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AJR luj ormation Volume LVNo. 2 February 2000 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss ... The Auschwitz The sins of the fathers dispute Emnna Klein p4 he late unlamented Franjo Tudjman was the pro-Europeans in the UK. Rebranding blood smeared Vicar of Bray of the Balkans. The ghost of Bismarck, architect of the German AJR Information He had started out as a Communist partisan, 'welfare state' has likewise taken up residence Letters p6 & 7 T fighting the Ustasha Fascists and been promoted a inside the body of Gerhard Schroder, who uses Danish rescue peacetime general by Tito - yet on the latter's public money to bale out insolvent private firms. A AWFreud pl2 death he helped precipitate the break-up of bizarre aspect of this salvage operation is the fact Yugoslavia. He then set about fulfilling the Croats' that the recipient of the Chancellor's largesse, Kinder's new home millennial aspiration for an independent state by Holzmann AG, used slave labour in the last war. Ronold Channing p 16 means which involved the slaughter of thousands Schroder's earlier intervention to stave off a hostile of Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. As President, the takeover bid for Mannesmann also has a historical former Communist incorporated the Ustashe resonance. In the early 1900s it was the Outrageous! Fascists' emblem into the national flag and paid Mannesmann concern's quest for iron ore deposits erman homage to Ante Pavelic (who had set up a wartime in French NW Africa which provoked the Moroc­ historian Croat puppet state at Hider's behest). He played can crisis - one of the flashpoints that preceded GLothar Fritze down the horrors of'Jasenovac concentration camp the Kaiser's War. posthumously - dubbed the Croat Auschwitz - and expressed And talking of Wilhelm II, it is quite bizarre, not castigates Hiders satisfaction that no single drop of Serb or Jewish to say macabre, that the display of his coffin for Would-be assassin blood coursed through his wife's veins. popular adulation in the Berliner Dom coincided Georg Elser for Tudjman represented one strain of the Commu­ with the death of the historian Fritz Fischer. It was having failed, in nist-trained post-Communist leaders now in power Fischer who in his magisterial Der Griff nach der November 1939, to in parts of Eastern Europe. Others of his ilk were Weltmacht. (The Bid for World Power) of 1961 warn the Mecar in Slovakia, Lukashenko in Belarus and, most had provided irrefutable evidence of the Kaiser's - Biirgerbraukeller notably, Milosevic in Serbia. All of them have adul­ and his government's - primary role in bringing audience of the terated their original Marxist-internationalist message about Armageddon in 1914 D impending with rabid chauvinism and explosion (which have built a ruling apparat r H E cost eight lives). riddled with nepotism and SHOAH CENTRE He laments the loss corruption. of eight 'iimocents' Though death has now Architectural Concept - as if participants removed Tudjman, there is by Daniel Libeskind in the key no guarantee that Croatia ceremony of the will evolve into a markedly Nazi year could be more open society. Newly thus described! - created states often continue while leaving the to bear the stamp of their coundess millions founders. The persona and Elser's time bomb oudook of self-willed nation might have saved state builders perpetuates out of account. itself through a sort of Compounding cultural DNA. The shade of the offence Fritze de Gaulle, the rebuilder of has published his France after wartime defeat farrago in the and self-abasement, seems to X journal of the inhabit the mind of Lionel \ Photograpn by Warren Shaftef Hannah Arendt Jospin as he prolongs a Institute, perverse 'beef war' that Architectural concept by Daniel Libeskind for a Holocaust memorial and museum in Manchester. (See report on pl5). Dresden D undermines the position of AJR INFORMATION FEBRUARY 2000 tions and set her heart on becoming a which made emigration easier. Just be­ Profile singer. Her parents let her have lessons, fore the outbreak of war the newly weds but insisted that she attend a dressmaking managed to get to France, where Eva's school at the same time. In due course divorced mother and sister had preceded Buddenbrooks, she acquired a boyfriend who caused her them from Vienna. Her husband joined to miss a rare opportunity. Oskar the Czech army and in Spring 1940, M/tte/european style Kokoschka wanted to paint her, which when France collapsed into chaos, they istening to Eva Oplatek's account of would have involved sittings at his stu­ all made their way (separately) to the her family history one gets a strong dio. The boyfriend - in contrast to her Mediterranean coast ahead of the advanc­ L sense of nature imitating art - in father - took a dim view of this. Eva ing Wehrmacht. The three women had to this case literature. In his Buddenbrooks deferred to his wishes and in conse­ proceed on foot, which wasn't easy for (1901) Thomas Mann chronicled the quence found no place on the margin of pregnant Eva. At Sette they crowded on decline of a Liibeck family whose art history. to an England-bound coal freighter business-focused founding generation In retrospect she shrugs off the missed where one of their fellow 'passengers' produced dissolute and wayward opportunity with the remark that was the khaki-clad Czech army private offspring who dabbled in the arts. Kokoschka made all his female sitters Robert Maxwell. The Oplateks of Prague enacted a Jew­ look ugly on canvas. Safe in England at last, Eva gave birth ish variant of the Buddenbrooks story. Realising, after a while, that as a Jewess to a Downs Syndrome child - a misfor­ Eva's grandfather, founder of a Prague she had little prospect of an operatic ca­ tune which contributed to the eventual metal factory, had placed her father in reer, Eva switched to light music and break-up of her marriage. She married charge of the firm's Vienna branch office. joined the Singing Babies (a female ver­ again and had two daughters who, in The latter, a failed medical student, how­ sion of the famous Comedy Harmonists). turn, chose solid bourgeois husbands ever, preferred cultural pursuits to dreary She toured abroad with the Babies - in even Consul Buddenbrook would have office routine. He trod the boards, sub­ the course of which she caught the eye' approved of. Eva's mother spent her de­ scribed to Karl Kraus' Die Fackel and, of Kemal Pasha Ataturk - and subse­ clining years comfortably in a Home for with the help of his wife, established a quently moved to Prague. There she which the family feels greatly indebted to salon frequented by literati, musicians secured small parts in films (one of the AJR. Eva is in close contact with her and painters. The Oplateks' circle inclu­ which starred Anny Ondra), but in the sister, daughters and grandchildren and ded real celebrities of the rank of Egon late Thirties, actresses who spoke Ger­ plays bridge. Refuting the cynical quip Erwin Kisch, the composer Alexander man-accented Czech were hardly the that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, she von Zemlinsky and Oskar Kokoschka. flavour of the month in Prague. numbers a record of the Comedy Growing up in this ambience, Eva In March 1939 the Nazis occupied Harmonists among her most treasured unsurprisingly developed artistic ambi­ Prague. Shortly afterwards Eva married. possessions. D R" New Claims Conference guide to compensation and restitution WIENER LIBRARY he Conference on Jewish Material to which they may be entitled. Eligibility Karl Pfeifer Claims Against Germany - more is often dependent upon a combination Author of works on Tcommonly known just as the of factors, including the survivor's origi­ antisemitism and the far right, Claims Conference - has published its nal and current countries of residence, very first guide to Compensation and the persecution endured and any com­ former editor of Die Cemeinde, Restitution for Holocaust Survivors. It sets pensation previously received. the official newspaper of the out to clarify the respective roles and The guide is divided into sections ac­ Jewish community in Vienna. responsibilities of claims organisations, to cording to each particular programme. It summarise the different schemes and to lists payments and benefits from Ger­ ^Jorg Haider and the indicate the procedures to be followed many, Austria and other Western rise of antisemitism by survivors or their heirs wishing to European Countries, deals separately pursue a claim. with the restitution of property and assets in Austria^ For half a century the Claims Confer­ in Western and Eastern Europe, as well Wednesday, 16 February 2000, ence has negotiated with Germany, as insurance policies and works of art. 7.30pm Austria and others to obtain compensa­ The comprehensive listing of the names, tion for Jewish victims of Nazi addresses and contact numbers of the or­ Wiener Library persecution and the restitution of assets ganisations and their affiliated offices 4 Devonshire Street and plundered property. In addition, nu­ alone would make this booklet invaluable. London WIN 2BH merous elderly victims continue to URDC receive essential benefits and services, Copies of the guide may be obtained free of Advance reservations £2.00. though the absence of a comprehensive charge by writing to The AjR, Re: Claims source of reference hitherto left many Conference Guide, I Hampstead Gate, Frognal, Tel: 0171 636 7247 people confused or unaware of benefits London NW3 6AL AJR INFORMATION FEBRUARY 2000 dents involved in genocide). Another do­ Telegraph sends out nor was Gerald Howarth, who, as a young MP on a parliamentary freebie had NEWTONS Wrong signals goosestepped through deserted East Ber­ Leading Hampstead Solicitors s the curtain rises on Karl Kraus' lin streets at night giving the Hider salute.

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