Author: Webb

Smoking Crematories

Dated:

By RODNEY TANAKA

The Los Angeles Times

GLENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE — The audience received an unforgettable history lesson, and the speaker hopes to keep it that way.

George Brown spoke at Glendale Community College Tuesday, describing his experiences during the Nazi Holocaust.

The event was organized by GCC students David Osipitan and Michael Ibarra for the One America Project, a series of events highlighting diversity. Brown visits many schools through the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance.

Brown’s family, originally from Hungary, were taken to Auschwitz, the forced-labor and extermination center in Poland, by train in 1944.

[…]

The Nazis murdered more than 2 million people at Auschwitz between 1941 and 1945.

The smoke from the crematoriums rose from the chimneys all the time, Brown said. A block leader for his barracks explained the situation to him when he first arrived.

“He said, `The only way you leave this place is through the chimneys,’ ” Brown said. “Eighty percent of the people left through the chimneys.” The Jewish people in the camp lost their identities and were treated worse than prisoners, Brown said. He was separated from his brothers and sister, and learned they all died by the end of the war, Brown said.

He managed to stay with his father when they were sent to labor camps in Austria. On Feb. 12, 1945, Brown turned 16 years old. His father told him he hoped at age 17 he would be free and be able to tell the world about the Nazi atrocities.

[…]

“Someone has said the Holocaust never happened,” Brown said. “If so, what happened to my family?”

The Holocaust as kitsch

Dated:

In St. Petersburg, Fla., the powers that be have graciously prepared a list of “40 Fun Things to Do” in their city. Number 11 on the list is “Remember the Holocaust.” Those out for an enjoyable afternoon are invited to visit the local Holocaust museum, where for $39.95 they can purchase a scale-model replica of a Polish boxcar once used by the Nazis to transport Jews and others to the concentration camps. (If that’s not enough, they can donate $5,000 or more to the museum and receive a genuine railway spike from Treblinka preserved in Lucite.)

[…]

In Los Angeles, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance promotes itself like a theme park. “Travel Leaders and Tour Operators!” barks the publicity material. “Make the Museum of Tolerance part of an exciting and informative itinerary for your group. Check us out for group discounts, special bonuses.”

[…]

Matters are even worse in the academic world. […] Today, with the emergence of a new discipline called Holocaust studies, the academicization of the subject is proceeding apace, complete with meaningless jargon and political agenda-setting.

Where one leading scholar pronounces the Holocaust “a multidimensional, many-person event,” another contends that it offers grounds for “non- objectivist, anti-positivist, feminist objectivity.” The titles of papers delivered at the 29th annual Holocaust scholars’ conference last week — “An Afrocentric Critique of The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Pop Art Representations of the Holocaust,” the “Holocaust and Femicide/Female Feticide” — give all too keen a sense of the academic fashions that have taken hold of the field.

Why does the Holocaust exert such great fascination these days outside the Jewish community? And why are its images being abused by those who purport to be custodians of its memory?

The answer to both questions undoubtedly lies at least in part in the rising culture of victimhood, visible in our society at large but particularly ensconced in the universities. As the ultimate in victimization, the Holocaust is simply assuming pride of place in a field that also comprises women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, disability studies and all the other victim disciplines that today constitute the cutting edge of the academic world.

It is in the interest neither of American Jews, nor of the broader public, to turn the Holocaust into grist for the mill of academic trendiness or into a carnival.

Source: GABRIEL SCHOENFELD, The New York Times, query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=
FA0A13F93D550C7B8DDDAA0894D1494D81

Webmaster note: On January 30, 2002, a man identifying himself as Gabriel Schoenfeld called me and demanded that I remove this article from this site immediately, calling me a “dirty dog.” (Those senior editors at Commentary certainly are eloquent!) Subsequently, on February 6, 2002, I received a letter from The New York Times’ legal department, demanding that the page be taken down immediately. The above text is a fair-use excerpt of Schoenfeld’s opinion piece, which appeared in The New York Times on March 18, 1999. If you have access to back issues of the NYT, look for “Death Camps as Kitsch,” by Gabriel Schoenfeld, The New York Times, March 18, 1999, Op-Ed 682 words, Late Edition — Final, Section A, Page 25, Column 1. It may be worth the effort, considering how much trouble they’re going through to suppress it.

Annihilation through Catholicism

Dated:

Re: Kieslowski (Fox)

Author: Tamar Fox = [[email protected]]

Date:=20 Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:04:20 -0600=20

Reply-To: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust

Sender: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust

From: Tamar Fox [[email protected]]

The Jewish woman wears a gold crucifix on a chain, given her during the war when she was in hiding. Now, apparently, she is a devout Catholic, while the Polish woman is an atheist.

I have not seen this film and am not impressed by the summary and the too-heavy symbolism described there. The above-quoted line seems to me to convey the message that the Jew’s survival/redemption depends on her conversion to catholicism, a message I find rather distatsteful. In fact, the Jew has not been saved, but annihilated. It is a new, Catholic person that emerges from the ‘hiding’.

Tamar Fox

Non-white, Nazi, Gestapo-like park rangers

Dated:

You have nothing to lose but your leashes

Dog owners are rebelling against what they see as draconian pet law

Douglas Martin

Tuesday, March 16, 1999

New York Times News Service

In cities and towns across the continent, a chorus of politically influential voices cries out in unison: Woof!

From leash laws to legislation to curb dangerous animals to regulations limiting the number of dogs per household, canine questions have become the new hot button of local politics.

[…]

In Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, and scores of other cities, people scream for more dog space in city parks. In Santa Fe, N.M., last year, a resident filed a $2-million (US) suit against the city, charging “Gestapo-style” enforcement of the leash law.

[…]

The New York City parks department says that surveys of parks favoured by dog users show that most people in the parks do not come with dogs; mail is running more than three to one in favour of its crackdown. People are irked that dog owners berate low-paid park rangers, often minorities, as Nazis, and exultantly unleash their dogs after an enforcer turns the corner.

[…]

Death by Denier

Dated:

The man who bore witness

Primo Levi, an obsessive chronicler of his life as a Holocaust survivor, gets a biography from someone else.

PRIMO LEVI: Tragedy of an Optimist By Myriam Anissimov Overlook Press, 452 pages

_Globe_and_Mail_ ([email protected]) | Saturday, March 6, 1999 |

KENNETH SHERMAN

Two hundred years from now, readers who wish to know our century will turn to the prose of Primo Levi, survivor of Auschwitz.

Levi was born into a cultured middle-class Jewish family in Turin in 1919. Myriam Anissimov, in this first full-scale biography of the Italian author and chemist, records that Levi’s father, Cesare, was an electrical engineer and an avid reader of literature. From him Levi learned that the humanities and the sciences need not be separate worlds.

[…]

Levi was fortunate to have entered university before the Fascists instituted their racial laws banning Jews from higher education. Still, no professor of chemistry was willing to supervise his thesis. The young physics lecturer Nicola Dallaporta helped Levi get his degree. He told Levi after the war that Providence had chosen him to become the chronicler of the slave-labour camp, a concept Levi refused to accept since his Auschwitz experiences had convinced him that there was no Providence, and no God.

[…]

Upon his return to Turin, Levi felt the need to bear witness: “I had a torrent of urgent things to tell the civilized world. I felt the tattooed number on my arm burning like a sore.” But the civilized world was not very interested in what he had to say. No large publisher would accept his powerful account, Survival in Auschwitz. Anissimov reports that the book received a few positive reviews but was “distributed rather than sold.”

[…]

On the morning of April 11, 1987, Levi plunged down the stairwell of his house, an apparent suicide. His death shocked his readers. How could this sober and diligent man, who had cast a rationalist’s penetrating light on our century’s most enormous crime, fall into the abyss? Anissimov does not provide a definitive answer, but presents a constellation of facts. She reports that after his return from Auschwitz, Levi experienced severe bouts of depression that he found increasingly difficult to overcome. She describes the complications he was having recovering from a prostate operation, his anxiety over his senile, 91-year-old mother, as well as his despondency over the media coverage being given to professional Holocaust deniers.

[…]

Kenneth Sherman’s essay Primo Levi and the Unlistened-to Story can be found in his book Void and Voice.

We Get Letters

On Jul 17, 2004, at 9:53 AM, Ken Sherman wrote:

I note that you have used my book review of “The Tragedy of an Optimist” on your website. I cannot see why, since the review neither supports nor denies your claims. It is merely the review of a biography. I would ask that you please remove it from your site.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Sherman

Mr. Sherman,

Thanks for contacting me about the contents of my website.

Actually, I have NOT used your book review: I have excerpted portions of it. By my count, I have used fewer than 400 words, and my understanding is that the doctrine of fair use allows me to quote up to 500 words, so I believe I am within my rights in presenting this information.

As to its relevance, I found it of interest, and I feel that others may, too.

HHP Webmaster

July 18, 2004 7:52:08 AM PDT

Mr. Sir,

Thanks for your reply. I sold the electronic rights for that review to the Globe and Mail and will pass this matter along to their legal department.

TO: Editor/Publisher, The Holocaust Historiography Project

It has been brought to our attention that you have electronically reprinted copyrighted material on your web site. We request that you cease and desist reprint of material by Mr. Kenneth Sherman immediately. Our Policy does not grant any electronic publication.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

Francine Bellefeuille
Permissions Editor
The Globe and Mail
Phone: 416-585-5257.
Fax: 416-585-5670
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 16:54:25 -0700

To: “Bellefeuille, Francine” [[email protected]]
July 21, 2004 4:54:25 PM PDT

Dear Ms. Bellefeuille,

Thank you for contacting me. Please let me know what your “Fair Use” policies are.

HHP Webmaster

Just remember, Nazis were NOT fashion-forward

Dated:

In his previous job as editor of the British monthly _Loaded_, James Brown created a publishing success by unapologetically pandering to the sensibilities of young, male party animals. Now his taste for outrage has lost him his new job — he’s been doing it for a year — as editor of _British_GQ_. His mistake? To include the Nazis on a list of the 20th century’s best-dressed men. The Newhouse family, which owns the magazine, didn’t think his joke was funny. Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Conde Nast, said in a statement yesterday that Brown’s resignation was by “mutual consent,” adding Brown “is a talented editor … Unfortunately, philosophical differences have arisen between James and Conde Nast.” Brown upset people on both sides of the pond by hailing the style sense of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Nazi army. Ken Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League told the _New_York_Daily_News_ that the gimmick was “outrageous.” When you do something like this, there’s the possibility of making it hip. People, especially young people, might say, ‘They’re not so bad. Look how well they were dressed.'” Lord Janner, chair of the Holocaust Education Trust, told Britain’s _Leicester_Mercury_: “The image of this general alongside some of the world’s most gifted actors, musicians, and designers makes decent people want to vomit.”

ARTS | Fascist Fashion

_National_Post_ ([email protected])

February 22, 1999, p. D4

Truth about cats and dogs

Dated:

[…] One of the most distressing moments in the Holocaust was when the Nazis decreed that no Jew could have a pet. Fathers lined up with the family dog, mothers with the cat, little old ladies with their budgerigars in order to have them registered and handed over to the Third Reich. Toronto’s bylaw isn’t the Third Reich, but it has this in common: The new animal bylaw has nothing to do with sanitation or a better quality of life for citizens. Its purpose is to regulate and persecute citizens. Existing laws were sufficient to deal with any problem this new bylaw addresses. What Toronto Councillor George Mammolitti (who originally asked that all cats be walked on a leash) wants to do is accustom us further to the idea that our habits, pastimes and property — animate or inanimate — are the business of the authorities and not under our own control. He and his kind want more power to inspect and interfere with our lives. They create and nourish the neighbourhood busybody and informer, without whom no tyranny can exist.

February 19, 1999 | Barbara Amiel | National Post ([email protected])