Town debates future of house of Hitler's birth

(looks like real estate is tough everywhere. I do believe this building should be preserved for its historical significance, but I can understand wanting to no longer live under this massive shadow.)

By GEORGE JAHN, APBRAUNAU, Austria — Living space in Braunau is scarce, but an imposing Renaissance-era building stands empty in this post-card pretty Austrian town because of the sinister shadow cast by a former tenant: Adolf Hitler.

With its thick walls, huge arched doorway and deep-set windows, the 500-year-old house near the town square would normally be prime property. Because Hitler was born here, it has become a huge headache for town fathers forced into deciding what to do with a landmark so intimately linked to evil.

The building was most recently used as a workshop for the mentally handicapped, which some saw as atonement for the murders of tens of thousands of disabled people by the Nazi regime. But that tenant moved out last year for more modern quarters.

The departure reignited debate on what to do with the house, with the mayor declaring he preferred creating apartments over turning the building into an anti-Nazi memorial.

"We are already stigmatized," Johannes Waidbacher told the Austrian daily Der Standard. "We, as the town of Braunau, are not ready to assume responsibility for the outbreak of World War II."

That sparked a storm of criticism, with Waidbacher accused of trying to bury memories of the Nazi past.

The comments were particularly ill-received due to the fact that Braunau's town council only withdrew honorary citizenship from Hitler last year, 78 years after the Nazi dictator was given the accolade — as did nearly a dozen other towns and cities after checking their archives.

Stung by the criticism, Waidbacher has since stepped back, saying he can conceive of "all possible uses" for the building.

On Thursday, Waidbacher expressed surprise at the vehement reaction his comments caused, saying he did not mean to make light of the significance of the house. "Our town has definitely done its homework as far as its past is concerned," he told The Associated Press.

Nonetheless, concerns about the building's fate continue to reverberate on the ancient cobble-stoned streets of this town of 16,600.

One major fear: The house could fill up with Hitler worshippers if converted into living space.

"These are certainly people we don't want here," said town council member Harry Buchmayr, noting that most visitors are not normal tourists but neo-Nazis stopping to pay homage to Hitler, even though he spent only the first few months of his life in the building.

And it's unclear who else might want to take up residence in the house.

"I wouldn't want to live there," said 19-year-old Susanne Duerr, as she paused from pushing her baby carriage to gaze at the yellow stucco building. "I think I would have a bad conscience."

Other townsfolk old enough remember the Fuehrer echo that sentiment. Georg Hoedl, 88, recalls Hitler as the man who dragged depression-era Austria and Germany out of the kind of abject poverty that forced him to go begging. But he also is aware of the evil Hitler spawned.

"There should be something else inside, something cultural. But apartments — I'm not for that," he said

Wife Erika, 73, says that bearing the burden of the house's legacy "wouldn't be pleasant for the tenants — once they moved in they would be asked about this all the time."

Austria's Interior Ministry has rented the house since 1972 from the owner, a woman in her 60s who refuses to be identified publicly. The ministry has been careful to sublet only to tenants with no history of admiring Hitler. Asked about the debate, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sonja Jell said the ministry remained "particularly sensitive" about the future uses of the building considering its legacy.

The owner refused a request by Braunau officials to let the city mount sign on the house warning of the evils of the Nazi past. But an inscription on a chunk of granite on public property near the building calls out to passersby: "Never again fascism, never again war."

The building still has the initials MB in the iron grillwork above the massive wooden doorway. It stands for Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, who bought the house shortly before World War II with thoughts of turning it into a shrine to the dictator.

The house is one of the few remaining structures directly linked to Hitler.

A house in nearby Leonding where he spent some teenage years is now used to store coffins for the town cemetery. At that graveyard, the tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, was removed last year at the request of a descendant. A school Hitler attended in Fischlham, also near Braunau, displays a plaque condemning his crimes against humanity.

The underground bunker in Berlin where Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945 was demolished after the war. It was left vacant until the East German government built an apartment complex around the site in the late 1980s. The apartments, which are still occupied, overlook the German capital's monument to victims of the Holocaust.

Ultimately, it's the owner who will decide the Branau building's fate. She's known to be opposed to turning it into a Holocaust memorial, meaning there's still a chance it could be converted into apartments.

That's a nightmare scenario for Buchmayr, a member of Austria' Socialist Party that has done much over the past four decades to sensitize citizens to their country's Nazi past.

"You can't simply wish it away," Buchmayr said of the house. "Unfortunately we have it here.

"Hitler was born here."

German police: Woman suspected of killing 5 babies

By DAVID RISING and GEIR MOULSON, APBERLIN — A woman killed her five infants shortly after giving birth in secret at home and in the woods because each time she got pregnant she worried her husband would leave her if she had any more children, authorities said Thursday.

The woman, 28, who has been arrested on five counts of manslaughter, made a "comprehensive confession" to the killings after turning herself in as a six-year investigation closed in on her, said Ulrike Stahlmann-Liebelt, the head prosecutor in Flensburg, on Germany's border with Denmark.

Stahlmann-Liebelt said the woman, whose name was not released in accordance with German privacy laws, has two living children, aged 8 and 10. But then in 2006 she began hiding her pregnancies, staying away from doctors and hospitals and killing the infants after giving birth to two at home and three in the woods, she said.

"She had the impression her husband would leave her if she had any more children, and that's why she didn't tell anyone she was pregnant, including her husband," Stahlmann-Liebelt said.

"She has said that the family lived at a certain level of prosperity, that it was clear her husband did not want any more children, and that one reason was to preserve this standard, and she feared that might be endangered if another child were there."

The husband has told police that he knew nothing about the pregnancies, Stahlmann-Liebelt said, and it wasn't entirely clear how the woman managed to keep them secret.

Stahlmann-Liebelt said there have been other cases when woman's pregnancy can go unnoticed by their partners and others.

Police found the first infant's body dumped in a paper sorting station in 2006 about 15 kilometers (nine miles) away from the town of Husum where the woman lived. The second was found in a parking area off a regional highway, also about the same distance from Husum but in a different direction, in 2007.

After reading news reports that DNA results had confirmed the two children had the same parents, the woman then decided not to dispose the other bodies in public places, police official Dirk Czarnetzki said.

She hid the next three infants — whose existence authorities were unaware of until the woman's confession — in boxes in the basement of the building where she lived.

The bodies have now been recovered and autopsies have been carried out, but forensic experts have not yet been able to determine the cause or dates of their death.

Germany has Europe's most widespread network of so-called baby-boxes — hatches usually run by church groups and charities and associated with hospitals where people can give up their newborns entirely anonymously and safely — but Stahlmann-Liebelt said the woman told authorities she did not know how to go about finding one. There are about 100 baby-boxes in Germany — including one in a town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the woman's home — and more than 100 babies are estimated to be given up in the country that way each year. While the baby-boxes are technically illegal, authorities turn a blind eye on the practice.

After finding the first two babies, authorities were able to narrow down the likelihood that the parents came from the area around Husum, a town on the North Sea coast.

In the course of the investigation they took hundreds of DNA tests from women in the area over time and took a sample from the woman on Tuesday, Czarnetzki said at a televised news conference in Flensburg, the regional administrative center. A short time after — before the sample had been processed — the woman turned herself in and confessed, he said.

Czarnetzki said the woman's decision to submit to a saliva test and to make a long statement to police suggested "that she felt relieved of great pressure ... simply to be able to say it."

"It's important to stress that, as things stand, our assessment is that no one else was involved and it is apparently the case — incredible as it might seem — that no one noticed the pregnancies or the birth of these children," he said.

A judge has ordered the woman held in custody pending a formal indictment, which typically takes several months in Germany. Stahlmann-Liebelt said it was too early to say what penalty she might face if convicted.

There have been several cases in recent years in Germany of women who have killed several of their own children, though the country's infanticide rate overall is similar to other western European nations.

In the worst case, a woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

Netanyahu says word fears about Iran to UN

( I get the Prime Minister’s point do we really want people who are will to kill over a crappy youtube video to have Atomic capability? Do we really want to sit idly by and allow this? How many “death to America!” parades do we need to see? How many times does Iran and it’s allies have to make clear how much they Hate us? Hate Israel and wish it destroyed? We need to act quickly before it is too late, or accept that there is going to be an nuclear exchange in the middle east.)

By ARON HELLER, APUNITED NATIONS — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb by next summer.

Speaking Thursday before the United Nations, Netanyahu said the world must draw a clear "red line" to make Iran back down from its nuclear plans. He said it is getting "late, very late" to stop Iran.

Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that time is quickly running out to stop the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear power and the threat of force must be seriously considered.

SKorea: Japan must educate its people about WWII

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON and JOHN DANISZEWSKI, AP

NEW YORK — South Korea's foreign minister said Thursday that Japan's wartime past will overshadow relations between the two staunch U.S. allies until Japan educates its people about crimes committed during colonial rule.

In an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said: "We are victims of Japanese colonial rule."

Kim, who will meet with Japan's foreign minister later Thursday, also said South Korea would not compromise in its dispute over the tiny Dokdo islands, called Takeshima by Japan, which has further strained ties.

"When the Japanese government claims Dokdo is their territory, Korean people (take) it as another attempt to invade our country," Kim said. "So that's the Korean sentiment and I hope that Japanese government understands this."

But he said South Korea recognizes its shared interests with fellow-democracy Japan, such as coping with North Korea and its nuclear ambitions. Both Japan and South Korea play host to tens of thousands of U.S. troops.

Kim said Seoul wants to expand relations with Japan, including in military cooperation, but only if South Korean public sentiment allows it. In June, they put on hold an intelligence sharing pact after it provoked an outcry in South Korea.

"We have to try to overcome these differences. It's up to the Japanese attitude. While they maintain their attitude ... there should be some limit on the scope of cooperation," he said.

Japan occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years until the defeat of fascist forces in World War II and also occupied much of China. Japan issued a formal apology in 1993 over its use of Korean women as sex slaves by its soldiers during the war, but has failed to convince South Korea it is truly contrite.

Kim accused Japanese politicians of denying war crimes and said Japan's failure to educate its people properly about the past was the root cause of its various territorial disputes over islands in the region — including with Russia and Asia's premier power, China.

"It's in sharp contrast with what Germany did to get the support and respect from the neighboring countries" after World War II, Kim said. "If Japan does it, I'm sure they can (get) respect from neighboring countries."

The dispute escalated last month when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak made an unprecedented visit to Dokdo, which drew unusually stern criticism from Japan. South Korea has rejected a Japanese proposal for the dispute to be settled in the International Court of Justice.

On Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda stuck by Japan's stance on the islands, but said it did not want it to adversely affect relations with South Korea.

The issue stirs particularly strong nationalist passions among Koreans, as Japan's takeover of Dokdo in 1905 presaged its annexation of Korea five years later. South Korea took the islands back in the early 1950s and deploys police there.

Kim said that South Korea remains open to better relations with North Korea, and that it was disappointed when its offer earlier this month to provide flood relief to North Korea was rebuffed as inadequate by Pyongyang.

He also said that since North Korea's failed attempt in April to launch a satellite, "Trust has regressed." The unsuccessful launch was deemed by the U.S. to have military implications and to violate prior agreement by North Korea to suspend ballistic missile testing.

In spite of North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un, setting a somewhat more modern and open style, there has been no practical improvement in relations with South Korea or the United States with Pyongyang.

The United States, China and South Korea are all going through elections or leadership changes late this year, Kim noted, suggesting that any significant resumption of diplomatic activity with North Korea may have to wait.

Norway gives $1 million for Khmer Rouge trial

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Norway has donated 6 million kroner ($1.05 million) to the U.N.-backed tribunal trying members of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge regime on charges of genocide and other crimes.

The tribunal announced Thursday that Norway's total contributions now exceed $5 million. The biggest donors have been Japan with $75 million and Australia with $15 million.

The tribunal is seeking justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who died due to the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge's 1970s rule. It has convicted the Khmer Rouge's chief jailer and is currently trying three of its former senior leaders.

The tribunal spent $141.1 million from 2006 through last year. It expects total costs of $230.7 million by its projected conclusion in 2013, and has warned that it faces severe budgetary shortfalls.