a delegation from the Berlin Karlshorst Museum visited the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk participants learned about our approach to narrating the history of World War II While guiding them through the permanent exhibition the temporary exhibition The Forest: Shelter for Victims we shared our experiences in running a modern museum We explained to our guests how we present the horrors of war from the perspective of the ordinary person and Poland—a country fighting against two occupiers—while situating the events of the war within a global context The Berlin Karlshorst Museum offers various perspectives on German-Soviet history in the 20th century What sets it apart from other German museums is its multinational board of trustees and involvement from four countries: the Federal Republic of Germany The museum is located in a historic building where the Wehrmacht's high command signed the unconditional surrender to representatives of the Soviet Union The surrender hall serves as the central point of the museum Karlshorst housed Soviet military facilities including the headquarters of the Soviet intelligence services the museum’s educational program also includes tours of the area and topics related to the post-war and Cold War periods was originally established in 1967 by Soviet forces as a ‘Museum of Surrender’ for the political and historical indoctrination of soldiers (until their withdrawal) and the population of East Germany After the withdrawal of the Red Army from Berlin in 1990–1994 the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation decided to maintain its operation the museum revamped its permanent exhibition it presents World War II from the perspective of both the German and Soviet participants The exhibition also focuses on the war’s consequences Following the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine the museum team decided that only the Ukrainian flag would be displayed in front of the building it was decided that in light of Russian aggression rather than the commonly used "German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst." The Berlin Karlshorst Museum collaborates with the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II in Kyiv a historian from the Ukrainian museum temporarily joined the Berlin team before returning to Kyiv The museum also works closely with members of Memorial International a human rights organization banned by Russia’s Supreme Court in 2021 the museum only collaborates with Russian historians living in exile The Berlin Karlshorst Museum staff are now considering further changes to their exhibition and are seeking inspiration which was one of the purposes of their study visit to the the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk and Westerplatte We hope our guests leave Gdańsk inspired by the visit Bonava is selling and starting production of a project comprising 194 rental apartments in Berlin to a Berlin-based company The total value of the transaction is EUR 45 M The start of production constitutes the first phase of the new Gartenstadt Karlshorst district where Bonava will construct some 500 housing units over time and this transaction shows that Bonava is capable of creating attractive offerings for investors This also signals the start of production for this new district in eastern Berlin which we will be developing for a long time to come the majority will be built in accordance with the guidelines for the City of Berlin’s housing subsidy system The homes will be constructed in three multi-family housing units that offer high energy efficiency green roofs and sustainable energy and heating systems such as heat pumps and solar panels The future “Gartenstadt Karlshorst” district is located approximately 10 kilometres from Berlin city centre in proximity to amenities including a district healthcare centre Bonava will build some 500 new housing units through 2031 by creating a garden city comprising 194 rental apartments some 50 single-family homes and approximately 280 condominiums.  The mobility concept of the new Bonava block which provides 180 underground car parking spaces with e-charging facilities and numerous bicycle parking spaces Germany's largest car-sharing provider ShareNow is directly adjacent to Gartenstadt Karlshorst and offers a real alternative to owning a car Bonava is one of Germany’s most active residential developers and is one of Berlin’s largest players in the residential sector meaning that they generate a positive cash flow from the very beginning fredrik.hammarback@bonava.com Bonava is a leading residential developer in Europe with the purpose to create happy neighbourhoods for the many Bonava develops residential housing in Germany the company has built about 40,000 homes and reported net sales of approximately SEK 13 billion in 2023 Bonava’s shares and green bond are listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.  For more information about us, please visit: www.bonava.com Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker On January 17, just days before the announcement that the German government would once again send battle tanks to wage war against Russia the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum commemorated the World War II blockade by German forces of Leningrad which resulted in some 1.2 million people starving to death The blockade lasted from September 1941 until January 1944 The brochure distributed at the January 17 event The Leningrad Blockade in the Testimonies of the Mojshes Family documents the diaries and memoirs of the Russian-Jewish Mojshes family and recalls this immense German war crime The Nazi war of extermination against the USSR claimed the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens nearly half the death toll in World War II The number of Leningrad blockade victims alone was roughly 2.5 times the number of US military deaths the US Military Academy in its Atlas of the Second World War estimated that Russian casualties during the siege were greater than combined US and British casualties during the entire conflict When by late summer the expectation of a quick victory had proven a miscalculation Hitler and the Wehrmacht leadership decided not to attack Leningrad but to seal it off Leningrad’s population of 3 million was to be annihilated by continuous shelling and starvation as murderous revenge on Bolshevism and the October Revolution which had such powerful roots in and ties to that city the inhabitants of the former Petrograd were trapped 1944 the Red Army managed to break through the encirclement In the winter of 1941-42 there was only one connection with the outside world Vehicles followed a route across the frozen Lake Ladoga called the “Road of Life” by Leningrad’s inhabitants Many of those who were supposed to be evacuated by this route lost their lives and urgently needed food supplies often never reached their destination that a rail line was able to transport food along a narrow land corridor The Leningrad blockade was judged at the Nuremberg trials in 1945 to be one of the most serious German war crimes and deemed genocidal The great quantity of evidence at the trial included what is probably the best known and most harrowing account the diary in which 12-year-old Tatyana Savicheva recorded the deaths of her relatives with dates and times—the last of which read “Mama The particular focus of the January 17 panel discussion at the former German-Russian Museum—also called the “Surrender Museum” because it was here that German generals Keitel von Friedeburg and Stumpff signed the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on the night of May 8-9 1945—was on the diary of Lasar Mojshes and the memoirs of his daughter Anna The Mojshes family originally came from the Vitebsk region where many Jews settled under tsarist rule The family moved to Yelets in the Oryol region in 1913 later fleeing from the brutal pogroms of the White Guard troops during the post-revolutionary civil war to Petrograd who worked in a factory for school materials the ring of the siege had closed around the city and during the night German bombs fell on the Badayev warehouses which burned almost completely to the ground destroying a portion of the city’s food supply “The events of the last days in Leningrad are so serious that I decided to keep a diary about them,” Lasar Mojshes notes He sees himself as a chronicler of the times and records everything soberly even times of the bombings and artillery blasts one learns how many social and cultural institutions existed in the city of the October Revolution—food canteens the “House of the Peasant,” the Palace of Labor described by Lasar as bastards and scoundrels including Leningrad’s largest department store and the hospital for evacuees on Nevsky Prospekt One also learns that a bomb killed Betty the elephant Lasar notes how the bread rations got smaller and smaller He is one of the non-working people after his factory closes at the start of the war and ultimately must make do with the smallest ration of 125 grams per day which comes to about one thin slice of bread The hunger becomes more and more desperate without vegetables and certainly without meat even I dream of catching a cat and trying it,” Lasar writes It is better than falling into the hands of the Hitlerites We see our salvation only in the defeat of the bastards and bandits Luck be with us.” Thus ends the diary of Lasar Mojshes on November 30 A month later he died of starvation at the age of 59 His wife Tatyana and his four children were evacuated in time and survived the blockade a journalist who was involved in the evacuation of children from Leningrad were tape recorded shortly before her 90th birthday especially from families of journalists and other members of the intelligentsia evacuated to Tatarstan in the late summer of 1941 and returned to Leningrad in 1944 explained in her introduction that the interesting thing about this document is that Anna Mojshes still represents the “communist narrative” 10 years after the end of the Soviet Union with its “optimistic narrative,” sounded at many points “like a Pioneer newspaper” of the official Stalinist youth organization One senses in it the “pride she feels in having succeeded in making ‘frontline workers’ out of the rather spoiled intelligentsia children But they don’t just work:  they are happy to be working Makhotina explains this “communist language” as the survivors’ attempt to overcome their traumas the enthusiasm and pride during the Leningrad Blockade were neither invented nor exaggerated nor is the willingness of Soviet soldiers to fight and sacrifice on the fronts The introductory remarks express the attitude of the academics of the post-German-reunification period who assess the fighting spirit of the Soviet population as support for the Stalinist regime the population was determined to defend to the bitter end the achievements of the October Revolution—the nationalized property the planned economy and the social and cultural advances associated with it—against the Nazi invasion There can be no doubt that this had an impact on children It was the criminal policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy that left the Soviet Union initially defenseless before the fascist onslaught not only murdered almost the entire leadership of the October Revolution and hundreds of thousands of Communists and intellectuals He disregarded the warnings about an imminent Nazi attack trusting instead in the non-aggression pact with Hitler Anna does not hide the difficulties the villagers faced where Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization led to hostile reactions She talks about clashes between children and caregivers But she is animated by the desire to incorporate the best features of the revolution into her pedagogical duties to the children to cheer them up and create a sense of security despite their separation from their starving parents in Leningrad “The children love it and appreciate being treated as equals,” Anna says recounting how the educators organize plays ultimately brings the orphans back to Leningrad and helps them cope with the loss of their parents through mentoring and social cohesion took the microphone and thanked the museum with moving words: “This event is very rare everywhere in the world today they are against Russia.” The Leningrad hunger blockade was a genocide “This event is especially important to me,” he stressed survived the blockade of Leningrad by the Germans and the Holocaust during World War II as the Wehrmacht advanced on the Soviet city he was evacuated with a children’s transport But the train was attacked by German bombers and as a 12-year-old he walked for three days he survived a children’s transport across frozen Lake Ladoga Many of his relatives died in Leningrad or became victims of the Holocaust in Belarus he came to Germany as a so-called contingent refugee Among contingent refugees were victims of the blockade Berezin was a professor of radio technology like many other Jewish contingent refugees he lives in poor conditions in a one-room apartment in Berlin surviving on meager basic welfare benefits He heads the Berlin association of blockade victims “Lebendige Erinnerung” (“Living Memory”) which celebrates the liberation of Leningrad from the siege on January 27 as “our Victory Day.” On February 2, the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum, whose original name was changed primarily at the instigation of the German Green Party, will host a reading and discussion of Vasily Grossman’s book Stalingrad to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad it is located on the site where the Nazis agreed to surrender in 1945 The German-Russian Museum, a museum in Berlin dedicated to German-Soviet relations, is dropping the word ‘Russian’ from its name in response to the invasion of Ukraine It is now called the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst Located on the site where the Nazis agreed to surrender on 8 May 1945 we have been discussing our name as the ‘German-Russian Museum’,” the museum said in a statement on 27 April It said the name “does not adequately reflect our actual work” “We remember all Soviet victims of the German war of extermination regardless of their nationality,” the museum added “In future we will use our name ‘Museum Berlin-Karlshorst’ which is registered in the official public records.” The Museum Berlin-Karlshorst said it condemns the “war of aggression against sovereign Ukraine which is contrary to international law and is being waged with numerous crimes against the civilian population” “Our compassion and our support goes out to the people affected by the war,” it said “That is why we stand in solidarity with all those who are raising their voices against this war both in Russia and around the world.” Meanwhile, surveillance footage appears to show rockets striking an amusement park called Maxim Gorky Central Park for Culture and Recreation in Kharkiv (via Reuters and ABC News) In the Ukrainian town of Skovorodynivka, a museum dedicated to poet and philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda has been destroyed by Russian shelling (via Reuters and the Guardian) The Hermitage Amsterdam, a museum of Russian art in the Netherlands, has also “cut ties” with Russia’s State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg due to the country’s “recent attack on Ukraine” the institution said it has “distanced itself from political developments in Putin’s Russia” for many years Get the latest attractions industry
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It can be easy to forget here that you're not actually in Moscow Old-school Soviet patriotism is on full display Visitors are greeted at the door by a Soviet T-34 tank inscribed with the phrase "за родину"—"For the Motherland." Marble monuments from the era adorn the halls praising the heroes of the Soviet Union who gave their lives to stop the spread of the "fascist plague." The unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed in this building in May of 1945 and this museum certainly wants you to know it The "capitulation room" has been recreated for visitors where an original video of the German high command signing its surrender plays on elevated TV screens in an infinite loop The exhibition rooms tell the story of World War II (or the "Great Patriotic War") from the Soviet perspective making it a must-see for any history buffs who can't make it all the way to Moscow The focus is often on the heroism of the Red Army and the suffering of the Soviet civilian population including a very moving exhibition on the Siege of Leningrad Highlights of the collection include a map of Berlin snatched from the desk in Hitler's bunker on which Hitler and his inner circle marked the Soviet advance on the city in the last days of the war. The museum building itself also served as the headquarters of the Soviet occupation forces throughout the Cold War and many of these rooms have been preserved for visitors The museum is accessible from public transit using the S3 from central Berlin take the bus 296 and get off at the "Museum Karlshorst" stop Five soviet prisoners of war were executed at this spot just days before the liberation of Norway This former Soviet military base has over 10 original aircraft and an enormous amount of memorabilia on display A line of disused military bunkers built to defend against Nazi invasion lies hidden on the outskirts of the city A sober museum housed in the original administrative building of one of Stalin's largest gulags A tower marking the spot where Yugoslavia began its resistance against the invading Nazis stands neglected This symbol of Yugoslav liberation decorated with 620 carved heads of mythical creatures is now a forlorn relic of another time A tribute to a man who defied the Nazis until his last breath a former wartime bunker holds some surprising secrets The TimesThe German government is struggling to evict several Russian ministries from their role overseeing a Berlin museum that marks the spot where the Wehrmacht surrendered to the Allies in May 1945 was founded by the Soviet Union in 1967 to commemorate the Red Army’s struggle against Germany in the Second World War After the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification it was reopened in 1995 as the German-Russian museum The museum is directly supervised by the armed forces museum in MoscowALAMYIt is funded by the German government to the tune of about €1.6 million a year but seven of the 17 institutions represented on its board of sponsors V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day, is celebrated on May 8 by the U.S., but actually the formalities of the war’s end were spread over three days. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide on April 30th, during the final Battle of Berlin, leaving authority to surrender in the hands of his successor, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz British and French ranking officers crowded into a second-floor recreation room of the red brick schoolhouse which served as Supreme Allied Commander Gen Field Marshal Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional “instrument of surrender” of all German fighting forces Eisenhower asked Jodl if he fully understood what he had signed including the requirement that German commanders sign a formal surrender to the USSR at a time and place determined by that government In accordance with the surrender of the previous day at Reims the end of hostilities was set for one minute past midnight on May 9 But the news did not get out in a uniform manner Battle between German and Soviet forces continued through the next day the Soviets lost another 600 soldiers in Silesia For this reason V-E Day is celebrated on May 9th in Russia Joseph Stalin saluted his nation in a radio broadcast “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations… has ended in victory The victory happened on President Harry Truman’s 61st birthday He dedicated the victory to the memory of his predecessor who had died of a cerebral hemorrhage less than a month earlier Ecstatic crowds all over the world massed to celebrate V-E Day In the years immediately following the end of World War II the Great Powers claimed their “spheres of influence” in Europe largely dividing the continent between east and west The United States and other Western nations are refusing to join the Russians in commemorations of this historic 70th anniversary of the end of World War II citing disapproval of current Russian policy On this occasion – surely the last when any massed numbers of active participants in the war will be able to assemble – once again opportunities to seek common ground are sacrificed to immediate political expediency Adapted from Chase‘s Calendar of Events and other sources Photo: Crowds gather in celebration in London during V-E Day in 1945.  |  Wikipedia (CC) People’s World is a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States and for the labor and democratic movements to our readers across the country and around the world People’s World traces its lineage to the Daily Worker newspaper Vietnam, beacon of peace and freedom, marks 50 years of reunification Amidst capitalist crisis and war, Russian Communists struggle against Putin and... Baltimore crowd hails Meyers’ bio ‘No Power Greater’ ‘Sinners’ review: Horror, history, and Black American folklore combine for trailblazing cinema  Chickens coming home to roost: Remember what Malcolm said Amidst capitalist crisis and war, Russian Communists struggle against Putin and the oligarchs U.S. imperialism’s new Cold War against China fosters anti-Asian racism at home Video: Springsteen sings “Nueva Canción” as tribute to people of Argentina, Chile Albert Dieckmann’s Pictures from Occupied Eastern Europe 1941-42” is the title of a small but thoughtful exhibition at Berlin’s Karlshorst Museum the site of the surrender of Nazi Germany’s military in May 1945 It opened June 22 on the 82nd anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union and is on view until December 17 On display are some 40 colour photographs from a private collection of 380 slides taken by Wehrmacht (German army) doctor Albert Dieckmann during his deployment with the advancing German forces in occupied Belarus His son Wolfgang donated them to the museum in 2007 along with private letters to his mother from the field had already participated in the First World War as a soldier he was transferred as a staff officer to the Eastern European territories recently occupied by the Wehrmacht he worked as a military doctor until the end of the war and he continued to practice medicine after the war The Radfahr-Wachbataillon 48 (B) (cycling guard battalion) to whose staff Albert Dieckmann was assigned as a physician was one of the “Korück” units responsible for securing supplies and guarding and removing prisoners of war behind the front lines of the advancing Wehrmacht Their duties also included enforcing the Nazi starvation plan under the “General Plan East” [1] and the forced collection of crop yields Even the curator of the exhibition, Babette Quinkert, who has long researched the Wehrmacht’s campaign of extermination in the East and organised the 2021 exhibition “Dimensions of a Crime,” was hardly aware of these Wehrmacht units Dieckmann was a passionate amateur photographer and had experimented with colour photography early on prepared with novel graphic elements for the younger generation one could admire or even enjoy the beauty of some landscape shots the sensitive portraits and group shots of villagers Behind the front of the invading German troops a murder machine was already raging in the first months of the operation carried out by special Wehrmacht units in cooperation with SS These were responsible for many crimes against the civilian population Dieckmann’s attitude to the Nazi terror cannot be deduced directly from his photographs His son reported that after the war his father did not tell his children about his experiences War and everything military became absolutely taboo in the family He found his father to be a serious and rather depressed person who rarely laughed and Even if his photos do not show direct scenes of violence burning buildings and also the degrading treatment of prisoners of war are always to be found Dieckmann must have experienced many cruel things first hand things he was not allowed to photograph or report to his wife in his letters now often consisted “in tracking down ‘partisans’ in forests and villages Since the time has expired until which they could turn themselves in with impunity they are now taken out of hiding places and houses and shot on the spot.” there was no such thing as “turning oneself in with impunity.” Moreover at the time of the letter there was no partisan structure the battalion in which Dieckmann served was hunting down scattered Red Army soldiers Tens of thousands of “dispersed” and “non-local” soldiers who had escaped capture and hidden in the woods or gone into hiding as farm labourers were shot in the late summer and fall of 1941 Many of the photographs give the illusion of peaceful village life such as a group of women carrying out harvest duty The exhibition panel exposes the optical illusion: Dieckmann’s battalion was involved in the plunder and security policy the “patrol and security service during harvest operations.” They controlled the population and searched for suspects the women in Dieckmann’s photo show themselves particularly eager at work A report records the “results” of one operation: “Arrest and delivery of 84 prisoners (partisans) With forced labour and the requisitioning of crop yields Nazi planners wanted to organize supplies for the troops and colonise large parts of Eastern Europe as Lebensraum im Osten (living space in the East) Hitler’s “General Plan East” reckoned with more than 30 million deaths from starvation Dieckmann shows the modern architecture of the Soviet Union in cities like Minsk which may have surprised many a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi and many soldiers after hearing propaganda day in and day out about the “semi-Asiatic” Soviet Russia that was dominated by “barbarism and stagnation.” This is probably also true for the photographer himself who in one photo shows very well the contrast between traditional huts and new buildings in Minsk—and thus indirectly the progress made since the 1917 October Revolution a family in Smolensk looks into the camera a huge laundry package and three small children one reads Dieckmann’s letter to his wife from September 4 again in some of the few still existing apartments of Russians in order to get to know how the people live there The depiction of the Belarusian family shows the empathy of the photographer Here one does not see a group of “Slavic subhumans,” but a working-class family that has lost its home and stands on the street A working-class family would not look much different after a bombing raid over Berlin or any other European country of the time Dieckmann seeks to get close to the civilian population His pictures of prisoners of war are harrowing As impressively conveyed in the 2021 exhibition “Dimensions of a Crime” [2] the Nazi leadership treated Soviet prisoners of war particularly brutally compared to those of other countries Next to an interminably long column of Soviet POWs on the march to a camp we read the following quote from an intercepted conversation in a British prison camp on August 27-28 there went a column of 6,000 tottering figures Every 100 to 200 metres one to three remained lying on the ground with pistols; anyone who stopped got a shot in the neck and was thrown into the ditch Many tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered in this way Those who reached the camps had little chance of survival Of about three million Red Army prisoners taken by the end of 1941 the Wehrmacht allowed more than two million to starve to death by the spring of 1942 more than three million of a total of about 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war had died Dieckmann’s photographs increasingly capture the horrors of the war of extermination Dieckmann also took disturbing pictures of Jewish ghettos in Poland The exhibition once more refutes one of the many historical falsehoods: the claims that there was a “clean Wehrmacht” and that war crimes were only committed by the SS the Karlshorst Museum continues its ongoing work to keep alive the memory of World War II and the monstrous crimes of German imperialism in the occupied territories of the former Soviet Union and which was built on the site of Nazi Germany’s final surrender and contains a magnificent permanent exhibition has been under great pressure from official politics since the Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014 and especially since the start of the Ukrainian war there are efforts by government circles to end the museum management’s cooperation with the Russian Federation which was established by an agreement binding under international law after German reunification in 1990 The anniversary of Germany’s surrender also would have warranted a major exhibition pillorying Nazi crimes in Eastern Europe That would likely have provoked angry reactions from Ukrainian nationalists who today celebrate Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera as heroes the small exhibition now being presented is all the more significant museum director Jörg Morré said he saw it as his job to keep the museum “on course” and to commemorate the German invasion of the Soviet Union He did not want to be “talked out of this” with the argument that it was no longer “opportune.” the museum is pursuing the goal of a “source-critical” assessment of photographs a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin until 2022 also addressed this question in his opening lecture He referred to the example of the Nazis’ propagandistic staging through using manipulative images He cited Leni Riefenstahl’s film about the 1936 Olympics as day after day footage from the Ukraine war zone flickers across television screens which supposedly “cannot be verified.” They are used to support demands for the war against Russia to be escalated which is now training on the borders with Russia the carefully and objectively presented photographs of Dr Dieckmann become a warning against a new barbaric war [2] The exhibition Dimensions of a Crime first on view at the Karlshorst Museum in 2021 has been very successful as a travelling exhibition July 23 was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp in Poland Commemorative ceremonies were held in Lublin where a memorial to the Nazi crimes was established shortly after the liberation in 1944 the date was hardly noticed by the official political establishment including one at the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum which commemorates the site of the capitulation of Nazi Germany in the Second World War because it was the first major Nazi camp to be liberated by the Red Army as historian and Holocaust researcher Stephan Lehnstaedt put it at the Berlin memorial event “basically all aspects of occupation and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.” the history of Majdanek is particularly revealing It is here that the connection between Nazi Germany’s war of aggression against the Soviet Union and the Holocaust the extermination of the Jewish population which primarily affected Poland and Eastern Europe What began as a prison and forced labour camp as part of the Germanisation and resettlement policy ended with the murder of around 80,000 prisoners When Soviet soldiers and members of the Polish underground army reached the camp on the outskirts of Lublin in eastern Poland on the night of July 22-23,1944 they found a place of horror: burning barracks human remains and mountains of shoes of murdered people around a thousand prisoners in a pitiful state between life and death The SS guards had fled the camp a few hours before their arrival hastily burying corpses and transporting around a thousand prisoners to Auschwitz relatives and local residents flocked to the huge camp site they gathered at a memorial service in Lublin which was also attended by international war reporters The horrific images of the Nazi killing machine quickly spread around the world the pleas of Jewish exile groups to the American and British allied forces to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz where the mass murders continued day after day A Soviet-Polish camera team—including Stanisław Wohl, Aleksander Ford and Adolf Forbert, who would later found the Filmhochschule Łódź—immediately began work on a film documentary, which was released that same year: “Vernichtungslager Majdanek—Friedhof Europas” (Majdanek Extermination Camp—Europe’s Cemetery) in which original statements by survivors and captured SS guards can be heard just under a month after the camp was liquidated the initiative to establish a museum was launched Majdanek thus became the first concentration camp memorial in Europe to begin its work during the war a historic city in eastern Poland with a population of 120,000 at the time was located only about a hundred kilometres from the border with the Soviet Ukrainian Republic After the invasion of Poland on September 1 it became part of the occupied General Government of Poland under the command of General Governor Hans Frank the “Butcher of Poland” who was later executed in Nuremberg His right-hand man in the Lublin district was Odilo Globocnik whom Heinrich Himmler had appointed SS and police leader of Lublin notorious for his mistreatment of Jews and personal enrichment at their expense organised a brutal campaign of terror in the city and surrounding area immediately after the occupation He drove farmers from their farms and their homes recruited paramilitary gangs of the “Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz” (German Self-Defence) from the German minority and used them for the mass executions of the so-called “Intelligenzaktion” (Intelligentsia Action) and the subsequent AB-Aktion (“Extraordinary Pacification Action”) This genocidal campaign by the German occupying power was intended to break the resistance of the Polish population and to initiate the Nazis’ plans for Germanisation and resettlement Globocnik began building forced labour camps as early as 1939 Four weeks after the start of the campaign against the Soviet Union in 1941 the task of “securing the newly occupied eastern territories.” He immediately travelled to Lublin and appointed Odilo Globocnik as his “representative for the establishment of SS and police bases in the new eastern territories.” Lublin with its high proportion of Jewish inhabitants was to be the centre and was to be settled by Germans from the Reich the construction of the camp in the Lublin suburb of Majdan Tatarski which later became the Majdanek camp complex Himmler initially ordered the construction of a “concentration camp for 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners to be used for workshops and buildings for the SS and police”[1] which was officially called the “prisoner-of-war camp of the Waffen-SS.” It was not until 1943 that Majdanek was designated the “Lublin concentration and labour camp.” The intention was to create a central military supply base for the network of fortified SS and police locations and industrial enterprises planned for the east Globocnik became one of the two managing directors of Ostindustrie GmbH which operated its own SS armaments company and appropriated existing private companies Globocnik was thus entrusted with the implementation of the Generalplan Ost,” Stephan Lehnstaedt said in Berlin commissioned by Himmler and developed at the Friedrich Wilhelm University under the leadership of the agronomist and SS-Oberführer Konrad Meyer (1901-1973) was an essential basis for the Nazis’ war strategy in the east The Generalplan Ost envisaged the expulsion of the majority of the “Slavic sub-humans”—Russians Czechs and Ukrainians—from Eastern Europe and the enslavement of the remainder The plan also included the extensive extermination of Jews and 30 million deaths from starvation The Nazis originally planned to build barracks for 250,000 prisoners on a huge site covering 516 hectares but were later forced to scale down their plans Unlike the outright extermination camps such as Auschwitz II crematoria with a smaller capacity were only built relatively late at Majdanek the prisoners were exploited to the point of exhaustion as forced labourers under miserable living conditions 63,000 died—first through extermination through work and then through extermination with gas vans and in gas chambers Inmates who were unfit for work or ill were deported to the region’s specially constructed death camps the inmates of Majdanek also included 35,000 Poles as well as entire families from Belarus and Ukraine who had been deported to build SS bases Around 15,000 members of this group of prisoners were also murdered the fact that there were not even more Polish victims was also due to the courageous intervention of a Jewish mathematician from the Galician city of Lviv (Lemberg) who passed herself off as the Polish countess Janina Suchodolska and at which the Nazi leadership decided upon the extermination of European Jewry the “Aktion Reinhardt” programme was concentrated in Lublin leading to the murder of 1.8 million Polish Jews and Roma within a year The code name is associated with the Nazi response to the assassination of the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA “Lublin was the centre of Aktion Reinhardt,” said Lehnstaedt in an interview “It is the place where the economic activities converge It is where the Jews who are still needed for forced labour and exploitation are distributed It is where the stolen goods are sorted and processed It is from there that people are transported to other camps and it is from there that everything is coordinated.” The forced labour in the workshops of Majdanek and its satellite camps Lublin-Lipowastraße Trawniki and others served to supply the Wehrmacht— for example Wehrmacht uniforms were manufactured by the company Schultz & Co. ammunition and ammunition boxes by the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke DAW parts for Heinkel aircraft construction and weapons by Steyr Daimler Puch Aktion Reinhardt was followed by Aktion Erntefest (Action Harvest Festival) This cynical code name concealed the mass shooting of all remaining Jews in occupied Poland SS Reichsführer Himmler had personally planned and ordered it in 1943 He was reacting to the uprisings of Jewish Polish and Soviet prisoners that had broken out in the Warsaw Ghetto (April/May 1943) Bialystok Ghetto (August 1943) and the extermination camps Treblinka (August 1943) and Sobibor (October 1943) after the defeat of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad Himmler and Globocnik planned a mass murder of 43,000 Jewish inmates of the remaining labour camps Majdanek Trawniki and Poniatowa at the same time on November 3-4 To drown out the sound of the machine-gun fire and the screams of the victims the Nazi murders were mainly prosecuted by Polish-Soviet courts Immediately after the liberation of the camp set up a commission of inquiry that organised an inspection of the camp and prepared the first trial in the same year against six captured SS perpetrators A second trial against 95 SS prisoners from 1946 to 1948 ended with seven death penalties and long prison sentences the murderers of Majdanek remained virtually unchallenged the existence of the camp was long kept secret and has hardly been discussed to this day It was not until ten years after the end of the Auschwitz trial that a six-year trial began in Düsseldorf against some mostly lower-ranking members of the SS guard team the trial ended with only one life sentence for Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan and mostly with short prison sentences or acquittals The trial ended in a riot when a lawyer for one of the Nazi defendants loudly demanded that a surviving witness who had been forced by the warden to carry a container of Zyklon B be charged with aiding and abetting the murder the Federal Republic of Germany refuses to contribute financially to the Majdanek memorial in Lublin Stephan Lehnstaedt responded to a question from the Berlin audience: “A clear no.” Germany also refuses to contribute financially to other memorials And this happens with “very absurd justifications.” Cornelia Pieper (Liberal Democrat until 2013 State Secretary at the Foreign Ministry and since 2014 Consul General in Gdansk said during the construction of a new memorial in Sobibor: “The victim nations are participating the so-called Theresienstadt Declaration is being invoked “And that is a masterpiece of German diplomacy in that it states that the countries in which the memorials are located are financially responsible for them.” The German government only provides subsidies for individual projects it was focusing unilaterally on the Holocaust and on Auschwitz since this was more effective in the media The real reason is that German politics after 1945 never really broke with the Nazi traditions. The 80th anniversary commemoration of Majdanek in the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum ended a series of events on the year 1944, which included the liberation of Leningrad after the Wehrmacht’s hunger blockade, the severe crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in the Ozarichi death camp and the Maly Trostenez extermination site on the outskirts of Minsk But these crimes against humanity do not prevent German imperialism today from pursuing its geopolitical and economic goals through war and the promotion of fascist tendencies. In Ukraine, it is supporting the war against Russia with billions of euros and is working with a regime that erects monuments to Nazi collaborators and mass murderers from the Second World War such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shushkevich Just a few days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Majdanek by the Soviet Red Army, a decree issued by the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) was announced honouring leading generals and officers of the Nazi Wehrmacht as fostering “tradition” and “identification.” And two weeks later German-supplied tanks rolled over the border into Russia near Kursk the German government supports the Israeli army’s genocide of the Palestinians and denounces anyone who protests against it as an “anti-Semite,” including numerous Jews it receives applause from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and numerous other fascist organisations its compliant media and academic lackeys twist history to justify this criminal policy the war of extermination against the Soviet Union Hitler’s and the Nazi leadership’s “anti-Semitism” was inextricably linked to their hatred of socialism and the Soviet Union At the centre of their aggressive war propaganda was “Jewish Bolshevism,” which they held responsible for the October Revolution of 1917 and the defeat of German imperialism in the First World War the ‘right’ war was always the one against the Soviet Union because for him the fate of Germany depended on the conquest of living space (Lebensraum) and the solution of the ‘Jewish question.’ Both depended on the destruction of the Soviet Union the war against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ and for Lebensraum was comprehensive and of a piece.”[3] This is also the deeper reason for the almost complete annihilation of Polish Jews Before the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939 the socialist and anti-Zionist General Labour Union—“The Bund”—was the strongest Jewish party in Poland The Communist Party also had a large following among Jews [1] Tomasz Kranz: “The Lublin Concentration Camp – Between Planning and Realisation.” In: Ulrich Herbert Christoph Dieckmann: The Nazi Concentration Camps Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East Svetlana Tumanov | Photo: Mikhail Iarkeev If you ever visit the Moscow Jewish community you will most likely meet Svetlana Tumanov the last thing you would ever think is that once Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram "It's the last thing I would have thought of I would do when I was growing up and when I moved to Israel," she said There has been no shortage of unexpected turns in her life the last one of which led her to call a particular apartment in Moscow her home and the confident voice on the other end asked me to report to the presidential office a concerned official informed me that President Vladimir Putin had ordered him to assign me an apartment." In order to explain why a kind Muscovite Jewish woman received such a generous gift from the president of Russia himself let us journey back in time to when Svetlana was just a child in a Jewish family in Riga in the 1950s and his brother grew up in independent Latvia before World War II that is until the Soviet occupation changed their lives: Both were sent to 15 years imprisonment in a gulag but paradoxically the cruelty of the communist regime and the exile to the camps in Siberia was what saved them from certain death at the hands of the Nazi invaders Shmuel got married and had a daughter – Svetlana my parents signed me up for an ice skating class and sent me to study English all the while their intention was to lay an infrastructure for escaping from the USSR," she recalled "Thanks to sports we could dream of traveling to a competition abroad and defecting and thanks to English we could plan our future life in the free world he handled arms shipments from Czechoslovakia to the newly established State of Israel Then he chose not to return to the USSR and changed his Jewish name which sounds more familiar to the British ear." Svetlana was convinced that her uncle did not live a normal life even after the desertion She thought that he worked in the service of Israel's intelligence organizations and even visited Moscow several times when it was closed off behind the Iron Curtain her family – the Katzs – were determined to leave the "socialist paradise" at almost any cost and the opportunity to do so suddenly presented itself in early 1971 "When I was approaching the age of bat mitzvah my father gave me a book written by the French author André Gide winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature," Svetlana continued This line impacted me to the depths of my soul My parents were close to a group of Jews who planned to hijack a plane and escape from the USSR and after the organizers of this operation were arrested by the KGB I was so shocked that I copied the lines by hand and distributed them to all the Jewish students in my class I saw a car at the entrance to our building I opened the door of our apartment and immediately recognized the father of Ira He held a very senior position – deputy director of the authority that was responsible for issuing exit permits from the Soviet Union explained to my parents that I could cause a disaster for them but ended the conversation with an offer that was impossible to resist: 'Quickly get a request from your relatives in Israel for family reunification and I will make sure that it is approved.' I think that the mysterious uncle from London also worked behind the scenes the miracle happened – in June 1971 we left the USSR." where they stayed at a Jewish Agency center he arranged visas for the family and they spent the next three months in London we finally left for Israel," Svetlana said She was greatly impressed by the British capital The integration of a young Riga girl in Israel was not easy Svetlana enjoyed the enthusiastic welcome and still remembers that "the Hebrew that the soldiers who met us at the airport spoke sounded like music to me." She excelled in her studies and as a promising athlete was even interviewed by a local newspaper that dubbed her "the queen of ice skating." so I transitioned into gymnastics and skating." Svetlana would skip out on school to attend demonstrations for the release of Soviet Jews and dreamed of more my father let me listen to the BBC radio broadcasts and I even remembered the name of the famous broadcaster – Anatoly Goldberg I went inside and asked the guard to see him on the condition that I pass a Russian typing test the next day but I had a whole night ahead of me that to learn to type at an age when all my peers were still in high school I started working in the holy of holies of the world press." Svetlana also enrolled in the Institute of Linguists a British secret agent who was caught in the USSR and even served four years in prison there until he was released as part of a spy swap deal Brooke pushed her to specialize in simultaneous interpreting not knowing that in doing so he was channeling her life to the dangerous world he knew so well the BBC reported of the supposed arrival in London of Oleg Tumanov who was known for his daring defection from a Soviet navy ship while he was in the territorial waters of Egypt and was considered a leading opponent of the Soviet regime," Svetlana continued which operated from Munich and served as a central anchor in the propaganda and subversive activities of the US against the USSR He became the editor-in-chief of the station's broadcasts in Russian and was considered an unimpeachable source by the entire Soviet immigrant community in the West and in fact by everyone who dreamed of the collapse of the communist regime" Despite the age and status difference between them the meeting between the star from Munich and the ambitious girl immediately sparked a love story Things turned around surprisingly quickly – and only two weeks later the two showed up at the marriage registration office the young couple received permanent residence status in Munich "I knew that Oleg often spoke to an American named Alex Everyone knew that Radio Liberty was run by the CIA so I assumed that Alex was the representative of the American intelligence agency and that my husband worked for them One day Oleg held a globe in his hands and asked me to go out on the balcony with him He handed it to me and asked me to point out the country I thought he worked for then Oleg turned the globe and put his finger on the inscription 'Moscow.'"  Although over 40 years have passed since that day Svetlana still had a hard time describing what she felt "To say that I was shocked would be an understatement," she finally said after a long silence Even the initial attraction to my husband was born of admiration for his anti-Soviet work and for a week I passed the time from morning to night in continuous tram rides trying to figure out what I should do now Oleg planned everything so that I would have nowhere to return: He convinced me to sell my studio apartment in the center of London and to move to Munich in Germany I tried to calm myself and thought that he didn't demand anything from me and didn't demand that I help him in his espionage activities I didn't realize that too would eventually come." Svetlana believed that her husband had no choice but let her into the secret of his affairs already at the initial stage of their relationship A photo lab was installed in the couple's apartment where Oleg photographed all the sensitive documents he could get his hands on and Svetlana would have discovered the strange equipment sooner or later anyway there were other spy devices in the apartment – equipment used for encryption a transmitter and receiver that received the transmissions from Moscow "Oleg would often leave Munich for secret trips which he also found difficult to explain with normal excuses I might still suspect him of cheating on me and not betraying the country that provided him with refuge he realized that it was easier to recruit me he also wanted to be seen as a hero in my eyes – he took the trouble to explain that he really opposes many of the injustices that occur in the Soviet Union and wanted to convince me that his escape from the ship was real Today I am no longer sure what the truth was." In the memoir he published in 1993 after he was exposed and fled to the USSR at the end of the Cold War – Tumanov claimed that the defection was staged from the beginning by the KGB and was intended to give him the image of a daring fighter against Communism to help his future integration into the ranks of the CIA or other Western secret organizations he was actually recruited by Soviet agents after he settled in Germany following the defection Q: Did you never think of exposing your husband for espionage and I was completely dependent on him in every way the idea of betraying a family member is against the values of the culture in which I grew up I didn't feel that he was doing something wrong or terrible I learned to drive and got a car from Oleg as a gift but there was also a utilitarian calculation behind this gesture: Oleg's license was revoked after he drove a car and crashed into a pole and he desperately needed someone to drive him to meetings "The first time he suggested that we go on vacation to Austria We arrived at a picturesque guesthouse in a village that Oleg had chosen and suddenly two people approached us who for some reason recognized me immediately 'How could you get married to her without getting permission from Moscow?' but he responded calmly and explained that because he was not allowed to drive and they apparently came to some kind of agreement Q: What were you required to do at this stage Two or three times a year I drove Oleg to meetings with the KGB officers who activated him It happened when the Americans were looking for a temporary worker for their facility in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen where intelligence officers were being trained for future missions in the Soviet Union "Oleg was shocked and did not want me to accept the offer The commanders of the facility warned me against any attempt to maintain personal relationships with the students this short employment was planted in the minds of the KGB people the idea that I can be used fully – and the opportunity for that came quickly." Oleg's CIA contact showed up at the Tumanovs' apartment and asked to speak specifically with Svetlana "I've found your dream job," he told her enthusiastically "To return to work at the school for training intelligence officers but in a more senior position as an assistant to the school commander you were born in Latvia and oppose the communist regime and as such you will receive the classification with us without a problem." "He was sure that I would accept the magical offer with both hands and of course he did not know what thoughts were running through my head at the time." The couple found themselves in an impossible situation and were under terrible pressure because there is no logical way to justify the refusal she would need to take a polygraph test which may have exposed her as they thought their agent would soon work in the heart of the American intelligence system They only advised her to drink some milk before the polygraph test "I was so naive that I was convinced that there might be something in the milk that misled the polygraph the questions were worded in Russian and with surprising carelessness to the point that the main question was worded in a way that allowed me to circumvent it and started working in a place that the KGB couldn't have imagined in its wildest dreams."  As an asset whose value was astonishing in the eyes of the KGB Svetlana was now privileged to have her own handler on behalf of the Soviet secret service she tends to underplay the intensity of the damage she caused to the Americans but it is doubtful whether intelligence officers would have thought the same at the time she provided her handlers in the Soviet Union with a wide range of information that was of great interest to them: reports on the location of US Army forces and above all a lot of highly detailed personal information about the American agents who were about to be sent on espionage missions in the Soviet Union Svetlana stressed that there was a limit to her willingness to help her husband and that she did everything in her power not to harm the Jewish state She said that Oleg asked her several times to go to Israel together but she refused because she suspected that she would be required to do something against the country she loved and appreciated with all her heart he was looking for potential employees for Radio Liberty among the immigrants in Israel I assume he had connections with the intelligence agencies in Israel A few years ago I contacted the Russian intelligence services and asked if they knew about it that the KGB realized that Tumanov was a triple or even quadruple agent and that he didn't give the Israelis anything important." It seems that on other fronts Tumanov did quite a few important things for his operatives in the KGB it is widely believed that the documents he obtained and passed on to the USSR revealed a "mole" who worked for the US in a circle close to the top brass of the Soviet Communist Party he provided Moscow with no less than 12 volumes of documents of intelligence interest served as a key figure in a KGB operation that fed the West false information for an entire decade But the intelligence bonanza of the KGB built thanks to the Tumanovs ended abruptly in 1986 I reported to work as usual at the American MacGraw Kaserne base and the commander informed me that my husband had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him "I was asked to accompany the security officers of Radio Liberty to our apartment to assist them in investigating the disappearance I immediately realized that he had fled to the Soviet Union We had an agreed sign in case he had to run away: he had to leave a certain book on the table to warn me I saw the cover of the book and realized that from now on I was alone against the whole world I noticed that several items from Oleg's spy equipment were missing from the apartment and what he was unable to take or destroy I managed to make disappear without the security personnel who were next to me in the apartment noticing it." Tumanov appeared on the TV screens in the USSR and stunned the world by admitting that he had indeed worked for years in the service of the KGB The news that a Soviet agent had been operating for many years in the nerve center of an array designed to bring down the USSR greatly embarrassed the CIA did not disclose the reason for the hasty escape which actually symbolized one of the great successes of the Americans a colonel in the KGB who knew well about Tumanov's activities and even served for a time as the officer responsible for its operation and Soviet intelligence rushed to get their agent back from Munich before it was too late now the "wife of a Soviet spy," was naturally fired from her job at the US base but at least managed to fend off for a while the suspicions that she too was involved in espionage Her Soviet handlers disappeared for a long time but after about a year she received a phone call from them and was asked to come to Berlin "I came to West Berlin expecting that the KGB people I would meet would tell me something about Oleg I walked with them from the Friedrichstrasse subway station through a series of corridors and when we got upstairs I saw Soviet cars and gray buildings all around me Even that didn't open my eyes until we sat down in the restaurant and I tried the meat I recognized the bland taste I ate as a child and realized – I'm in East Berlin." she was taken directly for questioning at "Karlshorst" the KGB headquarters in the East German capital An investigator interrogated her for two days about everything that happened at the time of her husband's escape and the frightened Svetlana – who found out that her husband was being given the status of a hero in Moscow and all the accompanying glory – asked about the possibility of following in his footsteps and returning to the country for which she had served as a dedicated spy she was met with laughter from the man sitting across from her "What will you do in the Soviet Union during the perestroika era?" he said we can arrange a job for you as an English teacher in a remote rural school." Svetlana was later smuggled to East Berlin two more times but time after time she was met with a cold shoulder and the scenario she feared came true – at the request of the Americans the German authorities arrested her on suspicion of espionage "I sat in a detention center for six months and then the court acquitted me of the charges within three days I think it was the Germans' revenge on the Americans for surveilling me without informing the German services." Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories Svetlana was convinced that for some reason Israel too intervened on her behalf and that the "Mossad asked the Germans to help me" she lived in Germany and was subject to close surveillance by both the Germans and the Americans Only then did she return to the country from which her family fled in the early 1970s and in the meantime renounced the communist ideology and changed from the USSR to Russia she adopted the name Svetlana and finally parted with the name Yeta she chose not to settle in the country after the turbulent chapter in her life came to an end she found a way to turn her good acquaintance with the West in general "I thought at the time that in a small country like Israel the possibilities for me were limited to non-existent," she explained sadly "While the area of economic cooperation between Germany and Russia seemed particularly promising I organized seminars for businessmen from both sides so that they could find a common language and build profitable ventures but collapsed with the economic crisis of 2008." Russia's spy service that came into the world in place of the KGB which shirked its responsibility toward her and the obligation to pay her a pension It seems that everyone has forgotten about her work A man whom she saw for the second time on the television background when he took an oath as the president of the Russian Federation she immediately recognized him as the same investigator from "Karlshorst." Vladimir Putin a junior officer in the KGB at the time and the all-powerful president today did indeed make up for his "English teacher at a rural school" remarks by granting Svetlana an apartment Jewish Agency Chairman Major General (Res.) Doron Almog met with new Olim soldiers.. "I know there's a lot of responsibility on me the scale and nature of the tragedy in the Lapu Lapu festival that killed 11 feel alien... Analysis  Archaeology Blogpost Business & Finance Culture Exclusive Explainer Environment Features Health In Brief Jewish World Judea and Samaria Lifestyle Cyber & Internet Sports Diplomacy  Iran & The Gulf Gaza Strip Politics Shopping Terms of use Privacy Policy Submissions Contact Us The first issue of Israel Hayom appeared on July 30 Israel Hayom was founded on the belief that the Israeli public deserves better more balanced and more accurate journalism [contact-form-7 id=”508379″ html_id=”isrh_form_Newsletter_en” title=”newsletter_subscribe”] [M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL: Paul Glaser / picture alliance / ZB; Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa; DER SPIEGEL (3) Real estate investor Sascha Klupp and his business partners bought four plots of land from the Russian government in Berlin’s emerging Karlshorst district – a 17,000 square-meter (4.2-acre) section of the old airfield as well as three dilapidated residential buildings where Soviet officers once lived The investors paid a total of 13.5 million euros a seemingly reasonable price in the overheated Berlin real estate market part of which had been declared an historic monument The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 20/2022 (May 13th When Klupp tried to step onto his newly acquired property two Russian Embassy secretaries confronted him and refused to vacate the field They claimed that Moscow had never sold the plots of land Berlin police had to be dispatched to calm tempers a criminal case has been unfolding in the German capital city that has reached the highest levels of politics In addition to calling in the Public Prosecutor’s Office the Russian Embassy also asked the German Foreign Ministry for assistance It soon emerged that even more properties owned by the Russian government were on the sales list without Moscow’s knowledge even including parts of the embassy complex on Berlin’s grand Unter den Linden boulevard Diplomats as well as investigators and intelligence officials are puzzling over what exactly happened Did corrupt Russian officials sell off old Soviet real estate to enrich themselves Was the Russian Federation possibly the victim of a Hollywood-esque secret agent conspiracy Or is it just a particularly brazen case of fraud A team of DER SPIEGEL reporters spoke with numerous people involved in the case in recent weeks including investigators and security experts Together with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project DER SPIEGEL journalists sifted through hundreds of pages of sales agreements and purported powers of attorney from the Russian Presidential Administration along with internal chat logs and company documents One name makes several appearances in the documents: Jefim B. a 60-year-old dentist from Berlin’s Grunewald district posed as an authorized representative of the Russian government at land registry offices and to real estate agents He presented professional-looking powers of attorney from Vladimir Putin’s Presidential Administration including a stamp and coat of arms with a double-headed eagle to the notary who notarized the sales agreements He tried to sell some of the real estate to companies owned by his sons Whether the man really intended to steal the valuable properties in Germany from Putin or was tricked himself will ultimately have to be clarified by a court Investigations by the criminal police suggest that the dentist had an intimate relationship with a mysterious woman who allegedly posed as a high-ranking officer with a Russian intelligence agency She is said to have obtained the supposed Kremlin powers of attorney for B. before directing him to transfer part of the purchase price to a man with an address in Moscow And that raises the question of whether political motives may also have played a role in the allegedly fraudulent real estate transactions were first initiated after Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine details of the delicate matter had not been made public And many of those involved were likely quite pleased about that fact the dentist to whom the alleged powers of attorney were issued judges and bankers who waved through the sale of the Russian properties – will face unpleasant questions at the very least is a well-known figure in posh parts of western Berlin where he likes to walk his dogs among the mansions His family lives in a big house with high columns and drives expensive cars he managed Sesam Spielhallen GmbH before becoming managing director of Vienna Gaststätten- und Video-Betriebs-GmbH in 2004 The purpose of the establishment: "The operation of restaurants amusement arcades and video equipment with regular film screenings" and "retail sale of sex articles." In 2007 the enterprising businessman left the industry and his family bought at least four properties in upscale locations It seemed the dentist had arranged everything for a carefree retirement But then he apparently wanted to try to go big It was a plan that would require plenty of chutzpah if not a fair amount of criminal energy as well If the Berlin prosecutors' suspicions are correct the dentist and his accomplices wanted to sell Russian real estate in Germany on a grand scale Russia still owns a number of properties in Germany to this day Most of that Russian-owned property is in former East Germany where the Soviet Union maintained numerous military bases and housing complexes after the end of World War II A small number of those complexes are still owned by the Russian Federation today It is unclear how and when the special operation to acquire the Russian properties began The 57-year-old also lives in the Grunewald area of Berlin She recently wrote in a social media profile: "Love is a state of mind in which people with the strictest rules allow themselves to go crazy!" It was followed by three fire emojis the two addressed each other with terms of endearment and assured one another of their feelings she sent him a photo of a power of attorney issued in his name Kremlin." The document had allegedly been signed by the head of the Presidential Administration the dentist is authorized to sell Russian properties in Berlin "You’ll be gobsmacked in a minute," she wrote the dentist first approached the relevant district court in Berlin’s Lichtenberg district about the Russian real estate in November 2020 he asked for information about one of the plots of land in Karlshorst A purported power of attorney from the Russian Presidential Administration was attached It stated that he was authorized to "request and receive" all documents relating to the properties The district court promptly dug up the information he had requested There is some evidence to suggest that the dentist really believed he was part of something big His lover Olena sent him documents that identified her as a colonel in the reserves of the FSB And she also forwarded messages to him that supposedly came from the Kremlin he even received an alleged thank you note from the Kremlin "for the tremendous work done," signed by a purported FSB lieutenant general who allegedly added that he was looking forward to "further fruitful cooperation." The order to discreetly conduct the real estate transactions likewise came from an account called "Moscow "The most important thing is that no information is leaked," read a chat message that Olena G He answered: "We will try to do everything in silence he sought contact in the Berlin real estate scene and soon established ties with well-known Berlin property developer Sascha Klupp Klupp's initial reaction was apparently one of skepticism A major Berlin law firm and a renowned notary were hired to check the powers of attorney apparently suspected that the papers from Putin’s Presidential Administration could be forged Russian real estate in Berlin's Karlshorst district (left) Red Army troops withdrawing from Berlin in 1994 [M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL: Meißner / ullstein bild; DER SPIEGEL The properties in Karlshorst have been derelict and falling apart for around 30 years and many windows of the apartment buildings are boarded up An issue of the former official Soviet government newspaper Izvestia from 1990 could recently be seen lying on the floor of one of the buildings The ruins are a constant nuisance for the authorities in Berlin The fact that the Russians now wanted to get rid of the structurally unsound property at a reasonable price would have made sense appeared before a Berlin notary to sign the purchase agreements for the four properties it was noted that he was acting on the basis of powers of attorney on behalf of the Administrative Office of the President of the Russian Federation The powers of attorney were attached to the purchase contract seem unusual that the account into which the purchase price was to be paid was held at the Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank a bank whose customers are primarily from the medical professions And that the account didn’t belong to the Russian state but rather to a company belonging to the dentist’s family The notary seemed a bit uneasy about the whole thing her law firm apparently filed a money laundering SAR The notary public nevertheless notarized the purchase contract – with the fees allegedly having amounted to around 130,000 euros When reached for comment on the multi-million-euro property deal citing a "notarial duty of confidentiality." He was provided with a 10-percent interest in four special-purpose entities to which the properties were transferred In other words: The authorized representative of the Russian state sold the real estate to himself When the purchase agreements were received by the Lichtenberg District Court In addition to having doubts about the powers of attorney she also raised the question in an internal memo as to whether it might be a prohibited transaction: She noted that B had acted both as the seller’s representative and as the buyer Such deals are generally prohibited due to the threat of conflicts of interest But the district court judge brushed those concerns aside A request was made to the notary to submit further documents but the judge ruled that he did not believe the purchase was a prohibited transaction was only the managing director of a non-voting special purpose entity belonging to the purchaser So why did the judge make the assessment that he made A court spokesman declined to provide an explanation for the ruling The notary presented further purported Kremlin powers of attorney to the district court and there were no more hurdles standing in the way of the properties' transfer the judge made a handwritten note that he had "no more concerns." Klupp and the dentist were registered as owners through the entities they held DER SPIEGEL found that he sold the next two properties on Feb 28 with the help of his purported powers of attorney: a lakeside property in Brandenburg for 300,000 euros where Soviet Embassy staff used to vacation during East German times Local residents say it is still used by the Russians today And the former Consulate General of the U.S.S.R the buyers were not Klupp and his associates They acted as shareholders of the firms buying the property which were represented externally by a suspected straw man The latter declined to comment when contacted The dentist’s sons also left inquiries from DER SPIEGEL unanswered the family's real estate fever seemed to grow even more acute Documents from the Commercial Register and the Land Registry Office suggest that they were now targeting the Russian Embassy complex on Berlin’s Unter den Linden boulevard Moscow owns an entire city block not far from the Brandenburg Gate diplomatic apartments and even a tennis court An administrative building on the eastern edge once housed the state airline Aeroflot was apparently to be transformed into money as one power of attorney seems to indicate The sons of the dentist were likely involved in this would-be deal As with the Brandenburg lakefront property and the West Berlin Consulate General one of them became a partner in a company that was presumably to act as the buyer it carried the name Unter den Linden Living GmbH But Moscow caught wind of the whole scam before the sale could be completed the new property management company placed a notice placed at the old airfield in Karlshorst stating that the Russian Federation no longer owned the property A copy of the newspaper Izvestia from 1990 in an abandoned apartment building in Berlin's Karlshorst district A diplomat rushed to the Lichtenberg district court and found that the Russian Federation was no longer listed as the owner in the land register filing an official objection and justifying it on the grounds that the powers of attorney used by the seller had been "forged." The criminal complaint filed by Klupp is also likely to have averted further damage The Russians also called in the German Foreign Ministry the embassy assured the Foreign Ministry of its "excellent regard" and was honored to announce that Russia had "not sold" the properties and had "not issued any powers of attorney in this regard." Russian representatives asked that all measures be taken to "restore" the "integrity” of the properties The Foreign Ministry replied just as politely that the diplomatic note had been immediately forwarded to the Berlin authorities they had asked the administration to guarantee the protection of the properties regardless of the "possibly incorrect land register entry." Panic must have broken out in the Russian representation during those weeks in March Diplomats were already under pressure because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine there was also the threat of losing property The lines to Moscow were so busy that the real estate scandal even drew the attention of Western intelligence agencies The embassy engaged the services of a Leipzig lawyer who sought to reverse the sale of the Karlshorst properties the lawyer turned to the district court in question The subject line of his letter: "EXTREMELY URGENT!! the lawyer explained why the deal was invalid He repeated the accusation that the powers of attorney had been forged and he also lodged serious accusations against the Lichtenberg District Court The lawyer noted that the court should have realized that an incorrect address had been entered for the responsible Presidential Administration in Moscow it stated that the court had "not applied Russian law correctly." But the district court rejected the embassy's objection at the end of March It stated that the alleged violations had "not been sufficiently substantiated." The district judge involved doubted in a memo that the land register was "incorrect at all." When reached for comment a court spokesman continues to insist that the necessary documents had been requested from the notary and that "based on the findings at the time," there had been no irregularities the usual international certifications for documents had also been provided At the behest of the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office the properties were nevertheless seized as a precautionary measure – and officials froze most of the purchase price Prosecutors quickly recognized the explosive nature of the case and initiated investigations into several suspects the purported colonel in the Russian intelligence service reserves Prosecutors have accused them of having jointly committed fraud and jointly committed forgery of documents Olena G.’s defense attorney also declined to comment Berlin prosecutors had several apartments and offices searched and confiscated numerous documents purchase agreements and bank statements to trace the money from the real estate transactions Some the 13.5 million euros paid for the four plots of land in Karlshorst apparently ended up in the hands of a man with a Russian name who allegedly lives in Moscow the dentist asked his paramour if he had recorded the man’s data correctly Investigators found that Jefim B.'s real estate company transferred 1.8 million euros to the man Investigators do not currently consider it likely that the alleged fraud was politically motivated there are no reliable indications of the involvement of intelligence agencies and "general criminal motivation" is suspected real estate mogul Klupp has been doing everything in his power to try to get his money back It is said that the dentist has apparently signed a contract promising Klupp a refund of the purchase price and the reimbursement of most incidental expenses Klupp declined to comment on the deal and its consequences The Russian Embassy said it was supporting the prosecution "within the scope of its competencies." The issue of "restoring the Russian Federation’s ownership rights to the real estate is currently being resolved," it added What is clear is that this story has many losers: a disgraced embassy that allowed real estate worth 13.5 million euros slip through its hands allegedly defrauded investors and an alleged representative of the Kremlin who was likely just a normal dentist and now has to pay for the damage The only thing that hasn't changed is the state of the Russian properties in Karlshorst Your web browser is not fully supported by Sharjah24 and sharjah24.ae You can get the new Chrome at Download Chrome. PremiumIt's pretty tough to be a woman (Berserk 06) The story takes place in 1945 where Karl Fairburne is a US OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agent sent to the Battle of Berlin disguised as a German sniper His Mission: Obtain secret documents about German nuclear technology before the Soviets get their hands on it Offering a unique blend of third and first person tactical action with stealth While all movement is made in third person (to include weapon switching) you switch to first person for all sniper shots The stealth aspect is reinforced by a camouflage feature As you navigate the terrain in Sniper Elite you are given a percentage of how well you are camouflaged Sniper Elite is a cross between simulation and arcade gameplay: Simulation - The game offers many difficulty modes of play Most of which include options you can toggle on and off: gravity (bullet drop) While it is arcade-like to be able to toggle these Arcade - Uses the Gamespy account service (similarly seen in recent games like Borderlands) to track and record your score The score is based on the number of times you save An overview of the statistics of the previous level are presented at each level's completion One of the selling features of the game is including a slow-motion sniper cam the camera will fixate on the bullet leaving your gun and follow the trajectory in slow motion to it's intended target you get to see the gruesome results of your shot and are given a rating based on that shot that adds to your overall level score Karl Fairburne - The protagonist and only character you play as The Wii version of Sniper Elite was ported by Raylight Studios and now includes motion controls and support for the Wii Zapper This version also contains an extra bonus level upon completion of the game; beyond the bonus level and the addition of motion controls the Wii version of Sniper Elite is near identical to the version released in 2005 The PC version of Sniper Elite is available on Steam for $9.99 USD Enter the URL for the tweet you want to embed. This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for: ESCLog in to comment "data-img-src" : imgSrc } = buylink %> />><%= itemTitle %> You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience A multimedia broadcast & distribution network Germany signed a document of surrender to the Soviet (surrender to the Allied Forces had already been made on May 7 and is commonly referred to as VE Day – Victory in Europe Day) Early in the morning of May 9 the Soviet Union made the official announcement that WWII was indeed over The day was inaugurated as “Victory Day” and became a national holiday in the former Soviet Union’s 15 Republics Since the fall of the USSR Independent nations of the former Union continue to recognize this day individually Victory Day is celebrated worldwide by Armenia (celebrated there as the Day of Liberation by the German Democratic Republic) Back to Top On The holiest day of the Jewish year, a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria crossing the cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights threatened the very existence … Read More Yom Kippur – Day of Atonement Avraham “Bren” Adan‎, (5 October 1926– 28 September 2012) was an Israeli general who served in the military between 1947 and 1973. Raised the Israeli “Ink Flag” following the successful Uvda Operation … Read More Avraham Adan (1924-2012) President of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of the State of Israel Chaim Azriel Weizmann was a chemist, a Zionist leader, President of the World Zionist Organization … Read More Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) Der Beschluss des OVG erging zunächst ohne Begründung Am Montag noch hatte das VG Berlin entschieden dass für kleine Versammlungen kein Verbot von Ukraine-Flaggen gilt Mit den umstrittenen Auflagen wollten die Sicherheitsbehörden nach eigener Aussage verhindern dass das Weltkriegsgedenken von möglichen Konflikten im Zusammenhang mit dem aktuellen Krieg in der Ukraine überschattet wird es fehle an der Rechtsgrundlage für ein Verbot Außerdem sah es keine Gefahr für die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung Nach dem Beschluss des OVG bleibt es nun aber doch bei dem Verbot Die Entscheidung ist wegen der Eilbedürftigkeit der Sache zunächst ohne schriftliche Begründung ergangen und unanfechtbar Eine Tür wird von der Polizei aufgebrochen – zahlen müssen am Ende nicht etwa die Beamten oder der Staat Bei Reisen nach Russland darf aufgrund der Sanktionen nur Bargeld in Höhe der Reise- und Aufenthaltskosten mitgeführt werden Die Kosten einer medizinischen Behandlung sind davon nicht umfasst Leseempfehlungen in Bibliotheken sind keine Seltenheit Ein Autor klagte gegen einen kritischen Einordnungshinweis und sieht das staatliche Neutralitätsprinzip als verletzt an Die Zahl der Straftaten im Jahr 2024 hat sich im Vergleich zum Vorjahr nicht stark verändert Ein auffälliger Trend in einem insgesamt sicheren Land Demonstrierenden nur den Gebrauch bestimmter Sprachen zu erlauben ist laut VG Berlin mit der Meinungsfreiheit vereinbar Dabei übersah das Gericht die Kunstfreiheit Der palästinensische Protest lebt auch vom Gesang Die Berliner Polizei handelte rechtswidrig als sie gegen einen Klimaaktivisten der "Letzten Generation" berüchtigte Schmerzgriffe einsetzte Eine Einzelfallentscheidung mit Signalwirkung Sie haben die Pushnachrichten abonniert.Durch zusätzliche Filter können Sie Ihr Pushabo einschränken This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.