MEPE

[HBendor]

A reporter's revenge

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1106796045322&p=1006953079865

~URI DAN,
THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 27, 2005

I was thinking this week of Karl Wolf, one of the most important SS
generals, whom I had the great privilege of sending to jail. Wolf was the
chief of staff of Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, during
the implementation of the Final Solution. I remembered him this week on the
60th anniversary of the release of the survivors of the Auschwitz death
camp.

I was also reminded of Wolf when the Catholic Bishops' Committee daily
Avvenire disclosed last week in Rome that Wolf had warned Pope Pius XII in
the spring of 1943 that Hitler had ordered him kidnapped because he
suspected the pope of "loving the Jews too much."

The New York Herald Tribune reported on its front page, more than 40 years
ago, how "a young and angry Israeli reporter had brought about the arrest of
former SS general Karl Wolf." The newspaper described how an interview I had
conducted with Wolf in his Munich home for the influential German weekly
Stern had led to Wolf's arrest and trial.

This story demonstrated to me that a journalist's fight against criminals of
all kinds pays off, even if they are very powerful or, as in Wolf's case,
enjoy the protection of the CIA.

At the time, Israel was trying Adolf Eichmann, who had been captured in
Argentina by Mossad agents led by my good friends Rafi Eitan and Zvi
Malchin.

For me, as for most Jews, this step taken by the young State of Israel was
of major historical and moral significance. But it was not enough for me. My
mother could not stop crying for her family from Poland that had been annihilated in Auschwitz. Ё

My father told me that in the same camp his whole family from Salonika, Greece, had been killed, among them his uncle, Jacques Uri, a well-known Greek journalist. "You are very like him in every way," my father often told me.

The desire for revenge burned strongly in me. I belonged to the generation
of Israeli fighters who had retaliated, on David Ben-Gurion's orders,
against acts of murder perpetrated in the 1950s by the Arabs.

But now, as a journalist, could I take the law into my own hands, as Mossad
agents had justifiably done when capturing Eichmann? Rafi Eitan had warned
me "not to act stupidly."

Still, I sought out major Nazi war criminals who had escaped justice and
were walking about freely. Holocaust survivor Tuvia Friedman was the first
to tell me about general Wolf. I traveled to the Frankfurt office of public
prosecutor Fritz Bauer, who confirmed that Wolf was indeed "one of the major
war criminals living freely in Germany, and that no one dared to bring him
to justice."

Bauer told me that Wolf, as Himmler's chief of staff, traveled with him to
Viniza, Ukraine, where the Germans were murdering Jews. Bauer explained to
me angrily that Wolf bought his immunity as commander of the SS in Italy
when, as the Third Reich was beginning to collapse, he negotiated a
surrender agreement with the head of the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA),
Allen Dulles, in Switzerland.

Bauer, a German Jew, showed me a photo of Wolf standing next to Himmler
while giving Hitler a birthday present.

Now, in an attempt to clear Pope Pius XII of the charge that he remained
silent while the Jews were being annihilated in World War II, and with the
intention of beatifying him next April, Avvenire devoted an entire page to
the Rabat Operation, which supposedly was a plan to kidnap the pope because
of his pro-Jewish stance. In this way, the bishops recruited war criminal
Wolf in a pathetic attempt to whitewash Pope Pius XII.

It is therefore apparent that SS general Wolf, in his attempts to evade
trial as a war criminal, purchased a double insurance policy – from both the
CIA and the pope.

I met Wolf 43 years ago as he was sunbathing by the swimming pool of his
luxurious villa in Tiegernezei, near Munich.

The Israeli photographer who accompanied me, Aryeh Keren (Kirschner), himself a Holocaust survivor, secretly photographed the meeting while I interviewed Wolf.

He had only pathetic excuses for his participation with Himmler in the decisions to
murder the Jews, including during that visit to Viniza. The interview and the photos were published in Stern and led to charges being brought against Wolf and a subsequent jail sentence of 15 years.

This was a small consolation for me, particularly after I learned that SS general Wolf was also party to Himmler's decision to send to Auschwitz the entire Jewish community of Salonika, including my grandfather, Rabbi Haim Uri, and his journalist brother.

Now, 60 years after Auschwitz, the taste of that revenge is still sweet in my mouth. I did one good thing, at least, as a reporter.
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***Thank you Uri Dan, you probably also redeemed the souls of all the members of my family from Salonika, Greece, who perished in Auschwitz... Thank you, may G-d bless you and yours.
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Pius XII barred Jewish kids' repatriation
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041229-081020-8731r.htm
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
29 (UPI) -- New evidence has emerged that Pope Pius XII opposed the return of Jewish children to their parents after the n*z*s' defeat, The Independent reported ...

Pope Pius XII told French churches not to return Jewish war babies
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/AntiSemi/4701.htm
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JUDEA & SAMARIA are clear and unquestionably JEWISH!

MiddleEast Political Expressions