“It’s not that I hate the Jews”

[PrinceMyshkin]

“It’s not that I hate the Jews,”
I can imagine Bishop Williamson proclaim:

“On the contrary, I love them
so much that I resolutely refuse to believe
that they were disenfranchised,
forced to wear yellow stars
at all times in public,
dragged from their homes
and herded into cattle-cars
enroute Buchenwald, Bergen-
Belsen, Dachau and all those
other unholy names,
that they were offered the chance
to have refreshing shower baths
where the water was replaced
by Zyklon-B...then they were laid
like so many loaves of bread
on planks that could be slid
into ovens...
All I ask is:

Show me the cattle-cars!
Show me the ovens,
the shower-baths, the
mounds of shaven hair
that could be made into wigs, the
shoes and golden rings and
fillings from their teeth that could be
melted and re-used!
Show me the alleged
mountain of hap-hazard bones!

And I might yet
believe....”

[qimissung]

To which we respond: "Do you believe in something that you've never seen before?" The irony is that he DOES if he believes in God.

[blp]

Oh, I can't just say nothing. Rowan Williams is neither an antisemite nor a Holocaust denier.

EDIT dear oh dear. I'm such a dolt. It's not even about Rowan Williams. I'm going to let this stand and take the shame.

[Sweets America]

There's a guy in France who's well known for saying that the Holocaust was only "a detail of history." :eek:

[PrinceMyshkin]

Ah forget it.

I suppose it's dirty pool to respond to a message you chose to withdraw, but I saw it - and it hurt! Nowhere in my poem is there any attempt to justify Israel's harsh, even brutal treatment of the Palestinians on the grounds of what was done to the Jews under the Nazi regime. It's as if, according to your post, no Jew should be allowed to speak out against anti-Semitism without having to answer for anything and everything that any Jew or Jewish institution ever did wrong.

Can one not speak of any one crime without having to condemn every other one?

[blp]

I suppose it's dirty pool to respond to a message you chose to withdraw, but I saw it - and it hurt! Nowhere in my poem is there any attempt to justify Israel's harsh, even brutal treatment of the Palestinians on the grounds of what was done to the Jews under the Nazi regime. It's as if, according to your post, no Jew should be allowed to speak out against anti-Semitism without having to answer for anything and everything that any Jew or Jewish institution ever did wrong.

Can one not speak of any one crime without having to condemn every other one?

It's not dirty pool, but we might be better off discussing this in private.

I've revised my response again to a straight refutation of your view. I accept it's an honest opinion.

EDIT Hey, wait a second. This could all be a misunderstanding. Who's Bishop Williamson?

Just googled him. Really sorry, Prince. Accusations of antisemitism against people who merely defend the Palestinians are so rife, that I misread it completely, got the wrong guy and my knee just jerked into action. I acted like an idiot, and am completely in the wrong. Sorry, sorry and sorry again.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's not dirty pool, but we might be better off discussing this in private.

I've revised my response again to a straight refutation of your view. I accept it's an honest opinion.

EDIT Hey, wait a second. This could all be a misunderstanding. Who's Bishop Williamson?

Just googled him. Really sorry, Prince. Accusations of antisemitism against people who merely defend the Palestinians are so rife, that I misread it completely, got the wrong guy and my knee just jerked into action. I acted like an idiot, and am completely in the wrong. Sorry, sorry and sorry again.

He stands so tall and ugly in my mind that I just assumed everyone would have heard of & would recognize him: "Bishop" Richard Williamson is one of the 4 or 5 bishops the Pope has reinstated to the Catholic church (though not to their priestly duties). They were members of a breakaway group in revolt against the Vatican council that sought to introduce some revisions into the Catholic church, e.g. permission to conduct the mass in the language wherever it was offered instead of Latin; and what was especially objectionable to Williamson and his colleagues, removal of the teaching that held the Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

In addition to having denied many details if not the whole of the Holocaust Bishop Williamson has made approving references to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, long known as a forgery concocted by some agency of Czarist police and widely dessiminated and believed by anti-Jewish groups.

[blp]

Yes, I'd seen the story, but only in passing and not caught the name. Been experiencing news fatigue lately. But ugly is right.

[~Sophia~]

Hi Prince: while the topic is heinous, the poem is a powerful and furious condemnation of antisemitism and in particular that idiot Williamson. What was the Pope thinking????Standing ovation Prince, bravo!

[PrinceMyshkin]

There's a guy in France who's well known for saying that the Holocaust was only "a detail of history." :eek:

Yes, and there was a guy in the Soviet Union, Stalin by name, who said: "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is a statistic."

[kiz_paws]

Bravo for your poem, Jer. :thumbs_up

The ending line makes me so mad that there can be such ignorance in the world. Or is ignorance even the right word? There must have been an awful lot of ostriches roaming the planet during that dark period of history.... :(

[Pensive]

A wonderful poem, PrinceMyshkin! One of the best I have encountered on these boards...


To which we respond: "Do you believe in something that you've never seen before?" The irony is that he DOES if he believes in God.

Exactly!
Apparently people just seem to want to believe in the beautiful things (though yes, you can always debate how beautiful the God would have looked in certain situations for certain people). They want to shut their ears, their eyes, everything, to any event of the history that speaks of the horrible attrocities human-kind has committed. This is quite a humanly behaviour (as many say 'ignorance is a bliss') but yes, when has a perfectly humanly behaviour been not annoying...

[PrinceMyshkin]

Bravo for your poem, Jer. :thumbs_up

The ending line makes me so mad that there can be such ignorance in the world. Or is ignorance even the right word? There must have been an awful lot of ostriches roaming the planet during that dark period of history.... :(

Ignorance one can always forgive as being perhaps not having had the opporunity to know better, but wilfull ignorance, ignorance because of what one chooses to believe, or to not believe, ignorance because if one acknowledged what is there before one's eyes one might be obliged to shed even an iota of one's hatred, that's another thing.

[PrinceMyshkin]

A wonderful poem, PrinceMyshkin! One of the best I have encountered on these boards...



Exactly!
Apparently people just seem to want to believe in the beautiful things (though yes, you can always debate how beautiful the God would have looked in certain situations for certain people). They want to shut their ears, their eyes, everything, to any event of the history that speaks of the horrible attrocities human-kind has committed. This is quite a humanly behaviour (as many say 'ignorance is a bliss') but yes, when has a perfectly humanly behaviour been not annoying...

Thank you.

[Lokasenna]

Sad and tragic... but well written! And a very valid point too.

Anyhow, flights to Cracow are pretty cheap at the moment, and the bus from there to Aushwitz is only a couple of quid. I defy anyone to there, see that terrible place, and then declare to the world that the Holocaust did not happen!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Sad and tragic... but well written! And a very valid point too.

Anyhow, flights to Cracow are pretty cheap at the moment, and the bus from there to Aushwitz is only a couple of quid. I defy anyone to there, see that terrible place, and then declare to the world that the Holocaust did not happen!

Many thanks. When I last visited my oldest son in Switzerland we travelled together to Dachau, the concentration camp nearest to where he lives. But once we got there, my techically non-Jewish son went in but I felt that it would be wrong for me to go in and as a free, unthreatened person, and I stood outside and walked the length of the barbed-wire perimeter.

“Wrong” or possibly too fearful. I feel it is my obligation, as one who never faced those events, to bear witness to them - or rather, that I have no other choice; but on the other hand I think that none of us - no Jews, at any rate - could fully absorb the enormity of it, and survive.

[firefangled]

"Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."

Bless you, Prince, for this.

[windblown]

Your poem, dear Prince, is really impressive. How can a person deny the Shoa and the incredible pain the Nazis brought over the Jewish people! This "Bishop" propagates ideas that are extremely destructive and dangerous and I am afraid that the Pope's decision to take back his ex-communication goes in a direction that bodes no good at all. Here in Germany Neo-Nazis have found their new hero and antisemitism is on the rise again.
I agree with what you say about the impossibility to really absorb the enormity of the Shoa and survive. What our knowledge about the Nazi crimes should generate, however, is the determination that nothing like this should ever occur again - but looking at the world as it is (and at utterances like the ones made by Williamson again and again) I am sceptical that we can do much.

[AuntShecky]

This assault on truth has been around since the end of World War II, and most of us wish that it had been laid to
rest at the time.

From Ken Burns's mini-series on World War II, I saw the footage of the camps finally liberated by the U.S. armed forces. The narrator of that documentary said that such footage had been suppressed and was never allowed to be shown in this country, because it was deemed too "strong" for the American people to see. (This is the same specious argument that was promulgated about the famous Zapruder home movies of Dallas in November of 1963.) Aside from the minor outrage one feels that someone else is deciding what Americans should or should not see, the major outrage comes with the fact that real evidence of an evil that should have been made known was kept secret.

When I was a little girl, I can remember hearing about the controversy over Pope Pius XII (I confess that I had to "Google" him because I didn't remember the specific Roman numeral.) The criticism of the Pope centered around that he didn't do enough to stop or at least speak out against the Holocaust. Over the past couple of years or so, apparently there has been evidence exonerating the Pope's actions (or lack of it), but I am sorry to say that I don't know the specifics or the scholars who are researching this.

I will tell you something about my extremely undistinguished personal history. In the mid 1970s we used to shop in a little store, smaller than a supermarket
but larger than a corner store. It had a generic name, but the owners were Jewish. I used to joke around with the man who worked at the produce section, didn't know him well. One day I saw him reach for a piece of fruit or a vegetable or something, and as he extended his arm, I noticed that right under his rolled up sleeve there was a long number tattooed on his arm. The split-second I saw it
I knew what it was -- and it seared my conscience. Of course I didn't mention it, and for some reason, I actually felt a little guilty about having joked with him about something the minute before.

Anyway, to your poem, which vaguely reminds me of the politically- charged works of Robert Bly and others from the
late 60s and early 70s, but the topic is much more important than mere transitory politics. The best part of your piece is that it is full of specifics -- "evidence," if you
will -- which the denier wants to see. So two scriptural references come to mind: the first is the famous verse,
"There are none so blind that those who will not see" and
the second is from the incident of Saint "Doubting" Thomas
who would not believe that the risen Christ was standing before him until he could touch the wound in His side.

Sorry this response was so lengthy, but I think part of your
intention was to open a much-needed discussion, correct?
before.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Sorry this response was so lengthy, but I think part of your intention was to open a much-needed discussion, correct?
before.

The only intention I was aware of was the need to bear public witness against this infamous man, and to find some relief from the pain, anger and fear I feel at every resurgence of anti-Jewish feeling.

Please excuse the chauvinism of this: You cannot imagine what comfort there is to me as a Jew any time a non-Jew allies herself with the Jews in any way. God (if you believe in Him/Her) bless you....

[PrinceMyshkin]

Actually, dear Bishop,
in disputing the figure
of 6,000,000 gassed,
brutalized, incinerated,
you may be closer to the truth
than even you suspect.
Personally, I’ve long been uncomfortable
with that figure of 6,000,000
- so round, so smooth!

In fact the International Red Cross
did a survey after the war
and came up with the figure
5,100,00
but even that is a trifle
too rounded, wouldn’t you say?

So how about we agree
on 5,099,999?

No?

How about 42?

Or one?

One elderly Jew,
arthritic, with bad breath,
failing memory
and of less than impeccable character...

Shmuel

Shmuel Leib Isaacson, RIP

[Delta40]

I won't being going on a day tour to Auschwitz but the Holocaust is on my list of atrocities comitted against humankind - by humankind. Good poem

[TheFifthElement]

I take this opportunity to bow my head to those other groups who were exterminated in the same way but often their struggle, their plight is forgotten. The Poles, the Slavs, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the disabled. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Lucaire.htm

And all the other civilian casualties, the 16 million Chinese, 11 million Russians, 4 million Indonesians, 1.5 million Germans, 1.5 million Indians, to name but a few of the 41+ million civilians killed. Even the comparatively meagre handful that died in UK. And those people who suffered and continue to suffer the after effects of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I take this opportunity to bow my head to those other groups who were exterminated in the same way but often their struggle, their plight is forgotten. The Poles, the Slavs, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the disabled. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Lucaire.htm

And all the other civilian casualties, the 16 million Chinese, 11 million Russians, 4 million Indonesians, 1.5 million Germans, 1.5 million Indians, to name but a few of the 41+ million civilians killed. Even the comparatively meagre handful that died in UK. And those people who suffered and continue to suffer the after effects of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I wish there were some way to honour and commemorate all of those. Alas, human consciousness can entertain only so much horror and it pretty soon tires of and turns away from victims, especially when we Jews have so often and sometimes stidently bayed at the moon, but you will understand, I hope, that as a Jew I feel most viscerally the systematic seeking out of Jews by efficient government agencies.

For none of these other groups was there created specialized units, einsatzgruppen, whose duty it was to go in ahead of the invading German army and extirminate as many Jews as they could find. For none of these others were there genickschussspezialisten, whose job it was, when the Jews had dug out their intended mass graves and were ordered to line up at the edge, facing the open grave, the genickschussspezialisten were trained to shoot them in the nape of the neck so that they would fall forward into the grave and lie there "sardine-style," as it was called. (I forget the German term for that.)

Anyone who cares to should read Raul Hilberg's encyclopaedic, carefully documented The Destruction of European Jewry.

[TheFifthElement]

I wish there were some way to honour and commemorate all of those. Alas, human consciousness can entertain only so much horror and it pretty soon tires of and turns away from victims, especially when we Jews have so often and sometimes stidently bayed at the moon, but you will understand, I hope, that as a Jew I feel most viscerally the systematic seeking out of Jews by efficient government agencies.

For none of these other groups was there created specialized units, einsatzgruppen, whose duty it was to go in ahead of the invading German army and extirminate as many Jews as they could find. For none of these others were there genickschussspezialisten, whose job it was, when the Jews had dug out their intended mass graves and were ordered to line up at the edge, facing the open grave, the genickschussspezialisten were trained to shoot them in the nape of the neck so that they would fall forward into the grave and lie there "sardine-style," as it was called. (I forget the German term for that.)

Anyone who cares to should read Raul Hilberg's encyclopaedic, carefully documented The Destruction of European Jewry.

Again, not restricted to the Jews. The Einsatzgruppen was not solely tasked with exterminating Jews but initially to securing government buildings with their accompanying documentation and the questioning of senior civil servants in lands occupied by Germany, and later to exterminate 'anyone belonging to groups that the Germans considered hostile' which included Poles and so on. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

***edited this bit, correcting myself!***
The technique of genickschuss spezialisten was used outside the extermination of Jews, referenced sickeningly here by the quite awful Paul Blobel, during his war crimes trial: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Blobel whilst he chose not to make use of them, it is apparent they were at his disposal.

Other groups were specifically targetted as well as Jews. The mentally and physically disabled (and who defined which people fell into those categories?) were persecuted under a euthanasia programme decreed by Hitler on the face of it to 'release them from their suffering' but more likely as a step on the route to the development of the Aryan race. See here for info: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

Poles were equally the subject of of cultural genocide. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles

Gypsies were persecuted pre-war and during the war. Details here: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005482 and here: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219

The mass extermination of Jews, Poles, disabled persons, gypsies and so on is a terrible blot on human history. As are many actions conducted in the name of the Nazi party. I watched a TV programme a couple of weeks ago covering the period following the Nazi invasion of Czechosolvakia which included footage which was shot by the Nazi party of a Czech village which had been singled out as an example to other Czechs resisting the German forces. The entire population of the village were shot (children included) and the village was completely torn down and the land converted to arable land. Effectively the village was wiped out. And there was Hitler smiling for the camera. It made me wonder if there truly is such a thing as soullessness.

I understand your affinity to the Jewish part of the story. All I ask is that this story is remembered as not exclusively Jewish, and that we acknowledge all those who suffered the same fate, perhaps in lesser numbers, but whose deaths should be as etched onto our memories as those of the Jews. Wasn't Bishop Williamson closing his eyes to them too?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Again, not restricted to the Jews. The Einsatzgruppen was not solely tasked with exterminating Jews but initially to securing government buildings with their accompanying documentation and the questioning of senior civil servants in lands occupied by Germany, and later to exterminate 'anyone belonging to groups that the Germans considered hostile' which included Poles and so on. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

***edited this bit, correcting myself!***
The technique of genickschuss spezialisten was used outside the extermination of Jews, referenced sickeningly here by the quite awful Paul Blobel, during his war crimes trial: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Blobel whilst he chose not to make use of them, it is apparent they were at his disposal.

Other groups were specifically targetted as well as Jews. The mentally and physically disabled (and who defined which people fell into those categories?) were persecuted under a euthanasia programme decreed by Hitler on the face of it to 'release them from their suffering' but more likely as a step on the route to the development of the Aryan race. See here for info: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

Poles were equally the subject of of cultural genocide. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles

Gypsies were persecuted pre-war and during the war. Details here: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005482 and here: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219

The mass extermination of Jews, Poles, disabled persons, gypsies and so on is a terrible blot on human history. As are many actions conducted in the name of the Nazi party. I watched a TV programme a couple of weeks ago covering the period following the Nazi invasion of Czechosolvakia which included footage which was shot by the Nazi party of a Czech village which had been singled out as an example to other Czechs resisting the German forces. The entire population of the village were shot (children included) and the village was completely torn down and the land converted to arable land. Effectively the village was wiped out. And there was Hitler smiling for the camera. It made me wonder if there truly is such a thing as soullessness.

I understand your affinity to the Jewish part of the story. All I ask is that this story is remembered as not exclusively Jewish, and that we acknowledge all those who suffered the same fate, perhaps in lesser numbers, but whose deaths should be as etched onto our memories as those of the Jews. Wasn't Bishop Williamson closing his eyes to them too?

I apologize to you and anyone else who read my previous post for my sloppy scholarship. Thank you for correcting my errors.

On the other hand I am puzzled and pained that you should have chosen to take this thread in an irrelevant direction. The original post was in response to Richard Williamson's defamation of the historical record vis a vis the Holocaust. If he had equally desecrated the murders of Poles, disabled persons, gypsies, retarded persons, I might very well have attacked him for that, too. And if any surviving member of one of those groups had written about what had done to his or her fellow Poles, disabled persons, gypsies, homosexuals &c., I would not have considered that he or she was unjustly overlooking what was done to the Jews.

[TheFifthElement]

I apologize to you and anyone else who read my previous post for my sloppy scholarship. Thank you for correcting my errors.

On the other hand I am puzzled and pained that you should have chosen to take this thread in an irrelevant direction. The original post was in response to Richard Williamson's defamation of the historical record vis a vis the Holocaust. If he had equally desecrated the murders of Poles, disabled persons, gypsies, retarded persons, I might very well have attacked him for that, too. And if any surviving member of one of those groups had written about what had done to his or her fellow Poles, disabled persons, gypsies, homosexuals &c., I would not have considered that he or she was unjustly overlooking what was done to the Jews.
I don't believe it is an irrelevant direction. The Holocaust encompasses more than just the Jews, which is the point I've been making. If Bishop Williamson refutes the Holocaust then he refutes all victims regardless of their background: political, religious, sexual, physical, cultural or so on. In standing in opposition to his position it seems to me that your poem is incomplete by about a third. Is it wrong of me to want that third to have a voice?
Now it may be that the poem is intended to be an attack on anti-semitism, but if that is the case it isn't clear enough.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I don't believe it is an irrelevant direction. The Holocaust encompasses more than just the Jews, which is the point I've been making. If Bishop Williamson refutes the Holocaust then he refutes all victims regardless of their background: political, religious, sexual, physical, cultural or so on. In standing in opposition to his position it seems to me that your poem is incomplete by about a third. Is it wrong of me to want that third to have a voice?
Now it may be that the poem is intended to be an attack on anti-semitism, but if that is the case it isn't clear enough.

True "Holocaust" had been used prior ro WWII, initially I believe by W. Churchill to describe the Turk action against the Armenians, but whether so intended or not it has come to be used specifically to describe the outcome of the so-called "Final Solution" enacted by the Nazis. It is plain from any reading of Williamson's words on the subject that he was speaking exclusively of what did (or as he sees it, did not) happen to the Jews.

[TheFifthElement]

Holocaust: a definition http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/summary/what.html

[PrinceMyshkin]

Holocaust: a definition http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/summary/what.html

But surely what's more relevant is what Bishop Williamson meant when he used the term and what contemporary meaning it has for most people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial

[TheFifthElement]

But surely what's more relevant is what Bishop Williamson meant when he used the term and what contemporary meaning it has for most people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial

I accept it may be more relevant to you. It is not to me. If contemporary meaning excludes something in the region of 3 - 7 million victims of the Holocaust then this strikes me, almost, as a kind of silent denial. I can't, in good conscience, accept that. Neither does it, currently, concord with the historical view point which I've already referenced but for ease of viewing here is:

The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of not only 6 million Jews, (two-thirds of the total European Jewish population), the primary victims, but also 5 million others, approximately 11 million individuals wiped off the Earth by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
and

The Holocaust was the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were.

Just for the record, had someone posted something refuting the stance of a Holocaust denier and referenced only the Polish victims, Slavic victims, Roma victims or so on, I'd have said the same things that I have said here.