Ball as saying that on the evidence "The Norwegians must have a sense of humour." The well-known comedian and political satirist Tom Lehrer said: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize." When the award was announced, hostilities were continuing. Kissinger did not attend the award ceremony in Oslo over concern that it would be targeted by anti-war protest groups. He requested that the prize money be donated to a scholarship fund for US servicemen killed or missing in Indochina. In 1975, as Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces, he offered to return the medal, an offer not accepted by the Nobel Committee. 1939 In a submission not intended to be taken seriously, antifascist member of the Swedish parliament Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt nominated German dictator Adolf Hitler, but the nomination was cancelled. No prize was awarded in 1939 to anyone for peace. 1935 The prize of 1935 was retroactively awarded one year later to Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist who had been convicted of high treason and espionage for exposing German re-armament. In an unprecedented move, King Haakon VII of Norway was absent from the award ceremony, two committee members resigned in protest, and the Norwegian conservative press, including leading daily Aftenposten, condemned giving the award to a convicted criminal. Ossietzky, interned in the concentration camp Esterwegen and severely ill with tuberculosis, accepted the award by letter but was prevented from traveling to Oslo. The award led to Adolf Hitler's forbidding any German to receive any of the Nobel Prizes in the future, and Ossietzky's prize was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press. Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. In 1948 Gandhi received six letters of nomination and was on the shortlist for the Peace Prize but he was assassinated on 30 January 1948, two days before the closing date for nominations. The Nobel Committee decided against awarding the prize, saying the laureate could only be awarded posthumously if the laureate died after the committee's decision had been made. The Nobel Committee ultimately made no award in 1948, stating "there was no suitable living candidate". Decades later, a Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission. Geir Lundestad, Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006, said, "The greatest omission in our