Nazi Concentration Camps

[Johnny Canuck3]

yes, that is my understanding, at least from what i've read. many Germans became resentful that teh Jews were doing better than them and thats one of the reasons Mr. Hitler came to power.

Where did you get this: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?


[Hey VP, invisible planet, etc: don't get too wealthy!]

 

[Detroit City]

Where did you get this: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

maybe i've been misinformed?

damn american educational system!

 

[invisibleplanet]

Jews lived and worked in Germany. They had stores, etc, and seemed to be doing fine, until Krystallnacht.

What a difference a day makes.

It's obviously disturbing to think that you can be living peacefully one day, then be murdered by your neighbors, the next. I think that's what Israel is all about. They'd been murdered by 'the neighbors' too many times. So in Israel, they'd have some say about who 'the neighbors' would be.

This seems like a complete misrepresentation of the situation. The perpetrators of Reichskristallnacht were not 'neighbours' who suddenly turned against German Jewish neighbours - they were local NSDAP party members and SA (brownshirts/stormtroopers) - deliberately called to violence by local party leaders at the behest of Goebbels in revenge and retaliation for the assassination of vom Rath by a now-stateless Jewish youth in Paris whose family were forcibly deported from Austria to the Polish border, and unrecognised as Polish citizens by the Polish government.

If you want to discuss the extent that we can consider German Jews to be assimilated or 'emancipated' through the process of 'Bildung' (self-formation), we can do so, but there's no doubt in my mind that the NSDAP/SA brownshirts/stormtroopers who carried out these violent acts of persecution were never neighbours to Jews and nor would the Jews have considered the NSDAP/SA brownshirts/stormtroopers as neighbours, and neither would either group have worked with each other in the same workplace - we are looking at the level of Jewish assimilation as a minority subculture in a German-majority culture.

As was often the case in the history of the Nazi state, it was a peripheral event, an insignificant catalyst, that set the fateful development in motion. In March 1938, following the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, the Polish government called into the questoin the validity of all expatriate Poles if they had lived abroad continuously for more than five years and had lost all ties with the Polish state. In spring 1938, there were fears in Warsaw that the approximately twenty thousand Jew of Polish nationality who had been living in Austria for a long time but who would now probably not wish to come under National Socialist rule, would return to Poland.

The Polish law was passed on March 31 1938, but was not yet put into forces .It was only on October 15, directly following the Munich agreement, that a Polish decree was izsued, enforcing the scrutiny of all passports belongng to expatriate Poles. From October 31 all consulate passports -- in other words, all documents issued abroad -- would only entitle the bearer to enter Poland after the addition of a special stamp at a Polish consulate. This directly affected the fifty thousand Polish Jews who were living in the German Reich, many of whom had been living there for decades. It was the clear intention of hte government in Poland that the majority of them should become stateless at the end of October, on October 30 to be precise. After that, the German Reich government would no longer have the option of deporting their troublesome Eastern Jews across the eastern border, as Poland no longer recognised them as citizens.

After negotiations between Berlin and Warsaw failed -- the Poles had twice refused to allow holders of Polish passport without the special stamp across the border after October 30 -- the Foreign Office, on October 26, handed the matter over to the Gestapo with the result that all Polish Jews were to be deported within the next four days. The Gestapo set to work without delay and with extreme brutality. Approximately seventeen thousand Jews were deported to the Polish border and then forced across. After Poland closed the border, they were forced to wander back and forth in a no-man's land between Germany and Poland. The Gruenspan family was among those Jews who had found themselves with an invalid passport. One son, seventeen year old Herschel, was living in Paris at the time and so escaped deportation. On November 3 he received a postcard from his sister with a description of what had befallen them.

A few days later, the stateless youth, who was roaming about Paris illegally, triggered off events the dimensions of which he could not have even begun to guess at. His shooting of an official of the German Embassy in Paris became the catalyst for the pogrom that indeed marked the turning point. Through no other event did the Nazi regime demonstrate so cynically that it no longer attached any importance to even the appearance of upholding the law and order. Antisemitism and animosity against the Jews, propogated forms of violence and persecution. The Reichskristallnacht represented the vertex on the path to the Final Solution, to the systematic murder of millions of Jews from all over Europe.

The November pogrom of 1938 was far from a spontaneous outburst; it was staged by state bodies at the highest level. The immediate trigger for the pogrom had been provided by Herschel Gruenspan, who on November 7 had shot and wounded the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath.

[...]

The nationwide staged pogrom began after Goebbels' speech in front of the "old guard" of the NSDAP on the evening of November 9 in the Old Town Hall in Munich. As on this day, every year, the leaders of the NSDAP gathered to commemorate Hitler's putsch of 1923. At 9PM came the news of vom Rath's death. At about 10PM, after Hitler had left the gathering, stimulation for the leaders of the NSDAP and SA was provided by the Reich propaganda chief, who spoke of retaliation and revenge and gave the impression that they were called upon to action. Via regional (Gau) propaganda offices and from them to the district and local party headquarters or the SA staff throughout the Reich, the general mood was passed on by telephone, already now in the form of an order. A short time later the first synagogues were burning, everywhere Jewish people were being humiliated, derided, mistreated and plundered.

Things did not stop, however, with this public and seemingly spontaneous vandalism. IN the days following November 99 1938, approximately 30,000 Jewish men, predominently those situated well financially, were arrested throughout the German Reich and sent to the three concentration camps Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The fact that the action was limited to a few weeks, that it was intended to intimidate and to exert pressure to emigrate and not (yet) to annihilate the Jews, counted for little in the face of the catastrophe that time spent in a concentration camp represented for respectable middle-class existences, for the destruction of familiar life patterns, and in the consciousness of the victims.

On November 12, directly following the pogrom of November 9, which came to be known under the harmless sounding name of Reichskristallnacht (literally, "Reich Crystal Night," or, as it was later termed in the English "Night of Broken Glass"), stock was taken of the material damage sustained during the nationwide action. At a conference held in Berlin under the chairmanship of Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand man, it was confirmed that 7,500 Jewish shops were reported destroyed, almost all synagogues had been burnt down or destroyed (according to official records, 191 Jewish houses of worship were destroyed by fire, a further 76 through acts of human violence, more recent research reveals that far more than 1,000 synagogues and houses of worship fell victim to the pogrom), and shop windows to the value of many millions of marks were smashed in teh night from November 9 to 10. The number of deaths as the result of murder, mistreatment, terror and despair lay in the hundreds, excluding suicide victims.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

This seems like a complete misrepresentation of the situation. The perpetrators of Reichskristallnacht were not 'neighbours' who suddenly turned against German Jewish neighbours - they were local NSDAP party members and SA (brownshirts/stormtroopers) - deliberately called to violence by local party leaders at the behest of Goebbels in revenge and retaliation for the assassination of vom Rath by a now-stateless Jewish youth in Paris whose family were forcibly deported from Austria to the Polish border, and unrecognised as Polish citizens by the Polish government. .

Depends how you want to define neighbor. The people who did this were members of the same communities that the jews lived in. To me, that qualifies as 'neighbor'.

Listen to the laughter of the crowd in response to this Hitler speech.

These people were the 'neighbors' of the jews.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

When I was going to uni in the seventies, I worked as a labourer for the municipality where I lived, in summer. Due to the unskilled nature of the work, there were a number of Eastern European men employed there: a lot of Ukranians, some Poles, Hungarians, etc. These men's ages ranged from mid forties to early sixties. They would have been anywhere from around 10, to late 20s, early 30s, by the end of the war.

I recall one guy from Rumania telling about how the Germans came to his village, rounded up all the jews, put them on the edge of a pit, and shot them. They then put lime on the bodies.

"It was 'bye bye Moshe!' ", this man said, with a smile on his face.

 

[invisibleplanet]

Depends how you want to define neighbor. The people who did this were members of the same communities that the jews lived in. To me, that qualifies as 'neighbor'.

Then we have different definitions of 'neighbour'. To me, a neighbour is someone you would take a cake around to and trust with the key to your house whilst you are away.

These violent thugs were local NSDAP party members and SA (brownshirts/stormtroopers), deliberately called to violence from the highest Reich command level, down through the hierarchical chain until it reached the local level - from there, these boot boys went and smashed local Jewish property across Germany - they were not, and never were neighbours-to-Jews - they were local, and they knew where the Jewish enclaves were - they knew whose businesses were Jewish and where the Synagogues were, but in no way would these types of person have lived NEXT DOOR to the Jews whose livlihoods, property, homes and places of worship they were destroying - their psychological make up would have precluded such a proximitous cohabitation.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then we have different definitions of 'neighbour'.

These violent thugs were local NSDAP party members and SA (brownshirts/stormtroopers), deliberately called to violence from the highest Reich command level, down through the hierarchical chain until it reached the local level - from there, these boot boys went and smashed local Jewish property across Germany - they were not, and never were neighbours-to-Jews - they were local, and they knew where the Jewish enclaves were - they knew whose businesses were Jewish and where the Synagogues were, but in no way would these types of person have lived NEXT DOOR to the Jews whose livlihoods, property, homes and places of worship they were destroying - their psychological make up would have precluded such a proximitous cohabitation.

The Rumanian man I knew was neighbor to jews. He smiled at the memory of them being shot and thrown into a pit.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A friend I grew up with was of Austrian ancestry. His parents had emigrated here after the war.

He always used to say how he could spot a jew out of a crowd. He was filled with disdain and dislike for jews, even though he was born here. I assume he got it from his parents.

His hatred was incomprehensible to the rest of us. What had jews ever done to him? His parents were just regular austrians, but their hatred of jews was so strong, that it infected their offspring, who'd had little actual contact with jews.

 

[Detroit City]

The Rumanian man I knew was neighbor to jews. He smiled at the memory of them being shot and thrown into a pit.

a "neighbour" is more a state of mind than where one's physical body resides ...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

a "neighbour" is more a state of mind than where one's physical body resides ...

These people lived in a village. Whatever else they were, they were in close physical proximity with one another.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

My aunt told a story once about a guy she worked with, a ukranian, also a displaced person.

The guy had been in an argument with someone over a parking spot. The other person was jewish. The argument ended with the ukranian yelling: "Well, you crucified Him, didn't you?!"

It's easy to pretend that nazi anti semitism was some sort of aberration, but it wasn't.

There's a saying that a good politician is one who figures out which way the parade is headed, then runs to get out in front of it.

 

[frogwoman]

A friend I grew up with was of Austrian ancestry. His parents had emigrated here after the war.

He always used to say how he could spot a jew out of a crowd. He was filled with disdain and dislike for jews, even though he was born here. I assume he got it from his parents.

His hatred was incomprehensible to the rest of us. What had jews ever done to him? His parents were just regular austrians, but their hatred of jews was so strong, that it infected their offspring, who'd had little actual contact with jews.

I've met a few people like that here, but very very few.

A lot of people i meet hardly know what a jew is and who can blame them, there are very few of us in the country.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I've met a few people like that here, but very very few.

A lot of people i meet hardly know what a jew is and who can blame them, there are very few of us in the country.

But you realize that antisemitism is being reshaped, into 'anti-Israeli'? You've met lots of people who get really exercised about zionism etc.

One of the ways to make this legitimate, is to undermine the rectitude of the jewish position, after the second world war.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The old style jew hatred isn't around as much any more, I agree. It was still pretty common when I was a kid.

 

[Detroit City]

These people lived in a village. Whatever else they were, they were in close physical proximity with one another.

physical proximity does not necessary a friend create...some say that familiarity breeds contempt

 

[Detroit City]

The old style jew hatred isn't around as much any more, I agree. It was still pretty common when I was a kid.

no, its still around but its mostly underground or covert now...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

no, its still around but its mostly underground or covert now...

"Throw the jews down the well.....so my people can be free..."

-Sasha Baron Cohen.

 

[frogwoman]

But you realize that antisemitism is being reshaped, into 'anti-Israeli'? You've met lots of people who get really exercised about zionism etc.

One of the ways to make this legitimate, is to undermine the rectitude of the jewish position, after the second world war.

On the internet yeah, not so much in real life.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

On the internet yeah, not so much in real life.

Girl, when you're in one of the 'noted minorities', it behooves you to stay vigilant.

 

[frogwoman]

Girl, when you're in one of the 'noted minorities', it behooves you to stay vigilant.

I am vigilant. But i just dont experience anti-semitism any more, i used to a bit when i was younger, nowadays i just dont see it ... and i don't even know anyone who's very virulently anti-israel except on the internet to be honest. Most people dont care, they have other things in their lives

i am very very aware that it exists though and a lot of my firends have had anti-semitic shit targetted at them

why do you think im a supporter of semi-militant anti-fascism ...

 

[frogwoman]

rest assured ...

if anyone says something anti-semitic - i NEVER let it lie

EVER

 

[invisibleplanet]

But you realize that antisemitism is being reshaped, into 'anti-Israeli'?

No, on the whole, the new scapegoat is the Arab/Muslim. Antisemitism, as Rachamim will tell you, (and this is one of the areas we agree strongly on), has been reshaped into Anti-Arabism/Anti-Islamism, especially in North America, but the underlying Judeophobia and anti-Jewish hatreds are still there if you scratch the surface, as Sacha Baron Cohen recently illustrated with his character 'Borat'.

"ANTI-SEMITISM" is a terribly misused word. A much better term in my mind is "anti-Jewishness." Astronaut has a point in that the term "anti-Semitism" is now commonly accepted as pertaining solely to Jews. However, it still does not make the definition correct and is a disservice to both Jew and Arab.

Just poke any leading Christian Zionist or make a literary analysis of an eschatological work, such as that of Pastor John Hagee's 'Countdown to Jerusalem':

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day....
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God uppon his rebellious chosen people." ["Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To War", paperback edition, pages 92 and 93]

Worse, Max Blumenthal reports that:

Journalist Michelle Goldberg, one of the keenest observers of the Christian right around, reported for the Huffington Post that Hagee suggested in "Jerusalem Countdown" that Adolph Hitler was a divine agent sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel in order to fulfill biblical prophecy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/aipac-cheers-an-antisemi_b_43377.html

What you JC2 are often taking to be 'antisemitism reshaped as anti-Israeli', is criticism of the IDF or Israeli government's policies, or of past-events carried out in Israel's name by an elite minority wielding violent power.

Most of the time, this is not antisemitism. It's just political criticism, with the most vociferous of critics often Israeli Jews themselves, closely followed by diaspora Jews. The philosopher Judith Butler has written beautifully about this: No, it’s not anti-semitic Just be aware that you don't misuse the term. And be aware that the same racist sentiment once directed at Jews is now additionally directed at Arabs/Muslims.

e2a: Mon, 11:33 "as Sacha Baron Cohen recently illustrated, with his character 'Borat'."

 

[frogwoman]

I think some anti-israel stuff does have anti-semitic undertones to it though, however. i've seen it on this website. but on the whole i don't think all of the the people who criticise israel are sort of "achtung juden!" types if you know what i mean. sometimes criticising israel dos get used as an excuse to criticise jews and i dont think anyone can deny that though. but i would say that anyone who did that was a fucking idiot.

 

[chainsaw cat]

Pages and pages of proof that religious people are nutters and need a close eye. You loony bastards.

 

[frogwoman]

i actually met some pro palestinian activist ISM types recently on a demo and we had a bit of a chat aobut Isarael and i said to them that i don't always feel comfortable with all of it and they were pretty understanding. Their reaction when i told them i was jewish was not one of a raving anti-semite lets put it that way. We met on a Burma demo and they were nice people and they weren't there to bring their particular agenda there with them, the way that I've often seen on demonstrations about say, Iraq. I only found out when I got chatting to them, they weren't carrying big banners about Hamas or anything like that.

ive seen some dodgy shit on demos though - on one I went on about a year ago about Iraq, there was a guy selling badges with the star of david with a swastika inside. i think anyone who denies that that shit goes on and that there is an effort by some people to use stuff about Israel to create a "new anti-semitism" is either blind or doesn't want to see.

That said i have been around people who were so racist about palestinians it made me feel extremely uncomfortable and it was that which made me think twice about israel and a lot of what i was thinking.

 

[invisibleplanet]

maybe i've been misinformed?

damn american educational system!

Yes, you're misinformed. You're spouting a peculiarly US strain of antisemitism that seems to originate with what I've been told are 'American Patriots' and industrialists (such as Henry Ford who made the Protocols accessible in popular print throughout USA and beyond) and Christian Evangelists such as Billy Graham as well as vigilante/Christian groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. This isn't the first time you've written this anti-Jewish tripe either!

I note this way of viewing Jews is particularly rife in USA, and grew in strength throughout the first 70 years of the 20th Century until laws were altered to outlaw discrimination against Jews by way of deeming them 'a race' (1975?). Anyway, Detroit City, you've been pulled up on this several times already by various different urbanites. Maybe you should make a thread, so we can slowly divest you of your misconceptions.

 

[frogwoman]

There is a lot of anti-semitism in america. most of the anti-semitic material ive seen on the internet comes from america.

i always thought, that if there's ever likely to be another holocaust, it will be there, not in europe.

despite the fact that some peopel in america always criticise europe for being anti-semitic (read - having "biased media" like the bbc). Incidents such as synagogues being burnt, cemetries being desecrated etc, etc, happen A LOT there. If they happened here they would make front page headlines.

i dont mean to be all like "oh this is the end of the world" or whatever, because i dont think there WILL be another holocaust for a long long time, but there is a lot of it about and america is more divided racially and has more potential for things to go badly wrong than most countries in Europe.

 

[invisibleplanet]

I think some anti-israel stuff does have anti-semitic undertones to it though, however. i've seen it on this website. but on the whole i don't think all of the the people who criticise israel are sort of "achtung juden!" types if you know what i mean. sometimes criticising israel dos get used as an excuse to criticise jews and i dont think anyone can deny that though. but i would say that anyone who did that was a fucking idiot.

We are asked to conjure a listener who attributes an intention to the speaker: so-and-so has made a public statement against the Israeli occupation, and this must mean that so-and-so hates Jews or is willing to fuel those who do. The criticism is thus given a hidden meaning, one that is at odds with its explicit claim. The criticism of Israel is nothing more than a cloak for that hatred, or a cover for a call for discriminatory action against Jews. In other words, the only way to understand effective anti-semitism is to presuppose intentional anti-semitism; the effective anti-semitism of any criticism turns out to reside in the intention of the speaker as retrospectively attributed by the listener.
It may be that [the person who sees anti-semitism in criticism of Israel] has something else in mind; namely, that the criticism will be exploited by those who want to see not only the destruction of Israel but the degradation or devaluation of Jewish people in general. There is always that risk, but to claim that such criticism of Israel can be taken only as criticism of Jews is to attribute to that particular interpretation the power to monopolise the field of reception. The argument against letting criticism of Israel into the public sphere would be that it gives fodder to those with anti-semitic intentions, who will successfully co-opt the criticism. Here again, a statement can become effectively anti-semitic only if there is, somewhere, an intention to use it for anti-semitic purposes. Indeed, even if one believed that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-semitic (by Jews, anti-semites, or people who could be described as neither), it would become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to distinguish between criticism of Israel and a hatred of Jews.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/butl02_.html

 

[frogwoman]

mate ... i know all that. Im not saying all criticism of israel is anti-semitic. I dont believe that any more than you do. Im just saying that some of the scum use that as an excuse to cover their sickness up and it disgusting.

 

[invisibleplanet]

There is a lot of anti-semitism in america. most of the anti-semitic material ive seen on the internet comes from america.

i always thought, that if there's ever likely to be another holocaust, it will be there, not in europe.

despite the fact that some peopel in america always criticise europe for being anti-semitic (read - having "biased media" like the bbc). Incidents such as synagogues being burnt, cemetries being desecrated etc, etc, happen A LOT there. If they happened here they would make front page headlines.

i dont mean to be all like "oh this is the end of the world" or whatever, because i dont think there WILL be another holocaust for a long long time, but there is a lot of it about and america is more divided racially and has more potential for things to go badly wrong than most countries in Europe.

I agree with all of that. It makes me sick to the stomach to see what is goes on not-so-free-corporate media and the so-called free-press on the other side of the pond.