The curious case of Bernhard Frank . . .

Morlar

I thought these articles might be interesting for comparison/discussion. They concern the curious case of Bernhard Frank a 97 yr old SS Veteran. Here are 4 examples of the media coverage and how they cover this civil lawsuit.

Article 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08nazi.html?_r=1&ref=world

December 7, 2010

Nazi Is Exposed, but Did He Have Anything to Hide?
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

BERLIN — Please do not call Mark Gould a Nazi hunter.

He finds the phrase demeaning.

Mr. Gould prefers this description: a 43-year-old college dropout from Los Angeles who says he made a lot of money in finance, became interested in Nazi memorabilia and ended up on an undercover odyssey where he posed as a neo-Nazi to befriend a former Waffen SS officer and recorded many of their conversations with the plan to someday expose the man’s role in the Third Reich.

But an alternative description might read like this: a man on a self-appointed mission to expose an aging Nazi — one who has published an autobiography and has never been accused of war crimes — and hoping, in the process, to publish a book and land a movie deal.

Whatever the subtext, on Saturday Mr. Gould revealed having posed as a neo-Nazi to the former SS officer, the 97-year-old Bernhard Frank, once a trusted aide to Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. Mr. Frank looked at his accuser and through the confusion of age and betrayal asked, “Are you my enemy or my friend?” according to a transcript of the encounter provided by Mr. Gould.

“I am your enemy,” Mr. Gould said, leaning in toward Mr. Frank. “I am your enemy.”

Mr. Gould announced Tuesday that he and his cousin, Burton Bernstein, were filing a federal civil lawsuit against Mr. Frank in Washington that would claim that the former Nazi officer was responsible for orders issued on July 28, 1941, that spurred troops from the SS, or Schutzstaffel, the Nazi special police, to kill their ancestors in an attack on the village of Korets, in Ukraine.

Mr. Gould says he can provide documentary proof that Mr. Frank had a central role in the administration of the earliest days of the Holocaust as a desk officer who facilitated the machinery of Nazi death. This charge, however, has been dismissed by other experts on the Holocaust as overstated.

The suit will close out the unusual journey of a self-styled historian with unorthodox techniques, and follow his staged friendship with a former Nazi officer who confided in one taped interview that Himmler “was a good man” and that the Jews “dug their own grave” by oppressing the Germans.

“My enemy, why?” Mr. Frank demanded, according to the transcript.

“Because you killed my family,” Mr. Gould replied.

Mr. Frank has not been in hiding, and he is not regarded as a war criminal by the authorities in Germany who are responsible for policing the Nazi past.

Indeed, four years ago Mr. Frank published a book here about his Nazi career, called “As Hitler’s Commandant — From the Wewelsburg to the Berghof,” complete with photographs of himself as a dashing young officer in uniform. He has also appeared on German television in shows about the Third Reich.

During the Nazi era, he served as a librarian at Wewelsburg Castle, the ideological training ground for the SS. He subsequently occupied a senior position on Himmler’s administrative staff, keeping what was called the war diary.

He co-signed some of Himmler’s orders and later served as a commander at the eastern front. He eventually was made commander of Obersalzberg, the site of Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof. Toward the end of the war, Mr. Frank was ordered to arrest and kill Hermann Göring, an order which he defied.

All that is in Mr. Frank’s book.

Kurt Schrimm, chief of the Federal Archives Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Germany, said that Mr. Frank’s name appeared in the archives, but never in connection with war crimes. Other Nazi experts also said that Mr. Frank was not linked to war crimes.

In a telephone interview from his home in Frankfurt, Mr. Frank said he knew nothing about the Holocaust, a statement that seems doubtful given his administrative role in Himmler’s office. “I’ve never done statements concerning the Holocaust, because I just don’t exactly know much about it,” Mr. Frank said. “You have to be careful with statements. Do you understand?”

Asked about Mr. Gould, he said at first that he was not sure who he was, and then added: “I have the feeling that he sells my words different, with a different value, so unreliable.” His voice was weak and cautious.

“Was Mr. Gould friendly?” he was asked.

“Well, what seller, who wants to sell something, is not friendly,” he replied.

Mr. Gould, unlike many accusers of Nazis, is not Jewish. He says he has an “extended Jewish family,” because his mother married a Jewish man who adopted him. He tells of a rough and tumble upbringing in Texas marked by fighting, heavy drinking and drug use, and said he was in rehabilitation by the time he was 18, dropped out of college and started selling stock.

He said he realized he could make money selling lists of investors, created his own company and moved to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, with whom he had three daughters. He was speaking to a coin dealer one day for business when he saw that the man was also selling a Nazi flag.

Mr. Gould bought the flag and started buying up World War II memorabilia, which he stored in his Los Angeles apartment. One day, he said, he purchased the gun Göring had surrendered to the Americans. Then, he said, he learned the weapon had been turned over to an American soldier, who was a Jew.

He said that inspired him to film members of the team who had arrested Göring. He then decided to take his video camera to Germany. He realized quickly, he said, that he could penetrate deep into the neo-Nazi community if he presented himself as a wealthy sympathizer.

“I have been living underground for a long time now,” Mr. Gould said one day, seated in an office in Berlin. He has grown his hair long now, a backlash against the years he had to remain clean-cut as a neo-Nazi. “I lived in that world. I saw things in a National Socialist point of view. I compartmentalized my life.”

His road to Mr. Frank’s home is impossible to verify. He suggests that intelligence agencies here helped him cover his tracks in exchange for inside information on the neo-Nazi movement, but that claim also could not be verified. It remains unclear where the money came from for all of his work, and some experts he met over the years said they chose not to be involved with him because they were dubious about his tactics — including hidden cameras — and skeptical of his goals.

Mr. Gould says he was secretive over the years because he did not want to reveal Mr. Frank’s identity. There are also some academics in the United States and officials in Israel who have verified meeting Mr. Gould in Los Angeles and in Tel Aviv, and being impressed with his work.

“I think Mark is an unconventional guy who has done courageous and lonely work,” said Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California and founder of The Holocaust Center in Britain.

After reviewing the material, he said he thought Mr. Gould’s work raised an important question of how society defined culpability. “Of all the Nazis that have surfaced over the years, Bernhard Frank sends the biggest shiver down my spine,” Mr. Smith wrote in an essay. “Not because he was an outright killer, but because he was active right in the heart of darkness, at the epicenter of the Holocaust, at the scene of the crime. For some reason we let him get away with it.”

Mr. Gould swept into Germany last week to complete his project. He was traveling with his companion, Danica Bernard, and a nephew. The three entered Mr. Frank’s home on Saturday. Mr. Frank was with his nurse and a friend. According to the transcript, Mr. Frank kept shouting, “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” waving a hand and at one point feigning going to sleep.

Mr. Gould was excited, and the cameras were rolling. “You’ll be dead soon,” he said before he left. “And the whole world will know.”

Stefan Pauly contributed reporting.

Morlar

Article 2

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/guywalters/100067196/another-day-another-tall-last-nazi-story/

Another day, another tall 'Last Nazi' story

This winter seems to have unearthed numerous elderly Nazis, and today has proved to be no exception. Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth is reporting the finding by an American called Mark Gould of a 97-year-old former SS officer, Bernhard Frank, who, according to the report, “was responsible for signing the first order of the Reich instructing the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews”.

This claim is pure junk.

Although I’ve no doubt that Frank was in the SS, the significance of his role in the Holocaust has been blown grossly out of proportion. The story says that Frank signed a ‘Commando Stadt order’ on July 28 1941, which I assume actually means an order issued by Himmler’s Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS, which was established in May 1941 to conduct anti-partisan operations, and by late June, to perform what Himmler ominously called ‘other tasks’ – ie, killing Jews.

Himmler started issuing orders to ‘comb the Pripet Marshes’ in early July, and on July 19 and 22, he ordered his units to ‘impose peace’ on the occupied territories. The order he gave on July 28 simply provided further directives for this ongoing operation, and also formally handed control to Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Two days later, Himmler made himself more explicit, by insisting that ‘all Jewish men should be executed, and the women and children pushed into the swamps’. (Source: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, pp 11-25, 1986, ‘Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS: Himmler’s Personal Murder Brigades in 1941′ by Yehoshua Büchler.)

Furthermore, according to Dr Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Frank’s signature is one of many on the document, and Frank’s responsibility only seems to encompass the language used in the document rather than the actual order itself. Frank himself has been living openly in Germany for years, and there is no evidence to link him to committing any war crimes.

It should also be borne in mind that these orders are far from the first in which the murders of Jews were called for. Bernhard Frank may not have been a good man during the war, but the idea that he somehow started the Holocaust is ludicrous.

UPDATE: I’m glad to see the scepticism is gaining a lot of traction. There’s a great piece in the New York Times by Michael Slackman that nicely captures the motivation of Gould, while my friend Michael Burleigh observes that the memories of elderly former Nazis are often tainted by endless documentaries about the Third Reich. “Old Nazis watch a lot of telly too,” he says. “Sometimes they can’t even remember if they were at Auschwitz or Austerlitz.”

Morlar

Article 3
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3995490,00.html

SS officer admits signing extermination order

For 65 years Bernhard Frank hid chilling past, including signing first order instructing Jewish genocide and close ties with Hitler, Himmler. Personal interviews with US Jew disguised as Neo-Nazi reveal dark secrets leading to upcoming lawsuit

BERLIN - He was a senior assistant to SS and Gestapo Commander Heinrich Himmler, and befriended Adolf Hitler as well. He was responsible for signing the first order of the Reich instructing the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, later turning into the Nazi systematic extermination machine.

No Justice?
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Full Story


But for the past 65 years since the end of World War II, Dr. Bernhard Frank managed to hide his direct involvement with the Jewish genocide, walking around freely in Germany and never being prosecuted for his actions.


Now, at the age of 97, he is being exposed for the first time by an American Jew who pretended to be a neo-Nazi.


In the upcoming days a lawsuit is expected to be filed in the United States against Frank, the most senior Nazi criminal still alive today. The suit, which will probably also call for his extradition, will be filed on behalf of US citizens whose families were murdered during WWII as part of the cruel order signed by Frank. The suit claims he is responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.


One of the prosecutors, a young 43-year-old American Jew by the name of Mark Gould, was actually the one who managed to expose Frank's past. In a special Yedioth Ahronoth interview Gould talks about how he was able to connect the puzzle pieces and uncover the chilling past of an old Nazi criminal.


Secrets Uncovered

Gould took advantage of his Aryan looks – tall, blond hair, blue eyes – in order to get close to the Nazi officer. He impersonated a neo-Nazi and met with Frank over the years, interviewing him for long hours at a time, sometimes documenting the meeting on video. This material is likely to serve as legal evidence against Frank during the trial.


Over time, the two developed a trusting relationship, and Frank began to confess to Gould about his SS past.


Frank was responsible for the Nazi language code used by the SS to disguise the 'special treatment' given to Jews during the German occupation of USSR territories. He was also one of the senior officers in charge of consolidating and distributing the racist Nazi ideology.


Frank was selected by Himmler to serve in a special commando unit responsible for SS operations in occupied USSR territories in the summer of 1941. As part of his new position, as Himmler's senior assistant, he was personally responsible for signing the July 28 1941 order called "Comando Stadt Order". This was the first actual SS order instructing to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews, including women and children, preceding the Commissar order. It was the first stage of the massive Jewish extermination process.


At the time, Frank was instructed by Himmler to keep an SS war journal, gathering all reports of SS activities, including the Jewish genocide.


Hiter's personal order

In 1943, Frank was appointed head of security at the SS base of Obersalzberg, the beloved mountain residence of Adolf Hitler located in southern Germany.


It was then that Frank was given a personal order by Hitler to kill Hermann Göring, a high ranking Nazi officer who announced his intention to take over the German leadership, due to Russia's closure of Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Frank refused to go through with it, but he did arrest him for treason.


Frank later signed Obersalzberg's surrender letter to the US, hoping he could prevent its complete destruction.


Over the years he wrote books about his service in the SS and gave television interviews, but always made sure to hide any information regarding his SS service under Himmler.


Loved by Himmler

During one of his long interviews with Gould, Frank said he and Himmler had a great relationship and that the latter loved him very much. Frank went on to say that the SS commander was a "good man."


Frank told Gould that when he was young he had Jewish friends, but that the political events at the time forced him to cut ties with them. He claimed that the Jews played a major role in German oppression and "dug their own graves." Frank added that the war was the outcome of decision made by governments, and the Nazis were only fulfilling their duties.


When the relationship between the two grew stronger, Gould confronted Frank with the extermination orders he had signed. After short hesitation, Frank admitted the signature on the documents was, in fact, his, but claimed he had only approved the linguistic content.


"He defended himself, saying the order was necessary, because Jews in those areas were involved in guerilla warfare against Germans," said Gould in an exclusive Yedioth Ahronoth interview. "In retrospect, we are talking about the first act of genocide by the SS. It was before the trains began making their way to extermination camps. It was also the first actual mass murder test run. The command wanted to see if SS soldiers would murder Jewish citizens, including women, children and elders. Frank was responsible for wording the orders in such a way that the troops on location, especially those who had undergone ideological training, could understand what do to. It was written in the spirit of Reinhard Heydrich (a high-ranking SS official, the first to be in charge of the 'Final Solution' operation)."


A rifle by his side

"Frank justified the orders, claiming they were given during the war, when there were a lot of partisan Jews, outlaws and robbers," added Gould. "When asked if the women and children murdered were also partisans and robbers, he shrugged his shoulders and didn't respond. I caught him lying a lot during the interviews. He admitted to some of the lies. Eventually he let me do anything I wanted with the materials. A rifle was by his side during many interviews, so he could have shot me if he wanted to. When I confronted him I feared what he might do to me or to himself. But my impression was that Frank wished to receive recognition for all the things he had done while serving in the SS. He hid it for so many decades. He was very proud of his actions and the fact that I was able to expose what he had done made him appreciate me. He gave me all the material which could convict him, including private journals, love letters and other documents he had written."


Gould arrived at Frank's house in Frankfurt last weekend to personally deliver the lawsuit against him. Frank's spouse attacked Gould and he needed to get medical attention at a nearby hospital.


"A civil lawsuit filed against Frank in the US will allow us to make sure a man doesn't get away with crimes he had committed and not dodge the punishment," said the prosecutor, Attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner. "Even after his death, the lawsuit will continue for his inheritance and his family will have to pay the price."

One of the most notable comments to this article is about the lawsuit :

"Why Civil in US and not Criminal Israel or Germany? "

Morlar

Article 4

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101207/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_nazi_suspect

US Jew who posed as neo-Nazi sues ex-SS officer
AP


By SAMANTHA GROSS and DAVID RISING, Associated Press Samantha Gross And David Rising, Associated Press – Tue Dec 7, 6:06 pm ET

NEW YORK – An American Jew who says he posed as a neo-Nazi sympathizer to document a 97-year-old German man's part in the Nazi genocide of millions has filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. court against the former SS officer.

Mark Gould, a data broker turned historical investigator, said Tuesday that he went undercover for eight years and filmed hundreds of hours of interviews with Bernhard Frank, who he said was an aide to SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

In a video shown at a Manhattan news conference Tuesday and subtitled in English, Frank appeared to acknowledge his signature was on a document ordering the killing of Jews in newly captured Soviet territories — a precursor to the wholesale killing to come.

But the Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, warned Tuesday the report might be overblown. He said there is evidence that Frank was a devoted Nazi, but that he has seen nothing to indicate he was involved in ordering that Jews be killed.

"He's attributed with far more responsibility and criminal guilt than he actually deserves," Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. "That's not to say he isn't a Nazi — even a zealous Nazi who still today identifies with the National Socialist movement — but there's a big difference between that and portraying him as one of the key operatives of the Nazi Holocaust."

Until now, only those former Nazis accused of committing the murders or directly giving orders have been prosecuted for genocide, said professor Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute. By targeting a Nazi whose role was similar to that of a communications director, Gould is seeking to establish a "precedent for culpability," said Smith, who reviewed much of Gould's research.

Smith argues such an approach makes sense since Frank "sat at the intersection between the ideology of National Socialism and the policy of genocide. ... Culpability lay with the ideology itself."

A linguist on Himmler's personal staff, Frank was not executing the orders he signed, but rather checking them "for correctness" and signing off on them. But he was more than a proofreader, Smith said: He ensured that the wording conformed to the ideology of the Nazi government and wielded the power to stop one of Himmler's orders if he so desired. From August to November of 1941, he was responsible for purging Himmler's war records of damning information about the killings of Jews and others, Smith said.

Frank "had full knowledge that his actions would result in genocide," Smith said. "He was not an architect but more a draftsman."

But Zuroff said that verifying that an order's language conformed with ideology was not the same as ordering deaths.

"There seems to be a very deliberate inflation of the criminal aspect of his activities," Zuroff said of Frank, who attained a rank that was the SS equivalent of a lieutenant colonel.

Frank has been best known as the SS officer who, in the final days of the war, arrested top Nazi Hermann Goering on Hitler's orders on accusations of treason. He has written two books in German on his experiences.

A call to a phone number listed under Frank's name went unanswered.

At the news conference, Gould explained that he came across Frank's name while researching Goering's capture by an American Jew and then befriended the older man. He interviewed him repeatedly, sometimes on video, and persuaded Frank to give him many of his papers.

Gould, who used money he had earned as an information data broker to finance his effort, said he used the ink and locations mentioned in Frank's love letters to his wife to help confirm where he was at times during the war and whether he signed off on certain orders.

The deception culminated in a confrontation at Frank's home in the countryside outside of Frankfurt, Germany, last week, when Gould revealed his agenda and presented the aging man with a copy of the American lawsuit, which was then filed in federal court in Washington on Monday evening. The lawsuit accuses Frank of genocide, torture, kidnapping and crimes against humanity and demands unspecified damages. Gould is a plaintiff, as is Burton Bernstein, a former writer for The New Yorker magazine who says his family also died as a result of Frank's actions.

Germany will not extradite one of its own citizens, but the lawsuit can continue without Frank's presence. Any finding against him could potentially lead to the freezing of his assets.

Gould plans to detail his experience undercover in a book to be published next year. He says he presented his findings to the German government to no avail. Few legal criminal options are available in Germany because of the statute of limitations.

Thomas Will, the deputy head of the special German prosecutors office that investigates Nazi-era crimes, said there has never been any evidence of a crime for which Frank could be prosecuted.

"There is no known concrete accusation against Mr. Frank," he said in a telephone interview from Ludwigsburg, Germany.

He added, however, that his office would be "very interested" if there was new evidence.

___

Rising reported from Berlin. Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

I think it is odd that this is a civil lawsuit yet there is much mention in the articles above concerning the alleged wealth of the instigator of the civil suit - with nothing much to back that up either.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

One of the most notable comments to this article is about the lawsuit :

"Why Civil in US and not Criminal Israel or Germany? "

Very interesting perspectives on the one subject- Not to unlike both sides of the argument on different threads.

The criminal Statute of law in Germany for Nazi crimes would only allow charges for Murder or accessory to murder in this case, which is not his perceived crime (depending on the article of course). Perhaps the same is the case in US? This could be why it is a civil case. I'm open to correction on this.

Morlar

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

...Perhaps the same is the case in US? This could be why it is a civil case. ...

You have answered a question with a question.

I think this seems a far more likely explanation :

Article 5
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/08/mark-gould-bernard-frank

Mark Gould, self-seeking Nazi-hunter

The fact that Bernhard Frank was a mere SS penpusher, not the Holocaust's prime mover, calls into question Gould's motives

Mark Gould, self-styled Nazi hunter Mark Gould during a press conference on 7 December 2010, in New York, to promote his documentary 'Last Interview', which features Bernhard Frank, 97, a German citizen who, Gould alleges, was a high-ranking Nazi officer who signed the 'start order' for the genocide of Europe's Jewish population in 1941. Photograph: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

Mark Gould is not the first person in recent years to adopt a false identity to try and track down Nazi war criminals and/or infiltrate neo-Nazi organisations. Israeli journalist Yaron Svoray posed as an Australian neo-Nazi in the early 1990s, and several years later, American private investigator Steve Rambam posed as a history professor (from a nonexistent university in Belize) to attempt to obtain incriminating confessions from Nazi war criminals residing in Canada. Both Svoray and Rambam were able to obtain information that ultimately helped produce practical results.

In Svoray's case, a second world war Nazi who was actively helping young neo-Nazis in Germany whom he identified, led to the apprehension in Argentina and prosecution in Italy of Gestapo officer Erich Priebke, who played a major role in the 24 March 1944 massacre of 335 hostages in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. Rambam's sting operation yielded the evidence that helped convict SS officer Julius Viel for the March 1945 murder of seven inmates of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In both cases, the investigators turned over their findings to the pertinent judicial authorities in order to facilitate justice, which was ultimately achieved.

That element is precisely what is missing in the story presented yesterday with much fanfare by Mark Gould at his press conference in New York. If Gould's real goal is to help bring important Holocaust perpetrators to justice, why didn't he ever turn to the German police or to the Zentrale Stelle, the central office for the clarification of Nazi crimes, which has played a critical role in the successful prosecution in the Federal Republic of thousands of Nazi war criminals?

In the press release distributed on Tuesday, Gould points to two factors to explain his course of action: the "cover-up of his [the suspected Nazi Bernhard Frank's] identity" and the "lack of criminal remedies". These claims, however, ring particularly hollow in view of the fact that Frank has lived openly in Germany under his own name for decades (and even published his memoirs five years ago), and Germany's impressive recent successes in prosecuting local Nazi criminals, which earned the country the highest grade possible in the Wiesenthal Centre's 2010 annual status report on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Another pertinent question in this regrad, is why Gould waited four long years to reveal Frank's existence. Given his advanced age of 97, such a delay would almost certainly jeopardise any chance of his being brought to trial, let alone being punished for his crimes.

A closer look at the allegations made by Gould regarding Frank's alleged role in Holocaust crimes, raises additional important questions concerning the credibilty of his project. According to Gould, Frank played a "pivotal role in the Nazis' extermination policy", a claim based primarily on the fact that his signature appears on a copy of an order dated 28 July 1941 issued by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, which orders the shooting of Jews in the Pripjet Marshes in Belarus. But the fact of the matter is, that Frank was a minor figure in this regard, who had absolutely no authority whatsoever to issue such an order or to effect its implementation in any way. His job was to check the wording of the document to make sure it was in accordance with Nazi ideology.

The Nazis who determined the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich were people like Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, and certainly not minor officials like Frank. In fact, Frank is not even mentioned a single time in any of the scholarly research on the units in which he served, such as Martin Cueppers' book Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsfuehrer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939-1945 (The Waffen-SS, the Command Staff of the Reichsfuehrer-SS and the Annihilation of the Jews 1939-1945) or in any of the scholarly accounts of the Holocaust in Belarus.

In other words, Gould has clearly exaggerated Frank's role and importance in the context of Holocaust history, apparently in order to enhance his chances of achieving fame and fortune. His choice of weapon in this case, a civil suit rather than a criminal prosecution, is clear evidence of such and, according to his press release, there is already a book on the way, as well as a documentary film.

I do not believe that we should begrudge genuine researchers devoted to tracking down Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice their share of the glory and financial compensation, but this project can only give Nazi-hunting a bad name, and possibly hamper and even undermine the last efforts to bring to justice those who bear genuine criminal responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust.

There is no doubt that Bernhard Frank is, to this day, a passionate and unrepentant Nazi, whose views and support for the Nazi regime are utterly repugnant, but when it comes to justice, the bottom line is: what were the crimes actually committed and what was the extent of criminal responsibility for a given individual? As exciting and newsworthy as Mark Gould's story may appear at first glance, he is not the hero he makes himself out to be.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

You have answered a question with a question.

I think this seems a far more likely explanation :

The answer being it is by choice.

The articles seem pretty certain in its cynicism about Gould but US civil courts often lets cases stretch out almost beyond credibility at times so is likely to prolong Mr. Gould's publicity.
Can a US civil case proceed without the defendents presence if they have assets in the country?

Mahatma coat

I suspect tht the Reason they're bringing a Civil Lawsuit in America as opposed to a Criminal Suit in Germany is because they Couldnt win a Criminal conviction in Germany or Israel, but going on Past results from American Lawsuits in this field they should get enough publicity for twhatever book is being written.

Few things that confuse me, is Gould Jewish?? 2 articles claim he is and one Says different, How come no one else investigated this guy?? how did he manage to live under his own name for so long in Germany, and even write a few books about being an SS Oficer, yet the only person to figure out how 'Évil' they guy was is this American Self Publicist witha chip on his shoulder

jonniebgood1

Prosecutions attempt to explain reason why its a civil case:

“It’s been over six decades since Bernhard Frank took a pivotal role in the Nazis’ extermination program, but given the cover-up of his identity and the lack of criminal remedies, this led to the decision to file a civil suit and to publish his crimes — at the very least, allowing the civilized world to recognize and condemn his deeds,” said Gould, whose Jewish relatives were among those murdered as a result of the orders signed by Frank.

The civil action charges Frank with genocide, torture, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity. The suit was brought by Gould along with Burton Bernstein, the brother of composer Leonard Bernstein, both of whose relatives were murdered during the Holocaust.

“We believe that this case is unprecedented and historic in that it represents the first time that heirs of those murdered by Nazi atrocities have brought civil suit against one of the perpetrators of the Holocaust,” stated Gould’s lead attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. “There have been criminal prosecutions, but no one has ever located a Nazi war criminal and brought a civil suit. For those long frustrated by the criminal justice system, this provides a bold new approach for survivors to take action, hunt war criminals themselves and prosecute them in civil court.”

Co-counsel Robert Tolchin agrees that, “in the history of Holocaust cases, institutions have been sued, but never a victim suing an individual perpetrator.”

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2010/12/11/the-incredible-sting-operation-that-exposed-a-high-ranking-nazi/

jonniebgood1

Mahatma coat wrote: »

Few things that confuse me, is Gould Jewish?? 2 articles claim he is and one Says different, How come no one else investigated this guy?

I think from some of the references, Gould was the adopted son of a Jewish survivor of WWII.

jonniebgood1

Video link http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=340

I think this video would more than likely make peoples sympathy lie with Mr. Frank.