Nazi Germany

A surge of emotion swept over the young Jewish soldier from Baltimore when he first took in his hands the original set of Nazi Germany's infamous Nuremberg Laws."

Setting aside regular classes, eighth-graders at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School spent the past two weeks studying a topic that is part of their lives every day: prejudice."

THE 200-PAGE report by U.S. government agencies on neutral countries' use of gold and assets looted by Nazi Germany during World War II provides perspective on an earlier report that highlighted the moral guilt of Swiss banks.Other neutral countries were also profiteering; Spain and Argentina had governments sympathetic to Adolf Hitler; Switzerland, like Sweden, was surrounded by Nazi forces and not a free agent. Turkey's gold supply mushroomed.These countries also helped Jewish refugees and others escape camps and ovens, even while selling Germany war materiel.

IN MOST Maryland suburbs, the president of the County Council is chosen by his or her fellow legislators. But Harford County's system is like Baltimore City's: The head of the council is elected by voters and, as in the city, can wield great influence on the success of the executive.This year's race for council president in Harford pits Republican Mark S. Decker, 38, a liquor store owner and first-term member of the council, against Democrat Gunther Hirsch, 72, a retired physician who was a mayor and councilman in Havre de Grace from 1983 to 1997.

For Gerd W. Ehrlich, the painful memories and ghosts of growing up in Nazi Germany never went away.Dr. Ehrlich, who taught political science for 18 years at Towson State University until retiring in 1983, died Tuesday of leukemia at his Towson residence. He was 76.In "The Story of My Life," an unpublished memoir, he wrote that he and his parents -- his father a decorated World War I officer and his mother born into a respected German banking family -- were nonpracticing Jews.That didn't keep him from being taken out of a German high school in 1938 because he was a Jew."

There is a shrillness about the sound of splintering glass that sometimes defies the quieting of it, even with the passage of time. Seldom, if ever, was the sound more prevalent than throughout Nazi Germany and Austria the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938. It was die Kristallnacht, Crystal Night, the Night of Broken Glass. Six decades have not stilled the clatter in the memory of those who were there.It is a sure bet that in any commemoration of the event, the speakers will call it the prelude to the Holocaust.

THE UPROAR over Switzerland's hidden bank assets, deposited by Jewish victims of the Holocaust or by Nazi looters in the 1940s, has had a salutary effect. The inquiry has spread to Sweden and France.One casualty of the dispute is the early retirement of Switzerland's ambassador to the United States, Carlo Jagmetti. A Zurich newspaper printed parts of an adversarial cable he sent to his government. He advised it to "wage war" in behalf of bank secrecy against allegations by the World Jewish Congress and by Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y.

BONN, Germany -- Still reeling from charges that it helped prolong World War II through financial dealings with the Third Reich, Switzerland faced newly published accusations yesterday that its wartime arms industry profited from -- and favored -- Hitler's Germany in a weapons trade worth millions of dollars.The disclosure will heap further discredit on a nation that cast itself as a wartime neutral but whose actions are seen increasingly, both by outsiders and some Swiss, as those of a power that collaborated broadly with Nazi Germany under the cloak of that neutrality.

Walter Spiro, 74, a refugee from Nazi Germany who built Spiro & Associates, one of Philadelphia's most successful advertising agencies, died of cancer Tuesday in Philadelphia. Pub Date: 9/21/97

THREE BIG SWISS commercial banks have made a start at righting wrongs from the Nazi era by setting aside $71 million in a fund to compensate needy victims of the Holocaust under terms to be agreed with Jewish organizations. This is more than the $30 million the Swiss suggested earlier and less than the $250 million that some Jewish leaders had proposed. They also suggested that the Swiss government and central bank participate.Almost immediately, a movement to boycott Swiss banks subsided.

Dorothea "Doty" Brown, who fled Nazi Germany and ran a chain of children's shops in Baltimore, died of an infection May 23 at Union Memorial Hospital. The Village of Cross Keys resident was 94. Born Dorothea Dreifuss in Berlin, she became a professional portrait photographer and often took pictures of children. "She was raised in a very reformed Jewish home. Her mother had converted to Judaism," said her son, Gary Schoenemann of Owings Mills. "She had a private Jewish education, and the emphasis of the household was on culture, education and sports."

Inge J. Cohn, who fled Nazi Germany and worked alongside her husband at their kosher bakery for more than 50 years, died of multiple organ failure April 30 at Northwest Hospital Center. The Reisterstown resident was 80. "She was a very independent person," said her daughter, Leah Cohn Wander, who now owns and operates the business with her brother. "She loved the work she did, but most of all she loved being alongside Daddy at the shop." Born Inge J. Falkenstein in Wuppertal, Germany, she completed four grades of elementary schooling before the German government cut off education to Jewish students.

Thea Kahn Lindauer vividly recalls the day she learned she was going to America. It was 1934, in Eisenberg, Germany, and her father, Samuel Kahn, told her about a program called Experiment in Education, in which she would be integrated into an American family, and educated to the best of the family's ability. "My grandfather asked my dad if I could go to a relative's house or somewhere closer," said the 85-year-old Annapolis resident. "But my father told him that there must be an ocean between us."

Harry Lindauer, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938, died of age-related complications and an infection Friday at the Ginger Cove retirement community in Annapolis. He was 88. Born in Buttenhausen and raised in Darmstadt, Germany, he was 20 when he left his family's tobacco and soap factory as the Nazi government intensified its campaign against Jewish business owners. Distant relatives sponsored his immigration to Chicago, where he worked initially in a sausage factory.

Jeffrey Herf's new book started from a simple question: Since virulent anti-Semitism existed in Europe for centuries, why was it only under the Nazi regime that it led to the mass murder of the Holocaust? In The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, the University of Maryland, College Park historian writes that Hitler and his cronies put forward an international Jewish conspiracy as the driving force of modern history: Jews were to blame for Germany's wartime suffering.

Sophie Scholl - The Final Days commemorates a rare episode in Nazi Germany when the still, small voice of conscience rang out loud and clear. It's an authentic, harrowing tale of heroism. Except for his perplexing, stylized use of massive, sparsely populated architecture, director Marc Rothemund tells Sophie's story unaffectedly and powerfully. He and his screenwriter, Fred Breinersdorfer, deftly reshape the interrogation and trial records of a White Rose resistance member: a 21-year-old woman arrested and executed for distributing anti-Hitler pamphlets on a Munich university campus.

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life By Tom Reiss Random House / 449 pages / $14.95 This exhilarating, best-selling biography tracks the fantastic, intercontinental tale of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew from the Caucasus who impersonates a Muslim prince and becomes a best-selling writer in Nazi Germany.

Local television news is easily criticized: From its endless stream of over-hyped crime stories to self-important talking heads, easy-to-hit targets abound. But every so often, local stations do exceptional work - important journalism that provides a public service. Survivors Among Us - a one-hour, prime-time special airing without commercials tonight at 8 on WBAL-TV (Channel 11) - is an example of such work. In the documentary, WBAL chronicles the histories of Baltimore-area Holocaust survivors.

For former Staff Sgt. Milton O. Price Sr., 84, of Bel Air, the Fourth of July has a meaning that no words can describe. "Nothing is like freedom," he said. "You don't realize how precious it is until it's taken away from you." Price avoids telling people about life as a prisoner of war during World War II in Nazi Germany. He has heard too many caustic remarks in the past. "Don't you have legs?" some have asked. "Couldn't you run?" But the people who make such comments never spent six months in captivity.

MOSCOW - It was a bad day to be a bureaucrat in Moscow. In the space of about 12 hours Thursday, assailants tried to kill three federal officials in separate incidents here: a civil court judge, the chief of information for the Russian Ministry of Justice and the director of the agency that prints banknotes and mints coins. The justice official died of multiple gunshot wounds; the judge and the mint director were seriously injured. The attacks, which did not appear related, were unusual only in that they came so closely together.