Why do Nazi-themed tricks occur in the UK?

British Tory MP Aidan Burley has left his post at the Transport Department after taking part in a Nazi-themed party. The order of his dismissal was signed personally by British Prime Minister David Cameron, The Mail on Sunday writes.

Several days ago this newspaper published photographs of a party at a French skiing resort where Burley is sitting side by side with a man wearing an SS officer’s outfit. Burley’s behavior brought sharp criticism from oppositional Labour MPs. Tories also considered their colleague’s conduct “offensive and foolish”. Aidan tried to save his career by denying any sympathy for Nazism. However, The Mail on Sunday discovered that he was not a random guest at that party and it had been his idea to hire the SS uniform.

In all probability, due to the growth of unemployment in the context of an economic crisis and all kinds of migration problems, the UK is living through a certain upsurge of right-wing moods aimed, among other things, against Muslim people. These people are subject to attacks similar to those in the period of the Nazi heyday in the 20th century. In this connection, it is small wonder that one of the participants in anti-Nazi campaigns in the UK Max Levitas directly declares that “the problem of fighting against Nazism is coming to the fore again”.

The English Defence League (EDL) is the face of the British right-wing forces today. This group, which identifies itself as a nationalist movement fighting against Muslim attacks on British culture, has repeatedly arranged protests against “Islamic extremism” on the British Isles. Stirring up anti-Muslim feelings in the British, the EDL and other right-wing radical groups put a stake on immigration problems in the UK. However, the EDL ideology is reminiscent of the past when Oswald Mosley’s Nazi ideas were fashionable in the UK in the late 1920s-early 1930s.

At the same time, it is worth pointing out that problems with immigration, higher unemployment and lower living standards of the British are not the only reasons for the growing radical moods in the country and Nazi-style tricks which have lately become frequent. If we remember the aforementioned Aidan Burley or Prince Harry, who put on a “Nazi” costume at a home party in 2005, those men can hardly be considered unemployed or needy. There must be a different reason for this. We can suggest moral degradation or complete immorality.

It is not a coincidence that straight after the August riots in the country and also last weekend Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about a “moral collapse” in the British society. In my opinion, the roots of today’s right-wing moods in the UK are in the moral field. Even though today’s right-wing radical organizations still remain in the backwater of British politics, people pay much more attention to them than before. Suffice it to say that the British National Party received two seats in the European parliament in 2009.

We can neither ignore the fact that in recent years the British bestseller lists contain a lot of books about the Third Reich. These books are fiction, documentary research and even science fiction. In 2000, only 350 books about the Third Reich were published in the UK and last year 850. The 100 most popular books on this subject have brought their publishers 12mln pounds. I suppose that publishers think little about the ethical and moral side of things when they receive these high profits printing all kinds of books about Nazis.

It is a pity because unduly enthusiasm about the dubious literature describing the Third Reich can eventually have a pernicious influence on the young British minds and is fraught with unpredictable consequences. The lessons of the Second World War in which Russians and the British fought together against Nazism remind us of this.

The Voice of Russia

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

No time limit for Nazi convictions

Heinrich Boere at court in Germany last week

It is part of society's obligation to the victims to make a serious effort to hold Nazi criminals such as Heinrich Boere to account

There no doubt are many people who wonder whether the conviction this past week in Germany of 88-year-old Heinrich Boere for Nazi crimes committed during the second world war serves any useful purpose. They can point to the fact that more than 60 years have passed since he committed his crimes and that he was not a mass murderer, the likes of those who helped run the death camps or served in the infamous Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units. But a closer look at his case will show why his prosecution and conviction in Aachen were, indeed, justified and the life sentence he received so important.

A resident of Maastricht, Netherlands, Boere, the son of a Dutch father and a German mother, volunteered to serve in the Waffen-SS shortly after the Nazis occupied Holland. After service on the eastern front he returned home, where he voluntarily joined Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, a unit whose primary function was the murder of members of the Dutch resistance and those opposed to the Nazis. In the course of Operation Silbertanne (silver fir tree), at least 54 individuals were killed, three of whom Boere admitted shooting to death – Fritz Bicknese, Teun de Groot and FW Kusters.

After the war, Boere escaped to Germany for fear of prosecution – and, in fact, was sentenced to death in absentia by a Dutch court in 1949 for the three murders. Holland asked for his extradition from Germany, but he was the beneficiary of the Fuhrererlass, a law promulgated by Hitler granting German citizenship to foreign Nazi collaborators. Since Germany refused in principle to extradite its citizens to stand trial in other countries, Boere had no reason to fear the Dutch court. He could, in theory, have been prosecuted in Germany, but for more than five decades that was not the case. In this respect, he was spared by the unofficial local prosecution policy on Nazi war criminals, which usually refrained from prosecuting individuals who were not officers, even if they had personally committed murder.

About two years ago, however, the state attorneys in Dortmund, headed by Ulrich Maas, announced that they would seek to prosecute Boere and they successfully contested a decision that he was not fit for trial. And thus, in November 2009, the Dutch executioner found himself in a German court facing the charges which he had escaped for more than 60 years.

Boere's conviction and life sentence are therefore more than justified, but they are also highly significant for several additional reasons. The first is that the Boere case is a precedent for Germany, where there are other instances of foreign Nazi collaborators who escaped from their countries of origin for fear of prosecution and who have hereto never faced legal action in Germany. The most famous of these cases are those of a Dutchman, Klaas Carl Faber, and a Dane, Søren Kam. The former, like Boere, served in Sonderkommando Feldmeijer and was sentenced to death in Holland in 1947 for the murder of at least 11 individuals. In 1952, he escaped from a Dutch prison to Germany, which has refused all requests for his extradition and has so far failed to bring him to justice. The latter, who is accused of murdering Carl Clemmensen, a Danish anti-Nazi newspaper editor, also escaped to Germany and was treated in the same manner. Thus Boere's conviction will hopefully serve as a precedent which will be applied in additional cases.

Several more personal factors specific to the Boere case add to its significance. The first is that he never expressed true regret for his crimes. On the contrary, at his trial, he said openly that he was very proud to have been accepted as a volunteer for the Waffen-SS and that during the war, at no time did he ever feel he had committed any crimes. His defence of coercion based on "superior orders" was totally rejected by the court. In that respect, it was the son of his victim Teun de Groot (the oldest of 12 children who has the same name as his father), who astutely remarked to reporters that if Boere had truly been sorry for the murders he committed, he should have returned to Holland to face justice and serve his punishment.

The presence in the courtroom in Aachen of children of Boere's victims was also an opportunity to learn first hand of the devastating impact of his crimes on the families of those murdered. And their insistence that he be tried despite his age reinforces the significance of justice, even when long delayed, as part of the obligations of society to the Nazis' victims to make a serious effort to hold Holocaust perpetrators accountable. This elementary truth and the successful result of the proceeding send a powerful message that the efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice are still very worthwhile and just as necessary today as they have been in previous generations.

Efraim Zuroff - Comment is free

War heroes' fury over nazi insult

Furious veterans have accused a British Army surplus store of "insulting" the dead by stocking Nazi memorabilia – just yards from the Hull war memorial

Combat Clothing Company, in Paragon Street, city centre, is selling various items of replica memorabilia just 200 metres from the memorial, where hundreds turned out for the annual Remembrance Sunday parade. The memorabilia includes:

• Flags displaying the Swastika
• Swastika armbands, as worn by Waffen-SS soldiers
• Replica Iron Cross medals, complete with a Swastika in the centre

Second World War veteran Perris Coupland, chairman of both the Hull branch of the Royal British Legion and Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, said he is outraged.

The 84-year-old said: "This is an insult to the 700 Hull people who lost their lives in the 83 air raids. The Nazis machine-gunned the centre of this city centre. It is disgusting and insulting to exhibit these items almost within sight of the war memorial, which is dedicated to the memory of those who died fighting these people."

Bill Feller, president of the Hull branch of the Normandy Veterans' Association, said: "It is disgusting. "Stores should be banned from selling this stuff."

Mr Feller, who took part in last weekend's parade at the Paragon Square war memorial, doctored his birth certificate and joined the Army aged 16. He fought in Algiers aged 17.

The 84-year-old added: "The Nazis were known for their cruelty. We had nothing against the ordinary German soldier – they were just like us. But the Nazis were in another league altogether."

Several different designs of Nazi flags hang on a hook next to modern, desert-coloured British Army uniforms in the store. Lapel badges, also featuring the Swastika, are displayed in the same glass cabinet as replica wartime medals issued to British soldiers.

Pat Arksey, organiser of Hull's Poppy Appeal, said: "This store should have more sensitivity, especially at this time of the year when we are remembering those from Hull who died at the hands of the Nazis."

It comes just weeks after four former generals complained about "extremists" who hijack British Army symbols. The four put their names to a letter stating the forces' reputation is being tarnished by right-wing groups. The British National Party (BNP) has been using military symbols, including a picture of a Spitfire alongside the words 'Battle for Britain', in the party's recent European election campaign.

Mike May, owner of Combat Clothing Company, defended his decision to sell the items. He told the Mail: "We have always sold these items. No-one has ever complained. If they were illegal we would obviously not be selling them. It's part of history. Should be stop reenactments at Fort Paull? There are a lot of re-enactors who buy our flags. They can't afford genuine German flags, which cost hundreds of pounds each. Some people might object to us selling British Army camouflage gear, but we stock that."

However, Jeff Baker, manager of Military Wear House, in Hessle Road, west Hull, said: "We do not sell Nazi items. It would be disrespectful to those who lost their lives fighting for this country."

Criminal Robert Cockerline was criticised after appearing before Hull Crown Court last week wearing an enamel badge, which featured the words "Heil Hitler" around a Swastika. Cockerline, 42, who has a record for harassment and criminal damage, appeared for breaching court orders but was allowed to walk free. He is on probation as an alternative to prison.

This is Hull and East Riding

Fascist ideology helps to create today's murderers and rapists

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Whenever a notorious murder or rape case, like Thomas Fritzl's imprisonment and serial rape of his daughter, or Jason Owen's and Steven Barker's killing of "Baby Peter" comes to light today, many people understandably rush to describe the murderer or rapist as "evil", without looking into why the criminal concerned carried out their crimes, which is a pity, because such murders and rapes will be more likely to happen again if people do not recognise the role which fascist ideology can play in causing violent crimes.

That ideology inevitably makes people more likely to be violent and controlling in their relationships with other people.

See an August 11, 2009 "Daily Mail" article, "Evil brothers who broke Baby Peter tortured their gran to make her change her will", to learn about the killers' NF activities.

See "The Independent" story, "Confessions from the cellar: 'It was great for me to have a second proper family in the cellar with a wife and a few children" (May 9, 2008), to learn that Josef Fritzl has blamed his Nazi upbringing for his crimes. Another story which discussed a different Nazi related aspect of the Austrian case, was "Evil dad Fritzl and the Nazis"

There is nothing new about fascist ideology warping the personalities of notorious murderers of course. See pp.105-106, 110, 152, and 244 of Emlyn Williams's book, "Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection" (Pan, London, 1968), to learn about Moors murderer Ian Brady's Nazi views.

It is true that other totalitarian ideologies can also create murderers and rapists, but many fascists do seem to be far more psychopathic than other totalitarians, which is why the only book to openly advocate killing most of the world's population (all of the world's Jews and non-white people), is the very popular in far right circles "The Turner Diaries", by the late American fascist party leader William Pierce (1933-2002), who led the National Alliance splinter group from the American Nazi Party.

See an April 3, 2000 article from "The Guardian", "Gospels of hate that slip through the net", to learn that "The Turner Diaries" is very popular in far right circles. As the article points out, the book has sold nearly 500,000 copies worldwide, and the FBI have described it as "the bible of the racist right".

So Conservative leader David Cameron should not be shrugging off the controversy which his party's new Nazism admiring allies in the EU have created. See a June 23, 2009 "Daily Mail" story, "Cameron's new EU allies have voiced support for Hitler's Waffen SS and call Obama's election 'the end of civilisation'", to learn more about that controversy.

As my September 13 Lancaster Unity article, "Do the BNP and EFP leadership still believe in the mass slaughter of billions?" pointed out, Nick Griffin was allegedly a "close ally" of the late American fascist party leader William Pierce, who openly argued for the mass murder of all of the world's non-white and Jewish people, and who inspired a number of American and British racist/anti-Semitic murderers, so there really can be no doubt that fascist ideology helps to create today's murderers and rapists.

Do the BNP act as “conveyor belt” to violent extremism?

See Nick Griffin defend neo-Nazi terrorists

Does rising electoral support for racist parties like the BNP lead to more racial violence?

The conviction [last] week of Neil Lewington, a neo-Nazi who planned a terror campaign in Britain, certainly raises that question.

Lewington is one of the nastiest (if crack-pot) potential neo-Nazi terrorists in recent history. In his summing up, the Judge said Lewington’s terrorist actions were “designed to intimidate non-white people … for the purpose of pursuing the ideological cause of white supremacy and neo-fascism, albeit in a rather unsophisticated way.” In Lewington’s bedroom police found a nail bomb factory and a notebook entitled “Waffen SS UK Members’ Handbook”.

During the trial the court heard about one of Lewington’s inspirations, David Copeland, the Soho nail bomber and former member of the BNP. (Another was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber).

Despite there being no evidence of Lewington’s involvement with the BNP (he appears to have been a lone wolf), his attempt to emulate the likes of Copeland raises the question: does the electoral success of the BNP lead to violent extremism?

The BNP is legitimate political party operating within the law. For that we should be thankful.

It does, however, hold many white supremacist and neo-fascist views which have direct lineage to Oswald Mosley, the German Nazi Party, the American KKK, Roberto Fiore and modern East European extremists like Jobbik. This is particularly true of leadership figures like Nick Griffin MEP, Andrew Brons MEP, Lee Barnes (Legal Director) and Mark Collett (Head of Publicity).

Whilst all parties have their rotten eggs, the BNP has more than its fair share of violent racists. Some like Robert Cottage (who stood as a BNP candidate three times) and Tony Lecomber were BNP activists. Others like Copeland and Mark Bullman (who used a BNP leaflet to light his firebomb) were on the fringe. (More details here).

Certainly the pool of candidates is likely to grow. The election and consequent media promotion of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons gives a certain level of legitimacy to the BNP and its ideals. This means disaffected people trying to find answers to their worries are more likely to turn to the politics of racism, segregation and intolerance and follow the examples set by the BNP’s high profile leaders and violent members.

And the temperature is likely to increase, particularly if politicians refuse to debate the issues that leave some of the population feeling angry, frustrated and dispossessed. Those issues include immigration, Britishness and joblessness.

Experts on Irish Republicanism and Islamism call this the “conveyor belt” to violence. It is too early for any clear evidence either way. But we fear that the election of a small number of weird, nutty and inadequate politicians legitimises the politics of racism and that, in turn, introduces an element of violence and intimidation to British society that changes the way we do politics forever.

Nothing British

Neo-Nazi jailed over terror plot

A white supremacist found guilty of planning a racist terror campaign involving home-made bombs has been given an indeterminate sentence.

An Old Bailey judge said Neil Lewington, 43, from Reading, must serve at least six years in jail. He was convicted in July of having explosives with intent to endanger life and preparing for acts of terrorism.

The trial heard Lewington (pictured, left), who was arrested at a station, was developing a bomb-making factory in his bedroom. He was carrying components for two home-made bombs when he was arrested last October.

Lewington's arrest on a train at Lowestoft station in Suffolk was by chance, after he had been abusing a female train conductor. A search of his bag uncovered the home-made bombs. Later investigation of his bedroom at his parents' home in Tilehurstm Berkshire, found weedkiller, firelighters, three tennis balls with diagrams on how to convert them into shrapnel bombs, firework powder, electrical timers and detonators.

A notebook labelled "Waffen SS UK members' handbook" included a "device logbook" of drawings of electronics and chemical mixtures.

During the trial, Lewington was described as a loner who had been unemployed for 10 years after losing his last job owing to drunkenness, and who had also not spoken to his father for a decade. The court heard he spent time searching for girlfriends on chatlines, where he made racist remarks and spoke of converting tennis balls into bombs.

His defence QC had argued Lewington was just an "oddball" and was not a terrorist, but "a big pest, a nuisance". But he was convicted of seven out of eight explosives and terrorism charges.

BBC

What had white supremacist planned?

Neil Lewington who turned his bedroom into a bomb-making factory has been convicted of terrorism and explosive charges. But how dangerous was he and what was he planning to do? Those are the two questions that have been hardest to answer in his trial at the Old Bailey. But what is clear is that his apprehension was a matter of good fortune alone.

In October 2008 he was travelling by train to meet a woman he had contacted in an internet chatroom on his mobile phone. He was drunk and abused the train guard. When he urinated on the platform at Lowestoft, he was arrested. But when officers opened his blue holdall, a public order arrest became a counter-terrorism investigation. Inside, they found two improvised but ingenious incendiary devices.

Counter-terrorism officers dashed to the 43-year-old's Reading home, which he shared with his parents. There they found extreme right-wing material, including videos of notorious racist or white-supremacist bombers. He had stockpiled chemicals, powders circuitry and wiring. In short, it looked like a bomb factory. And, according to the prosecution, Lewington was on the cusp of launching a campaign against anyone he regarded as "non-British".

But this case is full of mysteries. During 14 interviews, Lewington's only reply to counter-terrorism officers was "no comment". He chose not to take to the witness box at the Old Bailey - and his legal team offered up no other witnesses or material in his defence. He hardly looked up from the dock during the trial, sitting impassively as the proceedings went on around him.

Extremist material

Dr Matthew Feldman, an expert in neo-Nazi groups and imagery, gave evidence at the trial on the items that police recovered from Lewington's home.

He told the jury the material Lewington kept hidden in his room was exactly the kind of literature and notes you would expect to find belonging to a white supremacist neo-Nazi.

The most important document was Lewington's handwritten notebook entitled the "Waffen SS UK Members Handbook". Experts like Dr Feldman have not come across the title before, but its contents bore a striking similarity to other "field manuals" circulated among other neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18. Inside was a note written in Lewington's own hand.

"A new group has been formed, the Waffen SS UK. We have 30 members split into 15 two-man cells," it read. "We are highly trained ex-military personnel and will use incendiary and explosive devices throughout the UK at random until all non-British people as defined by blood are remoived from our country.

"This is no joke. In this country the most serious domestic terrorist threat is the ALF [Animal Liberation Front], start rewriting the books? Finally our motto: You CANNOT STOP WHAT CAN'T BE STOPPED"

The book included further notes relating to explosives and plans for picking targets. Other material loosely linked Lewington to "Blood and Honour", a British social scene built around neo-Nazi music. And unusually for a British man, Lewington was also interested in two other groups - the Ku Klux Klan and the Afrikaners who supported apartheid.

So Lewington's personal ideology was broad, encompassing hatred of other ethnicities, a white supremacist anger, but also a fascist yearning for a new world order.

Loner tendencies

Lewington himself bragged to women of being a skinhead who beat up Asian men. But counter-terrorism officers found no evidence the defendant was or is a member of any extreme right-wing political party or group in the UK or elsewhere. Furthermore, they had no evidence that he was associating with any known or suspected right-wing extremist.

These loner tendencies fit in with what we know about the rest of his life. Lewington lived with his parents - but had not spoken to his father for 10 years.

He did nothing to help at home. There was no lock on the bedroom door, but he had covered the keyhole with modelling clay. He had held down jobs in electronics - but not worked for a decade when arrested.

One would-be girlfriend was put off him because he kept making racist threats against black and Asian men. And during a relationship with another woman, he bought a toy chemistry set and told her he could use it to make explosives. He said he had made tennis ball bombs to explode in the woods.

Lewington appears to have had no home computer - although police did find a laptop cable. He had no training in chemicals or explosives. Yet he produced devices which, according to scientists, were more dangerous and professional than many DIY efforts uncovered by police.

So if he wasn't a member of any neo-Nazi group and wasn't spending his nights scouring the internet for bomb-making instructions, how did he learn how to make these devices?

Neighbourly behaviour

Lewington's silence in court means we may never know. But one incident following his arrest was incredibly revealing about his state of mind. Detectives at London's high security Paddington Green police station conducted a "safety interview" with Lewington, asking him for any information they might need to protect the public from uncovered explosives.

The officers were particularly concerned about a mechanism placed against the bedroom wall. Lewington told them it wasn't a bomb. It was the inner workings of an automatic air freshener. He'd adapted the motor and added a cord and metal nut. And during the night, at regular intervals, the motor would spin and flick the nut against the wall.

What was it for, asked the detectives. To annoy his neighbours, he replied.

BBC News

Hunt for most-wanted Nazi war criminal ends in Egypt

Son says 'Doctor Death' died in 1992 after search tracks down SS fugitive to Cairo hotel

The hunt for the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminal, Aribert Heim, appeared to have come to an end today with reports suggesting that he died in Cairo almost 17 years ago, after converting to Islam. According to new evidence published today, Heim, known as "Doctor Death" for the atrocities he committed against Jews as a physician at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, spent the last decade of his life living in Egypt after reinventing himself as an apparently kindly old man called Uncle Tarek, who played ping-pong with local children.

While serving with the SS, he was accused of injecting petrol into his victims' hearts, removing organs from healthy patients and decorating his desk with the skulls of prisoners he killed.

Heim was the prime target of Operation: Last Chance, the campaign by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to track down the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust. After 240 leads, which mainly focused on south America, Heim appears to have been tracked down to a hotel in Cairo. His son, Ruediger Heim, has admitted for the first time that his father died of cancer on 10 August 1992, after watching the Barcelona Olympics on TV. He said he was with his father when he died.

An investigation by the New York Times and the German broadcaster ZDF discovered a briefcase belonging to Heim which included his passport, bank details, and newspaper clippings of reports of efforts to track him down and his trial in absentia. It also included letters protesting his innocence and accusing Simon Wiesenthal of inventing Heim's atrocities.

ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo, where graves are reused after several years "so that the chance of finding remains is unlikely".

According to friends in Egypt, the doctor who had applied himself so vigorously to butchering and torturing his victims in the name of medicine had asked for his own body to be donated to medical research at his death. According to ZDF, his wish was not granted for religious reasons.

Today, the Wiesenthal Centre said that while there was "no doubt" that Heim had lived in Egypt, it had not been established that he had died there.

"What is not clear, what is missing from the presentation by ZDF and the New York Times, is the conclusive proof he indeed died in Egypt in 1992," Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the centre, told Reuters. "There's no grave, there's no body. We can't do any DNA testing."

Zuroff also pointed out that Ruediger Heim had previously said that the only contact he had had since his father went into hiding in 1962 were two notes, and that he had no idea if he was alive or dead.

"Ruediger has been lying," Zuroff told the Associated Press. "Either he is lying now or he was lying before, and he has a vested interest in this so anything he says has to be taken with a certain amount of scepticism and suspicion and the most important thing is missing: the body."

If it turns out to be true, however, Zuroff said that "the German police have a very important investigation on their hands in terms of prosecuting people who helped Heim escape justice". Ruediger Heim refused to comment when contacted at his home by the Associated Press.

Born on 28 June 1914, in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was annexed by Germany. He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941. He was held by the Americans after the war but released before the true extent of his crimes had become clear. He kept a low profile for the next two decades, even avoiding being photographed in the team picture of the ice hockey club he played for.

In 1961, German authorities were alerted that Heim was living in Baden-Baden and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him, apparently after he had been tipped off. Heim fled through France and Spain before crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt, ZDF and the New York Times reported, citing Ruediger Heim.

He lived in Cairo, under the name Tarek Hussein Farid, at the Kasr el Madina hotel for the 10 years leading up to his death, the report said. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the hotel, said Heim was known as Uncle Tarek, and that he played table tennis with him on the roof of the hotel. He said he bought sweets for children in the neighbourhood. Heim converted to Islam and worshipped at Cairo's famous al-Azhar mosque, the New York Times said.

Ruediger Heim told ZDF that he first visited his father in 1976, organising the trip through his aunt and arranging to meet with him in a hotel.

"He recognised me right away," Heim recalled. "It was a meeting of worlds. I was there for 14 days."

But, he said, he did not talk with his father about the allegations against him, largely because he said he was not fully aware of them himself.

"I didn't ask him: 'How many people did you kill?' because I didn't know. I didn't know any concrete details," he told ZDF. "Later, on other visits, I got to know his life better."

Guardian

YouTube condemned for showing video clips glorifying Nazi troops and Hitler

Video-sharing website YouTube has been condemned for showing video clips glorifying Nazi troops. The scenes, accompanied by militaristic music, have drawn millions of hits from potential Nazi sympathisers and voyeurs.

YouTube, which hosts film clips from the public, has 2,880 items on the Waffen SS, the most fanatical of Hitler's soldiers who were indicted for war crimes throughout WW2.

A Nazi swastika appears in a pro Nazi YouTube video.
The website has been condemned for hosting the videos

The entries have a string of 'Sieg Heil' comments and praise for the fighting prowess of the Waffen SS, recruited for their unswerving loyalty to Nazism.

The videos, some from Nazi propaganda news reels, have angered Jewish organisations who have called for YouTube to remove the 'hugely offensive' postings, including one that features the headline 'Hitler Was Right' directly below the YouTube logo.

Senior Liberal Democrat MP Susan Kramer was shocked by the content and the amount of SS sites on YouTube.

"Glorifying the Waffen SS or Hitler in any way is sickening," she said. "YouTube must understand its responsibilities. They should be hunting this type of material down if they want to maintain any credibility."

She added that YouTube has grown from fringe influence to mainstream source of content and that many young people view it alone where extremist views cannot be challenged by parents and teachers.

Another video posted on the site shows a picture of Hitler with the words 'Hitler was Right'

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it continues to be 'very concerned about the level of racist and anti-Semitic content on the internet'.

The YouTube clips include excerpts from history programmes but it is clear that many are directed at extremist right-wing elements around the world.

The Waffen SS regimental anthem is posted along with slickly edited montages of troops in heroic poses and Hitler addressing rallies. One viewer has simply posted a giant swastika made from 134 smaller swastikas.

Another states: "The fighting men of the German Waffen SS were true heroes - real Vikings!"

YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion in a purchase described by its chief executive Chad Hurely as 'one of the most significant milestones for our company and our community."

Google has been keen for YouTube to become self-policing and has pledged to clean-up on pornographic and street violence entries. But the system is still awash with violence and soft-porn clips.

Daily Mail

The Nazis' final atrocity: Why, as they were surrendering, did one unit wipe out an entire village?

Speeding South out of Paris on the A10 autoroute this summer, driving through the Loire countryside en route to their holiday homes, thousands of Britons will flash past the little village of Maillé without noticing.

A cluster of houses beside the main Paris-Bordeaux railway line and the motorway, it is an unremarkable little place with a few hundred inhabitants and half-a-dozen streets, one of them named Rue du 25 Aout.

In any other French community, this would commemorate a great day of national rejoicing - August 25, 1944, when Paris was liberated after four years of German occupation. But in Maillé, it signifies a terrible anniversary. Because on that warm summer's day, while the rest of France was celebrating its deliverance, Maillé's inhabitants were wiped out by soldiers of the Third Reich bent on vengeance.

In all, 124 men, women and children - the oldest 89, the youngest three months - were butchered. Ten were from one family alone, eight from another, as the soldiers rampaged through the village with guns, grenades and flame-throwers.

Maillé's fate went largely unnoticed. In Paris, Free French soldiers advanced down the Champs Elysees and the people flooded the boulevards, tearing down swastika flags and singing the Marseillaise. These heady, heroic scenes were what mattered, not more tragedy.

Its timbers still smouldering, Maillé quietly buried its dead in a mass grave, and the survivors - those who had fled in time or who had managed to hide in cellars and not been dragged out to die - began the process of rebuilding their lives.

The atrocity was cited as a war crime at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. Six years later, a Lieutenant Gustav Schlueter, a supplies officer in the Wehrmacht, the Germany Army, was tried in absentia for ordering the killings and sentenced to death by a military tribunal in Bordeaux. But his conviction was largely meaningless. He remained free in Germany until his natural death in 1965.

Now, 64 years after Maillé's 'martyrdom', the case is being re-opened - by the Germans themselves. This week, a prosecutor from the Nazi war crimes bureau in Dortmund arrived in the village, accompanied by two senior detectives. Their visit is unprecedented - it is the first time Germans have come onto French soil to investigate the war crimes of their own countrymen, according to Philip Varin, the regional prosecutor in Tours.

'We are providing every assistance and all surviving witnesses will be re-interviewed,' he said. 'Perhaps the perpetrators will finally be brought to justice.'

Seventy-four-year-old Serge Martin will be one to tell his story. Then the ten-year-old son of the village blacksmith, he was staying with his grandparents at their house just outside the village and listening to the Free French wireless station broadcasting news of the imminent surrender of German forces in Paris, 170 miles to the north.

The noise of machine-gunfire sent him scuttling to hide in the cellar from what he thought was yet another attack by the RAF on the nearby railway. He recalls a knot tightening in his stomach as, instead of planes, he heard 'half-track' military vehicles revving their engines and German officers barking orders. This was no air raid. He was listening to the sound of family, friends and neighbours being slaughtered - his own parents, his brother and two sisters among them.

The troops had arrived in trucks at 8am and blockaded the village. Gendarmes who came from a nearby village to investigate the commotion were met by a hail of bullets and forced away.

In the 50 or so homes, the villagers were going about the normal business of a Friday morning. Madame Meunier was opening up the grocery shop. Monsieur Creuzon was chatting to a neighbour and getting ready to go to his allotment.

The postman was on his way to collect mail from another village when he saw the cordon of soldiers and froze. He turned round, went home, scooped up his teenage wife and their 15-month-old daughter and sought refuge in the cellar under the village school.

At 9am, in their khaki camouflage overalls, the troops advanced, slowly and mercilessly moving through Maillé from south to north, killing anyone they could find. Some were blown apart by grenades; some machine-gunned; some burned alive by flame-throwers; some left to die slowly with their throats slashed by daggers.

In her shop, Madame Meunier was with her mother, grandmother, two-year-old son Jean and four-year-old daughter Annie when three soldiers walked in and casually opened fire.

'I was holding Jean in my arms,' she said in statements collected by the parish priest, Abbe Peyron, in the immediate aftermath. 'The bullets grazed my lips but my little boy's left arm was blown off and his left leg mutilated. I collapsed to the floor, playing dead, as the soldiers were reloading their guns. They shot my poor little Annie, killing her outright.'

The killers left to hunt out more victims, 'but I didn't dare move as soldiers were continually passing by outside. I managed to take off my smock and lie little Jean on it. He cried a lot to begin with, but as he lost blood, his cries became increasingly feeble. An hour passed, more Germans came in and I kept still, hardly able to breathe. Jean was dead by then. They smashed the windows with the butts of their rifles, laughing all the time, then they set fire to the place.'

Madame Meunier escaped in the thick smoke, taking her son's body with her. 'But I didn't have the strength or courage to get my other child; she burned in the shop.'

Monsieur Creuzon was standing near the church with his neighbour when 50 soldiers, he estimated, walked towards them, firing at will. His 18-year-old cousin, Fernand, was washing himself at the village water trough and began to run. A shot in the back killed him. The two others hid in the forge, behind the blacksmith's workbench, and were soon joined there by half a dozen other frightened villagers.

Outside, gunfire resounded. The house next door burst into flames. As the fire spread, they knocked out planks at the back of the building to escape.

But the blacksmith, 34-year-old Rene Martin, refused to leave. He could not believe what was happening. 'People don't get shot just like that,' he told the others. He had a white handkerchief. 'I'll wave this with my hands up and shout "Kamerad",' the German for friend.

He never got the chance. Soldiers came into the yard and hit him with their first shot. He fell screaming in agony. His wife and three children were gunned down, too.

Creuzon leapt through the hole in the wooden wall and ran away blindly until he caught sight of a group of villagers cowering in a pile of firewood. Gratefully, he pulled himself in alongside them.

Unusually, ten members of the Confolent family were at home together when the gunfire started. In the kitchen, 17-year-old Rene was the first to hear the gate creak open and footsteps outside.

'Papa, it's the Germans,' he whispered to his father. Bravely, Monsieur Confolent went to confront them. 'A soldier burst in like a madman,' he recalled, 'firing his sub-machine-gun.'

Like other villagers, he was incredulous. Why were the Germans doing this? They had been stationed in the area since 1940 and many were quartered in local homes. He tried to explain to the soldiers that they were civilians but another hail of bullets sent him diving. Another son, Yves, also tried to reason with the soldiers but was mown down.

One German spun round, firing in every direction. Rene fell with a bullet in his side. His 14-year-old sister Héléne was hit in the thigh. The rest hurled themselves to the floor and played dead until the soldiers left. The terrible silence was broken only by the mortally wounded Rene reciting the Catholic act of confession.

But their ordeal was not over. Another 'assassin' appeared, finished off Hélélne with a bullet to the heart and shot Madame Confolent. One by one the family fell, until Confolent had lost four of his five sons and both daughters. Their grandmother burned to death in her bedroom. He hid, cradling his wife until she died. He listened in terror to the mayhem beyond the walls of his house.

'Shots fired in the street shook the shutters, and bullets thudded into the wall. I heard Madame Martin, the blacksmith's wife scream: "Don't kill my child!" Then firing silenced her.'

It was late afternoon before Confolent emerged, with just one remaining hope - that his eldest son, Pierre, who had been away from the house working, might have survived. But the young man must have come back because he, too, lay dead in the yard. On the garden path, Monsieur Confolent laid out nine bodies, his entire family.

By then, the village lay in ruins. At midday, after the troops withdrew, heavy guns opened up to flatten everything within range. Only the church and a café remained standing. Now, the shocked survivors emerged from their hiding places, overwhelmed by the destruction and the bodies of family and friends in the streets.

That night, while the rest of France toasted victory, the Maillé survivors could only wonder why their village had been marked out for this eleventh hour slaughter?

The harsh fact is that these were the most dangerous of times. Ever since the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944, the Germans had been hair-trigger edgy. Emerging Resistance fighters across the country made them nervier still. The Maillé area, strategically situated on the north-south railway line, was a magnet for the Resistance, who had attempted to blow up the line and twice launched attacks on the station. Then, on August 11, the Germans were angered when an RAF pilot who baled out over the village was spirited away by locals before he could be captured.

On the evening of August 24, tensions were at breaking point. Some German forces were holding their ground, as Hitler had instructed. Others were in full retreat. It was a time for caution rather than bravado. But at around seven o'clock that evening, a truck of Resistance fighters drove into a farmyard near Maillé to commandeer supplies. Simultaneously, two German Army vehicles arrived at the same place.

A fire-fight broke out. Armed with Sten guns dropped to them by a British plane, the partisans had the upper hand, and a number of German soldiers were killed. Immediately afterwards - and in accordance with policy laid down by Hitler and Himmler on how to deal with 'terrorists' - a family on a nearby farm were lined up to be shot as a reprisal. But the executioner's gun jammed and they ran for their lives.

One of the officers caught in the fight with the Resistance was Schlueter, who, back at his barracks, telephoned his superiors in Tours. 'Should I act against them?' he is said to have asked. The reply was emphatic: 'Yes. Attack Maillé.'

The order was ambiguous. Was he being told to take a patrol into the village to root out partisans? Or was he to initiate mass slaughter as a lesson - just as at Oradour-sur-Glane, 100 miles to the south where, six weeks earlier, the Das Reich division of the Waffen SS systematically slaughtered 642 villagers as a reprisal for Resistance activity?

Either way, the soldiers who descended on Maillé acted as if everyone they came across was guilty. Their barbaric job done, they left behind scribbled notes, two of which survive to this day, proclaiming: 'This is punishment for the terrorists and their accomplices.'

Now the German investigators who are visiting Maillé this week will hope to discover the precise order, who gave it and how high up the chain of command it went. But they will also have to examine a bigger question: who actually carried out the killings? German documents have never been found to identify the unit responsible. 'Rogue killings' was one official explanation.

Gustav Schlueter - the man found guilty in absentia by a war crimes tribunal - was a Wehrmacht officer in command of a logistics unit and, though a Nazi Party member, there must be grave doubts that he led his men in murder on such a scale and carried out with such savagery. Did he have help?

It turns out that in the area at the time were battle-hardened troops of the feared Waffen SS - the elite of the Nazi military, owing direct allegiance to Hitler. The men of the 17th G¿tz von Berlichingen panzer division were retreating from Normandy where they had sustained heavy losses after weeks of fighting Allied troops. They had taken a beating and, exhausted, were heading for the German border to regroup. They had scores to settle.

They were a brutal bunch, named fittingly after a scary medieval German knight who had brandished a prosthetic iron hand in place of the one hacked off in battle. Many were not German but recruits from Romania, which had sided with the Nazis in 1940. The division as a whole was implicated in numerous war crimes, including the murder of wounded American paratroopers after D-Day.

According to military historian Jean-Luc Leleu of Caen University, an acknowledged expert on the Waffen SS, the 17th division are 'strong suspects'. They have been accused before, but exonerated because they were never armed with heavy guns of the sort that flattened the village after the massacre. But, says Leleu, in the chaos at this stage of the war, it was entirely possible that elements of the 17th were fighting with members of the regular Wehrmacht.

Previously, there was also an issue over the uniforms worn by the killers. Survivors recalled their khaki combats, not the black uniforms associated with the SS. But, says Leleu, a mechanised SS infantry division like the 17th routinely wore camouflage.

'It is a mistake to imagine that the bad guys were in black and the ordinary soldiers in green. The distinction was frequently blurred,' he says.

He believes that, unlike Oradour, where the populace was first assembled in the town square before being systematically executed, the Maillé massacre was spontaneous, with very little planning - 'that's why there are so few records of what happened'. But there are still the memories of those who survived, though, over the years, they have largely been ignored. The truth is the slaughter of their families and friends has been the forgotten massacre.

The world remembers Oradour, not least because General de Gaulle, the French leader, decreed it should remain a ruin as a memorial of Nazi cruelty. But Maillé, rebuilt by the end of the 1940s and displaying nothing of its agony apart from a single memorial stone with 124 names on it, slipped through the net of remembrance.

Six decades later, is there a real chance of the perpetrators being made to pay for their crimes, even supposing any are still alive?

'Germany has been very active in setting up the latest inquiry,' says Leleu, 'but we will have to see how rigorous it will be in pursuing guilty parties.'

Meanwhile, Serge Martin waits for answers and explanations for the murder in cold blood of his parents, his nine-year-old brother Raymond, four-year-old sister Josiane and baby Danielle, six months. Their loss still haunts him.

'I think about what happened all of the time. Unspeakable acts were carried out by men incapable of showing any mercy. We need to know who they were and why they did it.'

This is London