Holocaust Denial

[Jahoosafat]

And from Australias best journalists, The Chasers....

And among the swastikas, a little Aussie flag was flying...
Wednesday, 22 February 2006

One of the great joys of being an Australia living abroad is basking in the reflected glory of our countrymen and women who have made a name for themselves in the big, wide world.

We all walked a little bit taller when Germaine Greer entered the UK's Celebrity Big Brother. We love it when Warney's text messages are front-page news. When Peter Andre got it on with Jordan (owner of the most famous silicon breasts in the UK), we thought it rocked. We still treasure the memories of Pauline Hanson making front-page news around the world ... oh, how now we laugh at how busy we all were having to ‘explain' that one to a curious world. And let's not forget a personal favourite of mine: electing the Queen. Nice one!

NewsJunkies everywhere, we have a new national champion to personify our dreams and to globalise our ambitions. Take a bow, Lady Michele Renouf – former society wife, beauty queen, academic, self-styled "anti-Zionist", socialite, Australian and moron.

Students of history will know that this is the same Lady Renouf who gave Sir Frank "the Bank" Renouf, the New Zealand multi-millionaire financier his third, and final, spin through the matrimonial wringer. (He later described the marriage as a "nasty accident", which isn't very chivalrous of him, but does tell you quite a lot about the sort of accidents that can happen to you when you're a multi-millionaire financier). Frankie flicked her when he found out that she was the daughter of a truck-driver from The Entrance, and not a Russian noblewoman as she had claimed. Men are bastards, eh?

Our Michele has made a big splash at the David Irving trial in Austria. (For those not following the story, David Irving, the reviled author of Hitler's War and other works suggesting that the slaughter of Jews by the Nazi regime "never happened", was arrested and has been standing trial in Austria for denying the Holocaust and glorifying the Nazi regime, which is a crime in Austria).

Although billed by his supporters as a rousing defence of free speech, David Irving's denial of himself as a Holocaust-denier turned out to be nothing more than a fairly open plea for mercy by simply retracting the claims that had made him a darling of gilded racists of Lady M's circle. Far from ‘defending' his right to air his views - on the record for decades - Irving entered a plea of guilty, said he'd had a change of heart and begged for mercy. You see, the amazing thing is that it turns out (he told the court) that papers written by Adolf Eichmann (one of the architects of the Final Solution) persuaded him that perhaps there were gas chambers in Nazi camps, after all. You can only assume that if only Irving had realised in 1989 that these "fresh documents" (now over 50 years old) changed the situation somewhat, we might have all been spared a fair bit of bother.

(On the other hand, I am not sure that Austria comes out of the whole affair all that well either - Irving's arrest warrant was 16 years old. But a ‘message had to be sent', declared the judge. Hmmm. Who exactly are the Austrian authorities trying to convince? The former Nazi satellite state and home of Jorg Haider and the modern far-right doth protest too much, methinks!)

Nor were his defence team exactly in a combatative mood. When your own legal team describe you as "not a professional historian ... just a lonely, abused 67-year old who has said some horrible things," a lesser man might have thought that things were looking bad. But undeterred, Irving strode into court brandishing a copy of his own book, Hitler's War, and described the proposition that he might be jailed as "stupid". He got three years.

But enough about Irving – we're here for the crazy Aussie chick.

Cue Lady Renouf and the waiting press. "I am here," she announced grandly, with all the dignity and gravitas that goes with being an ageing, racist, slightly ditzy gold-digger, "to free David Irving and to free Austria from these totalitarian laws". Flanked by the standard-issue "unnamed men" wearing matching flag-pins, she knew her place, her moment and her mission: she was there to stand up for Queen and Country (and David and Adolf).

Irving, she argued, was "standing up to the Zionists". Most fetchingly of all, she demanded – nay, decreed! – that the "so-called Holocaust victims to be exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas". The press corps took this in their stride. (By this point, most of them had managed to download the coverage of her previous outings, including her deriding them as a "Jewish cabal" in 2001). One young and slightly over-earnest Austrian journalist remonstrated with her, but without much enthusiasm. The rest looked at their feet. A moment of awkward silence passed.

Now, standing on the cold paved steps of a building in which Nazis famously beheaded resistence fighters, begging the assembled media pack for a chance to rifle through the remains of the victims of death camps to check whether you can still smell the Zyklon B, is an odd place for a former Miss Newcastle to have ended up. But Fate makes fools of us all – and Fate has pretty self-evidently made a fool of Our Michele.

Perhaps, in her head, this was a rousing call to arms. (You heard it here first: Gentlemen, grab your shovels - we ride for Auschwitz!). To the rest of us, I gotta say, this just sounded like one of the last stops on a downward spiral. Join the dots. She's in the news, she's "controversial", she says stupid, hateful, provocative things. With, I must point out, a faint hint of an Australian accent.
Can an appearance on a reality TV show be far off?

 

[zardozzz]

Not sure of your point Pietro. I was annoyed because the discussion surrounded Holocaust denial and, specifically, whether the sentence handed down to David Irving was appropriate.

Zardozzz's response was to say, "well it was all a long time ago, let's forget about it and by the way isn't Israel mean and why they are allowed get away with it? It's double standards.

But it's OK because I used to go out with a Jewish girl."

Let me clarify what i was saying. I was not saying lets forget about the holocaust. I was saying lets stop using it as an excuse for letting Israell get away with some terrible practices. Practices that are not 60 years ago and we can do nothing to change, but going on today right now.

I wasnt saying anything was alright becasuse i used to go out with a jewish girl. I mentioned her to illustrate a proof that i was not a closet nazi. Who was hiding a seemingly valid critisism of Israels policies undernreath some racial predjudice.

Well either that or i was a nazi with very elastic tolerences, that would make me rather unpopular down at the local NF meetings !!

 

[wembley8]

I suppose what's so weird is that the holocaust is given special status. You can deny the genocide of native americans all you like, pretend the Armenians committed suicide, or claim that slavery was in the interest of black people. You might say that Stalin was a jolly decent chap and never hurt a soul, that the Opium wars were perfectly justifiable and Pinochet is a victim of injustice - just don't mention the H*******t.

It does seem a bit anomalous.

 

[MrSnowman]

I suppose what's so weird is that the holocaust is given special status. You can deny the genocide of native americans all you like, pretend the Armenians committed suicide, or claim that slavery was in the interest of black people. You might say that Stalin was a jolly decent chap and never hurt a soul, that the Opium wars were perfectly justifiable and Pinochet is a victim of injustice - just don't mention the H*******t.

It does seem a bit anomalous.

I've always been of a mind that the Nazi holocaust was seen as a 'the buck stops here' kind of moment. Although the other incidents you mention were equally as awful, they were never perpetuated over tens of centuries on any specific group as has happened to Jewish people since, well, the birth of Judaism!

Anti-semitism in itself is a good thing I suppose, but I think people get mixed up in thinking that, for example, to criticise Israel and her policies is tantamount to anti-semitism. It's not at all; you're not criticising a religion when you criticise a state and its actions. There's a massive difference in saying "Bloody Jews" and "Bloody Israelis".

 

[Peripart]

Anti-semitism in itself is a good thing I suppose

I think you kind of mean anti-anti-semitism?

but I think people get mixed up in thinking that, for example, to criticise Israel and her policies is tantamount to anti-semitism. It's not at all; you're not criticising a religion when you criticise a state and its actions. There's a massive difference in saying "Bloody Jews" and "Bloody Israelis".

Exactly. They're two quite different things. The Palestine / Israel situation is one where I used to switch sympathy from one side to the other, depending on the evening's news, although if truth be told I'm rapidly running out of sympathy for either of them. If people want to spend their entire existence hating one another, that's up to them. They deserve each other. Me, I reckon life's too short.

 

[MrSnowman]

Anti-semitism in itself is a good thing I suppose

I think you kind of mean anti-anti-semitism?

DOH! That's the one!

 

[Quake42]

There's a massive difference in saying "Bloody Jews" and "Bloody Israelis".

In theory yes but the reality is that a lot of Israel-bashing is coded or not so coded anti-semitism.

A lot of the anti-Israel lobby are on the Left, which does have a history of anti-semitism, and as I have said before the hysteria which the occupation of Palestine arouses easily eclipses the attention afforded to the Tibetans, for example, or the East Timorese under Indonesian occupation.

Not to excuse some of the actions of Israel of course, but it is probably also worth remembering that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and, if we are all honest, probably the only country in that part of the world any of us could stand to live in.

 

[Quake42]

You can deny the genocide of native americans all you like, pretend the Armenians committed suicide, or claim that slavery was in the interest of black people.

But Wembley... how often do you actually hear anyone (OK, outside of Turkey in relation to the Armenians) saying any of these things?

 

[MrSnowman]

In theory yes but the reality is that a lot of Israel-bashing is coded or not so coded anti-semitism.

Well, that's a subjective debate which could have no end. I'd have thought if you were talking with someone along such lines, then it'd become apparent if they actually meant one thing or another, in which case you could retort appropriately. Such thinking makes people scared to discuss important issues lest they get branded as anti-whatever, and the only conclusion one can draw from this is that whoever accuses as such without grounds is not actually worth debating with!

A lot of the anti-Israel lobby are on the Left, which does have a history of anti-semitism, and as I have said before the hysteria which the occupation of Palestine arouses easily eclipses the attention afforded to the Tibetans, for example, or the East Timorese under Indonesian occupation.

Whether I'm right or wrong is in the eye of the Beholder, but I've always perceived the main problem to be the UN mandate which created Israel creating thousand of homeless indigenous people whose lives were destroyed. If it had been a simple invasion and takeover, then it would have been an easier pill to swallow, because in a sense, the Palestinians would have had a 'fighting chance'. Another thing is that Palestine (as I understand it) was a reasonably okay place as it was anyway, with Christians, Jews and Muslims all getting on pretty well. What was wrong with a continuation of this infrastructure but with alterations to accommodate an influx of immigrants? What if the UN decided tomorrow that all people of Celt heritage should get a large portion of England back and the people currently there should relinquish their livelihoods and go and live in shanty towns and crap prefabs on the edge of nowhere?

Not to excuse some of the actions of Israel of course, but it is probably also worth remembering that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and, if we are all honest, probably the only country in that part of the world any of us could stand to live in.

Jordan's quite nice by all accounts!

 

[GSX1400]

I think that the entire episode of the holocaust needs to be re-examined from scratch so that we can have a proper objective account of exactly what happened and when it started and finished and who participated.

One of the most important questions is about the state of mind of the perpetrators; were they psychopathic or disturbed by the trench warfare of the first world war or hardened to death through the experience of the Spanish flu and general high mortality rates in that era?

It's important to examine these questions carefully because if we just take the simplistic option and say that they were all psychopaths then we might say something like; "well, we needn't worry as long as we keep psychopaths out of positions of responsibility". If we adopt this attitude and it turns out that the majority of the perpetrators were not psychopaths then we leave ourselves open to the whole thing happening again.

Also, we need a major review of the concept of killing for the state. At this moment we (the Uk and USA) have armies deployed in major conflicts whose members have killed hundreds of thousands of individuals and often these deaths have been much less 'humane' than gassing. These lads will be back soon and will become electricians and IT specialists; fathers and bosses; politicians and journalists. We will be the winners and therefore there will be no final reckoning of the death toll of the enemy and no proper and unadulterated acceptance of the scale and nature of the killing in those regions. We will also write the history of the conflict and it will certainly be written such as to salve our collective conscience.

That historian in Austria has been thrown in jail by the decendents of the perpetrators of the holocaust for denying that the holocaust happened whilst at the same time similar crimes against humanity are proceeding in full swing. I for one am flabbergasted.

 

[straightleftknee]

Apologies for the selective editing of the above quotes. It's nothing personal: some of my best friends are editors.

Fair points Peripart - my main issue is why people feel the need to bring up Israel's current domestic and foreign policy in a discussion on Holocaust denial. I just don't see the relevance.

Perhaps when Israeli ministers during interviews stop playing the everybody hates us, we know what it's like to be persecuted so we can't possibly be doing anything wrong, while their gunships are blowing up palestinian refugees.

Back to the topic at hand. People can believe whatever they want and they will whether the moral police decide it right or wrong. Banning religion didn't make it go away and nor will locking people up for using history for political means..just as they always have been.

If they're locking up Irving I want godbashers in all shapes and forms locked up because there's no evidence for their beliefs either.

 

[TulipTree]

I think that the entire episode of the holocaust needs to be re-examined from scratch so that we can have a proper objective account of exactly what happened and when it started and finished and who participated. ...

It's important to examine these questions carefully because if we just take the simplistic option and say that they were all psychopaths then we might say something like; "well, we needn't worry as long as we keep psychopaths out of positions of responsibility". If we adopt this attitude and it turns out that the majority of the perpetrators were not psychopaths then we leave ourselves open to the whole thing happening again.

Yes, thank you. I've been reading a history of Germany and one thing that became very clear was that the idea of self-protection was the driving force behind the atrocities. Human eugenics went from an unpopular fringe idea to a fall blown movement over the course of decades and not just in the few years leading up to Hitler's rule. As you said GSX, I believe that social insecurity was the cause, and I also believe we're not morally superior to the Germans who took part in those pograms, we're just luckier. Fear isn't just the mindkiller as they say in Dune, it's a civilization killer as well.

 

[Bistoinferno]

You dont have to look far in British culture to see people commiting disgusting crimes towards one another , IE: Football hooliganism or scary outbursts of public emotion, IE: Diana.
I dont doubt for a second that if somthing similar had happened in this country and been in the same circumstances we would have behaved in the same way.

 

[Quake42]

Whether I'm right or wrong is in the eye of the Beholder, but I've always perceived the main problem to be the UN mandate which created Israel creating thousand of homeless indigenous people whose lives were destroyed. If it had been a simple invasion and takeover, then it would have been an easier pill to swallow, because in a sense, the Palestinians would have had a 'fighting chance'.

But there were, of course, a number of population transfers/acts of ethnic cleansing (depending on how you want to see it) after WWII. As an example, a million ethnic Germans were expelled from what is now the Czech Republic. I think it's fair to say that those Germans and their descendants have not spent the last 50 years hijacking aeroplanes and blowing up Czech restaurants...

It doesn't make it right and there's no doubt that a lot of people got a raw deal in the post-war carve up. But other groups have moved on and got on with their lives. This hasn't happened in the Middle East largely, I supect, because Israel's neighbouring Arab states have a vested interest in keeping the conflict going.

I also think it is a bit unfair to say, as MrSnowman does that:

thing is that Palestine (as I understand it) was a reasonably okay place as it was anyway, with Christians, Jews and Muslims all getting on pretty well. What was wrong with a continuation of this infrastructure

We don't say that the Dutch, for example, are being unreasonable by wishing to have a separate country and not amalgamate with Germany. If you accept that certain linguistic or cultural groups have a right to a nation state, I don't think you can deny it to Israel. I do get annoyed with my lefty friends who appear to support self-determination for every group other than the Jews...

But to get back on topic, I have to say I agree with Bisto that I think a sizeable minority of people in whatever country will commit hideous acts if those acts are sanctioned by the authorities. I certainly don't think it was unique to Germany.

 

[BaronHardacre]

But surely in the case of Israel/Palestine it is more to do with the religous significance to Christians/Jews/Muslims of the geographical area, rather than it just being an issue of moving a particular group. Surely it would be akin to the U.N marching into the Vatican City and telling the pope that he has to hand over half his land to some atheists.
Plus, to say that only Muslim countries in the middle east have a vested interest in keeping the conflict going, doesn't really take into account the amount of money America pumps into Israel to fight the good fight.
Don't get me wrong, both sides are as bad as each other, however it must be remebered that Muslims aren't the only group to commit terrorist acts in that area. My grandfather, who served as a peacekeeper during the transistion, once told me that the Jewish terrorists would kill a British soldier, rig the corpse with explosive and hang it by the neck from a tree. When other soldiers would try and retrieve the corpse, they would be killed by the bomb. I don't have any details other than my grandad's statement, and unfortunately he is now dead, but he did say he actually witnessed one of these acts of "freedom fighting".

 

[Quake42]

But surely in the case of Israel/Palestine it is more to do with the religous significance to Christians/Jews/Muslims of the geographical area, rather than it just being an issue of moving a particular group. Surely it would be akin to the U.N marching into the Vatican City and telling the pope that he has to hand over half his land to some atheists.

I don't really agree. Self-determination in that area isn't just for religious Jews/Muslims. There are lots of secular Jews in Israel and also secular Palestinians (from nominal Muslim and nominal Christian backgrounds) who identify strongly with their respective homelands.

In the case of Jerusalem, which clearly does have major religious significance to all three faiths, I should have thought that it would be best administered essentially as an international city. There would be practical issues with how this would work of course but better than the current position.

 

[Spookdaddy]

...and I also believe we're not morally superior to the Germans who took part in those pograms, we're just luckier.

I'd disagree, but only up to a point. I believe that, at present, I am morally superior to anyone who actively took part in the murder of innocent and unarmed Slavs, homosexuals, Jews, the mentally ill, Gypsies etc, but possibly, maybe even probably, only because I'm lucky.

And of course not all Germans took part in or approved of the actions taken by the Nazis. This being the case you have to accept that there was an element of choice in the matter for many of those actively involved in the process. Once choice is involved so is moral decision making. Although I appreciate the point to a certain extent I think the tendency of arguments like this is to excuse responsibility for the Holocaust by claiming that the people involved were subject to a steamroller of social and historical forces which left them no choice and which I believe is simply wrong. The logical conclusion of such arguments is that we are all at the mercy of social and historical processes (which is true) and that freewill plays no part whatsoever in how events unfold (which is, at least in my opinion, not true).

I also believe that apart from anything else the argument is largely irrelevant. As I have said before, possibly on this thread, to withdraw from the criticism of other peoples evil acts simply because we understand that we all contain at least the potential to commit those acts is an act of abject moral cowardice.

 

[tattooted]

As I have said before, possibly on this thread, to withdraw from the criticism of other peoples evil acts simply because we understand that we all contain at least the potential to commit those acts is an act of abject moral cowardice.

When I hear people saying about the Nazis--"there but for the grace of God go we"--I don't hear them withdrawing criticism of the Nazi atrocities--I hear them saying that all peoples of all countries have to be careful so that we don't become the Nazis. According to a pyschological study by Hans Askenasy, it's a lot easier than any of us imagine. If it wasn't, we wouldn't now be associating the word genocide with the Bosnians, the Tutsis and the Anuak people in Ethiopia.

 

[TulipTree]

When I hear people saying about the Nazis--"there but for the grace of God go we"--I don't hear them withdrawing criticism of the Nazi atrocities--I hear them saying that all peoples of all countries have to be careful so that we don't become the Nazis. According to a pyschological study by Hans Askenasy, it's a lot easier than any of us imagine. If it wasn't, we wouldn't now be associating the word genocide with the Bosnians, the Tutsis and the Anuak people in Ethiopia.

Yes, thank you Tattooted, that is what I meant. I'm actually a little worried with the state of things here in the US. We're not experiencing ethnic cleansing at the moment, but there is a rise in very unhealthy ideas and associations.

In Germany, the memories of past greatness and present insecurity, mixed with the ideas of eugenics to create a movement that the people embraced with a religious zealotry. Referring back to the recent article, I think it's wrong that a man went to prison for a simple belief, but it shows you how much the people of Germany and the surrounding nations fear the power of those beliefs. You have to understand that the people of Germany thought of themselves as compassionate, good and wise when they committed those acts. They were trying to prevent hereditary diseases and social ills.

Today, in the US, I see a similar mixing of unhealthy ideas. Ideas that are historically innacurate, misapplied, and just plain wrong. They are ideas that feed people's social and religious fears. If you see a similar situation arise in the US, it will be because the people are trying to appease God and keep our country "free and safe from terror". The people here will also think that they are acting with goodness and wisdom.

Keeping your head while in the midst of a monstrous social trend demands that you feel compassion for people who have been accused of terrible criminal acts. To maintain the ability to act with wisdom demands that you think like an outsider and also demands that you face your fears. That's not easy for most people... and yes, this isn't an excuse for the past, it's a warning for today.

 

[Spookdaddy]

When I hear people saying about the Nazis--"there but for the grace of God go we"--I don't hear them withdrawing criticism of the Nazi atrocities...

Yes, you're right - that was badly worded on my part.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Rather long and should perhaps be on the RIP Thread, but a boggler of a story and well worth reading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,1752845,00.html

Obituary
Rudolf Vrba

Escapee from Auschwitz who revealed the truth about the camp

Ruth Linn
Thursday April 13, 2006
The Guardian

The truth about the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp was the best-kept secret of the Nazi architects of the Final Solution, guarded from discovery by more than 2,000 SS personnel, 200 vicious dogs, two lines of electrified fences, and a terrorised, fearful Polish population living around the camp. Throughout the five years of its existence there were hundreds of attempts by prisoners to escape. Seventy-six of these were by Jews. Of them only five succeeded in getting away to reveal the secrets of Auschwitz and to survive the war to tell their stories. Rudolf Vrba, who has died of cancer aged 81, was the most prominent escapee of the five.

In later life he settled in Vancouver. There he became professor of biochemistry in the pharmacology department of the medical school of the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Among attempts to break down the wall of silence around the Auschwitz secrets, historians have no doubt that the escape of Vrba and his fellow prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, was by far the most important. Born as Walter Rosenberg in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia, Vrba was the son of a sawmill owner. In 1939, aged 15, he was expelled from the high school (gymnasium) in Bratislava, under the Slovak puppet state's version of the Nazis' anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws.

Early in March 1942, in rebellion against the deportation laws, Vrba ripped the yellow Star of David off his clothes and left his Czechoslovakian home in a taxi, heading for Britain via Hungary. Later, having been intercepted by frontier guards, he was first sent to the Novaky transition camp in Slovakia, where he tried to escape, but again was caught and beaten. On June 14 1942 he was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland and two weeks later, on June 30, to Auschwitz. After six months in Auschwitz, he was transferred to Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and had the number 44070 tattooed on his arm.

From August 1942 until June 1943 Vrba was assigned - both in Auschwitz and in Birkenau - to work in the special slave labour unit that handled the property of those who had been gassed. In camp slang, the unit was known as "Canada" because of the food and the gold and other precious materials that the Germans confiscated from the luggage of the incoming "resettlement" deportees. The Auschwitz treasures from "Canada" were packaged for Germany, and the gold was quickly melted into ingots and deposited in the Reichsbank.

A major aspect of Vrba's duties during 1942 and 1943 was to be present at the arrival of most transports of deportees and to sort the belongings of the gassed victims. From this vantage point he was able to assess how little the deportees knew about Auschwitz when they entered the camp. Their luggage contained clothing for all seasons and basic utensils, a clear sign of their naive preparation for a new life in the area of "resettlement" in the east.

In the summer of 1943, Vrba improved his position for collecting information when he was appointed registrar in the quarantine camp for men. At the beginning of 1944, he noticed that preparations were under way for an additional railway line, for an expected transports of Jews who, in the SS camp language were called "Hungarian salami". Transports from different countries, Vrba would later explain, were characterised by certain long lasting provisions packed in the prisoners' luggage for the final journey into the unknown.

As he subsequently wrote: "When a series of transports of Jews from the Netherlands arrived, cheeses enriched the wartime rations. It was sardines when a series of transports of French Jews arrived, halva and olives when transports of Jews from Greece reached the camp, and now the SS were talking of 'Hungarian salami', a well-known Hungarian provision suitable for taking along on a long journey."

For almost two years he had thought of escape, at first selfishly, because he had merely wanted his freedom, but now, "I had an imperative reason. It was no longer a question of reporting a crime but of preventing one." He began his first scientific study: to assess every unsuccessful escape attempt, to analyse its flaws and to correct them.

On Friday, April 7 1944, (the eve of Passover), Vrba and Wetzler sneaked into a previously used hideout sprinkled with gasoline-soaked tobacco to prevent the dogs from sniffing them out. They stayed there for three nights, until the camp authorities assumed that the two men had already got beyond the outer perimeter. When the cordon of SS guards that had surrounded that perimeter was withdrawn, Vrba and Wetzler were ready to sneak out.

They knew one thing for certain: as shaven-headed inmates, clad in striped pyjamas and with numbers tattooed on their arms, there was no point in relying on any help in the world outside Auschwitz. "At the moment of our escape," explained Vrba, "all connections with whatever friends and social contacts we had in Auschwitz were severed, and we had absolutely no connection waiting for us outside the death camp where we had spent the past two years." As he later phrased it: "We were de facto written off by the world from the moment we were loaded into a deportation train in the spring of 1942. To start with, we had to step into a complete 'social vacuum' outside Auschwitz. The only administrative evidence of our existence was an international warrant about us, issued telegraphically and distributed to all stations of the Gestapo."

The warrant was also telegraphed to all stations of the Kripo (criminal police), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, security service), and the Grepo (Grenzpolizei, border police). It even reached the desk of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS.

After a perilous 11 days of walking and hiding, the escapees made it back to their native country, Slovakia. Almost at once, they managed to establish contact with the leaders of the remainder of the Jewish community. There had been 88,000 Jews in Slovakia; there were by then about 25,000. They warned that preparations were being made for the murder of nearly 800,000 Hungarian Jews. They also suspected that 3,000 Czech Jews, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau "family camp" would be gassed within a few months. For three days Vrba and Wetzler conveyed in detail to the members of the Jewish Council the geographical plan of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the specifics of the Germans' method of mass murder - tattooing, gassing, and cremation - and the course of events they had witnessed at the camp.

They also and most significantly gave an estimate of the number of Jews killed in Auschwitz between June 1942 and April 1944: about 1.75 million. The 32-page Vrba-Wetzler report was the first document about the Auschwitz death camp to reach the free world and to be accepted as credible. Its authenticity broke the barrier of scepticism and apathy that had existed up to that point.

It is doubtful, however, that its content reached more than a small number of the prospective victims, though Vrba's and Wetzler's alarming assessment was in the hands of Hungarian Jewish leaders as early as April 28 or at least no later than early May 1944. Between mid-May and early July, about 437,000 Hungarian Jews boarded the "resettlement trains" that carried them to the Auschwitz death camps, where most were immediately gassed. Vrba's and Wetzler's predictions regarding the "Hungarian salami" were soon confirmed by two other Auschwitz inmates, Cslaw Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin, who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz on May 27 1944, and reached Slovakia on June 6. They reported that during the month of May Hungarian Jews were being murdered in Auschwitz at an unprecedented rate. Human fat was used to accelerate the burning of the corpses.

Each escapee was provided with high-quality forged documents and the 19-year-old Walter Rosenberg became Rudolf Vrba - a name that he maintained until his death; April 7, his day of escape, became his birthday. Following his disclosures, and after hiding out in the Tatras mountains, in September 1944 he joined the Czechoslovak partisans and was later decorated for bravery.

The Vrba-Wetzler report had an immediate impact. The publication of portions of the report in the Swiss press in the final days of June 1944, and by the western allies shortly afterwards, produced a spontaneous international denunciation, which led to protests from the Pope, the US secretary of state, Cordell Hull, the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, the International Red Cross, and the King of Sweden. This amounted to what was called a "bombardment" of Admiral Miklos Horthy's conscience.

Horthy, the regent of Hungary, had led his country into the war on the Nazi side. But by 1944, with the Red Army approaching from the east, he was sending out feelers to the western allies with the aim of pulling his country out of the Axis. On July 5, Eden stated that the BBC would be employed to warn the Hungarian leaders. On July 7 Horthy ordered a halt to the deportations from Hungary, which became effective only on July 9. Almost 200,000 Jews in Budapest were thus saved from deportation.

The Jews of Hungary were subsequently to be harassed by members of the indigenous fascist Arrow Cross (Nyilas) movement, but their anti-semitic butchery was no match for German efficiency. They managed to kill approximately 50,000 Jews during their three months of fearsome rule, from October 1944 until the arrival of the Red Army, but this was a small number compared with the approximately 437,000 Hungarian Jews smoothly liquidated by the Germans in less than eight weeks in the spring of 1944.

The Vrba-Wetzler report continues to generate historical debate to this day. Many, including Vrba himself, have questioned whether the report was disseminated and acted upon as rapidly and as forcefully as it should have been. In an unanswerable "what if", Vrba continued to question to his last day whether more victims could have been saved had the allied and the Jewish leadership of the time pursued a more vigorous course of action in light of his report. This line of thought has at times made his ideas somewhat incongruent with the predominant Israeli historical narrative concerning the events of that time. Whereas the two escapees accurately predicted the fate of the Hungarian Jews, what they could not have foreseen was that their postwar memoirs and documented report would be kept from the Israeli Hebrew-reading public.

Although I am a native Israeli, who graduated from the prestigious Reali private high school, I had never heard about the escape from Auschwitz at the numerous Holocaust ceremonies I attended. Nor had I ever read about it in any detail in any of the Hebrew Holocaust textbooks at school in my own time or in those given to my three children, although Vrba's memoirs, I Cannot Forgive, written with Alan Bestic, were first published in London in 1963.

I became acquainted with Vrba's escape from Auschwitz during my adult life, through the non-Israeli Paris-based film-maker Claude Lanzmann, who considered Vrba's testimony central to the understanding of the Holocaust in his 1987 movie Shoah. The "presence" of the "absence" of the escape from Auschwitz in Israeli historiography on the one hand, and the moral visibility and sanctity of Auschwitz in the country's hegemonic narrative on the other, remained a puzzle for me, and my desire to gain firsthand knowledge of the escape stayed with me for many years.

Purely coincidentally, while lecturing at UBC I mentioned Vrba to a friend and was told that he taught there. Thus did we first meet. In June 1998, I succeeded in convincing my university, Haifa, to award Vrba an honorary doctorate in recognition of his heroic escape from Auschwitz and his contribution to Holocaust education. The award ceremony was planned to coincide with the first publication of the book in Hebrew by the Haifa University Press.

To my surprise, even at this undeniably historic moment, some Israeli scholars made a desperate last-minute attempt to belittle the hero and his memoirs. No less interesting was the position, as intellectual bystanders, taken up by the Holocaust historians' establishment in Israel. Not one of them publicly protested about the campaign against Vrba. It was here that the profound question posed by the American political thinker Michael Walzer crept into my mind: "What is the use, after all, of a silent intellectual?" In my book, Escaping Auschwitz, a Culture of Forgetting (2004) I try to delve into the mystery of Vrba's disappearance not only from the Auschwitz camp, but also from the Israeli Holocaust narrative.

Vrba was the only academic of the five escapees, and it is perhaps unsurprising that he chose biochemistry for his life's work, after that life was saved by the mixture of tobacco and gasoline. After the war he read biology and chemistry at Charles University, Prague, took a doctorate and then defected from a scientific delegation to the west. He worked in Israel from 1958 to 1960 at the biological research institute in Beit Dagan.

Then from 1960 to 1967 he worked in Britain, first at the neuropsychiatric research unit in Carshalton, then at the Medical Research Council. Then came the move to UBC, and after a two year sabbatical at Harvard University, a UBC professorship.

It was not just tobacco and gasoline that saved Vrba's life. It was also saved because Vrba admired knowledge, he was a scholar who knew its power, and believed that the deportees should have been given that power too. He felt that if they had known the fate that awaited them in Auschwitz, many lives would have been saved. He promised himself to bring them that knowledge, and he kept his promise. Meanwhile, I Cannot Forgive has recently been republished as I Escaped from Auschwitz.

His companion on that epic escape, Alfred Wetzler, died in Slovakia in the late 1980s.

Vrba is survived by his wife Robin, and a daughter, Zuza, who lives in Cambridge. His elder daughter, Helinka, predeceased him.

· Rudolf Vrba, Auschwitz escapee and pharmacologist, born September 11 1924; died March 26 2006

What a guy! :shock:

 

[tattooted]

In my book, Escaping Auschwitz, a Culture of Forgetting (2004) I try to delve into the mystery of Vrba's disappearance not only from the Auschwitz camp, but also from the Israeli Holocaust narrative.

Has anyone read this book, or come across any other examination, and possible explanation for the exclusion of Vrba's escape and Auschwitz expose from Israeli material about the Holocaust?

 

[ramonmercado]

Iran and Israel

Milking the Holocaust
Sep 14th 2006 | TEHRAN
From The Economist print edition

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revisionism is aimed at the wider Islamic world

AFP

NoIRAN'S growing political incorrectness thrills and scandalises the two worlds: Islamic and Western. The country's combustible president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launches blistering verbal attacks on Israel. An exhibition of more than 200 satirical cartoons about the Holocaust, on show in a state-owned museum in Tehran, is about to come to its underwhelming end. Behind both lies a tale of domestic vulnerability and foreign ambition.

The old Middle Eastern view that the world's Jews exaggerated the Holocaust to rationalise Israel's formation and subsequent brutalities against the Palestinians has long underlain the Islamic Republic's hostility to Israel's presence in the region. But it took Mr Ahmadinejad, and his now notorious description of the Holocaust as a “myth”, to reheat the issue.

Prompted by the publication in Europe of caricatures lampooning the Prophet Muhammad and the defence, by some Western editors and politicians, of these caricatures on grounds of freedom of speech, came the idea of demolishing a Western shibboleth in retaliation. The idea, say the organisers of the Holocaust exhibition, is to highlight Western double standards when it comes to freedom of speech. Mr Ahmadinejad has queried the fitness of such countries as Germany, Austria and France, where Holocaust-denial is a crime, to lecture Iran on free expression. The trouble is that only a few of the works in the show confine themselves to probing this inconsistency.


Dozens of the cartoons, the Iranian entries in particular (entries came from countries as diverse as Italy, Brazil and India), are wantonly anti-Semitic. The imagery is grotesque and predictable: Stars of David morphing into swastikas; the Statue of Liberty giving a Nazi salute. Subtle, the cartoons are not. Perhaps for this reason, visitor numbers have been on the low side. Your correspondent had the place to himself, until more foreign journalists turned up. That may not matter to Mr Ahmadinejad: the suspicion is that the show, like his outrageous one-liners, is aimed abroad.

This became clear from the president's decision, at the end of August, to release the text of a long, quixotic letter that he had sent to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. In this letter Mr Ahmadinejad regretted that the victors of the second world war continue to keep “a black cloud of humiliation and shame” hanging over modern Germans, described Israel as “the greatest enemy of humanity” and urged Ms Merkel to join Iran in an alliance to set the world to rights. She did not reply.

Her silence exemplifies Westerners' bewilderment and distaste at the revisionism of a leader whose country was a bit player in the war and does not even border Israel. On September 3rd Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, observed during a visit to Tehran that the Holocaust is “an undeniable historical fact”. On the same day the Iranian government announced its intention to hold a conference on the subject in Tehran. “Scholars” who refute the conventional history of the Holocaust will no doubt feature prominently.

For a president whose influence over strategic decisions, especially in foreign affairs, is constrained by the untrammelled power of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, probing the Holocaust is a cheap way of raising his prestige among Islamists everywhere. But it seems that for Mr Ahmadinejad, too, freedom of speech has its limits. On September 11th the government banned Iran's foremost reformist newspaper, Shargh, for publishing a cartoon that, it has been alleged, depicted the president as a donkey.

www.economist.com/world/africa/displays ... id=7912959

 

[Mouldy13]

Also, anti-Jewish sentiment seems to be one area where the far left and right agree (how many did Stalin exterminate?) even to this day...

I regard my political stance as "far left" in as much as I have a Marxist/Trotskyist viewpoint. Don't want to muddy any waters here but being anti-Israel IS NOT being anti-semitic. The holocaust was a tragedy of such proportions its hard to take it in. It wasn't just the jews there were gypsys, gays, communists and anti-fascists in the camps.

i think the holocaust deniers, behind closed doors, accept and relish the idea of the camps.

 

[WhistlingJack]

Holocaust denier to be released

An Austrian court has ruled that UK historian David Irving - jailed for denying the Holocaust - should be released on probation.

The court had heard calls for both a reduction and increase in the three-year sentence.

Irving was convicted in February in a case that sparked international debate about the limits of freedom of speech.

In 1989 he spoke in Austria denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, though he later said he was "mistaken".

Irving on Wednesday welcomed his release and said he was "fit and well".

He said he would urge an academic boycott of historians from Germany and Austria until the nations stopped jailing historians.

"I was put in prison for three years for expressing an opinion 17 years ago," he said.

The BBC's Kerry Skyring in Vienna said the presiding judge converted the remaining two years of Irving's jail term to a provisional sentence, upholding his appeal.

The conditions of the probation are not yet known, including whether Irving will be able to leave Austria.

But his lawyer, Herbert Schaller, said: "He is free, and he can leave, and he will leave."

Both the prosecution and defence had challenged the length of the sentence. The crime carries a prison term of up to 10 years.

The 1992 law targets "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide".

Irving, 68, was arrested in November last year on a motorway in southern Austria. He was visiting to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity.

The conviction had sparked intense debate with supporters saying it was fully justified but opponents arguing it undermined the right of freedom of speech.

At the initial trial, Irving had said it was "ridiculous" he was being tried for expressing an opinion and that he had changed his views on the Holocaust.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/12/20 11:29:44 GMT

© BBC MMVI

 

[lupinwick]

A suspected German neo-Nazi has admitted publicly burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary, at the start of his trial with six others.

The suspects are accused of inciting racial hatred and disparaging the dead.

Prosecutors in the eastern German city of Magdeburg said Lars Konrad, 25, threw the book onto a bonfire during a summer solstice party in June 2006.

Anne Frank wrote her diary while she and her family hid from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam during World War II.

The indictment says the public burning took place in Pretzien, near Magdeburg, and that the accused, aged from 24 to 29, glorified the Nazis.

Denying the Holocaust and incitement of racial hatred both carry maximum jail terms of five years under German law.

Mr Konrad's lawyer argued that he was merely trying to expiate an evil chapter in German history.

But state prosecutor Arnold Murra said the defendants "ridiculed Anne Frank and all those who died in the concentration camps".

The case shocked Germany, fuelling fears that neo-Nazism was on the rise in poor areas of the former East Germany.

BBC

 

[WhistlingJack]

University Shut In Holocaust Row

University shut in Holocaust row

An Italian university has closed down one of its campuses to prevent a planned lecture by a controversial French professor and Holocaust denier.

Robert Faurisson has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity.

He was due to speak at the University of Teramo in central Italy as part of a Masters course in Middle East studies.

But the university decided to close part of the campus to prevent him addressing students.

It said the "climate of tension" might endanger the safety of its students.

Faurisson says that Nazi gas chambers are a fiction and that most of the Jews who were killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp died of natural causes.

Last year, he was one of several prominent Holocaust deniers who gathered to take part in a conference in Iran.

The University of Teramo's Professor Moffa, who organised the lecture, was formally warned to cancel the invitation but insisted he had a right to academic independence.

"Are you so convinced of your truths?" Mr Moffa was quoted as telling the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa. "Then why don't you come and pull him to pieces?"

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre issued a statement saying that the invitation to Faurisson was "an embarrassment to Italian academia".

"To welcome Faurisson [...] encourages a perverse propaganda to incite a new generation to anti-Semitism," it read, according to AP.

European interior ministers agreed last month to make it an offence to condone or grossly trivialise crimes of genocide - but only if the effect is incitement to violence or hatred.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/05/18 17:33:14 GMT

© BBC MMVII

 

[ramonmercado]

Hes at it again. Thios time lets not hear any excuses about mistranslation.

Anger at Iranian Holocaust denial
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8264111.stm

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust
The Iranian president's latest denial of the Nazi Holocaust has drawn strong condemnation from Western powers.

Speaking in the capital, Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was "a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim".

Germany said the comments were a "disgrace to his country" while the US said they would "isolate Iran further".

Mr Ahmadinejad made the remarks at an annual rally where opposition supporters clashed with police.

Reformists, who have been banned from holding demonstrations since disputed presidential elections in June, defied warnings not to use the pro-Palestinian Quds (Jerusalem) Day marches to stage protests.

'Unacceptable and shocking'

As part of the Quds Day events, President Ahmadinejad delivered a speech in which he repeated previous assertions that the Holocaust was a lie.

Promoting those vicious lies serves only to isolate Iran further from the world

Robert Gibbs
White House press secretary


Clashes show unresolved Iran crisis
Iran eyewitness: Protest videos
In pictures: Tehran rallies
"The pretext [the Holocaust] for the creation of the Zionist regime [Israel] is false," he told worshippers at Tehran university.

"It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim."

In reaction, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs cited President Barack Obama's assertion in a speech to the Muslim world that "denying the Holocaust is baseless, ignorant and hateful".

"Promoting those vicious lies serves only to isolate Iran further from the world," Mr Gibbs said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: "This sheer anti-Semitism demands our collective condemnation.

"We will continue to confront it decisively in the future."

A French foreign ministry spokesman called the remarks "unacceptable and shocking", while British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the denial was "abhorrent as well as ignorant".

"It is very important that the world community stands up against this tide of abuse," Mr Miliband said.

Reformists attacked

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Tehran that it also risked further isolation and economic pressure if it did not provide answers soon about its nuclear ambitions.

Western powers suspect Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons, though Iran insists its programme is purely to generate power for civilian uses.

UN Security Council powers and Germany are due to hold talks on the programme at the UN General Assembly next week.

The BBC's Kim Ghattas reports from Washington that despite Mr Ahmadinejad's Holocaust comments and Iran's disputed election, the US offer to engage diplomatically with Iran is still on the table.

Even so, the US ambassador to the UN said there would be no meeting between Mr Obama and Mr Ahmadinejad at the UN.

At the rally in Tehran, thousands of opposition supporters turned out, shouting slogans in support of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Reports say there were clashes between police and protesters as the march progressed, with some arrests. Stones were thrown, and police used tear gas.

Iranian state-run channel Press TV showed footage of an opposition rally, with many supporters wearing green, the colour adopted by supporters of Mr Mousavi.

Mr Mousavi was forced to leave the rally after his car was attacked, the official Irna news agency reported, while former President Mohammad Khatami - also a reformist - was reportedly pushed to the ground and had his turban knocked off, before police intervened.

 

[ramonmercado]

Appalling. I think this story fits in here.

Holocaust exhibition in Oxford vandalised
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8482931.stm

Auschwitz
The artist was inspired by visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau

An exhibition marking Holocaust Memorial Day in a public park in Oxford has been vandalised.

Oxford artist Nicholas Hedges set up hundreds of 2ft-high metal stands at Shotover Park as part of a display.

Each was marked with a label containing extracts from a diary written by a Polish mayor during the early 1940s.

Mr Hedges said many of the stands have been removed. "It's something you've got to, unfortunately, expect to happen," he added.

The exhibition, called "The Woods, Breathing", is due to continue along the yellow trail of the park until 8 February.

"There are enough stands left to hopefully remain there for at least the duration of the exhibition," Mr Hedges said.

This year's Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

At 1100GMT, Oxford city and Oxfordshire county councillors gathered to reflect on the Holocaust at Oxford Town Hall, before watching a short film about the atrocities.

 

[George_millett]

Appalling. I think this story fits in here.

Holocaust exhibition in Oxford vandalised
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8482931.stm

Auschwitz
The artist was inspired by visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau

An exhibition marking Holocaust Memorial Day in a public park in Oxford has been vandalised.

Oxford artist Nicholas Hedges set up hundreds of 2ft-high metal stands at Shotover Park as part of a display.

Each was marked with a label containing extracts from a diary written by a Polish mayor during the early 1940s.

Mr Hedges said many of the stands have been removed. "It's something you've got to, unfortunately, expect to happen," he added.

The exhibition, called "The Woods, Breathing", is due to continue along the yellow trail of the park until 8 February.

"There are enough stands left to hopefully remain there for at least the duration of the exhibition," Mr Hedges said.

This year's Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

At 1100GMT, Oxford city and Oxfordshire county councillors gathered to reflect on the Holocaust at Oxford Town Hall, before watching a short film about the atrocities.

Ramon

Whilst i agrees that it is not right that these signs have been removed. In the current climate it could just be a coincidence that they had holocaust related material on them. Some git might just have taken them as it is a number of convieniently sized bits of metal which they could make some money on selling them for scrap.