Newsletter No 357

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                       October 2007
                                                                  No 357

Truth and Honesty: The Core Values of Western Civilization

Truth and honesty, the core or premier values of Western Civilization have been repeatedly, I might say continuously, challenged for a very long time, always by one or another imaginative view of the nature of our world.

Some famous examples of which are these:

1. At the time of Galileo and Copernicus, truth and honesty were challenged by an entrenched but incorrect view that the earth was the center of the universe;

2. The Magna Carta signified the victory of truth and justice over the concept of the divine right of kings, an achievement henceforth requiring kings and rulers to recognize the right of their subjects to be heard;

3. The victory of moveable type and the printing press over the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to exclusive dominion-mediation over reading and writing;

4. In our life-time the Internet furthers the democratic unmediated free flow of information begun with the printing press.

The core values of Western Civilization are once again being challenged, this time by Jewish supremacists (or such other designation as you see fit - perhaps organized Jewry?), with a ferocity which perhaps we have never experienced before. There are many who, in fear and trembling, think that Western Civilization is finished, or may be finished.

The onslaught against the defenders of truth and honesty is an attack on any questioning or doubt of the Jewish Holocaust, any suggestion that it may not have occurred or that any of the evidence presented to establish the truth of the Holocaust may be fake.

In addition, the attack is meant to protect all false history supporting the Jewish Holocaust. It continues to be claimed that six million Jews were slaughtered by the Germans, even though some Jewish organizations with access to reliable information, for several years now, have disputed the assertion of six million slaughtered Jews.

Seemingly as a response to the tremendous influence of historical revisionism on public opinion, the campaign of the Jewish supremacists to extinguish public doubts about the Holocaust has not only moved into high gear, so to speak, but has taken on a much more, shall I say, >in your face< character, most particularly seen in the escalation of efforts to criminalize Holocaust 'denial' by creating new laws, and imposing increasingly severe punishments and penalties for violations of such laws against freedom of expression and thought.

Massive numbers of people are now coming to realize that it is not reasonable to criminalize the natural propensity people have to inquire into things they are not sure of, lack sufficient information on, or issues that continue to be under serious discussion. Once more, people are finding themselves burdened by a >top-down< proscription, an authoritarian proscription, against inquiry into certain matters. Most intelligent people have never liked that and have never sat still with such a burden upon them.

In our civilization, respect for oneself has always rested on, and continues to rest on, respect for one's intelligence, or as one may say, on one's God-given intelligence. Most of us see this as a fundamental principle, yes an indispensable principle. I cannot even conceive of the belief in a Creator if, at the same time, I am to believe that our Creator has knowingly limited our intelligence to require that we allow someone else to do our thinking for us. That would be an intolerable contradiction.

The conflict over the Jewish Holocaust is one more attack, I might add a most vicious attack, on truth and honesty, an attack which must be defeated. Why? Because it is what has come to be known as 'a zero-sum game', which means that the loser takes nothing. To make it perfectly clear, that is to say if we are the losers in this conflict with Jewish supremacists, the great civilization of the West is finished.

ADDENDUM: If and when Western Civilization dies, and it remains only for historians to write about its demise, its termination might well be referred to as the great take-down. And who should be credited with engineering the great take-down? Well, Satan and his host of mortal captives and servants, of course. The underlying guiding rule of life, believe it or not, for those choice mortals who created the glorious preeminence of Western Culture was a stern rule: Straight is the way and narrow the path; a rule which, as we can see, is the precise polar opposite of the rule followed by the destroyers of Western Culture: Manifold and devious are the ways and labyrinthine is the path. The latter rule is Mammon's rule.

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Seven days in 'Jewish Germany' – NATHAN BURSTEIN , THE JERUSALEM POST

For at least another dozen generations or so, flying into Germany will remain an unsettling experience for Jews, even if the Jews in question haven't experienced a single moment's turbulence.

It's also a feeling, for better or worse, that will stay with most Jewish travelers as they continue on their trip, which in my case was a seven-day tour of "Jewish Germany" organized by the country's Tourism Ministry.

Wilkommen, in other words, to the Germany of 2007, a place actively seeking Jewish visitors and hoping to show off, if that's the right expression, the remnants of a culture it almost wiped out.

As magazines and newspapers were busy pointing out this summer, contemporary Germany enjoys a flourishing economy and perhaps unprecedented international prestige. "Jewish Germany," by contrast, remains a haunted place, quiet and solemn and only partly filled with the synagogues and graveyards the Nazis didn't manage to destroy. It's certainly an unconventional choice for a vacation.

But although it's understandably not for everyone, the Germany of the current moment offers much to Jewish travelers - more than to many others, even, owing precisely to its charged, complicated history.

Holocaust tourism will always be a somewhat uncomfortable affair, and some people will inevitably be repulsed by the thought of it - a reaction that is, of course, completely their right. For this traveler, however, the trip proved ultimately rewarding, a chance to see where Germany stands now in relation to its past, and to pay my respects to the communities and individuals who were obliterated.

BERLIN

For history-minded Jewish visitors, one of the key pleasures of a trip to Germany is knowing that your mere presence would make Hitler and his accomplices even crazier - if, that is, they weren't already busy burning in hell.

Still, it's a place where even routine behavior can take on a certain emotional resonance: Eating in one of Berlin's stylish restaurants, for example, can become a guilty reminder of the starvation imposed on earlier generations.

Ravaged by war and then divided by the victors, Berlin maintains more public reminders of the Third Reich than perhaps any other German city. In the reunified capital, it's possible quite literally to trip over the past, thanks to the installation of thousands of small "stumbling blocks" that protrude from sidewalks to remind pedestrians of the city's history. Marked with Holocaust victims' names and birthdays, as well as the year and place in which they died, the blocks number roughly 11,000 across Germany, though the large majority are found in Berlin.

Walking around the city, it becomes possible, somewhat perversely, to understand Berlin as the doppelganger to Judaism's own capital: Just as many people have trouble believing in Jerusalem as a real, physical location - and not just a place of legend like Atlantis or Camelot - Berlin can also be difficult to imagine. But it is in fact a place where people work, sleep and play, and seeing it in living color - and not just in black-and-white film footage - has unquestionable value.

For the first-time Jewish visitor, Berlin contains endless surprises, though some are surprising mostly because they at first seem so mundane.

The house still standing at 56/58 Am Grossen Wannsee Strasse, for example, so like the others around it, is in fact the site of the infamous Wannsee conference, the place where Hitler's elite worked out the details of European Jewry's destruction. (Then as now, the picturesque, lakefront Wannsee district remains a highly desirable area - enough, in fact, that local gossips claim Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have bought property there.) Quiet and contemplative, the building's atmosphere belies the mass killing planned in its conference room, which stands not far from the fireplace where Adolf Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich toasted each other with cognac after designing their history-altering Final Solution. Laden with photos and educational materials in English, German and Hebrew, the so-called Wannsee Villa features a guest book near its exit where many visitors have written, as they have at other such sites, "Am Yisrael Hai" (The People of Israel Live).

A short drive away - and worthwhile precisely because, unlike Wannsee, it isn't famous - is the Gleis 17 Memorial at the Grunewald railway station. Situated at the meeting point between two quiet, upper-middle-class streets, the station served as a deportation site for the Jews of Berlin, who were quite openly trucked and sometimes marched past the well-to-do residents of the neighborhood before being sent on their way to Theresienstadt, Lodz and, eventually, directly to Auschwitz.

Trains still pass through the Grunewald station, though Gleis (track) 17 is no longer used. A stark gray wall running parallel to the track showcases indented human silhouettes, an artist's effective rendering of lives rubbed out. Plaques bearing information about human "transports" from the station show that they continued until March 1945, even as Stalin's troops closed in on the eastern side of the city.

Berlin's most famous Holocaust memorials convey their own sort of power, though not one always absorbed by locals. The refurbished New Synagogue - actually a partly rebuilt version of the city's main pre-war synagogue - sits on Oranienburger Strasse, at night a popular strolling ground for prostitutes and their clients.

Those in the mood will be deeply affected by the bleakly suggestive Holocaust Memorial - a dark field of 2,700 mausoleum-like structures located within walking distance of the future US embassy and the Brandenburg Gate. (Those not in the mood during my visit included a small group of pre-teens who, regrettably if predictably, saw the memorial as an ideal spot for a running, shouting game of hide-and-seek.)

Lingering opposition to a Jewish presence in Berlin still isn't hard to find - it didn't take much digging on one evening to learn the strongly xenophobic views of one young resident, who evidently felt perfectly comfortable describing her problems with locals of Middle Eastern extraction, be they Turks, Arabs or Israelis. ("Though you all seem very nice," she added.)

At the "Wives of Jewish Husbands Memorial" on Rosenstrasse - named for hundreds of non-Jewish women who successfully protested for their husbands' release - someone else had spray-painted the words "Sieg Heil," also writing the name of the gas used at Auschwitz to get his or her message across.

But being in Berlin is in part about choosing what to focus on: whether to concentrate on students of Turkish ancestry who refuse to participate on school outings to the comprehensive Jewish Museum, or on the fact that the museum greeted its four-millionth visitor in June. (Nearly half the visitors are German, museum officials note, and the vast majority are believed to be non-Jewish.)

Like the country more generally, Berlin remains an ambiguous place. Anonymous thugs still write disgusting things in public places. But nowadays, at least, there are also Germans like the one guiding my group through the city - well-informed, thoughtful people who express genuine anger, as well as embarrassment, when incidents like this occur. They then call the police, who are charged with coming to repair the site and investigate its defacement.

DRESDEN

Has any city's public image been transformed and retransformed more completely than Dresden's? Widely considered one of Europe's most beautiful cities before the war - it was known to some as "Florence on the Elbe" - Dresden became the symbol of Germany's self-inflicted devastation in February 1945, when the city underwent perhaps the most famous firebombing of the war.

Immortalized in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, the city quickly became a symbol of East German communism after the war, a bleak center of destruction made all the more miserable by its rulers, who rebuilt only 26 of the 700 buildings demolished in the bombings. Much of the rubble was left in place as a testament to the suffering of Dresden's people or, depending on your interpretation, as a reflection of their wickedness.

Flooded at war's end by ethnic Germans fleeing the Soviet advance, Dresden today is home to four-fifths the population it had in 1945. (Berlin, not coincidentally, also has a smaller population today than it did before the war.) But after decades as an emblem of Soviet-bloc stagnation, Dresden is blossoming once again, and can serve as a convenient, historically rich spot on tours of either Germany or Central Europe. Equidistant from Berlin and Prague - it's about two hours by train in each direction - the Saxon capital is four hours from Budapest and quickly returning to its former glory.

Sixty years after its destruction, the city's most famous building, the Frauenkirche church, reopened in October 2005, drawing more than 2 million visitors in the 23 months since. After withstanding the city's firebombing, the badly damaged church collapsed the next day, with the resulting ruins kept as a monument until reconstruction began in 1993. Nearly identical to the original church, the new building is beautiful both literally and as a symbol of the city's restoration.

Ten minutes' walk from the Frauenkirche stands the former site of another religious building - Dresden's synagogue, burned to the ground on Kristallnacht. A new synagogue - the first built in what was the former East Germany - opened in 2001 on the anniversary of the pogrom and is located within easy walking distance of the old site.

In contrast to the Frauenkirche, which was built as a replica of the original building, the new synagogue is designed in a distinctly different style, one highlighting the still tentative existence of Dresden's Jewry. Numbering 5,000 on the eve of the war, Dresden's Jewish population had built its previous synagogue almost like a church, hoping the appearance of the building would strengthen the community's credentials as fully German. (The city is home today to slightly over 700 Jews, the large majority from the former Soviet Union.)

Built across a courtyard from a small Jewish community center, the new synagogue in many ways resembles a giant mausoleum - imposing, quiet and somehow empty of life, even when a small group of visitors enters the facility. (Unlike at the Frauenkirche, tours of the Dresden synagogue must be arranged in advance by e-mail. Services are not offered regularly, and a member of the Jewish community expressed doubt that more than two bar mitzva ceremonies had been held in the previous year. "It's a lot of old people," he said.)

The contrast between the unassuming Jewish center and the proud Frauenkirche is striking. The buildings are connected in one surprising way, however, both adorned with religious symbols saved from their predecessors' destruction. Worshipers at the Frauenkirche can direct their prayers toward a cross pulled from the post-firebombing rubble; at the entrance to Dresden's new synagogue is a Star of David - salvaged after Kristallnacht by a city firefighter, who then secretly preserved it in his house until after the war.

FRANKFURT and WORMS

German street signs can be unexpectedly eye-catching, be they in Berlin (David Ben-Gurion Strasse, Yitzhak Rabin Strasse) or in a small place like Worms (Judengasse, or "Jews' Lane," a euphemistic name for what was once the town's tightly packed ghetto).

In Frankfurt, the Nazis went on a name-changing spree not long after taking power, altering the names of 150 streets even as they prepared to enact far more significant changes in the lives of the city's 32,000 Jews. (Roughly 8,000 live in the city today.) Not far from Frankfurt's municipal Holocaust memorial stands the Bonneplatz, a site marked with no fewer than five street signs documenting the location's various name changes since its designation as the Judenmarkt (Jews' Market) in 1885.

By then, Frankfurt's Jewish history already stretched back more than 800 years, going at least as far as a rabbi's written instructions in 1074 about how to observe Shabbat when attending a trade fair.

Located in Germany's southwest, the Frankfurt region attracted Jews from opposing sides of the Diaspora, drawing migrants from Spain, Italy and southern France by Charlemagne's time and later bringing those fleeing persecution under the czars.

As in Berlin and Dresden, local tour guides demonstrate extensive knowledge of formerly Jewish sites, which in Frankfurt can be seen on a walking tour between the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Museum Judengasse. Located above the remnants of the historical Jewish ghetto, the museum offers well-presented artifacts "rediscovered" after the war, with displays including a mikve and foundations left from the area's cramped housing. (On seeing the ghetto, which was locked on Christian holidays and at night, Goethe was moved to remark on the alley's smell, but not on the living conditions of its people.)

Jews' long history in the region is implicitly measured by the destruction of their property, and nearby Worms - an hour's drive away on the Rhine - can claim the first burning of its synagogue in 1096, an attack carried out by Crusaders bound for the Holy Land but unable to contain their zeal.

The city's Jewish cemetery reached capacity, ominously, in 1938, the same year arsonists destroyed its synagogue on Kristallnacht. Rebuilt in 1961, the modest but immaculately maintained new synagogue stands next to the mikve and not far from the city's Jewish Museum. Another short walk away is a building once known as the Rashi Yeshiva, named for the talmudic scholar who finished his studies in the city sometime around 1065.

Unaware of the cataclysm lying ahead, the Jews of Rashi's time clung to values recognizable today - values immortalized in Hebrew on the city's oldest surviving Jewish gravestone. Fill your life with work and prayer, the gravestone suggests, but don't, heaven forbid, die at 26 and still single.

Perhaps the most effective Jewish matchmaking advertisement in all of medieval Europe, the gravestone's inscription broadcasts for all eternity the identity of the deceased, a young man named only - apprehensive Jewish singles take note - as one "Jacob the Bachelor." It's details like these that inject Jewish Germany with whispers of life, suggesting in small pieces what a rich culture eventually was lost. Remnants of that culture now sit preserved across Germany, waiting in silence for those who come to remember.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411416218&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Adelaide Institute’s comment on above: That’s progress: >Jewish Germany<, now also the offending >German Jews< disappears = Jewish Germans! Next = German Germany? Michael Walsh: >>Ah, but the pendulum swings and it's at the end of its present arc.<<

BERLIN, Sept. 16 — Hitler’s globe is missing.

Wolfram Pobanz, a 68-year-old retired cartographer, is positive that it’s not the one in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, with the Russian bullet hole through Germany, and he can prove it.

Neither is it the one in the Märkisches Museum, the Berlin history museum nearby, nor the one in a geographical institute across town, which first caught Mr. Pobanz’s eye 40-odd years ago when he was a student.

“We called it the Führer globe,” he remembered. It planted the seed of his fascination with the Columbus Globe for State and Industry Leaders, as this enormous model was called — a far cry from the inflatable version that Charlie Chaplin bounced around in “The Great Dictator,” which mocked Hitler’s megalomania and created the indelible vision of a fascist tyrant doing a pas de deux with the planet.

Manufactured in two limited editions in Berlin during the mid-1930s (the second edition changed Abyssinia to Italian East Africa), the real Columbus globe was nearly the size of a Volkswagen and, at the time, more expensive. A standard wood base was designed to support it, but custom furniture stands were made for Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Mr. Pobanz has been methodically tracking them down.

White-haired, large, jowly and bespectacled, an unstoppable St. Bernard of enthusiasm for all things globe-related, he came the other day to the Deutsches Historisches Museum with a stack of books and photocopied evidence in his satchel, happy to lay it all out.

“He’s a very serious man with a passion for this particular type of globe,” said the museum’s director, Hans Ottomeyer. Mr. Ottomeyer had mentioned Mr. Pobanz in passing during a conversation about Berliners with remarkable obsessions.

Mr. Pobanz’s full story turns out to be a mystery. Besides the globes in Berlin, he said, there are two Columbus globes in public collections in Munich. Fellow globe hunters, put on the scent by word of his pursuit, have turned up several more in private hands and elsewhere, outside Germany. None, however, is from Hitler’s office in the New Reich Chancellery, the globe that inspired Chaplin.

In Chaplin’s satiric film the globe is a balloon, an emblem of megalomania, which suddenly bursts in the fictional tyrant’s face. The image became a cinematic touchstone: art transformed into political symbol, shaping history.

Hitler, more than any modern tyrant, grasped the power of visual signs. He cooked up the Nazi Party uniform and the flag and hired Albert Speer to design the New Chancellery, where the giant Columbus globe, with a sharp-cornered, stepped wood base, was parked in Hitler’s quarters. Newsreels and still photographs from the time the building opened, in 1939, show visitors trekking down marbled passageways more than four football fields long to reach the Führer. It was Chaplin’s genius, in 1940, to exploit the symbolism of the globe.

“It has been a trait of megalomaniacs throughout history to use the arts to control thought, gain respectability, bolster their power and memorialize themselves,” Frederic Spotts, a historian of modern Germany, observes in his book “Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.” But Hitler went “beyond the others,” he writes, and “defined and legitimized his rule in cultural terms.”

Chaplin’s sight gag, you might say, gained weight precisely by playing off Hitler’s use of visual symbols.

Funny thing is, “Hitler probably didn’t think anything about the globe,” Mr. Pobanz said. “There’s no picture of Hitler beside the globe. He controlled all photographs of himself. If the globe had actually meant anything special to Hitler, there would surely be a photograph.”

“For me this is not about Hitler, it’s about the correctness of the situation,” he insisted. When a Berlin newspaper last year called the Deutsches Historisches Museum’s globe “the Globe of the Mass Murderer,” he simply felt, as a scholar, that the record should be set straight. Whether he would be going to the same lengths to uncover the pedigree of a globe attributed to Konrad Adenauer or John Foster Dulles, he didn’t say.

Instead, he said, “I don’t know how many of these globes were made because the Columbus factory was destroyed in 1943, along with its archives.” Mr. Pobanz pulled out a photocopy of a drawing he had unearthed for a custom base, designed by the Munich studio of Paul Ludwig Troost. Troost was Hitler’s favorite architect during the early 1930s. “This base was made for Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry,” he said.

It was identical to the one for the globe at the Deutsches Historisches Museum. “So this globe could only have been made for Ribbentrop,” he said.

He did not pause to contemplate if the provenance made much difference, morally speaking. “The globes designed for the New Reich Chancellery had a more angular base,” he said, then unveiled a different photocopy.

About the two globes in Munich, he explained, one came from Hitler’s offices there (also with a bullet hole in it, American). So that is a Hitler globe, but it’s still not the model ordered by Speer for the New Reich Chancellery, which Chaplin immortalized. The second globe in Munich came from a Nazi administrative building. Both pedigrees are documented, Mr. Pobanz said.

He then leapt into a list of international globe organizations. Mr. Pobanz belongs, he explained, to the International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes, through which “I’ve heard about a globe in Breslau, and another in Warsaw.” Meanwhile Globusfreund (Friend of the Globe) magazine, based in Vienna, he said, has been pressing him to publish his research. The unmistakable anxiety of a man contemplating a prospective deadline suddenly flashed across his face.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m still collecting evidence.”

First interested in maps and globes because of their artistry and technical complexity, as a boy he made field trips in Germany and long bicycle tours across Europe. “Maps contain the imagination of the world,” he said. “You can’t go to all the places, but you can travel in your mind.”

He lives alone, he said. He has no family. Before tackling this Hitler globe mystery, he specialized in maps from the Soviet Union and East Germany, tracking down errors planted to throw off enemies from military sites. The suggestion that he’s a map detective seems to offend his sensibility.

He opened a blue folder of papers to a photocopy showing a group of Russian soldiers in the New Reich Chancellery in May 1945, crowded around Hitler’s globe. “I don’t know where it is,” he said, studying the image for a second.

“Maybe it’s in Moscow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/arts/design/18globe.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&adxnnl=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190170974cAKpg6KtpzguNBwTLxRnwQ&oref=slogin

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Fears grow over neo-Nazi ‘school’

02 August 2007

By By Toby Axelrod Berlin

Local authorities fear that the German right-wing extremist National Democratic Party (NPD) is to open a training school near Berlin.

A source in the Interior Ministry of the State of Brandenburg confirmed that Gonda Molau, wife of Andreas Molau — 39-year-old party board member and publisher of the NPD newspaper the German Voice — had bought the isolated former farm and hotel in Rauen. The Interior Ministry, which also is responsible for security matters, will pay careful attention to further developments, the source added. There have long been suspicions that the party has been planning to open a training and educational centre in the region.
The NPD’s anti-foreigner and antisemitic policies have brought it under federal scrutiny, with many calling for the party to be banned. However, German laws designed to safeguard democracy militate against such bans.

Nevertheless, local politicians do not relish the idea of such an institution in their midst. Geert Piorkowski, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg, said authorities were looking into the purchase.
NPD spokesman Klaus Beier confirmed plans for an educational centre, but said that several properties were under consideration.

http://www.thejc.com/Home.aspx?ParentId=m11s19&AId=54361&ATypeId=1&secid=19&prev=true

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Spain arrests right-wing publisher wanted in Austria for Holocaust denial

The Associated Press, August 23, 2007

MADRID, Spain: Spanish police on Thursday arrested a right-wing writer and publisher wanted in his home country of Austria for repeatedly denying the existence of the Jewish Holocaust and the use of gas chambers, officials said.

Gerd Honsik was arrested in the southern city of Malaga, a police spokeswoman said. No more details on his arrest were immediately available.

Honsik had fled to Spain after being convicted in 1992 in Austria of neo-Nazi activities and sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison for writings that defended Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Between 1986 and 1989 Honsik published writings in a book disputing among other things that the Nazis systematically killed hundreds of thousands of Jews at Auschwitz and other extermination camps during World War II.

The Austrian judge who convicted him ruled that Honsik's writings were a misleading, propaganda-like presentation of Nazi activities and that they lacked objectivity.

The Vienna public prosecutor's office said Thursday it had issued a European warrant seeking Honsik's arrest, based on suspicions that he had committed other offenses since Austria enacted a landmark 1992 law making it a crime to deny the Holocaust or promote Nazi propaganda.

It was unclear whether or when authorities might lodge a formal request to have Honsik extradited to Austria.

Justice Minister Maria Berger said in a statement she was pleased with the arrest, calling it part of "the fight against racism and xenophobia."

*****

In Germany they'll throw you in prison for nominating the wrong person for a Nobel Peace Prize

Udo Voigt

Wow, isn't Germany the epitome of a modern democracy? Earlier this year German courts condemned Ernst Zundel for calling Israel "a place of refuge for world gansterism." Can you imagine? Personally I thought that was a well known fact, I guess not, at least in the German court system. Scrutinize the very first sentence of this Reuters article carefully and replace the name "Adolf Hitler," with any other name you can think of. Go ahead and try it, hell put Judas Iscariot's name in there if you like, or Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, whatever. Can't you see how damn silly it is? Can't you? The German government has no shame whatsoever, it is led by neo-Bolsheviks ruling under the guise of a modern democracy. The German people themselves are ashamed of their disgusting government, the only reason Americans aren't more aware of this than they are is for exactly the same reason Germans don't know how sick Americans are of their government, the MEDIA.

German police charge far-right leader over remarks on Nazi Rudolf Hess

By Reuters

German police have charged the leader of a far-right political party with inciting racial hatred after he recommended Adolf Hitler's former deputy for the Nobel peace prize.

Police in the eastern city of Jena said on Friday they had filed the charge against Udo Voigt, head of the National Democratic Party (NPD), after he proposed the late Rudolf Hess for the prestigious award during a speech last weekend.

If convicted of incitement, Voigt could face a jail term of up to three years or a fine, police said.
Voigt made the comment in Jena last Saturday as he marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Hess.

That evening, a mob of 50 attacked and chased eight Indian men through the town of Muegeln, east of Jena.

Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the Muegeln attack, which has prompted a fresh round of soul-searching in Germany about far-right violence, and renewed calls for action against it.

Far-right attacks have been a recurring problem in the poorer eastern states of Germany since reunification in 1990.

The NPD has no seats in Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, but is represented in the legislatures of two eastern states, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Members of the NPD in Saxony's state parliament provoked outrage in 2005 by walking out of a commemoration for the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp and calling the Allied air raids on Dresden in 1945 a "bombing holocaust". [There it is, they always mention the holocaust don't they?]

Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials and died in Spandau prison in 1987. [Unmentioned in this article is the fact that he didn't just die, he was found hanged under the MOST mysterious of circumstances. Funny how the media neglects to mention these sill things isn't it?]

Source = Haaretz –

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/897159.html

http://pcapostate.blogspot.com/2007/08/in-germany-theyll-throw-you-in-prison.html

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QUESTIONED UNDER 'TERRORISM' ACT. German dissident ordered deported from Britain .

NSNS Tuesday, 18 September 2007 neworder@execpc.com

LONDON — Veteran German dissident Manfred Roeder has been ordered deported from Britain on orders from the Home Secretary "for the public good."

Roeder arrived Sunday at Heathrow Airport on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. He had planned to pay a social call on friends in London.

Roeder, who is 78 years old and has suffered several strokes, was detained on arrival by two plain clothes officers who refused to give their names. Photographed seven times and fingerprinted twice, his passport and luggage were confiscated and copies of his personal diary, address book and other documents were taken.

For more than three hours the German freedom fighter was questioned under the so-called Terrorism Act, and he was not allowed to contact either his German office or the British colleague waiting for him in the arrivals area at Heathrow.
Eventually police contacted the British colleague and questioned him about Roeder's travel plans and political connections in the UK.

Authorities refuse to cooperate

At no time was there any suggestion that the German dissident or his British colleagues had committed — or were preparing to commit — any crime in the UK, let alone a terrorist act.

On the form giving "Reasons for Detention", which states "detention is only used when there is no reasonable alternative available," none of the boxes giving reasons for detention were checked. It was claimed only that "your release is not considered conducive to the public good."

A British lawyer was put on the case in an effort to ascertain Roeder's whereabouts. Despite repeated calls to Heathrow and the local Paddington Green police station, authorities refused to cooperate. The Terrorism Act documents served on the German dissident do not carry the names or signatures of the arresting and interrogating officers, who are identified only as 176519 and 180813. Eventually after 6 p.m. — almost five hours after arriving at the airport — Roeder was told that despite being an EU national he was excluded from the UK on the orders of the Home Secretary.

Fewer rights than illegal immigrants

The official notice stated that "the Secretary of State has given his personal direction that you should be refused admission to the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here would not be conducive to the public good on the grounds of public policy." In an Alice-in-Wonderland gesture, Roeder was told that "Regulation 26" gave him the right of appeal, but that "Regulation 27" dictated that he could only lodge this appeal after he had been deported.

By contrast, an illegal immigrant or bogus asylum seeker from any corner of the globe — who would be allowed to remain in the country for months or years while appealing — would have far greater legal rights than a fellow EU national.
As a final snub to the German dissident, he was not allowed to inform his colleagues in Britain or Germany as to which flight he was being deported on, thus preventing him from being picked up in Frankfurt. To prevent his absconding from the plane (sic), the passport of the 70-year-old was ordered retained by the airline staff until his arrival in Germany.

A detailed appeal is currently being prepared against this arbitrary action by UK authorities.

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Montenegro unearths WWII troops - Hundreds of soldiers from Nazi Germany were killed in Montenegro.

Forensic experts have unearthed the remains of dozens of German soldiers buried in Montenegro's capital during World War II, officials say. The remains were discovered during construction work a few kilometres from the centre of Podgorica. Many more soldiers are believed to be buried in the area, German and Montenegrin experts say. More than 2,100 German soldiers are thought to have died in Montenegro in the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia.

The remains in Podgorica were identified as German soldiers by metal identity tags found among human bones and personal items, AFP quotes Montenegrin forensic expert Dejan Popovic as saying.

The remains are to be reburied in a cemetery in the former Yugoslav republic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6999601.stm

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GAVE VIGOROUS DEFENSE AT HOLOCAUST™ SHOW TRIAL

Zündel attorney accused of 'mass incitement'
NSNS 19 September 2007.

Defense attorney Jürgen Rieger tries to bring evidence before the court.

MANNHEIM — The Mannheim state attorney's office has brought nine counts of Volksverhetzung "mass incitement" — against Politically Incorrect attorney Jürgen Rieger. The 61-year-old dissident, previously convicted on similar charges, had defended Holocaust™ challenger Ernst Zündel in court. According to a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Rieger himself is accused of having, as Zündel's defense counsel, repeatedly disputed and "played down" the alleged genocide of Jews in World War II.

In addition, the state attorney's office is seeking to have the well-known Hamburg jurist barred from legal practice. No date has been set for trial of the case.

In February Zündel was sentenced to a maximum five years in prison for so-called mass incitement. According to the court, he disputed the death of six million Jews on the Internet from Canada and in related publications.

Rieger

Jürgen Rieger

Another Zündel attorney charged

The federal court, meanwhile, has rejected an appeal. At the trial, Zündel's defense — representing five lawyers before the court — called the casualty figures of the Jewish "holocaust" into question.

Another Zündel defense attorney, Sylvia Stolz, has been accused of Volksverhetzung. She has been ordered to appear on November 15 before the state court in Mannheim. The state attorney's office is likewise seeking to have her disbarred from legal practice.

Because of "sabotage" the lawyer was excluded from the Zündel trial. She is accused of having signed a letter to the court with "Heil Hitler."

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http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/bw//id=1622/nid=1622/did=2607832/15hkrw/

Mannheim: Zündel-Anwalt wegen Volksverhetzung angeklagt.

Die Mannheimer Staatsanwaltschaft hat gegen den rechtsextremen Anwalt Jürgen Rieger Anklage wegen Volksverhetzung in neun Fällen erhoben. Der einschlägig vorbestrafte 61-Jährige verteidigte den rechtskräftig verurteilten Holocaust-Leugner Ernst Zündel vor Gericht.

http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/bw//id=1622/vv=zoomNoJs/nid=1622/did=2607862/5we03m/index.html

Wie ein Sprecher der Anklagebehörde mitteilte, wird Rieger vorgeworfen, als Verteidiger Zündels den Völkermord an den Juden in der NS-Zeit selbst wiederholt öffentlich abgestritten oder verharmlost zu haben. Außerdem strebt die Staatsanwaltschaft für den bundesweit bekannten Hamburger Juristen und NPD-Funktionär ein Berufsverbot als Strafverteidiger an. Terminiert wurde der Prozeß vor dem Mannheimer Landgericht bislang nicht.

Opferzahlen des Holocaust angezweifelt

Das Landgericht hatte Zündel im Februar wegen Volksverhetzung zur Höchststrafe von fünf Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt. Laut Gericht hatte er von Kanada aus im Internet und in einschlägigen Publikationen den millionenfachen Mord an den Juden während des Nationalsozialismus bestritten. Inzwischen verwarf der Bundesgerichtshof die Revision. In dem Prozeß hatten Zündels Verteidiger - vor Gericht ließ er sich von fünf Anwälten vertreten - die Opferzahlen beim Holocaust in Zweifel gezogen.

Weitere Zündel-Verteidigerin angeklagt

Auch einer weiteren Zündel-Verteidigerin droht eine Verurteilung wegen Volksverhetzung. Vom 15. November an muß sie sich vor dem Landgericht Mannheim verantworten. Für die Juristin strebt die Staatsanwaltschaft ebenfalls ein Berufsverbot an. Die Anwältin war wegen "Sabotage" von dem Prozeß gegen Zündel ausgeschlossen worden. Einen Brief an ein Gericht hatte sie mit "Heil Hitler" unterschrieben.

The German Federal Court of Justice http://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/ - official website, in German - said Monday it has dismissed - press release http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgibin/rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bgh&Art=pm&Datum=2007&Sort=3&nr=41158&pos=0&anz=129 - an appeal made by writer Ernst Zundel [ADL profile; CBC profile - http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/zundel/ to overturn his February conviction for denying the Holocaust. Earlier this year, Zundel was sentenced to five years - http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/02/german-court-sentences-zundel-to-5.php - in prison after the court found him guilty on 14 counts of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead [JURIST reports - http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/11/germany-tries-itinerant-holocaust.php. Holocaust denial constitutes a crime under Section 130 (3)text – http://web.archive.org/web/20070707132142/http:/www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/StGB.htm#130 - of the German Federal Criminal Code, which provides:

Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or renders harmless an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the type indicated in Section 220a subsection (1) [genocide], in a manner capable of disturbing the public piece shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine.

In his closing argument, Zundel maintained that the Holocaust never happened.

Zundel left Germany for Canada in 1958, but after a unsuccessful bid to gain Canadian citizenship and a short stay in the United States he was deported to Germany in 2005 after being judged a national security threat. A Canadian court convicted him in 1988 of "spreading false news" in an anti-Holocaust tract, but the "false news" law was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada - judgment - http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1992/1992rcs2-731/1992rcs2-731.html, which held it contrary to freedom of expression. Germany issued an international warrant for Zundel's arrest in 2003, and took him in to custody immediately after he was returned by Canadian authorities in March 2005. In its rejection of his appeal, the federal court also affirmed a lower court's ruling that Zundel's sentence should not be reduced because he had been detained by Canadian authorities before being deported to Germany. AP has more http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070917/ernst_zundel_070917/20070917?hub=World. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/09/germany-court-rejects-zundel-appeal-of.php

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Holocaust denier's sentence upheld - JTA, 09/17/2007

Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel will not avoid prison. The German Federal High Court confirmed Monday that it has upheld the 68-year-old Zundel's five-year prison sentence. On Sept. 12, the court rejected a 600-page proposed revision in the sentence, according to German news reports. After a yearlong trial Zundel, one of the world's most active Holocaust deniers, was sentenced Feb. 15 by the Mannheim district court on charges of denying the Holocaust on his Canada and U.S.-based Internet site. In justifying the sentence, the presiding judge, Ulrich Meinerzhagen, had described Zundel as an "extreme anti-Semite" and "committed National Socialist" who sought to glamorize Hitler and make him seem harmless. Zundel, a German native, was arrested in Canada in February 2003 and deported to Germany two years later. Reportedly he is one of the first right-wing extremists to use the Internet to spread hate material worldwide. http://www.jta.org/cgibin/iowa/breaking/104172.html

**************

http://www.swr.de//id=116/1p6o6z0/index.html

Mannheim: Zündel-Anwalt wegen Volksverhetzung angeklagt

Opferzahlen des Holocaust angezweifelt

Das Landgericht hatte Zündel im Februar wegen Volksverhetzung zur Höchststrafe von fünf Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt. Laut Gericht hatte er von Kanada aus im Internet und in einschlägigen Publikationen den millionenfachen Mord an den Juden während des Nationalsozialismus bestritten. Inzwischen verwarf der Bundesgerichtshof die Revision. In dem Prozess hatten Zündels Verteidiger - vor Gericht ließ er sich von fünf Anwälten vertreten - die Opferzahlen beim Holocaust in Zweifel gezogen.

Weitere Zündel-Verteidigerin angeklagt

Auch einer weiteren Zündel-Verteidigerin droht eine Verurteilung wegen Volksverhetzung. Vom 15. November an muss sie sich vor dem Landgericht Mannheim verantworten. Für die Juristin strebt die Staatsanwaltschaft ebenfalls ein Berufsverbot an. Die Anwältin war wegen "Sabotage" von dem Prozess gegen Zündel ausgeschlossen worden. Einen Brief an ein Gericht hatte sie mit "Heil Hitler" unterschrieben. Letzte Änderung am: 18.09.2007, 17.12 Uhr

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Fredrick Töben comments: info@adelaideinstitute.org September 19, 2007 7:26 PM.

Subject: Zündel lawyer Rieger faces charges concocted by Mannheim state prosecutor

German law is madness objectified - defend yourself and you face a further charge because by mounting a defence you are informing the court that you refuse to show remorse-contrition, exactly as prevailed during the witch trials where evidence to prove that someone was a witch consisted of mere words and no physical evidence was necessary to prove the allegation.

Defence counsel, Jürgen Rieger, rigorously defends his client, Ernst Zündel, then is himself charged for offending against Section 130. How can this happen in a German court?

In Common Law countries anything canvassed in court is privileged and so anything arising out of a defence cannot be used against a defence counsel. Absolute privilege attaches to any material brought into court. It is the judge who determines what is admissible or inadmissible in a matter. The infamous >Holocaust< trials are modelled on witch trials, or the modern version of the Stalinist show trials.

It is Horst Mahler's provocative stance before the German courts to bring about a situation where judges themselves become aware of their own absurd illogical rulings, as Mahler is currently doing by claiming that his National Socialist world view is compatible with the German constitution - Grundgesetz - which guarantees such freedom of expression.

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German federal state wins battle to get Hitler book

- 24.08.2007 İstanbul Today’s Zaman

Bavaria, one of Germany’s federal states, has won a legal battle to get the publication and sale of Adolf Hitler’s infamous book “Mein Kampf” banned in Turkey after the book became a best-seller here, a Turkish news report said yesterday. The court case was the latest attempt on the part of Bavaria to stop Turkish publication and sale of the book written by Hitler in prison before he rose to power, reports the daily Hürriyet. After becoming a best-seller in Turkey earlier this year, with publishers saying more than 100,000 copies have been sold, Bavaria took action to intervene. In letters to publishers, Bavarian officials argued that the book’s copyright belonged to the German federal state everywhere except in the United States and Britain. Some eight publishing houses responded to the Bavarian letter, providing legal promises that they would stop publishing and selling the book. But six others refused to comply with Bavarian demands, prompting the German federal state to file a lawsuit against them. The two-year court case resulted in a decision upholding the Bavarian position and the final verdict banned Turkish publishers from publishing and selling the book. The sudden rise in the book’s popularity caused concern in Europe and among Turkey’s Jewish community.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=120254

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MP Julia Pitera

- photo: wikicommons

Polish opposition MP denies having praised Hitler. September 19. 2007

MP Julia Pitera, from Poland’s largest opposition party, the centre-right Civic Platform (PO) has denied allegations by Arkadiusz Czartoryski, from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS), that she had praised Adolf Hitler’s ‘efficiency’. According to Pitera, Arkadiusz Czartoryski misquoted her. Pitera – previously the head of the Polish branch of Transparency International - explained that she said in a TV interview that she had expected from political experts a comprehensive analysis instead of a brief assessment of politicians’ efficiency. The PO MP said that she had stated in that context that Adolf Hitler was ‘efficient and everyone knew how tragically it ended up.’ Arkadiusz Czartoryski had previously appealed to leader of Civic Platform Donald Tusk to exclude individuals expressing similar opinions from the party’s election rolls. Czartoryski stressed that Julia Pitera had failed to mention any negative aspects of Adolf Hitler’s policies in her utterance and added that a German journalist had been laid off for making similar comments on German TV.

http://www.thenews.pl/archives/1245-Polish-opposition-MP-denies-having-praised-Hitler.html

Former President Jimmy Carter said that he does not think Iran poses an immediate threat to Israel, despite claims by Iranian officials that they have drawn up bombing plans if the Jewish state should attack. Speaking on Wednesday at Emory University, Carter, who brokered the 1979 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, said Israel's superior military power and distance from Iran likely are enough to discourage an actual attack. "Iran is quite distant from Israel," said Carter, 83. "I think it would be almost inconceivable that Iran would commit suicide by launching one or two missiles of any kind against the nation of Israel."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411443616&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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Iran president asks to lay wreath at ground zero, request denied

Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 20, 2007

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked permission to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site when he comes to New York City next week, but the request was denied, a police official said.

The Iranian president, who is arriving Sunday to address the United Nations' General Assembly, had asked the police department, the US Secret Service and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey earlier this month for permission to visit the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police spokesman Paul Browne said Wednesday.

The police and Secret Service provide security to visiting heads of state.

The request to enter the fenced-in site was rejected because of ongoing construction there, Browne said. "Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would also be opposed by the NYPD on security grounds," Browne said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said earlier Wednesday that the city was considering Ahmadinejad's request, but Browne said about two hours later that Kelly had misspoke.

Kelly's comments prompted outcry from politicians and families of Sept. 11 victims.

The Port Authority, which owns the trade center site and is the only agency that could grant permission to go inside, said it attended a meeting with police regarding dignitary visits, not specifically about Ahmadinejad. At that meeting, it was determined that no dignitaries would be allowed inside the site due to ongoing construction, said Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman.

It was not clear whether Ahmadinejad wanted to descend to the base of the trade center site, where the fallen twin towers stood, or lay a wreath on a public sidewalk outside the site.

Kelly earlier said he did not know why Ahmadinejad expressed interest in the site. "I am not sure we have the rationale behind it," he said.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Wednesday that an Ahmadinejad visit to ground zero "is a matter for the city of New York, but it seems more than odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit ground zero."

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters Wednesday that the United States would not support Iran's attempt to use the site for a "photo op."

"Iran can demonstrate its seriousness about concern with regard to terrorism by taking concrete actions," such as dropping support for Hizbullah and suspending their uranium enrichment program, Khalilzad said.

Iran and the US have not had diplomatic relations since Washington cut its ties with Teheran after Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Teheran in 1979. The Bush administration has accused Iran of arming Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq and seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

In a television appearance earlier this week, Ahmadinejad said his country wanted peace and friendship with the United States, despite mounting tensions between the two countries.

Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the UN, said he was not notified officially that Ahmadinejad would not be allowed at the site, but said it was unfortunate.

"President Ahmadinejad intended to lay a wreath at the site of ground zero in order to pay tribute to the victims of the terrorists attack of Sept. 11, 2001. We are hopeful that we can still work something out with the police department," he said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411443831&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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Germany adds $250m. in survivors' pensions

Etgar Lefkovits, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 2, 2007

After months of negotiations, the German government has agreed to add $250 million to its pension program for Holocaust survivors over the next decade, the Claims Conference announced Sunday.

The change, which is expected to benefit around 6,000 elderly Holocaust survivors around the world - nearly one-third of them living in Israel - followed months of negotiations with the German Finance Ministry, the Conference said.

The "Article 2 Fund" pensions will no longer be limited to survivors whose annual income is less than $16,000.

"This was, first and foremost, an issue of principle," said Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference executive vice president. "Since its establishment, the Claims Conference has argued that Holocaust compensation payments are symbolic and should not be based on need."

The agreement on the changes, which go in effect on October 1, stipulates that old age pensions - including governmental pensions and social security payments - will not be counted toward calculation of the income limit, granting benefits to thousands of survivors who were previously ineligible for the stipend, the Conference said.

Germany determine eligibility for the pensions based on a survivor's persecution history, including incarceration in certain camps or ghettos, and time spent in hiding or living under false identity.

Full eligibility criteria are available on the Claims Conference Web site at www.claimscon.org.

Article 2 Fund stipends have paid more than $2 billion to more than 73,000 Holocaust survivors since they were established in 1992 through negotiations with the German government, with monthly payments averaging approximately $320, the Claims Conference said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392518799&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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A Quotation to Remember in Coming Months - per neworder@execpc.com

"But now that I'm on Iran ... the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel ... "

— GEORGE W. BUSH, speaking on March 8, 2006 before the City Club at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, in answer to a question about the role of Judeo-Christian apocalypticism in shaping US foreign policy.

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Frances ReMillard Kamas

Zionist elites in power in the U.S. and Israel have long been drumming for war against Iran and Syria. The excuse is Iran might be developing nuclear weapons or Iran and Syria may be providing weapons to Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian fighters resisting occupation. Never mind that international law gives all people the right to resist occupation, or that the U.S. and Israel openly provide weapons to any who will fight our most recently designated enemy, or that the U.S. and Israel possess a nuclear arsenal dwarfing all others combined.

Recently, Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace, bombing selective targets and bringing us closer to another war. The U.S., by remaining mute, gave tacit approval. I'm tired of all this bad behavior which resembles classic abuser/perpetrator thinking, a demand for privilege that claims the rules apply to others but not to us or Israel. This bullying and entitled thinking is a dead-end, guaranteed to provoke more violence. I am one U.S. citizen who would welcome a return to international law and an empowered United Nations, where all parties, yes, even the United States and Israel, are held to the same standard. We don't need to be above the law.

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Iran's Newest Hero Aids WWII-Era Jews: TV Miniseries Puts Focus on Holocaust

By Nasser Karimi, Associated Press, September 17, 2007

TEHRAN, Sept. 16 -- It is Iran's version of "Schindler's List," a miniseries about an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews escape the Holocaust -- and viewers across the country are riveted. That's surprising enough in a country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's more surprising is that government media produced the series, and it is airing on state-run television.

The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in state media in Iran, school textbooks do not discuss it and Iranians have little information about it.

Yet the series, titled "Zero Degree Turn," offers a sympathetic view of the Jews' plight during World War II.

"Where are they taking them?" the horrified hero, a young diplomat who works at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, asks someone in a crowd of onlookers as men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes are forced into trucks by Nazi soldiers.

"The Fascists are taking the Jews to the concentration camps," the man says.

The hero, Habib Parsa, then begins giving Iranian passports to Jews to allow them to flee occupied France to what was then Palestine.

Though the Habib character is fictional, it is based on a true story of diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Paris in the 1940s who gave out about 500 Iranian passports for Jews to use to escape.

The show may reflect an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make -- that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.

About 25,000 Jews live in Iran, the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel.

The series could not have aired without being condoned by Iran's clerical leadership. The state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say in all matters in Iran.

Moderate conservatives have been gaining ground in Iran, where there is growing discontent with the ruling hard-liners over tensions with the West and a worsening economy.

The government allowed the series to break another taboo: Many actresses appear without conforming to the state-mandated Islamic dress code. The producers wanted to realistically portray 1940s Paris, and thus avoided the head scarves and head-to-foot robes that all women usually must wear on Iranian TV. Ahmadinejad sparked widespread outrage in 2005 when he described the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, as a "myth." He has also said the state of Israel should be "wiped off the map." His government organized a conference in December of Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world.

The TV series has been a revelation for some Iranians since it began in April and has pulled viewers away from more popular satellite channels, which are banned but often watched anyway on illegal dishes. Eight episodes remain.

"Once, I wept when I learned through the film what a dreadful destiny the small nation had during the world war in the heart of so-called civilized Europe," said Mahboubeh Rahamati, a bank teller in Tehran.

The series began with a love story between Habib and a French Jew, Sara Stroke, in the early 1940s. After Paris is occupied by the Nazis, Habib decides to forge Iranian passports for many French Jews to save them from the Holocaust -- starting with Sara and her family.

"I have watched the series from the beginning," said Sedigheh Karandish, a mother of two. "It's pulling me in to see what these two people do at the end. Hopefully, it will be a happy ending."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601363.html