Labor Camp

SHANGHAI, China - At least 10 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were reported yesterday to have died at a labor camp in northeast China last month, either in a group suicide or from torture. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said 10 women killed themselves to protest their treatment at the Wanjia labor camp outside Harbin in Heilongjiang province. But the Falun Gong Web site, based in the United States, was quick to denounce that report, saying that 15 women at the camp had been tortured to death and that the camp had labeled their deaths suicides to cover up its crime.

Felix Kestenberg, who survived eight concentration camps and two death marches during World War II, died Tuesday of a stroke at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 86. Mr. Kestenberg, the son of a shoe manufacturer, was born and raised in Radom, Poland. During the years of the Nazi horror that engulfed Europe, Mr. Kestenberg lost three elder siblings and his father. Beginning in 1939, when the Germans occupied Poland, and a few months before his 19th birthday, he was taken from his home and sent to a labor camp, where he worked on the fortification of the border with Russia.

WASHINGTON -- High-level U.S. help is rushing to the rescue of Marjorie Fuller, the "stateless American" confined to a Chinese labor camp much of her life and now held in a nursing home in northeast China.But a dispute has developed about whether she still wants to come to the United States.Texas businessman Ross Perot and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican, are trying to grant Ms. Fuller's repeatedly expressed wish to come to this country.The State Department, which for years has denied Ms. Fuller's right to U.S. citizenship, even though her father was a U.S. citizen, now says she no longer wants to come.

Witold "Victor" Stankiewicz, a decorated World War II Polish Army veteran who after surviving imprisonment in Siberian labor camps immigrated to Baltimore, where he worked as a barber, died of an aortic aneurysm Monday at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin. He was 101. Mr. Stankiewicz was born in Wilna, Poland. After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany and Russia occupied the country by treaty, with the Russians occupying the eastern sector and the Germans in the west. Communist leader Josef Stalin ordered that Poles living in the eastern sector be deported to Siberian gulags.

To sit and chat awhile with Jerzy Kajetanski, a World War II Polish resistance fighter and Nazi labor camp prisoner, you would not sense that this is a man full of emotion and vision.At 79, his hair is wispy and white. The body bends with age. In conversation, he is a man of few words.It is his paintings, thousands created in a lifetime filled with extreme despair, deprivation and derision, that are his power, his words."This man may very well be one the great unfound gems of modern-day art. To look at him you wouldn't know it, but he's just a frenzy of emotions, ideas and energy," says Rhoda Toback, curator of a 50-year retrospective of the Columbia resident's work.

NORTH CALDWELL, N.J. -- Mike Swack rarely spoke of it. What was there to say beyond this: that, as a prisoner of war, he had survived the brutality of a Nazi labor camp, the near starvation, the evacuation march that littered the German roadside with emaciated, dead GIs.In the 47 years since Mr. Swack, a lice-bitten, malnourished Army infantry private, stumbled into the arms of his U.S. liberators, this former Ohio farm boy has seen little reason to speak...

Arthur L. Berg, a World War II refugee who owned and operated food stores in Baltimore, died Saturday of lymphoma at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was five days shy of his 77th birthday. His best-known store was Andy's & Frank's, a Timonium grocery that he bought in 1970 with his wife, Sylvia, and operated until his retirement in 1986. The store specialized in custom-cut meats and personal service, with Mr. Berg selecting produce at the wholesale market in Jessup before dawn. Local sports figures and celebrities were among the store's clientele.

TOKYO - In a landmark settlement over wartime cruelties, a giant Japanese construction company agreed yesterday to establish a $4.6 million fund for relatives of Chinese laborers forced to work under barbarous conditions near an infamous Japanese mine during World War II. The settlement announced by the Kajima Corp., one of Japan's largest builders, marks the first time a Japanese company has agreed to make reparations to Chinese victims of slave-like working conditions. Japanese authorities forced thousands of people from Korea and China to go to Japan as involuntary labor during the war. Japanese companies in the past have generally said they are not liable for such wartime sufferings.

On the day after the United States exercised its right to vote, Chinese dissident Youming Che spoke movingly to a group of students about the extraordinary sacrifices he and others made in the hope of creating a democratic China.Che's recollections of his years in a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, the violent Tiananmen Square protest and his harrowing escape to the United States engrossed many of the 320 students yesterday at the St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville.Three times during his speech, Che, 39, a soft-spoken man in a plain navy suit who teaches Chinese studies at a private high school in Charlotte, N.C., paused to choke back tears.

Felix Kestenberg, who survived eight concentration camps and two death marches during World War II, died Tuesday of a stroke at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 86. Mr. Kestenberg, the son of a shoe manufacturer, was born and raised in Radom, Poland. During the years of the Nazi horror that engulfed Europe, Mr. Kestenberg lost three elder siblings and his father. Beginning in 1939, when the Germans occupied Poland, and a few months before his 19th birthday, he was taken from his home and sent to a labor camp, where he worked on the fortification of the border with Russia.

Michael John Bondyra, a wartime forced laborer whose journey took him from World War II Germany to a new life in postwar Maryland, died of Alzheimer's disease Monday at Riverview Care Center in Essex. The longtime Overlea resident was 86. Mr. Bondyra was born and raised in Grabowiec, Poland. He attended school until the third grade, when he left to go to work on his parents' farm and several neighboring farms, where he cared for livestock and tended crops. After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany and Russia occupied the country by treaty, with the Germans occupying the western sector and the Russians in the east.

GUSEN, Austria -- Garden Street, Flower Street, Park Street. The bland names can be found in any Austrian village. The solid, two-story houses that line these streets, the BMWs in the driveways, the neatly trimmed hedges, potted geraniums and inevitable garden gnomes speak of contented middle-class normality. A few residents always knew the truth, but they chose to ignore it, or at least not to dig too deeply into it. Occasionally, when they dug in their backyards to install swimming pools, they were startled to find human skeletons.

Hyman Pertman, a retired Baltimore tailor whose World War II exploits included escaping from a German prisoner of war camp and later surviving imprisonment in a Russian labor camp, died of heart failure Monday at Union Memorial Hospital. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 89. Born and raised Chaim Pertman in Wohyn, Poland, Mr. Pertman was 11 when he began training to become a tailor. He was working at the profession when he was drafted into the Polish army. He told family members that he vividly recalled the September day in 1939 when he and his comrades were digging trenches along a river separating Poland and Germany, and German troops suddenly crossed the river in the invasion of his homeland.

Eve Kristine Belfoure, a survivor of Nazi labor camps who was a language teacher at Woodlawn High School for 25 years, died Friday of heart failure at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown. The Woodlawn resident was 79. "She had seen the absolute worst in life, people executed in front of her eyes," said her son, Charles Belfoure of Westminster. "But she had an amazingly cheerful disposition and outlook on life." Born in Krakow, Poland, the former Eve Vetulani was forced to work in labor camps after the Nazi occupation of her country in 1939.

Peppi Simmeth considers himself one of the lucky ones. Simmeth, a Bel Air resident, is a German World War II veteran who fought in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and then survived six years in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. "I don't hold anything against anyone," he said to students at John Carroll School last week. "A war is a war, people react differently in a war." Simmeth, who will turn 80 next week, was invited to speak at John Carroll as part of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, said Ed Miller, Russian language teacher at the school.

Arthur L. Berg, a World War II refugee who owned and operated food stores in Baltimore, died Saturday of lymphoma at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was five days shy of his 77th birthday. His best-known store was Andy's & Frank's, a Timonium grocery that he bought in 1970 with his wife, Sylvia, and operated until his retirement in 1986. The store specialized in custom-cut meats and personal service, with Mr. Berg selecting produce at the wholesale market in Jessup before dawn. Local sports figures and celebrities were among the store's clientele.

Hyman Pertman, a retired Baltimore tailor whose World War II exploits included escaping from a German prisoner of war camp and later surviving imprisonment in a Russian labor camp, died of heart failure Monday at Union Memorial Hospital. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 89. Born and raised Chaim Pertman in Wohyn, Poland, Mr. Pertman was 11 when he began training to become a tailor. He was working at the profession when he was drafted into the Polish army. He told family members that he vividly recalled the September day in 1939 when he and his comrades were digging trenches along a river separating Poland and Germany, and German troops suddenly crossed the river in the invasion of his homeland.

RIGA, Latvia -- The Russian army, which swept over the Baltics with the roar of tanks 54 years ago, left quietly yesterday, rumbling out of Latvia on a woebegone train that carried the tattered remains of fallen empire.For the Baltic nations, a long foreign occupation had finally ended. The day was historic, but oddly empty of jubilation. For most Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians, the occupation was so painful that relief held sway over joy as it ended.In Germany yesterday, the departing Russian troops managed to march off with verve and honor.

SHANGHAI, China - At least 10 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were reported yesterday to have died at a labor camp in northeast China last month, either in a group suicide or from torture. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said 10 women killed themselves to protest their treatment at the Wanjia labor camp outside Harbin in Heilongjiang province. But the Falun Gong Web site, based in the United States, was quick to denounce that report, saying that 15 women at the camp had been tortured to death and that the camp had labeled their deaths suicides to cover up its crime.

BEIJING - Liu Xiaobo knew something was wrong when the plainclothes police officer who usually followed him showed up at his door one sunny fall morning five years ago wearing a uniform. After escorting him to the local public security bureau, police sat Liu in a conference room before a man with a video camera. Three people introduced themselves as representatives from the Beijing Re-education-Through-Labor Committee. "Today, we're going to go through a very formal procedure," one said.