I was involved in the organisation of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, while First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw. The 50th did not receive anything like the media coverage given to the 70th, of which more later.
Senior British visitors to Poland invariably included a concentration camp on their itinerary, and from escorting people around I visited camps a great deal more often than I would have wished. I found the experience appalling and desolate. The first I ever saw was Majdanek and I recall that I just had to sit helpless and shivering for some time. One thing the experience left me with – including meeting survivors and both Polish and German eye-witnesses, and seeing the architects’ plans for camps – was a contempt for those who claim the whole thing did not happen, or was an accident, or was small scale.
It in no way diminishes the genocidal attack on the Jews to remember that a vast number of Poles also died in the camps, as well as gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and disparate political prisoners. I tried sometimes to diminish the horror I felt at involvement with the camps, with attempts at humour. I was present at a meeting listing the guests of honour; the President of Lithuania was included. I whispered that he was coming to represent the camp guards. That was offensive, and I apologise. But there is a real problem that to this day Eastern Europe – including Poland itself – has not come to terms with historical truth about collaboration with anti-Jewish genocide and other attacks on minorities. I recommend this website, which tackles these issues very honestly and is well worth a lengthy browse.
It requires bigotry not to be able to understand why nationalist resistance movements against Russian occupation became allied with Germany during World War II. That would be reprehensible only in the same sense that allied collaboration with Stalin might be reprehensible, but for the added factor of enthusiastic collaboration with genocidal and master race programmes and fascist ideology. That is what makes the glorification of Eastern European nationalist figures from this period generally inappropriate.
I fear however that the real reason that the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz received so much more coverage than the 50th is a media desire to reinforce the narrative of the War on Terror and Western policy in the Middle East by invoking the spectre of massive anti-Semitism. There have been isolated but deplorable, apparently anti-Semitic attacks of a small-scale terrorist nature in France and Belgium in recent years. But to conflate this into stories of a wave of popular anti-Semitism in Europe is a nonsense. Maureen Lipman’s claim that she may have to leave the UK is not just silly but disingenuous. I do not believe she feels in personal danger of attack – there is absolutely no reason why she should – she is rather making a political point.
There are two factors which could exacerbate anti-Semitism at present. One is the appalling behaviour of Israel and its indefensible action in continually seizing Palestinian land and using its military superiority to dominate and occasionally massacre Palestinians. Regrettably, there are a very small minority of people who wrongly blame Jews in general for the actions of Israel.
The second factor is of course the terrible economic hardship wrought across the whole world by irresponsible banking practices, and the fact that the bankers luxury lifestyles were maintained at the cost of everybody else. There are still a tiny minority of people stuck in the medieval mindset associating banking with the Jewish community. There is in fact a very plausible argument that if any “race” has a disproportionate influence on the development and character of international banking since the mid eighteenth century, it is the Scots! But those who see banking as a racial issue are nutters.
You could construct an argument from these factors, and you could identify that anti-Semitic people do exist. They certainly do. They dominate the very small category of people who get banned even from this free speech blog. But are their opinions intellectually respectable, promoted in the mainstream or able to be expressed openly without fear of either social or legal consequences? No, no and no. Anti-semites are fortunately a tiny and strange minority. I might add that in my numerous and frequent social contacts in the British Muslim community, I have never encountered anti-Semitism (unlike, say, Poland and Russia where I encountered casual anti-Semitism quite frequently).
The final point, is of course, the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-Semitism. That seems to me the fundamental design of the media campaign exaggerating the scale of anti-Semitism at the moment. Yes, we must always remember the terrible warnings from history and it is right to remember those who died in the concentration camps, Jewish, Polish, Romany, Gay, Communist or any other category. But we should be aware of those who wish to manipulate the powerful emotions of horror thus evoked, for present objectives of the powerful.
I’ll give you my opinion, I think you published an extract from the book “Did Six Million Really Die?” written by National Front member Richard Verrall under a false name.
In 1988 a Canadian judge said of the book that it “misrepresented the work of historians, misquoted witnesses, fabricated evidence, and cited non-existent authorities”.
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Nope.
Oh and Fred, if I want your opinion, I’ll ask for…until then…
Mr Goss
Go back to explaining away Russian aggression in Ukraine and leave the Holocaust discussion to the grown-ups. 🙂
Republicofscotland
“Oh and Fred, if I want your opinion, I’ll ask for…until then…”
_______________
Bit touchy this evening, aren’t you?
One of the most important aspects of the Red Cross Report is that it clarifies the causes of those deaths that undoubtedly occurred in the camps toward the end of the war.
Says the Red Cross Report: “In the chaotic condition of Germany after the invasion during the final months of the war, the camps received no food supplies at all and starvation claimed an increasing number of victims.
Itself alarmed by this situation, the German Government at last informed the ICRC on February 1st, 1945 … In March 1945, discussions between the President of the ICRC and General of the S.S. Kaltenbrunner gave even more decisive results. Relief could henceforth be distributed by the ICRC, and one delegate was authorised to stay in each camp …” (Vol. III, p. 83).
Clearly, the German authorities were at pains to relieve the dire situation as far as they were able. The Red Cross are quite explicit in stating that food supplies ceased at this time due to the Allied bombing of German transportation, and in the interests of interned Jews they had protested on March 15th, 1944 against “the barbarous aerial warfare of the Allies” (Inter Arma Caritas, p. 78).
By October 2nd, 1944, the ICRC warned the German Foreign Office of the impending collapse of the German transportation system, declaring that starvation conditions for people throughout Germany were becoming inevitable.
______________________________
Habb aka Guido.
Neither Guido, Dora, Uncle Eliseo nor Joshua, have so far stated anything of significance, as I thought all mouth and no trousers.
“Bit touchy this evening, aren’t you?”
_____________
Not really Guido, Fred, well you know Fred better than I do, so you must be a hell of patient man.
Guido, say hello to Dora, and Joshua for me.
“Nope.”
Then how come at the bottom of the page on rense.com you lifted it from it says ‘For the entire book “Did Six Million Really Die?”, click here.’?
Do I have to post the proof? I don’t much want to be posting links to National Front propaganda.
Anon : “As for Node not being a Holocaust denier himself, he’s sourced material before from anti-Semitic sites such as Metapedia that question the Holocaust, so perhaps he would like to clarify his position?”
I vaguely remember the heavens crashing down upon me for referencing that site, but not the circumstances. I think Google threw it up in answer to a search about the Electric Universe? You seem to be keeping notes so no doubt you will enlighten me.
But it is an irrelevant distraction. Earlier you have labelled me a holocaust denier on the grounds of what you pretend to believe is the unspoken motivation behind my words. Now you accuse me on the grounds of a site I once linked to. Any chance of an adult debate here? No name calling, no putting other people’s words in my mouth.
Let me ask you a question in the light of Macky’s information today. He pointed out that for a while, it was “illegal in France to question both the Holocaust & the Armenian Genocide” but “three years ago France overturned the law on the Armenian Genocide, but not on the Holocaust.” So, after careful consideration, a court has decided that a Frenchman may question the Armenian genocide but not the Shoah. As a self-proclaimed believer in free speech, do you support this judgement?
I think you’ve got him there, Fred.
But you know he’s not quite what he seems…..
“Mr Goss
Go back to explaining away Russian aggression in Ukraine and leave the Holocaust discussion to the grown-ups. :)”
Read the article Noddy!
Again, how can one even talk about the “consensus” of professional historians in an environment in which holding any view that deviates significantly from orthodoxy is suicidal? How can anybody be sure that some history prof is saying what he says because he really believes it, or just because he prefers his comfy office to a jail cell?
If the narrative were so unquestionably true, would it require thus level of bullying and intimidation to protect it from the normal process if scholarly debate?
That’s two mentions of my name by the troll.
One implies that I am a holocaust denier. Completely untrue and it’s slander.
The other calls me a liar and calls for a retraction. For what I am unsure.
I think the troll is off his trolley.
12 posts by Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)
in the last two hours.
++++++++
La vita non è un bene per i Palestinesi.
Spain blames Israel for death of UN peacekeeper
Two Israeli troops killed in Hezbollah attack; UN appoints committee to investigate death of Spanish soldier
Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations is blaming Israel for the death of a Spanish UN peacekeeper during an exchange of fire between the Israeli military and the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group in a disputed border area and called on the United Nations to fully investigate the violence.
“It was because of this escalation of violence, and it came from the Israeli side,” Spanish Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi told reporters after an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council Wednesday night.
Marchesi said that during the meeting, “I did express my deepest concern about the deterioration of the situation in south Lebanon which resulted from the rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah from the UNIFIL area of operations toward Israel and the artillery fire which followed across the blue-line [the UN border demarcation from 2000].
“I did condemn this serious breach of the cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel in violation of UN resolution 1701.
“I did express my strongest condemnation of the death of the UNFIL Spanish peacekeeper, which occurred because of these events,” Marchesi said.
“I called on all sides to exercise utmost restraint, to respect the blue line and to preserve the security and stability of Lebanon,” Marchesi said.
“I did ask for a full investigation of the events. I also called on all parties to abide scrupulously by their obligation to respect the safety of UNIFIL and other UN personnel,” he said.
The UN peacekeeper has been identified as Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo, 36, and officials have said only that the cause of his death is under investigation.
/..
http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/59134-150127-two-rockets-fired-from-syria-land-in-northern-israel
What is tiresome about the Holocaust Industry is it’s insistence on the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust. In fact there have been many holocausts/genocides in history, some according to their own boastful account, conducted by the Jews.
Even in living memory there have been many holocausts of non-Jews, for example the genocide of the Baltic nations by mass movement of population — from the Baltic states to central Asia, and from Russia to the Baltic republics. Moreover, a kinder and gentler genocide of the European nations is ongoing through processes of mass migration and multi-culturalism, a processes approved and promoted by Jewish intellectuals and politicians as well as by the Liberal-left establishment.
The Jewish holocaust is unique only to Jews. The attempt to make it a unique event in the history of all people is one of many legitimate causes of negative feeling toward Jews, an antagonism that Jews seem deliberately to stoke, in order one supposes, to maintain a paranoid isolation that serves to maintain their racial and cultural identity while benefiting from immersion within societies of alien race and culture.
A very sad piece by Ramzy Baroud.
Dear Syria: From One Refugee to Another
January 28th, 2015
Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.
Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.
My grandmother Mariam, would venture out to the ‘death zone’ that bordered the separated and newly established state of Israel from Gaza’s refugee camps to collect figs and oranges. She faced death every day. Her children were all refugees, living in shatat – the Diaspora.
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/dear-syria-from-one-refugee-to-another/
Habbabkuk
Yesterday I referred you to section 4.1 of the Wikpedia article THe Jewish Holocaust. Have you read it?
__________________
Yes, I did read it, but in case I missed something, I have re-read it.
It begins thus:
‘Since 1945, the most commonly cited figure for the total number of Jews killed has been six million.’
I think we can all agree with that.
This means that until 1988 the figure was 6 million, but in 1989 the Auschwitz camp museum revised the figure killed there down by 2.5 million. This figure is widely accepted and not disputed.
But somehow the total figure remained at 6 million.
I confess I have no idea why 6 minus 2.5 should still equal 6. And you haven’t explained why.
You did claim that the final figure was ‘irrespective’ of the number killed at Auschwitz but did not respond to my invitation to explain this rather surprising mathematical truth.
Instead, you referred me to ‘what Lysias wrote at 22h38?’ which was this:
‘Hilberg’s figure, if memory serves, was based on census figures and the like, and did not depend on any estimates of the numbers killed in the death camps. So it should be unaffected by a revision downward of the number of people killed at Auschwitz.’
But this fails on logic. If the figure was 6, and 2.5 were deaths were wiped off the slate the figure is now 3.5. If it is still 6 then the original figure of 6 was wrong, and should have been 8.5, but I never see anyone arguing that.
The Wikipedia article you cite goes on to state that the 6 million figure came from Adolf Eichmann. Is that it? Is that the source and basis of your certainty and conviction? A Nazi war criminal on trial? How the feck would he know what the figure for the deaths of European Jewry were?
More pertinently, it seems the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, cited by Wikipedia in the same paragraph, do not accept that figure. They are quoted as saying there is ‘no precise figure for the number of Jews killed’ but they have been able to find documentation of more than three million names of Jewish victims killed.
So according to them, at least 3 million. I can buy that,. But they clearly don’t feel confident with Eichmann’s estimate. So why then—assuming as I do that these people are the true authority here— should sharing their doubt mean in certain countries loss of job, disgrace and possibly imprisonment?
How come they are allowed to express doubt about the figures but no one else is?
I didn’t want to come this far down the road when I originally posted. I don’t for a second doubt the horror of what was inflicted on the Jews (and others) in the Holocaust. Indeed, I read German at university and specialised in 20th literature and history. I’m well aware of what happened, and I’ve read much of the survivor literature. But equally my familiarity with what happened makes me bridle at attempt to make me things things that ‘just ain’t so.’ It seems to me, having taken a peek at this over the past two days, that there is wide disagreement about the true figures. That being the case, it is absurd to make laws and legislate on the truth.
@ Habbabkuk
“I do realise that there are some peculiar people out there who “reason” more or less as follows: there were no mass graves and the crematoria could not have burnt the numbers it is suggested were killed, ergo the number it is suggested were killed are false.
But I’m sure you’re not one of those peculiar people. Are you? ”
Just looking for the truth. Never have trusted mainstream sources, governments or any organisation that could benefit from being economical with the facts. Would I trust a Zionist or any of their non Zionist Lackeys, absolutely not! And their would be something peculiar if i did!
It’s not just Spanish, Ba’al.
IM (admittedly uninformed) O, Spanish is by far the closest derivative. When I first met it, I immediately formed the opinion that it was Essex Latin (“amamos, ama’is, aman’ “) with the bits Latin teachers linger lovingly over cheerfully discarded in the interests of communication. I think Castellano rocks, and I really must learn it properly one day.
Node
“I vaguely remember the heavens crashing down upon me for referencing that site, but not the circumstances. I think Google threw it up in answer to a search about the Electric Universe? You seem to be keeping notes so no doubt you will enlighten me.”
Yes of course. You used it to support the claim that Jews invent anti-Semitism by going around painting swastikas on public walls. And now you are getting very exercised about your right to deny the Holocaust. Presumably the Jews made it all up? Are we noticing a pattern here regards the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype of the devious Jew?
“As a self-proclaimed believer in free speech, do you support this judgement?”
No. I don’t know how many times I have had to repeat myself, but once more, I DO NOT support legislation making it illegal to deny the Holocaust, and no such legislation is in place in this country so yours is a moot point. I’m not engaging in a debate about the legal history of debating the Armenian/Jewish genocides in France.
So what is it that you wish to debate, Node? Perhaps we should start with your views on the Holocaust. Did it happen? Did it not? Or did it happen but was exaggerated? Your move.
CanSpeccy
“Even in living memory there have been many holocausts of non-Jews, for example the genocide of the Baltic nations by mass movement of population — from the Baltic states to central Asia, and from Russia to the Baltic republics. Moreover, a kinder and gentler genocide of the European nations is ongoing through processes of mass migration and multi-culturalism, a processes approved and promoted by Jewish intellectuals and politicians as well as by the Liberal-left establishment.”
Neither of which quite equals herding millions of Jews into extermination camps and then gassing them.
It’s worth noting that those most vociferous in their demands to be allowed freely to deny the Holocaust (which, incidentally, they are perfectly entitled to do anyway) are almost invariably anti-Semites, just as those who do deny it are apmost always anti-Semites motivated by their dislike of Jews rather than academic curiosity.
@Anon
Neither of which quite equals herding millions of Jews into extermination camps and then gassing them.
Oh, I see, you want genocide by mass murder rather than the other means outlined by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish scholar who coined the term “genocide.”
OK, how about the Holodomor, around six to ten million Ukrainians deliberately starved on Stalin’s order and under the personal direction of the Jew, Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, who rest his soul, died peacefully in his bed (see Stalin’s Jews, in the Israeli publication YNet News).
But if for some reason you don’t like that one, there was the Japanese slaughter of three to ten million in South East Asia, there was the Cambodian genocide, a result of US intervention, the Nigerian civil war. Then there are lots of little ones, Rwanda, for example, or the lethal expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Germans from East Europe after WW2, and more, many more.
@KingOfWelshNoir
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry report didn’t even consider the number of deaths at Auschwitz, it was compiled entirely using civic records.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/angap03.asp
So how could the number of deaths at Auschwitz affect it?
@Anon:
It’s worth noting that those most vociferous in their demands to be allowed freely to deny the Holocaust (which, incidentally, they are perfectly entitled to do anyway) …
Don’t talk bollocks. Of course Holocaust deniers are NOT “perfectly entitled” to deny the Holocaust in many countries. Throughout the EU for example, holocaust denial is punished by imprisonment of up to six years.
Why are such stupid remarks as yours permitted here whereas my carefully considered and well informed last post but one was deleted along with three of Mark’s that preceded it? Craig Murray’s idea of free speech? or just really dumb moderators? Bet this will be deleted too!
Oops, I was wrong about Yagoda’s death. The Commies shot him, but not for mass murder, though, merely for alleged diamond smuggling and spying for Germany.
Questioning the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust does not make you a denier or an anti-semite, but it raises suspicion because for some reason it is a tactic of anti-semites.
What real difference does it make if it is six or four million – it is still abominable.
Ba’al: PS Most of Genesis didn’t happen. Legal.
Genesis is not best contemplated as a legal text, or with a lawyer’s critical facultie for after all do not lawyer’s select those facts which support their arguments or their preferred preconceptions.
CanSpeccy
“OK, how about the Holodomor, around six to ten million Ukrainians deliberately starved on Stalin’s order and under the personal direction of the Jew, Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, who rest his soul, died peacefully in his bed (see Stalin’s Jews, in the Israeli publication YNet News).”
Yes the Holodomor does deserve more recognition. Sadly, I think starvation, whether it was deliberate or not, doesn’t have the same chilling effect on people as the sight of thousands of emaciated, industrially slaughtered bodies being bulldozed into pits. Some of the Soviet crimes were every bit as appalling as those carried out by the Nazis, but for some inexplicable reason the school curriculum makes very little room for the atrocities of the far-left.
By the way, the Jew, Yagoda, as you call him, was in fact executed.
CanSpeccy 10:29pm
Sorry, hadn’t seen your correction.
“Don’t talk bollocks. Of course Holocaust deniers are NOT “perfectly entitled” to deny the Holocaust in many countries.”
I’m was talking about this country you twit.
Out of interest, I would like to see a list of those countries in which it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. I should imagine that it strongly corresponds with those countries that still bear deep shame about what was done to the Jews in those countries. This might explain why such apparently harsh legislation exists and hence why it does not in Britain.