- Censorship is on the rise. Is it coming to America?
Author: Webb
Ban the Sham
THOUSANDS OF IRISH AMERICANS WEAR A SHAMROCK TO CELEBRATE ST PAT’S DAY BUT BOSTON FOLK SAY IT’S LIKE A NAZI SWASTIKA … IT MAKES THEM FEEL UNWELCOME
Julian Brouwer
In New York
LOONY Americans are set to ban the Shamrock in Boston following complaints from minority groups.
They have bizarrely compared Ireland’s three-leafed emblem to the Nazi swastika.
Now the shamrock will become a thing of the past as the emblems are torn down from playgrounds, doors and windows in housing developments all over the city.
The decision has been made by Boston Housing Association following complaints from blacks and Hispanics.
Lydia Agro, BHA’s communications director said housing managers are advising residents that shamrocks and other “bias indicators” are offensive to some minority residents and should not be publicly displayed.
“There are a number of symbols that have been identified by some of our residents as making them uncomfortable and unwelcome,” she said.
“In response to those concerns, we’re including shamrocks along with swastikas, Confederate flags and other symbols which may give offence.
“We’re aware that symbols such as shamrocks can reflect racial and ethnic pride,” Miss Agro said.
“We respect that, but at the same time we want to promote a sense of community here. We’re asking our residents to avoid public displays of any bias indicators.”
The decision has been greeted with outrage by many of the city’s large population of Irish American residents.
Jean McDonald, who is leader of a residents group in Boston’s Mary Ellen McCormack Development, said elderly tenants are anxious about the policy.
She said it sent them the message that their traditions are no longer acceptable.
“Some of the women here already feel like they’re living in a prison colony,” she said. “Some of them have been here more than 20 years.
“You’d think they’d be entitled to some respect. Instead, they’re actually living in fear, not knowing what to expect next.”
James Kelly, president of the Boston City Council, said the percentage of whites and Irish Americans in the city’s public housing has been dropping sharply in recent years.
“There’s only a small number of Irish Americans left, mostly elderly on fixed income,” he said.
“Having them take down their shamrocks is a hateful way of letting them know their time has passed.
“Believe me, the ‘no Irish need apply’ mentality is very much alive and well at the BHA.”
According to Kelly, minority residents now constitute the majority of every family development in the city, and the BHA is administered almost exclusively by blacks and Hispanics.
Although the anti-shamrock policy was supposedly designed to foster harmony among a diverse population of residents, it is having the opposite effect.
But residents’ leader Jean McDonald is to defy the BHA ban by putting a wooden shamrock outside her home in the build-up to St Patrick’s Day.
“You’ll probably be seeing even more shamrocks around here now, and I hope we don’t have any violence over this,” added Miss McDonald.
Many residents are angry that the BHA is putting shamrocks and swastikas in the same category.
The shamrock, a trifoliate plant said to have been picked by St. Patrick as a symbol to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity, is regarded as the national emblem of Ireland, while the swastika is the anti-Semitic emblem of Nazi Germany.
Jeannie Flaherty from the McCormack development said that she’ll be putting a shamrock on her door any day now.
“I’d like to see someone try to get me to take it down,” she said. “There’s a Chinese man who lives across the hall with some kind of Oriental sign on his door.
“Maybe they should check that out when they come around to talk to me.”
A city youth worker added that shamrocks, which still adorn basketball courts and murals in the development, were symbols of pride when he was growing up there.
“Even the Italian kids wore shamrocks,” he said. “We had our differences, but we got along OK.
“Nowadays, the kids here would rather shoot heroin than basketballs.
“This place has been going downhill for years, and kids are literally dying from drugs. It’s a real sad situation, and the BHA’s talking about banning shamrocks?”
Sunday Mirror, February 18, 2001
He’s done it again
Charles Laurence
National Post
February 17, 2001
NEW YORK — As the fogs of obfuscation begin to lift from the latest mess of his own peculiar making, former president Bill Clinton is looking like the seasoned snake-oil salesman who has just been sold a pup.
[…] Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, called Mr. Clinton in the final hours of his administration, while Rabbi Irving Greenfield, head of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, wrote a missive in support of a pardon on official letterhead.
“This is squandering the moral capital that Israel needs, that was deposited by the blood at Auschwitz,” says Mr. Stein. “That capital is needed in Israel’s ongoing struggle for safety, even survival. To use it for [Marc] Rich is appalling.” The Yiddish word for Jewish feelings, he explained, is shondah (shame).
[…]
Holocaust Museum Should Not Receive Fed Funds, Group Says
By Lawrence Morahan
CNS Senior Staff Writer
February 16, 2001
(CNSNews.com) — By taking sides in controversial political and religious issues, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has departed from its original charter of telling the story of the Holocaust and therefore disqualifies itself from receiving federal funds, a national Jewish organization said.
Toward Tradition, a national coalition of conservative Jews and Christians based in Mercer Island, Wash., criticized the museum, among other things, for showing visitors a film that links Nazism to Christianity and for sponsoring a panel that accused the CIA of genocide.
“Many people who aren’t Jewish feel uncomfortable criticizing an institution that almost represents the Holy Grail of American political discourse right now,” said Yarden Weidenfeld, national director of Toward Tradition, in a phone interview. “But we believe that as a predominantly Jewish organization, we have a special role to play in making the case for why the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum should not be federally funded.”
The group took issue with the museum for celebrating a book that charged Israel with “ethnic cleansing” and for seeking to appoint, as director of its Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, a scholar who compared the election of President Reagan to the rise of Nazism. The scholar, John Roth, eventually withdrew under protest.
The museum, which receives an estimated 2 million visitors annually since it opened in April 1993, was built with private donations on land provided by the U.S. government in downtown Washington, D.C.
Congress mandated the creation of the museum in 1980, and 60 percent of its funding comes through the House Appropriations Committee. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, whose members are appointed by the president, oversees the running of the museum.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, said in a statement, “As time goes by, it becomes increasingly hard to see how one might explain to, let us say, a wheat farmer in Iowa why his tax dollars should go to support such a foolish institution. Nor is it as if the United States had anything whatever to do with the Holocaust, a fact that made the museum a questionable object of federal largesse to begin with.”
A museum movie shown to visitors that links Christianity to the rise of Nazism is a “glaring example” of abuse of taxpayer funds, Weidenfeld said.
While the history of Christianity in Europe, especially during medieval times, was marked by anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews, “American taxpayers and American Christians have absolutely nothing to do with that,” Weidenfeld said.
“In the American context, Christianity has served as a very philo-Semetic influence on American non-Jews and the relationship that American Christians have had with the Jews is one of tremendous admiration and love and respect.
“We believe that since this museum is supported by American tax dollars and engages in any type of efforts to link Christianity with Nazism — those two facts together are tremendously problematic and ultimately not showing the proper gratitude and respect that we believe Jews owe American Christians,” he said.
The museum, which is open to the public free of charge, tells the story of 6 million Jews and other minority groups that were exterminated by the Nazis in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
Other commentators criticized the museum for what they called its one-sided portrayal of the issue of homosexuality during the Third Reich.
Nathaniel Lehrman, M.D. has pointed out what he called a “grave historical error” to the museum regarding its documentation of the relationship between homosexuals and the Nazis, but the museum has refused to consider his work.
“The Nazi Party was largely homosexual,” said Lehrman, a Holocaust scholar and commentator. “But the only discussion the Holocaust Museum has had about the relationship between homosexuals and the Nazis is the story of the 5,000 to 10,000 homosexuals who were sent to camps, and who possibly died there. The homosexuals were victims. The notion of homosexuals as perpetrators has been systematically ignored by the museum.”
Toward Tradition said the museum was taking sides in other controversial issues. “There are many Zionist and zealous Jews who were concerned that the museum celebrated a book that charged Israel with ethnic cleansing and accused the CIA of genocide. This over-politicization of the Holocaust is of great concern, but it makes it all the more so when the institution that is promoting this is the recipient of federal tax dollars,” Weidenfeld said.
Toward Tradition also criticized Rabbi Irving Greenberg, chairman of the Holocaust Museum’s Council, for writing to President Clinton on museum stationary in the last days of the administration, urging him to pardon alleged tax cheat Marc Rich.
Permitting Rich to return to the United States without criminal penalty would be “one of the most Godlike actions that anyone could ever do,” Greenberg said.
Tom Cooney, a museum spokesman, said a communication by Rabbi Greenberg was printed on museum stationary “in error” and Greenberg had acknowledged his mistake to the council members.
Addressing other concerns raised by Toward Tradition, Cooney said the documentary shown to museum visitors “did not attempt to blame anything on Christianity.”
Instead, “it was pointing out that at a time when Christianity was prominent, some things happened in the world that weren’t very palatable,” he said.
“It’s a matter of things not being looked at in the right context,” Clooney said. “Two million people go through this institution every year, including decision makers. Everybody is aware of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and clearly they don’t have the kind of issues that this particular group does. Quite clearly we’re not engaged in any kind of action other than one that explains to people what happened at a particular moment in time and what led up to that.”
Thomas advises standing firm
By LAURIE ASSEO, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — People who disagree with political orthodoxy should not “censor ourselves” or yield to criticism, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday.
“By yielding to a false form of civility, we sometimes allow our critics to intimidate us,” the justice said at the annual dinner of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“Active citizens are often subjected to truly vile attacks; they are branded as mean-spirited, racist, Uncle Tom, homophobic, sexist, etc.,” Thomas said. As a result, he added, sometimes “we censor ourselves. This is not civility, it is cowardice, a well-intentioned self-deception at best.”
Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 after a bruising confirmation battle, told of getting a strong negative reaction in 1980 when as a government official he was quoted as questioning the “sacred policies” of affirmative action, welfare and school busing.
“Debate was not permitted. Orthodoxy was enforced,” Thomas said. “When whites questioned the conventional wisdom on these issues it was considered bad form. When blacks did so, it was treason.”
“These rules of orthodoxy still apply,” the justice said. “You had better not engage in serious debate or discussion unless you are willing to endure attacks that range from mere hostile bluster to libel.”
However, he added, “one should not be cowed by criticism.”
Thomas said that after he dissented from a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that let inmates sue prison guards for using excessive force even if no serious injuries are inflicted, “I was widely denounced for advocating the beating of prisoners, which is ridiculous.”
People who say children should be raised in two-parent families “are often accused of trying to impose their values on others,” Thomas said. He called such criticism “purely and simply an in-your-face response. It is, in short, intimidation.”
But he said people should not shy away from stating their views.
“We are required to wade into those things that matter to our country and our culture, no matter what the disincentives are or the personal cost,” Thomas said.
Holocaust Education and Awareness Act of 2001
Holocaust Education and Awareness Act of 2001 (Introduced in the House)
Inside the concentration camps
To: The MEDIA
Re: CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVORS
Dear Sir / Madam,
My name is Alexander McClelland I am an Australian veteran of WWII, a TPI (Totally and Permanently Incapacitated) and a survivor of a Concentration Camp.
Aged 19 I volunteered for the AIF and fought as a Bren Gunner in 2/1 Infantery Btn in North Africa, Greece and Crete where I was wounded and captured by German forces. I spent the rest of the war as a POW but due to my many escape attempts I was finally put into the TEREZIN Concentration Camp close to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
I have recorded my experiences in an autobiographical book entitled : ‘The Answer — Justice’. In 1965 I was featured in an award winning but historically inaccurate Australian television documentary on Theresienstadt called ‘Where Death wears a smile’
I don’t receive my TPI Pension because of the heavy wounds I received in the battle action on Crete. I get my TPI Pension because of the inhumane treatment I received in the Concentration Camp. It is a mistake to believe that the Germans had enough spare manpower to staff and run the concentration camps. The Germans only ever guarded the outer perimeter of the camps, we Prisoners hardly saw German soldiers, so it was not the SS or German guards that beat me up daily.
No, the daily beatings that left me totally incapacitated, came from two fellow Prisoners called KAPOS.
Kapos (or Camp Police) had extra priviliges, such as their own room and they also had power, For example the Power to say who got to visit the Camp Sick Bay or the Camp Brothel, and because of the absence of the very disciplined Germans, these Kapos even had the Power over Life & Death.
The two Kapos that beat me daily, using a heavy wooden baton they called ‘Herr Doktor’ (The Doctor) were both fellow Prisoners, both were Jewish, one from Hungary and the other was, I believe, a Ukrainian. I was often witness when they dragged other hapless prisoners from their cells onto the ‘Appelplatz’ and beat them to death with ‘The Doctor’.
So whenever I meet a ‘ Camp survivor’ now, I look him deeply in the eyes to see what sort of a ‘survivor’ they are … whether they were really a Prisoner just like me, or whether they were one of the many ‘Privileged’ ones who survived the war being more inhumane to other Prisoners than the Germans ever were.
As a matter of fact, it was a German SS Soldier who saved my life after the Kapos, who after beating me sent me outside the camp on a work detail, with a dangerously poisoned leg. The SS Soldier walking by, saw my mates helping me, came over and then gave me his medical kit.
I now look deeply into the eyes of the ‘survivors’, because I know that not all Concentration Camp survivors were innocent victims. I know that a lot of the Prisoners were brutal and inhumane criminals. The world has never been told the whole truth about what life in the Camps was like. All we ever hear or read in the media is , how bad the German guards were and how badly they treated their Prisoners. I was in more than 8 POW Camps and a Concentration Camp, so who would know the truth? Me or the Media!
sincerely
Alexander McClelland
PO Box 887
Toronto NSW 2283
Cremation time is a big problem
Too bad India doesn’t have the secret Nazi technology that, according to anti-revisionists, allowed them to cremate Jewish bodies in a few minutes using a couple pounds of coal! Funny, how no one today has been able to equal that Nazi technology. A skeptic might wonder if the stories of Nazi crematory efficiency aren’t gross exaggerations.
Cremations nonstop in quake’s wake
- DISASTER: The number of dead creates an overwhelming need.
January 31, 2001
By NIRMALA GEORGE
The Associated Press
AHMEDABAD, India — An electric crematorium in this city was so overloaded that the hinges of the furnace door melted. Outside, wood-fired funeral pyres burned around the clock, overwhelming mourners with foul-smelling smoke.
“The bodies just keep coming in. Sometimes entire families, other times three or four members of a family,” said Syed Zain, the operator of the electric furnace at the Ellis Bridge Crematorium in central Ahmedabad.
The awesome human toll extracted by Friday’s earthquake in western India becomes obvious at Ahmedabad’s 11 crematoriums, which have been overwhelmed by the unending stream of bodies.
Hindus, the majority in India, believe that not cremating a body will leave the person’s soul in limbo — a fate worse than hell.
Zain said he has lost count of the number of bodies he has cremated. Besides those who died in Ahmedabad, people have brought corpses from nearby towns.
At the Ellis Bridge Crematorium, the registry clerk said that from an average of three to six cremations a day, the numbers had risen to about 50 a day.
“I have never seen anything like this in 22 years that I have worked in this crematorium. The number have mounted with each passing day,” said Zain, his eyes red with fatigue and fumes from the nearby wood-burning funeral pyres.
The proximity of the Ellis Bridge Crematorium to the V.S. Hospital, one of the city’s biggest, has meant that people who died of injuries have received the last rites here.
The electric furnace has been operating around the clock, Zain said. In the compound of the crematorium, 10 to 12 traditional funeral pyres of wooden logs burned continuously. At any given time, at least 10 or 12 bodies were being consigned to flames.
At the Saptarishi cremation ground, mourners lit incense sticks and threw sandalwood, sesame seeds and clarified butter into the flames in accordance with Hindu rituals. But the sweet combination could not hide the sulfurous, noxious smell of burning flesh.
The long wait and queues at the crematoriums have forced families to burn two or three bodies together.
Aslam Mansoori, the operator of the electric furnace at the Saptarishi crematorium, said it was so overworked after the earthquake that the hinges of its doors melted. The furnace had to be cooled down and the hinges replaced.
The electric furnace is maintained at more than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, but the temperature in its inner chamber goes up when corpses are burned.
In Bhuj, the town closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, workers used wood pulled from fallen houses to light funeral pyres.
The late-night hours are the most hectic, said A. B. Mehta, manager at the Dudheshwar Cremation Home, the city’s oldest facility. At night, bodies lying unclaimed in the hospital or found on the streets are brought to be burned.
The Shoah and those missing photographs
by Jacques Mandelbaum
“Le Monde,” January 25, 2001, p. 17
The photography exhibit “Memory of the camps” now taking place at the Sully Hotel, raises, as is implied by the very debate it has stirred, the question of the role and use of images in the process of recalling an especially grim era in the history of the Western world… pictures taken (during the liberation of the camps) were used in ways that were often historically problematical, from the very first newspaper photos and newsreels to the [now] famous documentary films, such as Alain Resnais’s memorable Night and Fog (1956).
… All well-known images employed in the portrayal of this crime are, if not [outrightly] false, at the very least ill-adapted… aerial photos of a [concentration] camp taken from an altitude of 7,000 meters, on April 4, 1944, by American reconnaissance planes, where the readers can make out all the mundane details, except the presence of gas chambers.
… Devoted for the most part, by the cumulative impact of the exhibit, to photographs of the world of the concentration camp, (this exhibit) is literally haunted by the near-total absence of photographs relating to the extermination program … If seeing is believing, how then does one make the admission that where the Shoah is concerned it is precisely [tell-tale] images we are [almost] completely without.
New Zealand school apologizes for thesis that denied Holocaust
SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 24 (JTA) — A New Zealand university has apologized to the Jewish community for awarding a master’s degree to a student who had written a thesis denying the Holocaust.
The 1993 thesis by Joel Hayward is cited regularly by neo-Nazis and other Holocaust deniers as evidence that they have academic support for their positions.
[…]
In 1998, Fredrick Toben, whose advocacy of Holocaust denial has been found to be unlawful by both the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Federal Court of Justice in Germany, tried to submit Hayward’s thesis as his defense against charges that Holocaust denial was not a legitimate academic subject.
Canterbury University awarded a degree to the author of the thesis, “The Fate of Jews in German Hands,” but after a study has concluded that it had a “perverse and unjustified conclusion.”
The university’s vice chancellor, Daryl Le Grew, apologized to the Jewish community but said the university had no power to revoke the granting of the degree.
The president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, David Zwartz, said the council is “deeply concerned that after all that has happened the Jewish community is left with a Holocaust denial thesis.”
“There is a fundamental difference in our attitudes,” Zwartz said. “The university has been concerned with how the thesis came to be awarded a first-class honors M.A., and how it can prevent such things happening again. The Jewish council doesn’t want it to happen again, but it is also concerned with the effect the thesis has and will have in the future in encouraging Holocaust deniers to think they have academic support for their poisonous views.”
[…]
Source: jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20001224Schoolapologizesfo.html
By Jeremy Jones
Published: 12/24/2000