Nazi Concentration Camps

[ViolentPanda]

Now I know what people mean by willy waving on this thread. You've got a nerve. You come on like a kid that's just discovered something and thinks no-one else knows about it. You've no idea where I've been, what I've seen, who I've spoken to and lived among. But hey, Johnny, that doesn't matter - you get your digs in first eh?

Hey, could have been worse, he could have trotted out the "self-hating Jew" line at you!

 

[Spion]

Hey, could have been worse, he could have trotted out the "self-hating Jew" line at you!

Yes, it expect it hurts you deeply to be called a traitor by our resident Brainiac.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes, it expect it hurts you deeply to be called a traitor by our resident Brainiac.

The wound in my heart is deep as an abyss, broad as a very broad canyon!

 

[JoePolitix]

You may think that accuracy and distinguishing the various facilities that the Nazis used as "pedantry", personally I think that making a distinction between camps that "processed" victims on arrival, i.e. took their lives and possessions within hours of their arrival, from camps where people were held and used for slave labour, but who had a chance, however small of LIFE, is a distinction worth making.

So please feel free to stick your "Mr Boasty" where the sun doesn't shine, Joe.

OK, fair point. I supose I shouldn't have had a pop at that particular post - it's the thread in general that's shit.

*exits shithole*

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Really? You actually believe that? To me that says more about state education curricula than "quibbles over terminology".
You see, if you (and I mean you as well as the "uninformed young citizens of today" that you mention) conflate the various crimes against humanity that the Nazis committed, if you lump together Aktion Reinhard with slave labour, with ghettoisation, with euthanisation of the disabled, with the concentration camp system, then you miss fundamentals on which Nazism was built. If you concentrate exclusively on one or two points of the compass you miss the true horror of National Socialism in Germany: The horror not only of the attempted eradication of Jewry and the state-endorsed theft of everything that belonged to them, but the horror of the attempted eradication of dissent, the horror of "racial purity" laws, the horror of the plans the architects of "Greater Germany" had for the populations of central and eastern Europe.
People need to see the whole picture, not just the parts that have shock value, not just the parts that provoke visceral revulsion, they need to see, to try to understand the utter depths of the vileness that was and is Nazism.

I agree with what you say here, and I can understand why you would want to see the distinction between concentration camp and death camp, kept clear. I wasn't as rigorous on the correctness of my terminology when I said 'death camp', I'll admit, although the film that is the subject of this thread doesn't seem to draw a clear distinction either.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I have nowhere on this thread castigated Israel. I merely expressed a wish that moving film footage was available to create a greater understanding of other historical atrocities so that they too might be remembered and righted.
.

Then how did you happen upon the Naqba as your example, as opposed to Rwanda, or Darfur for example?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

. Your use of the holocaust to further your cynical aims is nauseating.

What are my cynical aims: to bring up the fact that there may be more angles to the Israeli/Palestinian issue than you might care to admit?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Now I know what people mean by willy waving on this thread. You've got a nerve. You come on like a kid that's just discovered something and thinks no-one else knows about it. You've no idea where I've been, what I've seen, who I've spoken to and lived among. But hey, Johnny, that doesn't matter - you get your digs in first eh?

I know nothing about you, but I know something about the age demographic on this board.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

European anti-Semitism has been directed not only at Jews for around 1,000 years, but also Muslims and frequently, especially during the Crusade centuries, both Jew and 'Saracen' were targeted for ethnic cleansing by Christian leaders. .

The term 'antisemitism' didn't come into existence until the 19th century. The reasons for European enmity towards muslim, was different than that behind anti jewish behaviour.

Don't forget that jews occupy a special place in the Christian belief system. They are the murderers of Christ. The killers of God.

 

[Spion]

Then how did you happen upon the Naqba as your example, as opposed to Rwanda, or Darfur for example?

Because 1) it's the one example of a genocidal act that is most closely connected to the holocaust, and 2) is the one which - being arguably the biggest unresolved injustice of our times - perhaps most undermines the possibility of a peace on this planet

 

[Spion]

What are my cynical aims: to bring up the fact that there may be more angles to the Israeli/Palestinian issue than you might care to admit?

As far as I can see it's you who only has knowledge of one angle on it, and that is the 'official' zionist history which glosses over ethnic cleansing and plays fast and loose with the timing of the narrative to claim the Palestinians left voluntarily in the context of a war. Correct me if I'm wrong about the angles you 'admit to' but from what I've seen it amounts to copying and pasting the above from sources such as the jewish virtual library.

So, I admit there is that 'angle', but I don't think it stands close scrutiny.

There are also the 'angles' of the Israeli new historians - Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe etc - who have studied recently-opened Haganah etc archives to show that the cleansing of Arabs from Palestine was to varying degrees (those two historians don't agree) premeditated.

So, those are the angles I 'care to admit' to. I happily read any angle you like but from the evidence. It seems to me that you're the one who needs to become aware of the differing ways of seeing the conflict that exist.

 

[invisibleplanet]

3) Everyone and his/her mother had already mention the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their villages/towns - Spion didn't raise that in this thread, but after it's mention, he was the first to mention the lack of international film footage during and after the Nakba and thus it's seeming absence on the newsreels of the day. (Unlike Rwanda, Dafur, etc)

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Hey, could have been worse, he could have trotted out the "self-hating Jew" line at you!

I apologize for that. It was an uncalled for comment.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Because 1) it's the one example of a genocidal act that is most closely connected to the holocaust,

A few posts up, laptop says that the contention that there is a connection between the holocaust and the creation of Israel is the Big Lie; to which ymu added an 'Amen'. Do you disagree with that?

 

[Lock&Light]

I apologize for that. It was an uncalled for comment.

As often before, you are prepared to admit to a mistake. So unlike the most who post in this forum.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

As far as I can see it's you who only has knowledge of one angle on it, and that is the 'official' zionist history which glosses over ethnic cleansing and plays fast and loose with the timing of the narrative to claim the Palestinians left voluntarily in the context of a war. Correct me if I'm wrong about the angles you 'admit to' but from what I've seen it amounts to copying and pasting the above from sources such as the jewish virtual library.

So, I admit there is that 'angle', but I don't think it stands close scrutiny.

There are also the 'angles' of the Israeli new historians - Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe etc - who have studied recently-opened Haganah etc archives to show that the cleansing of Arabs from Palestine was to varying degrees (those two historians don't agree) premeditated.

So, those are the angles I 'care to admit' to. I happily read any angle you like but from the evidence. It seems to me that you're the one who needs to become aware of the differing ways of seeing the conflict that exist.

I've read about the initial flight of the Palestininans etc, both the 'jewish' and the 'palestininan' versions. I don't know for certain exactly what happened; but then, nobody does, except maybe for the people who were there, and maybe even they're not so sure.

Btw, I'm not ashamed of my claim of ignorance: as you yourself say, even these two historians who've researched the matter thoroughly, can't agree. And there are many other historians to be thrown into that mix.

What I try to do is quite simple. When ten people come on decrying some horror or atrocity committed by Isreal, I'll go research it. Most every time, there will be a different version of events. When I find that, I'll read it, post it, and argue it.

In the same way that you think it wrong that I only seem to know one side of the story, I think it's important that people reading these threads not come away with the impression that 'your' side of the story is the only true version, either.

 

[ymu]

A few posts up, laptop says that the contention that there is a connection between the holocaust and the creation of Israel is the Big Lie; to which ymu added an 'Amen'. Do you disagree with that?

There is a connection - in that both secular and religious Jews almost universally rejected Zionism until 1930s when the rest of the world closed their borders to refugees and there was nowhere else to go. Zionationalism has never shown much care for the survivors or the right of Jewish people to form their own opinion. It is simply a nonsense to claim that Israel exists because of the Shoah; the Zionationalist project succeeded when it did because of the Shoah. It's not the same thing at all.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

There is a connection - in that both secular and religious Jews almost universally rejected Zionism until 1930s when the rest of the world closed their borders to refugees and there was nowhere else to go. .

I'd call that a fairly significant development, if you were a Jew.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

the Zionationalist project succeeded when it did because of the Shoah. It's not the same thing at all.

You could have been one of those animal overseers in Animal Farm with this kind of doubletalk.

 

[ymu]

Your insistence on not distinguishing between Zionism, Jewishness and being an Israeli is insulting and ignorant Johnny. Not that you care as long as you believe you're scoring points.

These narratives were my parents legacy - a history of resisting injustice, speaking out, and fighting back. But of all their memories that had become my own, one stood out beyond all others. On a summer day in 1944, my mother was herded from a cattle car along with the rest of its human cargo, which had been transported from Belgrade to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. She saw a group of German women, some on foot, some on bicycles, slow down as the strange procession went by and watch with indifferent curiosity on their faces. For me, these women became a loathsome symbol of watching from the sidelines, and at an early age I decided that my place was not with the bystanders.

...

All during my childhood my parents continued pursuing their socialist visions of justice, whether through their involvement in workers' strikes and demonstrations, or their outspoken protest against the military rule over Palestinians in Israel, or their fierce opposition to David Ben-Gurion's dealings with West Germany. The police showed up on our doorstep several times, once to question my mother about distributing political leaflets, later to arrest my father for organizing illegal rallies.

I was five when I asked them why they had come to Israel; after all, they had never been Zionists. I found my answer years later, during the eighties, while studying in Amsterdam. Living there, I felt the true force of the void left after 1945, of how Europe, home to millions of Jews for hundreds of years, had simply spewed them out; how most people had collaborated with Nazi Germany's antipluralistic psychosis and accepted the gradual and final removal of the Jews with indifference.

...

I do not yearn for the landscapes of their childhood. I was born to the saffron of Jerusalem, the squills of the seashore, and the dry desert wind. But in my memory there will always be my parents' backward glance, their last look at the beloved homes from which they were banished. Because of their loss, though, my parents, unlike many other Jewish newcomers, would not move into a home just vacated by other refugees - Palestinians - when they arrived in Israel in 1949.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Your insistence on not distinguishing between Zionism, Jewishness and being an Israeli is insulting and ignorant Johnny. Not that you care as long as you believe you're scoring points.

I figured it out. 'Scoring points' is what's alleged by the person who's unable to sustain his side of the argument.

It's akin to the schoolyard cry of 'It's not fair!'

What's insulting and ignorant, is your odious revision of history.

 

[Detroit City]

Your insistence on not distinguishing between Zionism, Jewishness and being an Israeli is insulting and ignorant Johnny. Not that you care as long as you believe you're scoring points.

so many classifications for only 14 million people worldwide....its incredible!

 

[KeyboardJockey]

European anti-Semitism has been directed not only at Jews for around 1,000 years, but also Muslims and frequently, especially during the Crusade centuries, both Jew and 'Saracen' were targeted for ethnic cleansing by Christian leaders.

Good point. I've read somewhere that life for the Jewish population of Jerusalem during the Muslim rule before the Crusades was tolerable however the crusaders just killed everybody whether they were Jew or Muslim.

Understanding the horrors meted out to Jews in Europe can help to understand the bitterness, desire for any kind of revenge, need for total security and a support for a homeland to escape to in times of persecution. None of this excuses the displacement of other peoples to achieve this purpose of security, but should help others to understand, and find a way to support both peoples' aspirations as much as is humanly possible.

Good point again.

In Nazareth, there is a private holocaust museum begun by Khaled Ksab Mahamid (a muslim) who attempts to inform his fellow Palestinians of the European Holocaust, so they might understand today what drove Jews from Europe into Palestine in such great numbers throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

I'd be interested to hear more about this. Some of the Holocaust denial stuff put out by muslim fanatics (and yes I do accept that all faiths have the capacity for fanaticism- I've seen pictures of anti muslim graffiti in a West Bank settlement that even the bnp wouldn't get away with ) is appalling and I'd be fascinated to see what he is doing and what sort of a response he is getting. Its good to hear of people working to increase understanding of history and its effect on the here and now. People seeing both sides is a pre requiste for peace between peoples imo.

 

[ymu]

I'd be interested to hear more about this. Some of the Holocaust denial stuff put out by muslim fanatics (and yes I do accept that all faiths have the capacity for fanaticism- I've seen pictures of anti muslim graffiti in a West Bank settlement that even the bnp wouldn't get away with ) is appalling and I'd be fascinated to see what he is doing and what sort of a response he is getting. Its good to hear of people working to increase understanding of history and its effect on the here and now. People seeing both sides is a pre requiste for peace between peoples imo.

There's also a lot of misrepresentation of Muslim "holocaust denial". I haven't seen independent copies of Armadinajad's speeches, so I can't comment (I think VP mentioned he may have), but this is a breakdown of how MEMRI selectively quoted Norman Finkelstein to make out that he was a holocaust denier (and a self-hating Jew, obv).

There are bound to be people who are taken in by propaganda - that's its job - but there's far far less anti-semitism in Palestine than is usually assumed, let alone claimed.

Long before I moved to the Strip, I had discovered just how distorted the popular Israeli image of Gaza is - savage, violent, and hostile to Jews. In all the time I lived there, I made certain everyone knew that I was an Israeli and a Jew. The Hebrew speakers amongst my friends talked to me in my own language, without constraint - in their homes and offices, on the streets and in the markets, in the refugee camps, at a house in Khan Yunis where people had come to mourn the death of a girl shot by Israeli soldiers during a break in the curfew, at a demonstration calling for the release of prisoners, at the wedding of someone's brother. I often slept in some of their homes when Israeli-imposed curfews and army patrols still ruled the night.

"What would your friends do if militants founds out there was a Jewish woman staying with them?" I was asked by a man in Tel Aviv, someone with a reputation as a knowledgeable Arabist. The question took me by surprise. That my presence itself might cause trouble had never occurred to me or to my hosts, as I later confirmed. None of my friends were concerned; they opened up their homes to me freely, whether in the Rafah refugee camp or in al-Shatti camp, which sprawls along the shoreline of Gaza City. Thanks to them I learned to see Gaza through the eyes of its people, not through the windshield of an army jeep or in the interrogation rooms of the Shabak, the Israeli security service."

Amira's story is not at all unusual. Here's a couple of online articles, one by an Israeli Jewish journalist in Gaza during the incursions and house demolitions in 2003. The other is by an American Jewish woman in Balata during the (IIRC) 3rd invasion in a matter of weeks in 2002. Both well worth reading, IMO.

I was a human shield
The boy who kissed a soldier

 

[ViolentPanda]

so many classifications for only 14 million people worldwide....its incredible!

Are you being deliberately dense, or has some kind and well-meaning stranger dosed your beer with rohypnol so you're not troubled with difficult thoughts?

Your post implies that the 14 million people who share in being part of the Jewish culture are somehow homogenous. We're not, we're (to borrow a metaphor from the Anglicans) a "broad church". We consist of religiouses, seculars, people from every point of the political compass, of every shade of skin-colour, people from every trade and profession.

In other words, we're just like everyone else except for a single label that denotes the culture we were born to.

 

[chainsaw cat]

Sure you don't mean "concentration camp"? The only designated "death camps" (Sobibor, Treblinka etc) were all in Poland, and were all bulldozed and the sites "remediated" in '43-44.

Well, when he arrived the place was full of bullet riddled starved corpses and mass graves and it was a camp. Admittedly there were workshops of some sort.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

There's also a lot of misrepresentation of Muslim "holocaust denial". I haven't seen independent copies of Armadinajad's speeches, so I can't comment (I think VP mentioned he may have), but this is a breakdown of how MEMRI selectively quoted Norman Finkelstein to make out that he was a holocaust denier (and a self-hating Jew, obv).

There are bound to be people who are taken in by propaganda - that's its job - but there's far far less anti-semitism in Palestine than is usually assumed, let alone claimed.



Amira's story is not at all unusual. Here's a couple of online articles, one by an Israeli Jewish journalist in Gaza during the incursions and house demolitions in 2003. The other is by an American Jewish woman in Balata during the (IIRC) 3rd invasion in a matter of weeks in 2002. Both well worth reading, IMO.

I was a human shield
The boy who kissed a soldier

This is interesting as it ties in with what I heard on Radio 4 the other day about a guy who made Aliyah to Israel and endedup living on the West Bank and traded and exchanged various lifecycle greetings and all the normal stuff you would do in small towns. I got the impression that although people were leading separate religious and family lives there was civil interactions going on. I don't doubt that this is the full story but I'm also hearing of loads of good work going on in school twinning etc (small education charity based in Israel is getting Arab and Jewish kids together for extended camps and exchanges etc). In an environment where you have Jewish kids who've
been told that their Muslim Israeli neighbours are murdering devils etc etc, and Muslim kids being told the same about their Jewish Israeli neighbours, these charities are doing shitloads of work bringing people together in baby steps but hopefully in a much more collaborative way.

 

[ymu]

This is interesting as it ties in with what I heard on Radio 4 the other day about a guy who made Aliyah to Israel and endedup living on the West Bank and traded and exchanged various lifecycle greetings and all the normal stuff you would do in small towns. I got the impression that although people were leading separate religious and family lives there was civil interactions going on. I don't doubt that this is the full story but I'm also hearing of loads of good work going on in school twinning etc (small education charity based in Israel is getting Arab and Jewish kids together for extended camps and exchanges etc). In an environment where you have Jewish kids who've
been told that their Muslim Israeli neighbours are murdering devils etc etc, and Muslim kids being told the same about their Jewish Israeli neighbours, these charities are doing shitloads of work bringing people together in baby steps but hopefully in a much more collaborative way.

Aye. There have been Jews living in Palestine since 1948, and economic settlers who plan to seek asylum in the Palestinian state if it is ever formed. It's not as simplistic as propaganda sources make out. The claims that Israel makes about what Palestinian kids are taught are a good example.

Arafat's speech to the UN in 1974 is also worth a read. The secular Palestinian groups have long distinguished appropriately between Zionism and Jewishness.

Just as colonialism heedlessly used the wretched, the poor, the exploited as mere inert matter with which to build and to carry out settler colonialism, so too were destitute, oppressed European Jews employed on behalf of world imperialism and of the Zionist leaders. European Jews were transformed into the instruments of aggression -- they became the elements of settler colonialism intimately allied to racial discrimination .

Zionist theology was utilized against our Palestinian people: the purpose was not only the establishment of Western-style settler colonialism but also the severing of Jews from their various homelands and subsequently their estrangement from their nations. Zionism is an ideology that is imperialist, colonialist, racist; it is profoundly reactionary and discriminatory; it is united with anti-Semitism in its retrograde tenets and is, when all is said and done, another side of the same base coin. For when what is proposed is that adherents of the Jewish faith, regardless of their national residence, should neither owe allegiance to their national residence nor live on equal footing with its other, non-Jewish citizens -- when that is proposed we hear anti-Semitism being proposed. When it is proposed that the only solution for the Jewish problem is that Jews must alienate themselves from communities or nations of which they have been a historical part, when it is proposed that Jews solve the Jewish problem by immigrating to and forcibly settling the land of another people -- when this occurs, exactly the same position is being advocated as the one urged by anti-Semites against Jews.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat's_1974_UN_General_Assembly_speech

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Aye. There have been Jews living in Palestine since 1948, and economic settlers who plan to seek asylum in the Palestinian state if it is ever formed. It's not as simplistic as propaganda sources make out. The claims that Israel makes about what Palestinian kids are taught are a good example.

Interesting stuff from an at first glance credible source. Howeve I'm hearing this from educators in the region who are speaking about both sides being told to fear the other.

Arafat's speech to the UN in 1974 is also worth a read. The secular Palestinian groups have long distinguished appropriately between Zionism and Jewishness.

But thats the secular groups not the Islamists (and yes I do know that there are religious extremists on both sides). I don't doubt for one minuite that the majority of people both in Israel itself and the occupied territories, Arab and Jew want a lasting peace but this feeling of the majority has to be transmuted into effective political action.

 

[Spion]

I've read about the initial flight of the Palestininans etc, both the 'jewish' and the 'palestininan' versions. I don't know for certain exactly what happened; but then, nobody does, except maybe for the people who were there, and maybe even they're not so sure.

Btw, I'm not ashamed of my claim of ignorance: as you yourself say, even these two historians who've researched the matter thoroughly, can't agree. And there are many other historians to be thrown into that mix.

I think you're being wilfully ignorant. There are huge amounts of evidence, ranging from oral testimony through to not long opened Israeli archives which have thrown new light on what happened. Pushing your JVL screeds that promote the idea that the Arabs simply left just shows you're not keeping up with what historians are discovering about the naqba.

What I try to do is quite simple. When ten people come on decrying some horror or atrocity committed by Isreal, I'll go research it. Most every time, there will be a different version of events. When I find that, I'll read it, post it, and argue it.

It's quite astonishing that at no point do you say you assess the evidence of the claims. What you are saying here is that you are quite literally prejudiced, that it doesn't matter if the official version of events is true or not you'll argue it. Your candour is staggering.

In the same way that you think it wrong that I only seem to know one side of the story, I think it's important that people reading these threads not come away with the impression that 'your' side of the story is the only true version, either.

Now, is that a real danger? You'd have to have led a pretty strange existence to live in any 'western' country and not be very familiar indeed with the mainstream zionist narrative of 1947/48.

Anyone who gives a shit about peace, justice etc should do their best to familiarise themselves with the evidence. You don't seem to be, but we'll test that in detail on the appropriate threads