32 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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WEDNESDAY,JULY3,2002
Hitler's house haunts residents of Austrian town
The Associated Press
LEONDING, Austria — Word is spreading:
Hilter lived here.
leave it unidentified and use it to warehouse coffins for the nearby cemetery.
For decades, few people outside Leonding knew the Nazi dictator spent his boyhood in this picture-pretty town near the west Austrian city of Linz. In a country that is still struggling to own up to its past, Leonding would have preferred to keep its Hitler connection out of the public eye.
But this year, the house where Hitler lived for six years until age 15 was becoming a safety hazard and a decision had to be made; to renovate it or tear it down? Some in the town of 22,000 wanted the empty house designated as a memorial to infamy, while others demanded it be razed — both ideas too radical for Mayor Herbert Sperl, a self-described man of consensus.
Instead, he got the town council to approve a plan to renovate the house,
"Rededicating it for this function is one way of making sure Hitler isn't being glorified," he says.
Although renovation work already has begun, others remain opposed.
They point out that other buildings Hitler's birthplace in Braunau to the west and a school he attended in Fischlham to the south, display memorials or plaques condemning his crimes against humanity.
"I suggested that we should make it a monument, a memorial to the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust," said Dr. Claudia Mueller-Wechselberger, a 42-year-old physician at the local hospital. "Turning the house into something it never was won't change history.
"It's time people here stopped turning away and started facing facts — Hitler lived here, among us."
Spider season brings dangers especially from the brown recluse
By Todd Smith Kansan staff writer
The summer months bring brown recluse spiders out from the darkness, and students may find themselves caught in a web of trouble.
Julie Swords, publications coordinator at University Relations, said she was bitten more than a week ago by a brown recluse spider while she was sleeping.
She said at first the bite was two tiny holes with a red circle around them. The wound expanded into a fist-sized red area with a lump.
Swords said the swelling decreased after six days.
The worst reaction from the bite was an itchy feeling all over her body, she said.
How severely people are affected by the bite depends on how their bodies reacts to the poison, said Jamel Sandidge, a University of Kansas doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology. A person with an allergic reaction could have a gaping wound larger than a fist. Most people just have some itchiness and skin irritation with the wound. Sandidge said.
The spider comes out to mate and hunt for food during the summer, he said. Sandidge is researching the reasons the spiders live in houses and apartments.
Swords said she took the spider to Sandidge, who was able to identify it as a brown recluse.
Sandidge said if a person was bitten by a brown recluse spider, the best way to treat it was to put ice on the bite and go directly to a doctor.
Sandidge said a doctor would monitor the bite and administer drugs if necessary.
Adam Dubinsky, Overland Park spring
Dubinsky said he called an exterminator, Haley Pest Control, 800 Comet Lane, who specialized in brown recluse spiders.
graduate, said he would see one or two brown recluse spiders a day at his house on Tennessee Street last year. He said he often found them in the shower.
He said the exterminators sprayed all around the house and put sticky traps out. Dubinsky said he had not seen any of the spiders since the exterminators came.
Jim Slough, apartment manager, said Dubinksy had called him about the spider problem, and they divided the cost of paying for the exterminator.
Sandidge said spraying for the brown recluse only gets rid of those in direct contact with the spray. The spiders walk on claws and do not make direct contact with the ground, he said.
Linda Wood, office manager of Advantage Termite and Pest Control, Inc., 850 E. 13th St. Suite B, said the company sprayed for the spiders, but could not guarantee it would get rid of them.
The easiest way for a person to identify the spider is to look for a violin shape on the front part of its body. However, Sandidge said the absence of the mark on a spider didn't exclude it from being a brown recluse. He said the shape was not always found on the spider, and juvenile spiders did not have the mark at all.
More information about the brown recluse spider and Sandgidge's research can be found on his Web site at http://people.ku.edu/-spidermn/reclusecommunity/recluseproject.html.
Contact Smith at tsmith@kansan.com. This story was edited by Matt Stumpf.