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.
Will this ever be explained or is it just part of a covert take over using complicit western governments and suitable atrocity to push this agenda forwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBB6CqCGWh8
My average mark of 2% in Latin at school is probably related to my inability to understand what you are saying, Lysias. And that in turn may have something to do with the teaching of Latin as an Arts version of quantum physics, rather than as a means of communication. Wasted on me, sorry.
“By the way, although deponent verbs in Latin are passive in form but active in meaning in their other forms, the gerundive of a deponent verb is passive in meaning. Classical Latin: Gerunds and Gerundives, the Supine. So, even in Classical Latin, I am not sure that my use of vescendi would be wrong.”
I’m certainly not going to argue with you, Lysias. It must be 40 years since I looked at a passage of Virgil – or anything else. But I loved it and enjoyed studying it.
http://youtu.be/PWCOjOj4RAU
Above is a documentary made by a young Jew by the name of David Cole. He says he’s Jewish, but also an atheist. He was aware of questions regarding Auschwitz which are discussed by “Holocaust Experts”, but if they are raised by “deniers” the deniers in some places can be fined or imprisoned.
He went to Auschwitz himself to see what he could see, and to ask questions.
I came across this on Twitter two nights ago, and found it very interesting since I have always accepted the official version of events and never questioned any of it. (59 mins)
John Spencer-Davis
2.30pm
I agree with you. I must have expressed myself badly if you thought otherwise.
Myself (to Latin bloke): Where can I change some money, please?
Latin bloke: You shouldn’t have used the gerundive, and your vowels are all wrong.
Myself (to Spanish bloke): Where can I change some money, please?
Spanish bloke: Over there, under the gigantic sign which says ‘Cambio’. Are you blind?
Spanish has my vote.
Thanks for being with us in spirit yesterday, Ba’al, there was about 20 of us, speeches were made, and the Green candidates fro Norwich South and Norwich North came and spoke, so did a PR campaigner, Geoff Hinchliffe, from Fakenham.
The EDP came and took some photos of us, but it was quiet incumbent you would not have wanted to be on your hog yesterday.
Natalie Bennet came to Norwich today bigging up the Greens, they seem to be in with a good shout in Norwich south. oi wish she would lose her oz accent, at times she is hard to copy, maybe I’m going deaf…
@ Charlie, a piss poor argument if you have even been at Neuengamme CC, you ought to get a real life.
It’s not just Spanish, Ba’al.
‘The Romance languages—occasionally called the Latin languages, and even more infrequently the Romanic or Neo-Latin languages—are the group of modern languages that evolved from spoken Latin between the sixth and ninth centuries A.D.
‘The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (410 million), Portuguese (216 million), French (75 million), Italian (60 million), and Romanian (25 million).’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
Fellas, doesn’t the very existence of such a thing as holocaust denial laws pose a conundrum? You can, of course, claim the sun rises in the west without breaking any law. If there really did exist such a strong consensus that the full on Holo narrative is true — the six million figure, homicidal gas chambers, the full Monty — why would there be a need for holocaust denial laws in the first place?
But, moreover, once you have an environment where it is a crime to say that you don’t believe in something, surely it will be just about impossible to know how many people, professional historians or otherwise, truly believe it. It is possible that, in medieval Europe, everybody did believe in the immaculate conception and the resurrection and the infallibility of the pope. It is also possible that hardly anybody really believed in these things but they professed to believe in them because they did not fancy being burnt at the stake. How can we know?
In such an environment, it should be obvious that one can’t talk meaningfully about some “consensus of professional historians”. Do most of the doubleplus freethinkers here (including the blogger) really not grasp this?
bu
The Immaculate Conception was not declared dogma of the Catholic Church until 1854. In the Middle Ages, such figures as Thomas Aquinas denied it.
Similarly, the infallibility of the Pope was not declared dogma until 1870. In the Middle Ages, Pope John XXII denied it.
Interesting post and comments.
Nobody as yet has referred to Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech.
A former Zionist his contention was that it was Zionists that persuaded British and French administrations to reject Germany’s offer of peace in 1916 as they (the Zionists) could guarantee America’s entering the war.
So this is he states the reason for the rise of both Nazism and antisemitism post 1918:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFRGDyX48c
@Lysias
I suppose you’re right about the immaculate conception and the infallibility of the pope. It doesn’t much change my point. Replace those by any other dogmas that were enforced at the time. Once it is obligatory to profess one’s belief in something, how do you know how many people really believe it?
By the way, where I wrote “doubleplus freethinkers” above, I meant “doubleplus goodthinkers”, but that got spell corrected.
KingOfWelshNoir
29/01/2014 4:34pm
No, it was I who expressed myself badly, not you.
I could see perfectly well that you would agree with me. I was saying sorry, because I know that my opinion – that people should not be prosecuted and imprisoned for, say, making serious inquiries into the truth, or otherwise, of various aspects of the Shoah narrative – is opposed by many people with whom I have great political sympathy. And it is also espoused by many people with whom I have no such political sympathy. And I feel that very keenly. I feel that to a certain extent (not with anyone regularly commenting here, I hasten to add) I am in embarrassing company for holding such an opinion. But I can’t help that.
Kind regards,
John
Komodo, cc Node,
“Not on this blog. Not in Austria, Belgium, France, etc. And as Node hasn’t actually denied anything, but merely asks why someone questioning this event is apparently a legitimate target for abuse – abuse fully equivalent to calling a Jew a [insert perjorative epithet here] it might be nice if you answered his question without repeating the abuse.”
Node’s question is irrelevant, Komodo, because he can deny the Holocaust all he likes and in any case I believe, as I have expressed a number of times on this blog, that people should be free to do that. So I don’t know why he is asking me this when he is free to say what he likes and I support his right to do so. Better to have it all out in the open than welling up inside!
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?
John Spencer-Davies
“Re: Spanish peacekeeper
I have only heard one news item regarding this tragic incident. It was either on LBC (I think) or on Magic at about 4:00 pm yesterday, I heard it while driving home from work.
I mention this because the precise wording of the news item intrigued me. It’s been said on this blog that the Spanish peacekeeper was killed by Israeli forces. I don’t know of my own knowledge at this moment if that is true, even after having heard the news item. As I recall, the wording was something like “a Spanish peacekeeper was also killed”, or “a Spanish peacekeeper also died”. It was unclear whether the peacekeeper had been killed by Israeli or anti-Israeli forces, or whether anyone even knew. I remember muttering to myself “who by?”
Kind regards,
John”
_______________________
Perhaps you didn’t listen to the BBC? I can assure you that it was mentioned several times, that the soldier was identified as a member of the Spanish UN con tingent and that it was clearly stated that he was killed in the Israeli response to the attack on an Israeli vehicle carrying a number of Israeli soldiers.
Hope that helps.
And I have still not seen Mary’s retraction (but am not surprised – liars usually stick with their story).
Mr Goss refers us, with seeming approval (feel free to contradict me here, Mr Goss!) to the following:
“In this article the author looks at Polish collaboration with the Nazis in the death camps.
http://orientalreview.org/2015/01/24/auschwitz-where-is-the-root-of-the-polish-guilt/”
______________
That’s rather interesting, because from time to time some rather peculiar Jewish people attempt to pin some of the blame about the extermination camps onto the Poles (their main argument appears to be that because the Nazis placed those camps in Poland and not in the Reich, the Poles were also guilty in part).
So we can conclude that Mr Goss apparently shares the tosh put out by some of those rather peculiar Jewish people.
He’ll soon be praising the Kiev govt if he carries on like that…. 🙂
Maxter
“Have you seen the ovens, they resemble typical crematorium ovens not mass extermination capacity ovens. The more bodies you shove in the less effective the burning process until no burning takes place at all. A point raised by the revisionists that is not getting addressed.”
______________________
For Heaven’s sake, Maxter, get a grip.
1/. KZ inmates were not done to death by burning. They were shot, starved to death or gassed.
2/. The crematoria were one of two methods used to dispose of the corpses; the other method was burial in mass graves with grass grown over when full.
Hope that helps.
135,000 to 140,000
Source: This is an estimate based on documents held by the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross. It is known that International Tracing Service has a complete set of registration documents.
This is thought to include a complete set of roll-call data which includes twice daily tallies of those who died. Although the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross has such records, they have never officially published an accurate count of those who died, or even an accurate report as to exactly which documents they hold. However, totals from these records have been obtained by various interested parties.
The estimate of 135,500 is roughly corroborated by the “Auschwitz death books.” The death books themselves are wartime German camp records, which were captured by the Soviets towards the end of the war, and hidden in Soviet achieves, until released to the Red Cross in 1989.
The death books consist of 46 volumes which document each death at Auschwitz (each death certificate consists of the deceased person’s full name, profession and religion, date and place of birth, pre- Auschwitz residence, parents’ names, time of death, and cause of death as determined by a camp physician).
The records for the most important years, 1942 and 1943, are almost complete (there are also a few volumes for the year 1941, but none for the year 1944 or January 1945 (when Auschwitz was evacuated)).
The Auschwitz death books contain the death certificates of some 69,000 individuals, of whom about 30,000 were listed as Jews.
_________________________________
Habb aka Guido.
Tell me Guido, what do you make of this.
@Habbabkuk
Thanks for info. Can you provide the evidence of the mass graves.
Thanks in anticipation.
John Spencer-Davis says, correctly:
“It’s a horrible, hard question. I don’t think one can give a glib answer to it. But I think it’s actually more dangerous to persecute people who hold repugnant opinions than it is to show others that their opinions are repugnant, in the arena of public debate.”
__________________
The problem is that that public debate rarely takes place, at least in a way which is “accessible” and attractive to the general public.
Let’s face it, websites like David Irving’s, or Stormfront, or (increasingly) this one are an easier read (and easier to access) than works like Raoul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews or the transcript of the David Irving/Deborah Lipstadt libel trial, where Irving was comprehensively rubbished as an honest historian.
And where there are efforts of a more accessible nature to keep the truth alive and in people’s memories, you get people like Mary whining about “why is the BBC devoting so much time to Holocaust commemoration.
In other words, the advantage in the battle for truth and memory is, unfortunately, almost always with the Holocaust denier – who benefits, moreover, from widespread if low-intensity anti-Semitism amoung the general population (yes, it exists).
That is why it is perfectly proper for Holocaust denial should be sanctioned.
KOWN
“Despite a lot of invective being thrown, no one has challenged those figures. I therefore conclude that the 6 million figure is not a historically accurate figure but more a totemic one of great emotional significance to many people.”
___________________
In which case you conclude wrongly.
Yesterday I referred you to section 4.1 of the Wikpedia article THe Jewish Holocaust. Have you read it? If you have, you will have seen that the great majority of Holocaust historians are far from regarding that figure as totemic.
You have already been given an explanation, yesterday on this blog, by Lysias, of why an over-estimate of the numbers killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau (subsequently corrected) need not invalidate the total number killed in the Holocaust.
The Red Cross Report admits that the Germans were at first reluctant to permit supervision by the Red Cross of people detained on grounds relating to security, but by the latter part of 1942, the ICRC obtained important concessions from Germany.
They were permitted to distribute food parcels to major concentration camps in Germany from August 1942, and “from February 1943 onwards this concession was extended to all other camps and prisons” (Vol. 111, p. 78). The ICRC soon established contact with camp commandants and launched a food relief programme which continued to function until the last months of 1945, letters of thanks for which came pouring in from Jewish internees.
Red Cross Recipients Were Jews
The Report states that “As many as 9,000 parcels were packed daily. From the autumn of 1943 until May 1945, about 1,112,000 parcels with a total weight of 4,500 tons were sent off to the concentration camps” (Vol. III, p. 80). In addition to food, these contained clothing and pharmaceutical supplies.
“Parcels were sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sangerhausen, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Flossenburg, Landsberg-am-Lech, Flöha, Ravensbrück, Hamburg-Neuengamme, Mauthausen, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, to camps near Vienna and in Central and Southern Germany. The principal recipients were Belgians, Dutch, French, Greeks, Italians, Norwegians, Poles and stateless Jews” (Vol. III, p. 83).
___________________________
Habb aka Guido
And what of this Guido, whats your opinion, feel free to ask Dora if need be, or Uncle Eliseo, for that matter.
Wikipedia ROFL
You really are Habbing a Larf.
Node
“Yes, it’s a pity. I want my views to be challenged intellectually so Anon is a big disappointment. I wonder where we could apply for a replacement?”
__________________
In order for your views to be challenged intellectually, they should themselves be intelligent views.
Anon is doing just fine exposing your and others’ nonsense; no need to replace him.
Republicofscotland
Any record of Red Cross parcels being sent to the extermination camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka and the extermination part of Auschwitz-Birkenau?
Good deviation try though! 🙂
In the course of the war, The Red Cross Committee, was in a position to transfer and distribute in the form of relief supplies over twenty million Swiss francs collected by Jewish welfare organisations throughout the world, in particular by the American Joint Distribution Committee of New York” (Vol. I, p. 644).
This latter organisation was permitted by the German Government to maintain offices in Berlin until the American entry into the war. The ICRC complained that obstruction of their vast relief operation for Jewish internees came not from the Germans but from the tight Allied blockade of Europe. Most of their purchases of relief food were made in Rumania, Hungary and Slovakia.
The ICRC had special praise for the liberal conditions which prevailed at Theresienstadt up to the time of their last visits there in April 1945.
This camp, “where there were about 40,000 Jews deported from various countries was a relatively privileged ghetto” (Vol. III, p. 75). According to the Report, “‘The Committee’s delegates were able to visit the camp at Theresienstadt (Terezin) which was used exclusively for Jews and was governed by special conditions. From information gathered by the Committee, this camp had been started by certain leaders of the Reich.
These men wished to give the Jews the means of setting up a communal life in a town under their own administration and possessing almost complete autonomy. . . two delegates were able to visit the camp on April 6th, 1945. They confirmed the favourable impression gained on the first visit” (Vol. I, p . 642).
The ICRC also had praise for the regime of Ion Antonescu of Fascist Romania where the Committee was able to extend special relief to 183,000 Romanian Jews until the time of the Soviet occupation.
The aid then ceased, and the ICRC complained bitterly that it never succeeded “in sending anything whatsoever to Russia” (Vol. II, p. 62). The same situation applied to many of the German camps after their “liberation” by the Russians.
The ICRC received a voluminous flow of mail from Auschwitz until the period of the Soviet occupation, when many of the internees were evacuated westward.
But the efforts of the Red Cross to send relief to internees remaining at Auschwitz under Soviet control were futile. However, food parcels continued to be sent to former Auschwitz inmates transferred west to such camps as Buchenwald and Oranienburg.
________________________
Habb aka Guido.
It would appear that Guido and Dora, don’t have the answer,to the above comment, maybe Joshua will know better, eh Guido.
“And what of this Guido, whats your opinion, feel free to ask Dora if need be, or Uncle Eliseo, for that matter.”
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”.
Maxter
“@Habbabkuk
Thanks for info. Can you provide the evidence of the mass graves.
Thanks in anticipation.”
_________________
The best thing to do would probably to plough through Raoul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews (last edition). You’ll find plenty of info there on all aspects of the Holocaust including the matter you’re particularly interested in (allegedly). For other reputable Holocaust historians you could refer to the Wikipedia article I referred to a few posts ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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? 🙂
Habbabkuk (la vita è bella) 29 Jan, 2015 – 6:21 pm
Do you ever read an article before critising it and the person who posted it? Because if you read the one I linked which you even reposted you clearly did not understand what it was saying. But I suspect you looked at the title and thought you could work out what it was about without reading it. And you drew the wrong conclusions. 🙂
Republicofscotland
You’re putting a lot of effort into attempting to show that the Nazis were not really that bad in their doings, including with the Jews(Red Cross parcels, Swiss francs, etc).
But what’s the basic point (if any) you’re trying to make? Is it in some way Holocaust-related?