Concentration Camps

Joe Rose, a German-born Jew who survived Nazi concentration camps and went on to become an internationally recognized artist, is exhibiting his work in an art show opening today at Temple Beth Am. The show will be open through Nov. 3 at the temple, 1039 La Cienega Blvd., and then will go on a nationwide tour. The centerpiece of the exhibit is his "Hebrew Alphabet," a series of surrealistic depictions of the Hebrew letters from aleph to tav.

Re "Obama's Gitmo woes," Opinion, May 5 As a fan of Doyle McManus, I was disappointed to read his claim that most of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay were anti-American extremists when they were apprehended. Our own government has acknowledged that many of these men were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when the war started in 2001. They are guilty of nothing. I also note with dismay the remarks of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

Hans Gunther Adler, 78, a scholar and German-language author who wrote about his years in Nazi concentration camps. Born in Prague, Adler studied at Prague's German University from 1930 to 1935 and became a poet. He tried to emigrate in 1938, but plans fell through and he remained in Czechoslovakia, one of the last of the Prague German-Jewish writers. In 1941, he was picked up by the Nazis and spent several months in forced labor on a railway in Bohemia.

Chris Kelly, 34, half of the 1990s kid rap duo Kris Kross that had a chart-topping hit with "Jump," was pronounced dead Wednesday at an Atlanta hospital of an apparent drug overdose, authorities said. Police were called to Kelly's home in south Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon and he was transported to Atlanta Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. No official cause of death has been determined, pending an autopsy. Kris Kross was introduced to the music world in 1992 by music producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri after he discovered the youths at an Atlanta mall.

A former Bulgarian Cabinet minister has blamed ousted Communist leader Todor Zhivkov for scores of deaths at two concentration camps, the Douma newspaper reported today. In an interview with the newspaper, former Interior Minister Georgi Tsankov said Zhivkov had proposed setting up forced labor camps at Lovech and Skravena to fight rising crime in the late 1950s.

It is a custom for visitors wandering the thicket of tombstones in Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery to place small rocks on top of the markers, a practice said to date from when the Jews lived in the desert and there were no flowers to be had. Sometimes people tuck folded pieces of paper between the rocks, perhaps directed at whatever unseen spirit they feel resides there. I picked one up at random. It read: "Peace of heart, peace of mind, for me, for everyone."

Chancellor Helmut Kohl has accused East Germany of maintaining concentration camps for political prisoners, a charge that touched off a political tempest Monday. East Germany denied the charge, which Kohl made Sunday at a political rally in Dortmund opening the final phase of the campaign for parliamentary elections Jan. 25.

Memories fade after 40 years, but some sights and sounds cannot be forgotten. During the night of Nov. 4, 1943, about 20 young men, Japanese-American inmates of the wartime concentration camp at Tule Lake, Calif., were brutally beaten by their jailers. Blood and hair covered the walls of the improvised torture chamber. One inmate, Tom Kobayashi, was literally brained with a baseball bat.

A Nazi concentration camp guard who fled efforts by the United States to deport him in the mid-1980s, and who was hiding out in his former home in a Detroit suburb, has been arrested by federal agents, federal authorities said Wednesday Johann Leprich, 77, was arrested late Tuesday night in Clinton Township, Mich., on immigration-related charges by agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In 1944, a 14-year-old boy, future novelist Imre Kertész, was rounded up while on an excursion in the countryside near Budapest and sent to Auschwitz. And then to Buchenwald. Surviving the camps and returning to Budapest, he was asked, simply, by his surviving family and friends, "Where have you been?" In his work, Kertész reflects on how quickly he discovered that no one really wanted to know what he had experienced. And yet, Kertész's entire literary life has been an attempt at answering that simple question in the trilogy of novels, "Fatelessness," "Fiasco" and "Kaddish for an Unborn Child" — an attempt that earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002.

PARIS -- The auction catalog entry for Lot 900 was short, simple and utterly shocking: "CONCENTRATION CAMP -- striped uniform of a political prisoner held in a German camp. Jacket in mixed wool, style grey and Nattier blue stripes. Identification number and red triangles sewn. Good condition. 400/600€. " The item was due to go under the hammer at the respected Hotel Drouot auction house next Tuesday as part of a sale of historical artifacts, mostly political posters. However, when two of Paris' Communist councilors spotted the item, they were outraged and forced the auction house to withdraw it. "At first I couldn't believe it was true.

Hans Massaquoi, a former managing editor of Ebony magazine who wrote a distinctive memoir about his unusual childhood growing up black in Nazi Germany, died in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday, his 87th birthday. He had been hospitalized over the Christmas holidays, said his son, Hans J. Massaquoi Jr. Inspired by the late Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," Massaquoi decided to share his experience of being "both an insider in Nazi Germany and, paradoxically, an endangered outsider.

Reporting from Paris -- Rudolf Brazda, one of the last known survivors of Nazi Germany's persecution of gays who later called his three years in a concentration camp a descent into hell, has died. He was 98. A German gay rights group said Brazda died Wednesday, but it did not provide details. Brazda was among thousands of gay men deported to the death camps during World War II because of their sexual orientation. Adolf Hitler's Nazis saw homosexuals as an aberration and a threat to the Aryan race.

In 1944, a 14-year-old boy, future novelist Imre Kertész, was rounded up while on an excursion in the countryside near Budapest and sent to Auschwitz. And then to Buchenwald. Surviving the camps and returning to Budapest, he was asked, simply, by his surviving family and friends, "Where have you been?" In his work, Kertész reflects on how quickly he discovered that no one really wanted to know what he had experienced. And yet, Kertész's entire literary life has been an attempt at answering that simple question in the trilogy of novels, "Fatelessness," "Fiasco" and "Kaddish for an Unborn Child" — an attempt that earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002.

John Demjanjuk, a 91-year-old retired autoworker from Ohio, was found guilty of accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison by a German court Thursday for his part in the killings of about 28,000 Jews at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Judge Ralph Alt said he would allow Demjanjuk to be free pending an expected appeal. The defendant attended court in a wheelchair and the 18-month trial had been suspended several times because of his poor health. His lawyer, Ulrich Busch, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying his client was "just a scapegoat for the Germans; he has to pay for all the mistakes they made in the past and that's not justice.

Charles Jarrott Directed TV and film, including 'Mary, Queen of Scots' Charles Jarrott, 83, a British film and TV director best known for the Hal Wallis productions "Anne of the Thousand Days" and "Mary, Queen of Scots," died Friday at the Motion Picture Home retirement community in Woodland Hills, according to Jaime Larkin, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. He had prostate cancer. Although "Anne of the Thousand Days" (1969) was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, and "Mary, Queen of Scots" (1971)

Almost 50 years ago in the Nazi "model" concentration camp Terezin in Czechoslovakia, artists and composers were permitted to paint, draw, write and lecture. One of the works created there, Pavel Haas' "Study for String Orchestra," survived, even though its composer did not. Although Haas probably knew he and almost everyone else at the camp were doomed, he wrote a piece that is celebrated today for being full of life.

Saul Dreier and Lucy Weinberg lost their families in the Holocaust, and for more than half a century they'd lost each other too. The cousins emigrated to separate countries, where they learned English, fell in love, married, had children and led happy lives. Each thought the other had died at the Nazis' hands. But on Thursday, they hugged for the first time since the 1940s. "Is this Lucy? Is this Lucy?" Dreier asked as Weinberg walked toward him at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Samuel Kunz, 89, one of the world's most-wanted Nazi suspects who was under indictment on allegations that he was involved in killing hundreds of thousands of Jews at a concentration camp in Germany-occupied Poland died Thursday, a court in Bonn announced Monday. The cause was not disclosed. Kunz's name had surfaced in past investigations, but the recent allegations came up in Germany as prosecutors were poring through World War II-era documents in preparation for the case against John Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio autoworker who is being tried in Munich.