Nazis Germany

It is a landmark film that has been seen by virtually no one in the United States. "Nuremberg," an unsparing, 78-minute black-and-white film, was assembled in 1946 by the esteemed documentarian Pare Lorentz, who intercut footage of the Nuremberg war crimes trials with concentration camp atrocities filmed by the Nazis themselves and captured immediately after World War II. Working for the U.S.

For both audiences who admire it and the protagonist who lives it, the intense, emotional "Lore" is a picture from life's other side. While stories dealing with the suffering surrounding World War II and the Holocaust are a dramatic staple, "Lore" flips things around and involves us in a different side of war, in the confusion and pain of the young children of the Nazi hierarchy left alone and abandoned by the exigencies of fate and the fecklessness of...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage has refused to give in to demands that he apologize for comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo, but he said he never intended to insult anyone or "minimize" the misdeeds carried out by Nazi Germany's secret police force. LePage triggered controversy when he blasted President Obama's healthcare program during his weekly radio address: "We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the IRS. " Those comments were immediately denounced by many within the Jewish community as well as others, who say they are disappointed that LePage did not formally apologize.

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.

Re "Russia's Downhill Slide to Dictatorship," Commentary, Jan. 9: Niall Ferguson may be generally right in viewing the current regime in Russia. However, it is simply outrageous how he parallels Hitler's ambitions regarding Poland and Czechoslovakia on one side and Russia's feelings toward Ukraine on the other. Russia and Ukraine were one country for more than three centuries. For Russians to hear that, say, Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa are now in another country is the same as for Americans to imagine that Los Angeles is in Mexico or Chicago is in Canada.

Curt Bois, one of the self-designated Actors in Exile who fled Germany for Hollywood after the Nazi takeover in the early 1930s, is dead. Bois, a character actor whose many screen roles included a pickpocket in "Casablanca," was 90, said a statement issued by Berlin's Schiller Theater released over the weekend. The statement said he died Dec. 25, but did not explain the delay in reporting his death. Bois, a Berlin native, most recently had been working at the Schiller.

A leading Jewish human rights organization says that comparing Arizona's tough new immigration law with Nazi Germany is "inappropriate and irresponsible." The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles issued a statement this week expressing its opposition to the Arizona law but denouncing the use of language about the Holocaust, saying there was no need to "demonize opponents, even when they are mistaken, to those whose actions led to history's most notorious crime." "We don't need on top of everything else invoking imagery that is inappropriate," the center's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said Thursday in a phone interview from Jerusalem.

Milton Green, 91, a former world record hurdler who boycotted the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, died Tuesday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., his family announced. Green's death was erroneously reported last August by Associated Press and leading newspapers across the country after the news agency mistook him for another man with the same name. "He thought it was absolutely hysterical. He couldn't stop laughing," his daughter, Patricia Dunn, told the Boston Globe. A native of Lowell, Mass.

Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945 by Marie Vassiltchikov (Knopf: $18.95) The displacement of Europe's aristocracy by the First World War with its redrawing of national boundaries, by the Russian Revolution and by the Great Depression turned an international brotherhood of wealth and influence into something resembling a tribe of Gypsies. One of these was Marie Vassiltchikov, a Russian-born emigre who lived and worked in Berlin.

Britain and the United States developed and began to manufacture deadly anthrax bombs for use against Germany in World War II, but never decided to use them, according to a new report by a Stanford University historian. Prof. Barton J. Bernstein declared in an interview and in an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published Monday that an American plant, "probably in Vigo County" near Terre Haute, Ind.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage has refused to give in to demands that he apologize for comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo, but he said he never intended to insult anyone or "minimize" the misdeeds carried out by Nazi Germany's secret police force. LePage triggered controversy when he blasted President Obama's healthcare program during his weekly radio address: "We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the IRS. " Those comments were immediately denounced by many within the Jewish community as well as others, who say they are disappointed that LePage did not formally apologize.

New to the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration hospital in 1962, Dr. Ilse Lowenstam realized that many patients were checking out of the residence-care program she oversaw — and in to nearby bars. "We didn't have a real program for alcoholics," Lowenstam later said. "They often had to be excluded from treatment because one of the rules was that they had to be sober to be admitted to the hospital. " Then 50, Lowenstam was a refugee from Nazi Germany who had barely escaped with her medical degree.

Respected Israeli jurist Moshe Landau, who fled Nazi Germany as a young man and later presided over the historic trial of captured war criminal Adolf Eichmann, died Sunday in Jerusalem after a heart attack. He was 99. The former Israeli Supreme Court president was credited with guiding the fledgling nation through a deeply painful and ultimately cathartic tribunal after the 1961 capture and rendition of the fugitive German SS officer by Israeli spies in Argentina. Landau's rulings were instrumental in limiting government censorship and protecting civil rights, while his dry, no-nonsense style made him a standard-bearer of judicial calm and restraint.

An 89-year-old La Mesa man seeking to recover an Impressionist masterpiece seized from his Jewish family by the Nazis has the right to sue Spain and the cultural foundation that has the painting on display at a Madrid museum, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. Claude Cassirer, who fled Nazi Germany as a youth, said he was delighted by the 9-2 decision of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals clearing the ownership dispute for trial. But he expressed concern about the long legal road still ahead.

As a professional historian and longtime teacher of European and world history I must take issue with one aspect of Rabbi Marvin Hier's welcome June 29 op-ed, "Holocaust: A huge word made small." He is quite correct in insisting that the horrendous historical phenomenon known as the "Holocaust" not be distorted and demeaned by its use in trivialized political and nonpolitical analogies. However, he extends his brief too broadly — apparently to encompass within his objection any analogous reference to the Nazi regime.

A leading Jewish human rights organization says that comparing Arizona's tough new immigration law with Nazi Germany is "inappropriate and irresponsible." The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles issued a statement this week expressing its opposition to the Arizona law but denouncing the use of language about the Holocaust, saying there was no need to "demonize opponents, even when they are mistaken, to those whose actions led to history's most notorious crime." "We don't need on top of everything else invoking imagery that is inappropriate," the center's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said Thursday in a phone interview from Jerusalem.

Re "A Haunting Echo," Opinion, Nov. 24: Shlomo Avineri's attempt to find some similarity between the 1930s appeasement of Hitler and the current situation with Iraq falls way short. Germany was a military superpower that easily conquered most of Europe and fought the allies to a standstill for several years. Iraq, even at the height of its military power in 1990, was a paper tiger that offered only token resistance and surrendered after a few weeks of tremendous losses. Now, after 11 years of strict sanctions and the steady destruction of its weapons by the U.N. inspectors, Iraq has an anemic 10% of its 1990 firepower.

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.

Garden Street, Flower Street, Park Street -- the bland names can be found in any Austrian village. The solid, two-story houses that line these streets, the BMWs in the driveways, the neatly trimmed hedges, potted geraniums and inevitable garden gnomes speak of contented middle-class normality. A few residents always knew the truth but chose to ignore it. Occasionally, they dug into their backyards to install swimming pools and were startled to find human skeletons.

Royals and the Reich The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany Jonathan Petropoulos Oxford University Press: 524 pp., $37.50 * ONE picture in particular stands out among the many revealing photographs included in this comprehensive and engrossing book.