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GoPackGo
06-14-2006, 02:26 PM
http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/jun06/nazi061406.jpg
Just when you think you've seen it all, What a trip.......


http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=435393

Shrine to Hitler unnerves community
Former SS officer says Führer misunderstood
By JENNIE TUNKIEICZ
jtunkieicz@journalsentinel.com
Posted: June 13, 2006
Sugar Creek - Ted Junker seems like an ordinary, 87-year-old retired farmer until he starts to talk about his passion: Adolf Hitler.

Ted Junker says he spent $200,000 building a memorial to Adolf Hitler next to his home near Elkhorn. He plans to open it to the public June 25.

Junker, who says was an SS officer during World War II, believes Hitler was a great leader who was just misunderstood, so he built a memorial to the Führer next to Junker's home near Millard in Walworth County.

It's a beautiful location for a memorial to a man who most believe started World War II, in which 50 million people died, including more than 6 million Jewish people in the Holocaust - that's all part of what Junker disputes as bunk.

The memorial is a concrete structure tucked into the side of a tree-lined hill that overlooks a pond filled with geese and swans. Junker said he paid $200,000 to build the memorial.

Now that he has built it, he wants people to come. He is planning a grand opening at 11 a.m. June 25.

Junker said his mission is to clear up what he believes are inaccuracies in the teachings about World War II and Hitler's legacy.

With his still strong German accent, Junker said: "I like the U.S. I can't understand why people don't know the truth. This is for understanding, not hate."

But Junker's passion has been met with shock, not only in his own community, but also from those knowledgeable about WWII history and people in the Jewish community.

"I'd say he's full of bull," said Father John Donnelly, professor of history at Marquette University. Donnelly, who said WWII history had been his hobby since he was a child, said Junker might just be looking for a bit of redemption.

"I'm sure he looks back and wants to say that he was not serving a super evil man, the most evil man in (the 20th century)," Donnelly said. "He's looking for some kind of personal sense of redemption, and I don't think he can be taken seriously at all."

Kathy Heilbronner, assistant director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, said Junker is a classic Holocaust denier.

"In making these assertions, he's deliberately choosing to ignore the overwhelming volume of everything that supports every aspect of the Holocaust," Heilbronner said.

Molly Dubin, director of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center in Milwaukee, said people such as Junker make it more important that educational resources continue to exist.

"It's imperative that the Holocaust Center continues to do its work in terms of disseminating information about the Shoah, reaching out to young people to give them the facts about what did occur, and giving them information on how to address people like this when issues do arrive to speak to it accurate and appropriately," Dubin said.

Junker was born in Germany and lived in Romania when Hitler was gaining power. Junker's father, a farmer, spoke highly of Hitler and that left an impression on Junker. He volunteered to join the German Waffen SS, in 1940 and he served in Russia, where he said he and his countrymen worked to free Russians from communism.

Because Junker didn't serve in a concentration camp, he, like other former German soldiers, could come to the U.S.Junker said his family had lost their home and possessions after the war - he came to the U.S. in 1955. He first worked as a janitor in Chicago but longed for his own farm. He picked Walworth County for its beauty and purchased 120 acres there 43 years ago. He farmed and also ran a summer camp for German children living in Chicago, and later operated a community-based residential facility there. He and his late wife built a home a mile from the road down a mile-long tractor road, which is where his Hitler memorial is also located.

Plenty of opposition
Most of Junker's four children are opposed to his Hitler memorial, he said. So are people in the town.

"He's just a mixed up old man," Sugar Creek Town Chairman Loren Waite said.

Waite said Junker told town and county officials that he was going to build a tractor shed, not a memorial to Hitler, and he has not applied for a conditional-use permit for such a venture.

Michael Cotter, director of land use and resource management, and also deputy corporation counsel for Walworth County, said Junker had proposed an elaborate Hitler memorial and information center in 2001. That proposal called for 20 rooms, a 300-seat meeting hall and a radio station. Cotter visited Junker's center on Monday for the first time.

"There is not much there," he said. "I was expecting to see Lugers, uniforms, helmets and pictures - a museum. I don't think it's a museum, but I don't think it's a storage shed, either."

Cotter said Junker does not have the appropriate permits to open his shrine to the public, but the county does not have enough information to shut it down before it opens.

"We can't say there is a Nazi flag and shut it down because of that," Cotter said.

Waite said he is concerned about the notoriety Junker's memorial is bringing to the town.

"As long as it was just on his back 40, that was one thing, but now that he's gone public, we're afraid of what's going to happen here," Waite said. "We're afraid for Mr. Junker and the community. There are skinheads and other people in the world who still uphold what Hitler did, and this might bring them out of the woodwork. The more publicity this gets, the worse it gets. We've got bad people in the world, a world full of them."

Deputy Nutz
06-14-2006, 03:02 PM
So what is everyone doing on June 25th?

Road trip anyone? Great people watching.

RashanGary
06-14-2006, 03:21 PM
Hitler did do some wonderful things. According to the history books, he did some horrible things too.

mraynrand
06-14-2006, 03:27 PM
Goddamn it! He's having his grand opening on the same day as My grand opening for my Stalin Tribute Memorial! What were the chances.


Stalin wasn't evil, just misunderstood by the 750,000 he had put to death on his orders and the other 30-50 million who died from his policies. I'm just trying to 'set the record straight.'

Sincerely,

Bill Pot (son of Pol)

Anti-Polar Bear
06-14-2006, 03:31 PM
I am thinking about starting a memorial on the Wu Tang Clan. I am no chinese expert but to my knowedge, the Wu Tang Clan philosophy was this: kill or be killed.

They are also good at rap music.

Joemailman
06-14-2006, 04:46 PM
Hitler did do some wonderful things. According to the history books, he did some horrible things too.

Nick,

If you think there is any sort of balance between good and bad with Hitler, you have some serious learning to do. Reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich would be a good place to start.

Tony Oday
06-14-2006, 05:02 PM
Take out the fact that he was a looney and slaughtered over 6million Jews and other undesirables(sp?) he was in fact a great orater and leader. He brought a debunked country back to world prominance and a World Power. He built the strongest military of his time and conquered most of Europe.

If he would have stopped there, bringing his country back, building the military and conquering Europe, he would be remembered as a strong military leader.

HOWEVER he was a looney that instead of harnessing the might of his jewish population made them to be the boogey man when he could have made say the Russians the boogey man with the same effect.

He was an insane and ruthless leader that lost...


Disclamer: I in no way support what Hitler did but he was a strong leader to a nation that needed it. He just went too far.

the_idle_threat
06-14-2006, 07:43 PM
History is written by the winners, so I understand the skepticism of some who might distrust the thoroughly negative protrayal he gets in the history books.

However, it takes little more than a glance at his own writings to conclude that Hitler used fearmongering and hate to galvanize a national movement and place himself in power. The Holocaust was not an afterthought in his grand plan ... it was the logical conclusion. He was not a great leader who "went to far" ... rather, he was a demagogue who took advantage of a beaten-down country.

And I say this as a person of German heritage.

Tarlam!
06-19-2006, 12:43 AM
Hitler did do some wonderful things. According to the history books, he did some horrible things too.

Not sure if there is any sarcasm in this, but I hope there is.

Deputy Nutz
06-19-2006, 09:02 AM
Disclamer: I in no way support what Hitler did but he was a strong leader to a nation that needed it. He just went too far.


Hold on, I need a judges ruling,

Yep, just what I thought, Understatement of the year!

Congrats Tony!!!

Tony Oday
06-19-2006, 11:49 AM
LOL I agree that was an understatement of the year. He was a psycopathic nut case that was tempered in the early stages of his career by men that actually were good leaders, IE Rommel and Durnitz. But Hitler was a psycho!

LaFours
06-19-2006, 01:45 PM
Hitler did do some wonderful things. According to the history books, he did some horrible things too.

Not sure if there is any sarcasm in this, but I hope there is.

Here's some sarcasm for you on positive impacts Hitler made to society:

His Third Reich did provide Leni Riefenstahl with the medium she needed to kickstart her career as a documentary filmmaker (or was it propoganda? I can't remember which one).