RISE OF POPULISM 52 PLACES TO CATCH A MAN-EATER 2008’S EFFECTS ON A WORLD WAR I INDIA HUNTS A TIGER POLITICS TODAY PILGRIMAGE BEFORE IT KILLS AGAIN PAGE 10 | BUSINESS PAGE 19 | TRAVEL PAGE 7 | WORLD .. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2018 The far right Coalition vs. the center begins fight in Germany to take last Anna Sauerbrey ISIS bastion Contributing Writer Militant group has lost all OPINION but 1 percent of the land it held in Iraq and Syria BERLIN Only a week after several right- wing marches took place in the eastern BY RUKMINI CALLIMACHI German town of Chemnitz, protesters took to the streets on Sunday night in In the remaining slip of land under its Köthen, a city of about 26,000 people control, the Islamic State has dug tun- located 90 miles southwest of Berlin. nels. Its fighters, aerial surveillance in- Again, video footage showed ugly dicates, have mined the area’s circum- scenes, including one group shouting, ference, laying explosive devices on the “National Socialism, now, now, now.” roads leading into the region. As in Chemnitz, the protests in To facilitate escape, they have buried Köthen were sparked by allegations large quantities of cash in berms of sand that immigrants had killed a German and hidden weapons and ammunition in citizen: In this case, they stemmed from caves and underground passages, stra- the death of a 22-year-old man; the tegically positioning resources in the police have arrested two Afghan men desert, analysts say. suspected of having severely beaten The tunnels allow the militants to and kicked the man, who subsequently move from house to house, undetected had a fatal heart from the air. Some passageways con- As anti- attack. nect outposts to their military bases, immigrant No reasonable said one resident reached by telephone person expects that who requested anonymity for fear of ret- protesters these marches are ribution. march in the beginning of a On a bend of the Euphrates River in city streets, radical, dark turn in eastern Syria, the Islamic State’s last re- the country’s German society; doubt, Hajin, does not look like much: It leaders can’t sensationalist head- appears to have only a few major streets even agree lines aside, we are and just one public hospital. An estimat- on basic facts. not experiencing ed 60,000 people are believed to be liv- another “1933.” And ing there and in a smattering of neigh- yet something is boring villages. clearly happening PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRENDAN HOFFMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES But the forces that began an assault — the country feels out of sync with A staircase partly made of tombstones taken from a Jewish cemetery in Siauliai, Lithuania, where Jonas Noreika, an anti-Communist hero, served as county chief under the Nazis. on Hajin on Tuesday, a mix of Kurdish itself, and reality. We see things happen- and Arab militias that have been work- ing but cannot agree on what to call ing closely with an international coali- those things, or what they might mean. tion led by the United States, are never- It has been a whirlwind couple of theless preparing for a slog: between weeks. In the early morning hours of two and three months, according to one Sunday, Aug. 26, a man named Daniel senior official with the militia. Hillig died in Chemnitz after being Lithuanian hero, or Nazi ally? Given Hajin’s size, that may seem a stabbed at a festival. The police have surprisingly long time. Cities with popu- arrested a Syrian man and an Iraqi man SUKIONIAI, LITHUANIA granddaughter, Silvia Foti, a Lithua- lations one-and-a-half to three times as on charges of homicide in the case; the nian-American from Chicago who has large that have been held by the Islamic Iraqi suspect had been denied asylum spent years researching a biography of State, including Sinjar and Tal Afar in and should have been deported. her revered relative and went public in Iraq, fell in days. Over the next week, right-wing Descendant’s research July with her shocking conclusion: Her The difference is that in those battles, groups organized several protest grandfather was a fierce anti-Semite the jihadists made a strategic retreat, marches in the city, bringing thousands exposes complicity in the and Nazi collaborator. choosing to abandon their positions to to the streets. Billboards with far-right Holocaust, testing a nation Her unequivocal verdict — an- consolidate and regroup. This time, re- slogans were on full display. Some nounced in an article posted on Salon — treat is not an option. protesters raised their hands in the BY ANDREW HIGGINS has stirred emotional debate inside “We expect a long and hard fight,” Hitler salute. Counterprotesters ap- Lithuania and prompted a flood of “told said Col. Sean J. Ryan, a spokesman for peared as well, but they — and at times For the tiny village of Sukioniai in west- you so” reports by state-controlled news the American-led military coalition in even the police — were overwhelmed, ern Lithuania, the exploits of General media outlets in Russia. Baghdad. “These are the die-hard fight- except for a night when a free concert Storm, a local anti-Communist hero exe- “It was terribly shocking,” Ms. Foti ers with nowhere else to go.” attracted 65,000 visitors. Dozens of cuted by the Soviet secret police in 1947, said in a telephone interview of her find- Once in control of territory equivalent people were hurt in clashes between the have long been a source of pride. The vil- ing that her grandfather was a killer, not to the size of Britain, the Islamic State, two sides. lage school is named after him, and his a hero. “I had never heard about any of also known as ISIS or ISIL, is down to its Organizers of the marches have paid struggles against the Soviet Union are this Nazi stuff.” last 200 square miles, according to Colo- lip service to keeping things peaceful. honored with a memorial carved from It was also shocking for Jolanda Ta- nel Ryan. The group has lost all but 1 But on Aug. 27, in the middle of the stone next to the farm where he was mosiuniene, a teacher and librarian at percent of the territory it held in Iraq protests, a group of about a dozen men born. the J. Noreika Basic School in Sukioniai, and Syria, and its caliphate appears attacked a Jewish restaurant in Chem- All along, though, there have been where Mr. Noreika was born at the end about to be erased in the region where it nitz with bottles and stones. Several persistent whispers that General Storm, of the hamlet’s only street in 1910. A monument for Mr. Noreika, whose granddaughter, after years of research, went public was born, though it continues to grow in journalists, as well as members of a whose real name was Jonas Noreika, What shocked her, however, was not with a shocking verdict: Her grandfather was a fierce anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator. outposts in Asia and Africa. group of Social Democrats who had also helped the Nazis kill Jews. But Ms. Foti’s discovery that her grandfa- It has taken more than four years, participated in the counter-demonstra- these were largely discounted as the ther had been complicit in the Holocaust over 29,000 airstrikes and thousands of SAUERBREY, PAGE 15 work of ill-willed outsiders serving a — that was not really news to locals — Noreika did during the war,” Ms. Tamo- Keeping things in the family might be soldiers’ lives for the coalition to reclaim well-orchestrated campaign by Moscow but that a member of a patriotic émigré siuniene said. “He obviously took the a natural self-defense mechanism in a the group’s land holdings in Iraq and The New York Times publishes opinion to tar its foes as fascists. family had gone public and turned a pri- wrong path. But his granddaughter small, traumatized country that since it Syria. But the Islamic State remains a from a wide range of perspectives in Blaming Russian propaganda, how- vate family matter into a public national should have kept quiet. Every family first gained independence from Russia potent force. hopes of promoting constructive debate ever, has suddenly become a lot more shame. has its ugly things, but they don’t talk in 1918 has been occupied once by Nazi Data collected by the United States about consequential questions. difficult thanks to Mr. Noreika’s own “We have all heard things about what about them. It is better to stay silent.” LITHUANIA, PAGE 6 SYRIA, PAGE 7 An essential ‘rude woman’ tion, helping to rocket the London art dior.com A show in New York scene to international status. She established herself abruptly in by the sculptor Sarah Lucas London four years later with “Penis may ruffle some feathers Nailed to a Board,” her first solo gallery show. The title came from a work that in- BY ROBERTA SMITH corporates a sensational article — and its headline — from The Sunday Sport, a “A rude woman is really what we need British tabloid that’s now defunct. right now,” a veteran of the New York art Over the years, I don’t think any art- scene said to me last May, just weeks be- ist’s work has shocked me — mostly in fore several assertive female political good ways — as often as Ms. Lucas’s. candidates started to emerge in the Some of her pieces have initially made United States and even win some prima- me wonder if they are art or some kind ries.