way the Australian media and some individuals, such as the former premier of NSW, Bob Carr, who recently in the Weekend Australian approved of Germans being called >>A nation of murderers<<.
From my own experience in having lived and worked in Australia for over 50 years this kind of comment is unbecoming and un-Australian. The greatest handicap faced by the German people, of course, is the fact that after World War II no proper peace treaty has been concluded with the Allies, mainly Britain and USA, who still maintain military bases in Germany.
Werner Fischer
Adelaide
_________________________________________________________Some correspondence from Germans to their Australian relatives – as per original typed letter.
Heinz Rudolph,
Braunschweig,
Germany – British Zone
March 30, 1947
First report to all relatives!
Dear Cousins and dear relatives in Australia,
After the long terrible war in August 1947, I got the first news from you by Mr. Schmidt. Further letters from Frank and Sophie followed, and now, since February 9, several parcels from you arrived. I already wrote many letters to you and told you so much about our family, in one letter this, in others that. In order to give you all the same information, I send each of you a copy of this typewritten report.
At first we all regret very much the early, sudden death of Uncle Bruno, your dear father. My mother can still remember well the day when Uncle Bruno as a young man left home and immigrated to Australia. She was always very glad that Uncle, by his diligence, gained such a fine farm, and that he had such a large family as they had had in their parents’ home. Of the ten brothers and sisters only Aunt Emma and my mother are still alive here. Aunt Margarethe, the youngest sister, died at 66 in September 1946 in hospital ten weeks after an operation for cancer. That was a great grief for all of us. She was very pleased at the first letter from Mr. Schmidt. But on the other hand she can rest from all present troubles now. My mother was very much affected by Aunt’s death. She had several heart-attacks. We were very much worried about her, but now she really feels better.
My little boy, 21 months old, engages her very much and engrosses all her life, sometimes with anger, when she tries to get everything he wants, and when he is naughty, but mostly with pleasure with his funny jokes and plays.
In the last hard winter we couldn’t take him for a walk frequently, as it was too cold. But now we often take him for a walk. He likes dogs and horses very much, but most of all he likes motor-cars. He is always very much excited when I go to fetch one of your fine parcels from the custom-house. Then he wants to unpack, and he is very much pleased at the coloured tins. He already knows which tins contain milk, cheese, fruit, or sausage. If there is some cocos in the parcel, he asks for a teaspoon and wants to taste it. But he also likes to eat a slice of bread with lard, cheese, or sausage, and above all he likes fruit.
Till now he has not yet had any serious diseases. Owing to your help we can feed him now with nutritive food like cocoa, milk etc., and we hope that he will remain in good health in the future. He is our sunshine in these bad times.
Beautiful Germany has been ruined by the terrible war. In nearly all towns 50% of the houses, but in most cases still more, have been destroyed. Only the smaller towns and villages have been spared. After the cession of the eastern provinces from the Oder and Neisse up to the former German frontier, now Germany is only half as large as before the war. Millions of Germans are expelled from the eastern provinces, which were mainly agricultural districts, and are living here now.
The census in last September had a result of about 68 millions of people, and about 6-7 millions of prisoners of war are still to be added to them, for we hope that these prisoners of war will also return one day. You will certainly understand, how closely we all must live together. But that is not the worst thing.
The factories have been destroyed, and there are no raw-materials on hand, how shall all these people get a job? With what shall we pay the imports, which are urgently needed for our support? Some more heavy years will come.
If, after 10 years, conditions of life being normal to some extent shall prevail here, some miraculous things happen before. Too much has been destroyed and moreover the situation in the whole of Europe is not yet cleared. In this time it will always be the question whether I and my family will have enough to eat. I know that you all will help us; at present we really have to depend upon your parcels, otherwise we should have to be hungry.
I am not so very much troubled that I shall not be able to earn the necessary money. I am skilled and have not the least fear to do every occurring work. But to-day there are already jobs here with so little money in them that no family can live of it. That is useless, of course.
From these experiences I had already written to Mr Schmidt and Frank asking them, whether we can immigrate into Australia. The other day I already got a reply that at present an immigration is still very difficult and that my mother will not be allowed to enter Australia, as she is too old. Therefore I request all of you not to make any further steps with regard to our immigration. As long as my mother is alive, I shall never leave her alone. I hope that she will live in good health for a long time. My brother would not be able to take care of her, as he is living in Berlin. If my mother, at her advanced age, should have to live here quite alone, she would no more be able to manage that. In spite of all distress, we harmonise with each other so well that a separation is quite impossible.
We have only two rooms in our falt for four persons. The other two rooms of the flat are inhabited by Aunt Emma and another couple whose houses have been destroyed. Here it is like this everywhere. Two, three, and sometimes still more families live in one flat. But a large number of refugees from the eastern provinces are still living in barracks and families with many children have only one room. And moreover the most necessary things of life are lacking. Insufficient clothes, no beds, sometimes no table and chairs, no plates, cups, sauce-pans etc. – Our sauce-pans are also growing worse and worse, and this year we shall not be able to buy any new things.
Especially I am in want of boots, but my overcoat, too, will no more stand the next winter, as well as my shirts, underwear, and socks. My mother and my wife are better provided with clothes, but they are also in want of underwear and stockings.
But of greater importance for us are victuals, especially butter, lard, grease, palm-oil rice, dried eggs, fish in oil, dried fruit, dried onions, spices (pepper, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, cardamom), Sugar, soap, cocoa and other food for children, dried milk, and for holidays coffee and cigarettes or tobacco. Lemons, oranges, bananas, and all other similar good things we have no more seen for about 8 years.
After having read this list, you certainly will consider me as an exacting man. But if one could only buy a small quantity of these things here, I should never write you anything about it. I know that you have much trouble and expense with the parcels, and I thank you very, very much for everything. I hope that later on I shall be able to make amends to you for everything. –
This year winter was extraordinarily long and hard. For ten weeks we had a cold of 10 to 25 degrees Celsius below zero. As we got too little wood and coal, many a day we shivered with cold. The whole family was suffering from chronicle cough and cold in the head. But in spite of all that we got over this winter rather well.
In other towns conditions were still worse. The newspapers report that in Berlin 3500 people died of cold, about 1200 people are in hospital suffering from severe chilblains, and further 49000 people are medically treated. But now new misfortune arose. The highwater of the Oder breached in the dikes and about 70000 hectares of soil have been overflowed. The height of the water is about 4 to 6 metres there, and 8000 are said to be still on the roof of their houses. Many thousands of people already fled from these districts. – But in spite of all that spring fills us with new hope. When the weather is warm, all things look better.
At present negotiations about Germany take place at Moscow. They cannot dictate severe terms of peace to us, and can no more cede anything. Unfortunately there are great tensions between Russia and England-America. But I hope that reason will be victorious. A new war would destroy Europe and bring the whole world to ruin.
In contrast to all these troubles we are very much pleased at your letters and your parcels. Herr Schmidt also sent us some photos of Uncle Bruno, of the farm with the team of nine horses, and other photos, as well as the photo of the whole family of June 1946, at which we were especially pleased. Now we hope to get some photos of your children.
In order to give you the possibility to control whether all of your parcels have arrived, I give you the following list of their arrival:
On 9.2.47 1 parcel from Neola Gross with cake,
" 9.2.47 1 " " Frank " victuals,
" 15.2.47 1 " " E. (from Erich?) " "
" 25.2.47 1 " " Sophie " clothes
" 3.3.47 1 " " " " "
" 4.3.47 1 " " Margaretha " victuals
" 4.3.47 1 " " unknown sender " " (packed by Langland and Son)
" 14.3.47 1 " " Frank " "
" 14.3.47 1 " " Edna " "
" 15.3.47 1 " " Anna " "
" 20.3.47 1 " " Hedwig " "
" 26.3.47 1 " " Ernst
Thus our greatest distress has been relieved for a while. We thank you and your wives respectively husbands very much. We had too little to eat and now we get four weeks rations of 600 grammes of meat, 200 grammes of fat, 500 grammes of sugar, about 3 pounds of groats flour etc, then substitute-coffee, bread, potatoes, and a few vegetables. Last year we got 7 eggs and about 3 pounds of fruit. But the rations vary frequently.
Of myself I can tell you the following things. I am 42 years old, my wife is 31 years old. We got married only in December 1941. I was employed as a manager in a big building-association for dwelling-houses in Danzig, which is situated in eastern Germany and belongs to Poland now. When the war approached the town, we had to flee and could only take with us some boxes with clothes. The saved money at the bank was no more disbursed.
As the troops had already got to the rear of the town, we had to escape across the Baltic Sea. Among 9500 other persons we were on board a steamer of 17000 tons for a week, but we were only able to escape, when a warship with six other small boats took us under their protection. Another steamer with about 9000 persons on board was wrecked. This voyage was especially hard for my wife. She had been with child in the 5th month, and during the whole voyage we had only a small seat. The ship was overcrowded. In that week we only got 2 pounds of bread and 200 grammes of meat, and nothing else but coffee and water.
Then we were on the way for another ten days per railway, until we came to Altenberg in Thuringia, where our boy was born on 23.6.45. In the meantime was had come to an end, and thus the greatest danger was over. But now Germany was distributed into four zones of occupation.
At that time we were in the Russian Zone, whilst my mother was living in the British Zone. One was not able to travel from one zone into the other without a special permit. The trains ended at the frontiers of the zones. Then one had to walk for about 5 miles. On this occasion the luggage was controlled. Certain things like typewriters, sewing machines etc. were not allowed to be taken across the frontiers. As our boy was still too small and my wife was too weak, we could not start our travel to Brunswick before May 1946. It lasted for a week, but we all got over it rather well. But owing to uncleanness in the train or in the camps my wife contracted a bad erysipelas and had to stay in bed for a fortnight with high fever. She got very weak by this disease and lost half of her hair. But now she has got over that, and her hair is growing again. When she will be able to do her hair properly again, we shall have a photograph taken by us and send it to you.
I can tell you about myself that I have found a job as an agent of a firm, which enlarges photographs. My former line of business overcrowded. I should be able to earn much money now, but owing to lack of papers for photos and other materials my earnings are limited. But at first it is sufficient, as well still have some saved money.
I shall tell you more about us in my next report.
We send you, your wives and husbands, and our nephews and nieces too, our best wishes and kindest regards.
Yours, cousin [signed] Heinz
Yours, aunt [signed] Hedwig
Yours, cousin [signed] Ilse and little boy
******
Braunschweig, den 10 Dezember 54
Dear relatives,
Soon this year will come to an end, and we must remember 1946, when we got the first news from you after the terrible was and received the lot of parcels which helped us so much in our distress. Today we have nearly forgotten that time, when we got 50 grammes of fat and only a few pounds of bread per week, so that we suffered from hunger each day. But we did not starve. We have forgotten your kind help, and today we want once more to thank you very heartily for all you did for us.
We have sorrows still, for taxes and burdens in consequence of the war are enormously heavy. But there are sorrows everywhere in the world. We hope that you are all quite well, that you had good crops and much success in your work, and that you and all your children are safe and sound.
We are all well. Our boy is learning very well at school. At Easter he will enter the High School, where they learn languages (English, French, Latin) etc. That will cost a lot of money, but we want to give our boy a chance. He is not yet 10 years old, and he already plays the piano quite well. In other respects, like all boys of his age, he is often unmannerly.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all.
Ever your loving cousins
[Signed] Heinz, Ilse and little Jochen
******
Braunschweig, den 31. Mai 1958
Dear Cousins,
When we got your letter from December 30th, 1957, five months ago, we have been very glad of it and we meant to answer you at once, but again and again there was something coming across. Now you shall get your answer.
First of all we hope that you are healthy, separately the little Susanne and we wish you good luck in your family at all times. We hope, Susanne is growing well. She is so far now, that she laughs, when you play with her. Grandmother Sophie will be very often with you and will take care of the babe, when the mother allows it to her. And you, Maurice, are you able to associate with such a little thing? I myself have learnt it very well by my son, who became 13 years old now.
When the boy was born, the terrible war had finished just before one month and we lived at strange people in Altenburg/Thüringen, belonging now to the Russian Zone, in a furnished room. Ilse, having a difficult birth behind her, was lying in bed, and I had at that time bathed the babe daily, I had laid it dry, packet it into swaddling-clothes, I had later on cooked him the bottle-food, till Ilse was again healthy, so that she could make it herself.
That was a bad time, but the boy has good explained nevertheless. And I am proud of it, and I have not denied as father. How is that with you? Have you bathed little Susanne already or have you sorrow, that you cannot associate with such a little thing? Or are you thinking, that is no work for a man? Now, I don’t regret that I have it done so well. I am glad still now, when I think back to the time. And when the little fellow spoke the first word, and after a year took his first steps, that was a nice time in spite of all the trouble of that time. To-day is that now already otherwise. Jochen is in an age, in which all boys are a little naughty. They cannot order into the life in this age. But that will come with the time.
We live in Brunswick in a town of 250.000 inhabitants in a relatively quiet street. On both sides of the street there are houses, having 4 story’s. Nearly in all houses there live 8 families consequently.
We live in the first floor. About us there live two families and below us in the ground-floor also one family. In front of the house there is a very little garden and behind the house also a garden for tapping carpets. How that is in a great town. In Melbourne it will be just so as here. We have a habitation with 4 rooms, but we have to lease 1 room because the habitations are too narrow. That is lawfully regulated. Now a student lives in the room. He learns chemistry on our university.
In our part of the town there are no factories. They lie all on the after side of the town. They are large factories. The “MIAG” busies about 6000 workmen, the “Büssing-Bus” has also some thousands of workmen and many factories are there, which are not so large. Around Brunswick is good soil, much wheat is grown, especially greens, among these also the famous asparagus of Brunswick. Therefore we have many factories, making preserves.
I myself am employed with a bank, employing with her branch-establishments about 1000 men. Ca 17 miles distant there is the town of Salzgitter, where iron is drawn up, also are some blast-furnaces there. In the other direction, in the north ( ca 56 miles) there lies the town Wolfsburg, where the “VW” (VW cars) are produced. In the VW-factory are employed 40 000 men.
Brunswick lies in the plain in North Germany. The country around is flat. The next mountains are the Hartz-Moutnains (with a height of 3000f). They are about 55 miles distant. We reach them seldom. Going by train that costs too much. A motor-car I cannot buy. I am not badly paid, but it is not enough for a motor-car. The living costs are here very high. Tax, insurance and garage are about £12,- every month. The petrol costs here now £-,1,6 for one Liter.
Now I wish to finish for to-day. In the next letter I shall tell you more of our situation.
I send you the wished family-tree of the Wollermanns. I am sorry to say that we have the documents only till grand-father Wollermann descending from East-Prussia (at the Baltic). East Prussia was already in the 1st World-War run down by the Russian men and at that time all the archives were destroyed.
We wish you good luck for the next time and we would be glad, if you write occasional back.
With many heartily greetings
Your cousins [signed] Heinz, Ilse and Jochen
Also many greetings to your mother Sophie, to all relatives and to Mr Smith.
____________________________________________________More letters of recent date received by Adelaide Institute
Jenifer – Queensland, undated!
Dear Fredrick
If you are found guilty at your trial, does that mean while you are in jail some government bureaucrat will delete the >>undesirable << information from your website? Will you still be able to circulate your Adelaide Institute newsletter, or will the court forbid that too?
Have you read any of the Anastasia books? When I read Anastasia, the first in a series of five that are available in English translation from Ringing Cedars Aust, PO Box 3124 Robina Town Centre, Qld 4230.
Seems in Russia there are now a few Anastasia Estates – areas of 30 acres surrounded by a fence of cedar trees with dense-growing shrubs between them. Families have a house on a 1 acre block and have become self-sufficient in fruit and veggies and often have some surplus to sell. Recently I read the Dali Lama’s autobiography- first printed in 1990; second printing with an added chapter, in 1998. There was no mention of any visit to Australia BUT he did mention a >>settlement<< of Tibetan refugees in India that sounded remarkably like an >>Anastasia Estate<<.
…
Shortly after we were married, my husband told me there was Spanish blood in his family. From my general reading I am inclined to think they were Jewish refugees, escaping the Spanish Inquisition. Although his family was formally Church of England, I think the only >religion< they were interested in was Freemasonry – his mother and sister were both Grand Masters.
My husband told me when he was walking somewhere in London when he was about 18 years old, a gypsy had approached him and told him he wouldn’t live to see his 49th birthday. Naturally he asked why. His maternal grandfather had owned the largest privately-owned transport company in the UK prior to the government nationalizing it in about 1948. Grandfather had closed off an access route that gypsies had always had, so they cursed Grandfather and his whole family.
My husband’s father was a commercial artist-painter. Evidently one of his big paintings is hanging in a museum or art gallery in London. If one stands ten feet in front of it, it’s as if one is standing on the bridge of a ship approaching the London Docks.
He told me his dad had done a painting of Hamlet’s castle; close up one can’t see the >ghost< - stand further away and the ghost is easy to see.
His mother had written to me and asked me what I’d like for a wedding present, so I wrote and said I’d like that painting. She replied saying she had already sent it.
When my husband did his Extra Masters Certificate at London University we all stayed at his mother’s place. That painting was still hanging in their lounge!!
A few years ago, when my son was working with a company in Denmark, they sent him to London for a week or two. He got in touch with his father’s brother who gave him the ghost painting and another self-portrait. When my son decided to live in Denmark permanently, he gave those paintings to his sister.
…
It’s only recently that I’ve wondered whether my husband believed the gypsy and how that prospect of dying when he was only 48, affected the way he lived his life. My daughter still recalls her father spending money as if it really did grow on trees.
When we lived in Melbourne, my husband worked on the ship that serviced the lighthouses. He sent me some money fortnightly by mail. When I found it was not enough, I was lucky to find a job at the Burwood Teachers’ College which was adjacent to the primary school my kids went to. When I found out one of the neighbours’ sons was trying to pester my daughter for sex, I was lucky that the college allowed me to finish work at 4 pm, even though that did mean reducing my wages a bit. I liked all the staff.
When I worked at Adelaide University, after Whitlam had reduced or abolished fees, I forget which, I eventually realized most of those lecturers >imported< from overseas were pro-Marxist communists and certainly pro-Mao and Chinese communism. The Chinese government killed 1/3 of the Tibetans, according to the Dalai Lama.
So: I still prefer to ask questions and find my own answers. I’m convinced Constantine held the Council of Nicea, so he could have the Christians in Rome agree on doctrine and then used religion/Christianity as a political tool to help unify his expanding empire.
Only idiots believe everything they are told and that’s indoctrination rather than education.
Enough of my nonsense.
All the best, dear heart! I’m glad I’ve known you.
Jenifer.
FT comment: During the first years of Adelaide Institute’s operations it was Jenifer’s typing that enabled the publication of newsletters.
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Leonard Banks – Melbourne
2 May 2007
Dear Fredrick
In regard to your coming court battle with Jeremy Jones – free speech means freedom to give an opinion on any subject of interest to the public in general. That the Jewish holocaust is of interest is not doubted. Therefore to give an opinion on it is well within the right of holocaust deniers – could be deniers? - and doubters in practicing free speech. A policy in democratic rights and moral attention to truth, which open debate researches in fact finding discussion.
That Jews who support the holocaust theory, and like to see legislation enforced to deny discussion about it, indicates their fear that researching the holocaust will have a detrimental effect upon modern Jewish history in historical terms of race disaster the people of Israel have suffered in advancing to founding the territorial state of Zionist Israel. Zionism activates race ideology where in the history of the past is handed down to future generations.
It is important to the Zionist foundation that the Holocaust of the 2nd World War becomes a religious fact in Jewish history – that holocaust deniers wish to prove that the holocaust is sheer humbug and technically faulted in practical theory, is far too unnerving to the Zionist code in written history should such an investigation take place; to fault the holocaust is to fault Zionist ambitions in world control, which raises a very worrying matter.
What is most worrying is Israel’s policy to influence the political future of Nations other than themselves, in setting up governments as if these nations were colonial institutions of the Zionist State of Israel. In which the German state appears to be a model in Israel’s colonial empire, noting that the USA has a very powerful representation in Lobbyists in the USA HQ on Capitol Hill, and their power in England seat of power in Westminster, London, is not to be doubted either. In other western nations much the same influence attends the seat of government institutions, which means world peace is ever on doubt.
Who would doubt NATO was an inspiration of Zionist scheming to by-pass the UNO.
Regards
All love – oh! I forgot you’re a bloke!
PS: If what I have written is being antisemitic what I have stated gives good reason to adopt its use. But to keep protesting the much overdone accusation is illogical in protest.
*
10 May 2007
Dear Fredrick
I believe fair comment on news items of importance comes within the orbit of the Adelaide Institute publication activities in informed opinion. I noted and article in today’s newspaper that alerted me to a constant problem occurring in the war that NATO is fighting in Afghanistan.
The fighting in Afghanistan is initiated by NATO forces with NATOP implied use by the USA administration under President Dubya Bush aggressive policy in that region of the world to liquidate his foes whom he accuses of committing terrorist acts. This reveals the ludicrous situation of the NATO Allies committing terrorist activity to eradicate their enemy in areas of conflict they find it difficult to access by NATO troops in hand-to-hand fighting, because they are disadvantaged by the domestic situation of locating the enemy forces in a built-up area of domestic living that conforms to a particular tribe in local territory. To overcome this technical difficult situation they attempt sophisticated air power to strike at their enemy.
To illustrate what I am implying that NATO fighting in Afghanistan are equally responsible in committing acts of terrorism they accuse their enemy of perpetrating. Which is NATO excuse for acts of war in Afghanistan.
The following article I am about to quote appeared in The Australian, newspaper of this day, 10 May 2007, which I will now quote briefly, but forward the cutting with this written tract so that all the facts are known to you.
*
Afghans killed
Kandahar, Afghanistan: An air strike by foreign forces killed 20 to 30 villagers, including women and children, in southern Afghanistan overnight. The new claim of villagers being killed in US or NATO-led operations against Taliban fighters comes after nearly 60 people were said to have been killed in such incidents last month, prompting angry demonstrations. Warplanes bombed a village in the Sangin district of Helmand province late on Tuesday, provincial governor Assudullah Wafa said: >Twenty-one civilians including women and children were killed,< he said.
*
This is not an isolated case. This kind of war policy is happening far too frequently for an apologetic excuse to do away with the problem of miscalculated aerial attacks.
Permit me to make a comment. Iraq is not the only country that NATO should evacuate to let the dust of war settle down so that the people if Iraq can see their way to govern in their own right of administrative powers in elected government, under the guidance of a United Nations organised plebiscite to form a government. Not a NATO faulted contradiction in administrative power. I believe they should do likewise in Afghanistan. NATO should walk away from their Afghan gamble, and allow the United Nations act of diplomacy to settle the score of administrative power.
NATO should be abolished because it infringes the United Nations mandate for world harmony.
Noting that all of the NATO allies are signed up members of the United Nations, who fully know the harm their NATO policy does to destroy the United Nations ability to solve world problems by their actions to wage aggressive policing of governments they try to impose on the countries they wish to dominate by their aggressive ability in the force of arms. But NATO enemies are not the submissive kind of people to allow the colonizing of their territory.
The constant use of NATO allies to police situations that are none of their business in geographical terms in location. NATO is operating in an area of the world far away from the Atlantic region where its policy was to form a treaty power in military might to guard Taiwan Formosa from being occupied by the government of mainland China, whose territory, the Island of Formosa, rightfully belongs to in territorial possession.
The NATO treaty powers in allied Nations was a fiction originated by the USA to act as a bulwark to deter China from occupying the Nationalist held island of Formosam that the Nationalists call Taiwan.
But NATO is being used for other purposes than that which brought it into being. And, if the truth is to be known, NATO now is unwanted as a trouble maker, where there is trouble in warfare, is where NATO is to eb found.
The ordinary people of this world should shout out loud to abolish the NATO institution and plead for the UNO to organise to undo the problems that the NATO powers see I their right to dsolve – seeing that they create the problems that need solving.
The world would be a better place to live in by having NATO dumped out of existence.
Kind regards
Leonard Banks
********
The Sunday Age Letters
250 Spencer Street
Melbourne
13 May 2007
Sir/Madam
I wonder if Dr Colin Rubenstein would be willing to answer a relevant question to his article published in Sunday Age Opinion section for 13 May 2007.
Did the Hezbollah fire the rockets into Israel’s legitimate territory or into territory usurped from the Palestine people in the 1967 war with Egypt?
A lot hangs on the known facts of territory in ownership that the rockets land in and explode. There is a United Nations resolution in regards to territory usurped in war and retained in territorial expansion by the victor – making it illegal.
The United Nations Organisation does not recognize the legitimacy of territory usurped from war and retained as a territorial possession by the victor after the war has ceased.
Further more, any action taken by the Palestine people on the usurpation of their territory is to be expected as a policy, making the occupation by the Israeli squatters unpleasant as possible is quite legitimate as a function of the dispossessed.
Dr Rubenstein knows and fully understands that real peace will only come in the Middle East when the territory usurped by Israel in 1967 is returned to the rightful owners, whose territory in land is the National property of the Palestine people, handed down by their ancestors.
A statement! How long will be have to suffer Israel’s expansionism before it is corrected to conform with territorial borders drawn up by the mismanaged Balfour Declaration of 1917 arranged by Great Britain during the first World War that ceased in November 1th 1918?
And, the other matter that should cease is America’s efforts to make peace in the Holy Land as difficult as possible by their involvement there.
Regards
Leonard Banks
********
From: ArtButz@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, 7 July 2007 10:22 AM
Subject: sauce for the gander?
Salah seeks Libby dealA Chicago man convicted on a Hamas-related charge is trying to capitalize on Lewis “Scooter” Libby's commuted sentence. Mohammed Salah, 57, was convicted of obstruction of justice and is facing sentencing next week in Chicago. In the same trial Salah was cleared of racketeering charges in support of Hamas terrorist operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The maximum punishment for one count of obstruction is 10 years, but prosecutors are seeking a 22-year sentence based on evidence presented during trail they believe proves Salah was part of a terrorist conspiracy, reported the New York Sun.
"To sentence Mr. Salah on the basis of non-relevant, state, and acquitted conduct would most assuredly result in an unreasonable sentence and promote disrespect for the law," said Salah's defense attorney, Michael Deutsch.
President Bush pointed similarly to "allegations never presented to the jury" this week in his reasoning for commuting the 30-month sentence for Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted for obstructing justice into the investigation of the leak of the name Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent married to an Iraq war critic who had been targeted in a White House retaliation scheme.
Although the president's decision sets no legal precedent, Deutsch believes Bush's commutation to be relevant because the allegations the prosecution wants the judge to consider "were presented to a jury and he was acquitted." http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/102876.html
***
Conrad Black: Convicted columnist?AJN, JULY 16, 2007
THE editor of the New York Sun invited media mogul Conrad Black, now a convicted felon, to write for the newspaper from prison.
Seth Lipsky, who previously founded and edited the English-language Forward newspaper, on Monday called together his entire staff at the Sun, a conservative daily that claims a readership of 150,000, for a 4.05pm meeting at which he delivered a rousing defense of Black.
Lipsky stopped his speech several times to urge reporters not to answer the phones, according to a source.
A Chicago jury last week convicted Black, a founding investor in the Sun and owner of the Jerusalem Post, on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction for carrying out fraudulent business deals totaling up to $US60 million."I don't mind saying that it is a sad turn," Lipsky said in a piece published on Tuesday in the Sun. "In my view, Conrad Black is one of the greatest newspapermen of his, or any, time and, in my own career, he has been an inspiring partner and a friend. If he does go to prison, I hope he will be able to send us some columns. I don't know whether he will want to or be permitted, but the invitation is out," Lipsky, known for his loyalty to underlings and friends, told his staff.
"And to those of you who might handle his copy here at the Sun, I say this: Please treat any of his dispatches as coming from a man who made your newspaper possible and, when you edit his prose and put it into print, remember that the honour is ours."JTAhttp://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3732
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French Revisionist Georges Theil, gmtheva@yahoo.fr
Paris, 20 July 2007
Yesterday I appeared before a judge to determine how my six months prison sentence could be structured. It was suggested I accept the electronic bracelet and be under house arrest. I asked that I be given a few weeks before this sentence begins so that I can organize my financial problems. The matter was adjourned until September when I again have to appear before the judge. So, at the end of September, under electronic control, I shall thus be forced to stay at home with some hours of freedom every day. All this is terrible, but I don't resign.
Georges Theil
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Please be advised
SylviaStolz Sylviastolz@aol.com faces professional de-registration because she vigorously defended Dr Rigolf Hennig. During the hearing on 13 December 2005, she cited comments made by Gilad Atzmon, the Iranian President Dr Ahmadinejad, commented on Germar Rudolf's books, in fact, the basic Revisionist theses and more. This material is now before the court.
http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/LEGAL2006/Stolz.htm
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Robert FAURISSON
July 4, 2007
French Justice, Justice on its Back
Three new examples of how "the law lies down in the conqueror's bed".
In the course of a discussion programme on the ARTE television channel last November, Robert Badinter lied outright in saying that in 1981 he had won a court ruling against me "for being a falsifier of history". I therefore sued him for libel. On May 21, 2007, the 17th division of the Paris criminal court, presided by Nicolas Bonnal, held that R. Badinter had indeed libeled me BUT. IN GOOD FAITH. In its own words, the court declared: R. Badinter "failed to give convincing evidence" in support of his assertion (p. 13 of the judgment) but "the justifying circumstance of good faith" would be "acknowledged" for him (p. 16). Consequently I thus have to disburse 5,000 euros to R. Badinter for his lawyers' fees and pay court costs as well. Factors beyond my control unfortunately make it impossible for me to lodge an appeal against this villainous judgment (I shall shortly make plain what I mean both by "factors beyond my control" and the term "villainous").
Remarks that I had made during the Teheran conference on the "Holocaust" (December 11-12, 2006) prompted Jacques Chirac himself, then president of the French Republic, to make my talk at that gathering a special matter for his justice minister, Pascal Clement. At the latter's request, the prosecutor's office in Paris opened an inquiry. On April 16, 2007, police lieutenant Severine Besse and her assistant, having made the journey from Paris, questioned me at Vichy police station. In keeping with custom, I refused to answer their questions, giving them my usual reply to put in their books: "I refuse to collaborate with the French police and justice system in the repression of historical revisionism". Today, July 4, I learn from the news agencies that on June 13 a formal investigation was assigned to examining magistrate Marc Sommerer, who thus will not fail to summon me to Paris soon.
For an interview given over the telephone on February 3, 2005 to the Iranian television channel Sahar 1, the same Paris court, the same Nicolas Bonnal presiding, had sentenced me, on October 3, 2006, to three months' imprisonment (suspended) and a fine of 7,500 euros, as well as ordering me to pay the lawyers' fees - 1,500 euros - of each of the three organizations that had also brought civil cases against me at the trial (LICRA, MRAP and LDH *). Today as well, the 11th division of the Paris court of appeal, presided by Laurence Trebucq, has upheld that sentence, not without adding on another 1,000 euros for each of the three organisations' legal fees; the monetary sanctions in the matter of this single case thus amount to 15,000 euros.
All that without counting my own legal costs, my travel expenses, the various other outlays, the work in preparing for these trials and the hearings themselves. But the French revisionists are not to be grieved for if one compares their lot with that of the German, Austrian, Belgian, Swiss or Canadian revisionists.
* The LICRA is the “International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism”; the MRAP is the “Movement against Racism and for Friendship amongst Peoples”; the LDH is the “League of Human Rights” — translator’s note.
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