Paul Spiegel seems to be nervous and in somewhat of a retreat mode. As Germany's top Jewish leader, he wants tighter controls on immigrants to Germany who claim to be Jewish but aren't. Most such immigrants have come from the former Soviet Union. Spiegel suggest that additional would-be immigrants ought to study German for two years before being allowed into the country. According to him, almost two-thirds are dependent on social welfare payments.
Tellingly, Spiegel advocates no such means-tests or language skills tests for immigrants from Africa, India, Asia or the Balkans into Germany - just Jews. The reason is that Israel wants first call on Jewish immigrants as cannon fodder for the Israeli Army, since so many native-born Israelis are leaving, fearing a new war.
Paul Spiegel also pitched the lawyers involved in various Holocaust extortion schemes, asking them to forego part of their payment for handling Nazi-era slave labor cases. He wants them to share part of an estimated $51 million due them. He tells them that would be "a gesture of respect." Spiegel told Die Welt, a German weekly, that there was danger in losing sight of the purpose of the lawsuits to begin with. "Earning money should not come before moralistic intentions," an unctuous Mr. Spiegel said.
Trustees of the German fund have discovered that the number of "victims" who "qualify" is far greater than anticipated, which means that the slices of the pie will be smaller. Some "extermination program" those Germans ran, producing ever more "survivors" - 56 years after the war!
It is reported that the Evanston Public Library is listing the Revisionist classic, "The Hoax of the 20th Century" by Dr. Arthur Butz, as an "adult book" to keep young people from catching the Revisionist spirit.
Thirteen Canadian aboriginal youths recently handed a check to the Toronto Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre. These kids sold chocolates and raised a grand total of $326.50. Howard Driman, chair of the Holocaust Centre, stated that he was "extremely touched" by the contribution. The question bears asking how much the Toronto Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre has ever raised for Canada's aboriginals.
A strange story was reported by the Times of London. A Jewish broker, employed by the international money broker Tullett & Tokyo Liberty, arriving late for work, was asked by a colleague to "wear a Hitler uniform."
Mr. Weinberger, 33, refused to wear the outfit. His company ended up having to pay £500,000, even though the defense offered at a preliminary hearing was that the brokers found racial jokes, horseplay and name calling "a useful outlet for the extremely stressful nature of the job".
In an unsuccessful attempt to defend itself from the costly charge, company officials pointed out that Mr. Weinberger had joined in the fun in the past", calling a colleague a "fat Scot" and another a "yok" - apparently a slang name for being non-Jewish. The targeted company claimed that such language was "horseplay"".
This week, the Pope visited Babi Yar, a site near Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, where it is claimed in some accounts more than 300,000 were summarily executed, of which 100,000 are claimed to have been Jews. An Associated Press release calls this visit "Keeping up his tone of atonement for Catholic inaction to stop the Holocaust."
Revisionist research has found that by looking at German air photos taken before and after the alleged "massacre", there was no evidence of any mass grave digging or ground disturbance.
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What the Canadian Germans can't do, Rwandan-Canadians did - protesting the appearance of Bill Clinton to keynote a Holocaust Memorial fundraiser at the Canadian Yad Vashem Society. The Rwandans rightfully claim a far more recent Holocaust of their own and hold the former president of the United States responsible.
Not so, says Mr. Clinton. At the Kigali airport in 1998, Mr. Clinton stated, "The international community must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy."
Referenced at http://www.mcjonline.com/credits.htm, we learn that "Ukrainian victims of Nazi-era war crimes" are filing a class-action lawsuit against the Vatican and a monastic Catholic order. One Jonathan Levy is their attorney. The plaintiffs hope the case will force the Vatican to reveal the participation of Catholic clergy and officials in war crimes, including help given to Nazis wanting to flee Europe during and after the war.
And talking of suing, Lebanon is considering suing Israel for damages for its 1982 invasion by the Israelis, according to Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, after he met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. How much compensation for the victims of Sabra and Shatila?
In the Ukraine, an interesting question is shaping up as to "...who owns the Holocaust, who owns Holocaust commemorations and who has rights to the Jewish heritage in post-Communist Eastern Europe.."
According to Polish and Ukrainian officials, Jewish agents, acting for the Yad Vashem, stole a cultural artifact said to belong to the Ukrainian state. The artifact is called the "Schulz Murals" - wall paintings by a renowned Polish-Jewish artist.
"Israel has a long tradition of 'evacuating' Jewish cultural treasures that were deemed in danger after the Holocaust," said Bernhard Purin, director of the Franconian Jewish Museum in Fuerth, Germany.
There's another Holocaust movie playing at the local art houses. Entertainment Weekly (June 22, 2001, p. 63) hails this new movie, a Czech film titled "Divided We Fall", as an "excellent high-wire Holocaust comedy."
Remember "Jacob the Liar', "Life Is Beautiful, and Jerry Lewis's as-yet-unreleased 1972 film, "The Day the Clown Cried"? Are we witnessing the birth of a new Hollywood genre - laughter at Holocaust victims' expense?
Two American towns have said Nyet to the ever encroaching New World Order and outfits such as the UN. La Verkin and Virgin, two rural southern Utah communities, decided to lock horns with the United Nations.
The two town councils are considering ordinances that would erase all traces of the United Nations presence in their communities, claiming that the international body is usurping the sovereignty of the United States.
"We've been pushed far enough, and long enough," La Verkin Mayor Dan Howard said Monday. "We're tired of marching to [the U.N.] agenda. Maybe now we can start to march on our own agenda."
The proposed ordinance will create a "United Nations-free zone" that would ban aiding the organization with town funds, displaying any U.N. symbols on town property, and prohibit the "involuntary servitude" of any resident in U.N. peacekeeping activities.
Now that's one gutsy American spirit!
Leni Riefenstahl, the 98-year-old film maker best known for her "Triumph of the Will" production of the 1936 Olympics, says defiantly: "I don't regret what I did!"
Riefenstahl was speaking from St. Petersburg, where her films were to be screened at a documentary film festival upon the 60th anniversary of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. A public showing was banned, but a closed screening was quietly approved. However, the festival's organizers were angry at the outcry over Riefenstahl's films. "We made films about [Soviet dictator Josef] Stalin --why is this worse?" said festival director Mikhail Litvyakov. "We need to learn professional tolerance."
And finally, Manfred Roeder has been convicted yet again by a German court, this time for what is described as a series of anti-semitic and racist comments he made at a 1998 meeting of the right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD). Part of his sin was to call the late Ignatz Bubis, head of the German Jews, a "Gauleiter" - a term used in the Third Reich to describe a regional or county official, and by no means a derogatory term. Additionally, Roeder accused former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Bubis' predecessor Heinz Galinski of signing a secret agreement allowing Russian Jews to enter Germany.
Roeder is to serve two years and three months.