Private Letters Shed New Light on the Man Behind the Holocaust

 Private correspondence of architect of Final Solution shows how top Nazi was willing to shoot his own mother if Hitler asked, but despite mass murder surrounding him family life was indispensable

Himmler, the mastermind behind the Holocaust, was the person behind the Nazi propaganda machine between 1926 and 1930. In 1929, he was appointed as head of the SS; he expanded its ranks from 300 men to over 50,000 by 1933. Himmler was later responsible for implementing the "Final solution to the Jewish problem" - the systemic genocide of over 6 million Jews. 

The official met his wife, Margarete Boden, in 1927. The two married in July 1928; and their only child, daughter Gunrud, was born in August 1929. The relationship was allegedly strained, with Himmler utterly absorbed in his work. 

After lying around in a Tel Aviv apartment collecting dust for dozens of years, hundreds of personal letters, pictures and secret journals belonging to Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, have been revealed.

The revealing documents, stored in Israeli painter Chaim Rosenthal's apartment, show how on one hand the top Nazi official used an iron fist to send Jews to their death, and on the other hand had a soft touch when dealing with his family, even in the shadow of the mass murder happening around him.

Sealed with a kiss: 'Love, Your Heini' (Photo: Realworks)

Himmler, the high-ranking Reichsführer of Adolf Hitler's SS, wrote many open letters to his wife Margarete (Marga) during the Second World War, and he never hid from her the exploits of the Nazi extermination machine.

"From Saturday until Tuesday I'll be in a killing field to test new and interesting methods of shooting," he wrote.

After returning from a visit on the eastern front in July 1941, after the German invasion of the USSR, he apologized for having forgotten their anniversary. But in the same letter he admitted how when he saw his soldiers executing Jews by firing he couldn't stop throwing up.

His wife didn't remain apathetic to the surrounding events either. One time before leaving for the front she told him that "there's a can of caviar in the refrigerator. Take it."

Even when he was on his way to the death camps he didn’t stop thinking about his cherished wife. A short time before the implementation of the Final Solution, Himmler sent her a short note.

"I'm going to Auschwitz. Kisses, your Heini."

In another letter from July 1942, just before going on a tour of the death camps, he wished his wife an enjoyable vacation.

"In the coming days I'll be in Lublin, Auschwitz and Lvov. All the best, have a good trip, and have a good time with our little daughter. Lots of warm wishes and kisses."

From the correspondence, the two were not only partners in their loving relationship but also in their strong anti-Semitic sentiments. In November 1938, the day before Kristallnacht, Marga wrote how she wished the Jewish problem would go away.

"This issue with the Jews – when will these scum leave us so we can live a happy life."

'Your evil darling'

The letters also revealed that Himmler's wife knew very well with whom she was marrying.

"I'm so lucky that I have an evil husband who loves his evil wife," she wrote. Himmler responded: "There's nothing other than 'revenge.' Forever." Marga wrote back: "Remember: 'Revenge.' My black soul is thinking about the most impossible things."

Even more algid is the testimony of his daughter, Gudrun, when the little girl described her feelings after visiting an extermination camp.

"Today, Mama, Aunt Lydia, Aunt Frieda and I visited an SS camp in Dachau," she wrote. "We had a big meal there. It was a great day. What a grand project the concentration camps are."

In Himmler and his wife's correspondence in the last '20s, he already had his murderous traits well established.

"My love, I found out how great it is that a person so evil like me merited such a good woman like you. I hope you are happy with your evil darling."

And after being appointed head of the SS, he made it clear to whom he was loyal: "If Hitler would tell me to shoot my mother – I would do it."

Himmler with family (Photo: Realworks)

The leading theory is that Chaim Rosenthal – an Israeli artist and historical memorabilia collector interested in the Second World War – purchased the letters, probably in a Brussels' flea market.

According to another possible version of the events, the documents were found in the home of Karl Wolf, Himmler's personal assistant who fled to Italy at the end of the war and hoped to use the letters as a bargaining chip.

At some later point, Wolf took the letters with him to either central or South America. According to this narrative, Rosenthal purchased the letters in Mexico from Wolf's wheelchair-stricken personal assistant together with a group of investors for $40,000.

It is unclear which of the two versions are correct, but what is known is that Rosenthal brought the letters to Israel in the '70s and hid the collection under his bed.

Seven years ago Israeli director Vanessa Lapa's father purchased the letters, and she went on to make a documentary film on the subject, which is set to be broadcast on the Israeli Yes network in the near future.

In the 1980s, Yedioth Aharonoth reported that the letters were in the country but the public didn't have access to them. Despite the mysterious acquisitions of the letters, the top expert in the German Federal Archive has said they're real.

"We have no doubt as to their authenticity," President Michael Holman said.

Himmler, who was loyal to Hitler until his death, committed suicide in May 1945, a short time after falling captive to the British forces.

'A wretched man'

Opposition and Labor Cairman Knesset Member Isaac Herzog described Himmler's last moments, as told to him by his father, former president Chaim Herzog, who served in the British army during the war.

"As he was being examined by a military doctor he shifted his head to the side, cracked open a cyanide bottle with his teeth and died on the spot. We'll never know why he specifically chose to kill himself at that moment," MK Herzog said. "Daddy told us more than once the story of Himmler's capture, and he always told us how he looked like a wretched man, a gray clerk and uninspiring

see also:

Private Letters Shed New Light on the Man Behind the Holocaust

Yehuda Shohat and Elad Zeret

Israel News

Nazi Art Finds Begin Return to Descendants of Jewish Owners MarcChagall painting found in Nazi art trove among first to be returned todescendants of Holocaust victims.

A masterpiece by Marc Chagall found in an art trove hidden in a Munich flat was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family, a newspaper said Wednesday.

US soldiers artwork stolen by Nazis (file)

According to AFP, the top-sellingBild daily cited documents it found in Berlin official archives and said it had contacted the sons of the original owner who had fled the Nazis to the United States during World War II.
"Our father often spoke about the Chagall and other artworks that were stolen by the Nazis," the paper quoted the sons of the late owner Savely Blumstein, Neil and Philip, as saying.

Art experts now value the work by the Russian-French early modernist painter Chagall, a painting previously unknown to scholars, at up to one million euros ($1.3 million), Bild said.

The undated "Allegorical Scene" from the mid-1920s was amid more than 1,400 suspected Nazi-looted artworks found in early 2012 in the garbage-strewn Munich apartment of an elderly recluse.

When news finally broke last month of the "Nazi art trove", it caught global attention and led Germany to speed up efforts to locate the rightful owners, publishing some of the pictures on website lostart.de.
German officials stated that the process of locating the art's original owners would be long and difficult, and outraged Jewish groups by delaying the announcement for over a year and even returning some works to the defendant in the case. Israel has already asked German officials to keep the art in Jewish hands in the event that original owners are not found. 

The eccentric hermit who was in possession of the art, Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, is the son of Nazi-era art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who acquired the paintings in the 1930s and 1940s. The elder Gurlitt had been tasked by the Nazis with selling art the Hitler regime deemed "degenerate" or had stolen, or bought for a pittance under duress, from Jewish collectors.

The Chagall work was of "particularly high art-historical value", said the German chief expert aiding the police investigation, Meike Hoffmann, in early November.

Bild reported that the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, in 1941 stole the painting and all other property of the Blumsteins, a Jewish-German family who lived in Riga, Latvia.

Savely Blumstein had managed to flee to the United States with his brother Salomon, while a third brother and other family members were killed during the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union.In 1957 they filed a compensation claim for all their family's stolen art, eventually receiving 25,000 deutschmarks (around 12,500 euros) in 1981.

Blumstein died in 2009, but Bild said it had located his sons Neil, 57, and Philip, 53, after finding the compensation papers in state archives in Berlin.

The Nazi-era art dealer Gurlitt had claimed he received the painting as a gift in 1943, said Bild.


Arutz Sheva

Germany sells two battleships to Israel : This should sit well with BDS :-)

German daily reports that torpedo-laden destroyers are intended to provide protection for Israel's natural gas installations.

Germany has agreed to sell Israel two battleships in exchange for one billion euros, AFP reported on Saturday, citing a report in German daily Bild.

According to the report, the torpedo-laden destroyers are intended to provide protection for Israel's natural gas installations.

Bild reported that the head of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's National Security Council,Yossi Cohen, visited Berlin last week.

A German government spokeswoman confirmed Cohen's visit, but declined to comment on the nature of his business in Berlin, according to AFP.

Israeli Navy captain Ilan Lavi said in April that the new offshore gas resource offers Israel's enemies an obvious target that would require extra spending to protect.

"We have to build an entire new defensive envelope," said Lavi, head of the navy's planning department.

A senior naval commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that simply to patrol the area Israel needed four new ships and that it had already been in touch with eight or nine foreign firms.

The discovery of large natural gas deposits in its offshore economic zone in 2009 came as a welcome surprise to Israel, transforming the energy security outlook of a country that used to rely heavily on imports. A burst of exploration followed, and by the end of 2013 18 new wells are expected to be drilled at a cost of $1.8 billion.

Israel estimates there are about 950 billion cubic meters of gas beneath its waters, enough to leave plenty for exports. A successful attack could threaten export revenues and harm domestic energy supply.

Jerusalem post

"Peace in our time" said Chamberlin in 1938 - "Deal of our time"from Kerry in 2013 : And this will turn out just as disastrous -Americans and other nations seriously need to wake up

Kerry's appeasement will end up with the same nightmarish results as Chamberlin's appeasement  

Israel has learned a lot lately, especially in the last 24 hours, that she cannot trust anyone, now including her allies. 

The nuclear deal signed enabling Iran to effectively build a nuclear weapon via the back door, is the ultimate insult to Israel. 

America and the others know Israel's predicament yet they have now allowed Iran time knowing fully well that Iran will use it to build a nuke. Anyone, including a child of four, can see that all Iran's talk and promises of change is just that, talk. 

Even after Rouhani made his first promises Obama and Kerry didn't exactly give it time to see if they were genuine. A sensible world leader would have waited at least a year to see if any positive action by Rouhani to prove he'd changed, like stopping further hangings of women in public places, or gays being lynched from cranes. Or most of all a good world leader might have given it a year to see if the anti Israel rhetoric coming from Tehran might cease. 

But no, after a couple of smiles and a few words of encouragement Obama and Co Jump straight into the trap and sign a deal that could effectively mean the end of human existence. After just three months these incompetent bungling fools have swallowed the lie and have now given the worlds most dangerous regime a blank cheque to do what it wants. 

This deal will just give Iran time and now resources, to build a nuclear weapon and the sole reason for this is Iran's hatred of Israel, which will be the main target of any Iranian nuclear attack.

The whole world is at fault here for letting this happen. All of them could have helped prevent this, including Britain, Russia, China and Germany, but they chose not to. Instead they chose appeasement. 

But most shocking of all is the actions of America. America is 'supposed' to be Israel's closest ally, yet America has been the driving force for this 'deal', as it has also for the so-called 'peace talks' in the middle east, another 'deal' detrimental to Israel's interests. 

Israel has learned one thing from the last few weeks and that is that it can no longer trust its supposed allies let alone its enemies. Despite the good hearted nature of the millions of Americans, Britons, Europeans and Russians to name s few countries, the leaderships of those countries are out for a quick fix to look good temporarily for the voters, yet they are leaving an ally and the middle easts only democracy in the lurch, not forgetting putting the lives of millions of people world wide in jeopardy, including their own citizens. 

But the striking event to arise from this shamboc 'deal' is the conduct of France. Out of all the countries who has been vocal in standing by Israel was France. A nation that is regularly the object of jests on FB and elsewhere due to the policies of its governments in the past; jests and gibes about radical Islam on French streets and the influence of radicals in this or that sector to name some; jests and jibes coming from many quarters, but much often coming from keyboards in American homes. 

People from all nations need to step back and take note, but more so Americans need to step back and take a very close look at their own backyard before criticising others because the potential  harm done against Israel and the free world in this Iranian nuclear deal, far outweighs an Islamist buffoon shouting his mouth of on a French street or a radical nut insisting the traffic stops in Paris during prayer. 

France might have major problems, but it has not got the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood directing foreign policy in its parliament and it hasn't got an Islamist president causing problems of potential global destructive scale. 

As grateful as Israelis are at the support, past and present, from ordinary Americans, as indeed all nations, sadly its not them that hold the reigns of power. The power comes from Government and going by the actions in this latest 'Deal' involving Iran, France has actually shown more signs of being Israel's closest friend and sadly America under Obama has done Israel's interests harm, together with the lapdogs that masquerade as politicians from Britain and other appeasers.
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IDF Chief of the General Staff Makes Historic Visit to Germany

IDF Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz arrived today in Germany, marking his first visit to the country as Israel’s military chief. The visit aims to strengthen the IDF’s cooperation with the German military, while affirming the strong bond between Israel and Germany today.

IDF Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz landed today (Wednesday) in Germany as part of an official four-day visit in Europe. This is Lt. Gen. Gantz’s first visit to Germany as the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff, following several previous visits to Israel of Chiefs of Staff of the German Armed Forces.

The Chief of the General Staff began his visit to Europe yesterday in Italy, where he conducted several work meetings with the Italian Chief of Defense. Today, he continued on to Germany, where he will spend three days as the official guest of General Volker Wieker –  the highest ranking official in the German military. During his visit, he will participate in meetings with Germany’s defense minister and other officials. The visit is aimed at strengthening the IDF’s cooperation with the German military, while affirming the strong bond between Israel and Germany.

In addition, Lt. Gen. Gantz will be the guest of honor at a Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony at the Platform 17 Memorial at Grunewald Station in Berlin. He will also visit the Wannsee Villa, the location in which the “Final Solution” was declared during the Wannsee Conference in 1942.

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£1bn haul of art treasures seized by Nazis found in squalid Munich flat: 1,500 works by masters such as Picasso, Renoir and Matisse hidden behind tins of noodles, fruit and beans

• More than 1,500 paintings found including pieces by Picasso and Matisse
• Collector Hildebrandt Gurlitt ordered for them to be destroyed in 1945
• But in a routine search on a train from Switzerland to Germany, his son was caught with 9,000 euros cash earned from an illicit art deal
• Officials searched his small rented apartment in Munich and found the art
• Experts claim most were acquired from Jews in exchange for escape

A remarkable secret trove of paintings worth nearly £1billion, seized by the Nazis in the 1930s and thought to have been destroyed in the war, has been found – hidden behind tins of rotting food in a shabby flat.

The 1,500 works by such masters as Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and Chagall were said to have been lost to the flames when Allied aircraft bombed Dresden in 1945.

They had been taken from their owners, many of them Jewish, by the Nazis, who regarded the Impressionist, Cubist and Modernist pieces as ‘degenerate’, and never seen again.

Control: Hitler only liked classical art and held exhibitions of modern 'dissident' pieces to show German people what not to like. Many of those paintings that appeared in those shows have been found in Gurlitt's collection

Their astonishing rediscovery nearly 70 years on in a rundown apartment in Munich came about because of a chance customs inspection of a man returning to Germany by train from Switzerland.

The man turned out to be Cornelius Gurlitt – the reclusive son of Hildebrandt Gurlitt, the art dealer who in the run-up to the Second World War had been in charge of gathering up the so-called degenerate art for the Nazis.

Cornelius was not registered with the German authorities, had never worked and had no apparent source of income, raising suspicions among investigators who then uncovered the art cache hidden behind years-old tins of noodles, beans and fruit in his decrepit flat.

His father had bought for a pittance many of the paintings he seized, and they had passed to his son on his death. Cornelius then quietly sold a few, one at a time, to give him money to live on.

The works – sketches, oil paintings, charcoals, lithographs and watercolours – have not been publicly identified by investigators, who are working to reunite them with the families of their rightful owners.

But one painting is known to have been The Lion Tamer, by German artist Max Beckmann. Cornelius sold it through an auction house for nearly £750,000 shortly before the collection was seized.

Another is a portrait of a woman by the French master Matisse that belonged to the Jewish connoisseur Paul Rosenberg.

Rosenberg had to abandon his collection as he fled Paris when France fell to the Nazis in 1940. His granddaughter Anne Sinclair, wife of disgraced former IMF bank chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been fighting for decades for the return of her grandfather’s pictures, but is said to have not known of the existence of this painting.

Other works discovered in the flat in the Munich suburb of Schwabing are by noted artists such as Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Liebermann.

In the words of a spokesman for German customs: ‘This is a sensational find. A true treasure trove. It is an incredible story.’

Collector: Hildebrandt Gurlitt amassed more than 1,500 masterpieces and ordered them to be destroyed in 1945. His son was found on a train with 9,000 euros cash after selling off one of the collection in Switzerland

Holding place: Cornelius Gurlitt, lived off the collection and as a consequence he has managed to survive his entire life without any official bank account, pension or insurance. Pictured: The Munich apartment where officials discovered the hidden paintings

Loot: American soldiers are pictured discovering one of the Nazi's enormous art stash during the war

A story which begins one evening in September 2010 aboard a German Intercity Express train from Zurich in Switzerland to Munich.

Customs officials were carrying out a routine check on passengers – many wealthy Germans deposit money illegally in Switzerland to evade high tax rates at home – and asked for the papers of a white-haired man.

He proffered an Austrian passport in the name of Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born December 28, 1933, in Hamburg and currently residing in Salzburg.

‘He appeared nervous,’ said customs officials. He said he had travelled to Switzerland for ‘business’ at the Galerie Kornfeld in Bern.

He then he pulled out an envelope with 9,000 euros in 500 euro notes inside – 1,000 euros under the legal limit which must declared to officials when crossing borders in Europe.

Gurlitt was allowed to go on his way, but the officials remained suspicious.

Extensive checks soon disclosed that he did not live in Salzburg but in Schwabing, but he was not registered with the police – mandatory in Germany – the tax authorities or social services. He drew no pension and had no health insurance.

‘He was a man who didn’t exist,’ one official told Germany’s Focus magazine, which broke the story.

Investigators applied for a warrant to search behind the barred windows of his £600-a-month rented flat, eventually entering it in spring 2011.

There they discovered a mountain of tinned and bottled food, long past its sell-by date. Behind the decomposing food were found the missing artworks.

Sold: The Lion Tamer by painter Max Beckmann was one of the paintings in the collection Gurlitt has already sold

Matisse: Art historians are excited about the discovery of a painting by Matisse of a young woman like this

A customs official said: ‘We went into the apartment expecting to find a few thousand undeclared euros, maybe a black bank account.

‘But we were stunned with what we found. From floor to ceiling, from bedroom to bathroom, were piles and piles of old food in tins and old noodles, much of it from the 1980s.

And behind it all these pictures. They are worth over a billion euros [over £850million] we are told, but the real worth is inestimable. They are treasures.’

Treasures they may be, but the provincial-minded Nazi hierarchy despised them and termed them ‘degenerate’.

Hitler liked only romantic paintings that idolised his vision of German supermen. He and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels ordered the seizure of some 20,000 ‘degenerate’ works by artists including Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Van Gogh.

Potential heir: Anne Sinclair, wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (pictured together) is the granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg who is believed to have given his paintings to Gurlitt for a passage to safety

Many were displayed in the Degenerate Art exhibition which opened in Munich in 1937. Tens of thousands of Germans queued up to see exactly what their leaders were telling them not to like.

But in parallel to this exhibition was a behind-the-scenes fleecing of those who owned the paintings, many of them Jewish, who were forced to sell them at rock-bottom prices to art dealers with connections to the Nazi hierarchy in order to purchase expensive exit visas to flee Germany for safer countries.

According to Focus magazine, between 200 and 300 of the Gurlitt collection appeared in the Degenerate Art exhibition and the rest were bought at shamefully low prices from Jews who needed to get out of the country as fast as they could.

Gurlitt is a name well-known to art aficionados, a family which once catered to the elite of the German art collecting scene.

Hildebrandt Gurlitt, Cornelius’s father, was among the most respected art historians in Germany by the time the Nazis came to power in 1933.

He was a champion of modern art – and therefore, initially, hated by the Nazis. He was relieved of museum directorial posts by the regime and persecuted because he had a Jewish grandmother.

But the Nazis needed him because no one had the contacts within Nazi Germany – and outside – that he had with collectors.

Culture: Hitler and Goebbels (far left), here with actress Leni Riefenstahl, amassed large art collections together

He was tasked by Goebbels personally to ‘versilbern’ – turn into cash – the degenerate artworks for the regime.

He did this with some zeal and was rewarded by being offered the future post of director of the super-museum of art that Hitler planned to open in Linz, Austria, where he had once lived.

Hildebrandt Gurlitt acquired ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of artworks at knock-down prices, according to Focus. After the Degenerate Art exhibition, he took control of some of the exhibits too.

At the end of the war Gurlitt claimed that the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 had destroyed his collection at the family home in Kaitzer Strasse.

His Jewish roots and his initial disfavour with Nazism made him, in the eyes of the Allies, a victim not a persecutor and he was never charged with fleecing Jews out of selling their collections for pennies. He carried on dealing in art until 1956 when he was killed in a car crash.

The recovered works are now in a security wing of Bavarian customs near Munich and an art historian is leading a team of experts trying to find the descendants of the rightful owners.

Meanwhile, investigators are said to have found a bank savings book belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt with hundreds of thousands of euros on deposit in it – the fruits of his sale of the artwork over the years. He faces jail for tax evasion and money laundering.

Ironically, however, if the rightful heirs to the paintings are not found – and because his father bought the bulk of them with family money, even at shamefully low prices – then many of them could be returned to Cornelius.

An awesome find - now for the lawsuits

BY ROBIN SIMON, DAILY MAIL ART CRITIC

This is the most significant art find ever to have emerged from the chaos of the Second World War. It is also a big step towards answering the art world’s most nagging question: Where did all the pictures go?

We know that after the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the Russians, Americans and British all had sticky fingers when it came to seizing works of art. Individuals and governments alike connived in the removal of numerous pieces from post-war Germany.

But opportunist looting never explained the disappearance of a mass of masterpieces from the so-called ‘Degenerate’ exhibition, let alone the 1,000-plus other pictures acquired – often at knock-down prices from those desperate to escape Nazi persecution – by a collector named Hildebrandt Gurlitt.

Now we know: They were mouldering behind a pile of food in a Munich flat.

The ‘Degenerate’ show was put on by Hitler’s acolytes in 1937 to display the kind of modern art which they insisted showed ‘decadence’ and ‘racial impurity’. 

The works in the exhibition had been ripped from the walls of museums across Germany: Now that so many have been recovered, there will surely be a feeding frenzy on an unprecedented scale as the heirs of the original owners, real or imaginary, call in lawyers in an attempt to recover such spectacular treasures.

Who can blame them? A single Picasso can be worth up to £60million. A Matisse £30million.
The list of German painters alone reads like the roll-call of a lost generation. 

Precisely because the Nazis condemned their work as degenerate, surviving paintings by such hallowed names as Kirchner, Liebermann and Nolde are rare today, and correspondingly expensive.

Certainly, German collectors will be falling over themselves to buy – if these works are ever put up for sale.

Restitution is already a controversial issue in the art world as families deprived of their inheritance seek redress from private collectors and public museums all over the world whose walls are lined with great paintings acquired in the most dubious of circumstances.

No international exhibition now takes place without elaborate legal agreements, in case any legal heirs turn up to spoil the show, demanding the return of treasures looted during the war.

The current exhibition at Tate Modern of works by Paul Klee, one of the stars of this secret collection in Munich, will be no exception.

Oils by Klee – who was dismissed by the Nazis from his post at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1933 – were fetching £5million as long ago as the late 1980s. Even a tiny watercolour by Klee went for £1million at auction in 2008. 

Today, you would have to be very rich indeed to get a sniff of one. Yet claimants to the Klees in Gurlitt’s collection will be hoping to get one for free.

Most of the paintings involved in this find will have been recorded in catalogues and sale records. Most original owners will be identifiable.

But there will be relatively few descendants around to come forward and plead their case.

And if all the heirs fail to materialise, Cornelius Gurlitt, in a bitter twist of fate, could be legally entitled to keep some these paintings - once denigrated as abominations by Hitler, but now declared almost beyond price.

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Main German political party foundations fund anti-Israel activity -some things never change

Germany’s main political parties transferred public funds through their foundations to Israel-based NGOs, as well as to organizations in the disputed territories, that are rife with bias against the Jewish state and, in some cases, anti-Semitism.

This according to a study released last week.

“As NGO Monitor’s detailed report shows, while German political foundations claim a mandate for promoting democracy, peace and human rights, a significant portion of their activities related to Israel are immoral,” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post.

“And despite the use of taxpayer funds, the foundations fail the transparency test,” Steinberg said.

“Their positive contributions do not justify demonization and political warfare targeting Israel – Germany should be leading the way in ending Europe’s role in attacking the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign equality,” he said.

The 75-page study, titled, “German Funding for Political Advocacy NGOs Active in the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” found the Green Party’s Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Christian Democratic Union’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation funded the Ramallah-based MIFTAH NGO.

MIFTAH’s publications have accused Israel of “massacre,” “cultural genocide,” “war crimes” and “apartheid,” NGO Monitor reported.

MIFTAH’s Arabic-language website published an article on an anti-Semitic blood libel in response to US President Barack Obama’s support for Israel and his attendance at a Passover Seder. After allegations of anti-Semitism, MIFTAH removed the article.

The Böll Foundation funneled $24,416 to MIFTAH in 2011. The Adenauer Foundation distributed $92,869 in 2011 and 2012 to MIFTAH.

The Adenauer Foundation is affiliated with German Chancellor Angela’s Merkel’s party.

MIFTAH did not immediately respond to Postinquiries.

The German Left Party’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation funded the Tel Aviv-based Coalition for Women of Peace to the tune of NIS 197,969 in 2010 and NIS 146,026 in 2011. CWP officials have been photographed hoisting a flag of the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and CWP supports the boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign against Israel, NGO Monitor said.

In an email to the Post, CWP representative Zohar Elmakias wrote, “CWP is a leading women’s peace movement, and we stand with integrity behind every... word and action. With increasing domestic and international criticism of the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, it is not surprising that reactionary, extremist right-wing and anti-democratic groups disguising themselves as ‘objective’ desperately try to slander progressive forces in Israeli society.”

NGO Monitor’s report noted that the Luxemburg Foundation and the German Holocaust foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ) distributed funds to the Tel Aviv-based NGO Zochrot, which seeks to “raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba,” declares that “the rights of the refugees to return must be accepted” and has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing.

EVZ did not respond to Post queries.

According to NGO Monitor, Zochrot’s agenda is “equivalent to calling for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Post queries to Zochrot were not immediately answered.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is aligned with the German Social Democratic Party, used its office in Jerusalem to blame Israel for the failed peace talks with the Palestinians, according to NGO Monitor. In late 2011, Michael Broning, director of the foundation’s Jerusalem office, co-wrote an article with the director of the Palestinian Government Media Center in Ramallah, Ghassan Khatib, titled, “What about Israeli Rejection.”

The authors said Palestinian rejectionism was not the problem, the study noted.

The Free Democratic Party’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation funded the Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies. The Free Democrats refused to disclose their financial support to RCHRS.

“Following the March 2002 suicide bombing attacks and ‘Operation Defensive Shield,’ RCHRS issued a statement promoting the false claim that Israel committed ‘massacres’ in Jenin and Nablus.

RCHRS has also accused Israel of ‘terrorist crimes’ and making children the ‘sacrifice for the racial hatred,’” NGO Monitor said in its report.

The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian-based sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, used its Hans Seidel Foundation to fund the Nazareth-based I’lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel.

“I’lam’s reports and publications reflect promotion of the demonization campaign, including unsupported claims of bias and discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens of Israel in the media,” according to NGO Monitor.

Seidel does not disclose its funding amounts.

The NGO Monitor study found an overall lack of accountability and transparency throughout the German political foundations and their funding streams in terms of work in Israel and the disputed territories.

In response to a Post query, representatives of the six German political foundations with offices in Israel wrote in a letter, “The German political foundations are a unique instrument of the Federal Republic of Germany. We take pride in the wide range of our contributions to political dialogue, stipends, academia and development cooperation as well as in the endorsements we receive from all sectors of Israeli society. It is the belief in pluralistic democracy that remains the guiding principle for our work and for our diverse contributions to our partner countries.”

The representatives continued, “We jointly reject the one-sided and limited conclusions, which NGO Monitor draws in the above-mentioned report. We regard your conclusions as unfounded allegations resulting out of a biased, incomplete and scientifically flawed research.

“We did consider clarifying the vast number of shortcomings of your report through a close and collaborative interaction with your organization. Our scope of action will remain unaffected by your report. We certainly will continue to provide – with full integrity, legality and accountability – our value-based contributions to the German-Israeli relations, to the strengthening of pluralistic and democratic societies, and to the Middle East peace process towards a viable two-state solution,” the representatives said.

Steinberg told the Post, “We urge the foundation heads to respond through dialogue and cooperation, in contrast to simplistic attacks and attempts to silence this long-overdue debate.”

The Israeli Embassy in Berlin declined to comment on the NGO Monitor study.

When asked about the German Foreign Ministry’s role, according to the study, in funding anti-Israel work in the Jewish state, a spokeswoman wrote the Post, “Germany’s foreign policy stands firmly on the side of Israel” and is in line with a “fair and just” two-state solution.

Jerusalem post