Web-Financed Space Nazi Comedy Iron Sky Will Open in 2012

by Jen Yamato
from: http://www.movieline.com/

As the saying goes, it takes a village… and when the long-gestating Nazi comedy Iron Sky finally hits theaters next year, we’ll have many folks to thank. (Including crowdfunding backers and financiers from the U.K., Australia, Germany, and Finland.) Iron Sky explains that the Nazis didn’t just disappear when World War II ended — they relocated to the moon to regroup and hatch a space invasion of Earth (or, “meteorblitzkrieg”) in 2018. After the jump, the latest grindhouse-y teaser!

Added bonus, of course: Iron Sky stars the incomparable Udo Kier, Mauser from The Matrix films (Christopher Kirby), and a giant space zeppelin. So, you know. Totally there come April 2012.

Full synopsis from the Iron Sky website:

Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

Now it’s 2018, and it’s the time for the first American Moon landing since the 70′s. Meanwhile the Nazi invasion, that has been over 70 years in the making, is on its way, and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom. The three main characters of the story are Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), and James Washington (Christopher Kirby).

And an explanation of the unique community “cloud financing” that made Iron Sky possible:

What makes Iron Sky special is the wide ranging collaboration with fans and community: the movie project fans join in creating ideas and content for the movie in a collaborative movie making platform called Wreckamovie, give the film publicity by sharing information online, even fund the movie by designing and buying merchandise and other means. One million euros of the budget comes from fan funding.

According to the teaser, Iron Sky will arrive April 4, 2012 although specifics on North American distribution have yet to be announced.

[THR, Iron Sky Official Site]

U.S. Muslim leaders condemn Holocaust denial

From: http://www.politico.com/

U.S. imams pray at Dachau. | Photo courtesy of Suhail A. Khan

Imams join U.S. officials at Nazi sites

By: Laura Rozen

U.S. officials participated in a trip of eight Muslim-American clerics to the sites of the former Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps last week in what one official called a transformative experience.

“These Muslim leaders were experiencing something they knew nothing about,” President Barack Obama’s envoy to combat anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, told POLITICO Tuesday. Rosenthal lost many family members at Auschwitz, including her grandparents. “I can’t believe anyone walks into Auschwitz and leaves the same person. I watched them break down. I broke down in front of suitcases. ... It is the cemetery of my whole family.”

The participating imams “were totally aware that they were visiting my family cemetery, and they were very loving about it,” Rosenthal said.

At the end, the imams — from a broad range of backgrounds — issued a far-reaching statement, condemning anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and religious bigotry.

“We bear witness to the absolute horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, where over 12 million human souls perished, including 6 million Jews,” the group said in a joint statement issued after the trip. “We condemn any attempts to deny this historical reality and declare such denials or any justification of this tragedy as against the Islamic code of ethics.”

Beyond Rosenthal, among those from the Obama, Reagan and George W. Bush administrations who accompanied the imams on the Aug. 7-11 trip to Germany and Poland were Rashad Hussain, Obama’s envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Nasreen Badat, a State Department official working on religious freedom issues; Marshall Breger, former special assistant to Reagan for public liaison and his liaison with the Jewish community; and Suhail Khan, an official in Bush's public liaison office. Also participating was Rabbi Jack Bemporad from New Jersey.

The trip was co-sponsored by Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Center for Interreligious Understanding, of which Bemporad is executive director.

The letter was signed by Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain of Duke University; Imam Syed Naqvi, director of the Islamic Interfaith Center in Washington; Shaikh Yasir Qadhi, dean of academics for the AlMaghrib Institute in New Haven, Conn.; Laila Muhammad, daughter of late Imam W.D. Muhammad of Chicago; Imam Suhaib Webb of the Muslim Community Association of Santa Clara, Calif.; Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America’s Office of Interfaith & Community Services; Imam Muhamad Maged of the All-Dulles-Area Muslim Society in Virginia and vice president of the Islamic Society of North America; and Imam Muzammil Siddiqi of the Islamic Center of Orange County, Calif.

Organizers of the trip say they were dismayed that the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman lobbied U.S. officials against participating. They also say the Investigative Project’s Steve Emerson, author of "American Jihad," lobbied against the trip, arguing that one of the imams planning to participate had made Holocaust denial statements a decade ago.

Emerson was unavailable for comment and Foxman did not respond to repeated queries from POLITICO.

Organizers say they tried to pick imams from a wide range of American constituencies.

“The Muslim faith and community leaders represented the broad diversity of the Muslim-American community including Arab, South Asian, African-American, Caucasian, Sunni, Shiite, men, women, young and older established leaders,” Khan told POLITICO. “Most knew very little about the Holocaust, and all were eager to learn and personally witness the reality of this historical tragedy.”

“There is a view among some people in the Jewish community that you should not meet with certain Muslims because they are in some way not worthy or they don’t meet the right criteria,” former Reagan special assistant Breger, now a professor of law at Catholic University, told POLITICO. But, he said, it was the trip organizers’ belief that “it is important to reach out to Muslims prepared to talk to us, people who are ready to open themselves to experiences which might be transformative for them — as occurred on this trip to Dachau and Auschwitz.”

At the sight of the imams praying in Dachau, Rosenthal said, “All of the tourists stopped in their tracks. I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like it.”

In Poland, the group met with the chief rabbi of Poland as well as with the cardinal of Krakow. On the last night of the trip, Rosenthal said, the group went to an Iftar dinner at a Turkish mosque in Munich.

“It was truly an interfaith experience,” Rosenthal said. “There were representatives from the Catholic community, from the Jewish community and members of the mosque. It was wonderful. They were very curious about what we had just done. I am sure a number of them had no idea what we were talking about. How can you?”

“I can’t really put into words what we saw there,” Imam Suhaib Webb of Muslim Community Association in California, told POLITICO Wednesday. Webb, 38, originally from Oklahoma City, said he converted from Christianity to Islam. “I would have to say the sheer inhumanity of what we saw I was not able to comprehend — the systematic killing of people. … The whole time we were asking the rabbis, ‘why did they do this?’ ”

Webb said he and Rabbi Bemporad and Imam Muhamad Maged have discussed organizing future trips for Jewish and Muslim youth groups to Poland, Germany and Bosnia.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation was the sole sponsor of the trip. Suhail Khan's name was also spelled incorrectly.

Editor's note: After this story was published, Steve Emerson disputed the assertion that he lobbied against the trip. POLITICO tried to reach Emerson repeatedly before publication. In an email, Emerson wrote: “I never lobbied against the trip of the Imams. What I did was provide background material on 2 of the Islamic leaders attending the trip who had made anti-Semitic, radical Islamic statements or justified terrorist attacks. The request of me to provide background material on two Imams was made by one of the leaders of the trip. I never lobbied whatsoever against the trip—that statement is a blatant lie but pointed out the previous radical statements of these 2 Islamic leaders—something you somehow neglected to point out to your readers."

Emerson also said POLITICO's account failed to mention that he had "called the statement issued by Islamic clerics 'impressive' even though the full statement was replete with contrived statements falsely equating the notion of 'Islamophobia' with anti-Semitism and also omitting the fact that the Grand Mufti, Haj Al-Husseni, the leader of the Muslims in World War 2, actively collaborated with the Nazis.”

Dutch police use 'decoy Jews' to stop anti-Semitic attacks

Dutch police are to use "decoy Jews", by dressing law enforcers in Jewish religious dress such as skullcaps, in an effort to catch anti-Semitic attackers.

Bruno Waterfield

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Lodewijk Asscher, Amsterdam's mayor, has ordered the new decoy strategy to cut the number of verbal and physical attacks on Jews, amid fears that anti-Semitic "hate crime" is on the rise.

"Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighbourhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even attacked," according to local reports.

Amsterdam police already disguise officers as "decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies" in operations to deter street muggings and attacks on homosexuals or the city's red light district.

Police in the Dutch city of Gouda have claimed the use of officers disguised as apparently frail old age pensioners has helped cut street crime.

"If we receive several reports of street robbery in a certain location, we send out the granny. That soon quietens things down," said a spokesman.

Secret television recordings by the Jewish broadcasting company, Joodse Omroep, broadcast at the weekend, have shocked Amsterdam, a city which prides itself on liberalism and which is home to the Anne Frank museum.

The footage showed young men, often of immigrant origin, shouting and making Nazi salutes at a rabbi when he visited different areas of the Dutch capital.

Video: KKK Leader and U.S. Senate Hopeful from Mo. Talks "Inferior Races"

By: Chad Garrison

From: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/

Heard about Missouri's U.S. Senate hopeful Glenn Miller?

The Springfield man is a former leader of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan and has been airing bizarre radio advertisements throughout the state denouncing the white man for being cowardly and blaming Jews for all the country's problems. (Listen to the ads here.)

In this interview -- from 1984 -- Miller is introduced as being the No. 1 enemy of the Anti-Defamation League.



Miller's campaign website states that, "It's not against the law to be white, yet." And encourages anyone to call him for advice. His number? 417-463-7703.

Schindler's List goes on sale for £1.5million

By Mail Foreign Service
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

The famous Schindler's List of Jews saved from the Nazi Holocaust during the World War Two is being offered up for private sale for £1.5 million.

The list of 801 Jewish men, women and children, which belongs to the family of Oskar Schindler's right-hand man, Itzhak Stern, is one of only five known to exist.

Being sold through the website Momentsintime.com, the old and tattered manuscript dated from the 18/04/1945, is being handled on a first come first served basis.

Buying history: One of the original Schindler's List amongst other photographs in a Berlin newspaper office (file photo). One of the original versions of the list is being put on sale for £1.5million

Hero: Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilie at their farm in Argentina after the war. He died in 1974

The Stern family, whose patriarch, Itzhak was played by Ben Kingsley in the Oscar winning Spielberg epic 'Schindler's List', have been in negotiation with Momentsintime.com for over two years.

'There are five known examples of Schindler's List preserved in the world today,' said a spokesperson for Momentsintime.com.

'This is one out of a reputed list of seven made by in total Oskar Schindler.

'Two are in the hands of Israeli Holocaust Museum's, one is in Koblenz in Germany and the other is in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

'The other two are unaccounted for.'

Hollywood touch: Liam Neeson, left, as Oskar Schindler in the Oscar-winning 1993 film 'Schindler's List'

History: A close-up of part of the original list

The plain, typed names and birthdates conceal the vast historical importance and personal danger which Oskar Schindler himself went through to rescue the condemned Jews.

Schindler owned a factory in Krakow, Poland, during World War Two and relied on Jewish labour to run the plant.

He became distressed at the German treatment of Jews after witnessing a 1942 raid on a Jewish ghetto and used his position in the Nazi party to persuade officials that his workers were vital to the war effort and saved them from gas chambers.

He is credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the war.

His tale was immortalised in the seven-time Oscar winning film, 'Schindler's List,' starring Liam Neeson.

'This has been a two-year negotiation for the rights to represent this list,' said Momentsintime.com.

'We are happy to offer one of the most unique documents of World War Two that currently exists in private hands.

'We know from the Stern family that this is the penultimate list that Schindler wrote and is an incredible piece of memorabilia.

'We hope that a patron will purchase this and offer it to an important museum.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1259835/Schindlers-List-goes-sale-1-5million.html#ixzz0j188W1Vb

Recording of Nazi officers who found Hitler's body released

A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered.

 

By Allan Hall in Berlin

Adolf Hitler Photo: PA

The remains of Hitler's bunker in Berlin Photo: AP

The skull fragment that is believd to belong to Adolf Hitler Photo: EPA

The recording was made on October 25 1956 in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book "Mein Kampf" could be seized by the state government.
Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun.

The remains of Hitler's bunker in Berlin Photo: AP

 

On the recording, discovered by researchers for the German Spiegel TV channel, the men speak under oath of entering the Fuehrer's study after hearing shots ring out on April 30 1945.
"When I entered to my left I saw Hitler on the sofa," said Linge, who died in 1980.
"Hitler had his head bent forward somewhat and I could see a bullethole approximately the size of a penny on the right side of the temple."
Guensche, who went to his death in 1983 refusing to give details about the dictator's end, said: "Hitler sat on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder which was itself hanging limp over the back of the sofa. On the right side was the bullethole."
Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, was with them when they first entered Hitler's study, the pair testified.
They arrived at 3.30pm and participated in removing the bodies, carrying them upstairs to the devastated garden of the Reich Chancellery and assisting in their cremation.

The skull fragment that is believd to belong to Adolf Hitler Photo: EPA

Both men were captured by the Soviets after the fall of Berlin and shipped off to Moscow for over a decade. It fuelled the myth which Russian leader Josef Stalin wanted to perpetuate that Hitler might somehow have escaped and was on the run. They came back to Germany in 1955.
The testimony of Guensche and Linge lay hidden in the Munich public records office. Spiegel has restored the recordings to allow them to be heard by scholars and historians.

Tracking Down Art Stolen by the Nazis

"Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker" at the McNay
From: http://glasstire.com/
by Dan R. Goddard

Martin Monnickendam (1874–1943)
Portrait of Jacques Goudstikker, 1916, oil on canvas
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker

In 1940, the influential Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, his wife Desi and their one-year-old son Edo fled the invading Nazis on a cargo ship bound for England. But within 48 hours of their escape, Jaques Goudstikker died in a freak accident, falling through an open hatch on the ship's deck and breaking his neck.

Fortunately, though, it would take more than 60 years for his heirs to benefit. Goudstikker carried a little black book in his breast pocket detailing his inventory of more than 1,400 works, mostly paintings, by artists such as Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen, Vincent van Gogh and Titian.

Hermann Göring, the Nazi's second-in-command and a rapacious art collector, showed up on the doorstep of the Goudstikker art gallery in Amsterdam just two weeks after the 42-year-old art dealer's death. Göring orchestrated a forced sale of the Goudstikker inventory in what is now recognized as one of the largest art thefts from an individual perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.

Jacques Goudstikker in his gallery
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker

In 2006, Marei von Saher, Edo's widow, successfully concluded a 10-year legal battle with the Dutch government to reclaim 200 of Goudstikker's paintings from the Dutch government - one of the first and largest claims to Nazi-looted art ever resolved. Forty-six of the works can be seen in Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker at the McNay Art Museum.

But the word "collection" is a misnomer, since the paintings actually represent the scattered fragments of one of Europe's best and most influential galleries between the world wars. Goudstikker, whose grandfather Jacob established the family art dealing business as early as 1845, expanded the Dutch art market by featuring non-Dutch artists and presenting works ranging from the Italian Renaissance to 19th-century European art. Goudstikker took shows abroad and sold works to major museums around the world, including in the United States.

Hieronymus Galle (1625–c. 1679)
Still Life with Flowers in a Vase, 1650–75
oil on panel
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker

As an exhibition, "Reclaimed" is something of an Old World mash-up with works from the Renaissance, early German and Netherlandish paintings, Dutch art of the Golden Age, French and Italian rococo and 19th-century French and other European paintings. One of the highlights is Salomon von Ruysdael's River Landscape with Ferry (1649). It was recently acquired from the Goudstikker family by the National Gallery of Art. However, the tranquil scene of a flatboat loaded with passengers crossing a placid Dutch river hung for many years in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum along with another masterpiece in the show, Jan Steen's Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1671), a tumultuous image of a boisterous mob taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, depicting the Greek king Agamemnon about to sacrifice his daughter. 

Many of the Goudstikker paintings were displayed in several Dutch museums as part of the country's National Collection, and their removal remains controversial. A Dutch deputy culture minister called the settlement a "bloodletting" for the country's museums. More than 1,000 paintings are still missing, and Goudstikker paintings continue to show up at art fairs and in gallery and museum shows around the world. 

Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712)
View of Nyenrode Castle on the Vecht
late 17th – early 18th century, oil on panel
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker

During the war, Göring took about 800 of the most valuable artworks to Germany, and many were displayed in Karinhall, his country estate near Berlin. Göring kept about 300 artworks for his own collection, though many, including a small floral still-life by Hieronymus Galle (shown in "Reclaimed"), were destined for Adolf Hitler's personal collection. Other Goudstickker assets were taken by a Göring associate, Alois Miedl, who continued to operate the gallery under the Goudstikker name, selling many works to Nazi politicians and German industrialists.

After the war in 1945, Allied forces recovered more than 200 artworks looted by Göring and returned them to the Dutch government with the understanding that the works would be returned to their rightful owners.

However, when Desi returned to the Netherlands in 1946, she confronted a "restitution" regime in the postwar Dutch government that made it practically impossible for Jews to actually recover their property. Both Desi and Edo died in 1996. Von Saher, Edo's widow, learned about the Goudstikker paintings from a Dutch journalist, Pieter de Hollander, who went on to write a book about the collection.

Floris van Schooten (1585/88–1656)
Still Life with Cheeses, Candlestick,
and Smoker's Accessories
early to mid-17th century, oil on panel
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker.

During the 1990s, there was a critical reexamination of claims of artworks looted during World War II, spurred by books such as Lynn H. Nicholas's The Rape of Europa and Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum. But it was the U.S.-sponsored Washington Conference on Nazi Looted Assets in 1998 that opened the legal doors for Von Saher and her team of lawyers and art historians by forcing the Dutch government to change its restitution policy.

"It was 12 long years from the time I learned about the paintings until the case was settled, and it was all pretty terrible," Von Saher said during the opening at the McNay. "The Nazis are gone, but this beautiful art remains."

Goudstikker's little black book containing his handwritten notations about his inventory proved to be the key piece of evidence. There's a reproduction of the book in the show, along with a touch-screen display that allows you to call up images of some of the paintings he describes.

While the show is something of a mixed bag, most of the paintings are of outstanding quality. Renowned for his connoisseurship and scholarly catalogs, Goudstikker was a highly educated art historian and his collection reflected the international taste championed by the influential director of the Berlin museums, Wilhelm von Bode. Goudstikker was also an excellent showman and gave lavish parties at his country estate, Castle Nyenrode, depicted in a painting by Jan van der Heyden.

Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707–1762)
Young Woman with Bonnet and White Shawl,
Holding a Book Known as The Virtuous Girl
oil on canvas
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques Goudstikker

Though this exhibit is haunted by the specter of the Holocaust, it contains some spectacular biblical paintings, such as a stunning, multipaneled altarpiece depicting the Last Supper that's attributed to the early 16th century Master of Pauw and Zas. Other religious paintings include Joachim Beuckelaer's The Adoration of the Shepherds (1564) and Two Saints (St. Odilia and St. Cecilia) (1503) by the Master of Frankfurt.

Lightning flashes across Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael's Sailing Vessels in a Thunderstorm, while Jan Josephsz van Goyen offers a somber view of the port of Dordrecht dominated by soaring gray clouds. The oddest painting in the show is Jan Jansz Mostaert's Discovery of America, depicting naked natives attacking armed European invaders in early 16th-century military armor. It is considered one of the earliest painted representations of the New World.

But the most intimate pleasures of the show are provided by still-lifes, such as Gabriel Germain Joncherie's eerie Stuffed Birds and portraits, including an "Oriental" attributed to Tiepolo and a pair of young women by Pietro Antonio Rotari, one of Empress Catherine II of Russia's favorite painters.

San Antonio's museums don't have many Renaissance and early European paintings in their collections, so this show is a rare treat even without the added drama of the Goudstikker case. But it's a real coup for the McNay to land a show that's generated headlines around the world, and the Goudstikker collection is a chilling reminder of how swiftly the world can change and how long it can take to set things right again.

Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker
October 7, 2009 through January 10, 2010
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio
(Admission is $5 in addition to regular museum admission.)
Dan R. Goddard is a writer living in San Antonio.
Also by Dan R. Goddard:

Polish police retrieve damaged Auschwitz gate sign

AP – This two photo combination shows above: a Polish Police handout showing the entrance to the former Nazi …

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writer

WARSAW, Poland – Polish police found the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign that was stolen from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after an intensive three-day hunt and arrested five suspects, police said early Monday. The sign was found cut into three pieces.

Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo told The Associated Press that the sign was found Sunday night in northern Poland, the other end of the country from the southern Polish town where the Auschwitz memorial museum is located and where it disappeared before dawn Friday.

Padlo said police detained five men between the ages of 25 and 39 and took them for questioning to Krakow, which is the regional command of the area that includes the Auschwitz museum.

Another police spokesman, Dariusz Nowak, said the 16-foot (5-meter) sign, made of hollow steel, was found cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words. The cruelly ironic phrase means "Work Sets You Free" and ran completely counter to the purpose of Auschwitz, which began as a concentration camp for political prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Poland and evolved into an extermination camp where Jews were gassed to death in factory-like fashion.

The police refused to divulge any details of the circumstances in which the sign was found or to speculate on the motive of the perpetrators. They were expected to disclose more at a news conference in Krakow planned for 0800 GMT (3 a.m. EST) Monday.

The sign that topped the main gate at the Auschwitz memorial site was stolen early Friday, setting off an international outcry at the disappearance of one of the most chilling and best known symbols of the Holocaust. State authorities made finding it a priority and appealed to all Poles for assistance.

Museum authorities welcomed the news with huge relief despite the damage done to the sign. Spokesman Pawel Sawicki said conservation experts will have to determine how best to repair it and that the museum authorities hope to restore it to its place as soon as possible.

Sawicki said the museum staff did not yet know who carried out the theft or why and were themselves waiting for more information from police.

More than 1 million people, mostly Jews, but also Gypsies, Poles and others, died in the gas chambers or from starvation and disease while performing forced labor at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany built in occupied Poland during World War II. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Poland to act to find "these twisted criminals that desecrated the place where over a million Jews were murdered."

"The sign is of the deepest historical importance to the Jewish people and the whole world, and is a tombstone for more than a million Jews," Netanyahu said.

_____

Associated Press Writer Vanessa Gera contributed to this report.

Auschwitz death camp sign stolen

It is the first time the sign has been stolen in the camp's history

The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been stolen, officials there say.

The sign was taken from above the gate overnight. Police are looking for the culprits.

It is the first time the sign, made by prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in the early 1940s.

More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.

"It's a terrible thing," Auschwitz official Pawel Sawicki told the BBC.

"It had to be planned - it's obvious it wasn't someone who just came along to do it," he said.

The missing sign, which is occasionally removed by officials for conservation work, has been replaced by a replica.

During the Holocaust, hundreds and thousands of prisoners passed under the sign, whose words mean "Work Sets You Free", but the vast majority were murdered or worked to death.

Anne Frank diary offends Lebanon's Hezbollah

http://news.yahoo.com/

AFP/HO/File – Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by …

by Natacha Yazbeck Natacha Yazbeck

BEIRUT (AFP) – Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the militant group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism.

The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of "The Diary of Anne Frank" were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.

"What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted," said the report aired last week and also published on the station's website.

It questioned how long Lebanon would "remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education."

A member of the school board, Jimmy Shoufani, told AFP the school dropped the textbook from its curriculum after the controversy erupted. He asked that the school not be identified.

Hezbollah officials could not reached for comment.

In the Al-Manar report, party MP Hussein Hajj Hassan had criticized the school for showing poor judgement in picking out its textbooks.

"These respected, established schools are teaching the so-called tragedy this girl lived, and yet they are ashamed to teach the tragedy of the Lebanese people, the tragedy of the Palestinian people... the tragedy of the people of the south under the hands of Zionist occupation," he told Al-Manar.

Paris-based organisation Aladdin's Project, which fights Holocaust denial and first translated Anne Frank's diary into Arabic, issued a statement condemning Hezbollah's "intimidation campaign."

Hezbollah fought a devastating war with the Jewish state in 2006. It has since refused to surrender its weapons arguing they are necessary to fight Israel, which withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after close to two decades of occupation.

The militant party last month also took aim at another textbook used in a leading private school in Beirut in which Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas are referred to as "terrorist organisations".

The chapter in question is usually blanked out by Lebanon's censorship bureau, but an uncensored copy purchased by a student abroad apparently sparked the uproar.

Lebanon, which remains technically at war with Israel, bans the import of products from the Jewish state.

Attorney Naim Kalaani, a member of a committee to ban Zionist products, told Al-Manar that use of the book was a violation of Lebanon's penal code and "tantamount to a step toward normalisation" in ties with Israel.

However journalist and criminologist Omar Nashabe rejected such arguments as unfounded.

"The law talks about the state of Israel -- the Israeli flag, Israeli institutions, the Israeli entity, as a nation," Nashabe told AFP.

"Besides Anne Frank is not Israeli," he added. "Anne Frank is part of world literature."

He also pointed out that Frank's diary was available online.

Frank wrote the diary while her family hid from Nazi police and sympathizers in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 to 1944.

She later died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, and the diary was published posthumously.

Top 10 Movie Nazis: Our Nazi Basterd picks, plus advice on how to kill them.

by Tom Hawker, IGN UK

UK, August 18, 2009 - IGN is with Aldo Raine on this one: the only good Nazi's a dead one. And with Inglourious Basterds about to hit screens worldwide, we'd thought now would be a good time to unveil our own hit list of top cinematic Fuhrer-fanciers - the great, the not-so-great and the downright diabolical - and plot their grisly demises. Unfortunately, neither Lt. Gruber, nor his little tank, qualified.

---

10. The Illinois Nazis
(Henry Gibson in The Blues Brothers)

No, they're not Nazis, but members of the swastika-flashing American National Socialist White Peoples' Party, who just happen to also hate Jews and blacks - although they've just added white-boy soul musicians who disrupt their hate speeches to the list. Writer Dan Aykroyd took the "what are you going to do about it, whitey?" rant nearly verbatim from the morons in the US Nazi documentary The California Reich.

How To Kill This Basterd?

A mile-high plummet in a Ford Pinto, leaving a crater in the road. It's notable that, of all the car smashes in the movie, the Nazis are the only people to actually cark it. "I hate Illinois Nazis" indeed.

---

9. Commandant Ilsa
(Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS)

Welcome to Camp 9, where the inmates are slave labour during the day and sexual labour at night, with those who fail to satisfy the leathery nympho-Nazi - allegedly based on 'Beast of Buchenwald' Ilse Koch - losing their lives or their balls. And if you thought this blitzkrieg of Nazisploitation, torture-porn and porny torture couldn't be any more tasteless and insensitive, the movie is dedicated to the survivors of the Holocaust. No, really, someone actually made this.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Gunshot. The uber-granny gets a bullet to the head delivered by her sneering superior, so he can smirk of her misdeeds: "The Allies will never know."

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8. Neville Sinclair
(Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer)

Arch-movie star and even archer-fascist secret agent, Sinclair's like an Errol Flynn who swapped his membership of the debauched Flynn's Flying F*ckers for a Nazi Party card. Yes, the debonair Deutsch-dabbling douchebag is looking to half-inch Howard Hughes' rocket-pack plans and turn the master race into flying aces. But given that it was just Bond in a slick 'tache (Dalton is always 100% improved by lip fuzz) no one in the audience was the least bit surprised when he turned out to be the villain.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Aero incineration. The old boy gets flambéed along with his mutant-Jimmy Hill-alike henchman, Lothar, when his zeppelin Hindenberg's itself into the 'Hollywoodland' sign.

7. Kurt Dussander (aka Arthur Denker)
(Sir Ian McKellen in Apt Pupil)

'The Blood Fiend of Patin' was only following orders, of course, but it helped that he loved doing it too. Now his relationship as fairy godfather to fascinated all-American boy Todd Bowden threatens to reignite those dark fires in his eyes. The pair share a mutually corrupting bond, their twisted power games underscoring two monsters' recognition - or is that attraction? - of themselves.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Exposure. When the old man's horrific past is revealed and extradition to Israel looms, he gives himself an air embolism. He dies scared but, sadly, not ashamed.

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6. Adenoid Hynkel
(Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator)

Chaplin had never been fond of The Third Reich (one Nazi propaganda book called him "a disgusting Jewish acrobat") and so pushed forward with his then career-endangering determination to make Hitler as laughable as possible. The result is Tomanian dictator Hynkel, a duplicitous, garbage-spouting, hate-filled, petty little monster who's almost as puffed up as the inflatable globe he dances with. A pretty spot on impression then.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Fate unknown. He's mistaken for his Jewish-lookalike Shultz (also Chaplin) and arrested, while Shultz gets to impersonate Hynkel and reverse his fascist hate-policies. Score 1:0 to the disgusting Jewish acrobat.

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5: Standartenführer Hans Landa
(Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Bastards)

Cheerful, charming, cunning and completely camp, Landa's like a Nazi Rob Brydon, but less annoying and more genocidal. His uncanny ability to track down and exterminate Europe's Jews is aided by a coal-souled empathy, devoid of sympathy and compassion. 'The Jew Hunter' steals the whole movie, by virtue of being the best-written and most-complex character in it and, accordingly, was so hard to cast that Tarantino almost called off the whole bloody affair when he couldn't find the right man.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Does QT give Landa the "Injun Haircut" he deserves or a lingering fate perhaps worse than death? Now that would be telling...

4. Dr. Christian Szell
(Sir Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man)

"A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive." The White Angel is pure compounded evil - he's not just a Nazi but a dentist to (jack)boot. He sharpened his skills in Auschwitz by removing the diamonds from the teeth of Jews in exchange for their safe passage, then mercilessly betrayed them to the gas chambers anyway. Poor Babe Levy, his next patient, might just feel a little twinge. "Is it safe?"

How to kill this Basterd?

Greed is a killer, and so it proves when Szell accidentally stabs himself with his own hidden blade while diving after his precious, extremely unsafe diamonds.

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3. Franz Liebkind
(Kenneth Mars in The Producers)

He wasn't stupid, he was a smartie, so he joined the Nazi Party. The writer of 'Springtime For Hitler' has an ear that's as tin as his hat and a soft spot for horrible vermin - the only thing he fancies more than his pigeons is the Fuhrer. "Hitler, there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!"

How To Kill This Basterd?

Unlikely, as he's nigh on indestructible, surviving a suicide attempt and a close encounter with a bomb. He's still standing at the end of the movie, even though he is covered head-to-toe in a plaster cast.

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2. Dr Strangelove
(Peter Sellers in Dr Stangelove)

Well you'd have to be a Nazi to appreciate the majestic awfulness of a Doomsday Device, and this Teuton's solution to the imminent end of civilization - taking a small select group of males deep underground idea with a gaggle of nubile mates - merely takes the idea of the master race to the next level. Sellers was so brilliant at improvising on set that even the clinically methodical Stanley Kubrick gave his star room to improvise.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Mutually assured self-destruction. It's the end of the world as he knows it, but at least he's magically regained the use of his legs.

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1. Major Arnold Ernst Toht
(Ronald Lacey in Raiders Of The Last Ark)

Like the best movie Nazi's, Toht doesn't believe in the power of the Ark, he just believes in power. Just in case you didn't get the idea, Toht or Tod is German for death. His charming way with a coat hanger, less charming way with a red-hot poker, sinister giggle and sweaty, waxy complexion would make even hardened Nazi's think twice about letting him babysit their kids.

How To Kill This Basterd?

The Wrath Of God. It melts his face like a Jimmy Page solo while he screams like a girl. Bet the creepy bugger believes now. Gut tod, ya?

Woman Shouts "Heil Hitler!" At Jewish Man Praising Israel's National Health System (VIDEO)

Dear God. This is the way America is now. Some conservative radio host stages a "town hall" meeting in Las Vegas. The local news reports that it "was a packed house, full of opinions and no shortage of passion." How passionate? How does some dumb lady, yelling anti-Semitic slurs at another man grab you?

Media Monitor Jon, who holds it down daily on YouTube at NewsPoliticsNews, has the completely depressing clip, which shows an Israeli man holding forth on the virtues of Israel's health care system, which is "universal and compulsory, and is administered by a small number of organizations with funding from the government." I have no basis to judge its merits -- in 2000, the World Health Organization ranked it as the 28th best in the world. That said, let me sum up the countering argument, proferred by another town hall attendee: "Heil Hitler!"

That's right! Some idiot woman yells "Heil Hitler" at a Jewish man who was doing nothing more than being a passionate advocate for Israeli health care. The man, quite naturally, goes completely apoplectic, saying "Shame on you" over and over again. The woman counters by saying, "Well, you ought to be the most against President Obama." The poor man responds by saying, "I want to talk, not against Obama or for Obama. I want to talk about [health care]." He goes on to describe his own experiences with high-cost health care. For his efforts, the woman mocks him some more!

As ThinkProgress points out today, "Conservatives have strenuously denied that there is any anti-Semitism on display by anti-health reform protesters at town hall meetings nationwide." Those denials are no longer tenable, are they?

UPDATE: Various sources maintain that this awful woman is wearing an Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt, which is precisely the level of coherence we've come to expect from these Town Hall twits.

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