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.
“The people who say (as you do, come to think of it) that the British are not a race.”
Yes I do that also. The british is an idea, race does not exist, hence the term.
Oops, I’ve mis-interpreted the Wiki quote, sorry to all concerned.
“6 – 2.5 = 3.5″ isn’t Holocaust denial
I’m intent of renouncing myself as British in any way. I will say i’m English. But i’m not part of an ‘English race’ of people.
German/American parents, born and raised in england, Just how do you square that?
“Can anyone clarify what constitutes Holocaust denial?”
I’ve often wondered that myself. Even people like David Irving are not deniers that the Holocaust happened. How could anybody? But they dispute the figures. A better term than Holocaust denial would be Holocaust revisionism.
I turned on the local news and there was a ninety year old man talking to schoolchildren about his experiences at the hands of the Nazis. Although these were no doubt traumatic for a child I thought “Are we going to have this indoctrination every night?”
People in Eastern Ukraine are dying every day and no mention on the telly because they are putting out this shit on a daily basis. Enough is enough!
A week worth of remembrance says it all, a claim to total priory of suffering, nobody else is allowed to suffer as the Jews did.
Germany is pro Israel because any other notion would bring the anti semite brigade out, their support is tinged with guilt, understandably.
Uzbek seems to be fine with gaza’s children being slaughtered, so he should also be OK when Uzbek children being worked to death in the cotton fields of his home country, he is consistent.
Anon has no argument, he is fishing for reasons to normalise Zionists atrocities and Apartheid at home, if that means to use the pathetic label anti semite, then so be it.
The Shoah circus is slowly coming to an end, and as already pointed out by Ronald Thomas West, there are many other atrocities and holocausts that equally deserved international recognition, for decades, but this was pushed aside by the ‘special’ people’s insistence and argumentative bluster.
Is it not anti semitic to deny recognition of the native Americans wholesale slaughter? or the Armenians who suffered 1. under Churchill’s mustard gas excesses? I think it is evil to make out that your suffering is so much more worth remembering than the slaughter of 1.5 million in Turkey?
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/map-full.html Why would the Armenian Institute want to add Palestine on its map, if not to show how much anti semitic barbarity has occurred there since 1946?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
No mentions or Global commemoration or tv, coverage or newspaper articles, of the American Holocaust, which claimed over 19 million people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTrbVf6SrCc
No global commemoration or tv coverage or newspaper articles, of the entire genocide of a countries people, now called Tasmania.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/the-tasmanian-genocide/
Of course it wasn’t just the Germans who ran death camps, the allies got in on the act, with Eisenhower’s death camps.
I doubt they’ll have a commemoration for this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7VpLDLZYeY
“Also why does it barely get mention that the holocaust was not just against Jews.”
You must be at least the tenth person I’ve seen mentioning that today.
Je
No, I did read it. Precisely the guff I expected. Don’t post it again, wasting both our time.
[craigmurray.org.uk – spam filter false positive. I’ve retrieved it to see if Craig deletes it]
Can anyone clarify what constitutes Holocaust denial?
It means claiming the right to deviate from the Imperial or Zionist propaganda in a matter of historical debate, a right that obviously does not exist in liberal-leftie Europe (as confirmed in the case of David Irving and the recent case of mocking the mockers of an-Islamism).
CanSpeccy
“Lets all recognize anti-Europeanism for what it is, the Liberal for the genocide of the European peoples as racial and cultural entities within their own traditional homelands through a program of mass immigration and multi-culturalism.”
I think you have a lot of things messed up in your head. Clearly the “Liberals” (neo = not really) in power at the moment seem to be doing all they can to destroy European culture. I’m sure they’d be happy to see Greece evaporated. They been trying as hard as they can it seems. The roots of our own culture. What do we expact? creating such a mess in so many eastern places. Austerity. etc.
Liberal plan, lol, do you even know what that word means?
The problem with those arguing whether it was 4 or 6 million is that very often it is a code for what they really want to say.
The Native American Indian Holocaust is also called the 500year war, the worlds longest Holocaust. 95 -114 million native Americans were slaughtered infected and ethnically cleansed from their home counties, pressed into reservations, today’s concentration camps, just as Gaza and Auschwitz.
http://espressostalinist.com/genocide/native-american-genocide/
The astounding thing about the Western obsession with the Nazi Holocaust is that the UK-US plus the dumb frump Merkel are now backing Nazis in Ukraine.
What’s even more astounding is that most of the leaders and leading backers of the Ukraine Nazis are themselves Jews, or people of Jewish descent.
George Soros, currently stumping around the World trying to raise another $50 billion for the genocide of the Russkies in East Ukraine is a life-long Nazi whose happiest days were those of his youth when aiding Nazis in the dispossession of the Jews of Budapest during WW2.
yeah… right… “guff” as in drawn from historical documents… accurately quoted… sources listed… etc etc.
You want to censor an article published in a historical journal… fine. Its your blogs. You’ve got a closed mind… that’s your loss.
You are Nigel Farage and I want my £5, and some.
KingOfWelshNoir : 28 Jan, 2015 – 5:50 pm Can anyone clarify what constitutes Holocaust denial
I’m afraid you’re out of luck KOWN. Not even the INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE is prepared to definitively define it! They suggest a ‘Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion’ which begins with the words “The present definition is . . . ” which suggests the jury is still out.
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-holocaust-denial-and-distortion
It includes the words :”Holocaust denial in its various forms is an expression of antisemitism.” Rather than describe scenarios which would challenge that clause,
The problem with those arguing whether it was 4 or 6 million is that very often it is a code for what they really want to say.
Well what is it that they — the jailed, the despised and the ridiculed holocaust deniers — really want to say?
Or are we simply to assume the most bestial thing our imagination is capable of and then assume that anyone accused of holocaust denial is guilty of thinking it?
Sounds like standard liberal anti-free speech tyranny.
“Darien was not primarily a banking enterprise.”
It’ll have needed funding. Then it all went so badly wrong. Often the story with borrowing.
“In the following century, Scots founded the central banks of England,”
That’s 1694.
“France”
That’s 1716
“and the United States.”
I assume you’re talking about the first one set up in 1791.
Brilliant.
No one doubts the Scottish contribution to the 18th century, banking and otherwise, but as I’ve said previously, we’re talking about the 19th century.
Scots are not running central banking by the 19th century.
“1820 – 1850
From these roots, the Rothschild banking business spread rapidly across Europe.
By the time Nathan died in 1836, the Rothschilds were the most successful international bankers of the age.”
http://www.rothschild.com/our_history/1820-1850/”
The Rothschild’s made the old central banking system irrelevant to the new age, primarily through their creation and control of a new international banking market.
“According to historian Niall Ferguson, “For most of the nineteenth century, N M Rothschild was part of the biggest bank in the world which dominated the international bond market. For a contemporary equivalent, one has to imagine a merger between Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, J P Morgan and probably Goldman Sachs too — as well, perhaps, as the International Monetary Fund, given the nineteenth-century Rothschild’s role in stabilising the finances of numerous governments.””
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_M_Rothschild_%26_Sons
@Je: You stated-
“Pete – For some historical perspective I recommend you read the early books of the Bible and what happened the the Medianites and other tribes the Israelites slaughtered”
I have read all of those books many times when I was a fundamentalist Christian. Since then I’ve also read the archaeological and historical research into the bible which demonstrates that those books were mostly fictional. Of course, a movement inspired by those books will be equally unpleasant whether they were fictional or historically accurate.
“To talk about Ancient Roman actions as anti-semitism is absurd.”
Eh??? You appear to have totally misunderstood what I said. Perhaps English is not your first language- or perhaps you just read too fast and with insuficient attention. A very common problem on internet forums. I did not say that the mainstream pagan Romans were antisemitic. I said the early Christian church was antisemitic. The Christian church was at that time a small minority within the Roman Empire, based mainly among its subject peoples in the Eastern part of the Empire.
CanSpeccy, or anyone. Do you see that reply above?
If so care to respond CanSpeccy? Or just pretend it never happened.
I do wonder sometimes if my posts are seen by people.
“Well what is it that they — the jailed, the despised and the ridiculed holocaust deniers — really want to say? ”
That maybe them Nazis weren’t just so bad as people try to make out.
The reality of Holocaust Denialism is this:
Refusal to unquestioningly accept:
(a) The every member of the entire swinish German race, past, present and future, is personally responsible for the gratuitous murder of exactly six million Jews. Frau Merkel just said as much.
(b) All goys are the same as Germans, potential Jew killers due to an “age-old mental disease,” according to Elie Wiesel.
(c) The killing of Jews during WW2 stands out as vastly more significant than the murder of several hundred million other people by their own governments during the 20th century. (As for the ongoing US-UK-Israel backed effort to exterminate Russians in Ukraine, that of course is a positively virtuous undertaking.)
(d) If denial of the victimization of Jews did not exist, it would have to be invented, since the Jewish state depends on its eternal victim status to justify the holocaust of Palestinians, its possession of nuclear weapons with which it threatens not only its neighbours but all of Europe (we will take down the world).
@Homeneara
CanSpeccy, or anyone. Do you see that reply above?
You mean this:
I think you have a lot of things messed up in your head.
What’s to say except that you might consider changing your ID from homeneara to Ad Homeneara.
To respond to all the trolls on this site would take the age of the universe.
@ Fred:
That maybe them Nazis weren’t just so bad as people try to make out.
I think Craig must have had something more dreadful than this in mind. I mean there’s nothing jailworthy about stating the Nazis may not have been the worst people on Earth. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel-prize winning Soviet dissident writer said that in his experience of both, the Nazi Gestapo were gentlemen compared with the thugs of the KGB.
This is consistent with the view of my late friend who was a prisoner of war during WWII. He escaped twice but was recaptured and eventually confined to Colditz Castle: he told me, confidentially, way that he much preferred the Germans to our allies the French.
“The every member of the entire swinish German race, past, present and future, is personally responsible for the gratuitous murder of exactly six million Jews.”
???
So what about me, half German. and my kids? will they be guilty also.
CanSpeccy, do you not see this is EXACTLY the same thing your saying. It’s vile as hell.
I’ll defend your right to say it, in this circumstance, but it’s totally racist and messed up. There is no such classification of people that is real. And to blame future……O forget it, you need help imo. And your message of hate is horrible. And fantacy.
“You mean this:”
“I think you have a lot of things messed up in your head.”
No the actual points I made after that.
“I think Craig must have had something more dreadful than this in mind. I mean there’s nothing jailworthy about stating the Nazis may not have been the worst people on Earth.”
So you think putting all those people in gas chambers wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Pete – thanks, yes, sorry I misunderstood you.
The idea that “the early Christian church was antisemitic.” seems stranger than that the Roman’s might have been. The early Christians were Jews.
Looking quickly at this and here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christian
“Early Jewish Christians included those who believed non-Jews must become Jews and adopt Jewish customs. They were derogatively called Judaizers, and even Paul used this term against Jesus’s student Peter in public according to Young’s Literal Translation of Gal 2:14”
I’m sure you can take things like that and call it anti-semitism. Or you could call it people not wanting to adopt Jewish customs. Looking at history – its easy to find what you’re looking for rather than what was really there.
You can create a 2000 years of persecution narrative. Or you can consider that nobody got through those very violent 2000 years without being presecuted, massacred or something. And the Ashkenazi population of Europe went from handfuls to millions during that period.
@Fred:
So you think putting all those people in gas chambers wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
So Fred’s a troll too.
My question concerned what CM thought was worse than denying that six million died in gas chambers.
Specifically, CM said:
“The problem with those arguing whether it was 4 or 6 million is that very often it is a code for what they really want to say.”
So despite Fred’s crass and ridiculous attempt at diversion, my question stands:
“What is it that they — the jailed, the despised and the ridiculed holocaust deniers — really want to say?”
I was not even born, and my parents where not political. And I think Germans generally paid a huge price for a small minority (who did very well out of it for a time) pushing this racist ideology. It was a huge deception on most German people, and they suffered massively for it. And still do.
God knows how that cow can go along with all this. I was debating cashing in my potential German Citizenship, but I fugued there is not much odds between western elites. Maybe a trip to Greece instead. A place I may want to throw up less in.