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Himmler's daughter aged 81: She works with neo-Nazis and helps SS officers evade justice By Allan Hall UPDATED: 16:07 EST, 17 June 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004873/Himmlers-daughter-81-She-works-neo-Nazis-SS-officers.html Waving goodbye to her grandchildren, Gudrun Burwitz has the look of a woman ready to live the rest of her days in peace and quiet. Instead, the 81-year-old daughter of Heinrich Himmler still works at a ruthless pace to keep the Nazi flame alive. Mrs Burwitz has always nurtured the memory of her father, believing the man who ran the Gestapo, the SS and the extermination programme which murdered six million Jews, to be good and worthy. And despite her advanced years, she continues to help the ageing remnants of the Nazi regime to evade justice. As the leading figure in the shadowy and sinister support group Stille Hilfe –Silent Help – she helps bring succour and financial help to those still at large. Said to have been formed in 1951 by a clique of high-ranking SS officers and right-wing clergy in Germany, it exists ‘to provide quiet but active assistance to those who lost their freedom during or after the war by capture, internment or similar circumstance and who need help to this day’. Now it is in the hands of Mrs Burwitz. And her work has taken an even more sinister turn. She has become ‘grandmother’ to a new breed of female Nazis on the radical right. These disciples of Hitler wear the traditional dirndl dresses of Bavaria and their hair in plaits. Andrea Roepke, an expert on Mrs Burwitz, said: ‘The Silent Help is not only about former National Socialists. It collects money too for the neo-Nazi movement.’ Mrs Burwitz, who lives in Munich with her husband, is fighting to keep Klaas Carel Faber, 89, from being extradited back to his homeland from Germany. The Dutchman served with the SS in Holland where he murdered defenceless Jews in cold blood. And her latest client is Soren Kamm, a Danish SS officer wanted in his homeland for murder in wartime. Kamm, 90, is wanted in conjunction with several murders, including the execution of newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen in Copenhagen. In 1946, a Danish court sentenced one of Kamm’s associates, Flemming Helweg-Larsen, to death in the same case and citing the same evidence material. Helweg-Larsen was executed the same year. Germany has refused to act on an EU extradition warrant although Kamm has admitted his guilt in a TV interview. Mrs Burwitz, the ‘Princess of Nazism,’ as one historian called her, lives in a maisonette in the Munich suburb of Furstenried with her husband Wolf-Dieter. ‘I never talk about my work,’ she told the Mail. ‘I just do what I can when I can.’ An intelligence official said: ‘She is over 80 but pin sharp. She likes it if you think of her as some Mrs Doubtfire figure but that is not the case.’ Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004873/Himmlers-daughter-81-She-works-neo-Nazis-SS-officers.html#ixzz1tThhpPwm
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Scientific Jew Hatred Even the sciences were twisted into tools to be used against the Jews. by Rabbi Eliyahu Ellis and Rabbi Shmuel Silinsky
The German scientific community got on the bandwagon with pseudo-scientific presentations. The theory was that Jewish features could be scientifically determined. Many Germans were measured to absolve themselves of the "taint" of Jewish genes. Store windows displayed a device that could be placed on a person’s head. Twirl the dials, and it was guaranteed to tell whether the person was an Aryan or a Jew. Apparently, Jewish heads are round and fat, and Aryan heads are narrow and thin. A person could buy it for a few marks. Read the Nazi children's story "How to Tell a Jew" Up to this time, especially in Germany, Jews had seemingly been making tremendous gains in liberty and rights. Germany was on the cutting edge of everything at the turn of the century. Education, science, technology, you name it – Germany was there. And Jews were in the forefront. Click here to receive Aish.com's free weekly email. From 1901 until 1933 there were 37 German Nobel Prize winners - 11 of them were Jewish. The first three atomic bombs were built by Jewish scientists. Two of them - Teller and Einstein - were people that Hitler threw out. Germany never built the bomb, but during the war this was a big worry. They were years ahead of anyone else in research, and they had Heisenberg. It was said that if anyone could build an atomic bomb, Heisenberg was the man. After the war, it came out why the Nazis never built the bomb. Speer, the Nazi armaments minister, said that Hitler referred to atomic physics as "Jewish physics," "Jewish science." They never actually developed a nuclear program because they considered the field tainted by Jews. _____________________________________________________________________________________ OTHER ARTICLES http://www.aish.com/ho/i/ http://www.aish.com/ho/i/48955481.html The Six Million Kedoshim Why we refer to those who perished in the Holocaust as "kedoshim." by Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky THE "KADOSH" PARADOX No passages written about the Holocaust weigh so heavily on the heart of the religious Jew as those that see "no point, no faith, no Divine inspiration..." in the death of the Six Million. We admire those who preserved their faith under the worst of circumstances. Indeed, we view the individual who is a moser nefesh -- who risks his very life -- to be mekadesh shem shomayim (sanctify God's name) as someone whose concept of life transcends the flesh and blood of a this-world existence. Thus, we revere the Jews of the Middle Ages -- spiritual giants and simple Jew alike -- who chose the stake over the cross; in their death we catch a glimpse of eternal life. Regardless of the nature of their previous life, their choice at the moment of truth branded each as a kadosh, one who died sanctifying God's Name, and for all time their act is a beacon of inspiration. In come two soldiers and drag him off to the death camps, while he protests all along that he is a good Catholic. Is he also one of the six million kedoshim?But what about the Holocaust? What choices were the victims given? What merit could they have earned with death? Why do we call them all kedoshim, when so many of them had been vehemently anti-religious and had helped destroy the foundations of Torah in Europe? Consider, for example, the most ironic situation imaginable: a young Jew, born of Jewish mother and Catholic father, raised as a Catholic, is kneeling in a church, quietly murmuring his paternoster, perhaps even offering a prayer for the well-being of the brave German soldiers. In come two soldiers and drag him off to the death camps, while he protests all along that he is a good Catholic, and not a Jew. Is he also one of the six million kedoshim? Without pretending to offer definitive explanations for an inexplicable tragedy, the following essay deals with the use of the term "kedoshim" in regard to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust. Click here to receive Aish.com's free weekly email. THE MAKINGS OF KIDDUSH HASHEM God is immutable. He does not ever change in the least -- neither in sanctity nor in its lack -- regardless of any actions initiated by man. On the other hand, man can affect the degree of Divine revelation in our world -- the degree of gilui panim and hester panim -- that which permits man to perceive the Divinity, or veils Him from human perception. This can be understood on a simple level, in terms of psychological impact: if a person commits a sin brazenly and with impunity, it can weaken faith in God on a broad scale, and should he perform a mitzvah, the positive, inspirational effect could be equally far reaching. This can also be understood on a deeper level, as the Nefesh Hachayaim elaborates: Every person is granted the power both to bring the light of Divinity to this world or to block its illumination if he so chooses. Thus the description mechalel Hashem (desecrator of God's Name) applies to a person whose actions serve to dim the rays of ha'oras panim -- His illuminating presence; and mekadesh (sanctifier) refer to the person whose action brings about gilui haShechina -- revelation. Any action that makes God's truth more apparent is an act of Kiddush Hashem. Kiddush Hashem can be achieved in two ways -- actively and passively. The active approach is simple to envision: a person does mitzvot with great dedication, involvement, and self-sacrifice, or he actually gives away his life for God's honor. Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz explains that Kiddush Hashem describes any action that serves as a vehicle to usher the Shechina, the Divine Presence into our domain. In other words, any action that makes God's truth more apparent is an act of Kiddush Hashem. But what is "passive" Kiddush Hashem? To understand this, we refer to God's declaration of "bikrovei ekodeish" ("I will become sanctified through My close ones") in regard to the deaths of Aharon's sons Nadav and Avihu, who were consumed by holy fire during the consecration of the Tabernacle. Their transgression was so slight that commentaries have difficulty in pinpointing it. Their level of holiness was so great that it surpassed that of Moshe and Aharon (see Rashi on Vayikra 10:3), and they -- not their elders -- were chosen to be the kedoshim. The Talmud explains that in our conception of things, God becomes elevated, awesome, and sanctified when He castigates tzaddikim, righteous individuals, even though they did not perform any acts of Kiddush Hashem per se; through suffering Divine retribution, they become instruments of "ekodeish" -- "I will become sanctified" -- through them. We encounter many examples of this type of Kiddush Hashem: •A person who is mechallel Hashem, desecrates God's Name, is forgiven only through his death. He had lifted his hand audaciously, defying the existence of the Deity. Only when he himself crumbles into nothingness is a proper perspective restored. •The Talmud explains: "Every knee will bow before You" -- this is the day of death. Our Sages saw in death the ultimate prostration before the Almighty. The haughty, the mighty, the self-anointed deities buckle before their inevitable demise. Then their mortality is God's eternal immutability, in contrast to man's fleeting, transitory state. •One says Kaddish after the passing of a close relative, for an intimate encounter with death brings a person closer to the realization that this world was created by the Almighty and is ruled in accordance with His will. The surviving relative expresses verbally his humility before God's eternal sanctity. If this death can help others comprehend God's omnipotence, it surely is a great merit for the deceased. THE CORRECTIVE KIDDUSH HASHEM OF THE NATION This is the passive Kiddush Hashem of an individual. What is the passive Kiddush Hashem achieved collectively by the Jewish nation? The Kiddush Hashem of the Jewish nation is the realization of: "And you[r] fate will be a shock to all the nations of the earth." (Devarim 28:25) Or: " And you will be a wonderment, a metaphor [for suffering], a legend among all people (Ibid., v. 37) ." Or: " Why did God do this to this land? Why this great anger? And they will say: Because they abandoned the covenant of ... the God of their fathers." (Ibid., 29:23-24) ." When the Jewish nation is punished on so awesome a scale that one can almost see the Divine Hand manipulating its fate, we are forced to say, "Why did God do this?" The Holocaust can be attributed to no other cause than "Why did God do this?" By the same token, the Holocaust can be attributed to no other cause than "Why did God do this?" The German-Jewish confrontation was not a case of two nationalities competing in a zero-sum-total situation, as existed with the Palestinians vs. the Jews. Nor was it a situation of the Jew as the prospering middleman between the drunken estate-lord and the oppressed serf, as it was during the pogroms of the Middle Ages. We cannot even ascribe the Nazi campaign against the Jews to the madness of a psychopathic aggressor, for deep, deep in the war, when every bit of aggressive instinct should have been engrossed in waging the war on the battle fronts, major emphasis was on the meticulous planning to carry out the Final Solution to its fullest infamy. Considering the events of that epoch in the light of the passages in Deuteronomy, the question is not "Where was God at Auschwitz?" but "Why was God at Auschwitz?" GOD'S "CORRECTIVE ACTION" In a remarkably prescient essay, Rabbi Meir Simcha Hacohen of Dvinsk (the Ohr Somayach) wrote in the mid 19th century (in Meshech Chochma on Bechukosai) of an impending destruction due to the "Haskala," the Enlightenment -- total assimilation to the host culture of Western Nations; Rabbi Avrohom Grodzenski (who was killed in the Grodno Ghetto) made a list of specific sins that in his view brought down God's wrath; but all this is of secondary importance. The primary point made must be that one way or another the destruction was a Divine corrective action for a long-standing accumulation of shortcomings on the part of the Jewish nation over the ages: My father, who was in the Kovno Ghetto with Rabbi Mottel Pogremanski (also known as the "Tavriger Illuy" [Tavriger Genius], told me that Reb Mottel would say discourses during the closing moments of the Shabbos. A deep hush would fall on the crowded room ... Reb Motel closed his eyes and began, in a haunting voice: "I see no German parading ... I hear not the bark of their rifles... Passages from Scriptures I do see ... I hear the Voice of God echoing from one end of the ghetto to the other: "As I live, said God, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and a flow of wrath shall I rule over you ... I will gather you from the lands where you are scattered ... to a wilderness of a nation and I will wrangle with you there face to face" (Yechezkel 20:33-36). Had we been deserving, we would have accepted God's rule -- on our own; but we did not do so, and now He is forcibly imposing his dominion over us. Reb Mottel's words, seeming to reaffirm Reb Meir Simcha's predictions, echoed the anguished cry of the Prophet: "For saying ‘Let us be like all nations...' (did God vow), ‘As I live ... with a strong hand ... and a flow of wrath shall I rule over you!'" (Ibid., 32-33). The prophecy, the warning, and the searing lament at the brink of destruction all seem to suggest that the Jewish nation had chosen to distort its collective image by emulating the nations, rather than pursuing its own sacred destiny. Meant to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, inhabiting the sacred soil of the Holy Land, it betrayed its charges. The "corrective action" for this was a brutal, massive rejection of Jewry by the most powerful of Western nations, the epitome of European culture -- Germany. This terrible suffering was "bikrovei ekodeish" before the eyes of humankind as a whole: God is our King, ruling us by His determination, if not by our own elective volition. And the purest, the saintliest, the most learned, the most innocent were included in this terrifying enactment of "bikrovei ekodeish." The proper response? Perhaps this was most succinctly phrased by the Sforno in his commentary on "And Aaron was silent": "He found comfort in the Kiddush Hashem that resulted from their death." The burden resting on our shoulders, the generations after the Holocaust, is not the burden of self-defense; nor is it the wreaking of vengeance on the Germans. It is the burden of knowledge by a generation that witnessed "bikrovei ekodeish". If we sin, it is the sin of one who has seen the fury of Divine retribution. It is committed with the callousness of one who has peered into the depths of Hell, seen the fires and heard the screams, and then continued on as if nothing had happened. As Rashi comments on the impact of witnessing the death of the sons of Aaron: should anyone sin in a like manner after their death, it would be comparable to having witnessed a man drink poison and die, and then drink more of the same potion himself. As surviving witnesses, we are charged with an awesome responsibility. This essay appeared in The Jewish Observer of September 1980 and is included in the collection of essays "A Path Through the Ashes", Mesorah Publications.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Stille Hilfe
http://voices.yahoo.com/stille-hilfe-aiding-fugitive-imprisoned-8941767.html
Stille Hilfe: Aiding Fugitive or Imprisoned Nazis Since 1946
Shelly Barclay
Stille Hilfe, full name Die Stille Hilfe Kriegsgefangene und Internierte, is an international organization whose purpose is the subject of much debate. Their name in English means Silent Assistance for Prisoners of War and Interned Persons. Speculation, rumors and the involvement of some members would have many thinking that the only honest thing about the group's name is the silent assistance part. Stille Hilfe is known for their vocal assistance of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremburg Trials. What is a matter of debate is what they did before then and what have they been doing since?
In 1945, just before and after the fall of Nazi Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler, prominent members of the Shutzstaffel (SS) and Hitler's staff fled Germany. Well, those who had not killed themselves, been killed or captured fled Germany. Many of these men were successful. They left under the radar, even getting assistance from refugee aid organizations, such as the Red Cross, without their knowledge. It would seem to some that Stille Hilfe aided these war criminals in their escape and continued to help them in hiding. The thinking is that they helped an organization known as ODESSA. The problem is that historians are not in agreement as to whether ODESSA actually existed. One thing is certain, such men as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele (the Angel of Death) were able to escape. Someone must have helped them.
Stille Hilfe was organized in 1946 and officially became a non-profit organization in 1951. Several high-ranking church officials and even a princess have been definitively linked to Stille Hilfe. During the Nuremburg Trials, the group was vocal about how it felt Nazi war criminals should be treated. They opposed the death penalty and helped those in prison. Truth be told, they were not very effective. Ten Nazis were put to death during the initial trials. Since then, Stille Hilfe has continued the trend of helping imprisoned Nazis. Some believe they even help Nazis who are in hiding. The truth is that would explain a lot of the group's secrecy. The problem is that is abetting international fugitives, some of whom are wanted for crimes against humanity.
Gudrun Burwitz joined Stille Hilfe in 1951. Burwitz is the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, who was a chief organizer of the Holocaust. He killed himself while in Allied custody. Burwitz was close to her father and has continued to support Neo-Nazism, to all appearances. How far her support goes is largely unknown, though there are rumors that she and Stille Hilfe give financial aid to Neo-Nazi organizations. She is most definitely vocal about trying to stop extraditions of Nazi war criminals to Germany. To many, her actions are not of a woman who is helping those in need. Her actions bespeak support of genocide. To these people, she is showing that she condones the deaths for which her father was partly responsible.
Stille Hilfe, at this point, remains either an impotent group of Neo-Nazis or an effective network of Neo-Nazis. No one is quite sure which. Some have called them harmless. Others have claimed that their money is funding a new age of Nazis and that they have prominent politicians on their side. Either way, they support a movement that changed the world for the worse, brought out the evil in some and killed millions.
Sources
Henley, Paul, Neo-Nazis Silent Support Scheme, retrieved 8/9/11, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1364876.stm
Hall, Allan, Himmler's daughter aged 81: She works with neo-Nazis and helps SS officers evade justice, retrieved 8/9/11, dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004873/Himmlers-daughter-81-She-works-neo-Nazis-SS-officers.html#ixzz1Uar8D9R
More Holocaust stories
"STILLE HILFE ODESSA"
By mid-1940, the Nazis had overrun almost all of Western Europe. Britain was left fighting by itself. (The United States did not enter the war until the end of 1941, forced to do so by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.)
In mid-1941, Stalin’s intelligence agencies informed him that Hitler was about to attack the Soviet Union. Over four and a half million German soldiers were perched on the border. Stalin could not believe it!
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Battle of Stalingrad 1942
photo courtesy of National Archive
People used to fight by the rules. Back in World War I, the holidays came up and there would be a big truce. Everyone went home, had a great time, and came back at a certain time, a certain hour, and started killing each other again. One of the things that Hitler taught the world was how to fight dirty. He broke treaties and showed that one’s word meant nothing.
The day Russia was invaded, the still disbelieving Stalin sent a huge coal shipment by train into Germany. It was part of their treaty – the shipment was due, and Stalin felt bound by the treaty.
On June 22, 1941, four million troops poured over the Russian border. Within one month, over two and half million Russians had been killed, wounded or captured. The Germans made tremendous advances into Russia – into portions of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad.
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Wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad
photo courtesy of National Archive
And then winter hit. The Germans were caught in summer uniforms, and it was a bitter, cold winter that year.
Stalin, using sheer force of numbers, threw another two million soldiers at the Germans.
The German offensive sputtered, and then stopped. The German army was about 1,800 miles away from home, and the railroads did not work.
In the spring of the next year, another German offensive was launched especially around the approaches to Stalingrad. What followed can only be described as a nine-month titanic battle, with the result that the German Sixth Army in Russia was almost completely destroyed. That was the beginning of the end for Germany, but it would take three more years of desperate fighting, and millions and millions of people dead before it was all over.
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