Salt Lake Tribune | 2002-06-30 | Page 11

The Salt Lake Tribune NATION/WORLD All Sunday, June 30, 2002 Earthweek:A Diary of the Planet By Steve Newman tralia’s Great Barrier Reef. Ocean to escape Tokyo’s hot and humid WarmingIs Blamed Global warmingis being temperaturesacross a wide stretch of summer weather. blamed for the spread of the equatorial Pacific are currently 2) diseases that affect ani- almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit above Ebola Update mals as well as humans, according to a report published in the normal, with expected. further that pathogensare thriving in places Deadly Heat where they previously could not live The hottest as the climate warms and winters become milder. Researchers warned thatbacteria, bugs,parasites,viruses and fungi, formerlyrestricted by seasonal temperatures, may be able to invade newterritories and find new victims. Co-author Andrew Dobson of Princeton University said, “Climate change is disrupting natural Four new cases of the deadly Ebola virus have been identified in a warming journal Science. The report stated temperatures in.acentury acrossparts of remote northern portion of the central African nation of Gabon. Health expertsin the RepubEaster Europe killed at lic of Congo,investigating a new least two people in Roma- nia and sent hundreds more to hos- outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever that has claimed five lives in that pitals with symptomsofheat stroke. country, reported finding the fresh Readings soaring to 109 degrees casesin neighboring Gabon. Fahrenheit prompted the spraying of Earthquakes roads and rail tracks around Sofia At least 220 people in with water to prevent them from Iran per* ecosystems in a way thatis making melting or buckling. The heat wave QW northwestern sted ina magnitude 6.5 was broken by severe storms in life better forinfectious diseases.” earthquake that injured which two Romanians were killed by 1,000 others as it damaged numerlightning A WarmerEl Nifio ousvillages in Qazvin province. The U.N. World Meteoro* At least 50 people in northern logical Organization an- Japanese VolcanoAlert Bangladesh were injured when a The Japan Meteorological magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit the factories and bridges in war-tom nouncedthatthe developAgency issued warnings region. A number of buildings in Chechnyaand the neighboring northing El Nifio ocean warmto residents around Mt. Rangpur sustained cracks from the ern Caucasus. Atleast 75,000 others ing in the Pacific may become more AsamaVolcanoto remain shaking. intense later this year than the relawere lefthomeless bythe inundations, tively mild outbreakpredicted by the at least 2.5 miles away fromthe + Earth movements were alsofelt triggered by unseasonable storms. U.S. weather agency NOAA. The mountain as temperatures withinits in central Chile. northern Tunisia, The Interfax news agency reported phenomenonis already blamed for crater rose and seismic activity Sumatra, northern New Zealand and thatthe flooding wasthe mostsevere devastating floodsin EastAfrica and increased. Plumes of smoke soared Taiwan. to hit Chechnya since 1937. attacks on humansby cows, and an incident where one unfortunate bovine camefalling from the sky. Stian Skoglund was bashed and trampled by a furious cud-cheweron a farm in Belta in Asnes when the first attack occurred. He suffered a while shielding his wife from a charging cow. Four motorists near Rogaland saw only a large shadow in the sky before a massive impact shook the ground behindtheir vehicle. Police deduced that the cow must have fallen from a 30-foot cliff shattered leg and believes he sur- overhangingthe road. vived only by playing dead after Distributed by being knocked down a secondtime. ica, as well as severe drought and summit, located about 90 miles Russian Inundations The Los Angeles Times Syndicate , resulting wildfires in Indonesia. northwest of Tokyo. Mt. Asama is Norwegians were caught Skoglund theorizedthat the cow More than 200 people in E-mail: [e-mail] WarmerPacific waters off Australia near the resort town of Karuizawa, in a state between shock instinctively knew he had disposed southern Russia are feared ©2002Earth Environment Service also appear responsible for a fresh where many members of governdead in massive flooding e and amusement by a week ofa deadcalf earlier in the week. A outbreak of coral bleaching in Aus- ment andthe Imperialfamily retreat that saw two brutal farmer in Nordby wasalso injured that swept away homes, Pacific coastal areas of South Amer- 3,000 feet above the mountain's Bovine Mayhem Germans Displaced by World WarII Still Feeling Wronged Books,projects look at victimhood,loss and new reparations BY TOM HUNDLEY KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSSERVICE. BERLIN — From the unsettled memoriesof Adolf Hitler’s defeat in World War II, Germans are resurrecting a controversial groupof warvictims; themselves. In the chaos following the Third Reich's collapse in 1945, more than 13 million Germans were expelled from lands where they had lived for centuries. About 7 million lost their homes when Poland’s borders shifted westward. Another 3 million Sudeten Germans were evicted from what was then ‘Czechoslovakia. Others were pushed outof traditional German settlements along the Danube River in Yugoslavia and Hungary. Tens of thousands of people died in the process, butlittle wassaid of them. Germany,afterall, was the aggressorin the war and the perpetrator of the Holocaust. The mantle of its own guilt lay heavily on its »postwar consciousness. Outside of Germany, there +was a sense that whatever Geremans may havesuffered, they Gunter Grass, the Nobel laureate and conscience of postwar Germany, re-creates the death of 8,000 Germancivilians on a ship that was torpedoed by a Russian submarine as it attempted to flee the port of Danzig, Grass’ birthplace, whichis nowthePolishcity of of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, who has lately championed the cause of the Sudeten Germans. So is Klaus Rainer Roehl, a former far-left intellectual gone over to the far right, whorecently published a polemic, “Forbidden Grief: The End of the German Taboo,” telling his compatriots that they, too, were victims, Newspapers and magazines in Germany and Austria are beginning to explore the theme of German victimhood, and a recent German television series that documented the miseryof the expellees, as they are known in Germany and Aus- tria, drew a wide and appreciative audience. Emboldened by a growing sense among younger Germans that their country haspaid its debtto history, politicians are beginning to suggest that the were the architects oftheir own time has come for others to misery. apologize to Germany, and perhaps evento offer sometoken restitution for property In Germany, however, the stories of these Germansare now being looked atin a differentlight.In his latest novel, Breslau until 1991.” DIETER HEMPEL Expellees’ national organization Gdansk. Crab Walk, published earlier this year to critical acclaim, has opened a door that many others not of Grass’ stature appear eager to shoulder through. Among them is Joerg Haider that wasseized. The issue flared into the open earlier this year when nationalist politicians in Germany and Austria called for the Czech Republic to repeal the so-called Benes decrees that stripped Germans of their property in Czechoslovakia at the end ofthe war. Mostofthose wholost land had roots there dating back centuries, long be- fore Nazi forces took over Czechoslovakia. Milos Zeman, the Czech prime minister, bluntly re- jected the idea,telling the Germans that they got what they deserved. “Many Sudeten Germans committed treason, a crime which waspunishableby death according to the laws of the time,” Zemantold an Austrian magazine. “If they were ex- pelled or transferred, it was more moderate than the death malty.” Thatdid little to soothe German sensibilities. Last week the parliament of the German ™=Ti = © o a — _ Armenians, “Helost everything in Breslau, but for him there was never Chechens, Ingush, Serbs, Ka- Thecollapse of communism German reunification “We stood in front of the house. It was still there, but there were strangersliving in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroederandhis predecessor, Helmut Kohl, tried to keepa lid on this emotional issue, but Schroeder nowis in a tough election it,” the son recalled. “On the drive back to Berlin, my father didn’t say anything. He wasn’t upset. There weren't any regrets.” the campaign experience left against Edmond Stoiber, whose wife is an expellee. Ex- Hempel unsettled. pellee groups wereelated this expectation that they should get some financial compensation from the Polish governmentor the Czech government, but that’s notthe position of our “For somepeoplethereis an week when Stoiber embraced their cause, sayingthatif he is elected, he would insist on talks with the Czech and Polish governments about renouncing the post-war decrees. In the years after World War Il, the activities of expellee groups werelegally restricted to helping with the resettlement of expellees. Politically, they hadlittle to say. Dieter Hempelis the head of the Berlin branchof the expel- lees’ national Hempel’s Breslau organization. family was from — present-day organization. For me, personally, the answer is more abstract. There should be some sort of recognition that what happened to us wasn’t right,it wasn't legal,” he said. Erika Steinbach, a member of the German parliament from the Christian Democrats and head of the expellees’ nationalorganization, is pushing for the creation in Berlin of a National Center Ukrainians, zakhs, Croats, Albaniansand, of course, Germans. “The expulsions that happened in the Balkans during the 1990s helped openthe door. A new sensitivity emerged,” shesaid.“All of these 20th century expulsions havetobe dealt with in an open manner.” “T don’t like this project at all,” said Wolfgang Benz, di- rector of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University. “T don’t see the point in having a big documentation cen. ter, giving the message that this suffering on thepart of the Germans has been forgotten and needsto be broughtback to active memory.” The expulsion center project also has raised hackles in Poland and the Czech Republic, where many fear that demands for restitution or compensation will be the next step. The German governmenthaspaid reparations to Israel, and some private companies that profited through their cooperation with the Nazi regime havepaid individualreparations. Against state of Saxony passed a resolution that would require the Czech, Slovak, Polish and Slovenian governments to renounce all wartime decrees against the Germans before they could join the European 5¢ OFF PER: rf suffered expulsions in the 20th century — among them Jews, and Union. The resolution carries the center would be a kind of museum, study center and memorial for all groups that until 1991,”said Hempel, 60. anydiscussionofthis,” he said. no legal weight, but it sends a sharp message. Expulsion. As she envisionsit, he was captured by British troops somewhere in Europe and henever again saw Breslau madethe 1991 visit possible. 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