Putin Prowling Provocatorily ... Germany On Alert

"[Russia is determined to expand its] sphere of influence further westward into Europe."

"To achieve this goal, Russia will not shy away from direct military confrontation with NATO if necessary."

"We must not sit back and assume that a possible Russian attack would come in 2029 at the earliest. We are already under fire today."

"The means Moscow uses are well-known – attempted manipulation of elections and public opinion, propaganda, provocations, disinformation, espionage, sabotage, airspace violations by drones and fighter jets, contract killings, persecution of opposition figures living abroad." 

"[The current] icy peace [with the European Union could erupt at any moment into] heated confrontation." 

German foreign intelligence chief, Martin Jaeger 

This image from October 13, 2025 shows the German navy’s Braunschweig-class “Erfurt” corvette of during the Andoya military exercise in the North Sea near Harstad, Norway. Gerry Images

"[Recent drone incidents underscored the potential] hybrid threat [to Germany and its European allies from Russia, even as investigations remain ongoing]."

"Russia is aggressively pursuing its political ambitions against Germany, the EU, and its Western allies. [Russian conduct is] increasingly escalatory."

"Russian services continuously adjust the levels of escalation of their activities with the strategic aim of weakening liberal democracies."

"As a result, we detect a wide range of espionage, disinformation, interference, sabotage, and cyberattacks conducted by foreign actors and states in Germany."

Sinan Selen, president, German domestic intelligence service (BfV) 

Russia, warned Martin Jaeger, head of Germany's BND (spy service) is prepared to expand its "sphere of influence further westward into Europe". To achieve this goal, Russia will not shy away from direct military confrontation with NATO if necessary." Mr. Jaeger addressed a public briefing with parliament members in Berlin, where he was  joined by leaders of the country's domestic and military intelligence agencies.

 

Other threats were given mention which face Germany, in the realm of political and religious extremism, but it was the threat posed by Russia that dominated their statements. As Russia's "number one target in Europe", since Germany is the largest country in the EU alliance, and plays a "leading role in supporting Ukraine" in Russia's war of territorial expansion, Germany too must consider itself a leading target for Vladimir Putin's grand plan of domination in Europe and its increasingly military opposition to NATO, testing the resolve of the group by challenging the sovereignty of its eastern European members.

 

A series of incidents in recent weeks prodding members of the European Union, included Russian drones appearing in Poland, and Estonian airspace violated by Russian fighter jets. Germany also suspects that Russia is behind a number of drone incursions in Germany as well, including the most recent incident that interfered with flight operations at the Munich airport a week earlier necessitating a temporary close-down. Ongoing sabotage and disinformation campaigns also have European authorities on edge. 

 

Germany has voted to hugely invest in upgrading its military . BBC

 

"We are threatened by Russia. We are threatened by Putin. We have to do whatever is needed to deter that. [NATO should be braced for a possible attack in as little as four years]."

"It's not about how much time I need, it's much more about how much time Putin gives us to be prepared." "And the sooner we are prepared the better."

"Unlike the western world, Russia is not thinking in boxes. It's not about peacetime and war, it's a continuum: let's start with hybrid, then escalate, then back."

"This is what makes me think we are facing a real threat." 

German General Carsten Breuer

 

A Malicious Male Predator Incarcerated in a Women's Prison

"Whether the change is serious is doubtful."

"Liebich has been known for years for her right-wing extremist views and has also made queerphobic statements in the past."

"[It was likely that Liebich] made the change of civil status in an abusive manner in order to provoke and embarrass the state." 

Der Spiegel

 

"The BBC calls a male neo-Nazi ‘she’, because their absolutist belief in gender identity ideology means any man – rapist, voyeur, terrorist, murderer or paedophile – must be described as a woman the moment he says he’s one." 

J.K. Rowling

 

"Liebich's case has been used to further the hateful discourse [that characterized the debate around the bill in the Bundestag]."

"The Self-Determination Act is intended to strengthen the human rights of trans and non-binary persons and protect their fundamental rights."

"Instead, this individual case ridicules gender self-determination or declares it a danger. This jeopardizes democracy."

Theresa Richarz, legal expert, Germany's Federation for Queer Diversity (LSVD)  

Picture alliance/dpa | Sebastian Willnow

 

The not-so-subtle subterfuge by male criminals to evade prosecution, or to simply advantage themselves by posing -- however absurdly -- as female to be enabled to enter women-only public washrooms, change rooms, sport competitions, beauty pageants, and prisons, has become a fairly universal phenomenon in a 'progressive' world of minority gender dysphoric groups aggressively asserting their rights to full respect and acknowledgement in a gender of their choosing. Civil society, leery of being declared transphobic has bowed to the demands of subgroups within the wider LGBTQ-2 community.

 

In Germany, a man by the name of Sven Liebich, known for his racist beliefs was sentenced to 18 months without parole in July of 2023, in consequence of  his being found guilty of incitement to hatred, defamation and insult. This neo-Nazi committed his crimes as an identifiable male, and since his sentencing, has 'legally' altered his biological gender from male to female. And he aims now to serve that sentence in his criminal conviction, in a women's prison. 

"This is an example of the very simple abuse of the self-determination law."

"We now need a debate about how to reinstate clear rules against the abuse of changes of gender."

"The judiciary, the public, and politicians are being fooled here because the Self-Determination Act provides the opportunity for this."

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt  

Chemnitz women's prison

Germany's revised Self Determination Act, newly-enacted, was the enabling legislation for Sven Liebich to become Maria-Svenja Liebich, with full recognition under the law. Lipstick carefully applied under a handlebar moustache does not a woman make of a man. It does, however, create no end of controversy, when a law is carelessly constructed in its eagerness to please a vocal, demanding minority, delusional on biological verities to the extent they can feel confident in re-scripting nature's biological verities.

 

The law that guarantees an individual's right to alter their gender, places women's rights in jeopardy. As an active member since the 1990s of far-right extremism in Germany, this man was declared as a "right wing extremist" with statewide and national activity background, once a leading figure in the neo-Nazi "Blood & Honor" network, according to Saxony-Anhalt's intelligence agency. 

"Anyone who follows the reporting on neo-Nazi Sven Liebich can only come to one conclusion: The traffic-light coalition government has managed, by law, to force almost the entire German media landscape to tell untruths and make grotesquely false claims."

"Sven Liebich is not a woman."

Journalist Julian Reichelt

Liebich has now declared himself to be a devout Jew, and while in prison in the city of Chemnitz, starting on Friday, has demanded he be served kosher meals and rabbinical supervision in prison. His physical male visage with short dark hair and greying stubble is now enhanced with sunglasses, gold earrings, and red lipstick under his grey handlebar moustache. 

 

Of the law that came into force in November, while stating that this case "clearly demonstrates that the Self-Determination Act in its current form, contains weaknesses that could encourage targeted abuse", Family Affairs Minister Karin Prien added that safeguarding gender self-determination remains "right and important".  

 

The intention of  striking the law was so that the process for trans, intersex and nonbinary individuals could be eased in changing gender entries without having to undergo psychiatric assessment. When this man proposing himself to be a woman, arrives at the Chemnitz prison on August 29, he will be undergoing a series of questioning to determine his suitability to remain there for the duration of his sentencing. 

 

Women inmates can only hope and pray for sanity to prevail. 

 

Marla-Svenja Liebich, formerly Sven, was photographed wearing a Nazi-style uniform at rallies Credit: Sebastian Willnow

 

 

Failed Asylum Seekers in Germany

"We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims -- we hope very much that they all make it [recover from their injuries]."

"It is suspected to be an attack - a lot points to that." 

Bavarian Governor Markus Soder

 

"There is currently a major police operation in the area of Dachauer Strasse / Seidlstrasse. We are on site."

Munich Police Service  

"There was an incident in Munich at the Verdi rally. A car drove into the demonstration. "

"A person was lying on the street and a young man was taken away by the police. "

"People were sitting on the ground, crying and shaking. Details still unclear."

Sandra Demmelhuber, local journalist  

"It's all so unbelievable. We are totally shocked and are incredibly afraid for our colleagues who were part of the demonstration."

"We heard that the car drove straight into the demonstration on purpose. Hopefully there will be no fatalities."

Verdi managing director Claudia Weber

A badly damaged car at the centre of the scene   AFP via Getty Images

Central Munich suffered a catastrophic incident yesterday when children, among 28 people injured were the victims of a deliberate attempt to kill those gathered as participants in a service workers' union  demonstration while walking on a street.  A Mini Cooper driven by an Afghan asylum seeker overtook a police vehicle that had been following the gathering. The car driver accelerated, then drove directly toward the back of the marching group striking many in the entourage.

 

Some of the victims are believed to have been seriously injured. The scene was one of understandable chaos, people lying on the street, others sitting on the ground "crying and shaking". According to witnesses at the scene, a woman and child were pinned under the vehicle. Police shot at the vehicle before one of two men in the car was taken away. 

"I was in the demonstration and saw that a man was lying under the car. Then I tried to open the door, but it was locked."

Demonstrator at union gathering

Emergency services attend the scene   AP

A series of attacks involving immigrants have highlighted migration during the campaign for Germany's February 23 election. The car driver was arrested by officers who initially fired a shot at the car. The Mini Cooper was centre of the scene, debris from the scattered crowd surrounding it. Bavaria's state interior minister Joachim Herrman stated that the 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was previously known to authorities in relation to theft and drug offences. 

According to State Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich, a prosecutors' department which undertakes extremism investigations, was examining the case. The country's main opposition conservative bloc has demanded that a stricter approach to irregular migration be implemented; that many more people must be turned back at the border and deportations increased.

• A 2-year-old boy and an adult were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria -- an Afghan with a rejected asylum application became the suspect;
• There were knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year by suspects who were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria; the attacker in Solingen was supposed to have left the country as a rejected asylum seeker;
• The December Christmas market car-ramming in Magdeburg where the suspect was a Saudi doctor who had attracted various regional authorities' attention.

• 

  An injured person is taken away by emergency services   AP

  
  

Exalting Terrorism and Expressing Antisemitism In Germany -- One Count and You're Out!

"[The acts perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 have been] celebrated in a repugnant way [on social media in Germany. [The attack in Mannheim] also was glorified on the net by many in the most appalling way."

"Such brutalization online stokes a climate of violence that can drive extremists to new acts of violence."

"So it's very clear to me that Islamist agitators who mentally live in the Stone Age have no place in our country. Anyone who has no German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must, wherever possible, be expelled and deported."

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser

A protester is dragged away by police officers during a pro-Palestinians demonstration on the campus of Berlin's Free University, in Berlin, Germany, May 7, 2024.

 

New legislation is being launched in Germany to make it easier to deport foreigners who engage in public approval of terrorism. With the new law a sole, single comment posted to social media could conceivably represent adequate grounds for government agencies to deport those it considers have countered the law, offending Germany's moral and ethical codes unpermitting of verbal violence against Jews in particular. 

Public demands that the state  take remediative action against foreign elements that have supported the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, and the rising levels of antisemitism that have resulted from among asylum seekers compelled Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take hard action against those who unreservedly promote hate among themselves and infecting larger parts of the population.

 

A man attacks people with a knife, at a far right-wing information stand of the Buergerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE) in the central market of the city of Mannheim, Germany, May 31, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. Buergerbewegung Pax Europa/Handout via REUTERS

 

The Cabinet approved the measure in the wake of a deadly knife attack a month ago against a group describing itself as opposition to "political Islam". During the assault a police officer was killed. Migration continues to be a headache for Germany. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015 a million asylum seekers, basically economic migrants, were permitted to enter Germany when the EU was being flooded with an unstoppable migrant rush, mostly young males from the Middle East and North Africa.

Now, Chancellor Scholz faces a backlash by a population fed up with rising crime levels and in particular violence against women where incidents of rape have increased substantially. More latterly, since the October 7 Hamas assault in Israel, many from among the migrant community have expressed their general contempt and hatred for Jews; their cultural/religious racism in free expression.

 

New citizenship legislation stipulates that naturalized people must be capable of supporting themselves and their relatives financially, that those seeking citizenship be committed to the "free democratic fundamental order" is already covered under the existing law, with the new version specifying that antisemitic and racist acts are incompatible with the original stipulation. 

 

Basically, according to government rules, issues like antisemitism, Israel's right of existence, along with Jewish security in Germany now have greater weight in the test for citizenship which applicants must undergo.

 

The country's law on residence will also undergo change; approving or promoting "a single terrorist crime" is to be viewed as grounds for a "particularly serious interest in expulsion", according to the German Interior Ministry. In other words, a single comment that "glorifies and endorses a terrorist crime on social media" could result in expulsion.

Under the new guidelines anyone publicly approving of an offence "in a manner which is suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace", could face expulsion, without  a conviction. Simple social media post 'likes' will not fall into the deportation category. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser expressed her confidence that these changes would shortly be approved by lawmakers, nor is she concerned that freedom of speech laws would be impacted.

Source: JGI/Tom Grill / GettyImages.de

Europe COVID Ridden, Locking Down

"It's like a luxury prison. It's definitely limited freedom and for me it's not great psychologically."

"People were promised that if they got vaccinated they would be able to lead a normal life, but now that's not true."

Sascha Jamkovyi, food sector entrepreneur, Vienna

Pedestrians walk at the city centre during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, as Austria's government imposed a general lockdown from Monday, in Salzburg, Austria, November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Lukas Barth

Austria now is the first country in Western Europe reimposing lockdown since inoculations first began in the country. Non-essential shops, bars and cafes are now shuttered as caseloads surge, making the continent's leaders fearful of a second straight winter where the entire continent will be in deep freeze, so to speak. Tighter restrictions are also on the way in Germany in an effort to control a record-setting wave of infections.

Europe is now again the epicentre of the global pandemic that caused lockdowns first in March of 2020. The imposition of new restrictions and new vaccine mandates are expected to affect more countries struggling with rising caseloads, marking the approach of the second full year of spreading infections since the SARS-CoV-2 viruses that causes COVID-19 first emerged in China.

Confirming her position on the need to begin another closing of society, Chancellor Merkel informed leaders of her conservative CDU party: "We are in a highly dramatic situation. What is in place now is not sufficient" to dampen rising COVID case numbers. An urgent message from Jens Spahn the German health minister for people to be vaccinated, followed his confidential assurance of certainty that by winter's end everyone in the country would be "vaccinated, recovered or dead"; a message geared to spell out dire consequences.

Workers dismantle a booth in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, which, like Saxony, has cancelled its Christmas markets to help control Covid-19. Photograph: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images

 

Austrians are being urged to work from home if at all possible; warning that restaurants, theatres and non-essential shops would be closed for a period of ten days. Citing a limited number of reasons for leaving home, such as attending school, going out to a workplace, shopping for essential products, or walking outdoors for exercise, Austrian authorities have made it clear that normal life habits must temporarily undergo change.

As of February 1st, in Austria, vaccinations will become compulsory, within a public where many remain skeptical of vaccinations, a suspicion of medical science encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, third largest in parliament. Some 40,000 protesters were out on the streets in Vienna. In Brussels and across the Netherlands, protests turned violent over the weekend.

Unvaccinated people were banned from services, including going out to pubs and cafes and restaurants in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. In Austria a third of the population remain unvaccinated, one of the highest unvaccinated rates in Western Europe, a situation that authorities blame for the COVID wave the country is currently struggling under.

 

Abandoned tables of a closed restaurant are seen in a street as the Austrian government imposed fourth national coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in Vienna, Austria, November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Despite the imposition of a lockdown on the unvaccinated last week, daily infections continue rising far above the previous peak, leading to a full lockdown this week. In Berlin and other parts of Germany Christmas markets have opened for the first time in two years, but in states bordering Austria and the Czech Republic with Germany's highest case loads, stricter rules prevail with the cancellation of Christmas markets and barring the unvaccinated from restaurants and bars, along with night-time curfews.

Vaccination rates are lower still in Eastern European countries where some of the highest death tolls per capita in the world have been experienced. In countries like Bulgaria and Romania, hospitals are overrun with serious cases of COVID-19, the surging caseloads leaving medical personnel in a quandary of hopelessness over vaccine hesitancy.

Demonstrators protest against government COVID-19 restrictions during anniversary celebrations of the 1989 Velvet Revolution ending communist rule, Prague, Nov. 17, 2021.  AP Photo/Petr David Josek

Assisted Death -- Relaxing Rules and Regulations

A court in The Hague ruled that the doctor did not have to re-establish the wishes of her patient at the time of administering euthanasia.    Credit...Aleks Furtula/Associated Press

"This freedom has been there in law [Netherlands euthanasia law] from the beginning, but the law is being interpreted more and more broadly."

"Nobody can look inside the head of someone with dementia."

Jaap Schuurmans, researcher

"[In cases where a patient has advanced dementia], It is not necessary for the doctor to agree with the patient the time or manner in which euthanasia will be given."

Netherlands right-to-die medical code change

The Netherlands recently updated their euthanasia rules to permit doctors to use sleeping pills for patients to prevent patients suffering from dementia from becoming violent preparatory to receiving lethal injections to end their lives. Dissolving pills in a patient's drinks will serve to pacify their urge to violence, avoiding the inconvenience of an awkward end to their lives. The amended code supports the use of sedatives in food or drink of patients with advanced dementia should any concerns arise that the patient might be "disturbed, agitated or aggressive".

"It's only two or three cases a year but this might  help doctors to have less fear of a penal case", suggested Jacob Kohnstamm, chair of the regional euthanasia review committee, stating this to be a needed clarification to relieve fears of prosecution in the instance of reasonable, professional judgement carried out by doctors when faced with such situations requiring action to be taken to end a sufferer's life humanely.

The changes were occasioned when a court ruling overturned a murder charge against a nursing home doctor. Marinou Arends had surreptitiously placed a sedative into a 74-year-old's coffee, who was suffering from dementia, before he proceeded to administer a lethal injection. Having reached an advanced stage of dementia, the woman was no longer capable of any kind of informed consent on the treatment's timing. The doctor was in possession of an instruction from the woman who had stated she wished to die when she felt "the time was right".

Dr. Arends received a written reprimand by the Dutch medical board for having acted on "advance directives". According to critics of the doctor's actions, the patient had been victimized, a dignified end that euthanasia is meant to provide, having been denied her. A relative present during the procedure had pushed the woman back down on the bed when the had sat up in an effort to avoid being given the injection. There was obviously no comfort given the dementia patient as death was delivered.

According to the Dutch Supreme Court, the doctor had acted within the country's euthanasia law, enacted in 2002. The court ruled that should a patient no longer be capable of consent due to dementia, medical professionals were given discretion to determine for themselves when the correct time had arrived to terminate said patient's life. Opponents of euthanasia were alarmed at the ruling. The Netherlands, a pioneer in the practice of euthanasia, according to opponents has taken to interpreting set rules ever more inclusively.

Contradicting the critics, the country's euthanasia review committee is of the belief that the amendments to its code provides doctors with additional legal support in such instances where it is deemed to be "pointless" to attempt consent by the patient. Some Dutch medical practitioners have opposed the ruling. Over 200 doctors issued a statement that no doctor should be allowed to secretly sedate patients before euthanasia, when news of Arends's case emerged in 2018.

Coincidentally, in Germany, two terminally ill patients being treated for COVID-19, ages 47 and 50 were administered medication by a senior doctor that led to their immediate deaths. Employed at the University Hospital in Essen city in North Rhine-Westphalia, the 44-year-old doctor was arrested and charged with manslaughter this past week, and remain in custody. Essen police have divulged that in one case the doctor stated his intention was to end further suffering of the patient and his relatives.

A newspaper account described the two patients as suffering from coronavirus infections, their condition in his ward, according to the doctor "very critical". No further information was forthcoming relative to the treatment the patients had received. In Germany, seriously ill patients have the freedom to request assistance in ending their lives, under a court ruling of last year. Whether this happened in the doctor's case is as yet unclear; several steps are required before the provision of such assistance. An investigation is ongoing.

The doctor was employed at the Essen University Hospital

The unnamed doctor is facing manslaughter charges, in a country where assisted death is an extremely sensitive topic, considering the legacy of six million European Jews experimented on, used as starved slave labour in Nazi Germany's munitions factories, and finally annihilated by the regime during the Holocaust years amidst the Second World War.

Germany, Past and Present

"[Germany should approach the fight against the disease] more like a marathon than a sprint."

"Future measures must be designed and prepared in such a way that, on the one hand, they ensure good health care and, on the other hand, that they can be sustained over the necessary periods of time."

"Planning for this transition must begin immediately in politics, administration, companies and other organizations."

"The attempt to centrally control the resumption of production would ... not work in practice. This resumption must be controlled primarily by the institutions and companies themselves." 

Academic report, Ifo Institute for Economic Research

A man with a mask passes by an empty street during the coronavirus crisis in Berlin, Germany.

The first Western democracy that succeeded admirably in containing the COVID-19 spread is now prepared to begin the laborious process of re-opening its economy. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it is led by a woman. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also by profession a trained scientist and as such is by definition a professional analyst with a degree in quantum chemistry. She is practical, plainspoken, firm and resolute as a leader, and Germans love their leader.

Coincidentally, Taiwan too has a trained scientist in its government in vice-President Chen Chien-jen, an epidemiologist and scientific researcher of some global renown. As an Asian democracy that prides itself on its sovereignty with a physical proximity to China, the source of the zoonotic SARS-CoV-2, Taiwan no doubt, like Germany, profited handsomely in gaining control of the novel coronavirus with the guidance and knowledge of its vice-president.

Having a background in science and economics is a great leg up in evaluating and analyzing complex data, aiding in decision-making beyond the capacity of lawyers and business leaders who typically become national leaders. Had matters moved forward for Germany as they did elsewhere, where the coronavirus established itself in large numbers it would not now be in a position to contemplate relaxing the measures it took early on in view of the emergence of that highly contagious virus.

Michael Kappeler / DPA / Alamy

Science-based policies succeeded in overcoming the deleterious effect of a densely populated country encircled by other nations that experienced high death rates. Germany's death rate of 54 deaths per million is immensely lower than that of other countries located nearby in Europe; Spain as example with 437 deaths per million; Italy with 384 deaths per million, France with 296 deaths per million, and that of the United Kingdom of 237 deaths per million population.

Much can also be attributed to the German temperament and culture of discipline and efficiency. During the worst days of the raging pandemic, Germany's Chancellor addressed the nation calmly and rationally with readily digestible explanations and statistics and a rationale for decisions taken. Most Germans trust and respect their Chancellor, her ethics and her values and her conscientious and conscious sense of humanity.

Her early imposition of stringent social-gathering limits, school closings, business closures, slowing of the economy and lockdowns in response to the early days of the novel coronavirus sweeping through the country along with the state of preparedness of its medical community to deal with the health crisis, the focus on testing and tracing of "every infection chain", all contributed to containing its spread.

It helped that, unlike other European and North American countries struggling to cope with the novel coronavirus in the absence of adequate, reliable personal protection equipment Germany was self-sufficient in medical devices, test kits and the production of equipment, with a surplus of ICU beds. It was able to initiate a robust testing program where now 120,000 tests are completed daily in a population of 83 million.

Leading to Germany's instituting a program of issuing "immunity cards" for people identified as having developed antibodies to the disease, enabling them to return to work, to travel and to socialize with a view to expanding the system to the degree that the country will gradually fully reopen its economy. The disciplined mind-set of the population, obedient to authority, resilient and given to national pride in this instance has been put to good use to benefit all of society.

Those same attributes seventy-five years ago led to a majority of the German population electing a political party calling itself the National Socialist German Workers' Party which most know in its abbreviated form: Nazi Party -- to which it was loyal and trusting. A party and a leader that led it to stretch beyond the bounds of human conscience, tolerance and compassion for those it accepted through a tremendous propaganda machine as sub-human, ripe for extermination.

This time, thankfully, it is a virus that German efficiency and bureaucracy is fixated on exterminating.

"Since the Second World War there has not been a challenge for our country in which action in a spirit of solidarity on our part was so important." -- Angela Merkel

Yad Vashem Security guard stands at the empty Hall of Names in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem on April 19, 2020 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

 

"But You Never Forget and You Shouldn't Forget"

"I found humanity in Newfoundland. People were so kind to me. People helped me, people kept me in boarding houses, wouldn't charge me a penny. "They fed me."
"And I'm very happy I came to Newfoundland."
Philip Riteman, Holocaust survivor

Seventy years ago this man was in his early teens. He lived with his family in a Polish shtetl, Shershev, until 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded, driving his family along with other Jewish villagers out of the town they had always lived in generation after generation, herded to live in ghettos, those infamous collecting points from whence they eventually were shipped in cattle cars to work and death camps.

From left: 79-year-old Miriam Ziegler, 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, 85-year-old Gabor Hirsch and 80-year-old Eva Kor pose with the original image of them as children taken at Auschwitz at the time of its liberation on January 26, 2015 in Krakow, Poland. #   Ian Gavan/Getty Images

Philip Riteman's family was sent to Auschwitz. There his parents, five brothers and two sisters as well as his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were put to death. "I'm the only survivor. Many times I wish I didn't survive -- why me?" he queried in a classical survivor's reminiscence and sorrow. "I think about Newfoundland all the time. People ask me where I'm from, I say, I'm a Newfie boy", he has also stated,with pride.

At age 17, weighing 75 pounds, he was liberated in May of 1945. At that time he was convinced he was without family or friends, that there was nowhere he could go to, to resume life and normalcy. But the Americans who liberated the prisoners at Auschwitz  discovered through some compassionate sleuthing that he had relatives in Canada as well as in the dominion of Newfoundland, not yet a part of Canada.

While the government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King refused entry to Canada for this refugee child, Newfoundland welcomed him, and he was united with an aunt who lived there. In recognition of his having made a success of himself through his business acumen, despite the horrible tribulations he had suffered as a child, he is slated to receive the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador at Government House in St.John's.

His is one such story, and there are countless others. No Jews, under threat of extermination by Nazi Germany, were welcomed by the-then government of Canada  under Prime Minister MacKenzie King whose principal adviser on the "alien" refugee file assured King that "none was too many" to save from certain death and in the process defile Canada with their living presence.

Ana Maria Gordon was another such Jew who with her family attempted to escape the dreadful fate that the Axis Powers under Nazi Germany meted out to Europe's Jews. Her family lived in Kosice, Slovakia and her father assembled enough money to buy passage on a ship along with visas to enable them to enter Cuba and find haven there. She was four years old at the time that her family boarded the SS St.Louis, leaving Hamburg on May 13, 1939.

The luxury liner co-opted temporarily for a rescue mission to take desperate Jews out of Germany four months before war was declared, was bound for Havana, where the government of the day had agreed to absorb those Jews who paid for special visas. The German Captain Gustav Schroeder, happily was a decent and honourable man (later memorialized at Yad Vashem), determined to treat his passengers with respect.

"He was a wonderful man, a wonderful man. He was a real captain who said 'my passengers come first'. [However during the passage] people heard things and started getting nervous, you felt the atmosphere was changing. They [Cuban authorities] didn't let us off the ship", said now-82-year-old Ana Gordon. The Cuban authorities held up disembarkation for greater sums to be forthcoming from the passengers. But German law hadn't permitted Jews to take money or property with them, and there was no more to be had.

In desperation the passengers turned for help to the United States, which responded by refusing them entry. And then it was Canada's turn to deny entry to the Jewish passengers knowing that if they were forced to return to Germany their lives would be fraught with danger. Washington and Ottawa knew full well what awaited the returning passengers to Germany.  So the captain had little option but to return to Europe with his 907 remaining passengers.

S.S. St. Louis surrounded by smaller vessels in the port of Havana (USHMM Photo)

Captain Schroeder, however, had different ideas than to return his passengers to Germany, and so he helped to negotiate asylum for them in Britain, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The Jews on that fated voyage were disappointed in the failure of their attempt to find haven in Cuba, the U.S. or Canada, but satisfied that they would be safe where they finally ended up. Until, of course, the troops of the Third Reich marched into Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and the nightmare resumed.

While 250 of the passengers died in the ensuing years of deliberate genocide, others managed to survive. Ana Gordon and her family ended up  in Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Her uncle, married to a non-Jewish German, was given the choice of sterilization or camp internment, and he chose sterilization. The Gordon family survived, miraculously, were liberated by Soviet forces and eventually re-united.

Buchenwald corpses piled high  --  Holocaust Education and Research Team

Ana Gordon was eight years of age by the time she and her mother were released from the notorious Ravensbruck camp for women, north of Berlin. "What do remember? Too much. I was there close to two years. It was awful, just awful. At this stage after so many years, you know", she says from her home in Toronto, she cannot find it in her to harbour resentment against the Canada that shunned entry to her and the other shipload of Jews, shrugging.

"But you never forget and  you shouldn't forget. These things happen . . . and I'm afraid that they can happen [again]."

JTA Jewish Telegraphic Agency

http://www.jta.org

European Maccabi Games to be held at Olympic venues built by Nazis

By Toby Axelrod   July 21, 2015 

Adolf Hitler, second from left, watching the Olympic Games in Berlin with the Italian crown prince, left, August 1936. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

BERLIN (JTA) – They are roaring through Europe, raising dust as they go: Jewish bikers bearing an Olympic-style torch all the way from Israel to this German city.

Next week, 11 core riders will pull their steel steeds into Berlin’s famous outdoor amphitheater, the Waldbuehne, to help usher in the 14th European Maccabi Games — the first ever in Germany — at a venue built by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics. Other competitions will be held at the Olympic Stadium here, where Hitler presided over the opening of the games that year.

The riders are following in the treads of the Maccabiah Riders, who rode through Europe in the early 1930s to promote the games then being held under British mandate in Palestine.

The July 28 opening ceremony, which will feature remarks by German President Joachim Gauck and a concert featuring Matisyahu, Dana International and others, will usher in 10 days of sports, parties, a Limmud Germany learning event and more. Some 2,300 Jewish athletes from 36 countries will take part, cheered on by fans bused in from across the country by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. And the sports venues, including Berlin’s Olympiastadion, will be open to all, free of charge and under heavy security.

Elen Katz and Catherine Lurie-Alt participating in a motorcycle rally from Israel to Berlin for the opening of the European Maccabi Games. (Yosef Alony)

Athletes will compete in 19 sports, as well as a few exhibition games pitting Jewish athletes against German soccer and basketball stars. On July 31, they will try to break the Guinness World Record for the largest kiddush ever.

The European Maccabi Games grew out of the Maccabi movement, which traces back more than a century to Turkey when Jews, then shut out of local sporting clubs, founded the Israel Gymnastic Club in 1895. Jews elsewhere followed suit.

The first European Maccabi Games were held in Prague in 1929, and the second a year later in Antwerp. But with the rise of the Nazis, Jewish sports associations were banned. Germany’s Makkabi Club was reinstated only 50 years ago.

In 1969, the quadrennial competition resumed, alternating every two years with the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Bringing the European Maccabi Games to Germany was a herculean feat, says Alon Meyer, head of Makkabi Germany.

“People told me they never could imagine setting foot in Germany because their parents and grandparents were sent away from there,” said Meyer, 41, a Frankfurt businessman whose father fled Nazi Germany for Palestine. “Now these people are coming back to see the changes [and take part in] the biggest Jewish event ever held on European ground.”

The Berlin Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Olympic Games. (Scott Heavey/Getty Images)

The change to which Meyer referred is the dramatic growth in Germany’s Jewish population. Only a few thousand of Germany’s prewar Jewish population of 500,000 remained in Germany after the Holocaust. Today there are some 240,000 Jews here, most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Membership in Jewish sports clubs has grown, too.

Meyer wanted the competition to be held in the Olympic Stadium, those same stone halls where many Jewish athletes, though not all, were banned in 1936.

“They came all the way to Germany and in the morning they got a call, they were not allowed to run. They found out right before the race,” said Steven Stoller, 64, of New Jersey, a distant cousin of the late Jewish-American sprinter Sam Stoller, who was told he could not compete by Avery Brundage, then president of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“I wanted to come to Berlin for my children, my future grandchildren, to have the story live on,” Stoller said.

Jed Margolis, the executive director of Maccabi USA, will fly in from Philadelphia to cheer some 200 participating American athletes aged 15 to 85.

“At one point in life I would say, ‘I will never go to Germany or buy a German product,’” Margolis said. “Yet there is a vibrant and growing Jewish community there. We want to support them and at the same time teach our next generation” about what happened there.

Security will be tight for the event, in the stadium and beyond. Berlin announced the creation of a new digital reporting system for anti-Semitic incidents just in time for the games.
“Security is the No. 1 priority,” said Lena van Hooven, spokeswoman for the games.

But Danny Maron is not worried. He and the other Jewish bikers have been traveling through Eastern Europe with Israeli flags attached to their bikes.
“We have no fear at all,” Maron said. “We are very proud.”

Maron’s father, Yoram, a Holocaust survivor, told JTA that he wanted “to show the whole world that after all the death, we are still alive, and we keep moving.”

At each stop, from Athens to Romania to Krakow, more Jewish bikers have woven into the pack. The Maccabi torch itself rides in a specially built case carried by Greek biker Kobi Samuel, 48.
“Two of our riders are descendants of actual Maccabi riders of the 1930s, nine are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and two of our bikers are actual survivors aged 73 and 78,” said filmmaker Catherine Lurie-Alt, who snagged Jewish talk show host Larry King as the narrator for her documentary about the motorcycle rally.

“This is where it all started,” Lurie-Alt said. “We are going through communities where Jewish populations were decimated, on our way to Berlin, where they will enter that stadium with jubilation and joy.”

Toby Axelrod is JTA's correspondent for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. A former assistant director of the American Jewish Committee's Berlin office, she has also worked as staff writer and editor at the New York Jewish Week. She has won numerous awards from the New York Press Association and the American Jewish Press Association. She has published books on Holocaust history for teen-agers.

Never Forgotten

"...So the end of the ghetto fight against Germany was also inevitable. Disease, starvation, and mounting casualty figures from the murderous artillery fire took their toll. There was no one left to fight, and the defence collapsed. It is estimated that the Germans expended more artillery shells in subduing the Warsaw ghetto, defended by a handful of bedraggled Jewish partisans, than they did in the initial capture of Warsaw in 1939, when it was defended by the Polish Army. General Jurgen Stroop wrote a seventy-five-page battle report to the Fuhrer in Berlin, and a proud Hitler awarded the general an Iron Cross to ease his Halsschmerzen. When General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations of the German Armed Forces High Command heard this report read at the Nuremberg Trials, he could not contain himself: 'That dirty, arrogant S.S. swine', he shouted. 'Imagine writing a seventy-five-page boastful report on a little murder expedition, when a major campaign fought by soldiers against a well-armed enemy takes only a few pages.
"The world, however, took little note of the Warsaw uprising. It was too busy following the daily communiques of the two-front World War. But Adolf Eichmann noted it, and in his diary set down that a chill of fear swept through Germany upon the news. Even Goebbels was apprehensive. 'It shows what is to be expected of the Jews when they are in possession of arms', he jotted in his diary. And Jews too noted it, Jews in concentration camps, Jews in America, Jews in Russia, Jews in Palestine.
"In Germany orders were issued that henceforth there were to be no large concentrations of Jews anywhere. The extermination was to continue to the bitter end, at an accelerated pace. Even as German armies retreated in Russia and France, the death trains with their human cargoes kept rolling to Germany's gas chambers, and the chimneys continued to belch fine layers of warm, human ashes over the countryside and to fill the air with the sickening-sweet odour of the 'bakeries', as the Germans jestingly called the crematoriums. Only when Allied soldiers crossed Germany's borders did a frantic scramble begin to eradicate all traces of concentration camp activities. But the Allied advance was too swift, and what the world had refused to believe remained intact for all the world to see."
Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History

Nazi Germany embarked on its Thousand Year Reich under a persuasively charismatic chancellor who promised Germans their rightful place in the world order as Aryan specimens of humanity perfected. All other nations of the world would be in thrall to Germany as befits a master race. Nothing would deter Adolf Hitler and his minions, but to subjugate the world to the command and control of German hegemonic power through which Germany would become a light unto the world.

Illuminating totalitarian fascism at its height of entitlement, advancing into the future to destroy an entire people through the creation of a twofold campaign of epic proportions; the Axis powers controlled by Nazi Germany determined to conquer the responding Allied powers themselves determined to combat fascism and rescue the world from the domination of a creed whose purpose was to create a vast pool of victims comprised of the people of all the conquered countries.

A second stream of purposeful action demanded resources to be taken from combat zones; finances, manpower, transport by truck and by rail, administration, planning and execution; the gathering up of Europe's Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political dissenters for confinement and execution. That venture sufficiently successful that by war's end in 1945 six million Jews were annihilated. Seventy years later, the persecutor-slaughterers and the remnants and successors of the persecuted have a common cause.

Photographs (from the LIFE archives) by Hugo Jaeger
(Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer)

German reparations paved the way for Germany to pledge that all successive generations would be exposed to the shameful history of the dread barbarism of a German government that acted on behalf of the German people. And an eventual pact between the State of Israel -- which had been brought into existence as an antidote to the potential of any future state seeking a replay of Nazi Germany's Final Solution -- and the country that had given birth to the Holocaust.

A network encompassing all sectors of business, production, research, trade, government, military, society, art, exists between Israel and Germany. The economies of the two countries are intertwined; Germany presents as Israel's principal trading partner in the European Union, and is the third-largest trade partnership in the world with Israel after China and the United States. The bizarre bestiality of Nazi Germany has morphed into present-day Germany as a human-rights leader in Europe.

A number of exchanges and foundations in the sciences link joint cooperation elevating ing both countries' international reputations as captains of innovation. Cultural and educational exchanges represent further connections. One in two young Israelis has visited Germany, with tens of thousands of Israelis coming to Berlin annually, many taking up residence. German visitors are attracted to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.

Sister-city relationships number close to a hundred; business collaborations and cultural exchanges have seen Jewish life and culture flourishing once again in Berlin and other German cities. The first rabbinical seminary since the end of the war was inaugurated in 2009 in Berlin. "Never again" has ensured that each new generation is exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Is it even remotely possible for a country to make amends for an unspeakable mass extermination on such an unimaginable scale, that such trust and forgiveness is extended?

Of course there are complications. Israel, established in the geography from which Jews emanated historically in Judea in the ancient past is also home to other tribal peoples who are enraged at the re- creation of a Jewish state in the midst of Islamic countries and the threat from that source is never-ending. And just as Jews have returned to Germany where they lived before WWII for a thousand years, Muslims too have migrated to Germany, their presence now threatening Jews once again in Germany.

From Holocaust Survival to Happiness

"There was no water system, electricity, nothing. I was always barefoot [in 1940s Konus, Hungary]. If a car came into town, that was like a national holiday. We used to run out of school."
"People used to see bundles of bodies tied together with wires, floating in the rivers."
"My dad and I and my brother went to one side. And my mom and my three young sisters went straight to the gas chambers."
"I remember one day they called everyone to the middle of camp [Auschwitz/Buna work camp] and brought in three people, and hung them that night. One guy stole a piece of bread, another stole an apple. To survive, you had to. We called it organizing, not stealing."
"You didn't care [about death]. You're so desperate, so hungry, you don't focus on human beings. You're an animal."
"I had my number, 6024, and that's all I knew. You could have called my name, I wouldn't have answered you."
"When you were marching on the death march, you could hear shooting continuously. People who couldn't walk anymore, they shot them. Bang, bang, bang, bang -- continuously, you see?"
"I was sitting on top of someone's head [packed open freight cars]. People were starving, freezing -- it was January. They'd stop the train every so often and pull all the dead bodies out."
"[Buchenwald] was worse than Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, at least I went to work. In Buchenwald, you went there to die."
"[On April 22, 1945 came the Americans] All the guards were gone. You always thought that the Germans were coming back. You were so scared of everything."
David Moskovic, Holocaust survivor, Ottawa, Canada

David Moskovic is seen with his only surviving sibling, his sister Edith, who now lives in Florida.     Courtesy Joy Moskovic

David Moskovic's memory reaches back to the early summer of 1944 when, transported with his family to the Auschwitz death camp he recalls a smokestack and foul-smelling smoke blackening the sky; nearby a mountain of clothing and shoes. "But nobody knew what it was." Now, 85, he was fourteen when he was introduced to the world outside of his rural village, a farming community, now located in Slovakia. Even there his family heard of dreadful misfortunes of European Jews, and then his family was swept toward that wholesale misfortune.

This was when the infamous Adolph Eichmann, tasked as a major Nazi Final Solution organizer, began rounding Jews up in the provinces of Hungary. Rattling trains of cattle cars duly delivered 12,000 Jews on a daily basis to Auschwitz. Germany and its Axis supporters might have been fighting a war on the world stage against the Allied forces, but it viewed Hitler's dream of exterminating the world's Jews as too important to be neglected, so energy was not spared to fulfill that obligation, diverting troops and transport to the vital task.

On the day the town crier in Mr. Moskovic's sleepy little town ordered that all Jewish residents must assemble the following morning, he, his parents, his brother and sisters were placed in a cattle car with standing room only for the two-day trip to the death camp; no toilet facilities, but then no food or water either. On entering the camp gates SS guards separated the arrivals; women with children, the elderly and most girls to the left, men and youth to the right.

Moskovic, like others detailed to work as slave labourers to IG Farben -- still a German chemical colossus in Germany -- were taught various labour skills. He was taught how to lay bricks and was expected to work toward building a factory -- which American or Russian bombers would regularly bomb to rubble. "The whole world was shaking. When it stopped, it was back to work."  Those were twelve-hour workdays where the workers were fed a typical Auschwitz diet of 700 calories daily mostly comprised of stale bread heels and watery 'soup' absent nutrients.

The Buna camp inmate life expectancy was about three months on average. Workers considered too ill or too weak to work were liberated from their tasks, sent to the Birkenau gas chambers. Finally, in January of 1945 as the Soviet army began to close in, the Nazi command ordered 58,000 prisoners to be evacuated from Auschwitz on a forced march, one of which Mr. Moskovic and his father survived. They weren't called "death marches" for no reason; any who fell or became ill on the move were summarily executed.

After several days of marching they were once again on a train, this time to be taken to a concentration camp close by Weimar in Germany. Eventually American troops drew near to Buchenwald and the SS began killing prisoners; 500 or a thousand prisoners taken outside the fence by guards, forced to dig their own graves, then shot to death, to fall into the ready graves. David Moskovic survived this ordeal as well, managing to evade being called into a death group, by subterfuge.

When the Americans did arrive, he and the several thousand left in the camp were liberated, and he returned to his home village, hoping to find family members there. One day one of his sisters arrived. Before reaching the gas chamber his sister Edith had spontaneously been helped by several Slovak women who took her from the line to hide her under the linen they were handing out. They had been tasked to hand towels to victims informed they were headed to showers, to wash, not to be gassed by the deadly Zyklone B.

In 1950, David Moskovic applied to emigrate to Canada. There he found work as a plumber's apprentice. Preparing, among other apprentices to write a test to attain their master plumber's licences, a friend informed him that the city of Ottawa's then chief inspector had said: "There's a Jew coming through ... let's skin him alive." "A free country, with all the freedom in the world, and that's what happens to you in Ottawa!", he said wonderingly. "Would you ever believe it?"

Eventually he married, after starting his own company, General Plumbing and Heating. He and his wife had three children. "I used to drive down the Queensway and I didn't feel the tires touching the road. Life was terrific." He had moved beyond his soul-scathing experience in Europe. "Many people live that camp life till they die. I'm not one of them. I never fell into that horrible stuff. I became a Canadian boy, a good citizen, and I never looked back. I've had a good life and I never think about the camp."

"My life is so good that every day I get up and say thank God of another beautiful day. Every day's a gift. I'm a happy person." This speaks to the resilience of the individual, that hope was never lost despite horrendously brutal and tragic conditions imposed on men and women and children by the atrocious genocidal ideology of a vicious totalitarian government. It speaks also of the sad universality of anti-Semitism. But above all it speaks of human condition and the will to survive.