Apr
29
Concentration camp doctor heads list of top 10 wanted Nazis
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BADEN-BADEN, Germany - Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was he so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner’s foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim’s head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
“He needed the head because of its perfect teeth,” Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim’s arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. “Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible.”
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Heim would be 93 today and “we have good reason to believe he is still alive,” said Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi hunter. He spoke in a telephone interview from Jerusalem ahead of the center’s plans to release a most-wanted list Wednesday, and to open a media campaign in South America this summer highlighting the $485,000 reward for Heim’s arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria.
According to an advance copy of the list obtained by the AP, the most wanted, after Heim, are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
“All of a sudden there was pressure on countries like Latvia and Estonia to put these people on trial,” Zuroff said. “So two times in the past 30 years we’ve been given a tremendous infusion of new energy and new possibilities.”
The Wiesenthal Center’s previous annual survey counted 1,019 investigations under way worldwide. The number is lower this year and inexact because not all countries responded, but new investigations were up from 63 to 202, Zuroff said.
Still, a lack of political will in many countries, and what Zuroff called the “misplaced-sympathy syndrome” - reluctance to pursue aging suspects - has meant that few people have been brought to trial and convicted.
Lotter, the witness to Heim’s atrocity, was in Mauthausen because he fought with the communists in the Spanish Civil War. His statement from the 1950 arrest warrant was viewed by the AP at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
Now that the necessary evidence is in place, numerous witness statements have been taken and Heim has been indicted, all that’s left is to find him.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly 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.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners’ hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim’s file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This “cannot be correct,” the indictment says. “It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed.”
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army’s electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don’t include the file requested by the AP.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950 letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn’t trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic - also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961 German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him - he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
In Frankfurt, Heim’s lawyer said he still officially represents the fugitive, but has not heard from him for 20 years and has “no clue” to his whereabouts.
Asked in a telephone interview if Heim was dead, Fritz Steinacker said only: “I don’t know.”
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
“All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false,” he said. “The rest is speculation, and I can’t enter into that.”
___
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report from New York and Washington, D.C.
Apr
29
Obama says he’s outraged by former pastor’s comments
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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Barack Obama angrily denounced his former pastor for “divisive and destructive” remarks on race, seeking to divorce himself from the incendiary speaker and a fury that threatens to engulf his front-running Democratic presidential campaign.
Obama is trying to tamp down the uproar over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a tough time in his campaign. The Illinois senator is coming off a loss in Pennsylvania to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and trying to win over white working-class voters in Indiana and North Carolina in next Tuesday’s primaries.
“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” Obama told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.
His strong words come just six weeks after Obama delivered a sweeping speech on race in which he sharply condemned Wright’s remarks but did not leave the church or repudiate the minister himself, who he said was like a family member. After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago made three public appearances in four days to defend himself.
On Monday, Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.
And perhaps even worse for Obama, Wright suggested that the church congregant secretly concurs.
“If Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected,” Wright said. “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”
Obama stated flatly that he doesn’t share the views of the man who officiated at his wedding, baptized his two daughters and been his pastor for 20 years. The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” came from a Wright sermon.
“What became clear to me is that he was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for,” Obama said. “And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I’m about knows that I am about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people.”
Although Obama leads in pledged delegates, no Democrat can win the nomination without the support of the superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who can vote their preference. The Wright furor forces those Democrats to wonder about Obama’s electability in November.
Facing that reality, Obama sought to distance himself further from Wright.
“I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992, and have known Reverend Wright for 20 years,” Obama said. “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.”
The Illinois senator said of Wright’s statements Monday: “All it was was a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth.”
“Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed,” Obama said. “I don’t think he showed much concern for me, more importantly I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign.”
Obama said he heard that Wright had given “a performance” and when he watched news accounts, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.
“His comments were not only divisive and destructive, I believe they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate,” Obama said. “I’ll be honest with you, I hadn’t seen it” when reacting initially on Monday, he said.
Wright had asserted that criticism of his fiery sermons was an attack on the black church. Obama rejected that notion.
“He has done great damage, I do not see that relationship being the same,” said Obama.
Wright recently retired from the church. He became an issue in Obama’s presidential bid when videos circulated of Wright condemning the U.S. government for allegedly racist and genocidal acts. In the videos, some several years old, Wright called on God to “damn America.” He also said the government created the AIDS virus to destroy “people of color.”
Obama said he didn’t vet his pastor before deciding to seek the presidency. He said he was particularly distressed that the furor has been a distraction to the purpose of a campaign.
“I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he’s done enormous good. … But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. … There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced.”
While Obama said he remains a member of the church “obviously this has put a strain on that relationship.
“There wasn’t anything constructive out of yesterday,” said Obama. “All it was was a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth.”
At one point, Obama said he understood the pressures Wright faced but wouldn’t excuse his comments.
“I think he felt vilified and attacked and I understand him wanting to defend himself,” Obama said. “That may account for the change but the insensitivity and the outrageousness of the statements shocked me and surprised me.”
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Apr
29
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Indulging in chocolate during pregnancy could help ward off a serious complication known as preeclampsia, new research suggests.
Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is rich in a chemical called theobromine, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscle and dilates blood vessels, and has been used to treat chest pain, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries, Dr. Elizabeth W. Triche of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues write.
Preeclampsia, in which blood pressure spikes during pregnancy while excess protein is released into the urine, has many features in common with heart disease, the researchers add.
To investigate whether chocolate’s possible cardiovascular benefits also might help prevent preeclampsia, the researchers looked at 2,291 women who delivered a single infant, and asked them about how much chocolate they consumed in their first and third trimesters. The researchers also tested levels of theobromine in infants’ umbilical cord blood.
Women who consumed the most chocolate and those whose infants had the highest concentration of theobromine in their cord blood were the least likely to develop preeclampsia. Women in the highest quarter for cord blood theobromine were 69 percent less likely to develop the complication than those in the lowest quarter.
Women who ate five or more servings of chocolate each week in their third trimester of pregnancy were 40 percent less likely to develop preeclampsia than those who ate chocolate less than once a week.
A similar, but weaker, relationship between chocolate consumption and preeclampsia risk was seen in the first trimester, with women eating five or more servings of chocolate each week at 19 percent lower risk than those who ate chocolate less than once a week.
Theobromine could improve circulation within the placenta while blocking oxidative stress, or it could also be a stand-in for other beneficial chemicals found in chocolate, Triche and her team note in the May issue of Epidemiology.
“Our results raise the possibility that chocolate consumption by pregnant women may reduce the occurrence of preeclampsia,” they write. “Because of the importance of preeclampsia as a major complication of pregnancy, replication of these results in other large prospective studies with a detailed assessment of chocolate consumption is warranted.”
SOURCE: Epidemiology, May 2008
Apr
29
Austrian family members in incest-imprisonment case meet
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AMSTETTEN, Austria - Members of the Austrian family victimized by a man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her have had an “astonishing” meeting, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities said the daughter, most of her children whom suspect Josef Fritzl fathered through incest, and Fritzl’s wife met each other Sunday morning at a clinic where they have been getting psychiatric treatment and counseling.
“It was astonishing how easily it happened - how the mother and grandmother came together,” clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday.
Kepplinger said the family members interacted very naturally - even though the three children who lived upstairs with the grandparents had never met their siblings in the windowless cell.
Officials said one of the children who is receiving medical treatment at another hospital was not part of the gathering.
Word of the reunion came as police announced that DNA tests confirmed Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving children he had with his daughter.
Police also said they combed through Fritzl’s other properties but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he had held his daughter - now 42 - captive since she was 18.
Police said Fritzl confessed Monday to holding the daughter captive, sexually abusing her, fathering her children and tossing the body of one child who died in infancy into a furnace.
Officials had said Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses under Austrian law.
But prosecutors in Lower Austria said Tuesday they were looking into the possibility of charging Fritzl with “murder through failure to act” in connection with the infant death. Murder in Austria is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Investigators say they believe his wife, with whom he had seven children, was unaware that the daughter she believed ran away to join a religious cult in 1984 was living as a prisoner beneath her feet.
Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client also was under psychiatric care and “is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken.”
But prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was “completely calm, completely without emotion” when he was formally placed in pretrial detention Tuesday.
Austria is still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a girl who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years, and residents of Amstetten were puzzled as to how the Fritzl case could go undetected for so long.
“How is it possible that no one knew anything for 24 years?” asked Anita Fabian, a teacher in Amstetten. “This was not possible without accomplices.”
Regarding the apartment building that Fritzl owned and lived in, the town’s authorities authorized the construction of an addition with a basement in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the Austria Press Agency. He said inspectors examined the project in 1983 - the year before the young woman went missing - and nothing looked suspicious.
Police said the surviving children are three boys and three girls, ranging in age from 5 to 19. Officials said three of the secret children - aged 19, 18 and 5 - “never saw sunlight” until they were freed a few days ago.
Police released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept them from escaping.
Three of the children lived with the grandparents. Fritzl and his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, told APA that Fritzl apparently chose which of the children would live upstairs with him and his wife according to whether they were “crybabies.”
Officials said social workers made regular visits to the family but found nothing out of the ordinary, reporting that Fritzl’s wife was attentive, the three children were doing well in school and clubs, and that all of them played musical instruments.
The case unfolded after the eldest of the secret children, a 19-year-old woman, was found unconscious and gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to a hospital.
Hospital officials said the 19-year-old remained in critical condition Tuesday because of the effects of lack of oxygen, and was undergoing dialysis.
Amstetten Mayor Herbert Katzengrueber told the AP in an interview that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the town had honored the suspect and his wife in 2006 for their 50th wedding anniversary.
Katzengrueber said he was at a loss to explain how such an atrocity could happen.
“No one can really explain it,” he said. “I am appalled and saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown. … These have been awful and sad days.”
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Apr
29
New Zealand scientists thaw 1,000-pound squid corpse
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Marine scientists in New Zealand on Tuesday were thawing the corpse of the largest squid ever caught to try to unlock the secrets of one of the ocean’s most mysterious beasts.
No one has ever seen a living, grown colossal squid in its natural deep ocean habitat, and scientists hope their examination of the 1,089-pound, 26-foot long colossal squid, set to begin Wednesday, will help determine how the creatures live. The thawing and examination are being broadcast live on the Internet.
The squid, which was caught accidentally by fishermen last year, was removed from its freezer Monday and put into a tank filled with saline solution. Ice was added to the tank Tuesday to slow the thawing process so the outer flesh wouldn’t rot, said Carol Diebel, director of natural environment at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa.
After it is thawed, scientists will examine the squid’s anatomical features, remove the stomach, beak and other mouth parts, take tissue samples for DNA analysis and determine its sex, Diebel said.
“If we get ourselves a male it will be the first reported (scientific) description of the male of the species,” Steve O’Shea, a squid expert at Auckland’s University of Technology, told National Radio. He is one of the scientists conducting the examination.
The squid is believed to be the largest specimen of the rare deep-water species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or colossal squid, ever caught, O’Shea has said.
Colossal squid, which have long been one of the most mysterious denizens of the deep ocean, can grow up to 46 feet long, descend to 6,500 feet into the ocean and are considered aggressive hunters.
At the time it was caught, O’Shea said it would make calamari rings the size of tractor tires if cut up - but they would taste like ammonia, a compound found in the animals’ flesh.
Fishermen off the coast of Antarctica accidentally netted the squid in February 2007 while catching Patagonian toothfish, which are sold under the name Chilean sea bass.
The squid was eating a hooked toothfish when it was hauled from the deep. Recognizing it as a rare find, the fishermen froze the squid on their vessel to preserve it. The national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, later took possession of it.
The previous largest colossal squid ever found was a 660 pound female squid discovered in 2003, the first ever landed.
Researchers plan to eventually put the squid on display in a 1,800 gallon tank of formaldehyde at the museum in the capital, Wellington.
Colossal squid are found in Antarctic waters and are not related to giant squid found round the coast of New Zealand. Giant squid grow up to 39 feet long, and are not as heavy as colossal
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Apr
27
Hundreds flee wildfire burning in foothills near Los Angeles
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SIERRA MADRE, Calif. - An early season wildfire slowly chewed its way through dense brush near Los Angeles on Sunday, forcing more than 1,000 people from homes in the foothills.
More than 400 firefighters attacked the 350-acre fire, aided by two helicopters and water-dropping air tankers, said Elisa Weaver of the Arcadia Fire Department. Residents evacuated at least 550 homes Saturday night and Sunday, but none had burned.
“This is pretty serious,” Weaver said. “Some of these areas have not burned in over 40 years.”
Smoke and fire billowed near neighborhoods on the outskirts of Sierra Madre near Bailey Canyon Wilderness Park. The fire moved slowly as it fed on brush and was estimated to be 5 to 10 percent contained. It is expected to continue burning for another two or three days.
Winds were calm early Sunday, boosting firefighter efforts, Weaver said.
Helicopters made water drops Sunday morning on a steep ridge above Sierra Madre, about 15 miles northeast of Los Angeles and just east of Pasadena. A fixed-wing water tanker also made at least one drop of flame retardant.
The blaze also stranded 50 guests from a wedding party at the Chantry Flats ranger’s station on Saturday until they were airlifted out Sunday afternoon, Weaver said. It took five helicopter trips from the ranger’s station to the parking area where the wedding party’s cars were. The party then was escorted out by road.
The fire was first reported Saturday afternoon in a wooded area a few miles northeast of Pasadena. It was windy at the time and unseasonably hot, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees.
The flames also brought the evacuation of a Boy Scout camp Saturday and left about 100 hikers stranded in a parking lot. Most of the Scouts had already left the camp by the time the evacuation was ordered, Weaver said, and no injuries were reported.
Firefighters originally had hoped to have the blaze contained Sunday, but gusting winds late Saturday night kept the fire out of control and sent it creeping toward nearby homes. The mandatory home evacuations came shortly before 11 p.m.
Two shelters have been set up for evacuees.
Flames outlined steep ridges about a mile above Sierra Madre, a San Gabriel Mountains foothill community of about 11,000 popular with artists.
To the south in San Diego County, about 40 acres burned in thick brush about 15 miles north of downtown San Diego. No injuries or property damage had been reported, a San Diego Fire Department spokeswoman said.
Apr
27
Investigators: Millions in Iraq contracts never finished
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ADVERTISEMENWASHINGTON - Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say. T
The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.
The special IG’s review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors’ actual or anticipated poor performance.
In addition, the audit said many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or otherwise successful when they were not. In one case, the U.S. Agency for International Development contracted with Bechtel Corp. in 2004 to construct a $50 million children’s hospital in Basra, only to “essentially terminate” the project in 2006 because of monthslong delays.
But rather than terminate the project, U.S. officials modified the contract to change the scope of the work. As a result, a U.S. database of Iraq reconstruction contracts shows the project as complete “when in fact the hospital was only 35 percent complete when work was stopped,” said investigators in describing the practice of “descoping” as frequent.
“Descoping is an appropriate process but does mask problem projects to the extent they occur,” the audit states.
Responding, USAID in the report said it disagreed that its descoping of the hospital project was “effectively a contract termination,” but that it had changed the work because of escalating costs and security problems. Mark Tokola, the director of the Iraq transition assistance office, also responded that the database the IG’s office reviewed of Iraq reconstruction contracts was incomplete.
Bowen’s office said its review was preliminary and that it planned follow-up reviews to investigate descoping more closely. Investigators said they were also looking into whether contractors whose projects were terminated by the U.S. government due to inadequate performance might have been awarded new contracts later despite their poor records.
Investigators said the database they reviewed lacked full data on projects such as those done by USAID, the State Department, and those completed before 2006. But they said the figures cited in the report offered a baseline in terms of unfinished Iraq reconstruction contracts.
“Adding contract terminations from these (other) sources would certainly raise the number of terminated projects,” the report states.
The audit comes amid renewed focus in recent months on potential abuse in contracting government-wide, such as Iraq reconstruction. Last year, congressional investigators said as much as $10 billion - or one in six dollars - charged by U.S. contractors for Iraq reconstruction were questionable or unsupported, and warned that significantly more taxpayer money was at risk.
In recent weeks, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has been working with Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, on legislation that would restrict future reconstruction dollars to loans instead of grants; require that Baghdad pay for fuel used by American troops and take over U.S. payments to predominantly Sunni fighters in the Awakening movement.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said the latest audit report points to significant U.S. taxpayer waste in current reconstruction efforts.
“The report paints a depressing picture of money being poured into failed Iraq reconstruction projects - contractors are killed, projects are blown up just before being completed, or the contractor just stops doing the work,” she said.
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Apr
27
Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery
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STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car.
Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus “passports” that extended Sweden’s protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded.
Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews. He bullied, bluffed and bribed powerful Nazis to prevent the deportation of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps, and averted the massacre of 70,000 more people in Budapest’s ghetto by threatening to have the Nazi commander hanged as a war criminal.
Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, days after the Soviets moved into Budapest, the 32-year-old Wallenberg and his Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder, drove off under a Russian security escort, and vanished forever.
And because he was a rare flicker of humanity in the man-made hell of the Holocaust, the world has celebrated him ever since. Streets have been named after him and his face has been on postage stamps. And researchers have wrestled with two enduring mysteries: Why was Wallenberg arrested, and did he really die in Soviet custody in 1947?
Researchers have sifted through hundreds of purported sightings of Wallenberg into the 1980s, right down to plotting his movements from cell to cell while in custody. And fresh documents are to become public which might cast light on another puzzle: Whether Wallenberg was connected, directly or indirectly, to a super-secret wartime U.S. intelligence agency known as “the Pond,” operating as World War II was drawing to a close and the Soviets were growing increasingly suspicious of Western intentions in eastern Europe.
Speculation that Wallenberg was engaged in espionage has been rife since the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged in the 1990s that he had been recruited for his rescue mission by an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, which later became the CIA.
About the Pond, little is known. But later this year the CIA is to release a stash of Pond-related papers accidentally discovered in a Virginia barn in 2001. These are the papers of John Grombach, who headed the Pond from its creation in 1942. CIA officials say they should be turned over to the National Archives in College Park, Md.
In February, the Swedish government posted an online database of 1,000 documents and testimonies related to Wallenberg’s disappearance. In a few months, independent investigators plan to launch a Web site with their nearly 20-year research into Russian archives and prison records. Russia is building a Museum of Tolerance that will feature once-classified documents on Wallenberg. And the CIA last year relaxed its guidelines to reveal details of its sources and intelligence-gathering methods in the case.
Despite dozens of books and hundreds of documents on Wallenberg, much remains hidden. The Kremlin has failed to find or deliver dozens of files, Sweden has declined to open all its books, and The Associated Press has learned as many as 100,000 pages of declassified OSS documents await processing at the National Archives.
The Russians say Wallenberg died in prison in 1947, but never produced a proper death certificate or his remains.
But independent research suggests he may have lived many years - perhaps until the late 1980s. If true, he likely was held in isolation, stripped of his identity, known only by a number or a false name and moving like a phantom among Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric institutions.
In 1991, the Russian government assigned Vyacheslav Nikonov, deputy head of the KGB intelligence service, to spend months searching classified archives about Wallenberg.
“I think I found all the existing documents,” Nikonov e-mailed The Associated Press last month. The Soviets believed Wallenberg had been a spy, he said, but unlike many political detainees he never had a trial.
Nikonov’s conclusion: “Shot in 1947.”
Later in 1991, Russia and Sweden launched a joint investigation that lasted 10 years but failed to reach a joint conclusion.
The 2001 Swedish report said: “There is no fully reliable proof of what happened to Raoul Wallenberg,” and listed 17 unanswered questions.
The Russian report bluntly said, “Wallenberg died, or most likely was killed, on July 17, 1947.” It named Viktor Abakumov, the head of the “Smersh” counterintelligence agency, as responsible for the execution and cover-up. It said the Russians consider the Wallenberg case “resolved.”
Unsatisfied, independent consultants and academics have kept digging, analyzing, reassessing old information and pressing for the Kremlin to release missing files.
___
Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944. With the knowledge of his government, his task as first secretary to the Swedish diplomatic legation was a cover for his true mission as secret emissary of the U.S. War Refugee Board, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a belated attempt to stem the annihilation of Europe’s Jews.
In the previous two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews had been shipped to Auschwitz for extermination. They were among the last of six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.
Of the 230,000 who remained in the Hungarian capital in mid-1944, 100,000 survived the war.
After the Red Army arrived in January, Wallenberg went to see the Russian military commander to discuss postwar reconstruction and restitution of Jewish property. Two days later he returned under Russian escort to collect some personal effects, then was never seen in public again.
And what did his country - or his influential cousins - do about it?
Looking back a half century later, the Swedish government acknowledged that its own passive response to the detention of one of its diplomats was astounding, and that it had missed several chances to win his freedom.
“The worst mistakes were done in the first two years,” said Hans Magnusson, the Swedish co-chairman of the 10-year investigation with the Russians. Sweden felt intimidated by the mighty Soviets and unwilling to challenge them, he said.
In the mid-1950s, the Swedes pursued the case more aggressively, prompting a memorandum from Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in 1957 that Wallenberg had died of heart failure in detention 10 years earlier - at age 34.
As more testimony came in that Wallenberg was still alive, Stockholm periodically raised the issue with Moscow - but without results, said Magnusson, interviewed in the Netherlands where he is now ambassador.
Sweden could have pushed harder, he said, “but I doubt it would have achieved more.”
“It is inconceivable,” says Wallenberg’s half-sister, Nina Lagergren. “Here is a man sent out by the Swedish government to risk his life. He saved thousands of people - and he was left to rot.”
___
Some time around 1994, Susan Mesinai, who had by then been researching the Wallenberg case for five years, visited Lucette Colvin Kelsey, Wallenberg’s cousin, at her home in Connecticut. After lunch, Kelsey caught up with Mesinai as she got into the car and told her: “Raoul was working for the highest levels of government.”
“So I said to her, ‘How high? Do you mean the president?’ And she nodded her head,” Mesinai said, disclosing to AP a conversation she had kept confidential for 14 years.
Kelsey’s father, Col. William Colvin, had been the U.S. military attache in the Swedish capital around the time of World War I. Wallenberg spent vacations in the 1930s with the Colvin family while he earned a degree in architecture at the University of Michigan. Kelsey, who was a year younger than her cousin, died in 1996.
Rather than clarify anything, Kelsey’s cryptic remark only deepened the fog.
Wallenberg’s rescue mission inevitably placed him in a vortex of intrigue and espionage involving the Hungarian resistance, the Jewish underground, communists working for the Soviets, and British, U.S. and Swedish intelligence operations. He also had regular contact with Adolf Eichmann and other Nazis running the deportation of Jews.
Whether or not he himself was passing on intelligence, Russia had plenty of reason to suspect him of spying, either for the Allies or Germany - or both.
“Wallenberg had ties to all the major actors in Hungary,” says Susanne Berger, a German researcher who collaborated with the Swedish-Russian research project.
The Stockholm chief of the War Refugee Board, Iver C. Olsen, was also a key member of the 35-man OSS station in the Swedish capital, and it was he who recruited Wallenberg, who in turn kept the U.S. connection secret by sending his communications through Swedish diplomatic channels.
Olsen’s OSS personnel file - unpublished until the AP viewed it at the National Archives - revealed that the American was cited for using his position at the War Refugee Board “in gathering important information for the OSS and for the State Department.”
In 1955 Olsen denied to the CIA that Wallenberg ever spied for the OSS, and Mesinai and Berger offer a different likelihood: that the Swede was a source for the Pond, which was a rival to the OSS known only to Roosevelt and a few insiders in the War and State Departments.
A small clandestine intelligence-gathering operation, the Pond relied on contacts in private corporations and hand-picked embassy personnel. It worked closely with the Dutch electronics company N.V. Philips, “which had access to ‘enemy’ territory as well as a far-flung corporation intelligence apparatus in its own right,” said former CIA analyst Mark Stout who wrote a brief unofficial history of the Pond.
So far, no evidence has emerged that Wallenberg worked for the Pond, and Stout said in an interview he had not seen Wallenberg mentioned in any papers he has reviewed.
But their circles of contacts intersected at several points, including members of the Hungarian resistance and possibly the Philips connection.
“The Pond was centered around President Roosevelt’s office and rumors of a special mission, intelligence or otherwise, for Raoul Wallenberg have persisted through the years,” said Berger, who suspects the Soviets knew about the agency.
It may have been just one more reason for Stalin to order his arrest, she said. Regardless of whether Wallenberg was involved, “the Pond’s activities clearly would have served to enhance Soviet paranoia about Allied activities and aims in Hungary.”
Hungarian historian Laszlo Ritter, of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, said the Philips company also was providing cover for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service. One of its crucial agents in the Balkans was Lolle Smit, who was knighted after the war by both Britain and his native Holland.
One month before Wallenberg arrived, Smit fled Budapest for Romania, from where he continued to control his network, Ritter said, but he left his family behind.
Smit’s daughter, Berber Smit, worked with Wallenberg in his rescue efforts - and “had a romance with him,” according to her son, Alan Hogg.
Ritter said Hungarian war files show no direct tie between Wallenberg and Smit, or between the diplomat and British intelligence. At the same time, MI6 used the Swedish legation at least twice to smuggle out information, and helped give false papers to Jews and the anti-fascist resistance, he said.
When the OSS wanted to dispatch a radio to the Hungarian underground leader Geza Soos, it sent the transmitter with a Swedish intelligence officer and told him Wallenberg would know how to contact Soos.
Wallenberg’s very name may have been enough to arouse Russian distrust. Throughout the war, his cousins Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg, the czars of a banking and industrial empire, had done business in Germany, producing the ball bearings that kept its army on the move.
The Wallenbergs also were involved in discreet, unsuccessful peace efforts between the Allies and Germany, which Stalin feared would leave him excluded - a foretaste of global realignment that would lead to the Cold War.
___
In December 1993, investigator Marvin Makinen of the University of Chicago interviewed Varvara Larina, a retired orderly at Moscow’s Vladimir Prison since 1946. She remembered a foreigner who was kept in solitary confinement on the third floor of Korpus 2, a building used both as a hospital and isolation ward.
Though it was decades earlier, the prisoner stood out in Larina’s memory. He spoke Russian with an accent and “complained about everything,” she said. He repeatedly griped that the soup was cold by the time Larina delivered it. Prison authorities ordered her to serve him first.
“This is very unusual,” Makinen said in an interview. Normally, such complaints would condemn an inmate to a punishment cell. “The fact that he wasn’t means he was a very special prisoner.”
When shown a gallery of photographs, Larina immediately picked out Wallenberg’s - one never published before, Makinen said.
She recalled he was in the opposite cell when another prisoner, Kirill Osmak, died in May 1960.
That was enough for Makinen and Chicago colleague Ari Kaplan to roughly pinpoint the cell of Larina’s foreigner. Creating a database of cell occupancy from the prison’s registration cards, they found two units opposite Osmak’s that were reported empty for 243 and 717 days respectively.
Normally, cells were left vacant for a week at most, Makinen said. The researchers concluded that those two cells likely held special prisoners, namelessly concealed in the gulag.
Mesinai and others reviewed hundreds of accounts over the decades of people who claimed to have seen or heard of someone who could have been Wallenberg. They established a pattern of sightings, even though many individual reports were considered unreliable, uncorroborated, deliberate hoaxes or cases of mistaken identity with other Swedish prisoners.
Some stories, like Larina’s, ring particularly true.
One compelling account came in 1961. Swedish physician Nanna Svartz asked an eminent Russian scientist about Wallenberg during a medical congress in Moscow. Lowering his voice, the Russian told her that Wallenberg was at a psychiatric hospital and “not in very good shape.”
The Russian, Alexandr Myasnikov, later claimed he had been misunderstood, but Svartz stood firm. His remark, she later reported, “came spontaneously. He went pale as soon as he said it, and appeared to understand that he had said too much.”
A few years later the Soviets sent out feelers for a possible spy swap. Envoys indicated Moscow was ready to “compensate” Sweden if it freed Stig Wennerstromm, a Swedish air force officer who had spied for the Kremlin for 15 years.
Though Wallenberg’s name was never mentioned, he was considered the only prize worth exchanging for such a high-value spy. The intermediary was Wolfgang Vogel, an East German lawyer who engineered many Cold War prisoner exchanges. But years of halfhearted negotiation ended in no deal.
___
Nina Lagergren keeps a small wooden box in the cellar of her comfortable Stockholm home. The Russians gave it to her in 1989 when she visited Moscow. It contains her half-brother’s diplomatic passport, a stack of currency, a Swedish license for the pistol he bought but never used, and two telephone diaries. Among the entries are Eichmann and Berber Smit, the daughter of the Dutch spy.
They also gave the family a copy of Wallenberg’s “death certificate,” handwritten and unstamped.
“They anticipated that I would get very moved and understand there was no more hope,” Lagergren said.
Instead it reinforced her belief that Wallenberg had lived beyond 1947 and perhaps was even then alive. “This proved we could go on,” she said. Today he would be 95, and she concedes he must be dead.
If indeed Wallenberg’s death in 1947 was a lie, the question remains: Why was he never freed?
The 2001 Swedish report speculated that the longer he was held, the harder it was for the Soviets to release him. Still, “it would have been exceptional to order the execution of a diplomat from a neutral country. It might have appeared simpler to keep him in isolation,” the report said.
The search continues.
Berger, the independent researcher, has submitted a new, detailed request to Moscow to release files on prisoners who shared cells with the missing diplomat and on other foreigners in the gulag; Mesinai hopes to study psychiatric facilities where Wallenberg may have been confined; Ritter, the Hungarian researcher, is tracing the British spy network of Lolle Smit; and historians are awaiting the release of the Pond papers.
Whatever any of this reveals, a 1979 State Department memo puts these questions into perspective: “Whether or not Wallenberg was involved in espionage during World War II is a moot point at this stage in history. His obvious humanitarian acts certainly outweigh any conceivable ’spy’ mission he may have been on
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Apr
27
Gene therapy experiments improve vision in nearly blind
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NEW YORK - Scientists for the first time have used gene therapy to dramatically improve sight in people with a rare form of blindness, a development experts called a major advance for the experimental technique.
Some vision was restored in four of the six young people who got the treatment, teams of researchers in the United States and Britain reported Sunday. Two of the volunteers who could only see hand motions were able to read a few lines of an eye chart within weeks.
“It’s a phenomenal breakthrough,” said Stephen Rose, chief research officer of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which helped pay for one study done at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
If successful in larger numbers, experts said, the technique has the potential to reverse blindness from other kinds of inherited eye diseases.
“I think this is incredibly exciting,” said Dr. Jean Bennett, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and a leader of the Philadelphia study. “It’s the beginning of a whole new phase of studies.”
The research was published online Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with presentations at a medical meeting in Florida.
The two teams of scientists, working separately, each tested gene replacement therapy in three patients with a form of a rare hereditary eye disease called Leber’s congenital amaurosis. There’s no treatment for the disease, which appears early in infancy and causes severe vision loss, especially at night.
An estimated 2,000 Americans have the form of the disease they targeted, Bennett said.
Gene therapy - replacing faulty genes with a normal version - has been studied in humans for over 15 years with limited success. The field suffered a setback with the 1999 death of Jesse Gelsinger, 18, in an experiment for a liver disorder at Penn. And some children treated for an immune disorder called the “bubble boy disease” later developed leukemia.
The early results of the eye experiments should give the field a boost, some experts said.
“I think it’s really a big shot in the arm for gene therapy and for medicine in general,” said Dr. Ronald Crystal, head of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
Each of the study participants had mutations in a gene that makes a protein needed by the retina, which senses light and sends images to the brain. Those without the gene gradually lose sight until they are blind in early adulthood.
The retina itself stays in relatively good shape for a while, making it a good candidate for gene therapy, said Robin Ali, a professor at University College London, who led the British team. He likened the defective gene to a missing spark plug in a car engine.
“The whole engine can be absolutely fine, but if it doesn’t have a spark plug, the car’s not going to work,” said Ali.
For the experiment, the scientists injected millions of copies of a working gene beneath the retina in the back of the eye. Only one eye was treated - the worst one - in case anything went wrong; the untreated eye was used for comparison. After the treatment, their eyesight and light sensitivity were measured periodically; mobility was tested in a maze or an obstacle course.
All three of those treated in Philadelphia showed significant improvement in their vision, the researchers said. The volunteers - two women, 19 and 26, and a man, 26 - were from Italy, where they had been screened by researchers there. The longest follow-up was six months.
Besides reading lines on an eye chart, they could see better in dim lit, Bennett said.
“We were not expecting to restore their vision to 20/20,” she said.
In the British group, the treatment only worked in 18-year-old Steven Howarth, whose disease was less advanced than the other two - a girl, 17; and a man, 23, who was followed for a year.
Howarth said he used to rush home from school because he was worried about getting around in the dark, according to remarks issued by the university.
“Now, my sight when it’s getting dark or it’s badly lit is definitely better. It’s a small change - but it makes a big difference to me,” said Howarth, who lives in Bolton, near Manchester.
After the injection last July, Howarth said his eye felt like sandpaper. It was better after a week, and his eyesight gradually improved. He was able to negotiate a dimly lit maze in 14 seconds without bumping into any obstacles; before it took him 77 seconds with eight errors.
There were no serious side effects reported in either group. One of the patients in Philadelphia developed a hole in his retina which didn’t affect his eyesight. The researchers think the hole was related to the surgery and not the injected gene.
The researchers said there was no evidence that the altered virus used to ferry the gene into the retina’s cells had traveled outside the eye to other areas of the body.
The groups have each treated a fourth patient, including a preteen in England. The researchers hope to see better results with higher doses and in younger patients with less eye damage.
The National Eye Institute is funding a third similar study at the University of Florida.
The research in Philadelphia and London was paid for by a variety of government agencies and private foundations. An employee of Targeted Genetics Corp., which made the altered virus used in London, is a co-author of their report. Four of the Philadelphia researchers, including Bennett, have either applied for or have patents related to gene therapy. Ali and another British researcher have also applied for a patent for the procedure.
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Apr
27
100-year mystery: Did Indiana woman get away with murders?
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LAPORTE, Ind. - Asle Helgelien didn’t believe Belle Gunness’ claims that his brother, missing for months after answering the widow’s lonely hearts ad, had left her northern Indiana farm for Chicago or maybe their native Norway.
Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check - a large sum in 1908 - the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother’s remains in a pit of household waste.
A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.
Many locals believed Gunness staged her death in a farmhouse fire, 100 years ago Monday, before Asle Helgelien’s arrival to cover up years spent poisoning and dismembering more than two dozen people.
Forensic anthropologist Andi Simmons grew up in the area east of Chicago hearing tales of the LaPorte black widow.
“There was always a sense of, what if she’s still out there? What if she’s lurking around,” said Simmons, who decided to explore the case as part of her thesis.
Gunness probably killed at least 25 people and possibly as many as 33, Simmons said. The exact number isn’t known because authorities never thoroughly searched the farm property after Helgelien found his brother’s remains.
“When you look at the numbers, she should be a household name,” Simmons said.
The official account was that Gunness died in the fire at age 48, along with three foster children and another woman who has not been identified.
Bruce Johnson, chairman of LaPorte’s Gunness 100th Anniversary Committee, said some residents wish the story would fade away. But programs leading up to the anniversary of her death have drawn many who are eager to share their own tales.
John Olsen, 87, of nearby Schererville, said at a recent anniversary program that Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant, had a reputation among Norwegian families as a great foster mother.
He said Gunness took in his aunt, Jennie Olsen, at 7 months old after her mother died. Jennie decided to stay with Gunness when she got older, even after her father remarried.
“Jennie had many opportunities to come and join her siblings … and went back to Belle because Belle was the only mother she had ever known,” Olsen said. “And Belle gave her an excellent home.”
However, Jennie Olsen’s body was the second discovered when authorities began digging after the 1908 fire, and many believe she had been killed two years earlier because she uncovered her foster mother’s secrets.
The woman arrived in Chicago from Norway in 1881 at age 21, and married three years later. After her first husband died, Gunness moved to LaPorte, where she met Peter Gunness. They married in April 1902, but he died later that year when a sausage grinder and jar of hot water fell on him.
In both cases, family members believed the husbands’ deaths were suspicious, Johnson said. And in both cases, Gunness collected thousands in insurance money.
After Peter Gunness’ death, his widow advertised in Midwestern Norwegian-language newspapers for a potential mate. One read: “A woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first class security.”
Though Gunness was a plain, 5-foot-8 woman who weighed as much as 280 pounds, her letters were eloquent, Johnson said.
“She wrote wonderful letters, very encouraging,” he said. “She would tell them about how lovely LaPorte was.”
The coroner declared Gunness dead after her dentures were found in the fire debris two weeks later. But many believe she paid someone to plant the dentures - which Simmons said were found intact and not burned.
When authorities determined the fire was arson, suspicion turned to a handyman who had worked for Gunness and had been her lover. He was convicted of arson but acquitted of murder.
For a quarter of a century, Gunness sightings were reported all over the country.
The last came in 1931, when a woman named Esther Carlson died in Los Angeles while awaiting trial on charges she killed her employer. Carlson resembled Gunness, was about the same age, and there was no record of her before 1908, Simmons said.
Simmons’ team exhumed a body believed to be Gunness’ from a Chicago-area cemetery in November. The casket contained body parts from two children - but they did not belong to the foster children reported to have died in the fire. They could be remains of other victims whose remains had been buried in the basement and were inadvertently scooped up in the ashes, Simmons said.
“Now we don’t know whether we’re adding two more people to our body count,” she said
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