the times | Saturday August 1 2020 1GM 43
Wo r l d
Journalists and news outlets are under
Serbian government investigation in
what critics say is an attempt to silence
the last remnants of the free media.
Twenty individuals and 37 organisa-
tions face accusations of money laun-
dering and terrorist financing. Both
Serbia’s journalism unions, several
Network, which revealed that Serbia’s
official death figures were far below the
true numbers, is one of the groups on
the list.
President Vucic has presided over
curbs on the press since he became
prime minister in 2014. Most news
outlets are owned by businessmen loyal
to him.
Mr Vucic, 50, denied that the investi-
gation targeted his opponents. He
added: “But it is always about politics.Serbia
Hannah Lucinda Smith Istanbul
Milivoje Pantovic Belgrade
The French feminist movement is split
over the rise of an activist who advo-
cates lesbianism and warns that all men
are potential predators.
Alice Coffin, 42, is under police pro-
tection, having become the target of
online insults and death and rape
threats after her election in June as a
councillor for the Europe Ecology
Green Party in Paris.
She is facing anger from other femi-
nists. Some accuse her of importing a
man-hating form of feminism that has
long been eschewed in France.
Ms Coffin, a lecturer in journalism at
Paris University, was largely unknown
outside LGBT circles before her elect-
ion, but sprang to prominence after a
fallout with Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist
mayor, who in theory was her ally. Ms
Coffin had participated in a feminist
protest against the deputy mayor,
Christophe Girard, a leftwinger and the
council’s head of culture, who had been
questioned by police over his ties to
Gabriel Matzneff, a paedophile author.
Ms Hidalgo said that she was “sick-
ened” by the protests and would sue
those responsible. Mr Girard insisted
he had committed no crime and that
Matzneff was only a vague acquaint-
ance, but resigned anyway. He was
given a standing ovation at a council
meeting that was interrupted by Ms
Coffin shouting “disgrace, disgrace, dis-
grace”. She was criticised by right-wing
factions of the council, but also by the
left, which Le Figaro said had been
plunged by Ms Coffin into an “internal
war of rare violence”.
Ms Coffin, who is to publish a book
called The Genius of Lesbians this
autumn, was unruffled. “When a femi-
nist is accused of going over the top, it
shows she’s on the right path,” she said.Serbia in new clampdown on press and free speech
investigative collectives and the
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
are under investigation.
The organisations, many funded by
donations from the European Union
and philanthropic bodies, will not be
able to get bank credit or apply for fund-
ing while the investigations continue.
Last month security services violent-
ly quashed protests against the govern-
ment’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
The Balkan Investigative ReportingThey scream that they are in jeopardy
to get more money from donors. That
has been going on for 30 years.”
Branko Cecen, the director of the
Centre for Investigative Journalism,
who is on the list, said that “nothing sig-
nificant on this scale happens in Serbia
without the blessing of the president”.
Zeljko Radovanovic, of the finance
ministry, told Kurir, a pro-government
tabloid, that the list was incomplete but
refused to say which groups were on it.‘Man-hater’
splits French
feminists
France
Adam Sage ParisFormer Polish prisoners helped the
chief guard at the women’s concentra-
tion camps at Ravensbrück and
Auschwitz to evade the death sentence
after the war, according to research.
Johanna Langefeld, who took part in
the selection of people to be killed in gas
chambers and once demonstrated
physical beatings to Heinrich Himmler,
was regarded by Polish female inmates
as “friendly” and “humane”.
Survivors interviewed for a docu-
mentary on German television this
week described her as a “mature haus-
frau” with a “benevolent demeanour”
who would spare them long roll calls in
the cold and prevented some killings.
“As regards guards, there were bad
ones, worse ones and the sadists, the
worst. Langefeld was no angel but she
doubtless behaved differently in com-
parison with the others,” said Johanna
Penson, 99, who survived Ravensbrück
and was personal assistant to Lech
Walesa, the former Polish president. “I
had no doubt that we should help her
because even if she did just a little good
she was hugely different from the
others.”
Gerburg Rohde-Dahl, the film-mak-
er, said: “What attracted me to this story
was the ambivalence. Even though she
was a fervent antisemite and Nazi and
took part in deportations, she had a cer-Camp survivors helped Nazi guard
avoid death penalty for atrocities
tain sympathy for Poles. She only ever
helped Poles. She never helped Jews.”
Polish resistance fighters were
rounded up by the Nazis and taken to
the Ravensbrück camp with death
sentences hanging over them.
After the war Langefeld was arrested
and handed over to the Polish author-
ities. She was taken to Montelupich
prison in Krakow to be tried for war
crimes. Death by hanging was the most
likely outcome but former prisoners
wrote to the court in her defence.
Survivors said that in 1946 five of
them helped Langefeld to escape by ar-
ranging for guards to allow her to flee
while she cleaned the homes of prison
staff in a building outside the jail.
She was taken in by nuns and then
spent years living with a Polish woman,
performing household duties. The sur-
vivors vowed to remain silent about the
circumstances of her escape to avoid
prosecution and to protect her. None of
the women who helped her flee is alive.
She returned to Germany in 1957 and
worked in Augsburg as a sales assistant.
She died in 1974, aged 74, having never
been prosecuted by the Germans, who
knew who she was. In Germany shemet a former prisoner who had been
her secretary at Ravensbrück and
described her as a “broken person
suppressed by guilt” who told her that
she would like to go to jail “for at least
two years to atone for all the crimes”.
She did not turn herself in.
Langefeld joined the Nazi party in
1937 and the next year applied to the
guard unit at Lichtenburg camp, where
she rose through the ranks before mov-
ing to Ravensbrück, north of Berlin, as
head guard. She was unmarried but had
a son who lived with her in a spacious
staff house in an idyllic setting by a lake.
Guards enjoyed the lifestyle there,
close to the countryside and away from
Allied bombing raids, and their children
swam in the lake, not far from the camp
where tens of thousands of women
were murdered or died of malnutrition,
disease or experiments.
“One guard told me her time here
was the best time of her life,” Inse Es-
chebach, of the Ravensbrück memorial
site, said. “They were evidently con-
vinced they were doing the right thing
and I think Frau Langefeld is a good
example. She wanted to run a really
good concentration camp for women.”Poland
David Crossland Berlin
Johanna Langefeld helped Poles in
Ravensbrück camp but never JewsM
auro Morandi
left his
northern Italian
home to seek
the life of his
dreams in Polynesia three
decades ago. Instead he
found it a short boat ride
away, on an island off the
coast of Sardinia (Philip
Willan writes).
He has stayed on Budelli
ever since, acting as a
volunteer guardian for anoutcrop famous for its pink
sand and expansive beaches.
Thirty-one years later Mr
Morandi, 81, faces eviction as
the local authorities plan to
turn his home, a Second
World War radio station, into
a nature observatory.
Mr Morandi, a retired PE
teacher known as the Italian
Robinson Crusoe, has no
desire to return to Modena
and play cards in the bar
with other pensioners.
He arrived in a catamaran
in 1989 and decided to stay
after discovering that the
resident caretaker was about
to retire. He has since lived
alone, enjoying the nature
and trying to keep badly
behaved visitors at bay. Rulesprohibit people from walking
on the sand and swimming.
Access is allowed for a
limited number of visitors to
a path behind the beach.“I’m desperate, I want to
stay here,” Mr Morandi said.
“I feel it is mine, not in the
sense of owning it, but as if it
was part of me. I have
managed to keep the tourists
under control and I don’t
mind the solitude, I have
always sought it.”Budelli is one of seven tiny
islands in the La Maddalena
national park.
Mr Morandi enjoys the
company of park employees
between 11am and 3pm and
then has the island to
himself. “At night I immerse
myself in the silence, I lookat the sky and I’m in the
company of stars,” he said.
Fabrizio Fonnesu,
president of the national
park, said that no date had
been set for Mr Morandi’s
eviction but he would have to
leave when work began on
the house.For 31 years Mauro Morandi has
taken care of Budelli off Sardinia
and kept unruly visitors in checkItaly’s Crusoe
must desert
his island
MAURO MORANDI