Roger Vikstr / EPA

People gather at a protest against police violence and vandalism in Husby, northern Stockholm, Sweden, on May 22.

STOCKHOLM -- Hundreds of youths have torched cars and attacked police in four nights of riots in immigrant suburbs of Sweden's capital, shocking a country that dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to solve youth unemployment and resentment among asylum seekers.

Violence spread from the north to the south of the city on Wednesday as groups of youths pushed through Stockholm's suburbs casting stones, breaking windows and setting cars alight. Police in the southern Swedish city of Malmo said two cars had been set ablaze.

Local media said a police station office was set on fire in the southern suburb of Rågsved, where several people were also detained. No one was hurt and the fire was quickly put out.

The attackers have awaited nightfall before setting out, defying a call for calm from the country's prime minister and damaging stores, schools, a police station and an arts and crafts center in the four days of violence.

"I think there is a feeling that we need to be in more places tonight," said Towe Hagg, spokeswoman for Stockholm police. One police officer was injured in the latest attacks and five people were arrested for attempted arson.

Selcuk Ceken, who works at a local youth activity center in Hagsatra, said between 40 and 50 youths threw stones at police and smashed windows, then ran off in different directions. He noted the people were in their 20s and seemed well organized.

"It's difficult to say why they're doing this," he said. "Maybe it's anger at the law and order forces, maybe it's anger at their own personal situation, such as unemployment or having nowhere to live."

The riots appear to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby this month, which prompted accusations of police brutality. The riots then spread from Husby to other poor Stockholm suburbs.

"We see a society that is becoming increasingly divided and where the gaps, both socially and economically, are becoming larger," said Rami Al-khamisi, co-founder of Megafonen, a group that works for social change in the suburbs.

"And the people out here are being hit the hardest ... We have institutional racism."

The riots were less severe than those of the past two summers in Britain and France but provided a reminder that even in places less ravaged by the financial crisis than Greece or Spain, state belt-tightening is toughest on the poor, especially immigrants.

"The reason is very simple. Unemployment, the housing situation, disrespect from police," said Rouzbeh Djalaie, editor of the local Norra Sidan newspaper, which covers Husby. "It just takes something to start a riot, and that was the shooting."

Djalaie said youths were often stopped by police in the streets for unnecessary identity checks. During the riots, he said some police called local youths "apes."

The television pictures of blazing cars come as a jolt to a country proud of its reputation for social justice as well as its hospitality toward refugees from war and repression.

"I understand why many people who live in these suburbs and in Husby are worried, upset, angry and concerned," said Justice Minister Beatrice Ask. "Social exclusion is a very serious cause of many problems, we understand that."

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Stockholm has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, successive governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

Some 15 percent of the population are foreign-born, and unemployment among these stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Youth unemployment in Husby, at 6 percent, is twice the overall average across the capital.

Related:

Sweden stunned by third night of rioting

Fabrizio Giovannozzi / AP, file

The Duomo in Florence is the fifth largest in Europe.

ROME, Italy - An American tourist underwent emergency surgery after being stabbed in the Italian city of Florence on Tuesday, a hospital doctor and media reports said.

The 68-year-old was in front of the city’s famed Duomo cathedral listening to a street musician with his wife when someone tried to mug him and he resisted, according to a report by Italian news agency, ANSA.

The report said he suffered knife wounds to a kidney and a lung.

Armando Sarti, head of the emergency care department at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, said by phone on Wednesday that the man was recovering after an operation.

“The patient underwent surgery overnight and his condition has now improved and ... seems to be stable, although it is too early to release him from intensive care,” he said.

A hospital spokesman said the man's kidney was removed during surgery.

Local media reports in Florence said a 37-year-old Italian man from Bari was arrested shortly after the mugging and remained in custody, although this could not immediately be confirmed with police.

• More NBC News coverage of Italy

Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP - Getty Images

Firemen extinguish a burning car in Kista, Stockholm after riots on Tuesday night.

STOCKHOLM - Hundreds of youths set fire to cars and attacked police and rescue services in suburbs of Stockholm Tuesday night in Sweden's worst disorder in years.

A police station in the Jakobsberg area in the northwest of the city was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts center was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

It was the third night of unrest, mainly in suburbs where many immigrants live.

The riots, in one of Europe's richest capitals, have shocked a country that prides itself on a reputation for social justice, and fuelled a debate about how Sweden is coping with both youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

"We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals," Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said on Wednesday.

He said eight people had been arrested on Tuesday night, but there were no reports of injuries.

The riots appear to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby this month, which prompted accusations of police brutality.

"Everyone must pitch in to restore calm - parents, adults," Reinfeldt told reporters on Tuesday.

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Sweden has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

"We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future," Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

An anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting unease about immigrants among many voters.

Some 15 percent of the population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region. Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Among 44 industrialized countries, Sweden ranked fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures. 

Andreas Solaro / AFP - Getty Images

Italian businessman Marcello De Finizio stands on the dome of St Peter's basilica to protest against austerity measures on May 21, 2013 at the Vatican.

A man climbed onto a ledge on the dome of St Peter's Basilica on Monday and unfurled a banner protesting against a "political horror show," an apparent reference to Italy's embattled coalition struggling with recession and high unemployment.

Identified by police as Marcello Di Finizio, the man unfurled a white banner reading "Stop this massacre!" in English, scrawled in black and red ink, with "Help us Pope Francis" in Italian.

Di Finizio, who was still on the ledge on Tuesday, has staged similar protests in the past. Last October he stayed overnight on the dome with a banner criticizing multinationals, Europe, and former Prime Minister Mario Monti. Read the full story.

Filippo Monteforte / AFP - Getty Images

AFP - Getty Images

Police investigators work at a blast site outside a building used by court officials in central Makhachkala, Russia, on Monday. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured in twin car-bomb blasts.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia - Two car bombs killed at least two people on Monday in Dagestan, a turbulent province in Russia's North Caucasus region where armed groups are waging an Islamist insurgency. 

Car bombs, suicide bombings and firefights are common in Dagestan, at the centre of an insurgency rooted in two post-Soviet wars against separatist rebels in neighbouring Chechnya. 

Investigators initially said eight people had been killed by the successive blasts in the provincial capital Makhachkala, but law enforcement officials later put the death toll at two and said more than 20 people had been wounded.

Both explosions were near the headquarters of the court bailiffs' service and appeared to have been detonated by remote control, said the federal Investigative Committee, a Russian state agency.

Twisted wreckage of a car could be seen near the building, which was cordoned off by police.

The main suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in the United States, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lived in Dagestan with his family about a decade ago and visited the region last year.

The visit by Tsarnaev, who was shot dead by U.S. police after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded 264 others, is being scrutinised by U.S. investigators for signs of ties with insurgents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered law enforcement authorities to ensure insurgents do not attack the 2014 Winter Olympics next February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which is close to the North Caucasus.

Most of the wounded and the two dead were caught by the second of Monday's explosions, a few minutes after the first, the investigators said.

Insurgents in the North Caucasus have often sought to increase casualties by setting off an initial blast to attract law enforcement officers and then detonating a second bomb.

Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has become the most violent province in the North Caucasus, where insurgents say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state out of southern Russia.

At least 405 people were killed in Dagestan in violence linked to the insurgency last year, according to the Caucasian Knot website, which tracks developments in the region.

Putin launched the second war in Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 and likes to take credit for preventing the region from splitting from Russia. But his 13 years in power have been marred by deadly attacks claimed by or blamed on the insurgents.

Related: 

• Makhachkala: Dusty Russian city where Boston suspect felt he 'belonged'
• Video: Former Ambassador: We need to focus on the terrorist groups functioning in Dagestan
• Boston bombing suspects' father 'a good man,' neighbors in Dagestan say

This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 9:06 AM EDT

BERLIN – Germans are world-famous for their efficiency, a stereotype both mocked and admired by their economically ailing European neighbors.

But this hard-won reputation is now under threat after a catalog of calamities affecting major construction projects.

Perhaps worst of all is what should already be the main airport for the capital, Berlin, which has been dubbed the “eternal” construction site by the U.K.-based Economist magazine and a “fiasco” by French newspaper Le Figaro.

Udo Steffens, president of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, noted sadly that the international press had been asking, “What is it about Germany, this very efficient and effective economic power, are they not able to build a simple airport?"

It was supposed to open in October 2011 but is now not expected to be finished until 2014 at the earliest. Some staff who were hired for the opening have already been laid off.

Markus Schreiber / AP

A fence shields the main terminal of the unfinished Willy Brandt Airport near Berlin. It was supposed to have opened in late 2011 but now isn't expected to open until at least 2014 -- the cost having doubled to nearly $6 billion.

Then there’s Hamburg’s billion-dollar concert hall, ten times over budget and expected to open seven years late in 2017.

And in Stuttgart, angry protests over the demolition of the old train station to make way for a new one put officials into a costly spin.

They went back to the planning table, but after much discussion came back with a final design that was more expensive and much the same, according to a planning expert.

Germans are starting to worry they are becoming something of a laughingstock, with the airport’s woes the chief embarrassment.

"The entire republic, if not the entire world, is joking about the Berlin airport delay," said Ramona Pop, a Green Party leader in Berlin.

The cost of the Willy Brandt Airport -- named after the former German chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- has more than doubled to nearly $6 billion. The head of Brandt’s foundation has complained that the great man’s name “shouldn't be associated with the planning errors.”

It was supposed to have opened in late 2011 to cater for 30 million passengers a year, but today its visitors are mostly construction inspectors and safety experts.

The new terminal is up and the runway is being used by budget airlines from nearby Schönefeld Airport.

However, the fire protection system was installed incorrectly and there has been concern about an apparent shortage of check-in counters.

Additionally, a court has questioned the safety of future flight routes that pass over a nuclear reactor, while another ruled the "noise protection is insufficient."

The delays are hurting the 150 shops and restaurants that were supposed to open in the terminal.

"Our store interior, worth approximately $70,000, is fully in place at the terminal and collecting dust," said Markus Heckhausen, general manager of lifestyle store Ampelmann.

"We constantly renew our designs and in three to four years, the store furniture will probably be out of date," he added.

Gregor Klaessig invested $550,000 in his Fish&Chips restaurant, hired staff and purchased kitchenware. With no income in sight, the staff had to be laid off.

"I am shocked and have lost all faith in politicians," he said.

As for the concert hall, city officials in 2001 confidently predicted they would build the Elbe Philharmonic by 2010 at a cost of about $105 million.

Euroluftbild / EPA

The illuminated terminal of the Willy Brandt Airport in October 2012. Managers are reportedly spending $6,000 per day on electricity because they are unable to turn off the lights at the facility.

After a series of planning and construction failures, it has turned into a financial sinkhole with an estimated bill of more than $1 billion and a new opening date of 2017.

Stuttgart’s new train station, meanwhile, was supposed to be a major new transportation hub for southwestern Germany.

But when demolition work began on the old station in the fall of 2010, more than 50,000 people demonstrated against the project and dozens were injured when police used water cannons to break up the protest.

Officials’ efforts to handle the uproar were hardly a model of efficiency, according to one expert.

"If you look at what happened in Stuttgart, there was a huge round of mediation and participation, but the final result was the same project with a few modifications and even more expensive than it was before," said Professor Oliver Ibert, a planning expert at Free University Berlin.

But Ibert said the current furor would eventually die down.

"When the airport is open … I'm pretty sure the public discussion will be much calmer than it is today," he said.

After all, few remember that the beautiful Neuschwanstein Castle -- the model for Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Park, California -- actually bankrupted Bavaria’s King Ludwig II in 1884.

It attracts some 1.3 million visitors a year, although they soon discover it was never actually finished and only a few rooms are decorated.

Related:

Full Germany coverage from NBC News

PARIS -- French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings.

France's official journal announced on Saturday the bill had become law after the Constitutional Council gave it the go-ahead on Friday.

The bill, a campaign pledge by the Socialist president, has been for months hotly contested by many conservatives in France, where allowing gay marriage is one of the biggest social reforms since abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

Opponents have staged huge and often violent demonstrations against the bill and have called yet another protest on May 26. The leader of opposition to gay marriage, a political activist and humorist who goes under the name of Frigide Barjot, has said the protest would draw millions into the streets.

Montpellier mayor Helene Mandroux, who is due to celebrate France's first gay marriage in the southern city on May 29, said the law marked a major social advance.

"Love has won out over hate," she said, while voicing concerns the first gay wedding could attract violent protests.

France, a predominantly Catholic country, follows 13 others including Canada, Denmark, Sweden and most recently Uruguay and New Zealand in allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed. In the United States, Washington D.C. and 12 states have legalized same-sex marriage.

Unlike former president Francois Mitterrand's abolition of the death penalty, which most French people opposed at the time, polls showed more than half the country backed gay marriage.

Nonetheless, with Hollande's popularity ratings at record lows a year into office, the law has proved costly for the president with critics saying it has distracted his attention from reviving the recession-hit economy.

After lawmakers adopted the bill in late April, opponents had sought to scupper it with a last-ditch appeal to the Constitutional Council.

Related stories:

• France legalizes gay marriage despite angry protests
• New Zealand becomes 13th country to legalize gay marriage
• Protesters in France: Gay marriage would hurt children

BERLIN – It is possibly the German capital’s most visible new tourist attraction, but the opening of the bright pink Barbie Dreamhouse Experience was picketed Thursday by women’s groups protesting the “cliché of the female role in society.”

Only a stone's throw from Berlin’s fashionable Alexanderplatz shopping district, a water fountain in the shape of a huge pink high-heeled shoe now welcomes Barbie fans into a whole world of glittery, cerise-colored fun.

But while the city’s toy stores are filled with Barbie merchandise adorned with the slogan “Pink Rocks”, the protest includes a campaign called “Pinkstinks” that objects to “marketing strategies that allocate a limited gender role to young girls.”

The epicenter of doll devotion - only the second of its kind worldwide, after a similar attraction opened earlier this month in Florida -- is an interactive experience for its (mostly) young customers.

Organizers describe it as a “seemingly endless walk-in closet”, a life-size replica of Barbie's fictional Malibu home.

“It provides a completely new insight into the living interior and lifestyle of the most famous doll in the world,” said Christoph Rahofer,  of marketing company EMS which obtained the rights to the attraction from US manufacturer Mattel.

Slideshow: Barbie's Dreamhouse

Jens Kalaene / EPA

A life-sized house offers visitors a chance to tour the famous doll's home and even try on Barbie's clothes in her walk-in closet.

Launch slideshow

Visitors are greeted first by a large painting of Barbie smiling next to her love interest, Ken, then taken on a tour of her home that includes a bedroom and a stylish bathroom where a pink dolphin pops out of the toilet bowl.

Equipped with an electronic bracelet, real-world princesses can bake virtual cupcakes in Barbie's kitchen and listen to "Barbie talk" at touchscreen monitors.

The house is also equipped with a walk-in refrigerator and a huge pink piano playing happy tunes.

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Protests said they were angry at materialist stereotypes of women.

It’s too much for the taste of some Berliners.

About a dozen activists - including a man in a pink dress and a wig and a sign around his neck that said "Do you like me now?" - gathered in front of the attraction Wednesday.

Other placards read "Barbie is not my baby," "I will free you from the horror house" and "pink stinks."

“This dream world suggests that women can’t be anything less than beautiful and slim,” said Franziska Sedlak from protest group Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse. “And life is not about being beautiful all the time.”

The movement began in March when members of a youth group affiliated to Germany’s far-left party, die Linke, created an Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse Facebook page.

“Our protest is not directed towards little girls and their dreams,” member Michael Koschitzki said. “But, for us, this so-called Dreamhouse symbolizes the beauty craze and the discrimination of women in modern day life. It presents a cliché of the female role in society.”

Demonstrators included  a woman with bare breasts holding a burning cross with "life in plastic is not fantastic" written on her body.

Despite the criticism, the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience is expected to attract up to 3,000 visitors a day.

For her part, Barbie will pack up her enormous shoe and dress collection at the end of August, taking her pink paradise on a tour of other European cities.

Related:

• Photoblog: 'Life in plastic is not fantastic': Germans protest Barbie Dreamhouse
• Barbie's Dreamhouse now life-size reality in Florida
• Full Germany coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 7:55 AM EDT

Valery Hache / AFP - Getty Images

Investigators are trying to track down 50 suspected Auschwitz guards who are believed to be living in Germany. The gate at the former Nazi death camp, which is located in Poland, reads "Arbeit macht frei" -- or "work will set you free."

MAINZ, Germany -- In their search for justice that has endured for decades, the biggest challenge Nazi hunters face is time. 

The knowledge that war criminals are escaping prosecution through death by natural causes means their task has never been more pressing.

On Monday, German state police arrested a 93-year-old man accused of being a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hans Lipschis is the first suspect to be facing charges as part of a drive launched earlier this year to track down 50 suspected Auschwitz guards who are believed to be living in Germany.

Most of those involved in the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and still alive will now be in their 90s, a ripe old age for people who carried out one the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity.

But that doesn't stop Kurt Schrimm, director of Germany’s Central Investigation Center for Nazi Crimes. His agency employs 20 people, including seven focusing on the Auschwitz cases. 

"Someday there will be no more Nazi criminals to go after and then our organization will shut down," he said. "But until then, we will exhaust all investigation possibilities."

After years of frustration, Nazi hunters have also been given fresh hope by a German court's landmark ruling that has made it simpler to prosecute cases by opening the door to charges of "accessory to murder."

Efraim Zuroff, Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said he planned to ask German companies to help fund a renewed campaign to find the remaining war criminals and take advantage of the ruling, which came during the successful prosecution of John Demjanjuk.

Demjanjuk, an autoworker who lived in the U.S. for years after the war, was convicted in 2011 of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison.

Although he died a free man in a nursing home in Germany – he was released pending his appeal – the court’s ruling that he could be convicted on his service record alone was “a total game-changer,” Zuroff said.

“Until that point … German prosecutors could not try a case unless they had evidence of a specific crime with a specific victim,” he said.

“Demjanjuk was convicted solely for his service as an armed SS guard at a death camp,” he added. “As a result, this opened up a whole new potential number of people to bring to justice.”

Valery Hache / AP

Convicted Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk leaves a courtroom after a guilty verdict in Munich, Germany, on May 12, 2011.

Zuroff said there were usually three obstacles to holding Nazi war criminals to account: Finding them; getting enough evidence; and persuading the authorities to act.

The Demjanjuk ruling changed that in Germany.

“Now in Germany, all of a sudden, all you have is one task – all you have to do is find people, because you can prove service with documents,” Zuroff said. “You don’t have to have someone who says, ‘I saw this bastard kill my fellow inmate.’”

Schrimm said that the Demjanjuk case prompted his agency to start "looking at old files with a renewed focus."

He added: “Today, any job in a concentration camp can be sufficient evidence towards a conviction as accessory to murder."

It is a ray of hope in an otherwise gloomy picture. 

“Once the Nuremberg Trials had been completed [in 1949], the prosecution of Nazi war criminals never became a serious priority in any country outside of the Soviet Union,” Zuroff added. “The failure to do more to hold the perpetrators of the Holocaust accountable is naturally a source of frustration and disappointment for me personally, as someone who has devoted practically my entire adult life to that mission."

The Holocaust saw approximately 6 million Jews – about two-thirds of the pre-World War II Jewish population in Europe – murdered to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s infamous “Final Solution.”

Roma Gypsies, Slavic people such as Poles and Russians, communists, socialists, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and others were also slaughtered in large numbers.

Zuroff said that no one really knew how many people were involved in the killings, let alone how many were still alive.

But, asked to estimate, he reckoned that “probably not more than 10 to 15 percent” of tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals had been brought to justice.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center publishes an annual “most wanted” list, and also rates countries based on their willingness to take action. Only the United States got the top rating in 2013; Germany was among five countries in the second-highest group.

Zuroff said that “to their credit” Germany was one of the few countries that would bring prosecutions.

In contrast Austria, which became part of the Hitler’s Third Reich in 1938, was “horrific, terrible, the worst,” Zuroff said.

“They haven’t succeeded in taking action against a Nazi war criminal in more than 30 years. It’s not because there are no Nazis in Austria,” he said. “There’s a country that until 20 years ago … got away with claiming they were Hitler’s first victim. Austrians played a very leading role in the murders carried out by the Third Reich.”

Zuroff said it was “impossible” to get prosecutions in the Baltic countries, “especially in Lithuania.”

“They were the worst because they had a vast number of collaborators,” he said. “They don’t like punishing their own people and would prefer to think of themselves as victims of communism and not killers of Jews, which they were. They were outstanding killers of Jews.”

Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust, said the survivors "live with the memories every day."

"Bringing the perpetrators to justice sends an important educational and moral message to society at large: These kinds of crimes will not be tolerated, and there are no free passes," he said. "Although unfortunately many of the perpetrators escaped justice, nevertheless each trial sends an important message."

Germany and its allies controlled most of Europe during World War II, including Norway, France, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland and deep into the then Soviet Union.

Lydia Brenners was just 9 years old when she was caught up in a horrific massacre of Jews in Novi Sad in modern-day Serbia by Hungarian forces in 1942. Nazi-allied Hungary had annexed the area in 1941.

Brenners said she was forced to go to with her father, mother and sister to a local theater where many Jewish people were being gathered. They were taken in groups to the banks of the River Danube, where they were shot dead. A total of more than 1,200 civilians are thought to have been killed, according to The Associated Press.

“Slowly we came nearer and nearer [to the end of the line],” said Brenners, now 81 and living in Rishon Letzion, Israel. “Today I know it was for killing. Then … I didn’t know, maybe the older people understood.”

“In the row behind me, there was an auntie of one of my girlfriends. I knew her. She was holding a baby in her hands,” she said. “After a few minutes … [she] burst out with nerves and started to shout, ‘I cannot bear it anymore.’”

“The soldiers came and took her,” she said, despite efforts of others who surrounded her in an unsuccessful attempt to save her. “She did not come back from there.”

But then came an order from Budapest to stop the killing and Brenners and her family were released. They then took the train to Budapest that day and hid in the city until it was taken by Soviet troops toward the end of the war.

Brenners said years later she met a woman who said she was the child of her friend’s aunt. The woman was still trying to find out how she survived.

Brenners said she remembered an officer on a horse -- who was addressed as “Shanny” -- overseeing the massacre and the gendarmes referring to lists of names when deciding who should be taken.

She said “Shanny” was a nickname for Sandor Kepiro, a gendarme officer accused of helping organize the killings.

Kepiro was given a 10-year prison sentence over the Novi Sad massacre by a Hungarian court in 1944, but this was overturned after Germany formally occupied Hungary later that year, according to The Associated Press.

Kepiro, who lived in Argentina after the war, admitted he was present and supervised the identities of those being rounded up, but denied knowing they were killed until later, the news service said.

Kepiro was tried again in Hungary but acquitted in 2011, with a court ruling there was insufficient evidence against him, the AP reported. The prosecution appealed, saying the judges’ decision was “unfounded,” and so did the defense, which complained the ruling had not actually cleared Kepiro.

However, Kepiro died in September 2011, an innocent man in the eyes of the law, a hero to some in Hungary, but a killer who escaped justice to Zuroff and his fellow Nazi hunters.

Ian Johnston reported from London. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• German police arrest 93-year-old suspected of being Auschwitz guard
• 'Nazi Bride' case highlights rising influence of women in far-right movement
• A retired teacher's courageous campaign: Tackling neo-Nazi hate

Francesco Pecoraro / AP

Rescuers search what is left of the toppled control tower in the port of Genoa, Italy, after a cargo ship slammed into it on Tuesday.

GENOA, Italy -- Six people were killed and three are missing after a container ship crashed into a control tower in the northern Italian port of Genoa, rescuers said on Wednesday.

The tower, which was more than 160 feet high and looked much like the ones common at airports, collapsed into the water late on Tuesday after being struck by the prow of the vessel, the Jolly Nero.

Two of the dead were coastguard officers and a third was a pilot for the port, the coastguard said.

The three other victims have yet to be identified. Two were recovered from the wreckage of the tower's lift, a firefighters' spokesman said.

The accident happened as staff were changing shifts and there were 13 people in the tower when it was struck, the coastguard said.

As well as the dead and missing, officials said four people were injured and had been taken to hospital. Two were seriously hurt and one had lost a foot, investigators said.

"The main injuries are fractures, crushed body parts, significant traumas," emergency services doctor Andrea Furgani said.

The crash occurred shortly after 11 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) in calm conditions as the Jolly Nero was maneuvering out of the port.

Genoa prosecutor Michele Di Lecce has opened an investigation and is focusing on a possible malfunction of the ship's engine or steering mechanism, judicial sources said.

The crash is the most serious maritime accident in Italy since the Costa Concordia luxury cruise liner struck a rock and capsized off the island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people.

Massimo Cebrelli / AFP - Getty Images, file

This 2011 photo shows the control tower at the Italian port of Genoa.

"There's no logical explanation because two tug boats were moving the ship and there was a port pilot on board and sea conditions were optimal," the head of the Genoa Port Authority, Luigi Merlo, said.

The only thing left where the tower had stood was a leaning metal-framed stairway. Divers from the fire department joined the search for bodies.

The Jolly Nero, which is 781 feet long with a gross tonnage of 40,594 metric tons, is owned by local operator Ignazio Messina and Co.

"A thing like this has never happened, we are devastated," said Stefano Messina, one of the directors of the family-owned firm, who was in tears when he spoke to a local TV channel.

This story was originally published on Wed May 8, 2013 7:14 AM EDT

Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

Protesters holds posters depicting Alexei Navalny as they attend a rally at the Bolotnaya Square in central Moscow on Monday to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin one year into his new Kremlin term. The posters read: "Navalny is not guilty!" Organizers said tens of thousands attended the rally, which marks one year since a chaotic anti-Kremlin protest that descended into violence, and Putin's return to the presidency a day later. However, police estimated that 7,000 protesters attended on Monday.

News analysis

What a difference a year makes.

On May 6, 2012, the eve of Vladimir Putin’s third inauguration as Russia’s president, tens of thousands of middle-class Russians turned out on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square to chant "Russia without Putin" and "Anyone but Putin."

Their energy was electric. Their anger, palpable.  

But just 12 months later, a smaller crowd gathered at Bolotnaya Square on Monday, just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry arrived for meetings with Putin. The slogans were the same but the chanting was listless. Anger had turned to apathy.

What changed? First and foremost, the opposition movement has been damaged by a crackdown.

May 6, 2012 was the day Putin chose to fall back on old Soviet habits. Riot police and protesters each blame the other for starting the clashes, but by the end of that evening, dozens – on both sides – had been injured.

For the first time since the anti-Putin rallies congealed around blatantly fraudulent parliamentary elections held earlier in December 2011, hundreds of protesters were arrested. Many were released.

But the Russian government went after the protest organizers. More than two dozen were charged with violating social order. A year later, two are serving two- to four-year jail terms; the others are either under house arrest or pre-trial detention.

Russian lawmakers fast-tracked bills that made most protests illegal and all illegal protests very expensive – up to $10,000 in fines.

Then Putin took on the two "leaders" of an opposition which had never really coalesced around a single platform or person.

Alexei Navalny is a 36-year-old anti-corruption blogger who found, with each expanding rally, that his voice could inspire tens of thousands of dissatisfied Russians to hope about the future. 

But shortly after he declared his intention to run in the next presidential election, he was charged with embezzling $500,000 from a timber company he worked for in 2009. He says the charge is trumped up and brazenly political. But he faces 10 years in jail if convicted, and even if acquitted, would be disqualified from running for high office.

The same holds true for Sergei Udaltsov, a left-wing activist who’s currently under house arrest for organizing "mass disorder" one year ago. The Kremlin’s legal team is putting the finishing touches on a case against Udaltsov that could lead to a treason conviction. It centers around a state TV documentary which apparently shows him and two other activists in conversation with an official from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. 

Mikhail Metzel / AP file

A wounded opposition protester winces in pain during a rally in Moscow on May 6, 2012.

Udaltsov is allegedly heard on tape asking for funds to finance the overthrow of the Russian government. Udaltsov says the footage is a "sham." But now he, too, faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Russia has increasingly evolved as a police state,” said Maria Lipman, current head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “Detention and prosecution should be seen as the government’s warning:  Beware – if you want to take part in street activism you may have to pay with your freedom.”

The result could be seen in Monday’s lifeless protest on Bolotnaya Square. On the one hand, many protesters – the ones who bothered to come out – seemed intimidated by the riot police who surrounded them.

Most were quiet and looked apprehensive. Others appeared to burn with rage. Putin, on the other hand, secure in his ownership of all the levers of power, completely ignored the demonstration.

“Putin has full control of all the resources,” Lipman added. “From economic to political to the police, to the courts, to the intelligence services. [It’s why] there hasn’t been a single time when anybody ‘elite,’ from big business or high office, has switched sides and joined the protesters.”

Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters

Supporters of Vladimir Putin wave flags during a rally in central Moscow on May 6, 2012.

Some who took the stage on the square held banners calling for the release of their comrades from prison. A year ago, there was heady talk of the “beginning of the end” of Putin and Putinism – which, in one phrase, translates, “stay out of my way and I’ll make it worthwhile.”

Educated, urban Russians were crying out for dignity, respect and civil society back then, which they believed they had earned with their relative prosperity.  But, one year into his third term, Putin’s ratings are still in the soaring 60s. And his rural, blue-collar supporters know full well who’s the boss.

Meawhile, some analysts – and some protesters themselves – say their biggest mistake was thinking that their moment of opposition was a movement.  

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered the former Soviet Union and Russia since the 1980s.

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Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images file

A woman holds a leaflet, reading "For human rights" and featuring a picture of Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny, during an opposition rally in Moscow on April 17.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has launched an "unprecedented" crackdown on political activists and civil society groups, Human Rights Watch alleged in a report released Wednesday.

The New York-based group’s report described a "nationwide campaign" of harassment and intimidation by the former KGB officer's government.

It came on the day Putin critic Alexei Navalny urged a court to throw out what he said were trumped-up charges intended to silence him. It also comes weeks after the State Department cataloged a series of human concerns in Russia, including restrictions to harsh fines for unsanctioned political meetings, electoral fraud and the detention and trial of citizens without due process.

The HRW report, "Laws of Attrition: The Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency," said:

• Putin’s government has sought to portray critics as "clandestine enemies" 
• a number of political activists have been jailed 
• and a series of restrictive laws, including one against treason that could criminalize international human rights campaigners and others that impose "draconian limits on association with foreigners," have been passed.

It also said that hundreds of organizations had been subjected to "intrusive" inspections about a raft of matters such as tax affairs, fire safety and air quality.

In one case, the report said a group was asked for chest X-rays of its staff to ensure they did not have tuberculosis. In another, officials demanded copies of speeches made at a group's meetings.

"Taken together, the laws and government actions described in this report violate Russia’s international legal obligations to protect freedom of association, expression, and assembly and threaten the viability of Russia’s vibrant civil society," the report said.

Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, echoed the HRW findings, saying the democratic climate in Russia has got “much worse” over the past year.

“At first, these new laws were portrayed as something that would only be used as a threat, not a tool that would actually be used,” he said. “Now we are seeing these laws used a lot to target [non-profit] organizations and protests.

“Huge numbers of law enforcement officers are now involved” in the clampdown against political opponents and rights groups, he added.

Sergei Chirikov / EPA file

Russian police officers make their way through a crowd to detain opposition activists in Moscow last month.

“It is important for all democracies to be aware of what is going on in Russia.”

The HRW report cited two cases as "further examples of Russia’s waning commitment to its international human rights obligations": The two-year prison sentences given to two members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot for a political stunt in a Moscow cathedral and the fate of Leonid Razvozzhaev, a political activist accused of organizing a riot who attempted to claim asylum in neighboring Ukraine.

Razvozzhaev went missing in Ukraine after stepping outside the office of a partner organization of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees "to take a break during an asylum interview."

"Several days later he reappeared in custody in Russia. Razvozzhaev appears to have been forcibly disappeared and was forced to sign a confession under duress while in incommunicado detention. Razvozzhaev is in custody awaiting trial in Russia," the report said.

In response to the State Department comments earlier this month, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing the United States of politicizing human rights issues, according to Reuters.

"Americans prefer not to recall their own record (of violations)," the statement said, adding that Washington has recently resorted to disproportionate use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing civilian casualties, Reuters said.

On Wednesday, a court in the industrial city of Kirov adjourned to consider Navalny’s request to throw out charges that he stole $500,000 from a state-run timber firm, The Associated Press reported.

The most prominent opposition leader to be tried in post-Soviet Russia, Navalny has suggested Putin ordered the charges trial to stop his criticism of "swindlers and thieves" in government and sideline him as a potential presidential rival.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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