Holocaust Enforcer News Update

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Two pieces of news from the Holocaust Orthodoxy crowd - in case you 
haven't yet heard.  The Zundelsite shames the current German 
government for pimping for the Holocaust Enforcers by arresting 
Revisionist leaders in other countries for Mannheim-based 
Stalinist-type show trials  - and salutes the Arolsen folks for 
finally yielding to truth-seeking pressure from legitimate 
revisionist researchers all over the world.  

Regarding these Arolsen archives - don't let yourselves be fooled by 
comments like Sarah Bloomfield's of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum 
- it was outfits like hers that blocked access to Arolsen all along!

At any rate, there's movement on the Big-H Front, some not so good, 
some excellent:

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2 charged for Holocaust denial
18/04/2006 22:26  - (SA)  

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1918387,00.html

Berlin - German prosecutors say they have charged a German far-right 
activist, extradited from the United States, and a Belgian man, 
handed over by the Netherlands, with incitement for allegedly denying 
the Holocaust.

On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western city of Mannheim said Germar 
Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke were accused of "systematically" denying 
or playing down the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in documents and 
on the internet, and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. It carries a maximum 
sentence of five years imprisonment

Rudolf, 41, published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did 
not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He was deported to Germany from the US in November, to serve a 
14-month prison sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges.

Verbeke, 64, was arrested in the Netherlands and also extradited to 
Germany in November.

Prosecutors in Mannheim are leading a similar, but unrelated case, 
against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last year.

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Germany offers to help open records of Holocaust

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.holocaust19apr19,0,5482410.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines


WASHINGTON // Germany said yesterday that it will help clear the way 
for opening records on 17 million victims of the Nazis, a major step 
toward ending a long battle over access to a vast and detailed 
archive from that era.

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country would work 
with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives, which 
are held in the German town of Bad Arolsen, and allow historians and 
survivors access to 30 million to 50 million documents.

Until now, Germany had resisted providing access to the archives, 
pointing to privacy concerns.

The announcement, made at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, came 
after a decades-long effort by Holocaust survivor groups and several 
countries to gain wider access to the archives. In a meeting 
yesterday, Zypries said Germany had changed its position and would 
immediately seek revision of an 11-nation accord governing the 
archives. The 10 other countries must also formally agree if the 
records are to be opened, a process she said would take no more than 
six months.

Edward B. O'Donnell Jr., the State Department's special envoy for 
Holocaust issues, said he was encouraged, but he added, "We still 
have negotiations to do."

The next step is a meeting in Luxembourg on May 15, when all 11 
countries would have to reach a consensus. In some instances, 
parliaments would have to approve the archives' opening as well.

Opening the archives would enable many survivors and families of 
victims of the Nazis to find out with more certainty what happened to 
their relatives.

"We are losing the survivors, and anti-Semitism is on the rise, so 
this move could not be more timely," said Sarah Bloomfield, director 
of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

For 60 years, the International Red Cross has used the archived 
documents to trace missing and dead Jews and forced laborers, who 
were systematically persecuted by Nazi Germany and its confederates 
across central and eastern Europe before and during World War II.

But the archives have remained off-limits to historians and the public.

Speaking in German, Zypries said, "We now agree to open the data in 
Bad Arolsen in Germany. We now assume the data will be safeguarded by 
those countries that copy the material and use it, and now that we 
have made this decision we want to move forward." Her remarks were 
translated into English for reporters.

Germany's privacy law is one of the most restrictive among the 11 
countries, Shapiro said. Remaining safeguards, he said, might limit 
duplicating a document or prevent using the name of someone mentioned 
without the person's permission, he said.

Dissemination through the Internet also might be tightly restrained. 
However, privacy laws of the other countries will now prevail, he 
said. Most are less restrictive than Germany's.

Bloomfield called the decision "a great step, a really important 
step." She said, "I will be completely thrilled when I get the 
material in the archives."

"Overall, it makes it possible to learn a lot more about the fate of 
individuals and to learn a lot more about the Holocaust itself - 
concentration camps, deportations, slave-enforced labor and displaced 
persons," Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's center for advanced 
holocaust studies, said.

International Red Cross Committee spokesman Antonella Notari said 
that body is not on the 11-member decision-making panel and is not 
against opening the archives, but it believes personal information 
needs to be treated carefully. The international body opened its own 
archives a decade ago, she said.

"It should definitely be open for historical research, and there are 
ways to do that with respect for personal data," said Notari, who is 
chief spokeswoman of the ICRC in Geneva.

Besides Germany and the United States, the other countries involved 
are Belgium, Britain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the 
Netherlands and Poland.

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