An American Jewish - German Opinion Newsletter

1. AN AMERICAN JEWISH – GERMAN INFORMATION & OPINION
NEWSLETTER
dubowdigest@optonline.net
AMERICAN EDITION
December 20, 2013
IN THIS EDITION
A NEW GOVERNMENT: FINALLY! – The Grand Coalition is in place
BANNING THE NEO-NAZIS: GOOD OR BAD? – You decide.
MEIN KAMPF: THE DISPUTE – To print or not to print?
SINTI & ROMA TREATY – Finally recognized (sort of).
SUBMARINES – NOW DESTROYERS – Israel & Germany make the deal.
NAZIS, JEWS & THE ZOO – A Holocaust issue
GERMAN HATE MAIL – Guess who gets it.
AN INTERESTING BOOK – About Berlin
Dear Friends:
With the end of year coming up as well as the fact that I'm about to take a short
vacation, I decided to send this edition to you earlier than usual.
As you will read below, Germany finally has its new government ready to be installed.
With Angela Merkel serving her third term as Chancellor, I do not think there will be any
dramatic changes in policy regarding either the "Jewish issues" or Israel. In my opinion,
having her in that position is about as good as it gets.
Of course, the problems of ant-Semitism and neo-Nazism domestically remain and will
continue to be dealt with.
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2. How and what Germany will do vis a vis Iran given the "agreement" the EU and the U.S.
have with the Iranians, remains to be seen. We should keep in mind that Germany and
Iran have diplomatic relations and there is a certain amount of commerce between the
two countries. So, what role Germany can play is an open question. Thus far, as with
many issues these days, Germany relies heavily on the EU to play the lead role.
So much for Germany.
I will close with a personal story. While I busy myself mostly with great national and
international matters in writing this newsletter, as you might guess, I have considerable
interest also in what happens in my own hometown (as I hope we all do).
I live in the Village of South Nyack, which is part of the Town of Orangetown, which, in
turn, is part of Rockland County, New York. The chief executive of Orangetown is its
Supervisor, sort of like a mayor. In November the incumbent ran for a second term (a
very good guy). With over 12,000 votes cast and a lot of court cases that followed, he
won by exactly two votes. It goes to show you, first, that every vote counts and second,
how important personal involvement, even just to vote, is in a democratic society.
Things like this make one appreciate our country and its democracy.
To my Christian readers I want to wish you all a very Christmas and to all of you the
very best for the coming New Year. On to the news…
A NEW GOVERNMENT: FINALLY!
It took five weeks of bargaining and haggling but Chancellor Merkel’s CDU/CSU group
and the Social Democrats (SPD) finally signed on the dotted line so a government could
be installed. However, the SPD leadership had agreed that it would not be final until its
total countrywide membership had a chance to vote on it which took a few more weeks.
The vote is now in and 76% of those that responded did so in the affirmative. Now all
that remains is for the new government to be sworn in, the new Ministers to be
appointed and then the “Grand Coalition” is finally in business.
According to an earlier New York Timespiece, ―The 185-page[coalition agreement]
document calls for establishing a national minimum wage — a first for the country — as
well as increased pensions for some recipients and early retirement eligibility for others.
It would offer dual citizenship to Turks and other foreigners who are born and raised in
Germany, and it promises a new law by next summer to revitalize plans for renewable
energy.
More broadly, though, it reaffirms Germany’s current course in Europe, much criticized
by southern Europeans as burdening them with austerity. And the plans for improving
Germany’s ailing infrastructure seemed likely to fall far short of the extra 7 billion euros,
or $9.5 billion, a year in spending that a commission of government experts said was
needed.
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3. Ms. Merkel, who has moved her Christian Democrats considerably to the center over
her eight years in office, agreed to the concessions because ―she saw that she really
had no alternative to the grand coalition‖ with the Social Democrats…‖
Wolfgang Schäuble, 71, the current finance minister, is considered virtually certain to
keep that job, so it is likely that a Social Democrat would run the Foreign Ministry;
speculation centered on Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was the foreign minister in Ms.
Merkel’s first grand coalition government from 2005 to 2009.
As far as foreign policy is concerned, DW reported, ―German foreign policy is largely
determined by the chancellor, meaning that, even in a new coalition, it will be marked by
continuity. The foreign minister will have to try to put his own stamp on the job.
…German foreign policy will continue much as it is… The chancellor, Angela Merkel,
will make sure of that, as will the nature of the grand coalition between Merkel's
Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), with its need for
compromise.
And, in fact, the working group on foreign and security policy which has been drawing
up guidelines for the future coalition has produced its results promptly and without much
public argument. As far as foreign policy is concerned, the motto is "continuity" - even if
that doesn't exclude some new ideas. The few points of disagreement are in the realm
of security policy - for example, the purchase of armed drones for the military or the
demand for a more restrictive policy on arms exports.
The draft praises the good relations between Germany and its partners and allies,
especially its neighbors France and Poland. The USA has a particularly predominant
role as "the backbone of our security and freedom." But that doesn't include the freedom
to snoop, and so the new coalition expects the US government to win back lost trust
and respect German privacy in the future. But still, the most important future project is
the free trade agreement between the EU and the US.
The two sides in the future coalition agree in defining Germany's relationship with
Russia as "a partnership for modernization," but it admits that the two countries have
"different conceptions" of what that means. The draft says that Russia needs to uphold
legal and democratic standards in its treatment of civil society, minorities and the
opposition.
China and India are seen as "strategic partners," with whom economic cooperation
should be intensified. Africa should receive German support so that it can eventually
solve its own problems. The countries of the Maghreb in North Africa should be able to
count on Germany as what the draft calls a "transformation partner," especially if there
is evidence of "a positive development towards democracy and pluralism in society."
I think the above should give you a good idea of how Germany will conduct its foreign
policy. The word “unchanged” fits it best. Focus will continue to be on strengthening the
EU which is its cornerstone. They’ll have to get over the flap with the U.S. about NSA
spying. They will and so will we. We’re just too important to each other.
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4. The new Foreign Minister is not so new. As noted above, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was
Foreign Minister from 2005 – 2009 the last time there was a grand coalition. He is well
known and has served recently as chairman of the SPD's parliamentary group in the
Bundestag. A good choice.
BANNING THE NEO-NAZIS: GOOD OR BAD?
Over the last couple of years I have been reporting that there was a lot of discussion
about whether the neo-Nazi NPD Party should be legally outlawed. Now the German
States have banded together and are trying to do it by starting a legal action in the
Federal Constitutional Court.
Spiegel On-Line recently reported, ―The states argue that the NPD espouses a racist,
violent ideology similar to that of Hitler's Nazi party and that it wants to overthrow the
democratic order through militant action.
"The ideology and the whole NPD party is xenophobic, inhuman, anti-Semitic and antidemocratic," said the interior minister of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger
Lewentz of the center-left Social Democrats.
…Germany, mindful of abuses during the Nazi period, has high legal hurdles for
outlawing political parties. The last party to be banned was the West German KPD
communist party -- in 1956.
Many politicians remain skeptical that the court will rule against the NPD and are
concerned that if it doesn't, the party would enjoy a repeat of the boost it got in 2003
when the last attempt to shut it down failed.
At the time, the Constitutional Court threw out the motion because some of the
testimony was from government informants who held high positions in the party. That
prejudiced the case, the court argued. The new motion doesn't rely on informant
testimony and has a better chance.
But in a sign of how big the doubts are, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and the
Bundestag lower house of parliament declined to sign up to the motion.
The Constitutional Court has already made clear that mere similarity to the Nazi party
won't suffice for a ban of the NPD. The key is to prove the NPD is working to destroy
democracy through violence. But it may be difficult to prove that it constitutes a real
threat, given its small size with just 5,400 members, and its weak national support of
just 1.3 percent of the vote in September's general election.
The court case looks like anything but a sure winner. In fact, some who are deeply
opposed to the NPD think that a successful case would lead to complacency and that
the NPD under a different guise would be just as active if not more so.
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5. In any case it will take the Court a year or two to make its decision. During that time
there will be much said publicly and written in the media. Whether the neo-Nazis gain
strength or lose it is an open question. However, the much talked about court case is
now a reality. We will just have to wait and see how it turns out. To read the full Spiegel
On-Line article click here.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-launches-new-bid-to-outlaw-farright-npd-party-a-937008.html
MEIN KAMPF: THE DISPUTE
No! Nobody is disputing that Hitler wrote the thing or that, no matter where you go in the
world, you can buy a copy. Frankly, no one Is arguing about it other than the Germans
themselves – in this case whether it should be published and printed in Germany or not.
Briefly, according to Spiegel On-Line, ―For years, historians in Munich have been
working on an annotated edition of Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" to be released
when the copyright expires in 2015. The state of Bavaria gave the green light in 2012 -but now they are trying to halt the project.
Adolf Hitler's notorious ideological treatise "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle) is likely to
remain out of print in Germany after Bavaria's state government said late Tuesday it
intends to keep it from being published after the copyright expires in 2015. The move
reverses an earlier decision by the state to support a new annotated German-language
edition -- a project long promoted by historians.
The Bavarian governor's chief of staff, Christine Haderthauer, told reporters that the
state would file a criminal complaint against anyone who tried to publish the work,
adding that it would be contradictory for Bavaria to allow circulation of the book while at
the same time participating in thedrive to ban Germany's main far-right party, the
National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
For years, historians at the Munich Institute of Contemporary History have been working
on an annotated version of the book, which would include explanations of where some
of Hitler's ideas originated. The idea was to deflate some of the intrigue attached to a
book that has long been all but verboten in Germany.
As of last year, Bavaria's governing conservatives were behind the idea. "We have to
deal with the book. It must be demystified," Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder
told Cicero magazine in 2012. Their current about-face is bad news for the historians at
the Munich Institute of Contemporary History. A spokesperson told reporters on
Tuesday that they had yet to speak to anyone at the governor's office.
The book was meant to be finished in time for the legally mandated expiration of the
copyright in 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death. The copyright fell into the hands of the
Bavarian state in 1945, when Bavaria took over the rights of the main Nazi party
publishing house Eher-Verlag as part of the Allies' de-Nazification program. Fearing that
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6. the book could encourage neo-Nazis, Bavaria has not allowed "Mein Kampf" to be
published in Germany since then.
It’s probably hard for Americans to understand why, indeed, there is such a dispute over
this issue. The fact that it exists 68 years after the War should give one a deeper
understanding of how heavily, even today, the impact the Nazi time still rests on the
psyche of the German people. Anyone interested in Jewish – German relations should
understand that fact when thinking about the pros and cons surrounding this matter.
SINTI & ROMA TREATY
During the Nazi reign which culminated in the Holocaust, the Jews were not the only
minority group destined for Auschwitz. The Sinti & Roma (known at times as Gypsies)
suffered the same fate though in much fewer numbers than the Jews.
The German admission of guilt regarding the Jews goes back to the period right after
World War II. If has taken longer for anything to be done about the S & R.
DW.DE recently reported, ―They are German citizens and have lived in Germany for
centuries. But Sinti and Roma have been persecuted since the Nazi era and are still
discriminated against. A new treaty aims to strengthen the minorities' rights.
"We were here, before this country even existed", says Daniel Strauss, who is from the
southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg. He is familiar with the feeling of
being rejected. He is the chairman of the German National Association of Sinti and
Roma. Together with State Premier Winfried Kretschmann he has signed an official
state treaty designed to herald a new era for the minority group.
The treaty, which has the standing of an international law accord, forms the basis of a
relationship at eye level, which the Sinti and Roma have been waiting for 18 years.
Strauss called it a historic event "after years of mistrust and fear." Kretschmann
emphasized that "this is our common country."
The treaty recognizes the culture of Sinti and Roma as part of the last 600 years of
German culture. As a minority group, they should have the right to promote their culture
and language. Similar regulations have been put in place in other parts of Germany, for
minorities such as the Friesians, the Danish, and the Sorbs. In 2012, the northern state
of Schleswig-Holstein enshrined the protection of Sinti and Roma in the state
constitution.
But the new treaty not only deals with the past, says Daniel Strauss. "It is important that
we recognize anti-gypsy sentiment as a problem in German society."
Political scientist Markus End has been researching this phenomenon for many years.
He realizes that anti-gypsy sentiment is "racism against people who have been labeled
"gypsies." According to End's findings, a German ethnologist would still write about
"gypsy skulls" from the Nazi era in 1969.
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7. There is more to the article which you can read by clicking here.
http://www.dw.de/german-state-signs-historic-treaty-with-sinti-and-roma/a-17259769
All I can say is that it’s about time. The war ended almost 70 years ago. Let’s hope it
doesn’t take another 70 for the S & R to be seen as full citizens.
SUBMARINES – NOW DESTROYERS
Back in April Israel received its fifth hi-tech submarine from Germany. The Jerusalem
Post reported, “The submarine – called the INS Rahav – is the most expensive defense
platform ever purchased by Israel. The vessel is set to undertake several long-range
classified missions that are critical for Israel’s security.
It was pretty clear that the Rahav would eventually carry nuclear weapons and act as a
second strike deterrent to Iran. In the last few months news about Israel’s offshore
natural gas installations has appeared in the media and the government, obviously, is
beginning to think about how they might be safeguarded and, if necessary, defended.
So, once again Israel has turned to Germany, its pre-eminent supplier of naval vessels,
for assistance.
Recently JP reported, ―Germany has agreed to sell Israel two destroyers 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.
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8. 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.
Haaretz added, ―Israel has previously bought six Dolphin submarines from Germany.
The German government then agreed to cover a third of the cost of those purchases, as
a way of expressing its commitment to Israel’s security.
Berlin hasn’t yet responded to the current request, partly because the new government
elected in September hasn’t yet been sworn in. Chancellor Angela Merkel will need to
consult her new foreign and defense ministers before making a decision.
This last paragraph is somewhat troubling. While the policies of the new government will
not be far different from its predecessor, I just wonder whether the sale of the
destroyers might be used as some sort of pressure on Israel to stop or lessen its east of
the Green Line building program. Probably not, but one can never tell. No matter what,
it’s interesting that Israel turns to Germany when defense and security issues need
attending to.
NAZIS, JEWS & THE ZOO
It’s 80 years since the Nazis came to power in Germany. Following World War II and the
Holocaust many German corporations and institutions “fessed up” about their Nazis
links and their treatment of Jews.
And the Zoo?
Who would have thought that the Belin Zoo was guilty of anything? Well, it appears that
it was and now has some internal cleaning up to do. Rabbi Levi Brackman writing in YNet News reported, ―More than 70 years after the Berlin Zoo forced Jewish
shareholders out of its ranks, the institution is trying to come clean about its own dark
chapter during the Nazi era.
A Berlin historian is combing through thousands of names to identify members made to
sell their shares back to the zoo at a loss under the Third Reich, and has begun tracking
down their descendants ahead of publishing her findings.
"Jews were very important for the zoo," said historian Monika Schmidt, who estimates
up to a quarter of the zoo's 4,000 shareholders in the 1930s were Jewish.
"But they were pushed out step by step by the zoo itself, before the Nazi state asked
any institution to do those things," Schmidt told AFP.
Zoo shareholders did not receive dividends, but their families enjoyed free entry and
the prestige of supporting an important social institution.
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9. Their exclusion is just one example of how Jews were pushed out of public life in 1930s
Germany and stripped of their assets.
"Today, the zoo is just a zoo, with animals to watch," said Schmidt, with the Center for
Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin.
"But in former times, the zoo was a very important meeting place for the city."
In 1938, Jewish shareholders were forced to sell their shares back to the zoo for less
than their value, according to Schmidt.
The zoo, in turn, re-sold the stocks to "Aryanize" the institution.
Now, Schmidt is poring over names in a post-war recreation of a shareholders' log, and
will compare them to residence and restitution records in an attempt to identify former
Jewish patrons.
Commissioned by the zoo, she plans to publish the names and biographies in a book
next year.
The zoo's actions pale in comparison to other atrocities committed in Hitler's Germany,
but historians say there is value in documenting them.
"It's very important to see that this discrimination and these Nazi crimes were not only
done by some people, but in all parts of society," said Johannes Tuchel, a professor of
political science at the Free University of Berlin.
The zoo's undertaking is what Tuchel calls a "third wave" of research that started
around the 2000s in Germany.
After some Nazi war crimes were prosecuted and reparations paid out, attention turned
to returning confiscated artwork, and how public institutions treated Jews during the
Third Reich.
"The Department of Justice, the Foreign Office in Germany, and so on, gave jobs to
researchers and said 'OK, tell us a story, what happened in our institution in the Nazi
period'," Tuchel said. "New generations are coming and want to know what happened."
The zoo's Nazi-era past received little public attention until 2000, when retired New York
sociology professor Werner Cohn wrote in asking about his father's shares.
He published the response online, including a letter from a zoo lawyer stating there was
"neither force, nor compulsion" in the transfer of shares from Jews to non-Jews.
This garnered attention from German media and prompted a first zoo-commissioned
study by Schmidt, which revealed the stock sales, removal of Jewish board members,
and the barring of Jewish visitors from the zoo starting in 1939.
In 2011, the zoo installed a commemorative plaque for Jewish shareholders.
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10. Now, they want to do more.
"It is important to make the decision to continue to engage with this topic, to not forget
what is possible," said zoo spokeswoman Claudia Bienek, noting the particular
importance of documenting the lives of former Jewish shareholders in a book.
Bienek said reparation payments are not being considered.
One might think that delving into the Zoo’s history is not of great importance. They’d be
wrong. Not only is it important to memorialize those who were wronged but it vital to
show what happens to even the most distant kinds of institutions when a Nazi-like
government comes to power and exerts its influence without even specifically ordering
normal citizens to undertake certain acts. Even today anti-Semitism is available as a
scapegoating tool to be used in order to influence a population. The more light shed on
this sort of, perhaps, peripheral ant-Semitism the better.
GERMAN HATE MAIL
Donald Snyder writing in The Jewish Daily Forward recently reported on a study of
German anti-Semitic Hate mail. He noted, ―Over the course of a decade, the letters
poured into the Central Council of Jews in Germany like a river.
Many would view the stream of vitriol, sent to German Jewry’s central communal
organization between 2002 and 2012, as little more than raw sewage. But Monika
Schwarz-Friesel, a professor of linguistics at the Technical University of Berlin, saw it as
raw data. Together with Jehuda Reinharz, the American historian and former president
of Brandeis University, Schwarz-Friesel has recently published a study of these letters.
And their findings reaffirm one of the enduring, if still surprising truths about antiSemitism in Germany and elsewhere.
More than 60% of the hate mail came from well-educated Germans, including university
professors, according to their study, ―The Language of Hostility Towards Jews in the
21st Century,‖ released earlier this year. Only 3% came from right-wing extremists.
The researchers know this partly from analyzing the language of the letter writers — but
also because many of the authors of the emails in their sample gave their names,
addresses and professions. ―We checked some of them, [and] the information [was]
valid,‖ said Schwarz-Friesel in an email to the Forward. She and her research partner
were amazed that the writers were so brazen. ―I don’t think they would have identified
themselves 20 or 30 years ago,‖ said Reinharz.
―We found that there is hardly any difference in the semantics of highly educated antiSemites and vulgar extremists and neo-Nazis,‖ said Schwarz-Friezel. ―The difference
lies only in style and formal rhetoric, but the concepts are the same.‖
This is not exactly new. Schwarz-Friesel pointed out that many Nazis were highly
educated, too.
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11. One of the research pair’s other main findings was that hatred for Israel has become the
main vehicle for German anti-Semitism. More than 80% of the 14,000 emails focused
on Israel as their central theme.
Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz say they strove hard to distinguish emails that were
critical of Israel — even those that expressed anger toward it — from those that were
anti-Semitic.
―Only those letters were classified as anti-Semitic that clearly [saw] German Jews as
non-Germans and collectively abused German Jews to be responsible for crimes in
Israel!‖ she explained.
In the paper’s abstract, the researchers clarify further that ―Verbal anti-Semitism is
based on 1. Collective discrimination; 2. Fixation (by stereotypes) and 3. Devaluation of
Jews.‖
Schwarz-Friesel said she also considered as anti-Semitic letters that analogized Jewish
or Israeli behavior to that of the Nazis.
Some 20% of residents in the country still harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, according to a
2012 study sponsored by the German government. That compares to the AntiDefamation League’s most recent survey of attitudes toward Jews in America in 2013,
which found that 12% ―harbor deeply entrenched anti-Semitic attitudes.‖
Deidre Berger, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in Berlin, said
that government resolutions and a pro-Israel foreign policy were not enough to combat
the kind of prejudice reflected in the decade’s worth of emails to the Council of Jews in
Germany.
―There needs to be greater public awareness of the scope of every-day anti-Semitism,‖
she said. ―German politicians, educators, government officials, police officers and civil
society leaders need to highlight the urgency of the problem and initiate activities to
counter anti-Semitism…. It is critical that students learn more about Jews, Judaism and
Jewish history, as part of German history, as well as learning more about modern-day
Israel.‖
It should come as no surprise to anybody who has read this newsletter in the last few
years that there is abundant anti-Semitism in Germany – as there is throughout the rest
of Europe. In my opinion anti-Semitism is a never ending virus that comes to the
surface, recedes and then rises again. Eternal vigilance is necessary.
More important than anti-Semitic attitudes alone is whether or not the attitudes work
their way into government policy and law. That’s where the real trouble lies. Of course,
the “public awareness” that Deidre has written about (above) is critical. However, as far
as Germany is concerned, its government and especially Chancellor Merkel seem very
aware of the dangers to both Jews and to Germany itself in letting anti-Semitism
metastasize. For that we all should be thankful.
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12. AN INTERESTING BOOK
Jews in Berlin
Jews in Berlin“, by Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon is about
750 years of Jewish life and culture in the German capital has been published in an
updated 2013 version by Berlinica Publishing in America. The new edition contains a
chapter of Jewish life after reunifciation; from immigration to the Jewish Museum and
other cultural highlights, from the ressurection of synagogues to young Israelis opening
up bars and restaurants. Jews in Berlin has been reviewed by Ira Wolfman for the
Jewish Book Council. The review follows:
The story of the Jewish people in the German capital is one of incredible achievement
and recurrent horror. It also encompasses astonishing twists and turns.― And: „ All of the
books’s multiple authors have personal connections to the city. The book offers well
over 100 images – some in full color, including photos, paintings, postcards, and
documents. They add immeasurably to its value. (...) Now Berlin is again a world
cultural center, and appealing to Jews: Since the wall fell in November 1989, Jewish life
in Berlin has experienced a veritable quantum leap. Israelis and Russian Jews are
bringing energy to the tiny, damaged Berlin Jewish community. And, as the foreword’s
author, Carol Kahn Strauss, points out, Berlin is now a major destination for
AmericanJewish tour groups. Jews loved Berlin – a city that alternately freed and
destroyed them.In carefully recounting this confounding tale, Jews in Berlin honors the
complexity of an unfathomable relationship. Appendix, bibliography, index.―
The book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and selected bookstores.
http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/jews-in-berlin
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Happy New Year! See you in January
DuBow Digest is written and published by Eugene DuBow who can be reached at
edubow@optonline.net
Both the American and Germany editions are posted at www.dubowdigest.typepad.com
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