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.
Back to Auschwitz!
The first item that came up on BBC Breakfast News when I switched on was about Holocaust music. An old lady who survived a whole year in the camp told the presenter how she played the cello in the camp orchestra.
“I wonder why Andrew Wakefield and others have persisted with these allegations to the point where their careers have been destroyed. What’s their motive? Certainly not financial.”
What allegations is he making Node? Who is he accusing and what is he accusing them of?
Is he alleging that there is actual compelling evidence that the MMR vaccine is unsafe?
Is he saying that the benefits of vaccination don’t far outweigh the risks? That vaccines don’t save lives?
What exactly is he saying Node? The anti vaccination people seem to be making a big deal out of it but if you ignore all the hype what exactly has been alleged?
Mary, that sounds interesting; personal testimony. which station was it on? I’m going out soon but I’ll try to find it on iPlayer later.
Glenn, sorry, it was late; I made quite a few typos in my comments, too. Of course we can’t predict the outcome of global warming. I hope it doesn’t get as bad as you suggest, but insufficient action seems to be being taken to avoid it.
Scouse Billy, it’s a new day, but I still have my old questions.
Mary
“Back to Auschwitz!
The first item that came up on BBC Breakfast News when I switched on was about Holocaust music. An old lady who survived a whole year in the camp told the presenter how she played the cello in the camp orchestra.”
_______________
That’s splendid.
I hope that the same thing will happen tomorrow and indeed for the rest of the coming week.
It’s even more moving than hearing about OUR NHS seve, times a day.
*************************
La vita è bella, life is good!
Clark, great dialogue. You might think your banging your head against a wall, but your message is clear. It sounds like we may have gone back to the days of press ganging.
And Glenn, I’m not like Habbabkuk, who seems to discount other commenters quickly,and then trades escalating insults while all discussion is lost to polarisation. But Habbabkuk is an old-hand politician, I suspect, not accustomed to uncontrolled debate open to such a broad cross-section of the public. He seems to want to give out “a good kicking” and move on.
Changed my mind; I was up too late and I’m not lively enough to go out this morning.
Habbabkuk, please have a heart; Mary’s testimony on Squonk of the effects of her treatment is heart-rending. It was our NHS; my dad worked in it for decades.
Fool, thanks. It’s quite an effort sometimes, trying to pull the opposing margins together, but letting it rip down the middle – well we don’t want to go there. My parents went through something like that, too.
Scouse Billy does have good taste in music! Thanks for the link to the Jagodzinski Trio playing Chopin. As its Sunday here is something fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UOlZJutANA
Great trilling; if there is a jazz version somewhere I’d love to hear it.
Fred : “What allegations is he making Node? Who is he accusing and what is he accusing them of?”
Maybe “allegations” wasn’t the best word. Wakefield claimed that there is a link between the MRS vaccine and autism. His career was destroyed for doing so. Other doctors have suffered the same fate. Intelligent successful doctors committing career suicide. No financial motive. Why do they do it? What’s your theory?
For Fool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX3fIzDaXy0
Clark, I merely meant that Jimmy Rosenburg’s guitar mastery is “from another planet” – he was dubbed the new Djano when only 6 years old.
OOps should be Rosenberg, mea culpa, so here’s a bonus track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAyisqwjVf4
The Independent strikes again! Now I read
“Make no mistake: if Iran and its nuclear programme represent the toughest, most momentous foreign policy issue facing Obama during his two remaining years in power, it is also one in which Israel has a vital, indeed existential, interest, given Tehran’s vow to annihilate the Jewish state.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-open-loathing-between-barack-obama-and-benjamin-netanyahu-just-got-worse-10015845.html
A “vow to annihilate the Jewish state”. With nuclear weapons. What absolute rubbish. And again – no place for comments where one might contradict such utter drivel. They don’t want to hear it…
Clark The BBC do not put BBC News Channel output on the iPlayer. The lady was speaking at about 7.30am.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/schedules/bbcnews/20150201
She is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Lasker-Wallfisch
ex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_Orchestra_of_Auschwitz
Helpfully they have the segment on their Auschwitz page.
‘Service honours music’s role in helping prisoners of the Holocaust
4 hours ago
It is a remarkable fact that amid the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, some prisoners still found the will, and the means, to write and play music.
On Sunday, some of those works will be honoured at a service in Westminster Abbey.
The service is part of the series of commemorations that have marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
And some of the music is being performed for the first time in the UK.
Tim Muffett reports.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31080246
and there is another segment about her that must have been transmitted on HMD itself.
Holocaust Memorial Day: Cellist remembers Auschwitz
27 January 2014 Last updated at 23:59 GMT
National Holocaust Memorial Day was started by the UK government in 2001 and takes place every year on 27 January.
Anita Lasker Wallfisch, a surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz, told BBC Newsnight that her ability to play the cello saved her life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25922284
~~~
I did not mean to evoke sympathy in my post on Squonk, just to illustrate how much I care about the NHS which I will defend and fight for until my dying day – some time hence I hope! I must not forget a tribute to SECAMB whose paramedics have literally saved my life 5 times at home when I could not breathe. They always came in just a few minutes in response to my Careline alarm call and were always kind and reassuring.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a large store in a nearby town and had the same trouble. The store had no first aider but luckily a paramedic manager was in the store and responded to the call over the PA. He came to my rescue and called an ambulance so there I was in the car park using their nebulizer. They use a drug called salbutamol which expands the bronchi/bronchioles so I am told.
Thanks Billy I will be buying that album. I didn’t know that he went beyond Bach .
Mary, thanks for all the additional information, and for saving me a fruitless search of iPlayer.
Anyone suffering is due some sympathy. You are not an exception and Habbabkuk makes himself seem ugly with his taunting. But he, like anyone else, can choose otherwise should he so wish.
Scouse Billy, I still want to know how you draw the boundary between trustworthy and untrustworthy science. And I’d still like to discuss that video you linked to about ISIS funding and support.
Clark, I will at some point put somthing together for you.
Meanwhile, I think you are asking the wrong question: who can we trust?
I don’t trust anyone as such. I prefer to assess evidence. I agree one has to study in order to make sense of evidence – for example, I studied statistics from an early age and was employed as such for a fair portion of my working life.
To be going on with, the most disingenuous yet seemingly ingrained in much of the mainstream is the phrase, “it’s the exception that proves the rule”.
As anyone with a scientific understanding will affirm, it is the exception that DISPROVES the rule.
I like exceptions and anomalies. I find them interesting and more often than not lead to a deeper level of enuiry and, at times, understanding.
Trust, belief and faith are the stuff of religion not science.
Remember that Lamarckian inheritance was rubbished by 20th Century western science (though not in the Soviet Union). Now it is a hot topic redefined as epigenetic inheritance.
Please note we are only just beginning to understand that the epigenetic modulation of any pharmaceutical, including vaccines, cannot be predicted. All drugs are inherently unsafe to some of us, as to whom, hindsight is a wonderful thing but too late for the victims.
Scouse Billy, no, I’m not asking “who can we trust”. I’m asking where the boundary lies of what you have ruled out as unscientific and/or corrupt, and what your assessments are based upon.
I remember a long discussion about physics; you couldn’t answer even simple questions, but you were prepared to accept an entirely different physics based on the work of just two men.
You’ll have to remind me – which 2 men?
Was one of them Tom Campbell? If so then the discussion should more properly be described as metaphysical.
Yes it may have been Tom Campbell. But were you not claiming that much of physics had been specifically crafted to hide discoveries made by Tesla? You linked to (or maybe merely endorsed) some hour-long, virtually evidence-free video from the Thrive Foundation.
And what about that video concerning ISIS you linked to?
Scouse Billy
‘As anyone with a scientific understanding will affirm, it is the exception that DISPROVES the rule.’
________
Indeed, the current usage is a misunderstanding and reversal of the meaning. The word ‘prove’ originally meant test not affirm, thus the original meaning of this phrase is the exception tests the rule.
Ah, thank you, KOWN.
As in “probar” the Spanish verb to try or test.
Yes, fascinating how easily meaning can be reversed so easily.
Apologies for the repetition of “easily” – not concentrating due to listening at the same time to Joe Rogan interviewing Rupert Sheldrake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig6YDpOvkis
Good stuff 🙂
Glenn
31/01/2015 8:26 pm
Hi Glenn,
Why don’t you answer my request? Then I’ll answer yours.
Kind regards,
John
Clark
31/01/2015 11:32 pm
[Clark]: John Spencer-Davis, that’s a very detailed argument
[JSD]: You think differently to CanSpeccy, then. CanSpeccy says it’s wiffle waffle.
[Clark]: followed by a very rousing conclusion for specific types of Christians.
[JSD]: Hmmmm. I was not necessarily thinking of “types” or “sects”. What I had in mind was Christians ready to stand against religious or secular law, or authoritarian regimes, if their conscience did not permit them to collaborate. I thought that was the kind of thing that CanSpeccy was trying to get at when he said that anti-Semitic behaviour was not based upon Christian faith. For example, many early Christians were severely punished, including being executed, for refusing military service.
[Clark]: Do you consider yourself Christian?
[JSD]: My personal convictions are my own, and they are not relevant to what I have said here.
[Clark]: Are there any particular sects that you support?
[JSD]: I would not say that. I would say that I consider that certain denominations have been more admirable than others, taken as a body: for example, the Mennonites, or the Quakers.
[Clark]: What’s the Apostolic Creed?
[JSD]: The Apostolic Creed is a concise summation of the Christian faith. It’s almost like a mnemonic, no doubt originally developed to assist and confirm in their faith worshippers who had little access to other resources and probably could not read. Here it is.
“I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.”
In the Anglican Communion, for example, the Apostolic Creed is recited during the regular service of Evensong.
The interesting thing about it, in this context, is that almost everything in it is to be found in the four canonical Gospels, with the exception, as I mentioned as an aside when replying to CanSpeccy, of the occurrence of “He descended into hell”, which has been replaced in this version with “He descended to the dead”. Which is why I asked CanSpeccy what the Apostolic Creed is based on, as he seemed very keen to affirm that the Christian faith is based not on the Gospels, but on the Apostolic Creed. But, of course, my point is wiffle waffle, and he’s not going to deal with it.
Kind regards,
John
John Spencer-Davis, thanks for the detailed reply. I quite like the Quakers, too. I sit in the circle of my local meeting occasionally, but I’m probably best described as an atheist.
The difference between “hell” and “dead” is probably to do with translation from the Greek texts. Gehenna?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna#New_Testament
No harm reminding ourselves that while not all terrorists are false flag, lots are, enough that we should always consider it a possibility until proved otherwise.
This list does more or less what it says on the tin: