CRIME OF THE CENTURY

Y&R is recasting the role of Brad's mother. Millie Perkins last aired August 16. Lorna Raver starts September 19.

Aside from her Holocaust cache of playing Anne Frank in the The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959, Perkins was never right for the role. She was born in 1938. Meaning that, according to Y&R, she was heroically saving stolen Jewish art from the Nazis at the age of eight or so.

But it wasn't Miss Perkins' age that bothered me so much. It was the story itself. Tales of lost Nazi art, whether on daytime, primetime or film, always annoy me. Because, when it comes to the crimes of the Nazis, stealing some art is really, really, really low on the list of confirmed atrocities.

Every time I see such a story, it reminds me that no one can bring back someone's wiped out family, their lost childhood or undo the ravages of starvation and abuse. So they write a story about giving someone their painting back. As if that even comes close to losing a parent or a sibling or a spouse.

People make much of the heroism of General Dietrich von Choltitz who, in the last days of World War II, refused Hitler's orders to blow up Paris landmarks because, in the words of one commentator, "even he knew some crimes were too monstrous to commit."

Deporting 76,000 French Jews and an indeterminate number of French Gypsies to concentration camps? That's cool.

But torching the Arch de Triumph? Now there's a war crime worth resisting.