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.
Are there any memorials to the Irish Potato Famine in England? For that matter, are there any memorials for the famines British rule caused in India (most recently Bengal in 1942-3)?
Although this American must confess to his chagrin that, whereas there is a Holocaust Museum here in Washington, D.C., there are no museums dedicated to slavery or to the near-extermination of American Indians within the U.S.
Also, just must say. It seems a distant event to me born in the 70s, but perhaps to say such a long time ago is wrong. Maybe it’s close for all of us really, and needs to say close. I don’t know.
I do know i’m very fucking dubious about any proposed monument by people using recent events to stereotype Muslims or Islam or Arabs. Imo for there own sick purposes. As long as they bury themselves under it I won’t create much fuss.
“Are there any memorials to the Irish Potato Famine in England?”
Yes, in Liverpool.
Does anyone remember this overwhelming French solidarity with Noway? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t.
Wasn’t it worse ? Both awfull but 69 children hunted down?
They seem to promote him in the guardian, mmm should we let him go to uni?
And great pictures, i’m sure there is nice nuanced film on cards about the legendary killer…
Guess he is up there with click bait Tony.
I am now listening to a discussion on XFM with Charles Kennedy ..Gaz Coombes? I think it is LIVE on XFM and he is obviously fairly young(his daughter is 11 years old)..and is trying to explain how..all these evil people have nothing much to do with him and how lucky he is to live here in the UK…but worryingly despite all that he realises that there are are borders even in his words and music he can’t write or sing about..otherwise he will never get an interview again…
The Girl Who Fell To Earth is Wonderful
I am listening to it now
The Musicians just Blow Me Away
They Do it Live
Tony
Pictures of the Liverpool memorial here (thanks Fred, I’d never looked before):
http://irishfaminememorials.com/2014/01/16/liverpool-england-1998/
along with links to various others, in Australia, Canada, US, and 2 in Scotland.
Gone!
John Kennedy
sorry about that
No point arguing numbers murdered, nor even that there were others murdered. Those arguments don’t take us anywhere useful, and only play into the hands of those who would use the Holocaust to their own ends.
I’ve said before that Zygmunt Bauman has many useful lessons to teach from the Holocaust, Arendt as well.
If you’re interested in how the memory of the Holocaust has been abused to negative political purpose, rather than the positive purpose these commemorations pretend, then,
Norman Finklestein offers some thoughts on the matter:
“The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a 2000 book by Norman G. Finkelstein in which he argues that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel.[1] According to Finkelstein, this “Holocaust industry” has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.”
Below you’ll find much criticism of Finklestein’s work, and Finklestein’s responses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry
Anyway, I think that debate may be much more productive, and of greater service to those slaughtered in the many exterminations in human history.
If the commemorations of the Holocaust were a genuine attempt to remind us and ensure we never engage in genocide again, well then, well and good.
I’m all for it.
But, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be working out that way, does it.
That’s why Finklestein’s argument is important.
It’s worth saying that the phenomenon he describes is as old as History itself.
@ John Spencer-Davies:
Re: Pilate’s offer to release either Jesus or Barrabbus
This has always struck me as a remarkably anti-Semitic passage in the Christian Gospels.
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, and since there is no mention of Jesus in the historical record, 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.
My understanding is that for hundreds of years this particular passage has been cited as a justification for the murder and persecution of Jewish people, as bearing hereditary responsibility for the execution of the Saviour throughout history.
That may be, but it has little to do with the Christian faith which, for all the great Christian churches, Catholic or Orthodox, is based on the Apostolic Creed, which has nothing whatever to say about the murder of Jesus by the Jews.
Conveyed cogently, considerately, and with complementary concision, Herbie. Immense, and Well Done, that Fine Fellow… 😉
Is anyone here concerned that Eastern European Nazis are rewriting the history of ww2 and of the concentration camps?
And that history is written on the tablets and mobile phones of the up-and-coming generation?
One of the first things I remember reading about the Nazis was that burned lots of books. I was a child, and didn’t understand.
One of the most moving things I read about the Nazis was the words of Pastor Niemoller:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The USSR, with help from Roosevelt and Churchill, defeated Nazism. It looks like with the fall of the Soviet Union it was allowed out to play again… will humans never learn?
Latest from The Fascist Telegraph
“Men must prove a woman said ‘Yes’ under tough new rape rules”
The only way to do that is to Record The Entire Event.
I Never Even Thought About It
I used my HD Key Chain Camera on My Prototype Quadcopter…
Yeh it worked a bit..except for The Jellow..Vibration.
It’s Quite Small..I guess is is Possible to Use it as a Cock Vibrator Too
And Record The Entire Event
But What if You are Julian Assange and They Hack It???
Do You Realise How Our World Has Turned Mad…
Now Who Did It???
Well It Wasn’t Me
I Never Even Thought About It
The Cunts are Doing This..who Else is Publishing These Atrocities on The Daily Telegraph ans talking them..
Putin-in-the-dock ( I assume only one link is allowed here..and I am nearly about to get banned again)
Do you want to read what I wrote about this on The Daily Telegraph..It Hasn’t been Deleted..and you little moderators think I am a troll..watch this you lot.
“[eng subs] UAF POWs abused by Givi and taken to parade through the city destroyed by UAF artillery”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD15bxM3mTc
War – it ain’t nice is it..and where are all you Liberal R2P brainwashed idiots..you can’t even come out about 9/11???
FFS
Bye
Tony
Peacewisher
“The USSR, with help from Roosevelt and Churchill, defeated Nazism.”
__________________
Of course. The US and Great Britain were just bit players.
Clown!
KOWN (22h06)
Any comments on what Lysias wrote at 22h38?
I am allowed to question any aspect of any war except the second world war.
I am allowed to question any aspect of any genocide except the Shoah/Holocaust.
Would anyone here care to justify this limitation on my freedom of speech?
“Peacewisher
“The USSR, with help from Roosevelt and Churchill, defeated Nazism.”
______________________
Except for the period 1939 – 1941, when it helped to sustain it (supplies of raw materials and war matériel; allowing German divisions to be concentrated on the Western front…)
Fool.
Node
“I am allowed to question any aspect of any war except the second world war.
I am allowed to question any aspect of any genocide except the Shoah/Holocaust.
Would anyone here care to justify this limitation on my freedom of speech?”
____________________
You are certainly allowed to respond to my question at 20h06, which read as follows:
“My take on this, KOWN, Node (and others) would be as follows.
Whether 6, 4, 3,5 or 2,5 million Jews were slaughtered, that was 6, 4, 3,5 or 2,5 million too many.
Would you agree with that proposition?”
Why don’t you?
You seem less of a Node than a Diseased Ganglion.
@Habby
Peacewisher
“The USSR, with help from Roosevelt and Churchill, defeated Nazism.”
__________________
Of course. The US and Great Britain were just bit players.
Clown!
If you measure military effort by casualties, the assertion you mock seems justified:
British KIA: 383,000
US KIA: 407,000
Russian: KIA 8,700,000 to 13,850,000, or ten to fifteen times the combined US and UK casualties.
and in fact Churchill was so concerned with the relatively insignificant role played by British forces that he shocked his own military chiefs by saying Britain needed to suffer more casualties.
(source Wikipedia, with some estimates of Russian casualties much higher).
I find holocaust deniers fall into the same box as right wing American TV presenters. Because clearly for them none of the shit they do happens. Speaking of which
Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH96tuRA3L0
Craig uses the word Medeival pejoritavely, but a neo-con is someone who wants to turn the clock back to pre-modernism, back to an age of ‘ hegemony ‘. Martin Luther was still steeped in medeival anti-semitism in 1500, so the golden era of hegemony which the neo-cons want to re-create pre-dates the Reformation.
They want to possess the total control of people’s beliefs as well as to enslave them to their service. This is apparently also attractive to the branch of Political Islam, perhaps because they see quasi-medeival long-haired and long-robed savagery as a way of wooing the neo-con nutters like John McCain to give them weapons and a state.
Give us a break please from trying to conflate opposition to Zionist adventurism in the Middle-east which is blatantly anti-Islam, with Medeival anti-semitism based on Gospel myth. Are you trying to suggest that 20 years of USUKIS blasting away by war, by media, and by false flag against Muslim countries is nothing to do with Zionist hate of Islam, just a weird kind of colonialism by murder for Muslim countries, while the rest of the world gets factories,banking, and a middle-class.
No. Islam stands directly in the way of neo-con ambitions to enslave the minds and bodies of the rest of us. We are No.1 on the list to be attacked. It just so happens that Zionism, the creation of an Israeli powerbase in the Middle-East, serves as a fig-leaf for neo-cons’ wish to control us. Thierry Meyssan
explains why the Anglo-Zionist collaboration exists, how it arose and how it is falling apart at Voltairenet.org .
As a contributor to Voltairenet.org himself, Craig must know this. Fact is just as anti-semitism insults the intelligence of those who hate Israeli apartheid and expansionism, Craig’s insult of medeival anti-semitism insults the intelligence of those who hate the ‘hegemony ‘ dream of the neo-cons of the UK and US. OK let’s let the bastards rape Syria and Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Sudan-s, Nigeria Somalia, Europe and ourselves.
We are not going to be accused of medievalism when it’s the neo-cons who want totally out-dated totalitarian power over us.
‘It Never Happened’, Homeneara…. 😉
What I write is backed by nothing except an enormous amount of research when I finally realised about 15 years ago, that I knew absoulutely nothing about modern history..because I was working so hard trying to provide a nice beautiful home for my wife and kids..Sure I got incredibly stressed out..but did it..and then RETIRED 10 years ago..
What else was I supposed to do..I now had all This Free Time on my hands and no longer had to learn about the very latest technology to keep at the top of my game…
I read books and after 7/7..got banned from the UK and spent the next 5 years writing on Alternet..I just had to try and understand these Americans and I made a lot of friends
Sure I occasionally got directed to Craig Murray’s website..
I wasn’t going to do that myself..I had retired…My Son does all that stuff and makes a living out of it..He still lives at home..my daughter seems to be permanently at university..and skint…
But that is Me…
And I see stuff like what happens to Chris Spivey…
I don’t want to get drowned in that..but the bloke has got a lot of it right..especially Woolwich..That is What He is on Trial For..Analysing and Writing About It On His Own Blog Under His Own Name and Address..and He has had his Door Kicked in By The Heavy Mob..whilst they knew he was at home in his little council house in Essex with his daughter and his Grandson…in the Middle of The Night..
wtf is all that about??? I mean FFS…The Security Services are Taking on Chris Spivey For Writing Stuff on His Own Blog???
Even I find that a little hard to believe…but that seems to be the truth..and no I didn’t turn up in Southend or Romford or wherever the place is that he lives in Essex..but I nearly turned up in Norwich to Campaign For Craig Murray..The Laser Machine Still Works By The Way..My Lad Used it Last Weekend at His Girlfriends Birthday 23rd Birthday Party..The smoke machine was fucked so he bought another second hand on ebay for £30..and mixed the smoke machine chemicals himself..mainly Glycerine and Water..
I said Be Careful There Lad,
Apologies,
Tony
Who is Changing Anything Amongst You So Called Journalists..Who is Calling These Criminals in High Places To Account? Who Is Challenging Them? Who are They Taking Even The Slightest Notice Of?…is It Any Of You Unemployed Moderators..Trying To Make Peace Between Mary and Dre-oil-in
Thank You For Giving Me a Space To Write.
I Really Appreciate It.
Sorry Dreoilin Be Nice To Mary – Her Research Is Better than yours..Loved the Claws Thing which one of you girls wrote that???
Love & Peace,
Tony
I propose a monument. A monument that marks, honours and respects the memory of the Holocaust. A monument to the Dead injured and orphaned men women children in the Iraq invasion, in London. Like the German Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
I wonder how many places could have there own Holocaust monument in this spirit.
@@Homeneara*: “Does anyone remember this overwhelming French solidarity with Noway? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t. / Wasn’t it worse ? Both awfull but 69 children hunted down?”
Indeed it was – and I don’t recall hearing demands that we re-examine white people and their values, parades of world leaders against White Power radicals, with Netanyahu elbowing his way to the front. How do you say “Je suis un jeune socialiste” in Norwegian? Hasn’t got that “Freed’m & Democr-sy” ® ring about it, somehow.
*
Personally, I think it very sad that anyone wants to create an us Vs them picture, and use that separator to any personal or political advantage, at any time. Shame on anyone, whenever they do it.
It would be extremely sad to see British, French, or any other Jews persuaded that it is no longer safe for them anymore, and become convinced that society does not value their integral component of our society. This is simply vicious, opportunistic and cynical propaganda.
If a sufficiently wicked campaign encouraged Jews to all migrate to Israel, never mind the cost to the Palestinians, forget it – they’ll be sent off as boat-people, to get the same welcome as the US extended to the Haitian boat-people. Consider the loss of culture, and pride in our own country, an entire limb of society rent lame.
It’s also a damned insult. Our society – the UK – is so bereft of value, that we would not properly defend our own citizens? Such that an identifiable class of them can be picked off as if in open season, and we – as individuals, and as a country – would not protect them to the last?
That is the insult we should perceive, as Europeans, as British people, when this Maureen Lipman peddles the lie that Jews would not be safe here. That’s we’d just give them up, somehow. It’s pretty clear who’s working the Us Vs Them side of the street in this instance.
Can you imagine the bunker-mentality that would develop, if Israel really did achieve its goal of pulling in ALL (or most of) the world’s Jews? (For their protection, of course.)
Glenn.
Fortunately in England I don’t see that happening to Jews, I don’t happen to know any but friends do. And i’v never felt an integration problem. But I do get out less atm.
Unless of course the rising “Muslim question” also backfires horribly, as well as just being horrible. And it may be doing in some places, I don’t know.
I see the agenda you illustrate.
“Can you imagine the bunker-mentality that would develop, if Israel really did achieve its goal of pulling in ALL (or most of) the world’s Jews? (For their protection, of course.)”
Umm, no thanks, can I opt out.
Guess something that may be helpful is for Jews to move into the lands neighboring Israel. Sounds wild but probably not beyond what can be radically good Jew-ish culture.