Nazi Germany

In Germany, exploring the family tree is a risky proposition. Beware the limbs of the 1930s and '40s, for they may be laden with Nazis.But in recent years it has become fashionable among some of Germany's largest corporations to make the exploration. Giants such as Deutsche Bank and Daimler Benz have commissioned historians to clamber exhaustively through the tangled branches their Third Reich years.The result has been a series of sober corporate confessionals, detailing everything from Deutsche Bank's role in the "Aryanization" of Jewish property to Daimler Benz's use of slave labor.

A GOODY-GOODY who keeps quiet and always does what she is told in an organization like an opera house, especially one with political affiliations, is not likely to attract much notice," writes Allan Jefferson in his new biography of the much-admired German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.Schwarzkopf, who in the years immediately after World War II became one of the world's pre-eminent divas, certainly was nobody's goody-goody. Supremely ambitious from the start, she was, Jefferson notes, "determined to be noticed as often and by as many people as possible.

Three men were each sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday for a crime captured on videotape -- the death of a 16-year-old Lothian youth who was stripped, hog-tied, bound to a tree and left to die after he passed out during a night of heavy drinking.Daniel L. Corridean, 20, of Lothian, Ryan G. Massey, 21, of Upper Marlboro and Brian M. Wagaman, 19, of Chesapeake Beach told an emotionally charged Anne Arundel Circuit courtroom that they never intended to hurt the victim, Dennis S. Roche, after he left their party about 3: 30 a.m. Aug. 13 to pass out on a front lawn of a home in Lyons Creek Mobile Estates in Lothian.

Susan Sachs Fleishman knew very little about her mother's early life in Nazi Germany. She didn't know that her mother had sat calmly atop a daybed hiding her uncle while the Nazis searched the house for him during Krystallnacht. She didn't know that her grandparents had died in concentration camps. She certainly didn't know that her mother, as a teen-ager, had written poems so stunning that some would call her another Anne Frank.Shortly after her mother's death in 1991, she began learning these things.

Once again, the specter of Weimar Germany haunts Russia. If the outcome of last month's parliamentary elections is taken as a straw poll for the presidential race in June, one can easily imagine a nightmare choice between Communist Gennady A. Zyuganov and ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, or between Mr. Zyuganov and a weak reform candidate like Grigory A. Yavlinsky. A less nightmarish choice would pit Mr. Zyuganov against an ailing Boris N. Yeltsin or Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, a prime minister fatally damaged by his loyalty to an unpopular president.

Today in history: Sept. 27In 1825, the first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England.In 1854, the first great disaster involving an Atlantic Ocean liner occurred when the steamship Arctic sank. There were 300 people aboard.In 1939, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.In 1964, the Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy.

MOSCOW -- For a brief, bright moment yesterday, this nation battered by self-doubt and reversed fortunes walked with purpose, confidence and even pride.Russians celebrated and sorrowed over what many of them remember as the single greatest moment of their history -- May 9, 1945, when Germany admitted defeat in World War II.The anniversary began solemnly and emotionally at Red Square. There, 4,000 elderly veterans marched, sometimes feebly but with enormous determination, behind the red standards that they followed through the wartime years and through staggering losses.

Columbia must address problems of crime, several declining commercial centers, strained relations among ethnic groups and self-segregation of neighborhoods by socioeconomic status, community leaders said at a Harper's Choice village meeting last night.Howard County's Ad Hoc Committee on Human Rights organized the meeting in response to a hate-bias incident two months ago when large red swastikas -- the symbol of Nazi Germany -- were painted on the windows of a Harper's Choice Village Center photography shop owned by Russian Jewish immigrants.

The Rouse Co. has increased to $5,000 its reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for painting swastikas last month on the windows of a Harper's Choice Village Center photo shop owned by Russian Jewish immigrants.Rouse, the developer that manages Columbia's village shopping centers, said yesterday that it is adding $2,000 to the $3,000 in reward money it had already offered. The Howard County Police Department also has offered up to $300 for tips leading to an arrest.

Leaders of Columbia's Harper's Choice village denounced last night an act of vandalism in which seven large red swastikas were painted on the windows and outside walls of a photography store owned by two Russian Jewish immigrants.At the already-scheduled village board meeting, county Police Chief James N. Robey told about 40 residents that the department is investigating leads on the Harper's Choice Village Center hate-bias incident, which was reported to police Monday morning. A $300 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest.