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 agree with you. The liberation of Auschwitz is important but it has very little to do with Britain.
I also agree that the occasion was cynically manipulated by Zionists – with the familiar narrative of supposedly increasing anti-semitism in Britain trotted out yet again (and with characteristic gracelessness, given Britain’s wartime role).
There is something else too, though, and that is the increasing obsession in the media with anniversaries. It seems that the more the nation is neutered, infiltrated and embarrassed the more we’re supposed to feel proud.
PS, CanSpeccy
Why do you place the words “the Jew” before the name of an evil man who also happened to be Jewish? Is it because you believe he is evil because he is Jewish?
You remind me of our good friend N_ who likes to add after the names of particularly greedy businessmen the words “who is Jewish”, but for some reason forgets to do so when they are Christian, Muslim or Hindu.
Tom
“There is something else too, though, and that is the increasing obsession in the media with anniversaries.”
This is a good observation and one that might provide a better explanation than
JewishZionist manipulation.http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
Suggests that the US (1838 for Cherokees) & not us (Boer war 1900) as I had thought were the first to make ‘modern’ use of concentration camps.
Anon, Canspeccy always uses racial identifiers that are considered offensive. He likes to seem as racist as possible then loudly deny that he’s racist, then throw insults at everyone else, whom he classifies as “liberals”. It’s just affectation, style. And he needs to read Mendel; pea plants with blue flowers crossed with pea plants with red flowers do not result in uniformly magenta flowers.
That was only the excuse that they gave. Stalin’s real reason for punishing him was that he resisted starting the Great Purge that Stalin wanted.
Oh fuck of Clark, or else you’ll be telling me I insulted you because your granny died art Auschwitz or some other astounding ridiculous thing.
In the context of a discussion of the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust it is highly relevant, as the Jewish author of the article I linked to was keenly aware, that Yagoda, Stalin’s mass murderer, was a Jew.
It should be remembered that Raul Hilberg’s figure for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was 5.1 million. So that already represents a substantial reduction from 6 million and is more consistent with the reduced death toll at Auschwitz.
@ Anon
“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.
“a compromise has been reached within the EU and while the EU has not prohibited Holocaust denial outright, a maximum term of three years in jail is optionally available to all member nations for “denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” (Wikipedia)
So, yeah, you were talking bollocks.
With the key word being “optional”. How many times has it been exercised? None. And it remains legal to deny the Holocaust in the UK.
John Goss
Other commenters on here might moght loke to conform.”
Art thou taking ye p ?
I have said this before. People on this blog quite rightly have a point of view. They are quite entitled to express it. People, including myself, choose links that support what each of us perceives to be true. Fair enough. I have also said that one unnecessary death is a death too many. Arguing the semantics of how many Jews (and others) died in Nazi concentration camps is not productive. Catching the murderers and confronting them is productive, like catching the murderers of Dag Hammarskjöld and Bernt Carlsson.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/UN_SecretaryGeneral_Ban_Kimoon_Solve_two_of_the_Cold_Wars_greatest_mysteries/?sGRQXib
Thanks for signing. Much appreciated. And please spread this important petition.
Here’s Canspeccy with his cure for global warming – which is to ensure that people only breed in the country they were born in:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/clark-energy-resources-and-the-future/comment-page-1/#comment-12443
Racial purity, in other words.
CanSpeccy 28/01/2015 11:50pm
[JSD 1]: This has always struck me as a remarkably anti-Semitic passage in the Christian Gospels.
[CanSpeccy 1]: What’s anti-Semitic about it? It’s supposed to be an account of what happened!
Only if you say that it is a deliberately contrived false account of events can you call it anti-Semitic,
[JSD 2]: I do not think that is quite right. It seems possible to me to genuinely believe what you are saying, and to be anti-Semitic nonetheless. I have no doubt that many people have genuinely believed blood libels against Jews, and have been consumed with hatred for them as a consequence. Did the genuineness of their belief mean that they were not anti-Semitic?
However, I certainly do say that it is a deliberately contrived false account, and I give my reasons below.
[CanSpeccy 1]: and since there is no mention of Jesus in the historical record,
[JSD 2]: Let us go slowly and be more precise. I will assume that by “the historical record” you mean the contemporary secular historical record, and if so, you are quite right. Of course there is mention of Jesus in the historical record: there are the Gospels, and the earlier inferred sources upon which the Gospels are based; these form part of the historical record, naturally, even if one believes that every word in them is false.
[CanSpeccy 1]: we have no evidential basis for saying the gospel account of the execution of Jesus is true or false, or therefore for saying that the gospel account of the execution of Jesus is or is not anti-Semitic.
[JSD 2]: I don’t agree with that. Even though there is no contemporary historical record which mentions Jesus, I do not believe there is absolutely no evidence we can work with, in reaching an opinion on whether or not this specific incident, described within this specific Gospel, is likely to be true or false.
Incidentally, you seem to be saying that, because there is no contemporary external confirmation of the existence of Jesus, we are somehow obligated to suspend judgment about whether or not the Gospel narratives are true or false. That’s an odd way of looking at the matter, it seems to me. There are in fact surviving historical records from the time and place that Jesus, this amazing person who allegedly drew enormous crowds to his presence, and performed miracles in front of these crowds, and caused an army of resurrections after his execution, allegedly lived and preached and was publicly executed: and there isn’t a word about him in any of them. To me, that supports the idea that the Gospel narratives are made up; it does not mean we are not entitled to take this remarkable silence into account. And if the Gospel narratives are made up, then on your own showing we can say that this passage is deliberately contrived to be anti-Semitic.
In any case, your brush is a little bit broad for my liking, and I would like to narrow things down somewhat. I am not talking about “the gospel account of the execution of Jesus”. I am talking about this specific detail within one specific account.
There are four canonical Gospels, and this passage does not occur in all of them. It occurs in only one, the Gospel according to Matthew, as I quoted. That’s very curious in itself. Let’s assume for the moment that the Gospel according to Matthew is in fact describing a historical event. It’s a very striking one, isn’t it? Pilate addressing the “crowd”, having water brought to him or fetching his own water, washing his hands in public and proclaiming his innocence, and the people in the “crowd” separately and individually saying out loud that they take the guilt for this execution and also that their children are responsible too. (Does all that seem very likely to have actually happened, to you?) Not something easily missed. Yet it occurs in no other Gospel. I say that this is evidence that the passage has, in fact, been deliberately contrived to blame the Jewish people for the execution of Jesus.
It’s late. Apologies, but I will have to take up your other points another time. Good night.
Kind regards,
John
I find it curious, John, that you consider Matthew’s gospel anti-Semitic since Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was a Jew preaching to the Jews, as in Matthew 5: 17:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
From that we can infer that the author of Matthew was himself a strictly observant Jew. It is quite illogical, therefore, to suppose that he contrived a false anti-Semitic account of Jesus’s death?
Racial purity, in other words.
Being trashed on Tallbloke’s blog still rankles, does it Clark?
But rather pointless to misrepresent what I said, since you have provided the link that allows anyone to see what it was that I said.
Unfortunately, in your mad desire to see the British people made a minority in their own homeland, as they are now in London, Leicester, Luton, and soon in Birmingham and many other urban areas (the foreign-born, as the majority, already dictate the outcome of elections in several London boroughs, which of course explains why the lib-left suck up to the immigrant community while trying to pack in more immigrants at the expense of declining living standards for the indigenous population), you fail even to give a thought to the implications, the destruction of diversity, cultural as well as racia. For you, loving diversity means loving it to death by creating one mongrel race of untermenschen controlled by the globalist elite.
But, John, let me reiterate that the Christian faith is not based on the gospels, which are hearsay accounts written a generation after the death of Jesus. All major Christian faiths are based on the Apostolic Creed that says nothing about Jews killing Jesus. Insofar as there has been anti-Semitism in Europe it has been anti-Semitism of mostly Christians, but that does not make Christianity an anti-Semitic religion, it just means that the beliefs and actions of Christians do not necessarily follow from the religious doctrine to which they supposedly subscribe.
Interesting read.
Today’s House of Lords debates – Thursday 29 January 2015Palestine: Recognition.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/lords/todays-lords-debates/read/unknown/585/
Anon : “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.
If you like, I’m quite comfortable with my views. But before I do, let’s deal with you repeatedly calling me a holocaust denier. You haven’t cited a single example to back up your accusation, despite me several times asking you to. Try this : read through your comments today substituting the words “absolute rotter” for “Holocaust denier.” OK, you done that? Makes you look pretty stupid, doesn’t it, so do yourself a favour and stop showing yourself up.
Now, my views on the Holocaust. Did it happen? Did it not? Or did it happen but was exaggerated. In a nutshell, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.
Everything I learn about current affairs tells me to distrust the official narrative. The past is so notorious for false narratives that there is a cliché to cover it – “History is written by the victors.” Therefore keeping an open mind on historical matters is a wise policy, but on this one matter it is interpreted as sinister behaviour.
Before you think I’m evading the question, let me explain using an example from much more recent history – 9/11. I watched it live on TV and I’ve listened to a hundred eye witnesses. I’ve seen video tape from many angles, slow motion, looped, close-up. I’ve seen animated reconstructions and 3d modelling with real world physics. I’ve compared the evidence and theories of scientists, charlatans, demolition experts, crackpots, the knowledgeable, the ignorant, the sincere, the liars, qualified investigators, armchair pundits, and politicians. Yet I don’t know why those towers fell down.
9/11 : Live before my eyes. Fully documented. Endlessly examined.
As opposed to :
The Shoah : Happened before I was born. Shrouded in conflicting evidence. Not allowed to examine.
Yet you demand I express certainty about this event while you do everything in your power to ensure that open discussion and examination of it is made impossible. You bleat on about free speech while smearing those who try to exercise it. You demand I unquestioningly follow the official line or be destroyed, and you have the cheek to call me a nazi. You’re a hypocrite, Anon, and your cynical abuse of the term “Holocaust Denier” is a pathetic debating tactic and an insult to Jews.
Search this blog. I’ve often discussed 9/11 but you’ll find I’ve never expressed an opinion on what happened to the towers – only on what I can rule out. That’s not because I have a vile, shameful secret opinion about it – it’s because I don’t know. Same with the Holocaust. Something happened but people like you ensure it’s difficult to find out what. If you don’t like that answer, accept your share of responsibility for it.
So you don’t know what I think about the Holocaust because I don’t know what I think about it. But cheer up, I’m sure you can adapt your definition of a “denier” to include “don’t knows”. In fact, I’m certain you will.
@ Node to Anon:
If you like, I’m quite comfortable with my views. But before I do, let’s deal with you repeatedly calling me a holocaust denier. …
Don’t let it get under your skin. Trolling those who fail to tow the lib-left politically correct line, calling them racists, anti-Semites and holocaust deniers without the slightest evidence is what this site is all about!
Node, very well said.
Unfortunately, our blog host here encourages such intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy with ad hoc diktats regarding freedom of thought, expression and enquiry. As others have reminded us, it is his blog and prerogative but it undermines his credibility as an advocate of freedom (i.e. human rights).
During WXXI-Jew TV’s Great Performances on December 8, 2014 – the ‘Father of Zionist Holocaust Narrative’, Elie Wiesel, told famous Jewish violinist Itzhak Perlman that as a boy he took violin to Auschwitz in June 1944. On his father’s advice, he tried to join the Auschwitz Orchestra. During an interview at the Auschwitz Orchestra, when he couldn’t play music for the Nazi marchers, a vicious kapo grabbed his violin and smashed it under foot.
Elie Wiesel was a member of late Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin’s Jewish terrorist militia Irgun in the 1940s when that terrorist group employed extreme violence against Arab civilians and was more than ready to use it against the Arab fellow Jews in Palestine and Iraq.
Commenting on Wiesel’s story, Professor Daniel McGowan (Jewish), wrote on December 15, 2014: “If we are to accept an inmate orchestra at Auschwitz might we not envision a Klezmer band at Ketziot, Israel’s largest concentration camp for Palestinians in the Negev Desert; it could be called the Ketziot Klezmer Klub and give new meaning to the otherwise odious acronym KKK
http://rehmat1.com/2015/01/25/the-auschwitz-orchestra/
Whatevs, dudez. If it’s less than 6 million, the level of barbarity’s unimportant. Isn’t it?
http://palsolidarity.org/2014/04/avoiding-accountability-life-in-ramleh-prison-hospital/
https://haresboys.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/children-in-court/
And it’s good to see that the holocaust is still good business –
http://www.escape2poland.co.uk/auschwitz_tour_e2pl.html
“John Goss
Other commenters on here might moght loke to conform.”
Art thou taking ye p ?”
I think Habbabkuk was having one of his moments. I wish I could get my hands on what he’d been drinking. It seemed to have put him out for much of the day. He only made another eleven contributions of similar logic on this page. It’s a pity for him that this gem is right at the top of the page. 🙂
Thanks for all the great links from Mary, Ba’al. The rest of the Shoah specialists here who seemingly have nothing else to do than to keep the priory of their jewish victims swimming on top of all other nasty exploits of Human intelligence and technical endeavours happening to Cambodians, Indians, Armenians.
You are all anti Semitic, with the Israeli’s leading the list of anti Semitic excesses, arguments and abominable re writing of history.
Anon is the greatest anti Semite here by his own making, as he fails to see how stupid his argument is.
Just because hundreds of thousands walked into concentration camps was due to the superior propaganda, some of these victims actually believed that they are going away, they heard rumours, but could not believe them, why else would they walked to their certain death.
The same propaganda is being used to diminish the extermination of Palestinians in the Gaza concentration camp today, and all other atrocities which could divert from the Shoah priory of suffering. This propaganda is done solely by Zionist agencies and their criminals, and those in Neturei Karta have spoken out against Sharon as they do about Netanyahu, they represent the real spirit of Judaismn and they reject the anti semitism shown by the likes of netanyahu and his apologists, such as our very own Anon.
http://www.nkusa.org/
“The Shoah : Happened before I was born. Shrouded in conflicting evidence. Not allowed to examine.”
The evidence is all there Node, feel free to examine it.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=holocaust&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=pFnLVLH1MYXaaoDegJgO&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=672#rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&tbm=isch&q=holocaust+victims&revid=1478651932
Fred: “The evidence is all there Node, feel free to examine it.”
So are you saying there is no conflicting evidence?
“So are you saying there is no conflicting evidence?”
I’ve no doubt someone could concoct some if they wanted to desperately enough.
Fred : “I’ve no doubt someone could concoct some if they wanted to desperately enough.”
But are you saying there is no conflicting evidence?
“But are you saying there is no conflicting evidence?”
Nothing which can compare to the photographic evidence no.