By Courtney Flynn and Dan Gibbard,Chicago Tribune

SUGAR CREEK, Wis. – A retired farmer in southeast Wisconsin has built a memorial to Adolf Hitler, hoping to spread his admiration for perhaps the world’s most notorious man.

But on Thursday, Ted Junker, 87, agreed not to hold a grand opening as planned June 25 after authorities asked him to cancel the event.

Junker said he would still allow visitors into the shrine – a white concrete structure built into the side of a hill nearly a mile from the nearest road, down a narrow dirt path.

“On your property, you can invite anybody on you want,” Junker said. A door to the memorial was propped open with cinder blocks Thursday, and members of the news media who stopped by were invited to see it.

Michael Cotter, deputy corporation counsel for Walworth County, said Junker agreed Thursday to sign a restraining order stating that the memorial would not be open to the public unless he obtained the appropriate permits to do so.

But Cotter conceded that authorities could not legally keep all visitors away from Junker’s home.

“If a person came up to the house, knocked on the door and asked to see the shrine, it would not be against the law,” Cotter said. “But if the neighbors notice 50 people a day are driving down the driveway to see this Hitler shrine, then we would have to take some enforcement action.”

In any case, the shrine, which features framed pictures of Hitler and plaques that contend the Holocaust never happened, has prompted outrage from neighbors and Jewish leaders.

“I don’t think there’s anyone around here who supports him,” said Pete Ruby, an employee at a nearby machine shop. “To me it’s a mockery.”

The regional office of the Anti-Defamation League characterized the memorial as “the sickening work of an unrepentant anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.”

“Our concern is that this could very easily become a place of pilgrimage,” said Adam Schupack, associate director for the league’s Chicago office. “The average person who sees what Mr. Junker is doing would be horrified. However, neo-Nazis and white supremacists still glorify Hitler and his works, and they see Mr. Junker in a far different light. . . . They look up to the (Nazi Waffen) SS, they see them as the elite of the Nazi party.”

Junker says he once served in the Waffen SS during World War II and believes Hitler was the greatest man who ever lived. He said he was born in Romania and went to Germany in 1940 and joined the SS. He moved to Chicago in 1955 and later bought a farm near Millard, Wis.

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He initially planned to build a much larger Hitler facility.

In 2001 Junker applied to build a multistory building with a 300-seat assembly hall, a dining hall and a radio station, Cotter said. Although that proposal was denied, Junker was granted permission in 2002 to build a storage shed, which has evolved into the current memorial, he said.

“I want understanding of the truth that Hitler didn’t start the war,” Junker said Thursday at his home. “The Holocaust is the biggest lie in the history of mankind. It never happened.”

But many take issue with those beliefs.

A man who lives just down the street from Junker was shocked to learn about the memorial and called it “sick.”

“It’s kind of surprising that one of my neighbors would want to hold a shrine to Hitler,” said Jerold Gaches, 24. “It’s wrong, just wrong. What good did he do?”

Schupack said Junker is unusual because most people with Nazi pasts try to hide it rather than boast.

Junker, who said he spent $200,000 to build the memorial, said he is not bothered by people who disagree with him and that his main goal is to promote understanding.

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Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and expert on the First Amendment, said a private Hitler display is protected by the Constitution and there isn’t much a community can do to muzzle someone with provocative views.

“They could put up a big sign saying, “We disapprove of this; don’t go there,”‘ Volokh said. “(But) people are free to express their views.”

Zoning laws can be used to stop a public memorial, he said, but only if they are applied evenhandedly.

“They can’t selectively enforce it” because a community doesn’t like what someone is saying, he said.

Numerous countries in Europe, including Germany and Austria, make it a crime to deny the Holocaust.

“We are unusual in the West in protecting pretty much all ideas, even those that are deemed offensive and reprehensible,” but that’s a good thing, Volokh said.

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

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AP-NY-06-16-06 1821EDT

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