This evening is the start of Holocaust and Ghetto Revolt Remembrance Day, the 27th day of the month of Nissan, one of the days during which the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt took place. For Jews outside of Israel, the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and the Jewish resistance against the Nazis during WWII is often forgotten. Here that armed resistance to persecution is what is generally remembered and commemorated. Tomorrow, a siren will sound at 10:00 in the morning and all activity throughout the country will come to a halt, in remembrance of those who fought the vicious monstrosity of Nazi murder and who died in the effort.
Too many died.
One would think that by now anti-Semitism in Germany was a dead issue. Guess what? It isn’t. William Grim, whose writings may be found at Iconoclast.ca wrote this essay, called, THE RETURN OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO GERMANY: IT NEVER REALLY LEFT. I found this essay among William Grim’s Golden Oldies, but it just hit my e-mail box today, courtesy of Isralert, and its publisher Harv Weiner. Nevertheless, I had seen this before. I believe it was written in 2002.
It is the recounting of a non-Jew of the Jew-hatred that he discovered to be still extant in modern Germany, a country that is virtually “Judenfrei” – Jew free. Among other things, it talks about how a group of young executives, urbane and sophisticated young men, seemed to flare up in hostility at the mention of a Jewish name, uttering many of the nasty anti-Semitic epithets and accusations one would find in a Stürmer propaganda piece.
I myself do not trust Europeans: I do not feel safe in Europe, for the most part, and do not plan to visit there. This article details all the reasons why.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
A survivor from Auschwitz came to my son's school today to talk about the place. Apparently there were various separate camps where different functions were performed upon the "residents."
The survivor speaking at my son's school had a twin brother in the camp who had also survived, but who died seven years ago. They were about 11 yrs old upon arriving at Auschwitz. The boys' mother was immediately sent to be killed after disembarking the train. The father was sent to the "living" side. The survivor did not say if his father survived the ordeal.
All the twins who arrived in Auschwitz were sent to a special section, separate from the others, where they got numbers and haircuts. The Nazis did experiments with the kids - operations like taking out a human diaphragm and replacing it with the diaphragm of a pig, for example. As you can imagine, those kids did not survive the operations.
The survivor did not describe his particular trials.
The survivor explained how the Nazis thoroughly exploited the Jewish corpses for each recoverable reichsmark, something that might be familiar to those who have seen the movie, The Odsessa File. For example, the Germans took hair from the corpses and filled pillows and mattresses with them.
This man who spoke was 73 years old, he had his bar mitzvah here in Eretz Yisrael 60 years ago, and had probably arrived here in 1945.
He said that the German law governing slaves required Germans to give the slaves an article of clothing. His "garment" was about 20cms by 25cms approximately. That was all he had to wear. That was all anyone had to wear.
2 - Ahrimahn
It is not a "disease", it is called natural selection. Nature has made humans a tribal species which is why Europeans have traditionally persecuted non-Europeans (such as Jews and Gypsies) who live in Europe. The inability of Jews to accept this fact of life is what has caused them so much suffering over the centuries.
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Interesting observation, Ahriman.
Considering that Jews were driven from their homeland - they didn't choose to leave Israel on their own - your claim drives home even more sharply the point that the Exile was punishment.
It reinforces my distrust of Europeans as well, and makes me even more grateful that we left the States. One never knows when the "tribe" there will rise up to attack the foreign elemnts, like Jews, eh?
4 - TA Dodger
Ruvy,
Please do not judge us by that [insult deleted ahead of time to save editors the trouble] in comment 2.
Dodger
5 - Ahrimahn
Considering that Jews were driven from their homeland - they didn't choose to leave Israel on their own - your claim drives home even more sharply the point that the Exile was punishment
And who drove them out of their homeland? Stop blaming Europeans for your own peoples actions.
6 - Ahrimahn
One never knows when the "tribe" there will rise up to attack the foreign elemnts, like Jews, eh?
Be grateful that you are smart enough to realize that you shouldn't live in Europe. Many of your people lack your wisdom.
7 - RedTard
Interesting article, it's hard for me to understand this anti-semetism. I grew up in the states, in the southern heart of bigotry and got none of this. I suppose we were too busy hating blacks to care.
I don't know what a Jew looks like, or what last names you use, or any real stereotype other than being rich. I recognize the yammnukuhiuh thing you wear on your heads. I was probably out of highschool before I even knew the meaning of the word anti-semetism.
My main question is if the only thing anyone has on Jews is that you are supposedly all rich then why shouldn't you be emulated rather then exterminated?
8 - Nancy
What baloney is this? Ahrimahn, you sorely need to get yourself some antipsychotic meds, man, and then review your history: the Italians (aka the Romans as they were then) threw the Jews out of their own lands starting @ 70 AD for political reasons. The Jews certainly did not throw themselves out. And it was the good old Christian church that used them as a golden opportunity to make them the butt of suspicion & resentment, in order to divert attention from the church's own rampant misdeeds, a classic ploy still in use around the globe by various regimes. The Jews never did anything worse than to make whereever they went prosperous. Unfortunately they were then used by a lot of rulers as a sort of class of overseers, so that when the peasantry rose up in outrage, they wouldn't attack the rich aristocrats actually responsible for the bad conditions of the people. In any event, for reasons beyond my comprehension, some halfwits still seem to need to assign guilt for bad situations to Jewish scapegoats, instead of taking a long hard look at the real culprits, usually their own grasping, corrupt, & avaricious leaders.
9 - Andy Marsh
Good read Ruvy.
I was in Germany last year for a couple of months. I didn't see this anti-semitism that you speak of, but then again, I'm a gentile, so I wasn't really looking for it or exposed to it.
Then again, I did meet a couple of Germans that told me 9/11 was my country's fault. It takes all kinds....
I also visited a concentration camp while I was there. Dachau. What an evil place it still feels like to me. I don't think one can imagine how evil these places really are unless you actually visit one.
I was told by a German friend I made while there that it is required for every school child in Germany to visit one of these camps while in school and there are plenty of them to visit. They're littered all over Europe.
It amazes me that anyone could ever deny the holocaust happened with these monuments throughout Europe that remind them of the evil they were involved in only 40 years ago.
10 - RedTard
"It amazes me that anyone could ever deny the holocaust happened with these monuments throughout Europe that remind them of the evil they were involved in only 40 years ago."
The reply to that is if there were nothing to hide then why the mandatory school trips and jailtime for questioning the official version. There is absolutely no evidence I've seen to deny the holocaust but anytime a government tries to force people to act or think a certain way it raises a red flag to me.
11 - Andy Marsh
The way it was explained to me in Germany was that every kid is required to go to one of these places so they never forget what a maniacal group of people can do to another group of people.
I don't think making someone look at something is telling them how to think.
As far as jail time for dissenting opinions. I have a problem with that one, no matter what the opinion is, but I think that's an American thing...or maybe just an Andy thing...fucknose!
12 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Ahriman,
In answer to comment #5. Learn how to read. I didn't blame anyone for my ancestors being driven out of their homeland. I said that if your theory has any validity, it is proof that Exile was punishment - Divine punishment, in this case.
As for who drove us out of Israel? The Romans and their immediate successors whose capital was in Constantinople. In other words, Europeans. And the Europeans will be judged for their actions.
My own people's actions then were to attempt to survive. Don't get me wrong. I don't want or need your sympathy. That is not why I posted this. We've outlasted the Romans, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and rest assured Ahriman, we'll outlast you.
13 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Redtard, in answer to your question in comment #7, Nancy has given an excellent answer in comment #8. There is more to it with respect to the Nazis - they had religious ideas that dealt with racial origins and who deserved to inherit the planet and such - but they operated in the fertile soil of hatred planted by Christian anti-Semitism.
14 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Thanks for the kind words, Andy. I suspect you would have to live in Germany among Germans to see this kind of thing. I'm waiting for Diana Hartman to comment. She does live in Germany. I do not know if she lives among Germans, though.
15 - Dawn
When I was in Germany for a school trip one of our visits was to Dachau. Being the only person of Jewish descent on the trip made the entire visit very alienating. Most of those who took German in school at that time were of German descent, so naturally they didn't feel the same way about the experience I did.
I tried to talk to the bus driver about the visit, but he clammed up as soon as I mentioned my heritage. His basic response was embarrassment and it was suggested by my teacher that I end the conversation as it was impolite.
I wasn't judging the man, I was just curious about the normal German response to a place like Dachau in that day in age. In general I think most older Germans are profoundly ashamed by this blight on their history, but it seems the further removed from that time period that Germans become, the less they feel responsible as a group.
Anti-Semitism isn't ever going to go away. Jews will always be persecuted. In some ways I wish Israel/Israeli's would abandon the Middle East, so those who hate them so would realize that they are completely incapable of evolving peacefully without having the convenient excuse of the "Jews" to blame their idiocy on.
16 - Purple Tigress
I do not believe that natural selection is responsible for prejudice so much as fear and the weakness within the human heart and mind that makes people fear the unknown and wish to see others as inferior.
Having said that, I would like to add that the hatred of Jews isn't the only kind of hatred you see in Europe. You see the hatred of the Turks or Turkish-looking, the hatred of the East Asians, the hatred of Anglicans for Catholics, English of Irish, English of the French and almost every combination inbetween.
I lived in Europe (England) as an exchange student. Yet truthfully, the prejudice I experienced there is not really that different from the prejudice that I have experienced in the US, where I was born and where both my parents were born and raised.
Both my parents lost their homes and were imprisoned in America during WWII because of their race and lost most of their heirlooms and other belongings.
When I lived in England, I had a German flat mate. I believe her family was Catholic and I think the Roman Catholics suffered under the Nazis as well as the Jews, communists, gays and other undesirables. My Persian friend who had asylum in England was treated poorly because Germans thought she was either Arab, Muslim or Spanish and yet I have Persian friend in the US who have experienced similiar prejudice.
Traveling in Europe is not to be feared any more than traveling in America.
17 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, please stop making racist and hate allegations against my race based on the actions of some people from somewhere nobody's ever been to let alone fucking heard of.
The Romans were not all Italian for a start, not being a racist society and Constantinople, that well known major European city! FFS, You're starting to sound completely mad, like some bitter old man in a wheelchair not somebody in the prime of life.
18 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Redtard, et alia,
I don't know if mandatory school trips meant that much to the kids in Germany. Afer all, to them it was ancient history. If they were interested in anything, they probably would have been more interested in learning about the fire-bombing of the cities they had grown up in. That would have affected grampa and grandma, and mom and dad.
If anything, the trips to the camps told them that the camps were wrong - and then on came the news about Arab refugees - living in camps! Not a long step from there to sypathising with them.
Finally, one should be careful here. One cannot say "every German" or "all Germans." One can say "many Germans" and be not far from the truth, though. That is the prime weakness with Grim's article. It implies that all Germans are anti-Semites
19 - Purple Tigress
Ouch! I think people in wheelchairs might find that offensive. Not being a man or a person in a wheelchair, I found that offensive.
20 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chris, where did I say anything about Italians? And who is going after your race? Chill out, man.
Read Grim's article. He talks about Germans. I talk about Romans and their successors ruling from Constantople - which for many hundreds of years was a major European city. And just so we're clear, a number of Roman emperors were born in Spain.
21 - Ormazd
I see you Ahrimahn. Back into the darkness with you. Do not foul this place with your evil presence!
O
22 - Nancy
Ruvy, what always amazes me is that the Jewish leadership allowed their people to get maneuvered into this sort of situation, like in Poland, which was a classic: Jews got invited in by some prince or other, to settle. They came & did well. So they got invited to 'supervise' - and of course, all the prince's noxious orders against the peasantry got conveniently blamed on the Jewish middlemen, and not on him where it belonged. Next thing you know - POW! - down with the Jews.
The only reason I can think of for this odd widespread resentment of Jews is that possibly it's because they tended to stick together (not mind you that they were ever given the oppotunity to assimilate anywhere). People who don't open up & become part of the larger community, who don't assimilate, are resented and feared, and Jews are/were outstanding for their tenacity in keeping to their own religion & traditions, keeping to themselves, even when they had the opportunity not to, like in Egyptian Alexandria. Look at the problem here in the US with any group of immigrants: until they started to blend in and Americanize, they were all pretty much resented and ostracized, like the Italians in the 1900s, or the Mexicans today - altho ironically it was because the Irish DID move in & assimilate so readily that they were socially ostracized! Damned if you do & damned if you don't, I guess.
About half of the kids I went to school with were Jewish, so I spent a lot of time searching out breadcrumbs & not eating cheeseburgers when I was with my buddies, and I never noticed anything different about any of them except they never had bacon, but that was about it. Larger issues never came up. In any event, nothing to make me feel they were any different from anybody else: some of them were smart, and some were flat-out stupid; some were energetic & some were lazy - altho I have to admit that in general their parents did have a more powerful homework ethic than the non-Jewish kids' parents did. Maybe that's why I never noticed, since my parents were pretty tight about homework & extra homework as well.
23 - Nancy
I was the one that cited Italians, not Ruvy; I was talking about the Romans.
24 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
PT,
I don't fear travelling in Europe. I never have. Travelling in Europe is probably not significantly different from travelling in Canada. WEere I not aware of what Europe means for my people, it would be a lot of fun. I dislike the idea of travelling in Europe - and I don't trust Europeans. I don't hate them - I don't trust them. Two different things entirely.
It is not unfair to assert that Jew-hatred is ingrained deeply in European culture. The word "judĂo" is never used to describe a Jew in Spanish, even thought that is what it means. Similarly, one does not use the word Zyd in polite company among Poles or Zhid amongst Russians.
Other words are used to substitute for the "offending" word.
This is less true among Americans, but every now and again you run into the person who avoids using the word "Jew" so as not to insult the person he speaks to.
25 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy in #12: "The Romans and their immediate successors whose capital was in Constantinople. In other words, Europeans. And the Europeans will be judged for their actions."
If Constantinople was ever in what Western Europeans consider Europe I would be somewhat surprised but don't let reality get in the way of your paranoia, no sir.