Hitler and Nazi tribute built in Walworth Country
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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."
