Swedish queen's family 'made fortune from Jewish factory seized by Nazis'

Sweden's royal family has been rocked by allegations that the father of Queen Silvia made a fortune from a factory seized from Jewish owners in Nazi Germany.

TV4 broadcast a documentary detailing how Walter Sommerlath, a German Nazi Party member, had bought the factory from Efim Wechsler, a Jew.

The transaction was part of the so-called "Ayranisation" of such enterprises according to the Nuremberg Laws which stripped Jews of their rights and property. The factory allegedly made Ack Ack guns for the Luftwaffe and also parts for tanks.

When she married in 1976 the Queen's German father denied he had ever been a member of the Nazi party. That fiction was exposed some years later by a Swedish newspaper which proved he joined the movement in 1934.

Earlier this year Queen Silvia spoke for the first time about it in a TV documentary in which she said he was not "politically active"

"The truth about Queen Silvia's father, which she doesn't want to tell herself or her family, is that he joined Hitler's Nazi party beginning on December 1st, 1934," said Swedish investigative journalist Bosse Schon.

"Also, Queen Silvia's father worked during his time in Brazil for the German company Acos-Burderus-do Brasil-Ltda, which used wartime prisoners as slave labour in Nazi Germany."

Mr Sommelath resettled in Berlin and on 24 May 1939 he took over the company Wechsler & Hennig. Documents found show Sommelath bought it at a knock-down price, as was common at the time. Jews needed the money to try to escape from Germany.

The queen's attempts earlier this year to play down the Nazi past of her father have led to fierce criticism of her in the media now, both in Germany and Sweden.

She has refused all comment but a statement was issued by the palace ahead of part two of the documentary which runs on Sunday night this coming weekend.

"Concerning the discussions about Walther Sommerlath in the media, which deal with events which took place before the Queen was born, the Queen has no reason to comment on the content of the programme.

"Of course The Queen is sorry about her father becoming a member of the National Socialist Party in 1934. The Queen first got knowledge of his membership in adulthood, and she never had the opportunity to discuss this with her father."

Her husband King Carl XVI Gustaf was recently exposed in a book over a secret affair he had with a pop singer.

Telegraph

Neo-Nazi acquitted on a technicality (Canada)

Terry Tremaine

A federal court judge has "reluctantly" acquitted a neo-Nazi former math lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan of contempt of court, even though he "deliberately'' flouted an order of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to stop his online hate messages.

Terry Tremaine, whose case was launched by hate-hunting lawyer Richard Warman, not only admitted his contempt of the tribunal's 2007 decision against him, including a fine and a cease-and-desist order, but bragged about it to Justice Sean J. Harrington.

His acquittal on a technicality highlights a quirk of the "quasi-judicial" human rights tribunal system, in which the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal can issue orders but not enforce them.

That can only be done by a court, and so the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which prosecutes cases at the Tribunal, registers Tribunal orders in federal court. From then on, they carry the full weight of a court order, and violations can lead to contempt charges.

In this case, however, when the CHRC registered the Tribunal's decision with the federal court, soon after it was made, they did not inform Mr. Tremaine they had done so.

So although he is in contempt of the CHRT -- in that he continued to post messages after the tribunal's order not to, and was obviously aware of it, because he appealed in federal court -- he cannot be in contempt of a federal court order he was never told about, the judge decided.

Mr. Tremaine claimed he was only informed of the order this past August, after this case was heard.

"He is in contempt of the order of the tribunal -- indeed, he brags about it and admitted it before me. The issue, however, is whether he is in contempt of this court. I reluctantly conclude he is not.

"The only reason he is not is that the commission failed to bring to his attention the fact that it had registered the tribunal's order with this court," the judge wrote.

The CHRC argued the distinction was "artificial," but failed to convince him.

Mr. Tremaine, who also faces criminal hate speech charges, styled himself as the head of the National Socialist Party of Canada, and ran its website. He also made posts to stormfront.org,a Florida-based white supremacist forum. "Mr. Tremaine thinks (or perhaps just wishes) he is better than others because of the colour of his skin. He is a white supremacist. Although his dislike of others based on the colour of their skin knows no bounds, he has particular enmity for blacks and Canada's aboriginal peoples," Judge Harrington wrote.

"He is also a neo-Nazi. He is virulently anti-Jewish. He draws no distinction between Jewishness and Zionism. According to him, Jews are parasites who will take over the world unless they are stopped. The blacks are their stupid lackeys and the First Nations are in league with them. He is fond of Adolph Hitler; who got it right -- even though the Holocaust is a hoax."

The law under which he was initially charged with hate speech, Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, prohibits repeated online messages that are likely to expose identifiable groups to hatred or contempt.

In a separate case, after Mr. Tremaine's, the CHRT judged the law unconstitutional because it was designed to be remedial, but in fact carries the threat of punitive fines. That decision is under review in federal court.

National Post

Hate crimes soar as more victims come froward (UK)

Reports of hate crime rose sharply in Yorkshire last year as police across the country dealt with more than 50,000 incidents of abuse motivated by race, disability or homophobia.

The region's police forces recorded almost 4,000 incidents of hate crime during 2009, figures published yesterday by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) reveal.

Racism accounted for the vast majority of reports and Government statistics, also released yesterday, show that three of Yorkshire's constabularies dealt with soaring numbers of such cases.

South Yorkshire Police saw racist incidents rise by almost a fifth, while officers in North Yorkshire and Humberside recorded increases of 17 and seven per cent respectively.

The region's largest force, West Yorkshire Police, saw incidents fall by seven per cent to 2,687 but dealt with 15 reports of anti-Semitism last year – the fourth-largest caseload in the country.

ACPO said hate crime reporting increased by 12 per cent overall across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2009, compared with the previous year.

The rise was welcomed by police chiefs, who said it gave them a better understanding of the scale of the problem and indicated that more victims felt confident enough to come forward.

Insp Mark Iveson, of North Yorkshire Police, said the growing number of reports was a "very encouraging sign" while Humberside Police's head of youth and community cohesion, Adil Khan, pointed to evidence that more people were now happy to raise cases.

South Yorkshire assistant chief constable Max Sahota said: "Any crime against a person because of their ethnicity will not be tolerated, and whatever the reason for this increase in reported incidents, we will fully investigate each and every crime and endeavour to bring the perpetrators to justice."

For more information on reporting hate crime, visit the charity's website www.stophateuk.org.

Yorkshire Post