WITNESSES FOR THE WITNESSES

Witnesses for the witnesses
By Deborah E. Lipstadt
International Herald Tribune
January 27, 2005

www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/26/opinion/edlip.html

When I teach my courses on the history of the Holocaust, I have learned that for the students the "highlight" is when they hear about the Holocaust in the first person singular - from a survivor, particularly a survivor of Auschwitz or one of the other camps. However, the number of survivors I can call on to speak to my students is rapidly diminishing.

The commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is being held on Thursday, is the last commemoration (they are held every 10 years) at which a significant number of survivors of the camp will be present. I will be there, not as a survivor or a child of survivors - I am neither - but as a historian of this place and the other attendant horrors of that which has become known as the Holocaust.

On some level, this reflects the passing of the memory torch from the survivors to historians and scholars. I already witnessed the beginning of this process during my libel trial in London in 2000, when I was forced to defend myself against a Holocaust denier, David Irving. Irving had called the Holocaust a "legend," denied that gas chambers were used to systematically kill Jews, and removed all mention of the Holocaust from one his books because, he said, "if something didn't happen, then you don't even dignify it with a footnote."

Nonetheless, he sued me for libel for having called him a denier. My legal team decided not to call survivors as witnesses. Irving was acting as his own lawyer, and they feared that his only objective would be to humiliate and confuse these elderly people. More important, they did not think we needed witnesses of fact to prove that the Holocaust happened.

We relied instead, on a stellar team of historians and specialists. They became, in the words of the poet Paul Celan, the "witnesses for the witnesses."

This phrase took on life for me one day when an elderly woman broke through a phalanx of reporters who were trying to ask me questions. She rolled up her sleeve, pointed at the number on her arm and declared, "You are fighting for us." On other occasions survivors would wait in the hallway outside the courtroom and press into my hands pieces of paper with the names of their relatives on them. "This is the evidence," they would tell me.

Ultimately we won a unequivocal victory with the judge declaring it "incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier." The judge's choice of words to describe Irving's writings about the Holocaust were unambiguous: "distorts," "perverts," "unjustified," "travesty" and "unreal."

Deniers like Irving have made Auschwitz the focus of their attacks because it is the primary symbol of the Holocaust. But they have made few significant inroads. Holocaust denial is hardly a clear and present danger. But deniers are sure to try to ply their wares even more energetically when there is no one left to say: "This is my story. This is what happened to me."

Then it will be up to those who study Auschwitz and all the other elements of the Holocaust to help us know, beyond any doubt, what happened in these places. Holocaust historians, as well as those of other genocides, such as those in Rwanda and Sudan, bear a particular responsibility to be not just meticulous and exacting historians, but "witnesses for the witnesses."

It is a heavy burden, but it can be done.

 

DANCING ON THE VOLCANO

Dancing on the volcano
By Dominique Moïsi
International Herald Tribune
January 27, 2005

www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/26/news/edmoisie.html

My father was not liberated on Jan. 27, 1945, in Auschwitz, but on May 8, in a small camp in Bavaria, where he landed after having survived the ordeal of the death march the Nazis ordered as Russian soldiers advanced toward the camp. He was 42.

As a very young child I learned to decipher numbers by reading the Auschwitz tattoo - 159721 - indelibly etched on his left forearm. This number, I now realize, profoundly modified my relationship to life, providing me with values and an identity as the son of a deportee that have only grown stronger with the passage of time.

There are many ways of living as the child of a "survivor." In my case, being born with historical tragedy as an inheritance has brought a mixture of vulnerability and strength. It has meant keeping a distance from institutions, but above all engaging in a deep and never-ending commitment to Europe.

Being the son of a deportee means having come to life before one's biological birth. I was born after the war, but was I not really born amid the evil and horror of history on that April day in 1943 in Nice when my father, denounced as a Jew by a Frenchman, was seized by the Gestapo and escorted by French gendarmes to Drancy, before the "great journey" to Auschwitz?

Nearly 60 years have gone by, and I still carry that betrayal within me like a wound. Stained by that original sin, my love for France has only been stronger and more complex, more intense and more tortured, like that of a suitor who always expects to be rejected and has somehow to prepare himself for such a moment. "Do you love me, do you really love me?" Mozart continually asked his entourage. Am I not always tempted to put this question to my own country?

France however, did not only wound me through the body and the spirit of my father. The same day he was arrested, my mother was immediately warned and led into hiding, and hence saved, by members of a French Catholic resistance network. So my parents' story stands as a perfect summary, an emblematic condensation of the complexity of a tragic period in our history. The sin and the redemption took place simultaneously. A Frenchman betrayed my father, others saved my mother.

For the son of a deportee, peace of mind, like health, can only be regarded as a transitory phase, prefiguring nothing positive. Being the son of a deportee means carrying deep within a permanent feeling of dancing on a volcano. But it also means inheriting an inner strength and a great capacity for resistance. It means confronting daily challenges unburned, as though coated with Teflon, at times even to one's own amazement. A father's relentless struggle to survive is always an incentive to put in perspective and thus transcend any trial you may face. It also protects you from the temptation of comparing the legitimate worries of the present with the tragedies of the past.

The mix of vulnerability and strength that I inherited has led me to keep an ever greater distance from institutions, particularly from the most central of all, the State. My respectful but mistrustful remove from the State is, of course, a reaction against those gendarmes who became accomplices by carrying out the monstrous orders of the Nazi occupier.

My natural distancing from the classic games of power, social rank, honors and decorations arises from a fundamental skepticism about a political institution that could have failed so radically to accomplish its most essential tasks: the protection of its own citizens and their equal treatment, whatever their religious or social origins.

This is why I spontaneously contrast the judgment of the State with that of God and Men. Born with the inheritance of injustice, am I not better armed than any authority to define what seems "just" or not? Authority itself seems suspect to me, authority that can act unjustly, in the name of reasons of State that too often serve as a comfortable excuse for every kind of moral laziness and laxness. This feeling of historical fragility and this distance from the authority of the State are accompanied by a spontaneous mixture of empathy and activism in response to the sufferings and injustices in the world. This compassion is based on that fact that even though I have not personally known war, violence, humiliation, discrimination fear or hunger, I can visualize and internalize the sufferings of others through the experiences of my father, whether they be Bosnian Muslims, Kosovars or Palestinians.

Being the son of a deportee can lead to historical pessimism or even nihilism. But in my case the opposite was true. Encouraged by my father's humanism and my mother's religious faith, I was driven by my origins to work for the cause of reconciliation, most of all between France and Germany.

My indirect inheritance of Auschwitz did not lead me to fall out of love with France, but to fall in love with Europe. And this European choice received my father's moral support. Had he forgiven the Germans? Nothing is less certain. But like Simone Veil, he saw in the construction of Europe the best way of surpassing the tragedy of the past.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, I asked for my father's blessing before writing that the event represented for me the reconciliation of my three identities, French, European and Jewish. He gave it without hesitation. After all, had he not put an end, after Charles de Gaulle's speech at Ludwigsburg in 1962, to the ban on German products that had ruled our family life?

On Thursday, I will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a complex mix of emotions: immense tenderness for my father; the absence of illusions about human nature; the hope that this commemoration serves as a reminder and a warning for present and future generations. And with a commitment to Europe that is firmer than ever before. This ceremony expresses Europe's permanent struggle against its demons. Today, in spite of everything, the victory is fragile, certainly reversible, but nonetheless real.

(Dominique Moïsi is a special adviser to the French Institute of International Relations. This article was translated from the French by the IHT.)

 

THE LEGACY OF AUSCHWITZ

The legacy of Auschwitz
By Samuel Pisar
Ha'aretz
January 27, 2005

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/532464.html

Sixty years ago today the Russians liberated Auschwitz, as the Americans approached Dachau. The Allied advance revealed to a stunned world the horrors of the greatest catastrophe ever to befall our civilization. For a survivor of both death factories, where Hitler's gruesome reality eclipsed Dante's imaginary inferno, being alive and well so many years later feels unreal.

When the liquidation of the ghetto in Bialystok, Poland, began in August 1943, only three members of our family were still alive: my mother, my little sister and I, age 13. Father had already been executed by the Gestapo. Mother told me to put on long pants, hoping I would look more like a man, capable of slave labor. "And you, and Frieda?" I asked. She didn't answer. She knew that their fate was sealed, but she desperately wanted to give me a chance to live, if only one in a million.

As they were chased, with the other women, the children, the old and the sick, toward the waiting cattle cars, I could not take my eyes off them. Little Frieda held my mother with one hand, and with the other her favorite doll. They looked at me too, before disappearing from my life forever.

Their train went directly to the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau; mine to the no lesser hell of Majdanek. Months later, I also landed in Auschwitz, still hoping, naively, to find their trace. When the SS guards, with their dogs and whips, unsealed our cattle car, many of my comrades were already dead from hunger, thirst and lack of air. At the central ramp, surrounded by electrically charged barbed wire, we were ordered to strip naked and file past the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. The "angel of death" performed on us his ritual "selection": those to die immediately to the right; those fit for hard labor or atrocious medical experiments, to the left.

In the background there was music. Near the central gate of the camp - with its sinister slogan "Work Brings Freedom" - and dressed in striped prison rags like mine sat one of the most remarkable orchestras ever assembled. It was made up of virtuosos from Warsaw and Paris, Kiev and Amsterdam, Rome and Budapest. To accompany the selections, hanging and shootings, while the gas chambers and crematoria belched smoke and fire, these gentle musicians were forced to play Bach, Schubert and Mozart, interspersed with military marches to the glory of the Fuhrer.

In the summer of 1944, the Third Reich was on the verge of collapse, yet the tyrants in Berlin found no higher priority than to accelerate the "final solution." The death toll in the gas chambers now reached unprecedented levels. My labor commando was assigned to remove garbage from convoys arriving at a ramp near the crematoria. From there I observed the peak of human extermination and heard the blood-curdling cries of innocent men, women and children as they were herded into the gas chambers. Once the doors were locked, they had only three minutes to live, yet they found enough strength to dig their fingernails into the walls and scratch in the words: "Never Forget."

Have we already forgotten?

I also witnessed an extraordinary act of heroism. The Sonderkommando - composed of inmates coerced to dispose of the victims' bodies - attacked their SS guards, threw them into the furnaces, put fire to buildings and escaped. They were rapidly captured and executed, but their courage reanimated my will to live.

As the Russians and Americans advanced, those of us still able to work were evacuated deep into Germany. My own misery continued at Dachau, with the same back-breaking slave labor, bitter cold, hallucinating hunger and sadistic punishment as at Auschwitz. During a final death march, while our column was being strafed by Allied planes that mistook us for Wehrmacht troops and our SS guards hit the dust, their machine guns blazing in all directions, I and some others made a break for the forest. A few weeks later, an armored battalion of GIs brought me the gift of life and freedom. I had just turned 16.

In the autumn of their lives, the remaining survivors of Auschwitz feel a visceral need to transmit to new generations the memory of what we have experienced in our flesh and our souls, to warn our children that today's spreading intolerance, hatred, fanaticism and violence can destroy their world as they once destroyed ours, that powerful alert systems must be built not only against the fury of nature - a tsunami or hurricane or eruption - but also against the folly of man. Because we know from bitter experience that the human animal is capable of the worst, as of the best, of madness as of genius, that the unthinkable, the unimaginable, remains possible.

In the wake of so many recent disasters and tragedies, a tide of compassion and solidarity for the victims, a yearning for peace, democracy and freedom, seem to be rising on all continents. It is far too early to evaluate their potential. Mankind, divided and confused, still hesitates, vacillates, like a sleepwalker on the edge of an abyss. But the irrevocable has not yet happened, our chances are still intact. Pray that we learn how to seize them.

(The writer is an international lawyer in Paris, New York and London, and the author of "Of Blood and Hope.")

 

SIX MILLION REASONS WHY THE WORLD MUST NEVER FORGET

Six million reasons why the world must never forget
By Laurence Rees
Scotsman
January 27, 2005

news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=98592005

Today, in a desolate snow-covered courtyard in Poland, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will join politicians from across the globe to remember the Holocaust. One of the worst crimes in history is best understood through the prism of one physical place, the place where they will stand, heads bowed: Auschwitz.

For the past three years, my BBC production team and I have travelled thousands of miles and recorded hundreds of hours of interviews in an attempt to explain how this former Polish army barracks became synonymous with the careful, clinical evil that men do. On this, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is crucial we remember the victims: six million in total, of which Auschwitz contributed 1,100,000 - or 1,250 men, women and children for every word in this article.

But it is also important to try to understand how people could perpetrate such acts. Unlike the history of anti-Semitism, Auschwitz has one certain beginning (the first Polish prisoners arrived on 14 June, 1940), and, unlike the history of genocide, it has one definite end (the camp was liberated on 27 January, 1945).

In between those dates, Auschwitz had a complex and surprising history that, in many ways, mirrored the intricacies of Nazi racial and ethnic policy. It was never conceived as a camp to kill Jews, it was never solely concerned with the "Final Solution" - though that came to dominate the place - and it was always physically changing, often in response to the constant shifts in fortunes of the German war effort elsewhere. Auschwitz, through its destructive dynamism, was the physical embodiment of the fundamental values of the Nazi state.

The study of Auschwitz also offers us something other than an insight into the Nazis; it gives us the chance to understand how human beings behaved in some of the most extreme conditions in history. From this story, there is a great deal we can learn about ourselves. For instance, how could Wilfred von Oven, the personal attaché to Dr Josef Goebbels, when asked to sum up his personal experience of the Third Reich exclaim, "paradise"?

One question I asked myself at the beginning of our project was: how was it possible that, during the 20th century, people from Germany, a cultured nation at the heart of Europe, had ever perpetrated such crimes?

The question still sits heavily in my mind today. The view that the crime of the extermination of the Jews was somehow imposed by a few mad people upon an unwilling Europe is one of the most dangerous of all. Hitler magnified and manipulated an anti-Semitism that had already existed and, tragically, continues to exist in some quarters today.

Travelling across Europe to produce the series, I encountered old soldiers unrepentant at their participation in the murder of Jewish prisoners. What shocked me most of all was that these anti-Semitic views were not only confined to the older generation. I remember the woman at the Lithuanian Airways check-in desk who, after learning the subject of the film we were making, said: "You’re interested in the Jews, are you? Well, just remember this - Marx was a Jew." Or, also in Lithuania, I recall an army officer in his mid-20s showing me round the site of the 1941 Jewish massacres at a fort in Kaunas and saying: "You’re missing the big story, you know. The story isn’t what we did to the Jews, it’s what the Jews did to us."

As we followed the journey upon which the Nazis, and those whom they persecuted, embarked, we also gained a great deal of insight into the human condition. And what we learned was mostly not good. In this history, suffering was almost never redemptive. Although there were, on very rare occasions, extraordinary people who did act virtuously, for the most part, this was a story of degradation. It is hard not to agree with the verdict of Else Baker, who was sent to Auschwitz as an eight-year-old, that "the level of human depravity is unfathomable". However, if there is a spark of hope, it was in the power of the family as a sustaining force. Heroic acts were committed by those sent to the camps, for the sake of a father, mother, brother, sister or child.

Perhaps above all, though, Auschwitz and the Nazis’ "Final Solution" demonstrate the power of the situation to influence behaviour to a greater extent than we might like to imagine. It is a view confirmed by one of the toughest and bravest survivors of the death camps, Toivi Blatt, who was forced by the Nazis to work in Sobibor and then risked his life to escape.

He says: "People asked me, ‘what did you learn?’ and I think I’m only sure of one thing - nobody knows themselves. The nice person on the street ... in a different situation could be the worst sadist."

This, I think, is a crucially important point to remember today. Auschwitz is a part of history. Genocide is not. My work on this project is over, but there is one image I have never been able to forget since the day it was first described to me. It was of a procession of empty baby carriages - property looted from the dead Jews - pushed out of Auschwitz in rows of five towards the railway station. The prisoner who witnessed the sight said that they took an hour to pass by.

The children who arrived at Auschwitz in those baby carriages, together with mothers, fathers, brother, sisters, uncles and aunts - all of those who died there - are the ones who will be in my thoughts today.

(Laurence Rees is the writer and producer of Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, currently being screened on BBC Two, and the author of the accompanying BBC book.)

 

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY MISUSED

Holocaust Memorial Day misused
By Mark Levene, Guest Columnist
Seattle Post Intelligencer
January 26, 2005

seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/209312_holocaust.html

There has always been something rather odd about Holocaust Memorial Day. Its main purpose, so runs the mantra, is to increase public awareness of "the ideals of peace, justice and community for all," and in the words of David Blunkett, the British education secretary at the time of its inception four years ago, "to ensure that our children understand the value of diversity and tolerance."

All good universal stuff, and who could possibly demur? Yet using the Holocaust as a tool for the achievement of this goal seems to cut in a rather different direction. In a century that arguably saw scores of genocides, the attempt to exterminate an entire community across a whole continent, relentlessly pursued over four years, was exceptional. One can make connections between the Jewish genocide and others and, in the case of what was also done by the Nazis to the Roma people (gypsies), very close parallels indeed. But this might also lead one to wonder why the latter rarely seem to be embraced within that "sense of belonging" to which Blunkett in his original encomium claimed to aspire.

The discrepancy here, however, is not just a matter of what the government says and what it does with regard to its multiethnic citizenship. It also is at the core of the Memorial Day itself. As the U.S. historian Peter Novick has pointed out, if you genuinely want to teach lessons to young people on how properly to engage with one another across religious and ethnic divides, you don't go about it by throwing at them the most extreme example of man's inhumanity to man imaginable.

Could it be then, that what the government says Holocaust Day is about is actually a smokescreen for a rather different agenda? Let's just review its history for a moment -- or, rather, its absence. The British Jewish community spent several decades attempting to get official commemoration of their communal catastrophe. To no avail. This also happened to be the period of the Cold War in which the British government, as a leading light in the Western alliance, sought to focus public attention on the evil Soviet empire.

In the '90s, all this suddenly began to change. The nasty Russian enemy had been defeated. With the United States as the primary engine, Holocaust awareness began to take on a public role far beyond the reaches of the Jewish community. But interestingly, as it became more official, and more de rigueur for other countries to follow, its representation also began to change. Not only did it begin to be shorn of its more problematic elements -- not least the 1941-45 Allies' record of failure to recognize its very exceptionality, or provide safe havens for those fleeing it -- at the same time it became so ritualized that any challenge to its incantation began to look like a case of serious bad taste.

This ritualized narrative is, arguably, composed of the following key characteristics: The Holocaust was a life-changing event in the history of mankind; nothing like it has happened before or since. The event itself was one of unspeakable and monstrous evil; those who perpetrated it were "evil." Britain and the United States, however, were not tarnished but strove to defeat the evil -- they were the "liberators." Jews -- victims and survivors -- are identifiable with the liberators, and, hence, with "ourselves." "Never again" must an atrocity of this sort be allowed to take place. The guarantee of our freedom against tyranny and atrocity lies with Western states whose value-system is built upon this fundamental principle.

The West had found its "right" atrocity for the contemporary age. One which, on the one hand, was safe because it was contained within a concretized and politically defused past. And, on the other hand, could be selectively wheeled out every time the government -- when taking on a Saddam Hussein, for instance -- wanted to have its actions on the world stage given a legitimating imprimatur.

The Day, far from being a tool of remembering and commemorating, is actually all about forgetting and avoiding: forgetting Britain's own potential for mass violence inherent in its nuclear weapons program; avoiding too close a scrutiny not just of its many failures to halt genocide in recent times, but much worse, of its actual military, technological and financial support for genocidaires, most strikingly, Saddam at the height of his 1988 exterminatory campaign against the Kurds.

But there is double-irony, of course, in that anything that might involve engagement with the "real" Holocaust has also been lost. This year's Memorial Day peg was originally intended to be all about "refugees." What a surprise this has been quietly forgotten.

None of this in itself provides an argument for doing away with the Memorial Day. Nor for denying it the exceptional sensitivity that it is owed. In the wake of Iraq, there is great value in recalling who exactly within Axis, occupied or even bystander countries during World War II struggled to shelter, rescue and assist their fellow human beings. It was dissenters, whether political, religious or of no creed at all. And they did so by defying and even consciously subverting the wisdom of governments.

This is the true lesson of the Holocaust. And it is, paradoxically, why the Holocaust Memorial Day as it is presently cast with government commemoration at its heart, will not survive.

(Mark Levene is a reader in comparative history at Britain's Southampton University. This article was first published in The Independent.)

FULL ARTICLES

A FACTORY FOR DEATH

A factory for death
By Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
January 27, 2005

www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/27/a_factory_for_death/

By the time the Soviet Army reached Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945 -- 60 years ago today -- my father was no longer there. Ten days earlier, the Nazis had evacuated about 67,000 of the death camp's inmates, dispatching them on brutal forced marches to the west. My father, then 19, was in a group sent into Austria. He ended up at the concentration camp in Ebensee, near Mauthausen. Liberation there didn't come until May 9, with the arrival of US soldiers from the 80th Infantry Division.

My father had entered Auschwitz the previous spring, together with his parents, his two brothers, and two of his three sisters. They, too, were gone by the time the camp was liberated. Unlike my father, they didn't leave on foot. They ''left" through the chimney. For the overwhelming majority of the more than 1.1 million Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, there was no other way out.

Jews were not the only victims. Nearly 75,000 Poles, more than 20,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviets, and 10,000 members of other nationalities were murdered at Auschwitz as well. The Nazis first used the camp, in fact, as a prison for Polish dissidents, and Birkenau, the huge 1941 addition that became the main Auschwitz killing center, was originally designed to hold Soviet POWs.

But beginning in the spring of 1942, Auschwitz became first and foremost a slaughterhouse for Jews. From every corner of Europe, Jews were sent there -- from France in the west to Ukraine in the east, from as far north as Norway and as far south as Greece. Many, like my father and two of his siblings, were forced into slave labor in the expectation that the ghastly conditions and starvation rations would kill them soon enough. But most of the Jews entering Auschwitz -- like my father's parents and his youngest brother and sister -- were murdered as soon as they arrived.

Auschwitz was a vast factory of death, the site of the greatest mass murder in recorded history. Even now, two generations later, it is almost impossible to grasp the scale on which the Nazis committed homicide there. It is suggested by a detail: From 1942 to 1944, the train platform in Birkenau was the busiest railway station in Europe. It held that distinction despite the fact that, unlike every other train station in the world, it saw only arrivals. No passengers ever left.

But Auschwitz was not only a place of murder. It was also a place of theft. Jews were robbed of everything they owned -- the luggage they came with, the clothes on their backs, the hair on their heads, even the gold in their teeth. The stolen goods were stored in 35 warehouses, where they were sorted and packed for shipment to Germany. Before fleeing in January 1945, the Nazis burned 29 of the warehouses, but in the six that remained, the Soviets found 348,820 men's suits, 836,255 dresses, and 43,525 pairs of shoes. There were seven trainloads of bedding, waiting to be shipped. And 7.7 tons of human hair. And that was merely what remained at the very end.

The very worst thing about Auschwitz was -- what? The staggering death toll? The gas chambers disguised as showers, in which thousands of naked Jews went daily to agonizing deaths? The endless cruelty and torture? The diseases that ravaged those the Nazis didn't kill first?

Was it the inhuman medical experiments carried out by doctors like Josef Mengele, such as the deliberate destruction of healthy organs or the sadistic abuse of twins and dwarfs? Was it the willing exploitation of Jewish slave labor by German corporations? The tens of thousands of murdered children and babies?

No. The very worst thing about Auschwitz is that, for all its evil immensity, it was only a fraction of the total. Even if it had never been built, the Holocaust would still have been a crime without parallel in human history. It would still have been something so monstrous that a new word -- genocide -- would have had to be coined to encompass it. Never before and never since has a government made the murder of an entire people its central aim. And never before or since has a government turned human slaughter into an international industry, complete with facilities for transportation, selection, murder, incineration. And none of it as a means to an end, but as an end in itself: The reason for wiping out the Jews was so that the Jews would be wiped out.

In the end, 6 million of them were killed. But only one-sixth died at Auschwitz.

 

WELL-ROUNDED HISTORY LESSONS CAN'T SPARE UGLY TRUTHS

Well-rounded history lessons can't spare ugly truths
Commentary
Chicago Sun Times
January 26, 2005

www.suntimes.com/output/commentary/cst-edt-edits26.html

Even as the world marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the special significance of the Holocaust is in danger of fading. More and more people don't know about the death camp atrocities -- according to a recent BBC poll, 45 percent of British adults never heard of Auschwitz -- while others believe equal attention must be paid to other instances of genocide in our lifetime.

Most people would agree on the importance of educating our young people on the Nazis' systematic attempt to exterminate the Jews and keeping that heinous undertaking alive in the public consciousness. "Those who are willing to forget," said Elie Wiesel, "may be considered accomplices of the enemy."

Most people also would agree there is a profound need to better inform people about recent atrocities in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia. Spreading knowledge about all of these brutal campaigns has, one hopes, the potential to invest in people the power to resist the methods and madness with which tyrannical governments manipulate the masses to achieve their murderous ends.

Still, local Jewish groups are wary of the proposed expansion of a groundbreaking 1990 Illinois law requiring Holocaust education in schools to include all acts of genocide. These groups are concerned that the proposal might detract from the Holocaust as a central event in 20th century history -- an understandable sentiment given indications like the British poll and the persistent Holocaust denial of assorted cranks and nut jobs. The bill's author, Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), says the only intention is to acquaint schoolkids with the sad truth that genocide persists in the world.

In the end, both sides are in the right. At a time when generations are losing touch with the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism in the world is on the upswing, painting Hitler's concentration camps with a generic brush would be a mistake. This was a singular evil, a technologically advanced society devising an industry to eliminate an entire people, and it must remain singular in our collective memory. But survivors of African and Asian and Eastern European genocide, who don't have popular artists like Steven Spielberg to tell and preserve their story -- "The Hotel Rwanda" notwithstanding -- need to get their due. Attention, as Arthur Miller once wrote, must be paid.

Commemorating all victims of genocide isn't an impossible dream. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., gives prominent coverage to crimes against non-Jews. We must always respect what was -- as Richard Hirschhaut of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Skokie put it so well -- "a singularly unique tragedy in the course of human history." Still, widening people's concerns, encouraging them to reflect on the capacity of nations and individuals to commit inhumanities on other nations and individuals can never be a bad thing.

 

WE SAY TODAY: NEVER AGAIN

We say today: Never again
By The Editor
The Daily Star (South Africa)
January 27, 2005

www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=234&fArticleId=2387963

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where more than 1-million men, women and children, mostly European Jews, were killed between 1940 and 1945.

We ought all to take a minute to remember the murdered of Auschwitz and other death camps. And we also need today to remember that genocide did not end in January 1945.

The sacred injunction "Never again", humanity's promise to itself that the Holocaust should never be allowed to happen again, has unfortunately not been honoured.

At least three campaigns of genocide - attempts to rid the earth of specific people for no other reason other than that they are in some way different - have taken place in the world since 1945.

Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime killed 2-million people in Cambodia. From April to June 1994 an estimated 800 000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days. And in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, between 1992 and 1995, Serbians systematically murdered more than 200 000 Muslims. More than 20 000 went missing and were feared dead. Two million became refugees.

Despite the Holocaust, the passing of time has not changed humanity for the better. Genocide, or attempts at it, have happened again and again since 1945 - and the forms they have taken have been far from subtle.

We need therefore not to view Auschwitz and the Nazis, nor the events in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as merely the products of historical circumstances. For, to do this, is to turn them into historical occurrences and to do away with our moral anguish.

Better instead to understand Auschwitz as a gruesome example of human behaviour with a universal message: When conscience sleeps, any group is prone to commit unspeakable acts.

Unless we cherish our consciences, any of us could become killers and any of us could be killed.

Now let us take that minute to recall the murdered and violated of the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. And to re-pledge to ourselves and those we know: Never again.

 

HOLOCAUST SURVIVIORS CAN REMEMBER WITHOUT HATING

Holocaust survivors can remember without hating
By Jonathan Sacks
Daily Telegraph (London)
January 27, 2005

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/01/27/do2701.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/01/27/ixopinion.html

On January 27, 1945, Russian troops liberated Auschwitz and saw for the first time sights we still find difficult to comprehend – the reality of the so-called Final Solution in which all the Jews of Europe were scheduled for destruction. It is impossible to walk through the gates of Auschwitz, with their mocking inscription, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you free), without feeling that you have entered the gates of hell.

The Holocaust defies the imagination. To give the simplest sense of scale: the 21st century was transformed by a multiple act of terror on September 11, 2001, when 3,000 people died. During the Shoah, on average, 3,000 Jews were killed every day for five and a half years.

Whole worlds were destroyed: the bustling townships of eastern Europe where Jews had lived in some cases for almost a thousand years, the great academies of Jewish learning, the Jewish mystics, the Hassidim, whose joy in serving God was legendary, the more westernised Jews – doctors, judges, scientists, academics – and a million and a half children gassed, burnt and turned to ash. To this day, when I walk through the cities of continental Europe I feel the presence of ghosts.

This year, Holocaust Memorial Day will honour the survivors. It takes courage to survive. The Bible says that Lot's wife, turning back to look at the destruction, was turned into a pillar of salt.

How, I have often wondered, did people who lived through those events have the courage to continue?

Thirty years ago, when I was teaching philosophy, one of my fellow academics committed suicide. Only after he died did we discover that he was a Holocaust survivor. His memories had finally made life unbearable. There is nothing inevitable about survival.

Coming to know the survivors of our community has been, for me, a privilege. Having lost their families, they became one another's family, giving each other the strength to continue. For many years, the burden of memory was simply too painful. It took decades before they were able to speak of those years even to their children.

More recently, knowing that eyewitnesses were becoming fewer each year, many of them have taken on the task of education, handing their stories on to future generations. That, too, has taken courage.

What has consistently struck me has been how they have remembered without hate or desire for revenge. Their message has been simple: don't hate. Know where prejudice leads. Fight intolerance. Cherish each day as if it were your last. Love life and be willing to fight for it. Love the stranger, for how we treat strangers is the test of our humanity. Above all, remember, for without memory a civilisation travels blind.

I think of Rabbi Yekutiel Halberstam of Klausenberg who survived the extermination camps, having lost his wife and all 11 of their children. During those years he made a commitment that if he survived he would dedicate his life to saving life. Eventually he built the Laniado Hospital in Netanya, Israel, committed to treating Israeli and Palestinian, Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.

Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, founded a new school of psychotherapy on the basis of his experiences there. He called it Logotherapy, the "search for meaning''. What Frankl learnt was that, though the Nazis stripped their prisoners of every vestige of humanity – their possessions, their clothes, their hair, their names – there was one freedom they could never take away: the freedom to choose how to respond. He spent the rest of his life helping people to discover reasons to live.

Emmanuel Levinas, the French philosopher, was transformed by his experience of hatred. To others, he wrote, we Jews were less than human, members of a different species. The sole gesture of warmth he and fellow prisoners experienced was from a dog who, for a few weeks before the guards disposed of it, appreciated their company and barked in welcome when they returned each evening after their labour. Levinas called the dog "the last Kantian in Germany''. For the rest of his life he devoted himself to arguing that philosophy must begin with "responsibility for the other'', our duty to the stranger, the outsider, the one not like us.

The survivors in our own community, led by the redoubtable Ben Helfgott, became their own support network as they struggled to find their way back to the land of the living. What has long struck me is how they did not let trauma turn them in on themselves. They, more than anyone else, identified with the victims of other tragedies, in Bosnia, Cambodia and Darfur.

Last year, Holocaust Memorial Day was dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the slaughter in Rwanda. Beforehand I wondered how the Jewish survivors would relate to the Rwandans, so different in many respects. I need not have worried. There was an instant rapport between them. Grief, tears, the pain of memory are, I discovered, a universal language. Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, who has devoted her life to the survivors of the Rwandan genocide, told me how much she learnt and received strength from the Jewish community.

It would be good to be able to say we no longer need to remember, but it is not so.

In many parts of the world, the politics of hate still thrive. It is always easier to avoid real problems by blaming someone else. It is never true but, as a tactic, it rarely fails. Nations without freedom, human rights or accountable government, riddled with poverty, disease and illiteracy, continue to blame some outside factor or conspiracy, and so the tragedy continues.

Hate destroys the hated, but it destroys the hater even more. The lessons of the Holocaust are simple to understand however hard they are to live. Never blame others for your troubles. A society is as large as the space it makes for the stranger. Cherish life.

Fight for the rights of others. The Holocaust stands as the eternal symbol of what happens when we forget.

(Dr Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.)

 

AUSCHWITZ'S LONG SHADOW

Auschwitz's long shadow
By Julie Szego
The Age, Australia
January 27, 2005

www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Auschwitzs-long-shadow/2005/01/26/1106415661690.html

Sixty years ago today, this Nazi death camp was liberated. But many Melbourne Jews still live under the Holocaust's pall.

As a child I was never very good at art, so the day I scored a compliment for a drawing sticks in my memory. We had to draw images from the Holocaust (this was a Jewish primary school) using charcoal and crayons. Mine was of a girl wearing the Nazi symbol for a Jew - a yellow Star of David with the word "Jude" (Jew). The girl, with black curls and dark eyes, looked a lot like me. "That's very powerful, Julie," said my art teacher.

Memories live not just in words but also in emotions. They pass by osmosis from parent to child - the past forms a template for the present. This is why events of more than 60 years ago can resonate deeply with someone born decades later. It is why as a child of Holocaust survivors, whose father was in the Auschwitz death camp, I see the world differently, just as some people see orange instead of yellow. And what I see today provokes an unsettling mix of anxiety and optimism.

Looking back, I realise that the eyes I drew were also those of my grandmother. They stared out from an oil painting in our living room. She had perished in a Nazi concentration camp at age 40. Black and mournful, her eyes seemed to speak a warning: "Honour my memory, never forget. Never think this can't happen to you too!"

It could happen here: even in tolerant, peaceful Australia. This is the subliminal message - however absurd I now know it to be - I absorbed as a child, as did many other of Melbourne's second-generation survivors.

My father was deported to Auschwitz despite his family having converted to Roman Catholicism. "You can try and pretend you're not a Jew," my mother would say, "but don't worry, someone will always be there to remind you of who you are." The moral: A Jew living under gentile rule is bound to receive a "reminder" at some stage. Don't get too comfortable here, because your descendants are destined to wander again.

As a child of Holocaust survivors, whose father was in the Auschwitz death camp, I see the world differently.

The answer was, of course, Israel: the ultimate insurance policy against another Holocaust. When I travelled to Israel in my late teens, I met a battle-hardened, charming and rather manic man who seemed to personify the ideal. "You know," he once whispered, "if anyone in the world thinks he can pick on little Jewish Moshe, just because he's little Jewish Moshe, then they'd better watch out - I'm here now!"

Israel symbolised the new dawn after a long night in hell; the end of the Jew as sitting duck. In my father's autobiography he describes sitting anxiously by the radio with my grandfather, pen and paper in hand, as the United Nations voted on partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state in 1947. When the Jewish state was declared, they stood up and hugged each other, wordlessly. As twilight's shadows gathered in the parlour, my grandfather sat down at the piano and began to play a tune my father had never heard before. "It was a tune so mournful and stirring," my father writes, "that I knew I would never forget it. And it wasn't long before I heard it again, this time as the national anthem of a modern Jewish state, Hatikvah - The hope."

For years, Israel was also a stirring hope for me. It seemed to be the one place where I could also enjoy the easy self-assurance I saw in my non-Jewish friends in Australia - what the father of modern Zionism Theodor Herzl, called "normalcy". I ached not to feel like the perpetual outsider; wrestling with fundamental questions of identity, always looking over my shoulder. I longed to escape the silent reproach in my grandmother's black eyes.

But the years passed in happiness. I studied, worked and partnered. The restless longing eased. My blessings as an Australian Jew far outweigh any existential doubt these days. If I'm a little torn between the place where I live and the place where history suggests I belong, it's no big deal. This big, decent country accommodates many contradictions. I am cradled in strong, soothing arms - far "too comfortable" and glad of it.

A friend recently told me she'd love to live in Europe because "the people are so vibrant, so engaged". I knew what she meant. And yet when I backpacked from Prague to Paris, the memorials to deported Jews and the ghost of once-bustling Jewish districts evoked a sadness that wearied me. She can have Europe, I thought. And the painful reality is that a Jew today is more likely to come to a violent death in Israel than anywhere else. Every suicide bombing shatters not only the lives of people who could be friends or relatives, but also a precious, desperate dream.

Even more frightening for most Jews is Israel's vexed place in the world. Sixty years after Auschwitz, the Jew among nations is the target of a virulent and menacing form of anti-Semitism in the West. On a recent trip to London, I was shocked by the graffiti that seemed to pop up everywhere: "Israel the Nazi state!" "Long live Hamas!" "Death to the Jews!" - words threatening another Holocaust. It would be nice to brush this off as the product of angry youths, but such sentiments are gaining resonance among Western intellectuals. It is almost fashionable these days to attack Israel's legitimacy, to scorn and demonise.

At times, all this creates a sense of loneliness. On fragile days I can feel depressed and wounded by an offhand remark of a colleague or friend, like "no offence, but sometimes you people act as if you're the only ones who've ever suffered". This not only misrepresents the significance of the Holocaust (which has to do with the depravity of the perpetrators rather than the subjective suffering of its victims), it's also plain wrong. A disproportionate number of Melbourne Jews have an intense empathy with victims of past and present persecution, such as Aborigines and asylum seekers. I can relate, almost viscerally, to the Stolen Generation's desire for validation, for someone to say: "You hurt and this is justified."

If the Jewish community appears sometimes overly protective of Israel, it is because the collective carries the same baggage that I carry as an individual. It is a bundle of shameful, primal fears - the whispering voice that says: "You cannot protect your own children." In Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, you stand in a dark room of tiny lights, like stars in the night and listen to the endless names of children who perished in the Holocaust. It gives expression to an infinite, devastating grief that I feel in my darkest moments when those names merge with mine, with my sister's children and now with that of my own baby daughter.

She is named Sara, after my father's grandmother who ended up in the gas chambers after a casual flick of the finger from Dr Mengele. She stands to inherit a good dose of fighting optimism from her father's Irish Catholic heritage. I want her to be "too comfortable" wherever she ends up. But I will also say to her: remember your namesake, remember your legacy, tell your own children, "Never Again!" She is an affirmation, a miracle. The future, fearless and bright, flickers in her eyes.

(Julie Szego is a staff writer.)

 

LESSONS FROM THE HOLOCAUST

Editorial: Lessons from the Holocaust
The Australian
January 27, 2005

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/opindex/0,9320,opinion%255E%255ETEXT,00.html

On the Holocaust: In a century marked by atrocities committed in the name of ideology, one horror stands out above all others, and it is the Holocaust. The millions who died in the Soviet gulags or were systematically starved to death in the Chinese countryside are no less worthy of remembrance than the 6 million Jews, gypsies and political dissidents who were gassed in the Nazi death camps, and their names stand as equally solemn reminders of the depths of evil to which mankind can sink in the name of a political mania.

ARTICLE IN FULL – "LIES OF THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY"

Lies of the Holocaust Industry
By Hossein Amiri
Tehran Times
January 26, 2005

www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=1/26/2005&Cat=14&Num=001

Subjecting an ethnic group or nation to torture under any pretext is quite unacceptable, but it is worse when the suffering is abused, and it is the worst when a group tries to exaggerate the event for political purposes.

By exaggerating the suffering of the Jews during World War II, Zionist groups and the Israeli regime are taking advantage of the situation by raising the issue at international organizations in order to neutralize any opposition to their diabolical plots.

No one is trying to ignore the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, but the suffering of a religious/ethnic group should not cause the world to forget the suffering of another nation or allow those who suffered persecution to do the same injustice to another nation.

Every year on January 27 the media give wide coverage to the so-called Holocaust and Tel Aviv rebukes the world for the historic suffering that they claim they experienced in the past.

Today the Holocaust has very complicated connotations. The exaggeration of this phenomenon can be interpreted as the Europeans’ attempt to salve their guilty consciences by handing over the lands of the Palestinian nation to a people to whom the Europeans believe they have done an injustice.

After the end of the war in 1945, the Allies along with Zionist leaders began formulating strange conceptions about the killing of Jews at Nazi camps which a modern man can hardly accept. By conjuring up images of gas chambers, they are attempting to convey the idea that the Jews have undergone indescribable torture and that the world’s conscience should be awakened to this issue so that the Jews are not subjected to injustice again.

In pursuit of this goal, the West, spearheaded by Britain and the United States, began sowing seeds for the seizure of Palestine and condemned the Palestinians to pay for a crime that the Westerners themselves had committed. Thus, this nation, which claims to have been the perennial victim of violence and torture over the course of history, is now doing the same thing to the Palestinians.

It was not long before a group of revisionist historians in the West began to question the claim that six million Jews were butchered by the Nazis and even asked whether the slaughter of six million Jews during World War Two was possible or not.

The revisionist historians have proven in two decades of study that if Hitler had carried out a systematic program to eradicate the Jews, it would have taken more time than the six years that the war lasted. They have also proven that such an act of ethnic cleansing through the use of the poison gas Zyklon-B, as the Zionists claim, was not possible at the time.

Norman J. Finkelstein, a Jewish professor at New York University critical of Zionist policies, has called the claim the “Holocaust Industry”, which is only meant to boost support for the government of Israel.

Over the past several decades and since the event was questioned, Zionist propagandists have tried to substantiate this claim through various means.

The Zionists are trying to revitalize an issue which has become discredited in the eyes of world public opinion by using the press, radio, television, the Internet, and, most importantly of all, cinema and the great filmmaking industry in Hollywood, since most of the significant players of this influential industry are Jews.

It can be said that any war, and particularly one that affects the world, will always lead to many problems and disasters, and World War II is no exception.

Undoubtedly, the Nazi concentration camps were not holiday resorts and imposed various difficulties on the prisoners, just like any other detention camps in other wars.

Many people in these camps, including innocent men, women and children, died of hunger, illness, and other causes.

The victims were from different nations and ethnic groups, including the Jews, who also lost many people, but the Jews were not the only victims of the war and a greater number of innocent people from other ethnic groups also lost their lives.

The issue of the Holocaust and the anniversaries held for the event are only meant to promote the repressive policies of the Zionists.

The Jews suffered as a result of Hitler’s expansionism, just like other innocent victims but should not be granted special privileges over the others.

The declaration that six million Jews were killed in World War II is an exaggeration of the truth. Furthermore, the suffering and pains of a nation cannot justify their crimes against other nations.

The issue of the Holocaust is only being highlighted to cover up Israel's crimes in Palestine.

FULL ARTICLES

HOW THE JEWS IN FRANCE WERE ROUNDED UP

How the Jews in France were rounded up
Terror still growing
From our special correspondent
The Manchester Guardian
September 3, 1942

The round-up of Jews in occupied France was begun on July 14 and reached its height on the night of the 15th to 16th.

Twenty-eight thousand people, including Jews of foreign origin, French Jews, and other French subjects regarded as suspects were wanted by the French and German authorities. Many were warned in time of what was to come, in several instances by the French constabulary. In Paris thousands of them tried to hide in the Eighteenth District. One of those who were taken into custody after their money and valuables had been forcibly taken from them the men were brought to the Velodrome d'Hiver and the women carted off to the Parc des Princes.

Not a single soul whom the police could lay hands on was allowed to go free. Inmates of the Rothschild Hospital, which had been set apart for patients from the camp at Drancy, were placed under arrest regardless of their condition and no matter how recently they had been operated upon. Children over three years old were separated from their mothers, about 5,000 of them being herded together in three school buildings, whither they were taken in lorries after their parents had been seized and their homes locked up by the police. Quite a number of the smaller children are unable to give their names and cannot be identified.

Efforts are now being made by the Quakers, the Salvation Army, and the Iraelite Union of France to improve conditions in the camps to which the adults were eventually transported. The prisoners are half-starved and deprived of the most elementary comforts. There is no proper sanitation, no medical supplies, and no kitchen equipment.

Children left in the streets

In and around Paris foreign Jews formed the majority among the victims, but in the provinces, where German police carried out the arrests, French and foreign Jews alike were rounded up. Thousands of them, men and women, were provisionally interned in a camp at Pithiviers. Children were simply left in the streets and the neighbours expressly forbidden to take them in. The police turned up even in out-of-the-way places for the purpose of arresting the solitary Jewish family known to be living there.

The plight of the French Jews was relieved to some extent by help and sympathy shown to them by their non-Jewish countrymen. Some were enabled to escape and numbers of children were given shelter and smuggled later into unoccupied territory, in spite of the danger involved. Others who evaded arrest are trying desperately to reach unoccupied France, and there is an almost uninterrupted stream of fugitives towards the demarcation line.

 

THE GERMAN MASSACRES OF JEWS IN POLAND

The German massacres of Jews in Poland
From our diplomatic correspondent
The Manchester Guardian
December 11, 1942

The Note on Jewish persecution in Poland which the Polish Government in London has addressed to the respective Governments of the United Nations contains a comprehensive account of the horrors being perpetrated by the Germans on Polish soil. The Note mentions "new methods of mass slaughter" and tells the ghastly story of the Warsaw Ghetto. It declares that the total number of Jews killed in Poland since the German occupation runs into many hundreds of thousands and that of the 3,130,000 Jews in Poland before the war over one-third have perished in the last three years whilst many millions of the Polish population have been either deported to Germany as slave labour or evicted from their homes and lands, and many of their leaders murdered.

The Polish Government asks that the United Nations shall take effective measures to help the Jews not only of Poland but of the whole of Europe, three to four millions of whom are in peril of ruthless extermination.

The anxiety expressed in the Polish Note is fully shared by the United Nations.

Discussions on the subject have been going on for some time. Mr. Eden has had conversations with Mr. Winant and Mr. Maisky and also with representatives of other allies. The outcome of these discussions has not yet been made public, but it is known that the accumulation of evidence concerning the massacres that have already taken place and the proof of German intentions for the future of European Jewry which is now available have convinced the representatives of the Great Powers of the need for immediate action.

The situation obviously calls for something more than a reaffirmation of principles or a condemnation of the indescribable deeds being done in fulfilment of a predetermined policy. There is a growing feeling that in spite of all the difficulties involved practical measures of help must be sought and found.

But it would seem that a change of outlook and approach to the problem must precede any undertaking of the kind. There should in the first place be a relaxation in the official methods which have hitherto so impeded the work of rescue as to make it almost impossible. In the case of countries still liable to an illegal influx of Jewish refugees certain assurances should perhaps be considered. It should be made clear to these States that they will not be left responsible for chance immigrants indefinitely but that provision will be made for them in the general reconstruction after the war.

The German scheme for total extermination can only be combated by radical means, and any plan of rescue must be evolved on a really broad and constructive basis. It is clear, therefore, that whatever body may be chosen to put into practice decisions made by the United Nations must start with a generous mandate, unfettered by petty limitations.

The Polish Note forms an important contribution to the documentation of this black chapter in history. The situation as outlined in the Note has already taken a turn for the worse, according to the most up-to-date information. It is feared that of the weekly average of 25,000 Jews reaching Eastern Poland from the countries of occupied Europe the vast majority are going to a ghastly death.

 

"YOU MUST GIVE SOME MEANING TO MY CONDEMNED EXISTENCE"

You must give some meaning to my condemned existence

Zalmen Gradowski, a Polish Jew, wrote this just before he died in a camp revolt in October 1944. His testimony was found buried near the gas ovens

Dear reader, I am writing these words in the hour of my greatest despair. I neither know nor believe I will ever reread these lines after the "storm" that is to come. Who knows whether one day I will have the satisfaction of revealing to the world the profound secret I carry in my heart? Who knows whether I will ever see or speak to a "free" man again? Perhaps these lines will be the only witnesses to the life I once lived.

But I will be content if my account reaches you, a free citizen of the world. Perhaps a spark from the fire that burns inside me will ignite within you and you will accomplish our shared desire. You will take vengeance, vengeance on the murderers! Esteemed discoverer of this account! I am writing to make this request of you: that some meaning is given to my condemned existence. That my infernal days, my futureless tomorrow will be of some use in times to come.

I am describing only a tiny part, the very minimum, of what has happened in this hell that is Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have written many other things. I think you will at least find their traces, and from all that you will gain some idea of how the children of our race were murdered.

In the large room, deep underground, 12 pillars support the weight of the building, harshly lit by electric light. Along the walls, benches and hooks await the victims' clothes. A sign advises the victims in several languages that they are now in the "baths" and they must remove their clothes so they can be cleaned. We find ourselves there with them and look at each other, petrified. They know, they understand. These are not baths. This room is the corridor of death, the antechamber to the grave.

The room fills and refills with people relentlessly. More convoys of new victims continue to arrive and the "room" continues to swallow them. We all stand there in a daze, unable to say a word to them. It's not the first time. We have already received many such convoys and seen many similar scenes...

We are all stupefied... They study us with dark, deep, saucer-like eyes ... We watch them compassionately, because we can already see a different scene, a scene of horror. In a few hours all these beating lives, these lively worlds, all this hubbub will be rigid and lifeless ...

I stand here next to a group of 10 or 15 women, knowing that it won't be long before their bodies end up in a wheelbarrow of ashes. No trace will be left of those who were here, so many of them, enough to fill entire towns. They will be wiped out, eradicated. It will be as if they were never born.

Our hearts are rent by pain. We feel and suffer the torments of the journey from life to death along with them ... You have to harden your heart, dull all sensitivity, stifle all feelings of grief... You have to become an automaton, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing.

Your arms and legs set to work, a group of comrades, each charged with his own task ... Bodies are pulled and dragged from the tangle, one by the foot, another by the hand, however you can. You would think that they would be torn limb from limb by all the tugging this way and that.

The corpse is dragged across the icy, dirty cement and the beautiful polished alabaster body sweeps all the mud and grime along with it. The soiled corpse is seized and laid out, face upwards, outside. Two frozen eyes fix upon you, as if asking, "What are you going to do with me, brother?"...

Three men are there to prepare the body. One has a cold pair of pincers that he thrusts into the beautiful mouth, looking for the treasure of a gold tooth, which he pulls out, flesh and all. The second uses his scissors to shear their curls, stripping them of their natural crowns. The third grabs roughly grabs their earrings, often dashed with blood, and uses the pincers to force off any rings which resist removal.

Now it's up to the goods lift. Two men pile the bodies like logs on the platform and once seven or eight have been loaded a signal is given and the lift rises... Up there, next to the lift, are four more men. On one side, two of them drag the bodies to the "reserve pile". The other two haul them straight to the crematoria. They lay them out in pairs in front of the mouth of each furnace.

Children are heaped at the side then added afterwards, thrown on top of each pair of adults. The corpses are piled on each other on the iron stretcher, the mouth of Gehenna is opened and the stretcher pushed in. The infernal fires reach out their tongues like open arms, seizing the body like a precious treasure. The hair catches light first. The skin swells and blisters, bursting open after a few seconds.

Arms and legs twist, veins and nerves seize up and cause the limbs to jerk. By now the whole body is ablaze, the skin splits open, fat spills out and you hear the fire sizzle. You can no longer make out the body, just a furnace of hellish fire that is feeding on something at its centre. The stomach bursts. The intestines and entrails pour out and within a few minutes no trace remains. The head takes longer to burn. Two little blue flames flash in the eye-sockets, consuming the brain and everything within, and the tongue chars in the mouth. The whole process takes 20 minutes, a body, a world, is reduced to dust...

We had already seen hundreds of thousands of young, robust, vigorous lives pass before our eyes; from Russia, from Poland and from Hungary-and ... not one had tried to resist or put up a fight. They went like lambs to the slaughter. In six months, there were only two exceptions. During a convoy from Bialystock, a brave young man launched himself upon the guards with knives and stabbed several of them before being killed as he escaped.

The second incident was... that of the "Warsaw convoy". They were from Warsaw who had taken American citizenship; some of them had been born in America. They were supposed to be transferred to an internment camp in Germany then eventually to Switzerland where they would be placed in the care of the Red Cross.

But instead of doing so, the great and "civilised" powers-that-be had them brought to the crematoria here. It was at this point that a heroic young woman, a dancer, committed an act of great bravery. Seizing the revolver of Kwakernak, the head of the camp's political section, she used it to shoot Schillinger, a notoriously nasty character. Her act inspired the other brave women with her, who launched bottles and other missiles at those savage, rabid animals, the uniformed SS.

 

A DOCTOR DESCRIBES THE GAS CHAMBERS

Hell let loose
A doctor describes the gas chambers
The Manchester Guardian
October 2 1945

The Military Court sitting in Luneberg in judgment on Joseph Kramer and 44 members of his staff at Belsen has had a surfeit of horror during the past fortnight, but for sheer ghastliness nothing has equalled the description given in evidence today of the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

The prosecution put forward an unexpected witness in Charles Bendel, a Rumanian doctor resident in Paris for many years, who was arrested there in 1943 for not wearing the yellow star and was sent to Auschwitz. Here he worked at a crematorium as doctor to the special Kommando of prisoners required to dispose of bodies from the gas chamber.

Dr Bendel's was the whitest face in the courtroom as, speaking in French in almost a whisper, he described a normal day at the cremating places during a period when 80,000, composing the whole ghetto of Lodz, were being wiped out. Even some of the accused, let alone the many British officers and German civilians in court, seemed appalled at the horror of it all.

At Birkenau, a sector of the main camp, there were, stated the witness, four crematoriums, each equipped with two gas chambers. But their capacity became insufficient and an additional system was devised by digging large trenches, some 12 yards by six, in which the bodies were burned. It was part of his Kommando's work to prepare these pits each day by laying huge wood fires.

In the morning, the chief of the political bureau would arrive on his motor-cycle to say that a new batch of prisoners had arrived. There would be between 800 and 1,000 of them, some on foot and others, usually too ill to walk, in tip-up trucks, from which, to the amusement of the drivers, they were spilled out without warning. They were taken into the courtyard or, in winter, to a large hall of the crematorium and required to undress under the pretext that they were to take a bath followed by hot coffee.

Then the doors of the two-roofed gas chambers would be opened and the victims herded in with blows from whips and sticks. Finally the guards would succeed in locking the doors.

About 20 minutes later, said Dr Bendel, the main task of the special Kommando began. With the opening of the doors the bodies, tightly jammed inside, would fall out. Often it was almost impossible to separate one from another and one had the impression that they had fought terribly against death. Anyone who had seen a gas chamber filled to a height of four feet with corpses would never forget it.

As for the Kommando, which might contain an electrical engineer from Budapest or a solicitor from Salonika, people who had human faces a few minutes before were no longer recognisable. It was hell let loose. "They are like devils, no longer human beings as they drag the corpses away as fast as possible under a rain of blows from the SS."

FULL ARTICLE

VW TO SUE POLO BOMB AD DUO

VW to sue Polo bomb ad duo
By Stephen Brook, advertising correspondent
Media Guardian
January 26, 2005

media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1398392,00.html

Volkswagen is to take legal action against the mystery duo who made the controversial suicide bomber short film that apparently shows an Arab blowing himself up in a Polo car.

After a week of prevarication, the car giant has decided to go ahead and sue the people behind the advert on the grounds that it was damaging its reputation around the world and falsely linked the VW with terrorism.

"We are taking legal action but because it's early stages we cannot comment further," a Volkswagen spokesman said.

But the company privately admitted that it cannot locate Lee and Dan, the London based advertising creative partnership who dreamed up the film, which has been seen around the world via the internet.

"We are prepared to pursue the two individuals but need to locate them to ensure the success of our legal claim," the company said in a private memo, details of which have been obtained by MediaGuardian.co.uk.

The short film is made in the style of a TV advert and shows a man hopping into the car wearing the distinctive black and white kaffiyeh scarf commonly worn in the Arab world and made famous by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

In the advert, the man drives around London streets before blowing himself up outside a restaurant - apparently killing himself but leaving the car intact. Then the slogan, "Polo: small but tough", appears.

Volkswagen has consistently denied having anything to do with the advert.

Both Lee and Dan have apologised for the film, which they said had a £40,000 budget, but have refused to identify themselves or explain how it was funded.

But in a new development, MediaGuardian.co.uk has tracked down the director of the spoof advert, Stuart Fryer, 35.

Breaking his silence for the first time, he said he was horrified by the reaction to the ad and had only ever meant it to be used on a showreel and never seen by the public.

He disputed Lee and Dan's estimate of its £40,000 cost, saying the cost had been "more like £400".

"If it cost that much I would like to know where the money went," Mr Fryer said. "It was made in my spare time. It's remarkable what you can do for such a low budget.

"I just wanted it for show reel purposes, not seen by millions of people around the world.

"I don't want to offend people, I just want to make advertisements.I wanted to show it to the Saatchis and BBHs of this world.

"Little did I know that the advert that I made would be sent out on the internet and create such a fuss - it's shocked me."

ARTICLE IN FULL

WHERE THE REPORTING STOPS

Where the reporting stops
Jerusalem Post Staff
The Jerusalem Post
January 18, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1105992533340

*** AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ***

Palestinian journalist Majida al-Batsh surprised most of her colleagues late last year by announcing that she would run in the election for the chairmanship of the Palestinian Authority.

Batsh, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem, had been working for many years as a Palestinian affairs correspondent for the French news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Before she presented her candidacy in the January 9 vote, Batsh was a frequent panelist on Israel TV Channel 1's Politica talk show, where she would speak more like a representative of the Palestinians than an impartial journalist from an international news organization.

Her colleagues claim that shortly before she joined the race, Batsh resigned from the news agency, saying she wanted to devote her time to the election campaign. However, they add, this did not prevent her from seeking the agency's help in her campaign.

"One day she showed up and asked to use the fax machine to send some documents," reports one coworker. "The agency did not object."

The story of candidate Batsh, who wound up withdrawing her candidacy weeks ahead of the vote, highlights many concerns about the identity and political affiliation of several Palestinian journalists employed by international news organizations and TV networks to cover the Palestinian issue. It also underlines concerns about the credibility of much foreign news coverage in general in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

*** THE PA'S OFFICIAL ORGAN, AL-AYYAM ***

In addition to her work at the French news agency, Batsh was also a reporter for the PA's official organ, Al-Ayyam,. In other words, she was also on the PA's payroll, since the Ramallah-based newspaper was established and is financed by the PA. Al-Ayyam's editor, Akram Haniyeh, has been listed as an adviser to Yasser Arafat.

But Batsh was not the only journalist at AFP who was working simultaneously for the PA. One of the agency's correspondents in the Gaza Strip is Adel Zanoun, who also happens to be the chief reporter in the area for the PA's Voice of Palestine radio station.

The AFP bureau chief in Jerusalem, Patrick Anidjar, refuses to discuss the issue, saying, "I don't understand why you have to have the name of our correspondents." Pressed to give a specific answer, he says: "I don't want our correspondents' names to go into print. I don't want to answer the question. What is this, a police investigation?"

Regarding the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli correspondents employed by AFP, he says that it's about 50-50.

"We have 20 Palestinian journalists and 20 Israeli journalists, including photographers. Most of those working in the the West Bank and Gaza Strip are Palestinians, and most of those working in Israel are Israelis, as is logical, no?"

It is perhaps less logical when the covering of Palestinian affairs is entrusted only to Palestinian journalists, some of whom are openly affiliated with the PA or other political groups.

"I will never work on a story that defames my people or leadership," boasts a Palestinian "fixer" (mediator/guide/translator) who works on a regular basis with many foreign journalists. "It is my duty to protect my people against Israeli propaganda."

AFP is not the only member of the international news media to employ "journalists" who see themselves as "foot soldiers" serving the Palestinian cause. Other parts of the foreign media frequently allow their stories to be filtered through such fixers-consultants.

*** THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ***

Meanwhile, the Associated Press and Reuters, which have their own TV production services, rely almost entirely on footage provided to them by Palestinian crews covering events in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The material, distributed to thousands of subscribers worldwide, mostly focuses on Palestinians as victims of IDF operations; the cameramen decide from which angle to film and which material to send at the end of the day to their employers in Jerusalem.

The Associated Press also has a journalist – Muhammad Daraghmeh – who works for the PA's Al-Ayyam. "It's like employing someone from the [Israeli] Government Press Office or one of the Israeli political parties to work as a journalist," comments a veteran foreign journalist based in Israel.

Daraghmeh's byline has continued to appear in Al-Ayyam; AP's Jerusalem bureau chief denies that he works for the paper.

Adds the veteran foreign journalist: "I also know of cases where former security prisoners have been hired as journalists and fixers for major news organizations, including American networks. Can you imagine what the reactions would be if they hired an Israeli who had been in jail for one reason or another?"

*** CNN ***

In this regard, it is worth noting that for many years CNN used senior Palestinian politicians Ziad Abu Zayyad (Fatah) and Ghassan Khatib (Palestinian Communist Party) as in-house analysts on Palestinian affairs. This is in stark contrast to their use of Israeli journalist and commentator Hemi Shalev, and other such non-affiliated experts, to discuss Israeli affairs.

Conflicts of interest in the local bureaus of foreign media seem to extend to their choice of Palestinian commentators. For example, much has been said and written about the way CNN and the BBC cover Israel, but no one has ever asked why Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi gets so much time on air compared with other Palestinians.

"I can't understand why Hanan Ashrawi, who is an irrelevance in Palestinian society and was an abject failure as a minister, continues to attract vast amounts of international media attention, while longtime principled Palestinian critics of corruption like (legislator) Abdel Jawad Saleh are virtually ignored although they speak good English and what they have to say is 100 times more important," says a Palestinian editor.

"With regard to CNN, perhaps the fact that one of its main Palestinian producers, Sawsan Ghosheh, had been closely associated with Ashrawi explains why she appears on almost every program concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

CNN spokeswoman Abigail Levy insists that Ghosheh has "never worked with Hanan Ashrawi or with any other political figures."

On Ghosheh's experience as a journalist, she adds: "We employ our staff for their journalistic credibility. Ghosheh has been at CNN for nine years."

CNN refused a request to make public the producer's curriculum vitae.

*** A MYSTERIOUS CNN KIDNAPPING ***

Late last year, CNN witnessed one of the most bizarre stories in its history when one of its Palestinian affairs producers, Riad Ali, was "kidnapped" in Gaza City by unidentified gunmen.

The case itself remains shrouded in mystery, but the way CNN has handled it is even more peculiar. It is, though, perhaps indicative of the difficulties – and compromises – foreign media make in covering the Palestinian situation.

Ali, a Druse from the Galilee, was eventually released unharmed, and all the Palestinian groups still insist that they had nothing to do with his alleged abduction, leading many Palestinian journalists to conclude that the whole case was either staged or the result of a "power struggle" inside CNN.

Ali has since refused to talk about the case, and there is no word from CNN on the results of an internal inquiry into the kidnapping.

"We do not comment on security issues at all," explains the CNN spokeswoman. "We want to protect him."

She says she also has no idea when the findings of the CNN inquiry will be made public. "My guess is that they won't," she says.

Would CNN have remained tight-lipped had one of its representatives been kidnapped by Israelis?

"Of course not," answers a former CNN employee. "This whole story stinks, and it's not one that CNN wants to air. When one of its crews is delayed at a checkpoint, they start calling everyone in the government to complain and shout. But when it comes to the Palestinians, they never complain."

One consequence of the way the international media chooses to cover Palestinian affairs may be its reluctance to report stories critical of the Palestinian Authority. For example, most of the foreign media for years chose to ignore stories about rampant corruption and lawlessness in the PA, preferring to focus instead on Israeli "violations" and "atrocities."

*** THE MISREPORTING BY THE BBC'S BARBARA PLETT ***

Most recently, the BBC published on its Web site a story by correspondent Barbara Plett about the PA campaign to register voters for the election in east Jerusalem. Israel had closed down the six registration centers in the city because, under agreements signed with the PLO, the Palestinians are not permitted to carry out political activities inside Israel.

"When it comes to Palestinian democracy in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel is obstructing them, and the Americans have little to say," Plett concluded her report.

Plett failed to mention in her story that most Arabs in Jerusalem had refused to register.

Plett, who last year admitted that she had cried upon witnessing Arafat being airlifted from the Mukata in Ramallah for medical treatment in Paris, also ignored in her story complaints by Palestinians that the PA security forces were harassing and intimidating would-be voters and supervisors at the registration centers – a complaint made by the Palestinian Central Election Committee in a letter sent to the PA Minister of Interior and published in some Palestinian newspapers.

Only two days before the BBC election story was published on September 21, The Jerusalem Post ran the following story: "The Palestinian Authority's Central Elections Committee Sunday urged Palestinian security forces to stop interfering with the registration process of voters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the past few days the committee received complaints from many Palestinians that PA security agents were harassing voters and supervisors stationed at registration centers. Members of the PA General Intelligence and Preventative Security have been phoning supervisors asking for details of people who registered as voters.

The PA security agents have also raided the homes of several election supervisors, demanding that they hand over lists of registered voters. The committee urged PA Interior Minister Hakam Balawi to put an end to the intervention of security forces in the registration drive."

Two years ago, the BBC bureau in Jerusalem declared a boycott of the Prime Minister's Office because of a dispute over the issuing of press cards to Palestinian employees. The BBC, claims a former journalist at the station, has never boycotted any other governing authority anywhere in the world.

FULL ARTICLES

SPOOF SUICIDE BOMBER AD SPARKS GLOBAL ROW

Spoof suicide bomber ad sparks global row
By Stephen Brook, advertising correspondent
MediaGuardian
January 20, 2005

media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1394088,00.html

Volkswagen is at the centre of a global row after a disturbing film featuring a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Polo car flew around the world on the internet

The short film is made in the style of a TV advert and shows a man hopping into the car wearing the distinctive check scarf made famous by the late Yasser Arafat. He drives around a city before blowing himself up - apparently killing himself but leaving the car intact outside a restaurant. Then the slogan, "Polo: small but tough", appears.

Volkswagen said last night it was outraged by the spoof advert, which became the fifth most talked about item on internet weblogs.

"Volkswagen UK and its agencies strenuously deny that they have any involvement in the creation of a viral advertisement that has been accessible through the internet depicting an explosion taking place inside a Volkswagen Polo," the car maker said in a statement.

One explanation is that the film was created by a maverick advertising wannabe trying to get work from Volkswagen.

The mystery deepened after MediaGuardian.co.uk tracked down the makers of the film, who revealed that some distinctively professional techniques had been used: it had been shot on 35mm film, not something an amateur would usually do, and cost £40,000, not a sum an amateur could afford.

"Lee", who refused to give his surname, apologised for the spoof advert, which he said was released accidentally, but refused to say who funded it.

"We made the advert for Volkswagen," said Lee. "We never really intended it for public consumption. It was principally something we made to show people in the industry but it got out somehow.

"About half the work we do is for our own purpose, it is self-promotional. The ad's a comment on what's happening at the moment. People see this on the news every day," said Lee, who operates a website himself, leeanddan.com.

He said as far as he was concerned "the car comes out of it as a hero" because it stops the explosion.

The advert had received a "very positive response" on websites. Things had "gone crazy" after the ad hit the internet and its makers had even been interviewed by the New York Times, he added.

Viral advertising campaigns are used by companies as a way to avoid paying TV channels money to screen adverts, and because the unregulated nature of the internet enables adverts of dubious taste to get aired.

Last year Ford distanced itself from a viral advert that showed a Sport Ka viral showing a cat's head being cut off by a car sunroof.

But virals are also produced by creatives looking for work. A spokeswoman for Volkswagen's advertising agency, DDB, later said that it had been contacted by the duo who sent the viral to the agency.

Matt Smith, of the ad agency Viral Factory, said he thought the advert had been made as a "test" in order to get work.

"My suspicion is that it was made for a very small audience in order to get work. It's such a risky piece - it wasn't meant to be seen by a mass audience."

A spokesman for Volkswagen said the company was considering legal action and blamed the advert on "two young creatives who are trying to make a name for themselves".

"We don't take these sorts of risks with our advertisements. We regard ourselves as honest and respectable."

 

GERMANS "SICK OF NAZI REMINDERS"

Germans "sick of Nazi reminders"
The Times (of London)
January 16, 2005

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1442127,00.html

Most Germans would prefer to forget the Holocaust and are tired of hearing about Nazi crimes during the Third Reich, according to a poll released just before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, writes Justin Sparks.

Some 62% of the 3,000 people questioned by researchers from the University of Bielefeld agreed they were "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews".

Most said they wished to consign their country’s Nazi past to the history books. Well over half also thought there were too many foreigners living in Germany.

The poll horrified Lord Janner, a spokesman for British survivors of Auschwitz. "It's appalling," he said. "It raises fears that the current generation are not ready to pass on the history and lessons learnt from those events to their children."

Political analysts believe the findings reflect a growing feeling among younger Germans that they have atoned sufficiently for their grandparents' crimes and now have the right to bury the past. Their attitude has been fuelled in part by books and documentaries showing the destruction caused by Allied second world war bombing raids.

"This trend began with revisionist historians telling Germans they were really the victims of the war rather than its perpetrators," said Abraham Cooper, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The poll also highlights anti-Israeli feeling in Germany. More than two-thirds said they believed that Israel was waging "a war of extermination" against the Palestinians.

 

HIZBOLLAH THREATENS UK SUICIDE ATTACKS

Hizbollah threatens UK suicide attacks
By William Tinning
Glasgow Herald
January 20, 2005

www.theherald.co.uk/news/31855.html

Hizbollah, the hardline religious group, yesterday threatened to carry out suicide attacks in London in an attempt to kill a UK-based Iranian exile television presenter said to have made insulting comments about Islam.

Manouchehr Fouladvand, on the US-based Farsi language MA-TV, has been accused of mocking Moham-med and the Koran. There have been demands in Iran for the broadcaster's death.

Mojtaba Bigdeli, spokesman for Iran's Hizbollah group, warned the British government must ban the satellite channel, run by Iranian exiles, within 30 days or face the consequences. "After one month, our commandos will carry out suicide attacks in London against the shameless presenter of the channel. He has crossed our red lines by insulting our prophet and Islamic values."

Mr Bigdeli said Hizbollah had the approval of leading clerics to kill him.
The case echoes the Iranian fatwa against the author, Salman Rushdie. The government has hinted at special protection for Mr Fouladvand.

FULL ARTICLE

ZIONISTS EYEING TURKEY'S WATER RESOURCES

Zionists eyeing Turkey's water resources
By our staff writer
January 12, 2005
Tehran Times

www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=1/12/2005&Cat=14&Num=001

Qatar-based satellite television network Al-Jazeera reported last Sunday that the Zionist regime has made a proposal to establish a Jewish settlement in Turkey in southeastern Anatolia.

The proposal also called for a joint agricultural venture in the region.

The Turkish daily Yeni Shafak confirmed the report and wrote that Ankara does not have a positive view of the proposal, adding that Turkey's National Security Council has revealed that the region Israel has picked is one of the country’s most fertile areas.

A wave of concern swept over Turkish citizens and political circles after the news was reported, since the Zionist regime's current policies remind them of Israel's usurpation of Palestinian territories and its slogan about the so-called Greater Israel:

"From the Nile to the Euphrates".

In its Aug. 25, 2004 edition, Yeni Shafak wrote that the Zionists are planning to purchase parcels of lands and immovable property in eastern and southeastern Turkey.

According to the paper, Turkey's intelligence and security organizations are closely studying Israel's policy.

In June 2004, the Turkish magazine Nokta warned the Ankara administration of the risks entailed by Israel's plans.

The magazine disclosed that 60 Jewish people living in southeastern Anatolia where a dam is under construction, goaded on by the Zionist regime, purchased some plots of land with a total area of 423 square kilometers, i.e., half the size of Turkey's largest city, Istanbul.

Israel is now asking for permission to invest in Turkey's irrigation projects under the pretext of sharing its great experience in the field of agriculture, noted the periodical.

However, Israel's top priority in the region is taking control of Turkey's water resources.

Many Turkish political analysts view Israel's measures as a serious threat to their country's national security and have voiced their deep concern about the Zionist regime's activities in northern Iraq.

Indeed, Israel's recent proposals have worried political circles in Turkey much more than before.

Clearly, Turkey will face a serious predicament if it does not deal with the issue promptly and decisively.

FULL ARTICLES

NEW PALESTINIAN PM BEHIND MUNICH OLYMPICS ATTACK

New Palestinian PM behind Munich Olympics attack
By Steve K. Walz
May 9, 2003

President Yasser Arafat’s newly appointed Palestinian Authority prime minister does not have the pristine past touted by his supporters, charges an Israeli civil rights group. Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, provided financing for the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, says Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center.

In a letter to President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Darshan-Leitner called for an investigation into Abu Mazen’s role in the Sept. 5, 1972, attack, carried out by Arafat’s central Palestinian Liberation Organization faction Fatah.

Operating under the name “Black September,” the terrorist group, send a squad of armed Palestinians to attack dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team. The gunmen murdered a coach and a member of the weightlifting team, then took nine other Israelis hostage. The Palestinians demanded they be transported to the Munich airport where a rescue attempt by German police failed, and all nine hostages were murdered.

Last week, President Bush praised Abu Mazen as “a man dedicated to peace,” indicating he would invite him to the White House for talks after his cabinet was installed. The Palestinian parliament meets today to confirm the new prime minister as head of a cabinet created under international pressure to curb Arafat’s powers as president.

Shurat Hadin claims it has contacts within the Palestinian Authority itself who point out the hypocrisy of Abu Mazen’s insistence he was never been involved in terrorism.

The Israeli group also notes the mastermind of the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, or Abu Daoud, claims Abu Mazen provided the funds to carry out the Black September attack. Daoud made that charge in his 1999 French language memoir, “Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich,” and again in an interview last August with Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Abu Daoud said he was angered by the dozens of Palestinian terrorists allowed to return to the Palestinian territories as a result of the Oslo process while he remained persona non grata to Israel and the United States. Abu Mazen, Daoud complained, is now considered “respectable” even though he also was involved in the Munich attack. Abu Mazen, part of the Palestinian hierarchy for nearly four decades, has served as PLO executive committee chairman.

In his book Abu Daoud states: “After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Do you think that would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation? I doubt it.”

In the Sports Illustrated interview, he added: “Today, the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner ‘uncompromised by terror,’ yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.” Daoud also was interviewed about the Munich massacre for a film called “One Day in September,” produced by John Battsek and Arthur Cohn for Sony Pictures Classics. Director Kevin Macdonald said Abu Mazen admitted Black September was merely the cover name adopted by Fatah members when they wanted to carry out terrorist attacks.

The PLO operative recalled how Arafat and Abu Mazen both wished him luck and kissed him when he set about organizing the Munich attack.

The Shurat Hadin letter to President Bush said: “Under your leadership the United States has declared that it will no longer conduct diplomacy with those tainted by terrorist pasts. It appears that the new Palestinian leader to which the United States and Israel are now pinning all their hopes, was also involved in murderous attacks perpetrated by the PLO’s Black September. Abu Mazen’s alleged role in the brutal killing of the Israeli athletes and American Citizen David Berger must also preclude his involvement in the negotiations between Israel and their Arab neighbors.”

Abu Mazen also has been criticized for a 1983 book in which he suggested the figure of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust was “peddled” by the Jews. In “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” he said the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews in a plot to gain sympathy for creation of the state of Israel.

Nevertheless, as one of the PLO architects of the Oslo Accords, Abu Mazen is regarded by Europe and the United States as the best hope to lead the Palestinians to renewed negotiations, known as the “Road Map” to peace.

His supporters also point to statements he has made against the Palestinian armed struggle, or Intifada, as evidence of his moderate credentials. However, analysts, such as the Middle East Media Research Institute, contend his position has been primarily pragmatic, based on strategic reasons.

 

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED ARTICLE ON THE MUNICH MASSACRE

The Mastermind: Thirty years after he helped plan the terror strike, Abu Daoud remains in hiding – and unrepentant
By Alexander Wolff
Sports Illustrated
August 26, 2002

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/08/20/sb2/

Following the Oslo Accords of 1993, the mastermind of Black September’s Munich attack enjoyed a certain respectability. Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, a.k.a. Abu Daoud, sat on the Palestinian National Council, where in 1996 he joined a majority in voting to revoke the clause in the PLO charter calling for Israel’s destruction. Though Israel had long known of his role at Munich – Mossad was believed to have been involved in a 1981 assassination attempt in which he was shot six times – he even carried an Israeli-issued VIP pass that allowed him to shuttle between his home in Amman, Jordan, and the occupied territories.

All that changed in 1999 after Abu Daoud openly acknowledged his role in the Olympic attack, both in his memoir, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, published in Paris, and in an interview with the Arab TV network al-Jazeera. Germany issued an international arrest warrant on Abu Daoud, and Israel canceled his travel credentials, barring him from the Palestinian lands he had spent his adult life trying to liberate. In the U.S., former senator Howard Metzenbaum (D., Ohio) – who had watched the Munich crisis unfold on TV with his neighbors in suburban Cleveland, the parents of Israeli-American victim David Berger – led a campaign to keep U.S. bookstores from stocking Abu Daoud’s memoir. (Arcade, which owns the U.S. rights, still hasn’t set a publication date for an English-language version of the book.)

In late July, SI’s Don Yaeger went to the Middle East to find the 72-year-old Abu Daoud. After five days in Syria, where he met with leaders of several Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Authority, PA president Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction and the militant Hamas, Yaeger received a call from Abu Daoud, who said he was in Cyprus. Abu Daoud, who would not reveal where he resides – saying only that he lives with his wife on a pension provided by the PA – agreed to answer written questions. Among his claims, in his memoir and to SI, are these:

Though he wasn’t involved in conceiving or implementing it, “the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat.” Arafat is not known to have responded to the allegations in Abu Daoud’s book. In May 1972 four Black Septembrists hijacked a Sabena flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv, hoping to free comrades from Israeli jails. But Israeli special forces stormed the plane, killing or capturing all the terrorists and freeing every passenger, leaving Arafat, by Abu Daoud’s account, desperate to boost morale in the refugee camps by showing that Israel was vulnerable.

Though he didn’t know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud’s allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. “Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?” Abu Daoud writes. “I doubt it.” Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner “uncompromised by terror,” yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The German assertion that the team’s two senior commandos had infiltrated the Olympic Village in the weeks before the attack isn’t true. Abu Daoud speculates that the Germans found this story useful, to make the attack seem like an inside job and divert attention from their poor security measures.

While he doesn’t regret his role in the operation, Abu Daoud told SI, “I would be against any operation like Munich ever again. At the time, it was the correct thing to do for our cause... The operation brought the Palestinian issue into the homes of 500 million people who never previously cared about Palestinian victims at the hands of the Israelis.” Today, he says, an attack on an event like the Olympics would only damage the Palestinians’ image.

 

ELDERLY WOMAN SUING NEW PALESTINIAN PM

Elderly woman suing new Palestinian PM
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
May 1, 2003

An American-Israeli citizen is filing lawsuits in Israel and the U.S. against Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas because, she claims, he ordered the terrorist murder of her daughter and son-in-law.

Dina Horowitz and her husband Rabbi Eli Horowitz were murdered by Palestinian gunmen who burst into their home on March 7, 2003, as they sat at their dinner table celebrating the Sabbath in Kiryat Arba, just outside of the West Bank city of Hebron.

Dina and Eli were both born in the United States. Dina’s mother Bernice Wolf, 78, is a dual American-Israeli citizen, who has lived here for 15 years.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Wolf said in a telephone interview. “My whole life is shattered.”

Wolf said she wants to meet with President Bush “to ask him to explain to me why [Abbas], who ordered the murder of my daughter and financed the murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes, should come and be a peace negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians.”

This week, news reports indicated that Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) had financed the PLO faction called Black September when the group attacked Israeli athletes and their coaches at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Eleven athletes and their coaches were killed, some during a botched German rescue operation.

Wolf noted that just days before her daughter and son-in-law were murdered, Abbas said in newspaper interviews that it was permissible to murder Jews who lived in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In an interview published on the website of the Arabic newspaper Al Sharq Alawsat on March 3, 2003, Abbas spoke about the Egyptian-sponsored ceasefire talks with all the Palestinian militant factions.

“On the basis of the talks held in Cairo [between the different Palestinian factions] we agreed upon the freezing of Palestinian military operations [terrorist attacks] for one year,” Abbas was quoted as saying in translated excerpts, which appeared originally on the Israeli army’s website.

“This, on the condition that the chief Egyptian mediators receive [Israeli] guarantees about an Israeli military cease-fire, a cessation of arrests [of Palestinian terrorists] and on the withdrawal [of the army] to their positions before September 28, 2000...

“We did not say, however, that we are giving up the armed struggle. It is our right to resist. The intifada must continue. It is the right of the Palestinian people to resist and use all possible means in order to defend its presence and existence. I add and say that if the Israelis come to your land in order to erect a settlement, then it is your right to defend what is yours...

“The restriction applies only to “shahada-seeking” [suicide] operations and going out to attack in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. There is no justification to go out [of the territories] to fight the army,” he said.

Several days later, Palestinian Legislative Council member Qadura Fares confirmed in a radio interview that “resistance to the occupation” was legitimate and would continue until the Palestinians believed that serious negotiations to end what they consider the Israeli occupation were underway, according to the Independent Media Review and Analysis website.

Wolf delivered a letter on Thursday to the U.S. Consulate in eastern Jerusalem, which deals with Palestinian affairs, informing the U.S. government that she had filed a suit against Abbas in Israel.

“I have asked the Israeli government [to] indict Abu Mazen for the direct complicity in the cold-blooded murder of my daughter, Dina Horowitz and my son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Horowitz,” Wolf wrote.

“My children were murdered by a PLO terrorist... four days after Abu Mazen declared that it was permissible to murder Jews who live in [the West Bank and Gaza Strip].

“I formally request that the U.S. government cut off all ties to Abu Mazen, since Abu Mazen continues to advocate the murder of Jews,” she wrote.

In Israel, Wolf is asking that the Israeli government indict Abbas, as the head of the PLO Executive Committee, for incitement to murder.

In the U.S. Wolf plans to sue Abbas and the PLO for damages.

Abbas and his government were sworn in on Wednesday. On Tuesday, he denounced terrorism and pledged to collect illegal weapons in a speech before the PLC. Israeli officials have said they are waiting to see if he has the will and ability to stop terrorism before passing judgment.

 

JEWISH LAWYER TO DEFEND ERIC RUDOLPH

Jewish lawyer to defend Eric Rudolph
The Associated Press
Birmingham, Alabama
June 8, 2003

Eric Rudolph, the accused Olympic bomber portrayed over the years as a rabid hater of Jews, now finds himself represented by a Jewish lawyer who says he’s seen no evidence of anti-Semitism from his client.

In an interview Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, court-appointed defense attorney Richard S. Jaffe said he knew all about Rudolph’s supposed beliefs but said his client didn’t have a problem with his Jewish faith.

“There’s been a public perception painted of Eric Rudolph that’s far from accurate,” said Jaffe, who specializes in death penalty cases and has helped get three Alabama inmates off death row.

Jaffe’s rabbi at Birmingham’s Temple Beth-El said he wasn’t concerned about a member of his congregation representing a man who has been depicted as violently anti-Semitic.

“I myself detest Eric Rudolph,” said Rabbi Brian Glusman. “I would certainly support the death penalty for him. But I also believe he’s entitled to a good defense.”

Rudolph, arrested Saturday behind a grocery store in rural western North Carolina, is accused of detonating a powerful bomb that exploded outside a Birmingham abortion clinic on Jan. 29, 1998, killing a police officer and critically injuring a clinic nurse.

He also is charged with setting off a bomb that killed one person and injured 150 others in a park in downtown Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. Authorities also accused Rudolph in a pair of 1997 bombings in Atlanta at a lesbian nightclub and a building that housed an abortion clinic.

Rudolph’s sister-in-law Deborah Rudolph, who worked with authorities to develop Rudolph’s profile during his five years on the run, said her brother-in-law denied that the Holocaust had ever happened, and claimed that the Jews now control the media and the government. His derisive nickname for the television set was “the electronic Jew.”

Meanwhile, in western North Carolina, federal agents and local authorities were working Thursday to piece together Rudolph’s life as a fugitive. FBI Agent Chris Swecker said agents were still investigating whether Rudolph had help on the run.

Murphy police Chief Mark Thigpen and Cherokee County Sheriff Keith Lovin said they were checking whether Rudolph helped sustain himself by breaking into some of the uninhabited vacation cabins that dot the mountains.

They said they were going back over a list of break-ins in the region over the past five years, some of which resulted in the theft of such small items as canned goods, old boots, clothes, paper towels and soap.

“I went to one house yesterday where they ignored some items that I believe a burglar would have taken,” Assistant Murphy Police Chief Jerry Trull said. “And items were missing like dry socks.”

FULL ARTICLES

ARAFAT’S ‘PRAGMATIC’ PROTEGE

Arafat’s ‘pragmatic’ protege
By Michael Freund
The Jerusalem Post
April 2, 2003

What a difference a few years can make.

It was in February of 2000 that Israel’s government, then headed by Ehud Barak, was up in arms over the Austrian President’s decision to include Joerg Haider’s neo-Nazi Freedom Party in that country’s newly-formed governing coalition.

Haider’s inclusion, Barak said, should “infuriate all the citizens of the free world”. He promptly recalled Israel’s ambassador to Vienna, and convened a session of the cabinet, which issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over the Austrian move.

Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg also blasted the decision, calling it “a blemish on the Austrian nation”, and saying it was regrettable that “the Austrian people refuse to recognize the terrible tragedy that the racist Nazi ideology inflicted on humanity.”

But now, just three years later, after Yasser Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian version of Joerg Haider, to serve as Prime Minister, the voices of indignation have suddenly fallen silent.

Haider, of course, came under fire after making a series of foul remarks in which he downplayed the evil of the Nazi regime, defending those who took part in its crimes even as he sought to minimize the lethal nature of the Holocaust. As a result, Haider was roundly and justifiably condemned, and deemed unfit to serve in a position of power.

Curiously, the same logic has yet to be applied to Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, even though his views on the Holocaust are even more odious and offensive.

As a doctoral candidate at Moscow’s Oriental College in 1982, Abu Mazen composed a thesis accusing the Jews of exaggerating the Holocaust for ulterior motives.

“The Zionist movement’s stake in inflating the number of murdered in the war was aimed at ensuring great gains,” he said, asserting that “this led it to confirm the number [6 million] to establish it in world opinion, and by so doing to arouse more pangs of conscience and sympathy for Zionism in general.”

In his paper, later published under the title, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement”, the Palestinian leader sought to deny the German use of gas chambers as instruments of death, and suggested that the number of Jews killed was less than one million.

He also went to great lengths to compare Zionism with Nazism, and accused Jewish leaders of conspiring with Hitler to annihilate European Jewry.

“The Zionist movement,” Abu Mazen wrote, “led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.”

Even Joerg Haider, in the ugliest of his demagogic outbursts, never made such horrifying claims.

But despite professing such outrageous views, which he has never publicly retracted, Abu Mazen has nevertheless been hailed by the media and politicians alike, particularly since he was selected last month for the post of Palestinian prime minister.

A March 19 AP story called him “urbane” and insisted that he was “known as a moderate and a pragmatist”.

“He is a responsible man,” ex-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Radio on March 9. “He has the seriousness required of the job, as well as clear positions and intentions.”

US Secretary of State Colin Powell also praised Abu Mazen’s nomination, as did the usual European suspects.

And this is truly astonishing, for Abu Mazen’s record is far more egregious than Haider’s. Whereas the Austrian politician made inflammatory remarks regarding the past, Abu Mazen went one step further, threatening physical violence against Jews and Israel on more than one occasion.

In a March 4, 1990 interview with the London-based newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, Abu Mazen warned that Jews making aliyah from the former Soviet Union would be subjected to terror attacks if they made their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. “No one can check the behavior of the Palestinian citizen in the occupied territories. No one can guarantee the results of this provocation,” he said.

In June 1996, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister, Abu Mazen threatened that any change in Israel’s policy toward Oslo would cause the Palestinians to take up arms. “Any digression by Binyamin Netanyahu from the peace process,” he said, “will cause a return to the state of war which existed before September 1993” (The Jerusalem Post, June 14, 1996).

More recently, on January 26, 2003, Abu Mazen was asked by the Chinese news agency Xinhua about the prospects of halting terrorist attacks against Israel. His response was far from principled: “That depends on how Israel acts,” he said. “The Israeli side should stop its aggression against the Palestinians first.”

Similarly, on March 3, Abu Mazen again stressed his belief in the use of violence. In an interview with al-Sharq al-Awsat, he sought to clarify statements attributed to him in which he allegedly called for an end to anti-Israel terror. “On the basis of the talks held in Cairo [between the Palestinian Authority and terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad], we agreed upon the freezing of Palestinian military operations for one year... We did not say, however, that we are giving up the armed struggle... The Intifada must continue.”

Thanks, but that is hardly the type of “pragmatism” which the Middle East needs right now.

Indeed, the obvious question which comes to mind is: Why was Joerg Haider denounced for minimizing the mass murder of Jews, while Abu Mazen is not?

And why was the late President of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, barred from visiting Israel for writing an anti-Semitic World War Two history book entitled Wilderness of Historical Reality, while Abu Mazen is hailed as a “moderate” for holding similar views?

The answer, it would appear, is that not all Holocaust-deniers are created equal, as one standard is applied to the likes of Haider and Tudjman, while an entirely different one is used for Abu Mazen.

Even more disturbing, however, is the willingness of many Israeli and American leaders to overlook Abu Mazen’s brazen calls for violence and his support for terror, all in the vain hope that he will prove more accommodating than his mentor, Yasser Arafat. Such delusions, however, only serve to cloud their judgment, causing them to see Abu Mazen not for what he is, but for what they wish him to be.

So let’s stop fooling ourselves. Abu Mazen is no “moderate”. Anyone who denies the Holocaust, equates Zionism with Nazism and advocates the use of violence against Jews is certainly not deserving of such a label.

Instead, let’s call him what he really is – just another petty anti-Semitic thug. And, more importantly, let’s start treating him as such.

(The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office under Benjamin Netanyahu).

 

TWO PIECES BY RAFAEL MENDOFF

Two pieces by Rafael Medoff, which appered in various Jewish publications on the Internet. [Medoff is visiting scholar at the State University of New York. His latest book is “A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust,” co-written with David S. Wyman.]

***

The Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju shut down one of its magazines for printing an article denying the Holocaust.

International pressure compelled Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to publicly retract statements in his book doubting that the Holocaust had taken place. Austrian Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider was ostracized by the international community for his remarks praising members of the SS, as was French politician Jean Marie Le Pen, for questioning the existence of the gas chambers and belittling the significance of the Holocaust. A recent poll found 64 percent of Americans believe world leaders should likewise refuse to meet with Abbas.

Yet some in the media have treated Abbas with kid gloves, to say the least. The official BBC News Profile of Abbas reports: “A highly intellectual man, Abbas studied law in Egypt before doing a Ph.D. in Moscow. He is the author of several books.” The New York Times recently characterized Abbas as “a lawyer and historian ... He holds a doctorate in history from the Moscow Oriental College; his topic was Zionism.” Neither the BBC nor the Times offered any further explanation as to the contents of Abbas’ writings.

Bestowing the title “historian” upon Mahmoud Abbas awards his writings a stature they do not deserve, and deals a grievous insult to every genuine historian.

If Abbas is elevated to the post of prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, not only the media but the entire international community will be confronted with the question of whether Abbas deserves to be treated any differently from Tudjman, Haider and Le Pen.

 

PALESTINIANS GET A HOLOCAUST DENIER AS FIRST PRIME MINISTER

Palestinians get a Holocaust denier as 1st prime minister
By Rafael Medoff
Jewish Bulletin of North California

While European Union officials praised Yasser Arafat’s decision to appoint his first-ever prime minister, historians of the Holocaust winced at the news that a leading candidate for the job is the author of a book denying that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews.

The candidate is Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), Arafat’s second in command, and his book, published in Arabic in 1983, translates as “The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement.” It was originally his doctoral dissertation, completed at Moscow Oriental College.

The book repeatedly attempts to cast doubt on the fact that the Nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews, according to a translation provided by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

“Following the war,” he writes, “word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews...The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller – below one million.”

Abbas denies that the gas chambers were used to murder Jews, quoting a “scientific study” to that effect by French Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson.

Abbas’ book then asserts: “The historian and author Raoul Hilberg thinks that the figure does not exceed 890,000.”

That is, of course, utterly false. Hilberg, a distinguished historian and author of the classic study “The Destruction of the European Jews,” has never said or written any such thing.

Abbas believes the 6 million figure is the product of a Zionist conspiracy: “It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement... is to inflate this figure so that their gains will be greater,” he writes. “This led them to emphasize this figure in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions “fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand.”

Another falsehood. In fact, no serious scholar proposes such a figure.

After reducing the magnitude of the Nazi slaughter so that it no longer seems to have been a full-scale Holocaust, Abbas seeks to absolve the Nazis by blaming the Zionist leadership for whatever killings did take place. According to Abbas, “A partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement... [the Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.”

In addition to encouraging the persecution of Jews so they would immigrate to the Holy Land, the Zionist leaders actually wanted Jews to be murdered, because – in Abbas’ words – “having more victims meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiation table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over. However, since Zionism was not a fighting partner – suffering victims in a battle – it had no escape but to offer up human beings, under any name, to raise the number of victims, which they could then boast of at the moment of accounting.”

Perhaps sentiments of this sort were common within Abbas’ circle of graduate students in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. But in the free world, such propaganda has never been accepted as serious scholarship.

In most Western countries, Holocaust-deniers have been treated as pariahs. In Canada and many European countries, Holocaust-denial is a criminal offense. In New Zealand, Canterbury University recently issued an apology for having accepting a master’s thesis denying the Holocaust, while the French minister of education revoked a doctoral degree that was awarded to a Holocaust-denier by the University of Nantes. A Polish university professor who denied the Holocaust was suspended from his position. The Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju shut down one of its magazines for printing an article denying the Holocaust.

International pressure compelled Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to publicly retract statements in his book doubting that the Holocaust had taken place. Austrian Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider was ostracized by the international community for his remarks praising members of the SS, as was French politician Jean Marie Le Pen, for questioning the existence of the gas chambers and belittling the significance of the Holocaust. A recent poll found 64 percent of Americans believe world leaders should likewise refuse to meet with Abbas.

Yet some in the media have treated Abbas with kid gloves, to say the least. The official BCC News Profile of Abbas reports: “A highly intellectual man, Abbas studied law in Egypt before doing a Ph.D. in Moscow. He is the author of several books.” The New York Times recently characterized Abbas as “a lawyer and historian... He holds a doctorate in history from the Moscow Oriental College; his topic was Zionism.” Neither the BBC nor the Times offered any further explanation as to the contents of Abbas’ writings.

Bestowing the title “historian” upon Mahmoud Abbas awards his writings a stature they do not deserve, and deals a grievous insult to every genuine historian.

If Abbas is elevated to the post of prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, not only the media but the entire international community will be confronted with the question of whether Abbas deserves to be treated any differently from Tudjman, Haider and Le Pen.

 

RIGHT-WINGERS TO PROTEST “ABU MAZEN - HOLOCAUST DENIER”

Report: Right-wingers to protest “Abu Mazen – Holocaust denier”
Ynet (Yediot Ahronot)
April 27, 2003

Ynet reports that a group of “right wing extremists” have presented Jerusalem police with a request to hold a protest rally on Holocaust Remembrance day at “Yad Vashem” in Jerusalem against Prime Minister Sharon’s plans to conduct negotiations with new Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen.

The right-wingers plan to protest the planned negotiations with the “Holocaust denier” Abu Mazen, reports Ynet.

The protesters will carry banners, which read: “negotiations with Abu Mazen a blow to the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust.”

The protesters are referring to Abu Mazen’s doctoral dissertation presented in 1982 at Moscow’s Oriental College in which he allegedly made a claim that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate the Jewish people.

Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) holds a Ph.D. in history from Moscow’s Oriental College. His doctoral thesis served as a basis for his 1984 book, “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.”

In this book, Abbas raised doubts that gas chambers were used for extermination of Jews using arguments previously espoused by a known French Holocaust denier, and suggested that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was “less than a million.”

According to a translation provided by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, the book repeatedly attempts to cast doubt on the fact that the Nazis slaughtered six million Jews.

 

ARAB ANTISEMITISM

Inquiry and Analysis - Arab Antisemitism
MEMRI
No. 95
May 30, 2002

Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be “Even Less Than a Million...” Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to “Expand the Mass Extermination” of the Jews

A 1982 doctoral dissertation by Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, who is considered second to Yasser Arafat, discussed “the secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement leadership.” Two years later, a study by Abu Mazen based on his dissertation for Moscow’s Oriental College was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Amman, Jordan.

In the introduction to his 1984 study, Abu Mazen referred to well-known Holocaust deniers, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for extermination of Jews, and claimed that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust might be “even less than a million.” Abu Mazen claimed that the Zionist movement had a stake in convincing world public opinion that the number of victims was high; thus, it would achieve “greater gains” after the war when the time came to “distribute the spoils.”

Abu Mazen’s intention was to undermine the legitimacy of the Zionist movement by proving that during a critical stage in the history of the Jewish people – the rise of Nazism and World War II – the Zionist leadership stopped at nothing to achieve its aim of establishing a Jewish state. He wrote, “The truth [about the Nazi crimes] has another aspect” that the West preferred to disregard; instead, the West concealed “a basic partner in crime” – that is, the Zionist movement. The study pointed to a convergence of the interests of the Nazi and the Zionist movements, and the fundamental similarity in the two movements’ theories. The central claim Abu Mazen sought to prove is that the Zionist movement, with all its factions, conspired against the Jewish people and collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate it, because the movement considered “Palestine” the only appropriate destination for Jewish emigration.

Abu Mazen wrote, “It might be imagined that Zionism would do all it could, materially and otherwise, to save the Jews, or at least to keep them [alive] until the end of the war. It might have been expected that it would arouse world public opinion and direct its attention to the massacres carried out against the Jews, so that the governments would act to rescue them from their bitter fate.” But, stated Abu Mazen, “what Zionism did was the exact opposite of what could have been expected”: The Zionist movement sabotaged various aid plans 1 and withheld information regarding the bitter fate of Europe’s Jews “in order to free itself from the need to take necessary action.” Abu Mazen added, “the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.” 2

Introduction: The Truth has Another Aspect

“The Western countries sketched the final picture of the outcome of World War II. They defined the crimes committed, and described the criminals and the ones they victimized; after setting themselves up as a faithful judge with the decisive word in matters of these crimes. They locked up details, facts, and crimes that they didn’t want to exist; they ignored names, important people, institutions, organizations, and countries that they chose to ignore. In the end, they charged the Nazi leaders with all the crimes that were committed during the war, and they relentlessly hunted down those still alive, even though the crimes were committed long ago. The Nuremberg [trials] cut down the tyrants and the murderers, and cast a [shadow] on the basic partner in the crimes committed during the war. After they collected [the price] from them - they narrowed the focus on the crimes, criminals, prosecutors, defendants, and witnesses, and set the entire matter in limited frameworks that could not be breached. This was how these countries dealt with half the truth, deliberately neglecting the other half.”

The Number of Jewish Victims

“During World War II, 40 million people of different nations of the world were killed. The German people sacrificed 10 million; the Soviet people 20 million; and the rest [of those killed] were from Yugoslavia, Poland, and the other peoples. But after the war it was announced that 6 million Jews were among the victims, and that the war of annihilation had been aimed first of all against the Jews, and only then against the rest of the peoples of Europe.”

“The truth of the matter is that no one can verify this number, or completely deny it. In other words, the number of Jewish victims might be 6 million and might be much smaller – even less than 1 million. [Nevertheless], raising a discussion regarding the number of Jews [murdered] does not in any way diminish the severity of the crime committed against them, as murder – even of one man – is a crime that the civilized world cannot accept and humanity cannot accept.”

“It seems that the Zionist movement’s stake in inflating the number of murdered in the war was aimed at [ensuring] great gains. This led it to confirm the number [6 million], to establish it in world opinion, and by doing so to arouse more pangs of conscience and sympathy for Zionism in general. Many scholars have debated the question of the 6 million figure, and reached perplexing conclusions, according to which the Jewish victims total hundreds of thousands. The well-known Canadian author Roger Delarom[3] said on this matter: ‘To date, no proof whatsoever exists that the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi concentration camps reached four million or six million. Zionism first spoke of 12 million exterminated in these camps, but then the number decreased greatly, to half, that is, only six million. Then the number decreased further, and became four million, as the Germans could not have killed or exterminated more Jews than there were in the world at that time. In effect, the true number is much smaller than these fictitious millions.’ The [American] historian and author Raul Hilberg thinks that this number is no greater than 896,000.” [4]

“The source of the submission of this large number, 6 million [murdered], is Chaim Weizmann’s 1936 declaration before a British committee regarding the fate of 6 million Jews living in Europe if a world war should break out. [According to Weizmann], ‘The little green branches are the ones that will survive, while the rest must bear their [bitter] fate.’ From that point on, the Zionist movement insisted that all 6 million were murdered, and that none of them survived.”

“Afterwards, the Zionist movement attempted to describe how they [the Jews] were murdered in concentration camps and gas chambers, as it disregarded two fundamental facts. First, many of the Jews remained alive; some were rescued by the Zionist movement [which encouraged] their emigration to Palestine, and some [survived because of] the peoples of the world that managed to protect them and take them away from the Nazis, as the Soviet Union did by sending two million Jews to its eastern republics. In addition, hundreds of thousands of live Jews were found in the concentration camps when the Allies liberated the territories [conquered by the Nazis].”

“Second, the extermination of the victims was not carried out only in the concentration camps and gas chambers. Some of the victims fell as a result of their participation in wars and battles, and also due to starvation and disease that struck all the peoples of Europe. In addition, the concentration camps were not only for Jews, but held people from all over Europe, among them fighters, intellectuals, scholars, prisoners of war, and opponents of fascism...”

“Regarding the gas chambers, which were supposedly designed for murdering living Jews: A scientific study published by Professor Robert Faurisson[5] of France denies that the gas chambers were for murdering people, and claims that they were only for incinerating bodies, out of concern for the spread of disease and infection in the region.” [6]

The Zionist Movement Conspired Against the Jewish People

“It takes little effort to prove the truth [about the crimes of the Nazis] and to document them. World War II did take place, and in it fell millions of victims. It was Hitler... who established the concentration camps in all of Europe to hold all of his opponents and enemies, including peoples not worthy of living, and it was also he who invented the gas chambers. However, another aspect of the truth remains shrouded in mystery, like the other side of the moon...”

“How could [anyone with] reason believe that the institutions of the Zionist movement that arose to defend ‘the [Jewish] people’ then became a cause of this people’s annihilation? History has taught us that Nero burned Rome, but he was insane, and his insanity removes from him his responsibility. History has also taught us that leaders have betrayed their people and their country and sold them to their enemies. But they are few, and they alone bear the responsibility for their actions. Therefore, a popular, public movement’s conspiracy against its ‘people’ is something astonishing that demands an in-depth and meticulous examination before it is accused for no reason...”

On the Similarity Between Nazi and Zionist Theory

“When discussing declared Zionist ideas, which have been espoused with profound conviction and faith by the movement’s followers, one finds that they believe in the purity of the Jewish race – as Hitler believed in the purity of the Aryan race – and the movement calls for finding a deeply-rooted and decisive solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ in Europe via immigration to Palestine. Hitler also called for this, and carried it out. The Zionist movement maintains that antisemitism is an eternal problem that throbs in the Gentiles’ blood; that it is not possible to put an end to it or get away from it; and thus it is the basic motive for Zionist immigration. It follows that if antisemitism did not exist it would be necessary to invent it, and that if its flame dies away it must be fanned. David Ben-Gurion defined the Zionist movement as immigration [to Israel] and nothing else; whoever does not immigrate [to Israel] denies the Torah and the Talmud and therefore is not a Jew... These ideas provide a general dispensation to every racist in the world, most prominently Hitler and the Nazis, to treat the Jews as they wish, as long as this includes immigration to Palestine...”

The Entire Zionist Movement is Responsible for Conspiring with the Nazis
“In order to avoid error and generalization regarding the various factions of the Zionists, and for the purpose of accuracy, we must point out that the Zionist movement was divided. One part held the leadership and another part formed the opposition... Can we accuse the second group, which was not party to the institutions and leadership [of conspiring against the Jewish people]? This question is relevant in only one incident - whether there were differences of opinion between the two sides regarding the origin of the Zionist theory and regarding the practical implementation of Zionist thought. But if the point of departure and the implementation went together, as indeed happened – then there is no room for question... An Arabic proverb states, ‘When differences of opinion arise among thieves, the theft is revealed.’ This is what happened with the Zionist movement; when the Labor Party ruled Israel, it refused the Revisionists [the future Likud party] their share, and so [the Revisionists] began to expose the facts and rend the curtain of falsehood. However, in the heat of argument over the roles of the Laborites [in conspiring with the Nazis], they forgot to speak of the role they played, which was no different from that of others. Then came a third side and revealed the positions of all...”

 

FOOTNOTES TO THE ITEM ABOVE

[1] In the study, Abu Mazen notes several incidents in which the Zionist movement ignored the fate of the Jews and actively undermined plans to aid them. He wrote, “In 1943, there was an opportunity to send packages of food, medicine, and clothing to Jews in the ghettos of Europe. The International Red Cross, in cooperation with the U.S. government, began collecting these packages, but the Zionist movement objected to the proposal and sabotaged the idea, claiming that the German Red Cross would be the recipient [of the packages]. Because of these positions, thousands died in the ghetto of epidemic and starvation, even before the Nazis began their actions. Infant mortality ranged from 60% to 70% in various places – nothing could be more terrible. Had intentions been good, there were ways and means of delivering the packages, via the Red Cross or some neutral country such as Switzerland, Turkey, or Portugal, and they would have been sent – and all these children could have been saved.”

[2] Abu Mazen stated in his paper, “The Zionist movement’s most obvious incitement activities against the Jews living under the German conquest were the decisions of the Biltmore Conference, held in the U.S. [in May, 1942]- when the Zionist leaders declared war on Germany on behalf of the Jewish people. When Hitler learned about the conclusions of the conference through his ambassador in the U.S., he was enraged, and declared, ‘Now I will liquidate them.’ Afterwards he held an urgent meeting with all Germany’s leaders, and they developed their detailed plans for the Final Solution – We must not overestimate the importance of the Biltmore Conference and see it as the only reason leading Hitler to authorize the Final Solution, but it is clear that the decisions taken at the conference were one of Hitler’s main excuses for speeding up the implementation of his solution regarding the Jews, and therefore this conference can be seen as one of the more important causes that led to the [bitter] end...”

[3] The spelling of this name is not certain; the name as it appears in the study is unknown.

[4] Abu Mazen cited p. 670 of Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews as the source of this data. However, an examination of this source shows that no such figure is mentioned. Hilberg writes that between 1935 and 1945 world Jewry lost a third of its number; it dropped from 16 million to about 11 million. It should be noted that the original Russian version of Abu Mazen’s study focuses much less on how many Jews were murdered than does the Arabic version, and includes only the figure of 896,000, which Abu Mazen attributes to Hilberg.

[5] A well-known Holocaust denier.

[6] In the original version of this study (in Russian) the question of whether or not gas chambers were used to murder Jews does not appear.