25. 01. 12. - 13:00

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25. 01. 12. - 13:00

Dumb And Dumber

A survey in Germany - two days before the world remembers the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews - shows over a fifth of all young Germans do not know the name of Auschwitz or what happened there.

Twenty one percent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most infamous extermination camp of them all had not heard of it.  And almost half of all those canvassed in the Forsa research institute poll for Stern magazine said they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of them on its soil permanent memorials to the dead.

This Friday is the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945.  By the time the Russians got there, some 1.2 million of the six million victims of the Holocaust had been murdered there.

German government officials, camp survivors and Israeli politicians will be among those attending commemorations at the site of the camp built by the Nazis in occupied Poland during WW2.

The Stern survey showed that of people over 30, 95 percent had heard of Auschwitz and the crimes committed there.  But less than 70 percent could name the country it lies in.

Berlin, which is concerned about a rising tide of neo-Nazi crime and sentiment in Germany, is dismayed by the survey which underwrites the belief that ignorant youth in particular is vulnerable to far-rioght propaganda that the Holocaust is a myth.

German Herald

Silly Moos
Police asked callers to pull the udder one - when they rang in to report a cow waiting for a train in Steinfurt, Germany.

Copycat UK Rhino Horn Thieves
A gang who tried to steal valuable rhino horns from a British museum are suspected of pulling off a similar raid in Germany just days earlier.

Porn Film Flyer
German Philipp Schultz, 37, was badly hurt after forgetting he had taken down his trousers while watching a porn film at a cinema in the Hamburg red light district and toppling head first into the row in front when he went to leave.

Home Made Heli Death
Hobby pilot Gustel Schmidt, 61, was burned to death after he crashed a helicopter he had made himself during a flight near Stuttgart, Germany.

Monks Brew-ha-ha
An order of beer-making monks have won a legal brew-ha-ha with a local dairy over just who has the right to name their products after the town.

Policemans Bull
A runaway bullock has given a team of 12 policemen and hunters the slip after it broke out of its enclosure in Neuss, Germany, and fled into surrounding woodland.

Dignitas: Suicide Numbers Up
Suicide group Dignitas has revealed a 35 per cent increase in the number of people it helped to kill themselves last year.

Moo-ve Along
Traffic stopped moo-ving on a busy road in Feuchtwangen in Germany after 31 cows escaped after the lorry they were being transported in skidded and crashed off the road.

Mum Killer
Mentally ill German woman Marcela Rainer, 34, stabbed her 8-year-old son to death as he slept in the middle of the night at the family home and then calmly walked down the road to a petrol station where she called police to tell them what she had done.

Skull And Lost Bones
Charges have been filed against three men who allegedly stole the skull of a pirate dubbed Germany's answer to Robin Hood because he stole from the wealthy merchants of the time and freely distributed the money to the poor.