The stork sticking its beak into the German far right

Armed with a copy of Mein Krampf (My Cramp),
Heinar tours Germany to lampoon its neo-Nazis

He wrote a book called Mein Krampf (My Cramp), sports a toothbrush moustache and a rigid side parting and infuriates members of Germany's main neo-Nazi party with his satirical take on the Teutonic far-right.

The character in question is Storch Heinar, an anti-Nazi cartoon stork, whose image has appeared more than 5,000 times on anti far-right campaign posters in north-eastern Germany where state elections will be held on Sunday. The stork posters proclaiming "Stork Power instead of Nazis" have been deliberately placed beside the campaign placards of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

The lampooned NPD is furious. Party workers have made frenzied efforts to rid the region's big cities of stork posters to avoid further ridicule. Hundreds of Stork Power placards have been ripped from lampposts in the port of Rostock. "We are on the home stretch. The stork is giving his all to keep out the extremist idiots," says creator and Social Democrat politician, Matthias Brodkorb.

Storch Heinar began life as a satirical anti-Nazi figure whose aim was to debunk the "Thor Steiner" clothing frequently worn as a status symbol by members of far-right and skinhead groups. Heinar's Hitler moustache and Mein Krampf biography is complemented by his penchant for steel helmets and egg nogs and a rabid intolerance of frogs.

Mediatex, the company which owns the "Thor Steiner" label, tried to get "Storch Heinar" banned for belittling its products. But last year a court in Bavaria threw out the case after a judge ruled that he could see no reasonable grounds for the complaint. Aping the language of Adolf Hitler, Storch Heinar boasted afterwards: "The enemy has been destructively defeated."

Storch Heinar has since gone from strength to strength. The cartoon character has toured Germany with his own rock band: "Storchkraft" (Stork Power). T-shirts and badges bearing his image are best-sellers. He has even travelled the country promoting Mein Krampf.

The Social Democrats' decision to use the stork for their election campaign in the north east is a new development, but has gained popular local support. Benjamin Weiss, a Rostock hotel owner, grew so irritated by the NPD's xenophobic propaganda in a region that depends heavily on tourism that he joined the "Storch Heinar Division" and organised his own team to put up some 300 stork posters around his hotel. "I am fed up with seeing my guests welcomed to Rostock with slogan such as: 'Tourists welcome – foreigners out,'" he said.

The NPD has parliamentary seats in the east German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Pomerania. The government's bid to ban the openly racist organisation was rejected by Germany's constitutional court in 2003 after it emerged that intelligence service moles were the source of incriminating evidence against the party.

The NPD's chances of retaining its north-east seats are considered so narrow it is toughto make an accurate prediction. "The far right gets particularly annoyed by humorous initiatives," said Gudrun Heinrich, a political scientist at Rostock university. "Because it doesn't know how to deal with them."

Independent

RAF's rare anti-Nazi leaflet that told truth to wartime Germany

Heroes: Sophie and Hans Scholl were two
members of the group executed by the Nazis in 1943

A rare anti-Nazi leaflet dropped over Germany by the RAF during the Second World War will be presented to the UK Holocaust Centre this week.

The document is one of the few surviving White Rose leaflets produced by brave students at Munich University.

The White Rose resistance movement was behind thousands of copies of the leaflets, which gave details of the Holocaust and supported the ideals of democracy, freedom and religious tolerance. The six core members of the group, including Sophie and Hans Scholl, were executed in 1943. They are now regarded as heroes for their courageous opposition to the Third Reich.

The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany to Britain. In July 1943, copies were dropped over Germany by Allied aircraft.

Collector William Kaczynski is now donating one of the leaflets to the Holocaust Centre, a memorial and education museum in Newark, Nottinghamshire. It can be seen by the public at the first annual White Rose Ball, at the Kia Oval in South London on September 25 in support of the Holocaust Centre.

* To find out about the White Rose Ball go to www.whiteroseball.org.

Mail on Sunday

Professor, 80, fled from Nazi occupied Austria and championed Special Needs Education

Peter Mittler, today a University of Manchester Professor

One of Britain’s most distinguished academics has revealed his remarkable escape from Nazi-occupied Austria as a young boy.

Peter Mittler, the 80-year-old Emeritus Professor of Special Needs Education at the University of Manchester, is one of the country’s great champions for the intellectually disabled and has advised the government and the United Nations. But as an eight-year-old Jewish boy in Vienna, his parents put him on the Kindertransport – the rescue mission which brought 10,000 children to Britain to escape Nazi persecution.

Prof Mittler has revealed his remarkable flight in a new memoir, Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: A Personal Journey. He tells how his oppression as a child in Hitler’s Austria led to his pioneering work for special needs education and a lifelong determination to fight injustice. And he expresses his eternal gratitude to Britain for taking him in.

“There were children of all ages on the train but there were also adults to look after us,” wrote Prof Mittler. “We were allowed a little carry-on bag and were given a label with a number and our name which the Germans inspected at the Dutch border – and that was the most frightening part. I remember sleeping in a bunk on the way to Harwich and discovering sheets and blankets for the first time – we only knew quilts in Austria. And they gave use bacon and eggs on the boat without understanding that many Jewish people wouldn’t be able to eat that. But the Kindertransport showed Britain at its best: they took 10,000 of us while the United States only took 1,000. I am forever grateful.”

In the months before Prof Mittler’s escape, Jews had their businesses looted, were banned from work and public places, and saw their children thrown out of school.

In his book, Prof Mittler recounts how a stormtrooper appeared at the family’s front door on April 2, 1938 – the day of his eighth birthday party – and ordered his mother to scrub the streets. She handed the man a ‘donation’ to be left alone. When he arrived in Britain, Prof Mittler was taken in by a family of strangers. He would not be reunited with his mother and father – a prominent anti-Nazi Socialist who made it over to work as a research chemist – until 1942.

Prof Mittler became head of Britain’s first research centre for special educational needs at The University of Manchester in 1968. It grew to become the largest of its kind in Europe. Prof Mittler said: “My own oppression led to a lifelong interest in fighting injustice and changing legislation to help people with disabilities.”

Manchester Evening News

Sophie Scholl - The Final Days

Sophie Scholl - The Final Days sneaks almost unheralded into the Channel 4 schedule on Monday night (or Tuesday morning, if you want to be pedantic). One of a sequence of important modern German films dealing with its Nazi past, Sophie Scholl - The Final Days tells the tragic but ennobling story of The White Rose, a small anti-Nazi resistance group founded in Munich at the height of the Second World War. The film premiers on Channel 4 after midnight Monday November 5th at 00:30.

Synopsis:

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.

Click here to see trailer (requires Quicktime)
Click here for book
Click here to read more on the White Rose at Denise's personal blog

Secret Bath BNP meeting stopped by anti-fascists

After having his talk at Bath University cancelled, it looked like Griffin would be giving the city a miss. However, a report on BBC 'points west' stated that he would be holding a secret meeting arranged by nazi Bath student Danny Lake.

Upon hearing that the meeting was still taking place at a secret location, we rang BNP national office who obligingly provided us with BNP youth organiser Danny Lake's mobile number.

We rang him, posing as a student who was pissed-off that the uni talk had been cancelled, and he was happy enough to tell us the pub the BNP were meeting in before the speech. We rang the pub, who seemed worried at the prospect of having Nazis in their bar.

We only had a short time to organise the demo, but got 20 anti-fascists outside the pub within 2 hours notice. The nazis turned up, looked confused and tried to reorganise a meeting place. Our spotters followed the ringleader into a nearby pub, which we entered, chanting and confronting the facists. Despite big talk, they seemed to be unwilling to enter into confrontation.

After being ejected from the pub by the cops, we had a demo outside. When the BNP left the pub (in much smaller numbers than they entered!), we were prevented from following, although a team of spotters managed to get around the police and follow them. They ended up having a tiny gathering in a park, well outnumbered by anti-fascists, who drowned out their speeches with chanting and anti-nazi punks played down a megaphone!

We heard later that Griffin was intending to record his speech and use it as propaganda, but could not do so because of the background noise!

All in all, a good day for anti-fascism - we managed to crash a secret meeting, doubling fash numbers, push them out of three venues, then reduced them to 10 skinheads standing in a park!

Nazis are not welcome in Bath - wherever they go, we will stop them!

NO PASARAN!
(A) Sab x

Indymedia

Anti-Nazi symbols with swastika are okay: court says

A German court ruled yesterday that the sale of anti-Nazi products was not punishable even if the items contained the banned swastika symbol. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe supported the appeal of a man who was fined 3,600 euros ($4,757) last year by a Stuttgart court for selling a range of anti-Nazi t-shirts and badges bearing the swastika with a red line through it.

Under German law, performing a Hitler salute, wearing Nazi uniform or displaying the swastika can carry the penalty of a fine or up to three years in prison.

Judge Walter Winkler ruled that the swastika ban did not apply for items that were clearly intended for anti-Nazi or anti-fascist purposes.

German politicians widely condemned the decision last September by Stuttgart judge Wolfgang Kuellmer to fine the man, who distributed the paraphernalia via a mail order service and a website.

Kuellmer had ordered the seizure of 16,500 pieces of merchandise, two palettes of brochures and around 8,400 publicity flyers bearing the logo – a red circle with a line across it superimposed on the Nazi emblem.

Kuellmer said increasing use of the symbol, which is popular among left-wing activists and anti-neo Nazi campaigners in Germany, risked making the Nazi hooked cross acceptable again over 60 years after it was outlawed after World War II.

Gulf Times