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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
I didn't get the headline until I read the article. Not funny. Unreal. Great exposure, though. Thank you, Ian
"The silver lining in that cloud is that if Netanyahu is re-elected, it will not only prove that most Israelis are just as insane as he is, it may also be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back as far as the rest of the world is concerned."
That's what I thought about Americans before Bush was reelected. Surely, I wasn't the only one?
see also: "Judaism: This war is for us"
link to israelnationalnews.com
Unbelievable. Amalek, Book of Esther, and then Bibi has the chutzpah to say, in a recent interview with the Welt am Sonntag:
"First of all I think what Grass says is an absolute outrage. That it comes from a German Nobel laureate and not from a teenager in a Neo-Nazi party makes it all the more outrageous. And it demands a very strong response. I think what Grass has said shows a collapse of moral clarity.
He has created a perfect moral inversion where the aggressor becomes the victim and the victim becomes the aggressor. Where those who try to defend themselves against the threat of annihilation become the threat to world peace. And where the firefighter and not the arsonist is the real danger.
Here is a simple fact that apparently has eluded Mister Grass: Israel doesn’t seek to destroy Iran, Iran seeks to destroy Israel and openly calls for it and works for it by building atomic bombs for that expressed purpose.
What do we do with such statements? In every society you have extreme statements. A society is not judged by those statements but by how the leadership responds to them. And I think the fact that there was a broad condemnation by the leaders of Germany is important and positive. I am concerned that there is an undercurrent of support for this, at best it reflects a great ignorance on the facts that I have just put forward.
Welt am Sonntag: Would you call that way of thinking Anti-Semitic, the way Grass put it in words?"
link to welt.de
"And be certain not to miss Hess’ “eroticized passion” for der Fuhrer at the conclusion of the clip."
You mean when he yells "Sieg Heil!"?
"The Nazi rallying call, “Sieg Heil!” was inspired by American football cheerleading techniques, supposedly imported by his friend Ernst Hanfstaengl, who studied at Harvard. Hanfstaengl was so impressed by the rousing qualities and camaraderie inherent at American sporting events, that he passed this on to Hitler, who would in turn seek to emulate the atmosphere at his rallies."
link to military-history.org
link to guardian.co.uk
"non-racist to the core?"
I disagree. Einstein in Berlin, during the Weimar years, displayed major ethnocentrism, you can read about it here
link to ebookee.org
"Where else in the world had the “homeland” concept been used (besides Nazi Germany)?"
Wiki lists the Soviet Oblasts, South African Bantustans, and the "Homeland Movement" in Australia, as well as "Homeland Security"
Obviously, alternatives to homeland listed in this article -- Fatherland, Mother Country - would sound archaic and sexist. The Roman term "Patria" is loaded as well (Imperialism, Militarism).
link to en.wikipedia.org
Dickerson: Heimat and Heimatland are German, not Nazi terms. The Nazis spoke German. You can argue that they used or imprinted existing German words and concepts in ways that went beyond previous meanings but you can't argue they invented them. That is as true for Heimatland as it is for Lebensraum. On the concept of Heimat since the 18th century see
link to books.google.ca
"I certainly didn’t realise Germans could be this funny."
Well, Grass was serious saying the same thing (Israel/Netanyahu wanting to bomb/nuke Iran). No high-five for him.
"Israel is not quite like Nazi Germany, obviously, since it’s not committing mass genocide in terms of killing people"
Just as obviously, Israel never fought a war even remotely comparable to WW II during which Jews were not the only people subjected to a genocidal attack, and the Nazis not the sole perpetrators of genocide either.
"but unlike the Germans, the Israelis have access to modern media, the internet, and it’s harder to claim they didn’t know anything, and they have a democracy. Germany had a dictatorship most of the time."
Modern media in democratic countries are just as prone to spreading biased information and propaganda than are totalitarian regimes. One could argue that people living in dictatorships, now and then, have the advantage of knowing that what they are being served is highly filtered. The Weimar Republic lasted longer than the Third Reich and there is no question that Hitler (but not Churchill) was democratically elected. Racism, anti-semitism, not to mention genocide, was not the main reason, or even a main reason, why Germans, including German Jews, voted for Hitler in 1933.
@ Daniel
That's 'rich'!
"no right minded citizen of Berlin will call him/herself ‘ein Berliner.’"
Actually, Berliners call themselves "Berliners" all the time, just as citizens of Hamburg call themselves "Hamburgers".
Ozick 2003:
"By replacing history with fantasy, the Palestinians have invented a society unlike any other, where hatred trumps bread. They have reared children unlike any other children, removed from ordinary norms and behaviors. And they have been assisted in these deviations by Arab rulers who for half a century have purposefully and pitilessly caged and stigmatized them as refugees, down to the fourth generation."
One could certainly say the same thing about Zionists, assisted by Western rulers who have for about a century "pitilessly caged and stigmatized Jews" as refugees/victims of anti-semitism who can find a safe homeland only in Palestine, and only at the expense of Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims. And Christians, too.
Ozick's claim that Palestinians invented suicide attacks is not history but pure fantasy.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Excerpt:
"According to Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, 95% of suicide attacks in recent times have the same specific strategic goal: to cause an occupying state to withdraw forces from a disputed territory"
Doh. Declaring Palestinians to be a particularly despicable and inhuman lot and basically is obviously supposed to distract attention from such obvious conclusions.
you win, pick and choose:)
"I don’t care for hockey or Tim Hortons coffee"
You're obviously not Canadian, or you would choose Hockey and TH over any other sports/coffee. "To say you do not have a choice is a lie." Why did you not choose H and TH?
Book tip (1995 or so) - maybe hophmi should have a look at it
link to amazon.com
Well put, Dutch.
hophmi says: "it all looks absurd if you have no knowledge of history and seek to apply a special standard to Jews that you don’t apply to others."
it's just as absurd to not take into account the history of other people and not grant them the "special standard" you apply to Jews. It's not that difficult to wrap your head around this, is it, hophmi? You think Jews are the only people with a history of oppression and persecution? Apparently you do not have any knowledge of history other than Jewish history, or more precisely: Jewish victimhood
"Would this have happened if the moguls in Hollywood had not been determined to normalize Israel’s dark deeds?"
Let's not confuse chicken and egg. "Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in U.S. practice and intellectual culture. " (Chomsky)
example of "inflated hate crime":
link to haaretz.com
more on Fuerst's own hate crimes:
link to ejpress.org
"the motto on the WW1 German soldier’s belt buckle: Gott Mit Uns"
the motto was not only displayed by the Reichwehr (WW I) but also the Wehrmacht (WW II), among numerous other examples
link to en.wikipedia.org
"That Israel missed the connection is priceless."
I suppose there were to busy coming up with blood libel nonsense to slander Grass for his Easter message:
"In response to the publication, the Israeli Embassy in Berlin issued a statement offering its own version of "What must be said." "What must be said is that it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder," the statements reads. "Earlier, it was Christian children whose blood the Jews allegedly used to make their unleavened bread, but today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state allegedly wants to annihilate. "
link to spiegel.de
"the historial knowledge of how pride precedes a fall"
I fail to see this principle unfolding in history. Did pride precede the fall of the Palestinians? It's a religious or moral concept, not a historical law. Let's not get carried away with false hopes
"this kind of grind-it-in-their-face posing with some of what the Nazis did except for Alan Dershowitz telling us that any such parallels are per se anti-semetic."
It's more anti-German than anti-semitic. Expulsions and expropriations are not something only the Nazis did. The Bolshevists and Stalinists did it on a much larger scale, and long before the Nazis did it. The two jerks on that sofa are worse than either: there were no laws against expropriating people, or making people homeless, prior to the post WW II period, at least not in Russia/the Soviet Union ,nor in Germany and continental Europe. But there are such laws and international standards now. And lets remember that those two Knesset members are supposedly working under the restrictions of Israeli law as well, including the Declaration of Independence (no discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion). The difference between the Nazi and the Zionist prototype is that the first is rather upfront about it, while the latter is not only a racial suprematist but also a sickening hypocrite who screams 'anti-semitism' when you call a spade a spade, then gloats on the sofa.
"the Kairos document ... has been condemned as divisive and aiming to delegitimize the concept of a Jewish state in Israel"
Yawn.
Words and phrases that have become utterly meaningless and counterproductive:
delegitimization of Israel as a Jewish state
anti-semitism
blood libel
another Holocaust
Israel's right to defend herself
giladg:
I'm sure you will also agree with the following statement (slightly rephrasing your comment):
"Catholic Poles were not all innocent bystanders. They actively participated and supported violent action against Germany and Russia/ the Soviet Union. To think of the entire Catholic (or Jewish) population in the region as being peace loving and docile is a complete misread of reality. The best possible outcome for both the Catholic Poles, Russian/Ukrainian Orthodox, as well as the Jews, would have been working with Germany, including the Protestant Prussians, as partners."
How does this sound?
"It’s hard to think of the country’s early leaders saying “We want the Xtians to leave” or something during the Nakba."
Is it? The Templers were Christians. Sure, they were summarily expelled as "Nazi sympathizers" after WW II, just like the Palestinians (all Nazi-allied Muftis, of course --not). Either group had some nice real estate coveted by the Zionists
link to en.wikipedia.org
I also fail to see any common ground between East Germany and Israel, or the Berlin Wall and the Wall in the OPT, see previous comment
link to mondoweiss.net
"The evangelical monster you created may just as easily and just as quickly turn on you."
American historian Fritz Stern, in a recent interview with the FAZ (on the reaction to the poem of G Grass):
Netanyahu's intervention in the American domestic policy is inappropriate and dangerous. This may backfire someday. I have a Republican friend, a very rich man who asked for my opinion on this during the 2008 election . Until then he had always supported the Republicans but was unable to choose between McCain and Obama. Israel, he said, was particularly important to him. And I heard myself say, suddenly: "Allow me a historical comparison. In 1917, some Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Bolshevik revolution as an opportunity for emancipation, liberation, equality. I can understand that. However, this didn't end well for the Jews in any way." What I meant to say -- and I even convinced the man -- was that the present alliance between the Israeli Right and American Right may be an illusion which could turn out to be a terrible, a radical illusion.
link to faz.net
“you named the president [Obama] a ‘ German’”.
If Simon had actually said this, it wouldn't be as offensive as what Oren actually said/did. Or why should it be, eGuard? Got a problem with Germans or something?
Obama is listed as a German American politicians on this page:
link to en.wikipedia.org
He seems to be keeping a low profile on this, though. Wonder why?
link to whitehouse.gov
OT
After 9/11, the United States government created the Department of Homeland Security to prevent future acts of terrorism and deal with other domestic issues. Now in order to keep doing such, the agency is asking for 450 million hollow point bullets.
The DHS has signed off on an “indefinite delivery” from defense contractors ATK that will include, for some reason, nearly 500 million high-power ammunition for .40 caliber firearms. The department has yet to discuss why they are ordering such a massive bevy of bullets for an agency that has limited need domestically for doing harm, but they say they expect to continue receiving shipments from the manufacturer for the next five years, during which they plan to blow through enough ammunition to execute more people than there are in the entire United States.
link to rt.com
"1200 Rabbis suggests to me that there is a definite link between Zionism and Judaism, anti-Zionist protestations notwithstanding.'
Indeed. There is a disturbing streak of Messianism. See this piece, published March 2003 in Israel National News. Makes your head explode:
link to israelnationalnews.com
WW II, Iraq, Iran - all the same divine pattern and purpose? Netanyahu's gift to Obama last month was a scroll of the Book of Esther:
link to israelnationalnews.com
And the Israeli Embassy in Berlin had this comment on Gunter Grass:
"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration"
It is also a sacred duty to defend Jews at Passover against anyone, including Jews, and no matter what:
link to algemeiner.com
Does the date of the publication o Grass' poem matter? Did it matter to him or only the Israeli embassy? Meanwhile, the Communist Party in Greifswald, on their website, credits Grass with having prevented a war that has been long in the planning but has now become politically impossible.
link to dkp-greifswald.de
I wish.
Sure feels like 1939 to me.
"Obviously they didn’t know at the time what the endgame of this policy would be"
Not just the Rabbis. Do you seriously think the Nazis/Germans, or anyone else for that matter, knew the "endgame" in 1933? Or even later?
"never to write anything that casts aspersions on Israel’s right to exist"
I see no difference to the US. Helen Thomas? The German press was subjected to the Allied Control Council for decades, no? Let's also remember that there were two Germanys until the 1990s, and there was no common ground on the issue of Israel.
"There was no taboo on criticizing Israel in Germany"
I agree, hophmi. It's nonsense. I've posted several extremely critical articles from the Spiegel, going back decades. The view that Israel poses a threat to peace has been voiced repeatedly not just by leading journalists like the late Spiegel editor Rudolf Augstein, but also by German chancellor Schmidt, also going back several decades. He has repeated the same view since and, now in his 90s, is one of the most popular politicians in Germany today. The Germans, esp. the older generations, practically hang on his lips, whether he comments on the Euro crisis or Israel. I have not read anything about him commenting on Grass' poem. I would expect him to be somewhat critical, though. But no, criticism of Israel is not the issue here.
"The Holocaust needs to viewed in its historical context."
Couldn't agree more. The Holocaust happened during WW II, the most violent war in human history. No world war, no Holocaust. One reason why the endlessly repeated mantra: "the whole civilized world went to war to fight Hitler and save the Jews" rings hollow. A main war goal of the Allies was to wipe Prussia, heartland of German militarism, off the map. If the war goal of the Western allies had been to save the Jews, it would have made infinitely more sense to direct the resources mobilized for the war effort for the purpose of rescuing Jewish refugees from Europe. To destroy Prussia and the German Reich (unified under Prussian hegemony) by military means AND to save Jews were, for a variety of reasons, incompatible. Only one was indeed achieved: Prussia was wiped off the map forever, its former territory is now part of Germany, Poland and Russia. But that also meant the end of European Jewry. One prominent German historian who has written about this under the title : Zweierlei Untergang (Two kinds of ruin) is Andreas Hillgruber.
Uri Avneri posed this "short historical quiz" in 2009:
"Which state:
Arose after a holocaust in which a third of its people were destroyed?
Drew from that holocaust the conclusion that only superior military forces could ensure its survival?
Accorded the army a central role in its life, making it "an army that had a state, rather than a state that had an army"?
Began by buying the land it took, and continued to expand by conquest and annexation?
Endeavored by all possible means to attract new immigrants?
Conducted a systematic policy of settlement in the occupied territories?
Strove to push out the national minority by creeping ethnic cleansing?
For anyone who has not yet found the answer, it’s the state of Prussia.
But if some readers were tempted to believe that it all applies to the state of Israel – well, they are right, too. This description fits our state. The similarity between the two states is remarkable. True, the countries are geographically very different, and so are the historical periods, but the points of similarity can hardly be denied. [...]"
link to original.antiwar.com
It would take a cataclysmic war to wipe Israel off the map. Meanwhile, Israel is trying to expand its territory not by entirely peaceful means, but by the so-called "peace process"
Perfect summary of all that needs to be said on the subject of Holocaust Remembrance Day. I wouldn't be caught dead at such a cynical event. "Manipulated commemorations", indeed.
JTA reported in July 45:
"from the point of view of actual survival, the Jews of Germany fared better than those in any of the countries occupied by the Nazis."
link to archive.jta.org
Would that include Denmark?
Frankie P:
"I question the need to point out the righteousness of the Danes in the context of WWII. This woman, Irit Linur, with her smearing of the goyim as anti-semites, now because of a head of golden hair, is an outrage and she is certainly a sick individual. This should be said regardless of how the Danes behaved with regards to Jews during the Holocaust."
I completely agree and would add that Dena Shunra's reference to the "righteousness of the Danes" is not only completely irrelevant but also historically incorrect. In fact, it has become all but untenable in view of historical research published over the past decade or so. Sure, it's popular among Holocaust scholars promoting national/ethnic stereotypes and political agendas rather than more plausible and better researched versions of WW II/Holocaust history:
"In the international history of the Holocaust one event stands out as a
unique episode in the midst of endless stories of death and tragedy: The
rescue of almost 7,000 Danish Jews in 1943 during the German occupa-
tion of Denmark.1 This impressive and extraordinary operation has
tended to overshadow everything else in the historiography concerning
Denmark and the Holocaust. Less flattering aspects of Denmark's role in
the Holocaust have been left more or less aside – or have remained un-
known up until the last decade. [...] A more recent scholarly work that picks up this thread is Daniel J. Goldhagen's best-selling Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust (1997). Goldhagen strengthens his thesis about the special
German "eliminationist anti-Semitism" by a reference to the heroic Danes.
Goldhagen rhetorically asks if a battalion of Danes (or Italians) would
have slaughtered, deported and hunted down Jews in the same way as
the German perpetrators. According to Goldhagen this notion "strains
credulity beyond the breaking point" because the Danes allegedly treated
their Jews as human beings.4 But can the Danish rescue of the Jews –
magnificent as it was – support such conclusions? Would one not want to
base any claim of a specific Danish mentality on a broader case? In fact,
recent Danish research demonstrates that foreign Jews were treated with
significantly less heartfelt warmth and suggests that anti-Semitism per-
haps was not so uncommon in Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s."
more:
link to diis.dk
see also:
link to jcpa.org
link to groups.yahoo.com
Apart from taking a closer look at Danish Waffen-SS volunteers -- almost as many as there were Jews in Denmark -- and the treatment of Jewish refugees from other parts of Europe, the Danes have discovered plenty of other skeletons in their closets. Does the rescue of 7000 Danish Jews in 1943 excuse the death of 7000 German children in 1945, many of them orphans and driven out of their homeland by Poles? The Danes suffered the least under German occupation during WW II but were clearly no more charitable to German civilians of any age than were the Poles who suffered most. How does this inconvenient fact square with the dogma of 'just reprisals'?
"Kirsten Lylloff, 64, a Danish physician and historian, has just written the previously untold story of these unfortunate and forgotten children. She calls their deaths "the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in modern Denmark." Joergen Poulsen, director of the Red Cross, speaks of a "dark chapter" in Danish history, a chapter "we will always have to be ashamed of."
Lylloff's courageous documentation does much to debunk Danish myths about the nation's humanity during World War II. In documenting the suffering of what she calls the "tyske flygtningeborn," she has opened debate on just how willing Danish doctors -- and the local population -- were to help German refugees. The answers, less positive than most Danes would like to believe, have created an emotional swelling in Denmark and have forced Danes -- 60 years later -- to come to terms with the truth about their past.
In the final weeks of the war, between February 11 and May 5, about 250,000 German refugees fled across the Baltic Sea to escape the sinking German Reich. Most were from East Prussia, Pomerania and the Baltic provinces and were fleeing the Soviet Army. And most were women, children or elderly. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old.
When they landed, they found themselves stranded in putative freedom and at the start of a new martyrdom. The refugees were interned in hundreds of camps from Copenhagen to Jutland, placed behind barbed wire and guarded by heavily armed overseers. The largest camp was located in Oksboll, on the west coast of Jutland, and had 37,000 detainees.
Nutrition was terrible, medical care was miserable. In 1945 alone, more than 13,000 people died, among them some 7,000 children under five. According to Lylloff's research, more German refugees died in Danish camps, "than Danes did during the entire war." Lylloff, a long-time senior physician and department head of immunology in Hilerod near Copenhagen, examined 6,200 death certificates and 6,500 grave stones. The result: A dissertation ("Children or enemies?") and a crushing verdict on members of her own profession: "What kind of monsters masquerading as human beings were those Danish doctors of 1945?" she asks.
Lylloff discovered that the Danish Association of Doctors had decided in March 1945 that German refugees would not receive any medical care. That same month the Red Cross refused to take any action, according to the newspaper "Politiken," because public sentiment was "against the Germans." The result: 80% of the small children that landed on Denmark's shores did not survive the following months.
They either starved or were unable to fight infections due to extreme malnutrition. Detailed medical reports don't exist. All that's left are endless rows of sad grey grave stones.
Debate about Danish conduct
Lylloff's research is not disputed, but the reasons for what happened are being debated vehemently. Was it Danish "hatred" of everything German as a reaction to the oppressive Nazi occupying forces, as Lylloff believes? Or was it an attempt to wipe away memories of their own collaboration? "We had enough to do, taking care of ourselves," explains Arne Gammelgaard, a historian of the older generation, in order to excuse the negligent treatment. His view is shared by many.
There was, as pamphlets distributed in 1945 prove, also a widespread fear of a "new form of invasion" by the Germans. "As soon as the Germans were gone, they seemed to be back again, hundreds of thousands of them, but with different faces," says Lylloff, trying to explain. It gave rise to "an orgy of hate against a whole people. And children had to pay the price."
link to spiegel.de
"And when we hear about ethnic cleansing and talk about the monstrosities committed against the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda for instance, or in the Balkans, we should remember that we were driven by the same norms due to ethnic hatred," she told Danish daily Politiken. Lylloff's thesis, written after nearly two years of pouring over witness testimonies and other research, contradicts most Danish history books which tend to portray the Danish treatment of Germans after the war as good.
"This chapter should be rewritten, because the reality was quite different," she said, pointing out that neither Danish authorities nor the Danish Red Cross had come to the German children's rescue."
link to dw.de
From the testimony of Hjalmar Schacht (was he Prussian or Danish?) at the Nuremberg Trials:
DR. DIX: [...] What did you think about the ideology of the master race (Herrenvolk)?
SCHACHT: I have always considered it a very unhappy precedent to speak of a "chosen people," or of "God's own country," or of things like that. As a convinced adherent to the Christian faith I believe in Christian charity, which bids me extend love to all men without regard to race or faith. I would like to mention also that the silly talk about the master race, which some Party leaders made their own, was held up to constant ridicule by the German public. That was not surprising, because most of the leaders of the Hitler Party were not exactly ideal types of the Nordic race. And in that connection, when these things were discussed among the German population, little Goebbels was referred to as "Der Schrumpfgermane"-the shrivelled Teuton.
Only one thing-I have to say this to be just-did most of the leaders of the Party have in common with the old Teutons-and that was drinking; excessive drinking was a main part of the Nazi ideology.
DR. DIX: What did you think of the so-called National Socialist Weltanschauung?
SCHACHT: Weltanschauung in my opinion is a summation of all those moral principles which enable me to acquire a clear judgment on all aspects of life. Therefore it is a matter of course that a Weltanschauung cannot take root in the tangible world, but must rise above it; it is something metaphysical, that is to say, it is based on faith, on religion. A Weltanschauung which is not rooted in religion is in my opinion no Weltanschauung at all. Consequently I reject the National Socialist Weltanschauung which was not rooted in religion."
link to avalon.law.yale.edu
"All those years and images of Jewish soldiers (some of them religious) smashing Palestinians in the face just didn’t do it for her, because they look … well, kind of like Jews. If only they had been blonde-haired and blue-eyed, with high cheekbones and chiselled jaw..."
re image and reality: Would this be a candidate for Jewish revenge? From Wikipedia (page: Werner Goldberg)
"Werner Goldberg (October 3, 1919 – September 28, 2004) was a German who was of part Jewish ancestry, or Mischling in Nazi terminology, who served briefly as a soldier during World War II and whose image appeared in a German newspaper as "The Ideal German Soldier".
His father himself had grown up in Königsberg as a member of the Jewish community but had himself baptized in the local Lutheran church as he wished to become assimilated and had married a Christian.[1] After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Mr. Goldberg lost his position under the Nazi law of April 1933, Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which expelled Jews from the German Civil Service.
Werner left school in 1935 and became an apprentice at Schneller und Schmeider, a clothing company jointly owned by a Jew and a non-Jew, where many of his colleagues were Jews or mischlinge. Werner's uncle on his mother's side was an opportunist who joined the Nazi party and refused to be seen with the Goldberg family, even avoiding Werner's mother.
At the beginning of 1938 Werner served a six month term in the Reich Labour Service whose uniform, as Werner later recalled, "had a swastika on an armband". On December 1 1938 Werner joined the German Army. He took part in the invasion of Poland on September 1 1939, serving alongside childhood friend Karl Wolf whose father was now a high-ranking SS officer.
Shortly after the beginning of the War, Werner's photograph appeared in the Sunday edition of the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper with the caption "The Ideal German Soldier"; the photograph had been sold to the newspaper by the official army photographer. It was later used on recruitment posters.
In 1940 following the Armistice with France, Werner was expelled from the army under Hitler's order of April 8 1940 which stated that all Mischlinge were to be expelled from the military. He returned to his former workplace which had now changed its name to the Feodor Schmeider Company, having been obliged to remove the Jewish name Schneller. Werner played an increasingly more responsible role within the company, obtaining contracts for uniforms from the army and the navy. He also attended the Reich Board of Labour Studies School (Reichsaussschuss für Arbeitsstudie) where he was one of 4 out of 80 students who passed the test to become a REFA teacher. He then became a Labour Studies Board lecturer on the clothing business, and delivered lectures to organizations and company directors, even publishing an article in the weekly trade publication Textilwoche.
In December 1942, Werner's father was admitted to the Bavaria Hospital. The Gestapo however raided the hospital and sent him to a Jewish hospital which had been requisitioned by the Gestapo for use as prison, with Jews being taken from and sent to Auschwitz. On Christmas Eve, gambling that the guards would be drunk or absent, Werner took his father from the hospital. Mr. Goldberg was soon back in the hands of the Gestapo and in April 1943 was summoned for deportation, but Werner told him not to show up and he was again saved. He became the only member of Werner's family to survive the War.
Werner Goldberg's story formed part of the 2006 documentary Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, a 58 minute film produced by Larry Price in association with the Israel Broadcasting Authority.[2]
Werner Goldberg featured in an episode of the Yesterday TV series "Nazi Collaborators", first screened in the UK in December 2010.
Werner Goldberg died in Berlin on September 28, 2004 [...]"
"I have to admit that I was shocked by his use of the word annihilation, I am also slightly tired that we always have to state it."
It's a common complaint that Grass insinuated an Israeli death wish against Iran, as if they were planning to attack Iran with nukes. Even Grass defenders like Jakob Augstein and Gideon Levy saw unwarranted exaggeration here. True, I'm not aware of any official Israeli plans to attack Iran (destroy their suspected nuclear weapons program) with nuclear weapons. However, I haven't seen anything to indicate that Iran wants to develop nukes only to drop them immediately onto Israel. And yet, this is the scenario which Israel has cited repeatedly, practically on a daily basis. How is that not "exaggerated"? And why should it be horribly offensive if Grass turns this around? Besides, what does "all options are on the table" mean, on Israel or the US? See various contributions that speak for Grass on this site:
link to hintergrund.de
Besides, "exaggeration" is the stuff of poetry. I can't believe literary critic, even so-called 'literary popes' like Reich-Ranicki are idiotic enough to deny that Grass wrote a POEM on the grounds that there are no RHYMES. Reich Ranicki included Celan's Death Fugue in his anthology of 100 poems of the 20th century. It contains only one single rhyme:
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
Death is a German-born master his eye is so blue
He shoots with lead bullets he shoots you his aim is so true
Do you think it's an "exaggeration" to say that there is something exclusively German about death and blue eyes? Would anybody be idiotic enough to call Celan's poem "disgusting" because it doesn't mention that a great many non-Germans with or without blue eyes participated in the so-called Nazi killing machine, including Auschwitz? Poets, historians, politicians and pundits do not speak the same language. It's Reich-Ranicki, not Grass, who has disgraced himself
From 2010, 65 yrs after the Nuremberg trials:
link to spiegel.de
thanks, lysias. I wish him well
The latest news on the Grass affair: the writer has been hospitalized. Heart problems. Those who have slandered him as Hitler, Nazi, anti-semite, lunatic or senile old fool may want to pray that this is not serious, or it will reflect very poorly on them
link to focus.de
@ Klaus/Avneri:
"Germany’s new national ideology of pro-Semitism"
Frankly, I don't see much, if any, difference between Germany and Canada. Are Canadians "a bit more thorough here than others"? And if so, why?
@ Daniel Rich:
"If you believe sons and daughters can and should be held responsible for the acts of their fathers and mothers"
I certainly don't. I also don't think Germans born after 45 are automatically blameless just because they were not involved in the crimes committed by their parents or (great) grandparents (the latter applies to most Germans alive today). Germans today carry their own burdens. Knee-jerk support for Israel is one of them. One reason, I suppose, why many agree with Grass.
"Hopeless bunch, you say? Is your economical status that good?"
No, but I no longer live in Germany. Economic concerns have driven German support for Israel since the end of WW II and the "reparation" settlements. Maybe more so than German guilt. German guilt or historical responsibility is, in many ways, just the self-serving moralistic wrapper around the whole mess. Grass, in his poem, addresses this by bringing up the submarine deals. You think the German arms industry, and German employment figures, do not benefit from those sales, even at discounts shouldered by the German taxpayer, at the expense of social programs, education, health care? Not to mention peace in the ME
Actually, the more I read the poem and think about it, the more I appreciate it. It would require a lot of commentary to flesh out the various taboos he attacks. "Hopeless bunch" referred to the current hysteria in Germany to identify the correct reaction to and interpretation of what Grass wrote, and why, as if there could not be the usual variety of opinions when it comes to certain topics. Or as if there was only one correct interpretation of a poem. Because this is absurd, critics, even literary critics, now question whether it is a poem in the first place. As if that solved the problem.
Yes, there is an obvious gulf between the various commentaries in the press, by politicians and intellectuals, and readers' comments, as noted here and elsewhere. Would it matter if only 8 % of Germans, or nobody, agreed with him or found what he said worth saying? Not one bit. He would still have every right to say it, and in any form he wishes, with or without rhyme or reason
"Germans have been held prisoner based on the guilt of the Nazi generation. The youngsters (other perhaps than neo-Nazis) are innocent but still being SUPPRESSED."
imprisoned and suppressed by whom? Even if one would identify the oppressors as non-German or non-Gentile, what happened to the Nuremberg principle that following orders is no excuse?
Once again, the Germans only have themselves to blame. And, as is usual, they do so by beating up on each other over which reaction to Grass' poem is the politically correct one. A hopeless bunch.
"I lost my password to the Jewish mind cloud-computer site"
try: "Holocaust". If that doesn't work, try: "Uniqueness of the Holocaust" or, "Holocaust denial laws"
Worth watching, for comparison: Wallace, incredulous but not demonizing, interviews the Shah in the mid-70s
link to youtube.com
"For ordinary Danzigers the quality of life remained relatively good for much of the war. Sopot, especially, became a favourite stamping ground for soldiers on R&R, and in spite of rationing and occasional shortages life didn’t get worse until the closing stages. The first warning signs that all was not well came with the first air raids, yet even so allied bombers targeted the shipyards – home to munitions factories producing V1 and V2 rockets – and the Zaspa airfield. The war still seemed far off, even in 1943 when work commenced on whisking cultural treasures to locations westwards.
By 1944 a different picture had emerged; Danzig had become a major transit point, not least with swarms of refugees fleeing from the east, as well as a regular target for bombing raids. By March, 1945, with the Red Army fast approaching, the population had reached 1.5 million and city stood on the precipice of chaos. Suspected deserters were strung up from the lampposts and trees of al. Zwyciestwa, and the city descended into a Dantean vision. Historian Antony Beevor writes of the ensuing siege: ‘Fighter bombers strafed the towns and port areas. Soviet Shturmoviks treated civilian and military targets alike. A church was as good as a bunker, especially when it seemed as if the objective was to flatten every building which still protruded conspicuously above the ground... Tens of thousands of women and children, terrified of losing their places in the queues to escape, provided unmissable targets’.
Danzig had been designated a closed fortress, or Festung, and the defence proved bitter and bloody. Gdynia fell in the middle of March, and faced the full wrath of a drunken, avenging army, spurring the defenders of Danzig to fight even harder to grant the remaining civilians the chance of evacuation. Encircled and out-powered, even when the opportunity to surrender was offered the Germans continued fighting; that fires were burning a month after Danzig was captured is testament to the ferocity of the siege. Polish and Red Army troops finally entered the city on March 21; Gdansk, home to the first shots of the war, now lay adrift on a sea of rape and ruin."
link to inyourpocket.com
Danzig during WW II is the subject/setting of Grass Danzig trilogy (Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, Dog Years), and other works. Here's a description of the destruction of Danzig in 45 from the Tin Drum:
link to danzig-online.pl
By the summer of 44, preparations for the evacuation of the city were under way. The refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff, subject of Grass' Crabwalk, was torpedoed by the Soviets in January 45.
"Did he make a mistake or did he have little option – far less option than those who serve in the IDF."
The motive Grass cited for volunteering for Wehrmacht (navy/submarine) service at the age of 15 (rejected on account of his being under age for army service) is rather banal: he wanted to get away from home. That's quite common at that age, in war or peace. I would be surprised if all who serve in the IDF do so for the purpose of defending Israel, oppressing, occupying and killing Palestinians, or preventing another Holocaust and getting ready to bomb Iran or whoever.
By the time Grass (b. October 1927) was 15, Germany was at war with the British Empire, the Soviet Union, the US, and dozens of other countries. No, he didn't have any option when he was conscripted in 1944 and ended up in the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht. Defeatism was severely punished one way or another. Refusal to serve would have resulted in execution or transfer to a concentration camp where such prisoners either became guards or were sent on suicide missions at the front, such as exploding enemy mines ahead of Wehrmacht and/or Waffen-SS soldiers. He would have served one way or another. I see no mistake, and certainly no more guilt than I would automatically ascribe to any soldier who served in WW II. They were all in the killing business, the Germans were not the only ones involved in heinous war crimes, and it is absurd to assume that every member of the Waffen-SS was an architect of the final solution, or even knew about it.
"the soviets believed they had poland all wrapped up until 23 years ago, but, then, lo and bebold, poland is free and independent again"
I dunno. If you listen to considerable numbers of Poles, including leading politicians and officials, it's WW II all over again. The Soviets have eliminated the Polish leadership at Katyn, this time by faking a plane crash, and Merkel, obviously another Hitler, is cracking the whip over the Eurozone. Free and independent EU member Poland?
Citizen:
“…at the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to their involvement with the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), except conscripts sworn in after 1943, who were exempted from the judgment on the basis of involuntary servitude."
If this had been the case, and if it had been consistently applied in all occupied zones of post-war Germany, the conscripted Grass could not have been kept as a prisoner until 1946 -- about twice as long as he served in the Waffen-SS (he was sworn in Nov 10, 44), doing forced labor (dishwasher for the US occupational forces), presumably also "on the basis of involuntary servitude". Not that this presented undue hardship, given the circumstances: he was probably safer and better fed, working in an US army kitchen, than he would have been had he been released as a Waffen-SS conscript at the place of his capture, Marienbad (Czechoslovakia)
"The leaders of pre-Israeli terrorists became prime ministers (Begin, Shamir)"
So what? Eisenhower became president. Churchill, idol of the neocons, is revered as the greatest Briton ever and credited for saving European civilization or something. You can't walk 5 steps in Canada without tripping over a Churchill statue, road, airport and what not. How absurd and hypocritical. And not just because of his European victims
link to time.com
link to open.edu
pabelmont: do you think British or American youths did or do NOT grow up surrounded by propaganda? Evil Huns? Evil Nazis? Evil Communists? Evil Arabs? ...
"where do you get the notion mere membership in the Waffen SS of a conscripted 17 year old makes him a criminal?"
Nuremberg, perhaps? The Allied decision to declare and treat the SS as a criminal organization? That automatically made any member, be he a volunteer or conscript, a criminal. This approach did stop short of the summary execution of SS members and Wehrmacht officers, even of NSDAP members, without trial, as advocated by Henry Morgenthau during the final phase of the war. Nevertheless, many SS members, most of them easily identified by the characteristic blood group tattoo on their left arm, lost their lives in wild executions performed by allied soldiers, during the liberation of the camps (such as the Dachau Massacre), by the Jewish Brigade, or by civilians across Europe. Other violations of the Geneva convention involved the use of millions of German POWs (Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and civilians, even returning exiles) as forced and slave laborers for months, years, even decades in the US, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Victor Gollancz wrote, in 1947:
"AMONG THE PLACES we visited were Neuengamme and Recklinghausen, two of the civilian internment camps where members of the organisations declared criminal at Nuremberg are awaiting trial. They are excellently run, within permissible limits, by commandants of great humanity, who cannot be held responsible for such mean regulations as that which limits incoming mail for each prisoner to one letter a week, even if a dozen arrive for him. Many of these men, it must be remembered, have been interned for more than two years, and their families outside are often destitute. But it is the injustice, not of this regulation or that but the whole procedure, that is so deplorable. Man after man whom we interviewed was clearly guilty of nothing worse than of doing what at the time he considered, and what as things were he was often almost bound to consider, his patriotic duty. Nuremberg is retrospective legislation of the cruellest and most reactionary kind.
In both camps there was great bitterness about something which at first we didn't understand. In the British zone, it appears, but not in the American, anyone in the Nuremberg categories, unless acquitted, is to be vorbestraft: i.e. entered in the police register as a man with a criminal record. He is to be vorbestraft even if the punishment is only a moderate fine or a short term of imprisonment, which, in view of the years already served, commonly means release. The young fellow we interviewed, who joined the Waffen S.S. in pretty much the spirit in which an Englishman might have joined the Guards, will become, at any rate for some considerable period, a stigmatised criminal. I say nothing of the fact that every one of these young men considers himself, and some of them not without cause, to have been unjustifiably excluded from the Sholto Douglas youth amnesty.
My reference to the Waffen S.S. and the Guards (whose conduct I am not for a moment comparing) will no doubt be misunderstood. A writer in the Press has suggested that I am "ready to forget many things", including unspeakable atrocities committed by members of the Waffen S.S. and other Nazi organisations. Often in my nightmares I have wished I could: just as I have wished that other would remember - those, for instance, who sent the remnant of the gassed and incinerated back to Germany, and the British public that failed to protest against so contemptible an iniquity. But you have to think yourself back into other people's shoes. Some of these fellows were nine when Hitler came to power; they were 17 when they joined the Waffen S.S.; and they joined it because, in that environment, they thought of it as the corps d'élite of the German army. And remember that no personal participation in atrocities [can] even be alleged against them. Unless they can prove, and one doesn't see how, that they didn't know what was happening, their failure to "resign" - with what chance of survival in times of war? - will mean punishment now in the way described. That they should have had the moral insight which would have prompted them to the sacrifice even of their lives is what everyone must wish; but was it to be expected of them with such a history as theirs?"
link to library.fes.de
Some alternative: commit suicide or become a criminal. Is there any other alternative in war? I suppose mass suicide of German conscripts would have saved Allied soldiers from having to kill them. Reminds me of Golda Meir: "When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."
Not all camps were as well run as the ones described by Gollancz. See this memoir for treatment in France. Also have a look at the last page/conclusion
link to amazon.com
"Isn’t the question whether his poem results from prejudice rather than from reason?"
my inner Kantian wants to know: what is the difference? According to Kant, objectivity is only possible because we all have the same mental/sensory filters that guide our perception of reality. In a similar vein, but on a mega-level, we all, regardless of ethnicity, age and other factors, are under moral obligation, via a manufactured consent, to view Nazis and Nazism as some ultimate evil without compare, as if no other perspective was humanly possible. Is this prejudice or reason?
"If he had been a keen anti-Semite ... in his youth that might be a reason for attributing prejudice to him"
only if we assume that people are incapable of learning and change. In that case, decades of major denazification and reeducation efforts were a waste of time, and the only solution would have been murder on a massive scale: kill all Nazis, or at least all the anti-semitic ones, as well as all non-Nazis among the Germans or their allies and opponents who were nevertheless keen anti-semites? On the other hand, if change is possible, it is also possible that Grass was not an anti-semite and/or Nazi in his youth, but has become one now.
Now what?
"Grass was conscripted into a tank unit when he was 17 near the end of the war. He is not and has never been a National Socialist"
And what if he had been a volunteer to the Waffen SS, and what if he had indeed been a National Socialist? How would that change the burden of proof that he was also a criminal? Were all National Socialists criminals? Was there anything criminal in the NS party program? Were Auschwitz and WW II on the ballot? Was consent to genocide a prerequisite for party membership? Would we criminalize all Democrats or Republicans in the US because they voted or supported, politically or by active military service, as enthusiastic volunteers or reluctant conscripts, aggressive war during which major war crimes and mass murder of civilians occurred? You are just shifting the problem around without solving it. And I just did the same thing
"They understand the insanity of war and the madness of militarism.
Israelis don’t."
I can't help bringing the following somewhat unusual attack on Grass and German/Prussian militarism (or lack thereof) to your attention, which illustrates the point you make:
"I should like you to think about something that is less well known, Herr Grass, and that is the fact that the First and Second World Wars were entirely unnecessary. That’s right: the fact that they were fought in the first place is entirely the fault of people like you, and specifically of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who could have pre-empted them in 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Günter Grass: a couple of soul-mates.
In March of that year, Germany demanded an open door for trade with the French colony of Morocco and called for Moroccan independence. Morocco was a pretext, of course; Britain and France had just signed the Entente Cordiale, and Germany wanted to force a crisis to preempt its eventual encirclement. Russia, you will recall, was in the midst of the 1905 Revolution following its humiliation by Japan, and Britain was in no position to defend France.
If Kaiser Wilhelm II had had the nerve to declare war on France during the 1905 Morocco Crisis, Count Alfred von Schlieffen’s invasion plan would have crushed the French within weeks. Russia’s Romanov dynasty, humiliated by its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and beset by popular revolt, likely would have fallen under more benign circumstances than prevailed in 1917. England had not decided upon an alliance with the Franco-Russian coalition in 1905. The naval arms race between Germany and England, a major source of tension, was yet to emerge. War in 1905 would have left Wilhelmine Germany the sole hegemon in Europe, with no prospective challenger for some time to come. Germany’s indecision left the initiative in the hands of Russia, elements of whose secret service backed the Serbian terrorists who murdered the Austrian crown prince in 1914, forcing Germany into war under far less favorable circumstances. Hohenzollern Germany, to be sure, was in many ways a disgusting place, but hardly to be compared to the Third Reich.
Think of it, Günter Grass: all that misery and bloodshed and recriminations, not to mention all your dreadful fiction — it all was unnecessary, because Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bully and a braggart rather than a man of action. If only Benyamin Netanyahu had been Kaiser in 1905, none of these terrible things would have happened!
It’s too late for Germany to reverse the mistakes of 1905, to be sure, but that’s no excuse for America or Israel to repeat them.
By the way, how did you like Inglorious Basterds?"
link to pjmedia.com
A similar argument is made in his recent book:
link to amazon.com
The British Army in North Africa was actually made up of British, Australian, Indian, Canadian, NZ, and South African forces, with additional units of Czechs, Poles, Free French, and Greeks. Also active on the Allied side were the Army of Africa, made up of French and Arab soldiers, and the Libyan Resitance fighters ... which prevented the Germans..."
I suppose you mean Wehrmacht soldiers when you say "the Germans"? Does that include the Italian divisions of the Afrikacorps? The Indian Legion? North Africans and Arabs? Somehow not all Arabs and Indians were willing to fight for a British victory against the racist Germans. Can't imagine why not. You do realize, I trust, that the Wehrmacht, as well as the Waffen-SS, was also a multi-ethnic, multi- national force of volunteers and conscripts, including many Europeans, a few Brits, Irish, Americans, and a million Soviets. Whatever.
"You sick bastard insult every one of those people."
You are a "sick bastard", Woody. You conveniently omit the fact that it was not some 'evil force' that was destroyed by the Allies, but human beings, animals, cities, towns and villages. Deal with it.
"Similar to the Bush administrations smaller but similar genocide in Iraq."
Why switch to the Bush administation? What about the "killing machine" unleashed by the Roosevelt administration against Hitler's "killing machine"? What, other than gas chambers, qualifies as systematic, industrialized murder, and as a war crime and crime against humanity? And how did one "killing machine" fuel the other?
Scenes from the 'good war':
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about your final bombing run, not over Japan, not over Germany, but over France?
HOWARD ZINN: Yeah. Well, we thought bombing missions were over. The war was about to come to an end. This was in April of 1945, and remember the war ended in early May 1945. This was a few weeks before the war was going to be over, and everybody knew it was going to be over, and our armies were past France into Germany, but there was a little pocket of German soldiers hanging around this little town of Royan on the Atlantic coast of France, and the Air Force decided to bomb them. 1,200 heavy bombers, and I was in one of them, flew over this little town of Royan and dropped napalm — first use of napalm in the European theater. And we didn’t know how many people were killed, how many people were terribly burned as a result of what we did. But I did it like most soldiers do, unthinkingly, mechanically, thinking we’re on the right side, they’re on the wrong side, and therefore we can do whatever we want, and it’s okay. And only afterward, only really after the war when I was reading about Hiroshima from John Hersey and reading the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and what they went through, only then did I begin to think about the human effects of bombing. Only then did I begin to think about what it meant to human beings on the ground when bombs were dropped on them, because as a bombardier, I was flying at 30,000 feet, six miles high, couldn’t hear screams, couldn’t see blood. And this is modern warfare.
In modern warfare, soldiers fire, they drop bombs, and they have no notion, really, of what is happening to the human beings that they’re firing on. Everything is done at a distance. This enables terrible atrocities to take place. And I think reflecting back on that bombing raid, and thinking of that in Hiroshima and all of the other raids on civilian cities and the killing of huge numbers of civilians in German and Japanese cities, the killing of a hundred thousand people in Tokyo in one night of fire-bombing, all of that made me realize war, even so-called good wars against fascism like World War II, wars don’t solve any fundamental problems, and they always poison everybody on both sides. They poison the minds and souls of everybody on both sides. We are seeing that now in Iraq, where the minds of our soldiers are being poisoned by being an occupying army in a land where they are not wanted. And the results are terrible.
AMY GOODMAN: You learned you dropped napalm on this French village?
HOWARD ZINN: You say?
AMY GOODMAN: Napalm?
HOWARD ZINN: Napalm. Well, we actually didn’t know what it was. They said, oh, you’re not going to have the usually 500 pound demolition bombs. You’re going to carry one — you’re going to carry 30 100-pound canisters of jellied gasoline. We had no idea what that was, but it was napalm.
link to democracynow.org
Just wondering how many Americans know that napalm was dropped on France during WW II. Some 'liberation'.
"A slander against the Poles. I’d be surprised if the Poles were guilty of mass murder even in the four figures. What are your sources?"
In “Statistics Of Poland's Democide -Estimates, Calculations, And Sources” R.J. Rummel wrote:
“Poland is of special interest because of the large number of Germans its regime killed. But these are not the only ethnics that it murdered. Table 7.2 recapitulates the total democide of Reichdeutsch and ethnic Germans (line 21) and adds to this the Polish post-war killing of Jews (lines 8 to 12) and Ukrainians (lines 15 to 17). I suspect these numbers are very conservative and do not take into account the murder of war-time collaborators [...]. But I can find no estimates of such a toll in the sources. In any case, the total democide for these years (line 24) still well places Poland among the megamurderers.”
link to hawaii.edu
Table 7.2:
link to hawaii.edu
According to Rummel, Poland’s annual democide rate (1945-48) is considerably greater than the annual rate of the Soviet Union (1917-87) or Nazi Germany (1933-45):
link to hawaii.edu
Rummel also notes:
“Of all the statistics I have presented on democide, two cases have been most controversial. One is for the democide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 1975 to 1979 [which] has received considerable criticism from the left as a gross overestimate. [...] Another controversy is over my case study or statistics of the Polish post-World War II democide of the Reich and ethnic Germans under their control. This has aroused considerable discussion in Poland [and] caused some irate Poles to send me "fuck you" e-mails, but there were also attempts to refute my facts and arguments. “
See link for details and discussion:
link to hawaii.edu
The persecution, and, indeed, the exodus of Jews, Germans and Ukrainians in and from Poland did not start at the end of WW II, and it would be naive to assume that revenge for Polish suffering during WW II provides the main or sole motive. In fact, such arguments only tend to provide similar psychological and political exculpation for aggression and revenge against Poles, be it by Germans or Ukrainians, during or after WW II. Is that what FY-emailing Poles want to justify as well?
On the persecution of Jews, Germans and Ukrainians and other non-Poles in Poland after WW I see:
link to en.wikisource.org
link to en.wikipedia.org
Germans:
link to books.google.ca
link to ghi-dc.org
Ukrainians:
link to ghi-dc.org
I would also recommend Gregor Thum’s Uprooted: How Breslau became Wroclaw During the Century of Expulsions. See p. 192 ff et passim on the old Polish national dream of western expansion into German (Prussian) territory, and its political pursuit immediately after WW I
link to books.google.ca
Rummel quotes Polish documents (from the archdiocese in Breslau) on the expulsions of the Germans from the city:
“There, where the number of Germans who had remained behind was about 300,000, it has been determined officially that more than ninety per cent of the babies, a very large percentage of infants, many young mothers and old persons died of starvation. As a result of the shortage of fats, dysentery broke out and claimed many victims, all the more so as the medical supplies which had not been confiscated or stolen were soon exhausted. Since the dispensaries usually only sold their goods in exchange for Zloty [Polish money] ..., the majority of Germans were not in a position to buy any medical supplies. For the same reason it was practically impossible for them to obtain hospital treatment as a deposit of 200 Zloty ... had to be paid upon admission to a hospital. The Germans were obliged to sell the few possessions they had managed to save, such as linen, clothing, electric stoves, jewelry, etc., to the Poles in order to obtain zloty with which to buy a little food. It must be remembered that from May 8th [1945] onwards the Germans had been obliged to get along without receiving any Polish money (in the form of wage or salary) and without any official allocations of food rations. The misery and distress of the population in the towns was indescribable.
It is obvious that, under the circumstances, many persons were at their wit's end. The number of suicides increased at an alarming rate; in fact, there would have been even more suicides in Breslau had the gas supply been available.”
link to hawaii.edu
The Potsdam Agreement, as Rummel notes, was not an order to expel, but merely gave permission. It did by no means authorize murder, plunder and rape. Thum writes extensively about the memory hole to which post-war Poland has assigned the crimes committed against the Germans (and not only the Germans, of course). See his Chapters 8-10. One finds much common ground here with the various ways of dealing (or not dealing) with the Nakba in Israel. Still, in the 1990s, a Wroclaw writer significantly broke through the collective amnesia and amputated memory:
“Please keep in mind that I was living in a German house in which whole generations of German children had been born and elderly Germans had died. I slept on a German bed, looked at German pictures on the walls, bathed in a German bathtub, ate from German pots and dishes, played with German swords, wrote with a German pen and German ink, leafed through German books ... And every time I took my school shirt off its hook, I would see the inscription ‘Steuernagel’. That was the name of the doctor who had lived in my apartment. He had never done anything to me ... and yet there I was living with his things. Sometimes I would think to myself: ‘My God, we’re living with stolen good!’.... we were raised in hatred and fear of the Germans from childhood on; and at the same time our entire world, the entire cosmos of everyday life, even our tastes were shaped by the realm of these German things, appliances, forms, and by the German spirit. Do you know what this means? Don’t you think this will have an impact on a person?” (Thum 384)
What impact does it have on a person, a culture, a society? What is the difference between a Pole living in a German apartment or house and a German living in a Jewish apartment or house, or an Israeli living in a Palestinian apartment or house?
MW commenter dumvitaestspesest on November 26, 2011 at 9:08 am
“I can totaly relate to it. My grandparents, ( on my mom's side) were ,transfered from Ukraine right after the war, to the south-west of Poland. They wound up in a tiny village located near Wroclaw (Breslau), where they lived in a post-German house. I was born and spent my young years there ,before my parents moved up North. Aaand thooose were the days, I wouldn't trade for anything else. I owned EVERYTHING . All the forests, streams, meadows, river, cementaries, trees, roof-tops etc. Me and the local kids were free to run around there ,like little dogs let out of a leash, and explore, all day long. I was a Tree Fairy. I loved climbing trees, used to spend hours on them, had favourite ones, and never fall off them. Trees were my friends, as well as roofs. Again, climbing , walking and spending time on them was a challenge and a pleasure, that I quite can't figure out right now. I was a litte tomboy, not afraid of anything. Dressed in a very simple , rather dirty clothes , oftentimes with holes ( all the climbing, jumping, rolling , etc was taking toll on them) I run around with an energy and curiosity of a very inquisitive , and not afraid of anything child. Kind of a hippy child or a native Indian child ,free to go whenever she wishes, as long she shows up at the meal times, and definately by the evening time. I remember especially those beautiful,vast ,Polish meadows, covered in the late spring, with a multitude of multi-color wild flowers and tall , green grass. Us/girls used to spend hours in them making bouquets ,and crowns on our heads made of grass and those colorful flowers. We were little princesess that were not looking for a prince, but were just having a good time jumping thorugh wild streams with plenty of rocks to climb on. I rememeber the old attic in our house. Full of old, post- German furniture, mirrows, books, newpapers, clothes etc ,and spider webs with an occasional, unfriendly spider sitting in them. On a rainy days I loved going there and just go through everything there for the 100th time. It was an excellent place to play hide and seek. I have so many great memmories from my simple, not fancy at all, ( I almost had no toys, but I had the whole wide world around me to play with) ,yet very enjoyable, free childhood, that I could almost write a book about it. We had freedom to explore the nature, freedom to discover what the real world is about, freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, freedom to make it or break it. We had that kind of freedom that now, current generations have no idea what we are talking about. Sometimes I do not even believe that it was for real. It seems like ages ago. And I'm not even thaaaat old:).”
How poetic. Now imagine a German taking over a ‘post-Jewish’ or a Jew taking over a ‘post-Palestinian’ house posting this on MW. It would either be censored or fiercely condemned by a few dozen comments. Why the double standard?
"he must have been a courageous man."
Augstein seems pretty mainstream to me. I do remember him slamming Grass for lacking precisely this particular virtue, though. Augstein was no friend of Grass. Apart from differing political views and party affiliations, Augstein senior characterized Grass as having become a pompous, self-righteous a** after the success of the Tin Drum (which Augstein found way too long) and Nobel Prize went to his head. He wrote a favorable review of Grass' Crabwalk but added that it was typical of Grass to tackle controversial or taboo subjects only once they've pretty much gone mainstream (in this case the view of Germans as victims of ethnic cleansing during the explusions at the end of WW II). A refugee from his native Danzig himself, Grass had for decades smeared everyone who complained about it as a right-winger, revanchist or neo-Nazi. Some see poetic justice in the fact that Grass is now at the receiving end of being told to shut up about what many people, and not just Israelis, don't want to hear. As for Augstein's point on Grass' lack of courage or political opportunism one may think of Norman Finkelstein's recent declaration that Israel bashing has become too easy? Finkelstein clearly does not lack courage. I'm not sure about Grass. Or even Augstein
addition, from 2001, in English. More of the same:
THE BLOND BEAST RETURNS
by Emanuel A. Winston, Mid East Analyst & Commentator
"Is there a little or perhaps a lot of the Nazi spirit alive and well among Germany’s so-called intellectuals? Publisher Rudolf Augstein of ‘Der Spiegel’ compares Prime Minister Ariel (Arik) Sharon to Adolph Hitler because Sharon is now defending Israel against Yassir Arafat’s terrorist attacks.(1) The basis of Augstein’s column was that Sharon’s hard-line toward Arab Palestinians was comparable to Hitler’s methods and, presumably, his goal of eliminating the Jews.
Mr. Augstein: How is any of this comparable to Sharon’s extraordinary patience and restraint in the face of numerous terrorist assaults? What you suggest is more in tune with former Nazi propaganda than a sound analysis. One is reminded of Hitler’s accusation - among other canards - that it was the Jews’ fault that Germany had collapsed financially in a flood of inflation. A lot of not so latent Nazism is once again rearing its ugly head in Germany.
Do we need to remind the reader of the six prior wars initiated by the Arab nations to eliminate the Jewish State of Israel and her Jewish citizens? Is it necessary to detail the terrorism originated by Arafat since 1964 and carried forward through today - every day?
For a respected intellectual in a flagship journal, ‘Der Spiegel’ to charge that Sharon had wiped out two decades of peace efforts by provoking war, is reminiscent of Herr Goebbels’ propaganda war against the Jews of Germany, Europe and Russia."
link to netanyahu.org
Deja vue or game changer? Augstein's defense of Grass reminds me of what his father, Rudolf Augstein, in 1981, wrote in response to Begin's ad hominem attack on former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, defaming the latter as a former Nazi who had no right to criticize Israel. Same old trick, same old controversy. Sorry, in German only. Should nevertheless be read or at least registered by anyone who mistakenly believes that there is anything new about harsh German criticism of Israel's aggressive foreign policy, or the hysteria that promptly follows
link to spiegel.de
"I don’t know any Jews personally "
Why not, Cliff? Have you been avoiding Jews? The "Some of my best friends are Jews" - claim is suspicious enough, but to come right out and say: "I don't know any Jews personally" - what is one to make of that? Maybe you'd meet some nice Jews if you weren't a H-denier and visited H-museums.
“Zundel’s right to express his views without being thrown in jail. “
It wouldn't surprise me if future generations of Americans (and Europeans, including Germans, and including German Jews*) recite the following:
"First they came for the Holocaust deniers, but I wasn't a Holocaust denier... then they came for the terrorist sympathizers, but I wasn't a terrorist sympathizer..." Maybe reverse the order? Either way, same problem
I am thinking of Evelyn Hecht-Galinsky, a prominent activist who has defended Atzmon's right to express his opinions without being subjected to censorship and defamation
"Sorry to bring this up."
Thanks for bringing this up. HUGE.
re politicians exciting crowds to get them frothing at the mouth:
"Iran will help Muslims around the world to liberate Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said in Tehran on Sunday, as the Iran was celebrating 33 years to the Islamic Revolution.
Haniyeh's comments came as the Gaza PM continued his visit to Iran, and after saying on Saturday that Hamas would never acknowledge Israel."
link to haaretz.com
another fool's game
"Israel wasn’t a nation when it was founded. There is no medieval poetry that describes the Israeli condition."
neither was the US, or, more recently, the Soviet Union. There's no "shared memory that goes back more than 60 yrs in Danzig and the German territories annexed by Poland either. The Poles call the expulsion "resettlement", and prefer to speak of the "recovered territories". It's the same BS as "Judea and Samaria". Why should the Poles get away with it, and not the Israelis? Do I detect anti-Semitism here? It would be an easy charge to make anyway. It's not like there are centuries that passed between the expulsion of Germans over several yrs, starting in 45, and the Nakba. But feel free to subscribe to the cult that the Germans deserved it, and the Poles acted in self-defense. Why fall for one kind of hasbara, and not the other?
You're welcome. Here's another brilliant one, from 2006:
link to theonion.com
"TEHRAN—Amidst mounting geopolitical tensions, Iranian officials said Wednesday they were increasingly concerned about the United States of America's uranium-enrichment program, fearing the Western nation may soon be capable of producing its 8,500th nuclear weapon. "Our intelligence estimates indicate that, if it is allowed to progress with its aggressive nuclear program, the United States may soon possess its 8,500th atomic weapon capable of reaching Iran," said Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, adding that Americans have the fuel, the facilities, and "everything they need" to manufacture even more weapons-grade fissile material. "Obviously, the prospect of this happening is very distressing to Iran and all countries like Iran. After all, the United States is a volatile nation that's proven it needs little provocation to attack anyone anywhere in the world whom it perceives to be a threat." Iranian intelligence experts also warned of the very real, and very frightening, possibility of the U.S. providing weapons and resources to a rogue third-party state such as Israel."
the onion.com
Chomsky, 1990:
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. By violation of the Nuremberg laws I mean the same kind of crimes for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And Nuremberg means Nuremberg and Tokyo. So first of all you've got to think back as to what people were hanged for at Nuremberg and Tokyo. And once you think back, the question doesn't even require a moment's waste of time. For example, one general at the Tokyo trials, which were the worst, General Yamashita, was hanged on the grounds that troops in the Philippines, which were technically under his command (though it was so late in the war that he had no contact with them -- it was the very end of the war and there were some troops running around the Philippines who he had no contact with), had carried out atrocities, so he was hanged. Well, try that one out and you've already wiped out everybody. "
link to chomsky.info
I don't see why it should be more disgusting than referring to the US and various satellite states as part of the "free world".
There you go: What's needed is another vegetarian eco-fascist to put an end to such despicable specism
Curious how Germany got into hot water with the US for voting with BRIC against the Libya intervention:
link to ecfr.eu