Waffen Ss

The father of John M. Shalikashvili, the Army general nominated by President Clinton to become America's chief military commander, served as an officer in an elite Nazi military unit during World War II, according to information released Friday by a Jewish research institute.

GUNTER GRASS has put himself in the line of fire again. The first time was when he served in the German army in 1944. This time, it is with the publication of his memoir, "Peeling the Onion," that the Nobel laureate has launched himself into a space that leaves him open to attack. The first time, he was the 17-year-old youth who "saw himself as a man, was interested in military hardware." Now he is exposing a crucial and damning detail of his past, one that he has long suppressed.

The recent flap over the movie "Seven Years in Tibet" once again exposed the usual assortment of the intellectually challenged, making stupid but politically correct remarks about the Waffen SS. The Waffen SS was an army. Its young volunteers came from 34 countries and were the elite in an anti-Bolshevik crusade. The Soviet Union, America's ally, was preparing to invade Europe. But for the German leadership, it would have been unopposed. As a former combat Marine, I feel humbled by the sacrifices made by these men. Their enemy was our enemy; their battles were our battles.

This is the true-life fable of a hero tumbling from a moral perch of his own invention, undone by a shame kept secret for a lifetime. The scenarios and plot twists in the disturbing saga of Germany's most famous novelist are many: Was it a publicity stunt by a 78-year-old author whose voice may have lost its resonance and vitality? Was it a preemptive move to divulge what biographers might have discovered after his death? Was it the earnest exploration to put life and art in perspective?

Vienna-based Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has asked the U.S. State Department to try to prevent an American veterans group from meeting next week in Germany with former German Waffen SS soldiers they once battled, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said Wednesday. The center released a Sept. 11 letter addressed to Helene van Damm, U.S.

Despite protests by Jewish organizations, veterans of an American World War II infantry division intend to meet next week in Germany with German Waffen SS soldiers they once battled, organizers of the 50-member tour group said Monday. Members of the 70th Infantry Division have met with Waffen SS veterans every two years since 1977, and will do so again this year, said Floyd Freeman, 60, a South Gate travel agent who is a veteran of the division and has organized the tour.

In an emotional speech Thursday to the West German Parliament, Chancellor Helmut Kohl publicly thanked President Reagan for accepting an invitation to visit a German soldiers' cemetery next month. The Parliament soundly defeated a proposal to withdraw the controversial invitation after bitter argument about the issue and Germany's Nazi past. "I am grateful to the President of the United States for this noble gesture," Kohl told Parliament.

West German leftists protesting a rally by Waffen SS veterans of World War II broke into court offices in Hamburg, smashing windows and throwing documents into the street. The protesters apparently were angry because the courts and city officials had not banned the rally, held by veterans of the combat branch of the SS, Adolf Hitler's elite force. Later, demonstrators smashed windows at the Dutch Consulate in Hamburg.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gunter Grass acknowledged in an interview that he served in the Nazi Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II, a German newspaper reported Friday. Grass was asked why he was making the disclosure after so many years during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he discusses a memoir about the war years to be published next month. "It weighed on me," he said.

I certainly agree with David Shaw's review that Irving Wallace's "The Seventh Secret" (Book Review, March 2) is a contrived and regurgitated affair, to the point of once again leveling conspiracy and guilt on today's "official" Germany: The Berlin police certainly can't be trusted in a hunt for the surviving Eva Braun! What deeply disturbs me, however, is Shaw's attempt to expose the "cheap-shot suggestion" by Wallace that the "Evelyn Hoffman/Eva Braun" character would respect Reagan's visit to Bitburg as an "honor to the Waffen SS" via compounding this dangerous fantasy.

German novelist Gunter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen SS during World War II. Mayor Pawel Adamowicz had the letter read out loud Tuesday by actor Jan Kiszkis at a news conference in Gdansk. Earlier this month, Grass, 78, made the surprising confession that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' fanatical organization.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gunter Grass acknowledged in an interview that he served in the Nazi Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II, a German newspaper reported Friday. Grass was asked why he was making the disclosure after so many years during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he discusses a memoir about the war years to be published next month. "It weighed on me," he said.

The Justice Department asked a federal court Wednesday to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Romanian-born former Nazi SS member accused of serving as a concentration camp guard. The government alleges that Joseph Wittje, 83, of Bensenville, Ill., was a member of an SS Death's Head battalion that guarded Sachsenhausen, a camp near Berlin where thousands died from starvation, disease, hanging, gassing and medical experimentation. Wittje's attorney, Joseph T.

About 300 veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS walked slowly through Riga on Thursday to honor their fallen comrades in a ceremony bitterly criticized by Russian and Jewish groups. The former soldiers, most in their 70s and 80s, said they weren't making a political statement but remembering 50,000 comrades who died in battle.

The recent flap over the movie "Seven Years in Tibet" once again exposed the usual assortment of the intellectually challenged, making stupid but politically correct remarks about the Waffen SS. The Waffen SS was an army. Its young volunteers came from 34 countries and were the elite in an anti-Bolshevik crusade. The Soviet Union, America's ally, was preparing to invade Europe. But for the German leadership, it would have been unopposed. As a former combat Marine, I feel humbled by the sacrifices made by these men. Their enemy was our enemy; their battles were our battles.

The father of John M. Shalikashvili, the Army general nominated by President Clinton to become America's chief military commander, served as an officer in an elite Nazi military unit during World War II, according to information released Friday by a Jewish research institute.

German novelist Gunter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen SS during World War II. Mayor Pawel Adamowicz had the letter read out loud Tuesday by actor Jan Kiszkis at a news conference in Gdansk. Earlier this month, Grass, 78, made the surprising confession that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' fanatical organization.

The Justice Department asked a federal court Wednesday to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Romanian-born former Nazi SS member accused of serving as a concentration camp guard. The government alleges that Joseph Wittje, 83, of Bensenville, Ill., was a member of an SS Death's Head battalion that guarded Sachsenhausen, a camp near Berlin where thousands died from starvation, disease, hanging, gassing and medical experimentation. Wittje's attorney, Joseph T.

They gathered at a sports hall in this tidy corner of Germany--ordinary citizens, waiting for their leader's word to revive their spirits. They weren't disappointed. At 70, Franz Schoenhuber may be past his prime, but the former Waffen SS sergeant basked in the moment that seemed as important for him as for the faithful of the right-wing Republikaner Party he has led for the last eight years.

The U.S. government's bid to deport a retired La Habra grocery clerk who allegedly served as a Nazi concentration camp guard erupted into violence outside the courtroom Monday when a Jewish observer lunged at him, screaming, "How many Jews did you kill?" U.S.