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December 01, 1995 - Image 12

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1995-12-01

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

DESIGNER SHOW
MARCY
FELDMAN
FOR HEARTWEAR DESIGN

Friday and Saturday • December 1 &2

BAR MITZBEHAVED page 10

that boredom is usually the rea-
son teens misbehave at parties.
He says no matter how enter-
taining a party is, those invited to
an excessive number of b'nai mitz-
vah parties get bored. For some,
attending 50 or more in a year is
not uncommon.
Star Trax's Ms. Erlich says,
"That's why it's up to us as the en-
tertainment providers to offer
something different."
Mr. Prentice recommended
parties where teens can partici-
pate in an unusual activity. The
most popular, he says; are casino
parties, which keep teens busy all
night.
Mr. Prentice also says if par-
ents get too involved in the pomp
and circumstance behind the par-
ty, it leads to teen-age boredom.
"The more upscale a party is, the
more likely kids will be bored."

Teens concerned about their
friends causing a problem should
alter their prospective guest list
so that the troublemakers at oth-
er parties and services are not in-
cluded.
Michael Stulberg came home
from a bar mitzvah with names
of teens he decided not to invite to
his event. Many 13-year-olds and
their parents have adopted the
same attitude.
Ms. Kifferstein's older son cel-
ebrated his bar mitzvah in 1991,
and the family saw "nowhere near
the problems as now," she says.
"The kids were wonderfully be-
haved. There were no incidents
whatsoever. I don't know what the
difference is. Maybe parents are
more lax. I don't know.
"You want to enjoy your party
and not worry about kids making
trouble." ❑

HAMMER page 3

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one with "knowledge or informa-
tion" about the allegations against
Mr. Hammer.
But in an interview, Mr.
Schmidt said he knows nothing
about Mr. Hammer's wartime ac-
tions. Mr. Schmidt said that while
he has known the defendant since
childhood, they lost contact with
each other in 1939, when Mr.
Schmidt entered the German
army. Mr. Schmidt said he fought
in Italy.
"I didn't see him again until
1947 and then I met him in Aus-
tria," said Mr. Schmidt. Still, he
said he maintains a firm belief in
his friend's account of his past.
"He's a good man," Mr. Schmidt
said.
Judge Gilmore has ordered the
defense to submit a more detailed,
if scaled down, witness list by to-
day.
If the defense case remains
murky, the government's strate-
gy is coming into sharper focus as
the trial nears.
With no witnesses who can di-
rectly identify Mr. Hammer as a
death-camp guard, the govern-
ment is relying largely on docu-
ments exhumed from wartime
archives in Germany, Poland,
Austria and Russia, and from
duty rosters culled from the camps
themselves.
The government says the doc-
uments link Mr. Hammer to
Auschwitz in Poland, Sachsen-
hausen and Flossenburg in Ger-
many, and to a transport to
Mauthausen in Nazi-annexed
Austria.
The list of 10 government wit-
nesses includes a war historian,
two experts from the U.S. Immi-
gration and Naturalization Ser-
vice, and at least three
concentration-camp survivors who
will testify generally about conch-
tions at the death camps.
One government witness,
Thomas Burgenthal, is a law pro-

versity, an expert on human
rights and a survivor of
Auschwitz.
The witness list also includes
Baltimore resident Bluma
Shapiro, 72, who survived five
concentration camps and was at
Auschwitz at the time Mr. Ham-
mer was alleged to have been a
guard.
The brutality of the guards
"varied from guard to guard," said
Ms. Shapiro, who lost her parents,
two brothers and a sister in the
camps. "Some were partially hu-
man in regard to inmates and oth-
ers were just like beasts."
Ms. Shapiro said that if the ev-
idence shows Mr. Hammer was a
guard at a death camp, it would
be difficult for him to prove that
he did not engage in acts of per-
secution.
"I don't recall that any guards
were only guarding the outside of
the camp," she said. "Every single
one of them was guarding the in-
mates ... . They participated in any
actions that had taken place there,
including marching people to the
gas chambers, marching with
German shepherds — whom they
taught to kill — and participating
in the selection" of prisoners to be
executed.
Another government witness,
Leon Messer of Tamarac, Fla.,
was at Sachsenhausen when Mr.
Hammer was allegedly a guard.
He recalled how guards hanged
prisoners in front of other inmates
as Strauss's "Blue Danube" played
over loudspeakers.
Mr. Messer, 75, a retired watch-
maker, said the Sachsenhausen
guards were "brutal" to the gen-
eral inmate population. "They
took them out and beat them up
all the time."
They are scenes, he said, he will
never forget, making his decision
to come testify in Detroit an easy
one. "It's the satisfaction of get-
ting even," he said. ❑

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