The White House has said that the US President would not be attending what used to be the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he participate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate?

The EU has three Presidents – if they cannot decide who is their President in fact – do they really expect for Obama to travel trans-Atlantic, and sit at Summits chaired by all three of them – Herman Van Rampuy, The Permanent EU President, Jose Manuel Baroso, the President of the European Commission, and the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,    who is presently the Rotating President of the EU?

Papers write of a “Snub.” This is ridiculous and for us who watched the Copenhagen Conference that was saved by President Obama under a G-2 arrangement with China, because he had to act fast if he wanted to save the meeting from itself, and there was no strong man or woman of the EU to stand at his side, the above “News” are old hat – and we say – we told you so!  Actually, we welcome Charles Forelle writes as “World News” in the Wall Street Journal of today: “Things haven’t been good recently for Europe’s position on the world stage. Despite the new treaty ambition to make the EU a bigger player, the bloc has sometimes seen itself shut out.  At climate talks in Copenhagen in December, Mr. Obama hammered out a last-minute accord with China and other emerging nations. The Europeans were left out of the picture.” This recognition of reality in a WSJ article is very unusual – but this is real life. If the EU does not get together – and still claims 7 seats at the G-20 – rather then one seat for real – they are turning themselves, by their own choice,  into world political irrelevancy. The same is true at the UN where we see more and more a 2 1/2 seats situation – with France and the UK in Security Council seats but Germany on practical UN Security Commissions, and no EU representative with any powers what so ever.

Obama’s decision not to go to Madrid is no snub to Mr. Zapatero or to Spain – but rather the cleareeded sign that he wants to go and meet the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED EUROPE. Had Obama decided to go to Masdrid it would have been as if someone from Europe would come to a meeting of the US Governor’s Association. Just think – Germany id California, France is New York, the UK is Texas, Spain is Florida, Poland is Illinois, Austria is Vermont … etc etc. Perhapse indeed Van Rampuy should come to the US Governor’s Association meeting in order to learn what is needed in order to create out of the EU the neededpartner for Obama in order to turn the G-2 into a G-3 and to create out of the G-20 a new meaningful global body.

———————–

The best article on this we found is from The Telegtaph:
Barack Obama has snubbed the EU amid confusion in Washington over which “president” of Europe he would be expected to meet at a trans-Atlantic summit this spring.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  – from Telegraph.com
Published:  01 Feb 2010 -
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew…

The White House has said that Barack Obama will not be attending the EU-US talks planned to take place in Madrid in May.
The White House has said that the US President would not be attending the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he particioate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate.
US officials have expressed frustration because the Lisbon Treaty, which was supposed to give the EU a single global voice, has created a number of European presidents competing for Washington’s attention.

Even the venue for the summit, Madrid or Brussels, has been “up in the air” after a tussle between Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency and Herman Van Rompuy, the new created President of Europe.

Under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Van Rompuy, President of the European Council which represents EU heads of government, should host the summit in Brussels as Europe’s lead negotiator in global bilateral talks.

But Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, insisted that he should host the summit because the EU was in “transition” after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December.

A US official told the Wall Street Journal that President Obama had not yet received an a formal invitation to the EU-US summit, a twice yearly meeting that has taken place since 1991.

“We don’t even know if they’re going to have one. We’ve told them, ‘Figure it out and let us know’,” said the official.

Other American diplomats have blamed confusion over which of the three EU “presidents” is in charge of the summit – Mr Van Rompuy, Mr Zapatero or José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president.

“Who attends from the US and at what point will depend on who’s calling the meeting,” said a US state department official.
“There’s a competition in Europe because you now have the standing EU architecture.”

Many national and EU diplomats are dismayed at the institutional infighting that has followed the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

“The Spanish are behaving badly. They’ve made a mess of the summit but Van Rompuy and the post-Lisbon EU institutions will carry the can in the long term. The squabbling has damaged the EU in the eyes of the most powerful nation in the world,” said a senior source.

A European Commission spokesman hinted that the meeting would have to be downgraded or cancelled if Mr Obama did not show up.

“Normally a summit is a summit because it is attended by heads of state and government,” said the spokesman.

A Spanish foreign ministry spokesman said: “The EU-US summit is scheduled to take place in May in Madrid, as was foreseen and we are still preparing it.”

US officials have indicated that Mr Obama might reschedule talks with the EU in the wings of a Nato summit in Portugal this autumn.

DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES

OP-ED in The Jewish Press.
DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES.

Posted Jan 14 2009 on http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/…

And yet the slurs continue.

On December 31, Paramount Vantage released “Defiance,” which tells the
story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three Jewish brothers from a
tiny village in Nazi-occupied Belarus. They formed a guerrilla unit in
the dense woods, created a makeshift village from ghetto escapees and,
in the end, saved some 1,200 Jews from Hitler. The Bielski brothers
have long deserved to be mentioned with Oskar Schindler and the
fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The film, which is based on a book of the same title by Nechama Tec,
has garnered a shower of positive attention. It stars Daniel Craig,
the current James Bond, as the visionary Tuvia, who ended his life as
a Brooklyn truck driver. Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell (of “Billy
Elliot” fame) play Zus and Asael respectively.

The project has also drawn a more negative response.

Although smears against the brothers have long enjoyed currency among Polish
anti-Semites – who can’t seem to decide whether the Bielskis were
simpering cowards or heartless savages – they had not reached the
respectable press until word of the film’s release began to spread.

In June, Gazeta Wyborcza, an important Polish daily edited by
Solidarity hero Adam Michnik, gave prominent airing to the charge that
“Bielski partisans were involved in the massacre of 128 [Polish]
civilians by a Soviet partisan unit in the village of Naliboki in May
1943,” according to an English language translation of the article on
its website.

As a source, the paper cited an investigation being conducted by the
Lodz branch of the Instytut Pami?ci Narodowej or Institute of National
Remembrance (IPN), a Polish government-affiliated body charged with
prosecuting crimes against the Polish nation.

Since the Gazeta Wyborcza article appeared, other periodicals have
followed suit. A Polish “historian” named Jerzy Robert Nowak told
Variety, the daily newspaper of the entertainment industry in
Hollywood, “We Poles are furious. It is a scandal that anyone could
think of making a film casting the murderers who massacred Polish
villagers as heroes.”

On December 31 The Times of London published a story, “Poland Split
Over Whether Daniel Craig is Film Hero or Villain,” which repeated the
IPN accusation and said that some “Poles fear that in telling
Bielski’s story Hollywood has airbrushed out some unpleasant
episodes.” (The piece concluded by pointing out that “several members
of the Bielski family served in the Israeli armed forces,” which the
writer seemed to regard as a damning fact.)

The Daily Mail (of London) followed up a few days later with a story
on Tuvia Bielski headlined, appallingly, “Jewish Savior or Butcher of
Innocents?” It said that “critics” accuse him of “terrorizing ethnic Poles.”

None of the articles noted that the IPN’s accusation is utterly
lacking in solid evidence. It is, in fact, little more than an
exercise in character assassination.

The IPN, which has been investigating the Naliboki incident since
2001, has said that Soviet partisan detachments – which began a covert
war against the Nazi occupiers soon after the invasion of the Soviet
Union on June 22, 1941 – murdered a group of 128 Polish individuals,
mostly men but also three women, an unspecified number of teenage boys
and a ten-year-old child, on May 8, 1943.

In the roughly 300-word description of the investigation e-mailed to
me in 2007, the word Bielski is only mentioned once, in the final
line: “Jewish partisans from Tweje Bielski’s detachment also
participated in the attack on Naliboki.”

Then in June 2008 the IPN issued another statement, one that
backtracked considerably from its previous statement. Noting that some
eyewitnesses claimed Bielski partisans were “among those who
attacked,” it added that the “eyewitnesses don’t say on what factual
basis this statement is based.”

Their statements were “not supported by any other proof, for instance
by archival documents.” (The Soviet documents on the Naliboki attack
do not mention the Bielskis.) The IPN also said that “some historians”
allege the Bielski detachment was involved “but the authors don’t give
sources of this information in their works.”

“So the fact of the participation of the partisans from the Bielski
detachment in the attack on Naliboki is only one of the versions
accepted in the course of the investigation,” the IPN said.

Yet even the Polish journalist who co-authored the original Gazeta
Wyborcza story, Piotr G?uchowski, has come to believe the charge is
shockingly flimsy. In a December 28, 2008 e-mail message to me, he
said he tracked down a Polish war survivor, Wac?aw Nowicki, who wrote
a memoir in 1993 suggesting the Bielski unit was involved in the
attack.

The book has been a primary source for Polish anti-Semites wishing to
denigrate the brothers’ achievements. “After a two-hour interrogation
he said to us that he is not sure that the Bielskis were in Naliboki
on May 8, 1943,” he wrote.

Nowicki claimed he was relying on testimony from “Lova from
Novogrudek,” whose words were confirmed for him by “Vanya from
Lubocz,” wrote G?uchowski in a subsequent article for Gazeta Wyborcza.

Here’s the simple truth: The Jewish unit was not “stationed in the
Naliboki dense forest” nor “active in the area” in May 1943 at the
time of the Naliboki attack, as the IPN has alleged.

The Bielski brothers, strapping sons of a miller, hailed from
Stankevich, a speck on the map in a borderland region that has been
part of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia at various points in its
history. After the Nazis and their collaborators began conducting mass
slaughters of the Jewish population, they slowly built a ragtag
community of desperate Jews in the woods where they had tromped as
boys. On the day in May 1943 when the Naliboki attack occurred, the
brothers’ group was located in a forest called Stara-Huta near
Stankevich. It is more than 50 kilometers to the west of Naliboki
village.

It is true that since February 1943 the brothers’ unit (then a few
hundred strong) had been formally integrated into the Soviet partisan
structure, pledging allegiance to a cause that provided cover for its
rescue and resistance efforts. At the time of the Naliboki attack, it
was officially known as the second company of the October Detachment
of the Lenin Brigade in the Lida District. (The official name would
change a handful of times over the course of the war.) All of the
group’s movements were recorded in Soviet documents that now reside in
the archives of the Belarussian branch of the Soviet partisan movement
in Minsk and in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

According to the IPN, the attack on Naliboki village was not
perpetrated by detachments from the Lenin Brigade in the Lida
District. Instead, the IPN said it was carried out by three
detachments from the Stalin Brigade and “partisans from” the Chkalov
Brigade. Both brigades, based in the Naliboki forest, were members of
the Ivenets District.

The IPN didn’t respond when I asked if wandering members of the Jewish
unit participated in the attack, acting under the orders of someone
other than the Bielski brothers and operating outside of their
designated brigade structure. It probably doesn’t need to be stated
that the Soviets were very serious about adhering to lines of
authority. Soviet partisans were executed for violating even the most
minor of regulations.

The Bielski partisans eventually did reach the Naliboki forest, which
may explain why they have become mixed up in this allegation. They
first arrived in August 1943, after it became too dangerous to remain
in the area near Stankevich, only to be driven out by German attack.
Then in September and October 1943 they returned with nearly a
thousand men, women, and children and created a legendary shtetl, an
extraordinary place with tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and
gunsmiths.

It had a large kitchen, a central square for gatherings, a mill
powered by a horse, a main street, a theater troupe, and a tannery
that doubled as a synagogue. It was well known to the gentile peasants
in surrounding communities like Naliboki village on the forest’s
eastern edge. They called it Jerusalem.

It is an outrage that wartime achievements of this magnitude can be so
casually denigrated. The Bielski brothers were far from perfect. But
what they accomplished in the woods of Belarus deserves the highest of
acclaim.
———————————

Peter Duffy is the author of “The Bielski Brothers”
(HarperCollins, 2003).  He writes for The New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, and other publications.

From The San Francisco Sentinel - http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=5…

AUSCHWITZ SIGN RECOVERED IN THREE PIECES – FIVE ARRESTED
20 December 2009

“Arbeit macht frei” – “Work makes you free.”

BY BEN QUINN
The London Guardian

Polish police said Sunday night that they had recovered the infamous bronze sign to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after it was stolen on Friday.

They said it had been cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free).

Five men, aged between 25 and 39, were detained in northern Poland and taken yesterday for questioning to the southern city of Krakow, about 40 miles from Auschwitz.

A state of emergency involving tightened border controls and a nationwide search was declared in Poland last week after the theft of the sign, which was cast by camp prisoners and stands as a symbol of the suffering millions endured at the death camp.

The discovery on Friday morning that the sign had been wrenched from the top of the camp’s entrance gate sparked an international outcry.

Avner Shalev, president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, called the theft “an attack on the remembrance of the Holocaust,” while Jarek Mensfelt, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said it was a “desecration.”

Police suspected that a gang was responsible because the theft was carefully carried out, with the perpetrators avoiding attracting the attention of night watchmen or CCTV cameras. Sniffer dogs led police to believe that the sign was removed through a hole in the camp fence before being loaded into a van.

More than one million people, 90% Jews, died at Auschwitz, which was liberated by Soviet troops 65 years ago, on 27 January 1945.

About 500 acres of the former death camp was turned into a museum after the war’s end and tens of thousands of visitors from around the world now visit the site.

———————————-

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camps are to become an international memorial as per announcement made earlier this month – this rather then the present Polish State museum, so it seems that this act of vandalism may have been perpetrated because of plain anti-semitism.

The theft comes just days after the German government pledged 60m Euros ($86m) to an international endowment fund to help preserve the camp.
Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947, in respect to the Polish National Sovereignty over this region that became universal symbol of humanity meltdown.
It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940.
The Letter ‘B’ in the reversed and upside-down form is thought to have been reversed as an act of defiance-symbol by those Poles – making it appear upside-down.
Locals say Red Army soldiers were bribed to leave it in Poland after the camp was liberated.
The wrought iron sign, whose words mean “Work Sets You Free”, was unscrewed and pulled down from its position above the gate in the early hours of Friday.
Polish authorities denounced the theft, while Israel’s Holocaust museum branded it an “act of war”.

Polish ex-President Lech Walesa described the theft as “unthinkable”, while Poland’s chief rabbi said he could not imagine who would do such a thing.
“If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick,” said Michael Schudrich.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski called on the public to help recover the sign, which he described as a “worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims”.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also condemned the theft during a special meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk – in Copenhagen – as this happened while both of them were in Copenhagen because of the Global meeting of Heads of State at the High Level part of COP 15.
The bizarre event just formed another link between Holocaust and future destruction because of Climate Change – what a strange world indeed when you start noticing sick elements of what we call humankind.
In a statement, his office said Mr Peres “expressed the deepest shock of Israel’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world”, and urged Poland to “make every effort” it could to find the criminals and return the sign.

FORMER GERMAN PRESIDENT DETAILS WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCES
1 September 2009
‘It Was Horrific, And It Will Always Remain So’

Former German President Richard von Weizsaeker.

BY MARTIN DOERRY and KLAUS WIEGREFE
Der Spiegel

In a SPIEGEL interview, former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, 89, discusses his time as a soldier during World War II, resistance against Adolf Hitler and the issue of whether his father Ernst, then a senior official in the Foreign Ministry, could have stopped Jews from being deported.

SPIEGEL: Mr. von Weizsäcker, in late August 1939 you were a 19-year-old private at a military training camp in Gross Born near the Polish border. What memories do you have of the start of the war?

Weizsäcker: One night, a few days before the outbreak of hostilities, we were taken from our barracks to railway stations for loading. This was done silently and in an orderly manner, and expressly without waving citizens lining the streets. We were then deployed along the so-called “Polish corridor” as part of the first attack wave on Sept. 1. The next day my brother Heinrich was killed just a few hundred yards from me. I buried him myself. I needn’t tell you how that feels.

SPIEGEL: Did this loss of a family member change anything about your attitude to the Nazi regime and its war?

Weizsäcker: No-one who goes to war can imagine what it will do to him. But it’s true to say that the war also had a profound effect on my awareness to this very day.

SPIEGEL: How do you mean?

Weizsäcker: Because war destroys human neighborliness, because it should never be used as a political tool, because politics should promote culture. Culture helps people live together. War does the opposite.

SPIEGEL: Did you view the invasion of Poland as a mistake?

Weizsäcker: A mistake? That’s not the right expression. I’m sorry, but that’s a rather naive question.

SPIEGEL: We didn’t live through the war …

Weizsäcker: Then it’s good that you’re asking about it. That’s far better than simply knowing with hindsight far better what we oldies should have felt and known back then.

SPIEGEL: We really want to know how you perceived the outbreak of war.

Weizsäcker: My mother lost two brothers in the World War I, my father lost one. That wasn’t an exception in Germany, but more or less the norm. As a result we were deeply concerned by the thought that war could break out again. It was the basic attitude of any normal, sensitive person.

SPIEGEL: Do you mean to say that the war was not popular in 1939?

Weizsäcker: No, it probably wasn’t. Most people were distraught and scared. I remember my mother mentioning a few days before the start of the war that only 20 years had passed since people had last lost brothers, fathers, and other relatives in a world war, and that we could be facing another situation where husbands and children were killed in battle. In many families that was truly their predominant, heartfelt and entirely rational attitude.

SPIEGEL: What was your feeling about Poland?

Weizsäcker: I was one of the countless young Germans of my generation who knew far too little about Polish history and culture, and the situation it found itself in. However, we did notice a clear difference in the various sections of the population in terms of how they received us as soldiers. Once we had crossed the Danzig Corridor we arrived in East Prussia, where people were relieved that the corridor was finally being eliminated. By contrast, on the Belgian-Luxembourgian border with (Germany’s) Eifel (region), where we were transported immediately after the invasion of Poland, the local Germans were pleased to see us, although they begged us not to trigger another war by going beyond Germany’s western borders into Luxembourg, Belgium and France.

SPIEGEL: Did you share the view held by many of your contemporaries that Germany should annex Danzig and the Polish Corridor?

Weizsäcker: I was a very young man. What did I know about Danzig and East Prussia? Sure, my married sister lived there, and I visited her once. All I had experienced was personal fate. What I lacked were sound historic knowledge and my own life experiences.

SPIEGEL: In 1939 your father, Ernst von Weizsäcker, was an undersecretary in the German Foreign Ministry and therefore the deputy of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. How do you view your father’s role today?

Weizsäcker: My father’s entire career, and that of his confidantes at the Foreign Ministry, was geared towards introducing the kind of reforms that would usher in the European peace that the Treaty of Versailles had failed to bring. Without a doubt this also meant changes in favor of the Germans, who had lost World War I. But the basic premise was that this had to be achieved exclusively by peaceful means. That is why my father remained at the Foreign Ministry even after 1933.

SPIEGEL: We get the impression that your father was one of those conservative civil servants who rejected Hitler’s methods but welcomed Germany’s re-emergence as a central European superpower.

Weizsäcker: Why this interpretation? Again I am pleased that you are asking me. What do you mean by “re-emergence as a superpower”? As a colonial power with a navy like that of the Kaiser? No. My father wanted a common European understanding about the necessity of establishing peace in Europe. When Hitler subsequently began planning war in earnest, diplomats from Italy, Britain, and Germany worked together in secret to prevent it.

SPIEGEL: You’re referring to the 1938 Munich Agreement: In an attempt to appease Hitler, the Western powers agreed to his demand for the German annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Weizsäcker: My father conspired with the British and Italian ambassadors, and they managed to talk Mussolini into convincing Hitler to accept the agreement. Nowadays the Munich Agreement is seen as a capitulation by Western democracies in the face of a dictatorship. At the time the Western powers considered it the only possible avenue to peace. In any case they were not militarily ready for another war. However, even Hitler always considered the Munich Agreement his worst foreign-policy mistake. Our present view is influenced by the fact that Munich merely delayed the onset of war.

SPIEGEL: How did your father see the Munich Agreement in retrospect?

Weizsäcker: Without a doubt he believed his mission had failed when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the war gradually spread.

‘It Was Clear Hitler Expected to Win War by Autumn of 1941?

SPIEGEL: You spent most of the World War II on the Eastern Front. In December 1941 you were within a few miles of Moscow, and later your unit was involved in the siege of Leningrad. Many of those who fought in the war are still traumatized by the death and killing they witnessed. Are you?

Weizsäcker: It was horrific, and it will always remain so. In the winter of 1941, I heard Reich Press Spokesman Otto Dietrich say on the radio that the war effort had run into difficulties “because the winter surprised us as we were approaching Moscow in December.” That was the first time I saw many of the soldiers in my regiment angrily waving their fists. Was this “surprise” the reason why we were completely inadequately equipped to fight 40 kilometers from Moscow in the heart of winter? It was clear Hitler and the other leaders had expected to win the war by the autumn of 1941.

SPIEGEL: Did you ever witness any war crimes in the Soviet Union?

Weizsäcker: Not personally.

SPIEGEL: The files of your division contain reports from late June 1941 that the bodies of “brutally mutilated” soldiers had been found. Do you remember that?

Weizsäcker: I never saw those files at the time, but I did see mutilated German soldiers. We were petrified of being captured by the Soviets.

SPIEGEL: The papers also contain an evening report from Infantry Regiment 9 dated June 28, which contains the following sentence: “Prisoners were not taken because, having seen how brutally their comrades-in-arms had been mutilated, the soldiers in the regiment no longer felt able to do so.”

Weizsäcker: Whichever way you look at it, what you are talking about is monstrous. I have never heard such a report, not even the slightest inkling. Nor did I hear about anyone in our regiment acting in the way this suggests. I therefore deny that this happened in our sector.

SPIEGEL: You seem to be annoyed by the question.

Weizsäcker: Annoyed? No, it distresses me. Is that really so hard to understand? Nobody doubts that the war was waged brutally, and that people were brutal. But the German army took millions of prisoners, and it goes without saying that not all these prisoners were abused or massacred. I’d like to point out that our infantry regiment was a long-established part of the army, and placed great store in personal behavior and discipline — even in times of war. Of course we take seriously the questions and research of those investigating the issues today. Much of what they have found after decades of research was not known to us at the time. The important thing is to promote historical and moral understanding between generations, and that can and should involve mutual respect.

SPIEGEL: You didn’t have any knowledge of the Holocaust prior to 1945?

Weizsäcker: It was only after the end of the war that I heard and tried to comprehend the word and the horrors of the Holocaust. But a friend of mine in the regiment, Axel von dem Bussche, had observed to the rear of our position that the region’s Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants had been made to dig a large trench and lay down in it, whereupon they had been shot dead. He came straight back to the regiment, and I’ll never forget how he said he had felt like lying down beside them. Axel was a colossus of a man, and highly decorated. He was deeply moved by his experience, and hearing that from him made you want to participate in the resistance to the extent possible.

SPIEGEL: Could Bussche speak openly about his experiences with his fellow soldiers?

Weizsäcke: There was a small, tightly-knit group of friends who spoke about it — albeit with the almost inevitable impotence of not being able to draw any conclusions from it. What could we have done? After all, we were far from Berlin somewhere in the Soviet Union.

SPIEGEL: What was the main thrust of your conversations?

Weizsäcker: The specific, constantly recurring problem for us in Russia was that we were forever having to pass on orders from above. Time and again it made us wonder who thought these orders up without being able to judge whether or not they could be carried out. So passing orders on and thus colluding with the orders that came from behind the lines was generally the first topic of conversation when we got together and asked ourselves how we could justify all that.

SPIEGEL: So there were several reasons why you chose to join the resistance movement: The experiences of your friend Bussche, your military situation, etc.

Weizsäcker: The entire terrible situation into which our leaders had plunged the entire country.

SPIEGEL: What was your connection to Berlin?

Weizsäcker: An even older friend — Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg — who always spent half his time in Berlin and half with us at the regiment. He collected like-minded people almost to order. In 1943, Count Claus von Stauffenberg saw an opportunity to assassinate Hitler. An officer from the front was supposed to be demonstrating new uniforms to Hitler, and Stauffenberg was looking for someone who was willing to blow up Hitler and himself on this occasion. Schulenburg suggested Axel to him, and Axel agreed to it immediately.

SPIEGEL: What was your role?

Weizsäcker: Stauffenberg, whom I knew, had sent a telegram to the division and the regiment ordering Major von dem Bussche to return to Berlin or Potsdam immediately. That was difficult because the division didn’t want any active battalion commanders being sent back to base in Berlin. I then organized papers and the travel arrangements for Axel with regimental headquarters, and notified Stauffenberg about this. However, the assassination had to be postponed because an Allied air strike destroyed the uniforms. In the meantime, Axel was seriously wounded at the front.

SPIEGEL: Do you consider yourself one of the co-conspirators of the July 20, 1944 plot?

Weizsäcker: I spoke to Schulenburg three weeks before the assassination attempt in Potsdam. He told me the assassination was imminent, and that if the plot was successful we would immediately receive instructions on how to proceed.

SPIEGEL: What would your task have been if the plot had been successful?

Weizsäcker: Schulenburg wanted to bring me and a few friends from the regiment to Berlin straight away. After the abortive attempt on Hitler’s life, 13 former or current members of the regiment were executed or took their lives to avoid falling into the Gestapo’s hands.

My Father’s ‘Sentence Was Neither Morally Nor Humanely Just’

SPIEGEL: After the war, you interrupted your law degree to help defend your father at the Nuremberg Trials. The Americans eventually sentenced him to five years in prison. You have always criticized this sentence as unfair.

Weizsäcker: My father was tried before the wrong kind of court. Foreign policy was the only work he really had any influence over and that he really enjoyed. Although the outbreak and expansion of the war frustrated all his efforts, his actions later prompted the so-called Reich Main Security Office — a part of the SS — to demand he be charged with high treason by the People’s Court. Even the wife of the then foreign minister wrote extensively about this demand in her memoirs. Luckily by the time they got round to it my father was the ambassador to the Vatican in American-occupied Rome and therefore out of the reach of the German bloodhounds.

SPIEGEL: He was also acquitted of the charge of “crimes against peace.” The verdict was based on “crimes against humanity.” In 1942 Adolf Eichmann asked the German Foreign Ministry to issue a statement on the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. Ernst von Weizsäcker replied that the ministry had “no objections.”

Weizsäcker: My father faced a central moral dilemma: Should he stay in office or not? What would and should he be prepared to accept any mission for? What could he influence personally, and what was beyond his control?

SPIEGEL: And your reply?

Weizsäcker: He remained at the Foreign Ministry in spite of all the deep disappointment it brought him. But after fastidiously reviewing the matter, he found that he was powerless to prevent the central domestic crimes against humanity. That’s why he was all the more willing to help in any specific case of persecution he had access to. This is why he remained in office. Hundreds of statements from Jews, from churches, at home, in Britain and in other countries thanked him for the many ways he protected them, as did one of the judges at the Nuremberg Trials, in contrast to his two colleagues.

SPIEGEL: So you say your father was not treated fairly at the trials?

Weizsäcker: During a confidential though recorded meeting before the trial began, the prosecutor asked my father to be a prosecution witness and agree to testify against others. The prosecutor said surely it was worth committing a bit of perjury if it meant he could therefore escape trial. My father vehemently rejected the offer. The sentence was neither historically, morally nor humanly just. The American high commissioner in Germany ordered my father’s immediate release from custody, and the first German federal president, Theodor Heuss, and many others spoke out on my father’s behalf. In a speech during a parliamentary debate in England, Winston Churchill even said American prosecutors had made a “deadly error” over my father.

SPIEGEL: Have you ever asked him what would have happened if he had voiced his concerns to Eichmann?

Weizsäcker: Of course we put this imaginary scenario to him.

SPIEGEL: It’s not an imaginary scenario, but a moral one.

Weizsäcker: The concrete effects were imaginary. Please believe me when I say that we haven’t only just discovered what a moral question is.

SPIEGEL: You mean it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had refused to approve it?

Weizsäcker: I won’t repeat the conversations we had, but of course both he and we were deeply concerned about this issue. What do you think?

SPIEGEL: We’re trying to understand what happened back then.

Weizsäcker: I have come to know and tried to portray him as best as is humanly possible.

SPIEGEL: Does that concern you to this day?

Weizsäcker: Of course. There is no such thing as historical, moral, human immunity, whether in youth or old age. I’m sure we agree on that too.

SPIEGEL: Mr. von Weizsäcker, we thank you for this interview.

The following are the top 28 finalists in the Official 2009 New 7 Wonders of Nature competition – nominated from among hundreds of sites around the world that have been proposed.

ALDE – Distribution: immediate – July 8, 2009, 11:04 am
Watson to withdraw to give Buzek a clear mandate of support

Former ALDE Group Leader and EP Presidential candidate Graham Watson MEP today announced his intention to withdraw from the Presidential contest to give EPP candidate Jerzy Buzek a clear mandate of support from Parliament’s three major political families.

“The EU is mired in a crisis – economic, environmental and constitutional,” Mr Watson said; “and the three political families which founded our Union have decided to unite their forces to save it. The European Parliament is more divided than ever, with no stable majority possible. That is why I am withdrawing from the race to be President in support of a three-party agreement to save the EU.”

“Despite renouncing my plans for the Presidency of Parliament, I will continue to argue for a stronger and more effective Institution more focussed on the interests and concerns of the citizens and more engagement with national and regional parliaments.”

Note: Graham Watson MEP led the ELDR (later ALDE) Group in the EP for seven and a half years, two and a half years longer than any of his predecessors. He built the group from a membership of 46 MEPs in 2002 to a membership of 106 at its peak in 2008.

————

In 1963 Jerzy Buzek graduated from the Mechanics-and-Energy Division of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice specializing in chemical engineering. He became a scientist in the Chemical Engineering Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gliwice. Since 1997 he is a professor of technical science. He is also an honorary doctor of the universities in Seoul and Dortmund.
From 1997-2001 he was Prime Minister of Poland. In 1998 he became a laureate of the Grzegorz Palka Award, was nominated the European of the Year by the European Union Business Chambers Forum and Man of the Year of a Polish political weekly Wprost.
After losing the parliamentary elections in 2001, he stepped back from Polish political life (although he was elected a member of the European Parliament in 2004) and focused more on his scientific work, becoming the prorector of Akademia Polonijna in Częstochowa and professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Opole University of Technology in Opole.

Jerzy Buzek comes from the well-known Buzek family, present in Polish politics since the 20 years of free Poland between the World Wars (World War I and World War II). His family comes from the Polish community in Zaolzie, a region of Cieszyn Silesia which is now part of the Czech Republic. He is a Protestant.
In the 1980s Jerzy Buzek was an activist of the democratic anti-communist movements, including the legal (1980-1981 and since 1989) and underground (1981-1989) Solidarity trade union and political movement in the communist Poland. He was active organizer of the trade union’s regional and national underground authorities. He was also the chairman of the four national general meetings (1st, 4th, 5th and 6th) when Solidarity was allowed to act legally.

In years 1997-2001 he was the prime minister of Poland, first of the right-centrist AWS-UW coalition government until 2001, and then of the rightist AWS minority government. His cabinet major achievements are 4 significant political and economic reforms: the new local government and administration division of Poland, reform of the pension schemes system, reform of the educational system and reform of the medical services system.

On 13 June 2004 Jerzy Buzek was elected Member of European Parliament from Silesian Voivodeship constituency, without printing of any posters, basing his election only on popularity of his name and on direct contact with the voters. He received the record number of votes in the whole Poland: 173,389 (22.14% of the total votes in this region).
His party is the Platforma Obywatelska which joined the European People’s Party and sits now on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.
Buzek is a substitute for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, a member of the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and a substitute for the Delegation for relations with the countries of Central America.
On 7 June 2009 Buzek was reelected Member of European Parliament from Silesian Voivodeship constituency. Just as in the previous election, Buzek received the record number of votes in Poland: 393, 117 (over 42% of the total votes in the constuency).

============

The Original July 4, 2009 posting:

Will it be   Jose Manuel Barroso or Graham Watson at the helm of a strengthened EU?

Graham Watson MEP

Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group

He is the candidate from ALDE to the left of The European Parliament to stand up as counter-candidate to Jose Manuel Barroso’s bid to become European Commission president for a second time.’s bid to become European Commission president for a second time.

It seems that the elections will now take place mid-September – under the Swedish Presidency of the EU.

08.06.2009 – 00:36
Centre-right dominate as Socialists regret ‘bitter’ result
 http://euobserver.com/9/28261/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 02:03
Far right make gains in ten member states
 http://euobserver.com/9/28263/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 01:06
European elections marked by record low turnout
 http://euobserver.com/9/28262/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 02:17
Libertas vote fails to materialise
 http://euobserver.com/9/28264/?rk=1

————-

From the ALDE – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats – faction of the European Parliament   we received the following:

Liberal and Democrat MEPs will be returning to the new European Parliament after this weekend’s European elections in almost exactly the same proportions as they left the old with approximately 12% of the seats of the House. Precise numbers are yet to be confirmed but they expect to form a group with about 85 MEPs. With no overall majority party, this will confirm their role as Kingmakers in the new Parliament.

Graham Watson MEP (outgoing leader of the ALDE group) called today for a new political deal in the Parliament that makes sense for Europe’s voters:

“Rather than the illogical, technical deals between Right and Left that we have seen in the past, Parliament needs to form a political and ideological majority based on a clear programme of action which will guide our work in the coming mandate.

Voters have expressed, once again, a disengagement with European politics by the falling turnout (43% against 45.5% five years ago) which the next President of the House must take up with some urgency. This will be the leitmotif of my campaign to become President over the weeks ahead.

The polls have also demonstrated that we still run 27 different national campaigns rather than a European one. Votes were cast largely according to national political grievances or as a vote on the performance of an incumbent Government or in reaction to a particular national debate. It is regrettable that we lacked a sense of a pan-European political campaign on the policy issues that are the substance of our work.

Finally, I very much regret the election of a number of far right extremists who advocate values of intolerance and hatred of foreigners which are anathema to the model of Europe we are trying to build. I predict that their own internal divisions and incoherence will prevent them from spreading their ideas further afield.”

————-

from another evaluation – from “The Nation”:

Far-right parties made gains in the Netherlands, where the anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders came second with 17 percent of the vote; in Hungary, where the anti-Roma party Jobbik took three out of 22 seats; in Austria, where the Freedom Party polled 18 percent; in Slovakia, where extreme nationalists won their first seats; and in Britain, which elected not one but two candidates from the British National Party–a racist, neo-Nazi group committed to white supremacy and to “reversing the tide of non-white immigration.”

What explains this ugly result? Obviously, it’s partly the economy: hungry creatures tend to turn against their neighbors. But it’s also a loss of faith: in the idea of Europe; in mainstream politics (seen as disconnected and corrupt); and particularly in the center left’s ability to come up with any alternatives. (A sliver of silver lining: in France, former sixty-eighter Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s green coalition, Europe Ecologie, outpolled the Socialists in greater Paris and in the south-east.) In Britain, BNP leader Nick Griffin actually won fewer votes than he did five years ago; the reason he is now an MEP is that the Labour vote spectacularly collapsed. Because of the expenses scandal and Labour’s recent implosion, Britain might be seen as something of a special case, but the pattern in Europe is similar. In Germany, France and Italy the center-left has been on the defensive, offering no alternative routes out of the recession.

EU turns blind eye to corruption in eastern gas trade
Andrew Rettman, The EUobserver, June 6, 2006

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The EU is sending a “fact-finding” mission to Ukraine to see if its financial troubles could lead to a new gas crisis. But it is wary of tackling deeper problems of politics and corruption in the eastern gas trade, which also threaten EU energy security. The team of senior European Commission officials will travel to Kiev “in the coming days” and produce a report in time for a regular summit of EU leaders in Brussels on 18 June.


The move comes after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine is unable to pay for Russian gas and will probably start stealing EU-bound transit volumes, unless the EU loans it billions of euros.

Ukraine’s state-owned gas distributor, Naftogaz, has poor cashflow and often avoids public audits. But Ukraine sees the Putin statements as part of a propaganda war to damage its reputation and increase political support for new Russian pipelines bypassing the country. The dispute over Naftogaz’ reliability is just one aspect of a major shake-up in the Russia-Ukraine gas business.

Mr Putin and Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are at the same time trying to strong-arm Ukraine gas tycoon Dmitry Firtash, in developments which highlight the links between politics, gas and organised crime in the region.

A Putin-Tymoshenko deal in January ended the role of RosUkrEnergo (RUE), in which Mr Firtash controls a 50 percent stake, in selling Turkmenistan gas to Ukraine. Naftogaz in March also seized €3 billion of RUE gas stocks.

A little-known, Swiss-based firm called RosGas in May took ownership of Mr Firtash’s Hungarian gas supply company, Emfesz, in a transaction that Mr Firtash has called “illegal” and is fighting in the Swiss courts. It is unclear who owns RosGas. But Emfesz has said it belongs to the Putin-controlled Russian firm Gazprom.

The events have already affected European interests. RUE’s problems have seen it cut deliveries to EU states Poland and Hungary. The Emfesz takeover means 20 percent of Hungary’s gas supply is now in unknown hands.

The Putin-Tymoshenko attack on Mr Firtash could be designed to hurt Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, and reformist presidential candidate, Arsenyi Yatsenyuk. Mr Firtash is widely reported to have given financial support to Mr Yushchenko. The Firtash-linked TV station, Inter, has given Mr Yatsenyuk lots of good publicity.

“People can see that Firtash is a dead fish, so they are taking little bites out of him,” one Brussels-based diplomat said on the Emfesz takeover.

See no evil, hear no evil

Mr Firtash, who denies having any business relations with Mr Mogilevich or paying Mr Yushchenko, is trying to engage EU support.

One of Mr Firtash’s employees, Robert Shetler-Jones, last year donated around €57,000 to the British Conservative party.

Mr Firtash’s small, Brussels-based public affairs firm, Macmillan, compares him to “Mazeppa” – a seventeenth century Ukrainian patriot betrayed by a fellow nobleman and forced to flee the country, leading to decades of domination by Russia.

A middleman claiming to represent Mr Firtash has also approached the Brussels offices of two large international PR firms in recent weeks.

The European Commission has so far turned a deaf ear. In March, EU officials said they were “closely monitoring” Naftogaz’ seizure of RUE’s gas – “closely monitoring” is a typical commission “holding statement” when it does not have a real position.

The June fact-finding mission will not ask questions about Emfesz.

“From our point of view, the takeover of Emfesz has to be done in full respect of internal market rules. If there is any suspicion this is not the case, there should be a notification by one of the parties. At this stage we have not received any such notification,” a commission spokesman said.

———–

Concrete steps:

“The European Commission has failed to recognise the danger these companies [RUE, RosGas or other alleged Gazprom offshoots] present to the energy security of the EU and has not made any attempt to convince member states to investigate the role these companies play in the supply chain,” Jamestown’s Mr Kupchinsky s

The UN May Have Made The Holocaust Symbol of Man’s Inhumanity To Man – But Then The Stands Nicaraguan Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the current UN General Assembly President, and Some At The UN Security Council Take Against Israel, Negate All Those Nice Words That The UN Proclaimed in 2005 – Its 60th Anniversary Year.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 28th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Prior to the event, we also had comments about the way it was announced in the UN DPI material,

In UN Fashion – The UN Holocaust event announced for Tuesday January 27, 2009 (The Mandated Day to Remember the Holocaust) is balanced out with an announcement for the Arab Edition on a book on The Question of Palestine. An Interesting Way of Creating What Sick Minds At The Present UN Think To Be Correct Balance.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 17th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Now we have also the reaction of the Jewish Week: ” In The Name of Our Common Humanity,” The UN commemorates the Holocaust, but the international body – often at loggerheads with Israel – and Jewish leaders appear to differ on some of the lessons they glean from it.” This is the title for the article in the January 30, 2009 issue. See that article it is attached at the end. And we decide thus to write also our own observations in a photo-report.

The event was scheduled for the Great Hall of the General Assembly, but as the building is being prepared for repairs, the Hall was closed and the event was held in the Trusteeship Council Chamber. When I got there – the place tags from the left to the right read: Mr. Leonid Rozenberg, Mrs. Ruth Glasberg Gold, Father D’Escoto Brockmann – President General Assembly, Mr. Kiyo Akasaka – USG (Chair), Ms. Asha-Rose Mgiro – Deputy Secretary-General, Rabbi Yisrael Lau, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev. This according to the announcement, with the exception that UNSG Ban Ki-moon, having left for meetings in Madrid and Davos, was being represented by his Deputy Mr, Mgiro.

The Program:

There was some milling in the room see:

 
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, USG Akasaka, DSG Mgiro

Very few minutes before the start of the event, father Brockmann’s name place was removed, and instead was put a nondescript ACTING PGA sign. You could have heard a sign of relief from the audience that included survivors of the Holocaust and quite a few members of Jewish communities from all over the US, besides the UN diplomats.

In order to convey the reason why Jews from Israel and from the US feel repulsion when encountering Father Brockmann, the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua, I attach the letter of January 14, 2009,From Ambassador Shalev, that explains how in his haste to go after the Israelis, he actually committed an act against rules of the UN – when trying to convene the General Assembly in order to castigate Israel, not according to the right item available to him. Doing it the proper way would have meant a small delay – and that what he tripped upon.

As Ambassador Shalev points out – the GA could not reconvene on an item that is not germane to the issue at hand. Israel has no settlements in Gaza anymore, and the conflict in Gaza is not about settlements.

With Father Brockmann a no-show, in his place, that chair was taken impromptu by the Ambassador of Rwanda, who read Father Brockmann’s statement. Now, Ambassador Joseph Nsengimana of Rwanda, participated the previous Saturday at the Holocaust Memorial Service at Rabbi Schneier’s Synagogue in Manhattan – the Park East Synagogue.

UNSG Ban Ki-moon and Diplomats accredited to the UN came Saturday January 24, 2009, to Park East Synagogue in New York City for a Holocaust Remembrance Day Service.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 24th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

After Mr. Akasaka’s opening and Cantor Matzon’s prayer, Ms. Migiro read the UNSG message: “we must understand why the world did nothing and we must oppose Holocaust denial on this 4th International Day of Commemoration let us re=member – and hope for a better future.”

Sounds good, but we had to remember also yesterday when Ahmedi-nejad spoke at the UN, and we must remember tomorrow when the UNGA picks on Israel again.

Next was the Ambassador from Rwanda reading the Brockmann message. He gave a history of the US resolution to have such a remembrance event, and proceeded saying that the election of an African for America President reflects the acceptance of the “other.”

Our difficult with this statement, as much as we are proud of the long road taken by the US, we find it still irrelevant to a UN that insists in keeping the Jews as a perpetual “other” – and to hear this from the particular left-wing Catholic priest, saying the right thing in the wrong place, this did not do justice either to the Ambassador from Rwanda, who spoke much more to the point when he said his own words – just three days earlier.

The fourth speaker was Ambassador Gabriela Shalev of Israel.

She started saying that the child born today will never meet a Holocaust survivor – our obligation is thus to tell for future generations the story of the holocaust survivors – one by one. She proceeded telling about her own family. With tremor in her voice she started with the grandfather – a successful lawyer in Berlin and columnist in a main newspaper and her father a medical student. Their life was shattered. The medical student became a cook in Palestine. The grandparents on the maternal side did not escape – he was a Rabbi in Kiev. Much later they learned the family was transported to Therensienstadt and from there to Auschwitz. Their fate was sealed because they were Jews. NOT ALL VICTIMS WERE JEWS, BUT ALL JEWS WERE VICTIMS.

We have the responsibility to learn and teach the lessons of the Holocaust and to make sure that it is not repeated against the Jews and other people. WE HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO FIGHT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM. WE HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO OPPOSE ANY STATE AT THE UN THAT CALLS FOR THE EXTINCTION OF ANOTHER STATE. The hall filled applause.

Mr. Akasaka informed the audience about the footprints being collected from material about victims that perished in the camps (see attached UN Press release), and then proceeded to introduce next speaker as a valiant russian soldier of WWII, who helped free the city of Berlin.

Mr. Leonid Rozenberg, his chest completely covered with Soviet decorations, but sporting a tie depicting an American Flag, spoke in Russian. THE GOOD VANQUISHED THE EVIL AND THAT IS HOW WE ARE HERE TODAY he said. He said that the Soviet army freed the world of the worst plague of the 20th century – out of the six million Jews killed, three million were from the Soviet Union. But he also added – UNFORTUNATELY, THE EVIL WAS WITH THE COMPLICITY OF THE LOCAL POPULATION< BUT ALSO SOME OF THE LOCAL POPULATION SAVED US AND WILL BE REMEMBERED AS RIGHTFUL GENTILES.

Sometimes we get the impression that humanity has learned nothing from this. IT IS THE IMPRESSION THAT NEW HITLERS THREATEN THE WORLD. It is regrettable that some of these people are presented as heroes. Even in the Ukraine, the Ukrainian Nazis that killed in Babby Jahr were declared heroes by their countries. It is particularly important to preserve history. This year we will celebrate 70th anniversary of the opening of WWII, and 65th anniversary of the opening of Front 2.

In conclusion, he said, I believe the US to be an agent of good, because it is a strong home to democracy and the way to peace. It gave us a new home and we hope in the future also evil will be defeated by good.

——–

A musical interlude with Elite Abbas on the piano playing under the wings of the Scandinavian bird of hope in the Trusteeship Council Chamber of the UN.

———

The sixth speaker was Mrs. Ruth Glasberg Gold telling how she was left an orphan, managed to survive and eventually left Rumania to Israel, Latin America and eventually to the United States. She was raised in Czernowitz, at the time Rumania. That was the largest city in Bukowina and her first language, I am sure was still German, as Czernowitz was an important city in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her older brother was a violin prodigy – she worshipped him as a child. She is a child survivor without a number tattooed on her hand. The Rumanians were too primitive to have a sophisticated extermination system. She was not in Auschwitz – but in the Rumanian exile to Transnistria. That was an area that Hitler awarded to Rumania for their loyalty to him. One day, in 1941, 2000 of the Czernowitz Jews were herded into cattle cars and 4 days they were there, then when unloaded driven at 25-km/day through a forced march. She said that the cruelty of the Rumanians even astonished the Germans. The 1940-41 years were marked with brutal pogroms and massacres under the Antonescu Rumanian Nazis. 250,00 Jews and 15,000 Roma perished. Eventually they reached the Bershad concentration camp and people were dying from a typhoid epidemic. In three short weeks she lost her father, the 18 year old brother and her mother – in that order. She was left at 16 an orphan. Her mother told her that she will live so she can tell of what happened. Her mother’s corpse was lying there for two weeks before it was taken away. Thanks to strangers in Bershad, she survived. One of the boys in the group of children that were there with her, Michael Serkis, was present at the UN that day.

Ruth wrote her story in a book: “Ruth’s Journey – a Memory of a Survivor.” I read that book, and I know that she did not tell her complete story – Ruth made it her task to go back to Bershad and get the locals to help her build a memorial at the site of that camp.

When she left Rumania in a Children-transport to the then Palestine, they were shipwrecked, ended up in Cyprus, and eventually in a Kibbutz. She served as a medic at that new kibbutz, and then went to continue her education in the Hadassah nursing school in Jerusalem.

At the end of her presentation she reminded the listeners that Dr. Trojan Popovich, the Mayor of Czernowitz, was one of the just people – he gave out authorizations that saved 97,000 of the city’s Jews.

———

The prayer for the dead and

a musical interlude with excellent violinist Yoon Kwon who gave the rendition of jewish music

————

MRabbi Lau, once Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, and now President of Yad Vashem – presented by Mr. Akasaka as leading UN partners in the UN Holocaust Outreach Program – the Keynote Speaker:

On April 11, 1945 he was liberated from Buchenwald. He was then a nobody – a number. On April 11, 1995, he was invited to speak at Weimar, at the 50th anniversary to his liberation from that camp. He came there as THE CITIZEN OF A FREE STATE OF ISRAEL – that is change!

You might be inclined to say – lets open a new chapter – let’s forgive. But we are not authorized to forgive! I have no mandate to forgive from my father, brother, and mother that died in concentration camps, and my 42 cousins – I can forgive?

nothing can be compared to the systematic extermination of the Holocaust.

Hitler declared it for all to see in a book – “Mein Kampf.” then the things moved on by him testing the world for reaction. What will the free world say? What did they say? We know now – Absolutely nothing!

I believe that this day – January 27 – made by the UN is not only to condemn anti-semitism, but how to defeat it. They liquidated 1.5 million children – were they enemies of the Nazi party? Why were we the target of liquidation? Did we shoot rockets, Kassams,. Skuds, Missiles? Why did you kill us? WE HAD NO ARMIES!

Some said in Poland if you all were like us, you would be welcome. In Germany we have donated to the German culture, society, the best German scientists, doctors, physicians, writers, poets — the last Minister of foreign Affairs – the Rotchilds. Because we were like you – why did you hate us there?

In Europe you said to us you are foreigners – this is not your home – go back to your home. Now we are in our home – do you love us?

This is the day of fighting anti-semitism – it is beyond logic.

The Israeli writer – Yehiel Katzetnick, never appeared in public – he said I do not write with ink – I write with blood. The one time he ventured out he came to testify in the Auschwitz trial. After 2 minutes collapsed and fainted. When he said I see…I see – that was it.

“Auschwitz was another planet not like this one, that is where they do not allow children to live.” I knew him, I told him it is too easy to say it was another planet – no t like this one – no they were like us, they could kiss their own children, our babies they could tear into two pieces.

The world was divided into murderers and victims – The others were supporters, murderers or kept silent.

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini went to Berlin to say – go ahead – kill the Jews. He was the only religious leader to go to Berlin to say – go ahead – eliminate the Jews.

400 Rabbis went to washington to demonstrate – that was one time. Where was the World?

After Evian in 1938, only Norway came up with 1000 places for Jews – the only One. Nobody else could find place. After the Evian convention Hitler understood that he can go further.

The UN must have learned what enabled Auschwitz to be established.

64 years later did they learn the lesson? 2 million children of Biafra died of starvation. 1 million people killed in Kosovo – Why? Did we learn nothing from the Holocaust?

Rabbi Lau pulls out from his pocket a piece of newspaper – 21 February 2007 – in an Israeli newspaper – a quote from the UN: the Department of Food and Health of the UN – “…everyday 18,000 children die of starvation in the World.”

This mainly in Asia and Africa.

if this can happen – it is proof that we have learned nothing. This was on page 21 of that newspaper – not even page one.

Still, I am an optimist, 6 years of WWII, there were some stars that gave us the light at the end of the tunnel.

A Japanese diplomat in Kaunas (near Vilna), Raoul Wallenberg, Oscar Schindler. They were individuals with good heart. They saved people, they did not know. These personalities gave me the hope.

The trees in the Boulevard of Yad Vashem keep each the name of one person. Had the Vatican taken a position that Boulevard could have reached New York. Ethics and morals for 1933 – 1945 – were nothing until the Soviets, generals Patton and Eisenhower came.

Osee schalom bimromav – hu iasse shalom beineinu – vnomar Amen!

Ms. Kwon plaid on her violin the music from Schindler’s list.

Later that day, the UN DPI had a press release – it does not even mention that the UNGA President was not present – it just gives his statement as if he was there present by himself. Does Rwanda not exist so far as the UN is concerned? The Ambassador’s name did not apear on his name plate, we thought we accepted this as a post last miniute decission, but now? Was the UN staff so affraid of Brockmann that they just rode over the Ambassador from Rwanda? Will they try this next time also on the Ambassador from Egypt?

A Most Dignified Holocaust Remembrance Event Organized Within The UN Compound, Was Organized From Outside the UN – by the Missions to the UN from the US and Poland.

It was about one single real woman in Poland, a devout Catholic, that put her life on the line and saved 13 Jews, strangers to her, including the life of one baby born in hiding, that she refused to allow the mother to have an abortion.
She hid them in the basement of the house of the highest ranking German Officer of the occupying forces in Tarnopol, Poland. Her deeds, in the end, even melted the heart of that German officer.

It was just a staged reading of a play – but Tovah Feldshuh was an impeccable actress. With her on stage, really no need for any stage props or designs. Her supporting cast was also excellent. The evening was to the credit of all involved in its organization – and mainly to the US Public Delegate at the US Mission, Mrs. Cheryl F. Halpern, that as I understood, is herself a survivor of the Holocaust, and she organized the event with her own Halpern Family Foundation. She acts as a Special Advisor to the Mission.

This is not to say that among the UN proper there is no staff that did credit to their own personality with the events they helped organize, but as we pointed out, the heavy handed effort on the top – to create what they thought to be a credible balance to the concept of genocide – did misfire because they really did not understand that the Holocaust was indeed a one of its kind event, and you do not mess around with plain common politics when you handle it.

Dan Gordon, the playwright, was present to get his due acclaim also.

Irena Gut Opdyke left Poland after the war, by way of the Jews that were looking for a new life in the west. She immigrated to the US were she married and had a daughter – but that boy from the basement, who ended up with his parents in Jerusalem, considered her as his second mother – his real mother gave him birth – but she gave him life. The play ends with him coming to look for her in the US.

In the audience I spotted also Professor Ephraim Isaac, from Princeton University, an Ethiopian Jew, who I know that he felt specially for that boy, as today there are also Ethiopian young people looking for those that helped them in their exit from Ethiopia, or even for their biological parents – but I know he does not consider even that Jewish problem as an example to be called a Holocaust.

The opening statement of the evening, by the US Mission’s Public Delegate to the 63rd Assembly, said “Rising above religious divides and boundaries – that is what we want to achieve here at the UN.” the UN resolution is to remember the Holocaust and disallow any deniers. To be able to say “never again” we must understand how such thing happened.

The Polish Ambassador said that the UN was born out of this war. The members of the UN decided it should never happen again and established this International Day to commemorate the victims. This resolution has a call to action to combat anti-semitism and any form of racial intolerance.

———————————————-

An important aside remark based on the content of this dramatic writing:

When the 12 Jews talk survival strategy with Irena, in that basement in Tarnopol, one of the Jews says – look this is a house that was taken away from Jews – “for centuries, a Jewish home used to have somewhere a trap door with a space to hide from a pogrom.” They set out to search the house for such a place – and indeed found exactly what they were looking for – a well organized large underground room with an exit leading to an area under some trees.

That is a also a clear reminder that Jews in Poland, as in many other places, were persecuted for many years, and that anti-semitic outbursts were common and happened sporadically. Because of this reminder, we find it honorable on the part of the present Polish Ambassador to the UN that he did not try to get the playwright remove that one sentence from this particular performance. Maybe it passed unnoticed by other viewers – but not by this one – nor will it pass unnoticed by future readers in The State of Israel. Further, this also explains why Jews will not give up their vigilance in planning for survival – with or without the support of the UN.

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===

 UNSG Ban Ki-moon and Diplomats accredited to the UN came Saturday January 24, 2009, to Park East Synagogue in New York City for a Holocaust Remembrance Day Service.

In November 1, 2005, 60 years since the creation of the UN in the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust, the UN decided to designate January 27 as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. This year will be thus   thus the fourth year of such a   Commemoration and it will be held at the UN next week, while some at the UN will try to connect   these memorial events by holding parallel activities targeting the State of Israel for the recent invasion of the Gaza Strip and for the essence of its existence. As one example of this cloud over the UN, we posted   – www.SustainabiliTank.info posted:   http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/01….

With above in mind, nevertheless, the Park East Synagogue community, in the presence of Holocaust survivors, was proud to host the UNSG, four more UN officials, and the Diplomats that showed up – including the Diplomats from six European countries on whose territory the Holocaust was committed – Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Italy. The Ambassador to the UN from Rwanda, a non-Muslim African country came as he knows the impact of genocide from his own country’s experience. Also present were diplomats from Australia, Israel and the United States, and from the Latin American countries – Argentina, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Thus,14 countries out of the 192 Representations to the UN, showed up at this memorial service, but then, thinking of the WWII differences – seeing Germany, Russia, Israel, and the US sitting side by side, in the presence of survivors, and honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in the presence of the UNSG, means that change is possible. Albeit, change through the UN maybe still very far off. There a great number of members may still take the position that Jews are not entitled to sit in the same bus with them, and when the issue is the Holocaust they will try to muddle it with “The question of Palestine.” January 26-27, 2009 will be just this sort of UN days. So what?

Join the wind energy industry at the Wind Power Works Pavilion (Hall 11) during COP 14 on 4-11 December to learn more about wind energy, visit our spectacular photo exhibition and enjoy free coffee and wifi.

We will have over 35 side events, film screenings and receptions from 4-11 December, in Hall 11, on the COP 14 campus.

Mark your calendar for some key events including:

4 December
18:30 -20:00: Grand opening of the Wind Power Works Pavilion & Photo Exhibition – reception and party

5 December
10:00-11:30: 3Tier side event: Harnessing Wind Power as a Global Climate Change Mitigation Technology (Launch of global wind map)
12:30- 14:00: Greenpeace side event: Forests for climate

6 December
10:00-11:30: Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP): Pacific Climate Change Film Festival
15:00- 17:00: Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) side event: Access to energy and climate change: the way forward

8 December
13:30- 15:00: European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) side event: The EU’s Climate & Energy Package 20/20/20 by 2020
15:00- 17:00: Polish Wind Energy Association side event: Wind energy in Poland – a contribution to countermeasure climate change followed by a cocktail reception.
19:00 – 21:30: Greenpeace: Reception and film screening – The Age of Stupid

9 December
09:00- 10:00: European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC) side event: The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change
10:00- 11:30: European Renewable Energy Council (EREC): Technology Roadmap for Europe – Reaching 20% of renewable energy by 2020
14:00- 15:30: European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) side event: From Poznan to Copenhagen

10 December
9:00- 10:30: Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) side event: Global Wind Energy Outlook- Scenarios for wind energy development up to 2020
18:00- 19:30: WWF International: Launch of Earth Hour 2009
19:30 – 21:00: The Wind Power Works campaign VIP Reception

11 December
16:00- 18:00: U.S. NGOs: Reception for international delegates and the U.S. Congressional delegation                                                                        
The Wind Power Works campaign aims to show policy makers that wind energy already provides clean and fuel free electricity in over 70 countries of the world, and can cut 10 billion tons of CO2 by 2020. It is a proven and reliable technology that makes sense, not only for the environment, but also in economic terms.
We are looking forward to welcoming you in Poznań.

Best regards,

Angelika Pullen
Communications Director
Global Wind Energy Council

This is an excellent editorial – and we never agreed more with anything that the New York Times printed – and we brag about this because here they agree with everything our website stood for – and what great way to put it:

“A US CLIMATE POLICY WRAPPED INSIDE AN ENERGY POLICY WRAPPED INSIDE AN ECONOMIC POLICY.”

This is it in a nutshell. For the US to creep out from the years of “derivatives” and Oil we need an Economic Policy that looks at replacing oil with all sort of means – conservation, efficiency, change of lifestyles, “Gross National Happiness,” a Renewable Energy answer – this will then become automatically the needed energy security policy that answers also the environmental crises including the threatening climate change.

We are thankful for the upcoming switch from Bush to Obama and we will hold Obama’s feet to above fire.

We will analyze Obama’s VISION by the directives he gives to his policy implementers, in his hand picked cabinet, and in the intelligent expression he will be giving to the global implications of his new direction he is expected to give the US.

Yes, we understand that we will not get all answers in the first few months of his government – but we expect to hear from him expressed clearly how the necessary immediate first moves fit into a Grand Scheme of   things to come.

Yes, we know Kyoto was not the ideal plan to deal with climate change, it came about because of ideas the US suggested and then walked away from. To put back life in international agreements we agree that it is difficult to get 192 UN Sovereign delegations to sing in unison, but a few well placed US bilateral agreements could smooth the way for that needed global regime.

Yes, we know that the UN was dancing on the spot – one foot forward – one foot back – but without the cooperation from the Bush little else could be done, and procrastination is now the face of the UN time-piece. The US will have to help reorganize that institution also, and that is easy to do if that above noted terrific worded plan becomes the US methodology. Others will emulate it because they are in the same pickle as us and even worse. Poznan was never intended to be the starting point for a roadway to solution. It is just another bubbles’ exercise – but what a great place for some privately arrived US Senator to announce – look world – we are coming on board – we have plans – we want to rebuild our economy after we showed you all our nakedness – we know and we will do. Let us meet mid 2009 and we will have shown you by then that we have plans, we know what we are doing and we will work with you to save the Planet for the benefit of all humankind.

We will tell the other nations – We have erred, we have sinned, we transgressed, we started fine under President Nixon – Yes Nixon – and we hurt ourselves – and you – by diluting what he started in the area of the environment. We allowed the Oil industry, the Auto-manufacturing industry, our labor unions, our banks, our money dispersing interests, to push us as if we were rugs under their feet. Our town became Sodom and Gomorra, and we got covered asphalt and brine – but we will recover because recovering we must. Our down-payment will be made public January 20, 2009. Let’s give thanks that this is just eight weeks from now.

—*—*—*—

* — *

The Great Editorial:

From:        sander at brinkmanclimatechange.com
Subject: Information Toolkit for post-2012 climate policies, side event Poznan December 1st, 3.30pm
Date:           November 28, 2008

Toolkit for post-2012 climate policies will be presented in Poznan on the very first day:

December 1, 3.30-5.30pm, EU Pavilon: Rubinstein room.

We are pleased to invite you to have a look at the Toolkit and to be informed on the contents.

If you are already interested, you may freely download the Toolkit from:
 http://www.brinkmanclimatechange.com/Too…

For further information, please contact:
Sander Brinkman,  sander at brinkmanclimatechange.com
Koen Smekens,  smekens at ecn.nl

Polish Miners, Greens Clash On Eve Of Climate Talks

POLAND: Reuters, November 25, 2008

WARSAW – Greenpeace protesters clashed with coal miners at a new opencast mine on Monday in an incident highlighting Poland’s environmental dilemma on the eve of a major UN-led conference on climate change.


The western Polish city of Poznan will be the venue for the Dec. 1-12 conference aimed at agreeing a new global climate package to replace the Kyoto protocol which expires in 2012. But Poland still relies on polluting coal for more than 90 percent of its growing energy needs. Along with other ex-communist European Union states, it opposes parts of an EU climate package forcing big cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

“This is a protest against burning coal and against extracting coal from a mine like this one,” Greenpeace Poland spokesman Jacek Winiarski said at the Jozwin opencast mine near Poznan.

“We were stopped violently by miners… but fortunately nobody was hurt,” he said of the protest, which involved about two dozen Greenpeace activists waving “Quit coal!” banners.

The Jozwin mine lies near Goplo lake, listed on the EU’s Nature 2000 programme aiming to safeguard threatened species in the bloc. Investments can still be conducted in such areas if studies show there is no better option.

Konin, the firm that operates Jozwin, also plans to open a second opencast mine in nearby Tomislawice but environmentalists say this could destroy Goplo, home to rare wildlife.

The company says it has all necessary permits to press ahead also with the second project, which it estimates to cost around 200 million zlotys ($65.10 million).

“We don’t plan to scrap this project. Why should we?… We will open the site in two to three years’ time. Usually such mines operate for 15 to 20 years,” Konin spokesman Radoslaw Stankiewicz told Reuters.

KING COAL

Greens clashed with local residents and police two years ago in months-long protests over a key highway bypassing the Rospuda river, a wilderness area also protected by Nature 2000, an event that triggered a debate in Poland over how to balance economic growth and protect the environment.

Story by Gabriela Baczynska

Poland rejects French CO2 compromise as summit looms.
RENATA GOLDIROVA, November 20, 2008

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Poland has given the cold shoulder to concessions offered by the French EU presidency on how the union’s power sector should reduce CO2 emissions.

“It does not solve the problem of electricity prices in a satisfactory way,” one Polish diplomat said on Wednesday (19 November) in response to the French proposal.

What will happen if the 11 December EU summit, the post-Poznan summit – fails to see agreement?

The concessions paper is aimed at addressing Warsaw’s key objection – against the buying of 100 percent of pollution permits under the union’s reformed emissions trading scheme (ETS), the cornerstone of the EU’s strategy against climate change.

Under the reform, EU governments would no longer give away permits to pollute to the power sector. Instead, the industry would be forced to buy the right to emit carbon dioxide by auction, with full auctioning expected to kick in from 2013.

To get Poland on board, the French EU presidency has offered a three-year long exemption from the regime to those countries that produce at least 60 percent of their electricity from coal and are poorly connected to the grids of other EU states.

Their plants could receive half of their pollution permits for free until 2016, France has suggested.

Poland – the chief opponent of the ETS reform – swiftly rejected the French ideas, however. It claims the changes would harm its economy, as almost 95 percent of the country’s energy production is based on coal.

***
Alternative suggestion:

Instead, Warsaw has tabled its own alternative to full auctioning – a so-called “benchmarking-auctioning approach” that suggests granting free allocations on the basis of actual production.

In practice, separate benchmarks would be set for each type of electricity production – hard coal, brown coal, natural gas and fuel oil – while free allowances would be granted “ex-post” based on actual emissions.

The system would reward best performers, a Polish diplomat said.

Starting from 2013, the base benchmark would be reduced by one percent each year – something that should put additional pressure on the power sector to modernise technologies.

Warsaw argues that its proposal helps address concerns about the level of electricity prices, while full auctioning is likely to see producers passing on the entire market price of allowances to consumers in the electricity price.

“In countries where coal is the main fuel for electricity production, the electricity price increases will be particularly visible due to a need to purchase a proportionately larger quantity of allowances at auctions,” the Polish paper says.

In addition, Poland suggests to promote development of clean coal technologies rather than to eliminate coal from electricity production. “The EU should treat coal as an energy source, which improves its energy security,” it says.

***

Another EU summit?

The 27-nation bloc has been in a race against time, trying to reach a deal on the ambitious package of green legislation in mid-December (11-12 December) when EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels .

“For the time being, we hope for an agreement on the 11th and the 12th. If there is no agreement, then we will see,” a French presidency spokeswoman told EUobserver.

 At www.SustainabiliTank.info we keep saying this since the beginning of the year – December 2008 there will still be the Paula Dobriansky UN delegation and as such nothing will change and the meeting is a deliberate waste with UN personnel just creating travel mileage CO2 and hot air. That was the case in Bali, and this will be the case in Poznan.

The solution was easy – postpone Poznan Meeting to April 2009 so some start of a decision becomes possible and the needed input for Copenhagen in December 2009 becomes feasible.

The UN Secretary-general is touting the Copenhagen Roadway that starts with Poznan in order to come up with a Kyoto II. We heard from Danish Prime Minister that if there is no Kyoto II there will be a better Copenhagen I, but we told him that what he will get, because of the timing, rather a Poznan II. Now Yvo de Boer, head of the UNFCCC office in Bonn, plainly agrees with our estimate when he realizes in public that the US has only one President at a time – and he well knows that there is no climate change business with US President N0. 43, and before Obama takes over from Bush, there will not be any negotiations. (period.!)

Oh! yes! UNSG Ban Ki-moon will take the paper we just posted, that he somehow thought to bring to the attention of the G-20 in Washington DC at their November 14th meeting – and read it at the opening of the COP-14 of the UNFCCC on December 1 in Poznan. He will then turn around smiling and say that the world has heard how important the subject is.

AND THAT WILL BE IT – and Yvo de Boer just declared that he understands that – that will be it!

Strangely, last night at an event for the Pacific Island States, a person representing a UN body, To be fair to him I do not divulge which important UN affiliate he represents, he told me that Obama will go to Poznan not as President-elect but as Senator (you know, like Al Gore, Timothy Wirth, and Bob Kerry went to   Rio in 1992.) I just did not have the heart to tell the gentleman that next week Obama will not be a Senator anymore. He leaves the Senate so someone else can be appointed and gain in seniority – this is another right and easily predictable thing we know. This story just shows how deep the UN lives in the unreality of its comfortable cocoon.

———–

OSLO (Reuters) November 17, 2008 – President-elect Barack Obama will not attend United Nations talks in Poland next month working on a new treaty for fighting global warming, as per the the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

“There is not going to be an Obama delegation in Poznan,” Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat, told a news conference in Germany that was also shown on the Internet. The 190-nation talks will be held from December 1-12 in the Polish city of Poznan.

“There is one president at a time,” he said. Obama will take over from President George W. Bush on January 20, 2009.”

After Obama won the presidency last month, de Boer expressed hopes that Obama might attend the Poznan meeting, which is due to work on details of a new climate treaty.

A new pact to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol is meant to be in place by the end of 2009. De Boer said that the U.S. delegation in Poznan would liaise closely with Obama’s team.

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We believe that there will be an Obama observer at Poznan, but he will have a clear mandate to keep away from the negotiations. Obama does not want to become a co-owner of a sinking ship. He will in due time take the reins in his hands and wants to have free hands to do so. No last minute bail-out please! A bailout that leaves him holding an empty bag? No thanks.

If Yvo de Boer is afraid to recognize the above, and still wants to convey that he is playing in tune with Obama – this is another case of UN misleading the innocents. The Poznan party is on – the decision making process is off!