Tag Archives: Pre WWII

The Horror of the Ukraine—The Holodomor, a Forgotten Genocide

The Holodomor comes from the term moryty holodom which translates as “death inflicted by starvation.” A man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet Republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933.

Millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims of the Holodomor were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 per cent of Ukraine’s population in the 1930s.

The first journalist to write about it was Gareth Jones. He went to the USSR, to investigate and witnessed the horrors with his own eyes.

On 29 March, he issued his first press release, which was published by many newspapers, including The Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post:

“I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying.’ This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening.

On the train, a Communist denied there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A fellow passenger, a peasant fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist denier subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be two hundred oxen and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and had only a month’s supply left. They told me that many had already died of hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travelling by night, as there were too many starving desperate men.

‘We are waiting for death’ was my welcome, but see, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,’ they cried.”

This report was denounced by several Moscow-resident American journalists such as Walter Duranty and Eugene Lyons, who had been obscuring the truth to please the dictatorial Soviet regime.[3] On 31 March, The New York Times published a denial of Jones’s statement by Duranty under the headline, Russians Hungry, But Not Starving. Duranty called Jones’ report “a big scare story.”

On 11 April 1933, Jones published a detailed analysis of the famine in the Financial News, pointing out its main causes: forced collectivisation of private farms, removal of 6–7 million of “best workers” (the Kulaks) from their land, forced requisitions of grain and farm animals and increased “export of foodstuffs” from USSR.

Below is the full of the April 11 and the follow-up report.

BALANCE SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN

1-INDUSTRIALISATION

By Gareth Jones

It is difficult to gauge the industrial achievements of the Five-Year Plan. It is true that on paper formidable results can be produced, such as the increase of coal production from 35 million tons in 1927-28 to 62 million tons in 1932, the increase of iron production from 3,283,000 tons to 6,206,000 tons, and the increase of oil from 11 million tons to 21 million tons in the same period. Official statistics also show great achievements in the building of tractors, the annual production of which rose from 1,27 five years ago to 50,000 last year, and in the building of motor lorries, the production of which increased from 677 in 1927-28 to 24,000 in 1932. In light industry, gigantic figures are also produced. On the other hand, in 1932 less rolled steel was made than two years previously, and the production of steel has remained almost stationary since 1929-30. One is justified, however, in having very little confidence in Soviet statistics.

White Elephants
The giants of Soviet industry, Dnieperstroy, Magritogorsk, the Nijni-Novgorod factory, and the Kharkoff Tractor Works, can also be regarded as great achievements, but achievements of the order of Wembley or the Crystal Palace rather than well-functioning organisations. Difficulties of production are so great that they will long continue to be white elephants.

Through the Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Government succeeded in creating many factories for the construction of machines, which were never been made before in Russia. This was part of the autarchic aim of the Five-Year Plan, namely, to make the Soviet Union independent of the rest of the world. This aim has not been reached. In spite of all the various objects, which can now be made in the Soviet Union, such as motorcars, aluminium, and hydraulic turbines, which were formerly imported, their quality is so bad, and the lack of specialists is so great, that the Soviet Union can never be regarded as independent of the capitalist countries. Autarchy has not been achieved in so brief a span as five years. The shortage of foreign currency will render the render import of machinery difficult, and the recent cutting down of orders from abroad points to a slowing down of Soviet industry. The number of foreign specialists in Russia grows less month by month and when most of them have gone, the plight of the machinery will be grave.

According to experts, the Five-Year Plan has succeeded in its munitions side, and, from the point of view of ammunition, large gun, rifle and tank factories, there is reason to believe that it was a great success, for it was first and foremost a military and not an economic plan. Its primary aim was to render the Soviet Union powerful in defence against capitalist aggressors.

Another achievement is the great increase in the production of cotton in Central Asia.

In spite of colossal achievements, however, on paper, the difficulties facing the Soviet industry are greater than ever and are likely to increase in the future. They are mainly hungry, lack skill and fear responsibility, transport and finance.

In some factories, especially in the big Moscow factories, the first difficulty, hunger, does not yet exist, for there solid meals with meat are still given each day. But in the majority of factories, especially in the provinces, there is undernourishment. In a Kharkoff factory, the male worker received the following rations: 600 grams (about 1.3/4 lb.) of black bread per day, a pound of sugar per month, a quarter-litre of sunflower oil per month, and 800 grams (about 1.3/4 pounds) per month of fish, which was usually bad. In Moscow, the worker receives 800 grams (about 1.3/4 lb.) of bread per day, together with a meal at the factory. If he is a skilled worker, he will have sufficient to eat. There is every prospect of food conditions worsening, which will lessen the productivity of the workers.

Disastrous Negligence

Lack of skill and fear of responsibility are other great enemies of industrialisation. The damage done to good machinery through clumsy handling and negligence is disastrous. Much of the skill and brains of Russia have disappeared through shooting or imprisonment, while the successive trials have led to a condition of fear among many engineers, which is not conducive to good work and responsibility.

Transport difficulties are still unconquered and are responsible for most of the bad distribution in Russia. Last summer, according to “Pravda,” perishable goods had from 30% to 95%, losses en route; potatoes sometimes took sixty days to come to Moscow from a village about forty miles away. The result of these difficulties has been rapidly growing unemployment, which is a striking contrast to the shortage of labour one year ago. There have already been many dismissals throughout the country. In Kharkoff, for example, 20,000 men have been recently dismissed. Unemployment is a problem, which will attack the Soviet Union more and more and led to increasing dissatisfaction, for there is no unemployment insurance, and the unemployed man is deprived of his bread card.

What are the causes of unemployment in the Soviet Union?

The first is technological. A director of the Kharkoff Tractor Factory explained why his factory had dismissed many workers: “We dismissed them because we had improved our technical knowledge, and thus do not need so many workers!” an admission that technological unemployment is not confined to capitalist countries.

Lack of Raw Material

The second cause of unemployment is the lack of raw materials. A factory has to lie idle because the supply of coal or of oil has failed. Such is the synchronisation in the Plan that when one supply fails there are delays in many branches of industry. “Pravda” of March 10 contained the following item, which throws a light upon this cause of delay: “In the storehouses of Almaznyanski Metal Factory 13,000 tons of metal are lying idle, intended mainly for the agricultural machine factories; 550 tons are waiting to be sent to the Rostoff Agricultural Machine Factory, 1,500 tons to the Kharkoff Factory, 2,000 tons to Stalingrad Tractor Factory. The Southern Railway is only sending 12-15 wagons of iron per day, instead of 35. On some days absolutely no wagons are despatched.”

The third cause of unemployment in the Soviet Union is the food shortage. The factory is now made responsible for the feeding of its workers, a given a certain agricultural district or certain State or collective farms from which to draw supplies. A director is made responsible for the supply department. When the food supply is not sufficient for the total number of workers, the surplus men are dismissed. Some experts consider this the chief cause of unemployment.

The final cause of unemployment is financial. This will be dealt with in my next article, which will appear in tomorrow’s issue of the Financial News.

The Financial News, Tuesday, April 11th, 1933.

BALANCE-SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN

—

II-FINANCIAL IMPRESSIONS

–

By GARETH JONES

A drastic economy drive is now in progress in the Soviet Union. The control over expenses in the factory is new exceedingly strict. The factories no longer have financial autonomy and a heavy responsibility is placed upon the administration of the factories to balance their budget. Last year the expenses of the factories exceeded the estimates. To counteract the deficits, which were caused by over spending the planned figures imposed from above on the factory administrations are now to be absolutely obligatory, and the financial work of each factory is to be controlled each month by the bank, which gives it credit.

When a factory or a trust has a deficit, sanctions are applied. In some cases, where the deficit is attributed to bad organisation a trial of the director is held and he is condemned and thrown out of the Communist. Part. Other sanctions in cases of deficit are: Non-payment of salaries and the obligation for the factory administration to dismiss a part of the staff. The rigid economy drive has thus been responsible for a part of the growing unemployment. In some offices and factories 20 per cent, 30 per cent., and even 40 per cent of the staff have been dismissed on financial grounds.

No Figures

The absence of statistics upon the most vital sections of financial life makes it difficult to form a judgment concerning the currency. Gold reserve figures are no longer published. Gold production figures are hard to obtain, but in one official organisation the figure given for 1932 was 84,000,100 roubles. No figures are published on the amount of gold obtained from the Torgsin Stores, where customers have been able to buy with gold, silver, or with foreign currency. Even on the issue of roubles there have been no statistics published since September 5th, 1932. Some reliable observers state that they have seen at least l00 one-rouble notes with the same number printed upon them. The impression one obtains, is that those in charge of Soviet finances are bewildered.

There is only one certainly about. Soviet finances, and that is that there is a large-scale inflation, however loudly it may be denied by the Soviet Government, and however much members of the Communist Party may boast that “the chervonetz is the only stable currency in the world.” Some data on prices form sufficient proof of this. The Government has opened the so-called commercial shops for those who earn good salaries, where the following prices are now normal:

Butter: From 62 roubles to 75 roubles a kilo. (rouble at par equals 3s.).

Meat: 15 roubles a kilo.

Sugar: 15 roubles a kilo., but difficult to obtain.

Bread (black): 3 roubles a kilo.

(white): 4 roubles 50 kopeks a kilo.

In the open market the prices are as follows:-

Meat: About 20 roubles a kilo.

Tea: 25 roubles a pound.

Butter (when obtainable): 65 roubles a kilo.

In the Ukraine, where the food shortage is greater, the prices are higher.

In the co-operatives bread may be obtained cheaply for breadcards at the price of 7 kopeks a pound for black bread and 12 kopeks a pound for so-called white bread.

The gold prices in the Soviet Union provide interesting data for the economist:-

Flour (25 per cent.): 47 kopeks a kilo.

Sugar (refined): 50 kopeks a kilo.

Potato flour: 40 kopeks a kilo.

Flour (85 per cent.): 24 kopeks a kilo.

Butter in Torgsin (gold or foreign currency) costs from 1 r. 40k. to 1 r. 90k.

Rising Prices

The rapid rise in prices has been a source of disorder for the Plan, for long-term planning ahead is disarranged when the currency loses its value, in the same way as in the capitalist world falling prices disorganise trade. The high prices in the Soviet Union must, however, be studied in connection with the wages which are paid. An unskilled labourer receives about 120 roubles a month; a skilled worker may receive anything from 200 to 600 roubles. Engineers are well paid, and usually receive monthly from about 500 to 1,500 roubles, and even 2,000 roubles. A young train conductor receives about 67 roubles a month.

A part of the wages goes, however, to the loans and lotteries, which play an important part in financing the Plan. In 1932 15.9 per cent. of the budgetary receipts came from loans. In 1933 it is planned to raise 2,800,000,000 roubles through internal loans. Lotteries, while providing a negligible part of the State funds compared with the loans, are used to finance such undertakings as the Soviet Mercantile Marine, the Society for Aviation and Chemical Defence, and the Motorisation of the Soviet Union. Prizes, such as motor-cars, which may be owned as private property by one man, and even money prizes, are offered as incentives to invest in these lotteries.

In internal finances one obtains impression of disorder. The rouble seems to have run away from the Plan. On the Black Market 50 to 70 roubles can be obtained for a dollar, instead of the legal 1 rouble 94 kopeks. Any suggestion of devaluation, however, is immediately refuted with indignation.

Obligations Abroad

The external financial situation also arouses no confidence. It is estimated that the Soviet Union’s obligations abroad total £120,000,000. Recently the adverse balance has mounted up with the declining prices of the goods exported by Russia. In 1929 the Soviet Union exported 923,700,000 gold roubles’ worth of goods, whereas in 1932 her exports amounted to 563,900,000 gold roubles. Her imports have not declined so rapidly, having fallen from 880,600,000 gold roubles in 1929 to 698,700,000 gold roubles in 1932.

World prices have declined so much and Russia’s agriculture has received such a blow from the Five-Year Plan, that it is doubtful whether the Soviet Union will long be able to maintain her payments abroad, however meticulous she may have been in meeting payments up to now. If an embargo is placed upon Soviet imports by the British Government, the difficulties of payment will become still greater, for normally nearly 30 per cent. of Soviet Russia’s exports are destined for Great Britain, and a blow will be dealt to the creditors of the Soviet Union in Britain, and especially in Germany, where the Government has guaranteed German ex-ports to Russia to a considerable degree.

The concluding article of this series, dealing with agriculture, will appear to-morrow. The first, on unemployment, appeared in our issue of yesterday.

The Financial News, Tuesday, April 13th, 1933

BALANCE-SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN

III-RUIN OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE

–

By GARETH JONES

THE main result of the Five-Year Plan has been the ruin of Russian agriculture, a fact which completely outbalances the achievements of Soviet industry and is already gravely affecting the industrialisation of the country. In the eyes of responsible foreign observers and of peasants, the famine

in Russia to-day is far worse than that of 1921. In 1921 the famine was spread over wide areas, it is true, but, in comparison with the general famine throughout the country which exists to-day, it might be considered localised. In 1921 the towns were short of food, but in most parts of the Ukraine and elsewhere there was enough bread, and the peasants were able to live. To-day there is food in the towns although in the provinces not enough whereas the countryside has been stripped of bread.

Symptomatic of the collapse of Russian agriculture is the shooting of thirty-five prominent workers in the Commissariat of Agriculture and in the Commissariat of State Farms, including the Vice-Commissar of Agriculture himself, and Mr. Wolff, whose name is well known to foreign agricultural experts. They were accused of smashing tractors, of burning tractor stations and flax factories, of stealing grain reserves, of disorganising the sowing campaign and of destroying cattle. “Pravda ” (March 5) stated that “the activities of the arrested men had as their aim the ruining of agriculture and the creation of famine in the country.” Surely a formidable task for thirty-five men in a country which stretches 6,000 miles!

Sign of Panic

The shooting of thirty-five is a sign of the panic which has come over the Soviet regime on account of the failure of collectivisation. The writer has visited villages in the Moscow district, in the Black Earth district, and in North Ukraine, parts, which are far from being the most badly hit in Russia. He has collected evidence from peasants and foreign observers and residents concerning the Ukraine, Crimea, North Caucasia, Nijni-Novgorod district, West Siberia, Kazakstan, Tashkent area, the German Volga and Ukrainian colonists, and all the evidence proves that there is a general famine threatening the lives of millions of people. The Soviet Government tries its best to conceal the situation, but the grim facts will out. Under the conditions of censorship existing in Moscow, foreign journalists have to tone down their messages and have become masters at the art of understatement. The existence of the general famine is none the less true, in spite of the fact that Moscow still has bread.

What are the causes of the famine? The main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivisation. The prophecy of Paul Scheffer in 1920-30 that collectivisation of agriculture would be the nemesis of Communism has come absolutely true. Except for drought in certain areas, climatic conditions have blessed the Soviet Government in the last few years. Then why the catastrophe?

Passive Resistance

In the first place, the policy of creating large collective farms, where the land was to be owned and cultivated in common, led to the land being taken away from more than two-thirds of the peasantry, and incentive to work disappeared. Moreover, last year nearly all the crops were violently seized, and the peasant was left almost nothing for himself. The passive resistance of the peasant has been a far more important factor in Russian development than the ability to cook statistics.

In the second place, the massacre of cattle by peasants not wishing to sacrifice their property for nothing to the collective farm, the perishing of horses through lack of fodder, the death of innumerable livestock through exposure, epidemics and hunger on those mad ventures, the cattle factories, have so depleted the livestock of the Soviet Union that not until 1945 could that livestock reach the level of 1928. And that is, provided that all the plans for import of cattle succeed, provided there is no disease, and provided there is fodder. That date 1945 is given by one of the most reliable foreign agricultural experts in Moscow. In all villages visited by the writer most of the cattle and of the horses bad been slaughtered or died of lack of fodder, while the remaining horses were scraggy and diseased.

In the third place, six or seven millions of the best workers (the Kulaks) have been uprooted and deprived of their land. Apart from all consideration of human feelings, the existence of many millions of good producers is an immense capital value to any country, and to have destroyed such capital value means an inestimable loss to the national wealth of Russia. Although two years ago the Soviet authorities stated that they had liquidated the Kulak as a class, the drive against the better peasants was carried on with renewed violence last winter.

The final reason for the famine in the Soviet Union has been the export of foodstuffs. For this it is not so much the Soviet Government as the world crisis, which is to blame. The crash in world prices has been an important factor in creating the grave situation in Russia. Prices have dropped most in precisely those products, wheat, timber, oil, butter, &c., which the Soviet Union exports, and least in those products, such as machinery, which the Soviet Union imports. The result has been that Russia has had to export increased quantities at lower value.

What of the Future?

What of the future? In order to try and gauge the prospects for the next harvest, the writer asked in March the following questions in each village:-

(1) Have you seed?

(2) What will the spring sowing be like?

(3) What were the winter sowing and the winter ploughing like?

(4) What do you think of the new tax?

On the question of seed, several villages were provided with seed, but many lacked seed. Experts are confident that the Government has far greater reserves of grain than in 1921, but evidence points to a lack of seed in certain areas.

Peasants were emphatic in stating that the spring sowing would be bad. They stated that they were too weak and swollen to sow, that there would be little cattle fodder left for them to eat in a month’s time, that there were few horses left to plough, that the remaining horses were weak, that the tractors, when they had any, stopped all the time, and, finally, that weeds might destroy the crops.

Information received concerning the winter sowing and the winter ploughing was black. There had been little winter sowing, which accounts for about one-third of the total crops, and winter ploughing had been bad. The winter sowing had been very late.

On the question of the Soviet Government’s new agricultural policy, peasants were also doubtful. The new tax, by which the collective farms will pay so much grain (usually about 2 and half centners) per hectare and be free to sell, the rest on the open market, is not likely to make much difference to the situation, for the peasants have completely lost faith in the Government.

The outlook for the next harvest is, therefore, black. It is dangerous to make any prophecy, for the miracle of perfect climatic conditions can always make good a part of the ‘unfavourable factors.

The chief fact remains, however, that in building up industry the Soviet Government has destroyed its greatest source of wealth – its agriculture.

This is the concluding article of a series of three; the first appeared in our Issue of Tuesday and the second yesterday.”

On May 13th the New York Times published a stinging reply from Jones which reiterated that he stood by every word he had said:

…” I stand by my statement that Soviet Russia is suffering from a severe famine. It would be foolish to draw this conclusion from my tramp through a small part of vast Russia, although I must remind Mr. Duranty that it was my third visit to Russia, that I devoted four years of university life to the study of the Russian language and history and that on this occasion alone I visited in all twenty villages, not only in the Ukraine, but also in the black earth district, and in the Moscow region, and that I slept in peasants’ cottages, and did not immediately leave for the next village.

My first evidence was gathered from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the Russian situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press, and therefore remain silent.

Journalists, on the other hand, are allowed to write, but the censorship has turned them into masters of euphemism and understatement. Hence they give “famine” the polite name of “food shortage” and “starving to death” is softened down to read as “widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” Consuls are not so reticent in private conversation.

My second evidence was based on conversations with peasants who had migrated into the towns from various parts of Russia. Peasants from the richest parts of Russia coming into the towns for bread. Their story of the deaths in their villages from starvation and of the death of the greater part of their cattle and horses was tragic, and each conversation corroborated the previous one.

Third, my evidence was based upon letters written by German colonists in Russia, appealing for help to their compatriots in Germany. “My brother’s four children have died of hunger.” “We have had no bread for six months.” “If we do not get help from abroad, there is nothing left but to die of hunger.” Those are typical passages from these letters.

Fourth, I gathered evidence from journalists and technical experts who had been in the countryside. In The Manchester Guardian, which has been exceedingly sympathetic toward the Soviet régime, there appeared on March 25, 27 and 28 an excellent series of articles on “The Soviet and the Peasantry” (which had not been submitted to the censor). The correspondent, who had visited North Caucasus and the Ukraine, states: “To say that there is famine in some of the’ most fertile parts of Russia is to say much less than the truth: there is not only famine, but – in the case of the North Caucasus at least – a state of war, a military occupation.” Of the Ukraine, he writes: “The population is starving.”

My final evidence is based on my talks with hundreds of peasants. They were not the “kulaks”- those mythical scapegoats for the hunger in Russia-but ordinary peasants. I talked with them alone in Russian and jotted down their conversations, which are an unanswerable indictment of Soviet agricultural policy. ‘The peasants said emphatically that the famine was worse than in 1921 and that fellow-villagers had died or were dying.

Mr. Duranty says that I saw in the villages no dead human beings nor animals. That is true, but one does not need a particularly nimble brain to grasp that even in the Russian famine districts the dead are buried and that there the dead animals are devoured.

May I in conclusion congratulate the Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true situation in the U.S.S.R.? Moscow is not Russia, and the sight of well fed people there tends to hide the real Russia.”

Banned from the Soviet Union, Jones turned his attention to the Far East and in late 1934 he left Britain on a “Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour”. He spent about six weeks in Japan, interviewing important generals and politicians, and he eventually reached Beijing. From here he traveled to Inner Mongolia in newly Japanese-occupied Manchukuo in the company of a German journalist, Herbert Müller. Detained by Japanese forces, the pair were told that there were three routes back to the Chinese town of Kalgan, only one of which was safe.

Jones and Müller were subsequently captured by bandits who demanded a ransom of 200 Mauser firearms and 100,000 Chinese dollars (according to The Times, equivalent to about £8,000). Müller was released after two days to arrange for the ransom to be paid. On 1 August, Jones’s father received a telegram: “Well treated. Expect release soon.” On 5 August, The Times reported that the kidnappers had moved Jones to an area 10 miles (16 kilometres) southeast of Kuyuan and were now asking for 10,000 Chinese dollars (about £800), and two days later that he had again been moved, this time to Jehol. On 8 August the news came that the first group of kidnappers had handed him over to a second group, and the ransom had increased to 100,000 Chinese dollars again. The Chinese and Japanese governments both made an effort to contact the kidnappers.

On 17 August 1935, The Times reported that the Chinese authorities had found Jones’s body the previous day with three bullet wounds. The authorities believed that he had been killed on 12 August, the day before his 30th birthday. There was a suspicion that his murder had been engineered by the Soviet NKVD, as revenge for the embarrassment he had caused the Soviet regime. Former UK prime minister Lloyd George is reported to have said:

“That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too much of what was going on. He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he shrank from no risk. I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that there was some fact, which he could obtain. He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered”

Amazingly 90 years on Russia is still using the same tactics ‘allegedly’.

sources

https://www.garethjones.org/

https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor

https://www.garethjones.org/margaret_siriol_colley/financial_news.htm

1936 Winter Olympics—The Forgotten Games in Photographs

Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936
Date: 6–16 FEBRUARY

sources

https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/garmisch-partenkirchen-1936

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=16%20februari&rows=25&page=1

Hate is Mankind’s Worst Disease!

Ever since I was 13 or 14, I have played the guitar. Over the years, I have bought hundreds of songbooks. In one of those books, they put words to Beethoven’s 9th symphony or more precisely, the bit commonly known as Ode to Joy. In the book, they renamed it, Hate is Mankind’s Worst Disease.

The first few lines are as follows:
What’s the use of killing and fighting?
What’s the use of any war?
Oh, did history still did not show us,
nothing is worth dying for.

As the title suggests, the song deals with war and the hate it creates, or rather war created by hate. I could give examples of so many wars, but I am focusing on the war, which had an unprecedented level of hate, and the period before it, World War II.

Below are some examples of the hate that triggered the Holocaust, and pictures of the Holocaust itself.

Nazi Propaganda Used in Education

A Jewish woman concealing her face sits on a park bench marked “Only for Jews.” 1938, Austria

In the early 1930s, Jewish hatred had spread to countries outside of Germany

Newspaper clipping with a pre-war caricature from the Dutch Press, but taken from the French satirical newspaper “Le Canard Enchaîné” The caption translates to, “The Berlin Chief Rabbi speaks in full independence and freedom on the radio” The article issued in 1933 or 1934 indicates that the world knew the fate of the German Jews several years before the war.

The Holocaust

12 April 1945—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and George Patton were given a tour of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. Here they visit a burial pit containing the charred remains of prisoners burned to death at Ohrdruf.

April 12, 1945 – Dwight D. Eisenhower views the charred bodies of prisoners at Ohrdruf.

23 April 1945—Tattoo that was part of a man’s body. It was removed by Nazi SS men and then used as a decoration on the wall of their quarters at Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

The bodies of former prisoners piled outside the crematorium at the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp. Dachau, Germany, April-May 1945. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Marcy Haupsman

A survivor stokes smouldering human remains in a still lit crematorium oven. Dachau, Germany, 29 April—1 May 1945.
—US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Merle Spiegel

Corpses lie in one of the open railcars of the Dachau death train. The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty cars containing the bodies of between two and three thousand prisoners transported to Dachau in the last days of the war.

What is of great concern and worry to me is that this hate has not gone away. It was dormant for a short time, but that monster called hate is waking up again. We can still stop it, as it’s not too late yet.

sources

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/photographs/world-war-ii-holocaust-images

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=jodenvervolging&rows=25&page=2

Donation

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Pogroms

I had a chat a few days ago with a friend. We were talking about the Holocaust and we both agreed that the Germans, specifically the German Nazis, were the main instigators and culprits of the world’s biggest crime. Without them, there may not have been a Holocaust or at least not on the scale.

However, the hate for Jews is not solely a German thing, there were many violent against the Jewish population of Europe and beyond. These acts have been happening for centuries. Even in the 11th and 12th centuries, there were Pogroms.

Before I go into some of the more recent Pogroms, it is important to understand what a Pogrom is. There are several definitions, following are just a few of them:

• An organized massacre and looting of helpless people, usually with the connivance of officials, specifically, such a massacre of Jews.

• A pogrom is generally thought of as a cross between a popular riot and a military atrocity, where an unarmed civilian, often urban, population is attacked by either an army unit or peasants from surrounding villages, or a combination of the two… Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon, but historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence. In mainstream usage, the word has come to imply an act of antisemitism.

• Originally used to describe violent and often murderous anti-Jewish persecutions (the most important of which took place in Kishinev) in Russia following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, more recently the term ‘pogrom’, from the Russian pogrom (total destruction, devastation) has also been used to refer to attacks on other groups.

As I stated earlier this was not just a German phenomenon, the actual word comes from the Russian language. There were pogroms everywhere in Europe and other parts of the world. Even in a peaceful place like Limerick in Ireland, my hometown.

The Limerick Pogrom

On the evening of 11 January 1904, Fr John Creagh took the pulpit during mass at the Redemptorist church at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick. His congregation comprised the weekly meeting of the ‘Monday Division’ of the Arch-Confraternity of the Holy Family, a 6,500-strong male sodality which, under his then spiritual direction, was a powerful force in the city’s Catholic life. John Creagh, a Redemptorist and Spiritual Director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, gave a sermon at their weekly meeting attacking Jews. He repeated many Anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including that of ritual murder, and said that the Jews had come to Limerick “to fasten themselves on us like leeches and to draw our blood”. Dermot Keogh describes what happened after Creagh delivered his lecture calling for a boycott on 11 January 1904.

In 1904 there were roughly 35 Jewish families, about 150 people, in the Limerick urban area. They lived in Collooney Street (now Wolfe Tone Street), not far from the present-day O’Connell monument, and had established a Jewish burial ground at Kilmurray, near Castleconnell. The first attack on them came in January, a few days prior to Fr Creagh’s sermon, when, following a colourful Jewish wedding, Judge Adams commented on their commercial success and vibrancy. This led to a sour report in the Limerick Leader, which compared their prosperity to the poverty of the native population.

A few days later the matter was taken up by Fr John Creagh CSSR, spiritual director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, which had a membership of around 6,000.
From the pulpit Fr Creagh stated:

‘The Jews were once chosen by God. But they rejected Christ, they crucified Him. They called down the curse of His precious blood on their heads. They were scattered over the earth after the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and they bore away with them an unquenchable hatred for the name of Jesus Christ and his followers. The Jews came to Limerick apparently the most miserable tribe imaginable, with want on their faces, and now they have enriched themselves and can boast a very considerable house property in the city. Their rags have been exchanged for silk. How do the Jews manage to make their money? Some of you may know their methods better than I do, but it is still my duty to expose these methods. They go about as peddlers from door to door, pretending to offer articles at very cheap prices, but in reality, charging several times more than in the shops…They forced themselves and their goods upon the people and the people are blind to their tricks.”

Collooney Street where most Limerick Jews lived, was only a few minutes’ walk from the Redemptorist church. The hundreds who left the church after the meeting had to pass the top of Collooney Street on their way home; many were fired up by Creagh’s incendiary sermon. The Jewish community immediately sensed the menacing mood of the crowd-turned-mob and remained locked in their homes as the church militants passed by. Jewish shops, however, remained open and their owners felt menaced. One old Fenian, a member of the confraternity, single-handedly defended a shop from attack until the police arrived to mount a guard.

John Raleigh, a teenager (15 years of age), was arrested and incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison for one month for throwing a stone at the rabbi (which struck him on the ankle). Once released he returned home to a welcoming throng who were protesting that the teenager was innocent and that the sentence imposed was too harsh. While in prison Raleigh was called a “Limerick Jew slayer” by a warder, but Raleigh, who claimed he was innocent, was insulted by this and reported the incident to the chief warder. Later, after 32 Jews had left Limerick due to the pogrom, Creagh was disowned by his superiors, who said that “religious persecution had no place in Ireland”

The Jedwabne Pogrom

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, issued orders on 29 June and 2 July 1941, for German forces to support ‘self-cleansing actions’ by the local population to rid itself of people alleged to have collaborated with the Soviet occupation, communists and Jews.

“No obstacles should be made for the efforts aimed at self-cleaning among anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles in the newly occupied territories. To the contrary, they should be instigated without leaving a trace, and if need be – intensified and directed on the right track, but in such a manner so that the local ‘self-defence circles’ could not refer to the orders or political promises made to them.” —Reinhard Heydrich

On 10 July 1941, hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children were massacred by local Poles in the town of Jedwabne.

Prior to the Holocaust, Jews made up between 60 and 70 per cent of the overall population of some 2,000 in Jedwabne. The town was situated in an area that was a hotbed of the antisemitic National Democratic Party (Endecja). After the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, Jedwabne was taken by the Soviets.

Shortly after the Soviets retreated, Polish townspeople rounded up hundreds of their Jewish neighbours and forced them to dismantle a monument of Vladimir Lenin that the Soviets had installed. From there the Jews were forced into a barn, where they were burned to death.

There is general agreement that German secret police or intelligence officials were seen in Jedwabne on the morning of 10 July 1941, or the day before, and met with the town council. Szmuel Wasersztajn’s witness statement in 1945 said that eight Gestapo men arrived on 10 July and met with the town authorities. Another witness said four or five Gestapo men arrived and “they began to talk in the town hall”. “Gestapo man” was used to refer to any German in a black uniform, Persak writes. The witnesses said they believed the meeting had been held to discuss murdering the town’s Jews.

According to the IPN’s( Institute of National Remembrance) report, on 10 July 1941 Polish men from nearby villages began arriving in Jedwabne “with the intention of participating in the premeditated murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the town”. Gross writes that a leading role in the pogrom was carried out by four men, including Jerzy Laudański and Karol Bardoń, who had earlier collaborated with the Soviet NKVD and were now trying to recast themselves as zealous collaborators with the Germans. He also writes that no “sustained organized activity” could have taken place in the town without the Germans’ consent. The town’s Jews were forced out of their homes and taken to the market square, where they were ordered to weed the area by pulling up grass from between the cobblestones. While doing this, they were beaten and made to dance or perform exercises by residents from Jedwabne and nearby.

The massacre is a controversial topic in Poland; as the main perpetrators of the massacre were Poles, it goes against the commonly accepted Polish narrative of the Holocaust.

The Kielce pogrom

The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence toward the Jewish community centre’s gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce, Poland on 4 July 1946 by Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians during which 42 Jews were killed and more than 40 were wounded. Polish courts later sentenced nine of the attackers to death in connection with the crimes.

The Pogroms of 1189 and 1190

From 1189 to 1190, the anti-Jewish pogroms in London, York, and numerous other cities and towns displayed cruelty and barbarity never before seen by English Jews. Indeed, these acts of violence distinguished themselves as some of the worst atrocities committed against European Jews in the Middle Ages

The catalyst for the anti-Jewish violence in 1189 and 1190 was the coronation of King Richard I on September 3, 1189. In addition to Richard’s Christian subjects, many prominent English Jews arrived at Westminster Abbey to pay homage to their new king. However, many Christian Englishmen harboured superstitions against Jews being present at such a holy occasion, and the Jewish attendees were flogged and thrown out of the banquet following the coronation. After the incident at Westminster Abbey, a rumour spread that Richard had ordered the English to kill the Jews. Christians attacked the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood of Old Jewry, setting the Jews’ stone houses on fire at night and killing those who tried to escape. When news of the slaughter reached King Richard, he was outraged, but only managed to punish a few of the assailants because of their large numbers.

When Richard left on the Third Crusade, the Jews of the village of King’s Lynn attacked a Jew who converted to Christianity. A mob of seafarers rose up against Lynn’s Jews, burned down their houses, and killed many. Similar attacks occurred in the towns of Colchester, Thetford, Ospringe, and Lincoln. While their houses were ransacked, the Jews of Lincoln managed to save themselves by taking refuge in the city’s castle. On March 7, 1190, attacks in Stamford, Lincolnshire killed many Jews, and on March 18, 57 Jews were massacred in Bury St. Edmonds. However, the bloodiest of the pogroms took place from the 16th to the 17th of March in the city of York, staining its history forever.

sources

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Pogroms-1189-1190/

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history–hundreds-of-jews-massacred-in-jedwabne-pogrom

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-711642

Click to access jews%20of%20limerick%2050.pdf

98 years ago: The Limerick Pogrom

https://www.theirishstory.com/2020/07/05/revisiting-the-limerick-pogrom-of-1904/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

What Were Pogroms?

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Laying the Foundation for Hate

When I see young people being very passionate about something that has a political undertone, I always wonder who is really behind that.

The Nazis understood that for them to successfully implement their racial ideas and policies, they would have to indoctrinate the youth. Hitler had a very strong viewpoint on education. The only teacher he liked at secondary school was his history teacher Leopold Potsch.

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1925): “Dr. Leopold Potsch, my professor at the Realschule in Linz, embodied this requirement to an ideal degree. This old gentleman’s manner was as kind as it was determined, his dazzling eloquence not only held us spellbound but carried us away. Even today I think back with gentle emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of his narratives, sometimes made us forget the present; who, as if by enchantment, carried us into past times and, out of the millennial veils of mist, molded dry historical memories into a living reality. On such occasions, we sat there, often aflame with enthusiasm, and sometimes even moved to tears. What made our good fortune all the greater was that this teacher knew how to illuminate the past by examples from the present, and how the past draws inferences for the present. As a result, he had more understanding than anyone else for all the daily problems which then held us breathless. He used our budding nationalistic fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor. By this alone he was able to discipline us little ruffians more easily than would have been possible by any other means. This teacher made history my favorite subject. And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that I became a little revolutionary. For who could have studied German history under such a teacher without becoming an enemy of the state which, through its ruling house, exerted so disastrous an influence on the destinies of the nation? And who could retain his loyalty to a dynasty which in past and present betrayed the needs of the German people again and again for shameless private advantage?”

Leopold Poetsch began his history teaching career in Maribor and later moved to Linz. He held strong nationalist opinions on the subject and believed that all ethnic Germans should be united by a single government. He also held strong racist views and told his pupils that Jews and Slavs were members of “inferior races”. However in later years took some distance from his former pupil, and considered Hitler an enemy of Austria.

The Nazis went to great extents on teaching the German youth to be proud of their race through biology teaching, the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) in particular taught in schools that they should be proud of their race and not to race mix.

Race biology was meant to encourage the Germans to maintain their racial purity, the NSLB stressed that as early as primary schools Germans have to work on only the Nordic racial element of the German Volk (people) again and again and have to contrast this with the racial differences that foreign peoples such as the Jews represent.

Every institution was infused with National Socialist ideology and infiltrated by Nazi personnel in chief positions. Schools were no exception.

Schools and universities were to:

indoctrinate young people into the racial ideas of Nazism and make children loyal to Hitler – this was in effect a form of brainwashing;
train girls to be good Aryan wives and mothers, and prepare boys to be effective soldiers.

Make young people “swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp steel”. All teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers’ Association, which vetted them for political and racial suitability. By 1939, 97 percent of teachers belonged to it.

Jewish teachers were fired.

Teachers had to go to summer school so they could teach Nazi ideas effectively. Pupils were encouraged to inform the authorities if teachers did not teach and support Nazi ideas.

There were even so-called Bride Schools. The Reich Bride Schools (German: Reichsbräuteschule) were institutions established in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. They were created to train young women to be “perfect Nazi brides”, indoctrinated in Nazi ideology and educated in housekeeping skills. The fiancées of prominent SS members and senior Nazi Party officials (and later a wider range of German women) were taught skills including cooking, child care, ironing, and to how to polish their husbands’ uniforms and daggers. They were required to swear oaths of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, to pledge to raise their children as Nazis, and to marry in what the Nazis alleged to be ceremonies based on the pre-Christian model.

The bride schools were a collaboration between Gertrud Scholtz-Klink and SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who was obsessed with German superiority over all races and the need for a “strong family life to create a strong, pure nation”.

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink

Regulations dictated that young women would be taught ‘washing, cooking, childcare and home design’ before they could walk up the aisle with the men who would staff death camps and rule conquered lands with an iron fist.

They were also instructed in social niceties – such as how to hold conversations at cocktail parties – and how to bring up their children worshipping not God or Jesus Christ, but Hitler. Although several bride schools were established in locations across Germany, the demands of the Second World War made it impossible for the Nazis to realize their ideal of women as being exclusively homebound.

Nazi racial policy did not always include degrading Jews but had to always maintain the importance of German blood and the Aryan race. This was often connected to the blood and soil ideology.

Whilst the young Germans were being taught about the importance of one’s blood, at the same time they were being taught about the dangers that the Jews represent in Germany and the necessary living space in the East, in particular Russia.

Novels portrayed the Germans as uniquely endowed and possessors of a unique destiny. The segregation of races was said to be natural, just as separate species did not come together in nature.

Der Giftpilz was a piece of antisemitic Nazi propaganda published as a children’s book by Julius Streicher in 1938. The title is German for “the poisonous mushroom/toadstool”.

The book explains that the Talmud discourages Jews from performing manual labor and encourages them to engage in trade instead; that it teaches Jews that non-Jews are meant to be slaves and asks Jews to enslave the non-Jewish population; and that Talmudic law allows Jews to cheat non-Jews. The book was sometimes used in German schools.

The indoctrination, or rather brainwashing, also happened in third-level education, in the Universities. On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.” Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann, and Remarque, among many other well-known intellectuals, scientists, and cultural figures, many of whom were Jewish. The largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead”

The information in this post comes from a great number of sources. The reason why I did this article is to warn people. There are groups out there at the moment who are manipulating young people, to be foot soldiers for their political ideas. We need to check who is behind some of these movements, some of them have a noble veneer, but if you scratch the surface you might discover there is a different agenda behind it.

Of course, the vast majority of young people are decent human beings.

sources

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/1933-book-burnings

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/brief-history-book-burning-printing-press-internet-archives-180964697/

https://histclo.com/schun/country/ger/era/tr/book/ned-book.html#:~:text=The%20NAZIs%20proceeded%20to%20unabashedly,of%20the%20national%20community%20…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2390238/How-perfect-Nazi-bride-The-sinister-regulations-women-learn-breed-cook-sew-iron–worship-Hitler.html

https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/nazi-bride-schools-educated-german-women-in-racial-values-and-homemaking.html

https://nypost.com/2013/08/13/documents-reveal-secrets-behind-the-third-reichs-bride-schools-where-women-were-trained-to-be-perfect-nazi-wives/

Hitler remembers his history teacher (1924)

https://spartacus-educational.com/Leopold_Potsch.htm

https://spartacus-educational.com/GEReducation.htm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z897pbk/revision/3

A race education class at a school for German girls, 1943

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Cancel Culture—3rd Reich Style

Cancel Culture seems to become more and more of a problem nowadays. Apparently, the only opinions that matter are those who get offended by literally everything. However, they didn’t realize that what they are doing is a carbon copy of 1930s Nazi Germany, which eventually resulted in the murder of millions.

On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute. In Berlin, 40,000 people gathered to hear German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels give a speech in Berlin’s Opera Square. He declared “the era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. … The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. … And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past.” Radio stations broadcast the Berlin speeches, songs, and ceremonial incantations to countless German listeners. Widespread newspaper coverage called the “Action against the Un-German Spirit” a success. The Nazi war on “un-German” individual expression had begun.

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass also called the November pogroms. It was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The Nazi regime looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht (literally Crystal Night) comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, the Nazi leadership decided to stage an economic boycott against the Jews of Germany. Local Nazi party chiefs organized the national boycott operation. Although it lasted only one day and was ignored by many individual Germans who continued to shop in Jewish-owned stores, it marked the beginning of a nationwide campaign by the Nazi Party against the entire German Jewish population.

The April 1, 1933 Boycotts were aimed to intimidate Germany’s Jews and discourage the German public from shopping at Jewish businesses. It marked the beginning of Nazi efforts to drive Jews from the German economy.

These events were basically cancel culture by another name.

sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/boycott-of-jewish-businesses

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/

Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich -work-shy Reich

So many people think that the Holocaust only lasted as along as WWII. But they could not be further away from the truth. It could be argued that the foundation of the Holocaust goes back to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German revolutions of 1848–49. I started to watch a series on Netflix called ‘Knightfall’ which is set in the 13th century, it is inspired by events of the time although with fictional characters. In the show there already is a portrayal of hate against the Jews and there is a scene where they are forced to leave Paris, and the order is given to kill all of them once they have left the outskirts of Paris. In the show they are saved by the templars, but I know there have been pogroms going back as far as that.

In 1933 the first concentration camp became operational,Dachau. Between 13–18 June 1938, the first mass arrests of Jews begin through Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich.

In the course of the “work-shy Reich” campaign carried out by the German police between June 13 and 18, 1938 against people classified as “asocial”, more than 10,000 people were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Around 6,000 prisoners were taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp alone and marked as “asocial” with a brown, later black triangle.

During the Nazi regime, the accusation of work shyness served to characterize the so-called asocial. According to an implementing regulation from 1938, anyone who “shows through behavior contrary to the community, even if it is not criminal, that he does not want to fit into the community” was considered antisocial.

According to the ordinance, anti-social persons were those who “through minor but recurring violations of the law do not want to submit to the order that is taken for granted in a National Socialist state”. Tramps, beggars, prostitutes, gypsies, drunkards and people suffering from contagious diseases, especially venereal diseases, were listed by name.

The wave of arrests was primarily intended to discipline the so-called sub-proletarian groups. During the “June Action” there were also targeted mass arrests of Jews. In Berlin, the police arrested between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews under the flimsiest of pretexts, crossing a street crossing incorrectly was enough. An anti-Semitic speech by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels acted as the initial impetus. At a meeting in the Ministry of Propaganda on June 10, 1938, he stirred up the atmosphere. In his diary, Goebbels noted: “Spoke in front of 300 police officers in Berlin. I really got excited. Against all sentimentality. The slogan isn’t the law, it’s harassment. The Jews have to get out of Berlin. The police will help me with that.” Encouraged by the actions of the police, pogrom-like anti-Semitic riots broke out in Berlin and other large cities in the German Reich. Jewish shops were smeared and Jewish shopkeepers forced to close their shops; several synagogues were demolished.

Dr Christian Dirks, curator of the exhibition of diplomatic dispatches on the 1938 pogrom, suggests a connection with anti-Semitic attacks in Berlin, which, starting in May, escalated from June 13–16, 1938 with boycotts of Jewish shops, marking shops, raids on cafes and arrests.

In 2013 Dr Dirks also called an Irish report on Kristallnacht ,which was issued by Ambassador Charles Bewley in 1938, disgraceful.

Bewley, who described the events as “obviously organised,” began his report in the tone of a dispassionate diplomatic observer and identified with Germany’s claims that Jews dominated in areas of finance and entertainment and used their influence to promote “anti-Christian, anti-patriotic and communistic” thinking.

Charles Bewley

He went on to say their corrupting moral influence helped explain the “elimination of the Jewish element from public life.”

Bewley condemned the Irish media for following the “British press, itself in Jewish hands”, and “Anglo-Jewish telegraph agencies” by prominently displaying news of oppression against Jews but suppressing news of crimes perpetrated by Jews and anti-fascists.

He refrained from advising Dublin on how to correct what he believed was Ireland’s one-sided view of what he called the “Jewish problem”, but left no doubt that he viewed Jews themselves as the key issue.

sources

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/pro-nazi-irish-ambassador-report-on-kristallnacht-to-go-on-display-in-berlin-231342571-237786911

https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1091388.aktion-arbeitsscheu-reich-das-bezeichnete-bleibt-beiseite.html

Click to access handout_aktion_arbeitsscheu_reich.pdf

https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/ns-regime/ausgrenzung-und-verfolgung/aktion-arbeitsscheu-reich-1938.html

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Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well .

The title of this blog is a quote from Heinrich Heine’s play “Almansor” which he had written in 1821. Heine was a Jewish German poet, writer and literary critic. His words would ring true just over a century after he wrote them.

The Holocaust didn’t start with the mass murder of Jews and other so called “undesirables”. It was a gradual process. It was not just the destruction of life but also the destruction of art and culture that did not suit the Nazis philosophy.

In a symbolic act of ominous significance, on May 10, 1933, university students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of so called “un-German” books, heralding a period of state censorship and control of culture. The disturbing part of this ,it was university students doing this, Supposedly well educated people. In an effort to synchronize the literary community, Goebbels had a strong ally in the National Socialist German Students’ Association (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, or NSDStB).

On the evening of May 10, in most university towns, right-wing students marched in torchlight parades “against the un-German spirit.” The scripted rituals required for high Nazi officials, professors, university rectors, and university student leaders to address the participants and onlookers.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. There are 3 definitions for enlightenment:

1.the act or means of enlightening : the state of being enlightened
2capitalized : a philosophical movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism —used with the
3. Buddhism : a final blessed state marked by the absence of desire or suffering.

None of the definitions applied here.

Below are just some of the books which were deemed harmful to the German people, according to the Nazis .

Bambi, a Life in the Woods; Time Machine; War of the Worlds; The condition of the working class in England; All Quiet on the Western Front; The Lord of the Rings; Ivanhoe.

As you can see from those titles there was absolutely no justification, nor will there ever be, for banning and burning books.

In Berlin, some 40,000 people heard Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!” Goebbels enjoined the crowd. “Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner.”

“The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path…The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.”

— Joseph Goebbels, Speech to the students in Berlin.

Not all book burnings took place on May 10, as the German Student Association had planned. Some were postponed a few days because of rain. Others, based on local chapter preference, took place on June 21, the summer solstice, a traditional date for bonfire celebrations in Germany.

The really scary things is this is happening again, the burning has been replaced by cancelling, and the banning of books is happening more and more.

sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/101688.Books_Banned_by_Nazis

http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Bambi%2C_A_Life_in_the_Woods

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Rolf Wenkhaus; Child actor and Luftwaffe crew member

I was reminiscing on TV shows I watched as a kid in the Netherlands. One of my favourite shows was a series called “Q&Q”. It was about 2 teenage detectives. The boys named Aristides Quarles and Wilbur Quant accidentally snap a photo of a dead body in the woods. After finding the place where the body was, they find it to be gone. Nobody believes them except Grandpa. They decide to investigate themselves. I will spare you the theme song because once you hear it, it will be in your head for days.

Then I also remembered a German movie I watched about some German teenage detectives, nowadays with Google and IMDB, it was relatively easy to find the title. The movie is called “Emil and the Detectives” .Turns out it is the birthday of the young main actor today. Rolf Wenkhaus was born on September 9,1917. The movie I was referring to earlier was made in 1931.

Rolf only made tow more movies, the last one was a Nazi propaganda movie titled “S.A.-Mann Brand”

Ironically the screenplay for Rolf Wenkhaus’s 1st movie, “Emil and the Detectives” was written by Billy Wilder, a Jewish Austrian screenwriter who lived in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he moved to Paris, due to rampant antisemitism and discrimination against the Jewish people. He moved to Hollywood in 1933. That movie was also based on a novel by Erich Kästner, a pacifist and an opponent of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo interrogated Kästner several times, the national writers’ guild expelled him, and the Nazis burned his books as “contrary to the German spirit” during the book burnings of 10 May 1933, instigated by Joseph Goebbels.

After the outbreak of World War II, Rolf Wenkhaus enlisted in the military. At the time of his death, aged 24, he was in the aircrew of a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, a four-engine bomber that specialized in attacks on shipping. Wenkhaus’s plane, with identification code F8 MH 0093, was shot down on 31 January 1942, off the coast of Bloody Foreland in County Donegal, Ireland by HMS Genista, a British Flower-class corvette being utilized as a convoy escort vessel.

The entire aircrew of six was killed. The body of the pilot, Werner Bornefeld, washed up at Bunbeg two weeks later, and was eventually reburied at a German War Cemetery at Glencree, Ireland.

Because Rolf Wenkhaus’s corpse has never been found they officially pronounced his dead only in 1948.

sources

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0921020/?ref_=tt_ov_st

https://prabook.com/web/rolf.wenkhaus/1928015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_K%C3%A4stner#Berlin_1933%E2%80%931945

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This Is How Close The Holocaust Still Is To Me

The picture is of a vacant building in the town center of Geleen in the Netherlands. The building wasn’t always empty. It used to be a clothes shop called “Modehuis” or Fashion House. It was a shop that catered more for the older ladies, my mother liked to shop there A few doors next to it, there used to be a hairdresser, where I got my haircut several times.

Across from it there used to be a video store where I would rent my favourite movies. The address of the shop was Raadhuisstraat 16.

All of this will mean absolutely nothing to you, and even until today, the historical reference of the place was not known to me.

The shop was known as “Kousenhuis” (Stockingshouse) in the 1930s, the owner was Paul Siegfried Willner and his wife Charlotte Sophia Walter. Paul was Jewish but Charlotte was Roman Catholic. They were married on April 17, 1934, in Geleen, the maximum temperature that day was 21 degrees centigrade, so it was a warm spring day. Aside from the shop they also ran a wholesale business in cleaning products.

The shop was initially situated somewhere else, but due to subsidence caused by mining, they moved to the Raadhuisstraat. On January 11, 1939, Paul sold the shop to Julius Jacob Wolff.

Paul and his wife moved to Molenstraat 27 in Geleen. Below is a recent picture of that address.

As a young kid in secondary school, I had a friend living in Molenstraat 25, which is next door. The house is also near my favourite restaurant, swimming pool, and a few other places I would have visited several times a week.

Paul Siegfried Willner was born in Aachen in Germany, near the Dutch border, on June 5, 1902. He had moved in February 1934 from Aachen to Geleen. On November 25, 1941, Paul lost his German citizenship as per the new Reich citizens’ law. As a Jew, he was no longer considered to be a German.

On February 5, 1942, Paul and Charlotte divorced, I don’t know why but I can only imagine that this was to save Charlotte. If she was no longer married to a Jew, she would more than likely be safe.

On August 25, 1942, Paul had to register for labour in Germany, A day later on August 26, he ended up in Westerbork transit camp. Two days later he was deported to Auschwitz. But shortly before arriving there, he was taken off the train at the labour camp in Kosel. It is not clear where he was murdered. His date of death was registered as April 30, 1943, but that was a generic date used for many whose death date wasn’t known.

On October 5, 1942, the RAF mistakenly bombed Geleen, assuming it was Aachen, Paul’s house was destroyed as was the house of his ex-wife.

Julius Jacob Wolff who was also Jewish survived the war, His shop was still thriving when I left Geleen in 1997.

When I said at the start ‘how close the Holocaust still is to me, I meant it in a physical way as in buildings I have been in or have been close to, but also in an emotional way, because I never knew this bit of history. I had to emigrate to find out the significance of the actual buildings, which is a pity.

sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/137523/paul-siegfried-willner

https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Slachtoffers/Paul-Siegfried-Willner

https://www.openarch.nl/rhl:54839896-93a6-84fb-e6c6-a4540cb3b0a6

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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