Nazi Schmazi

(Newser) - Ripping off a toy classic and tossing in al-Qaeda and Nazi themes just in time for Christmas might not seem like the best marketing strategy, reports the Sun, and sure enough, Jews and Muslims alike aren't happy. BrickArms has outfitted Lego figurines as al-Qaeda terrorists and Nazi soldiers, brandishing assault rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers. A Jewish leader complains the “distasteful” products add to tensions, while a Muslim leader calls them “absolutely disgusting.” More »

(Newser) - Germany's top Nazi hunter is seeking the extradition of a retired Ohio autoworker accused of war crimes, the Times of London reports. The investigator says he finally has conclusive evidence that Ukrainian-born former SS trooper John Demjanjuk, 88, was the man know as Ivan the Terrible, responsible for the deaths of more than 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland. More »

(Newser) - Federal agents have broken up a plot by two neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 88 black people, the AP reports. ATF agents said the pair planned to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school in a murder spree that was to begin in Tennessee, with Obama as its final target. More »

(Newser) - A handful of determined librarians are trying to reunite books stolen by the Nazis with their owners or their families, Der Spiegel reports. Experts believe at least a million such books are still on the shelves of libraries across Germany. Many carry a 'J' inscribed by Nazi-era librarians to indicate they were seized from the collections of Jews sent to extermination camps. More »

(Newser) - French authorities are investigating the sale of T-shirts bearing anti-Semitic slogans that date to 1940, the BBC reports. The shirts carry the slogan "Jews not allowed in this park" in German and Polish, reproduced from signs posted in Lodz, Poland, during World War II. Almost all of Lodz's Jews perished in the Holocaust. More »

(Newser) - Celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Drew Pinksy's armchair diagnosis of Tom Cruise in Playboy has riled up Cruise’s lawyer, who compares the doc to a Nazi, Radar reports. The host of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew said Cruise’s attraction to the “cultish kind of environment” of Scientology is “a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood—maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect." More »

(Newser) - Neo-Nazis in Germany pulled a fast one on the national postal service by tricking the agency into making stamps featuring one of Hitler’s senior deputies, der Spiegel reports. The skinheads used a Deutsche Post service that allows people to upload images for custom stamps online to create about 20 with images of Rudolph Hess. "The Hess stamp is out there," gloated one magazine. Deutsche Post says it's reviewing its policies. More »

(Newser) - Politicians just can’t stop invoking Hitler to make their points, complains Anne Applebaum on Slate. President Bush did it last week, saying negotiating with “terrorists and radicals” was tantamount to 1930s Nazi appeasement. It was a ridiculous statement, “giving tactical choices a phony moral grounding.” But that’s par for the course for such analogies, which never fail to cheapen debate. More »

(Newser) - A British spy is out of a job following his admission that his wife was one of the five prostitutes who participated in Max Mosley's Nazi-themed orgy, reports the Times of London. Worse yet, the wife was purportedly behind the camera, though MI5 yesterday denied Mosley's accusation that it set up the orgy as a sting. But the spy's link is a messy twist, since he could have been subject to blackmail. More »

(Newser) - There's been an outcry from the Dems over President Bush's "appeasement" comments but the shouting was loudest on last night's Hardball , the Huffington Post reports. Radio host Kevin James sang the praises of Bush's remarks comparing Barack Obama's planned outreach to Iran to Nazi appeasement. But after being asked repeatedly by host Chris Matthews, James couldn't come up with exactly what that moment in Hitler history involved. More »

(Newser) - He didn't name names, but he didn't need to. President Bush used an appearance before Israel’s Knesset today to accuse Barack Obama of the “foolish delusion” that “we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals.” In comments aimed at Obama’s support among American Jews, CNN notes, the president compared the Democrat to Hitler appeasers, saying, "We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." More »

(Newser) - In jail-cell notes released by his lawyer, Josef Fritzl goes to bizarre lengths to defend the rape and imprisonment of his daughter, citing his Nazi upbringing for instilling “a high regard for decency and uprightness,” and a need to save the 18-year-old Elisabeth from drinking and dissipation. “She was going out to seedy bars and would spend whole nights there drinking and smoking," he wrote. "I only tried to rescue her from that life." More »

(Newser) - A doctor at barbaric Mauthausen concentration camp heads the list of the 10 most-wanted Nazis sought by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, AP reports. Aribert Heim, 93, is believed to be living in South America, and has a $485,000 reward on his head. One witness recalled how the physician-butcher decapitated a teenage Jewish athlete and saved his skull for display because of his perfect teeth. More »

(Newser) - Adolf Hitler dolls—with arms that move to make the infamous "sieg heil" salute—will soon be on sale in the Ukraine, the BBC reports. The Barbie-sized figure, which even comes with a change of outfits, is certain to spark an outcry in the country where the Nazis killed 3 million people and positive depictions of the Nazi regime are banned. Government critics blame its policies for a chilling rise in neo-Nazism. More »

(Newser) - Not for the first time, people are calling for Bill Maher's head—in this case for taking pot shots at Pope Benedict XVI on his HBO show. "If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader,"  Maher said. "If you have a billion, they call you 'pope.'" He also made a joke about the pontiff's membership in the Hitler Youth group as a child. More »

(Newser) - Formula One leader Max Mosely is being pressured to quit his post after a newspaper obtained video of the 67-year-old Brit in a Nazi-themed sex orgy with five prostitutes. The Oxford-educated multi-millionaire, whose father was a friend of Adolf Hitler, spoke German as he beat hookers dressed as concentration camp prisoners and let a uniformed dominatrix interrogate him, reports the Times of London. More »