Who knew what, when? – Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Published on November 15, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

Defenders of the Church are fond of repeating the already debunked post-WWII myth that nobody knew of the atrocities back home, that the perpetrators were merely following orders, and that they feared for their own lives if they dared opt out of an Aktion. This is simply not true. These men killed because they wanted to, they did it with gusto and pride, and very few of them asked their superiors to be relieved of their duties. There is no record of any of them being shot because of it. Many men volunteered to work in the death camps; they even had waiting lists for the job.

It is absolutely true that the “Final Solution” was a top secret operation, but it’s absolutely not true it stayed that way. Most people knew back home. Many among the millions of soldiers who fought in the East sent letters and pictures telling their families of their deeds, with pride and with nothing to hide.  They spoke about it at home when they came back from the front, and their families largely approved of it as they had all been indoctrinated in the same miasma of hatred. As Stewart Herman, the Minister of the American Church in Berlin who remained in Germany until December 1941, corroborated: “It became definitely known through the soldiers returning from the front that in occupied Russia, especially at Kiev, Jewish civilians—men, women, and babies—were being lined up and machine-gunned by the thousands.”

How else could it be? After years of the most vicious anti-Jewish campaign in history, hundreds of thousands of Jews were visibly disappearing from their homes everywhere in Europe, they were being visibly loaded onto cattle cars never to be seen of again, and we are to believe no one knew? That no one suspected?

I can’t fathom how anyone can really believe that the factory workers making Zyklon B thought that all of a sudden the insect and pest population had grown so dramatically that they had to produce orders of magnitude more poison. Or that the train workers bought the official story that they were bringing tens of thousands of Jews into the concentration camps every day to work, given that they were doing it every day, and that these “workers” were never leaving. Even a very dimwitted train engineer would have realized that they were bringing too many people into the concentration camps, and they were never taking any out. At some point these people surely must have wondered about the brutality of the transportation process, the death of many of the people on arrival, the Selektion process (which they witnessed as it was done next to their train), and the stench of death, which was pervasive in these camps and they would not have been able to avoid. Surely these men smoked a cigarette and chatted with the guards while the trains were emptied before leaving to pick up another batch. You don’t think they would have asked what was going on there? But maybe they didn’t ask, after all. Because they already knew.

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Us vs. Them. Again.

Published on November 10, 2010 in General and In the News by Gabriel. 0 Comments

For almost two thousand years Christianity taught the faithful that Christianity had superseded and replaced Judaism. It taught that God had abrogated his covenant with the Jewish people and had made a new one with the “New Israel”, the followers of Jesus. This replacement theology was based on the premise that the Jewish people, due to their obstinacy and blindness, failed to recognize Jesus as the son of God and as his messiah, and therefore lost their place in the world. According to this Christian view, Jews were no longer the “Chosen People”.

This unfortunate state of affairs evolved over time from contempt to hatred. For centuries Christians persecuted Jews everywhere they lived. They locked them into ghettos, they prohibited Jews from working in most professions, they forced them to hear conversion sermons, they forced them to wear distinctive clothing, they persecuted and tortured them, and often they murdered them. The Second World War provided the infrastructure, the excuse and the opportunity for Christians everywhere in Europe to give free rein to their latent or open antisemitism and turn against their Jewish neighbors. The result, as we know, is six million dead.

After the Second World War the surviving Jews of Europe, unable to go back to their former homes, went to Mandatory Palestine where they later founded the State of Israel. The surrounding Arab countries, unwilling to tolerate a Jewish state in their midst, initiated a war of extermination, promising a grand bloodbath and to push the surviving Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. For almost a hundred years now, the land of Israel has been in turmoil between Jews and Arabs.

In 1965 the Catholic Church issued an extraordinary declaration essentially exonerating all Jews of Jesus’ time, and of all time, for his death. The declaration also made clear that Judaism had not been superseded, that Judaism was still valid and its relationship to God was as legitimate and strong as that of the Church. In other words, the fathers of the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, bolstered by further statements by all popes since, have reinforced the notion that the Jews were and continue to be God’s “Chosen People”. Since then, both the Catholic and Protestant churches as well as Jews have made great strides to improve relations between Christians and Jews. Today Jews and Christians are closer than they have ever been.

This background makes the recent declarations of the Synod of Middle Eastern bishops convened in Rome and subsequent statements particularly jarring. Ostensibly intended to address injustices toward the Christian population living in Middle Eastern countries and the dwindling numbers of Christians there, the bishops seem to have focused instead on regressing to previously held but now officially repudiated theological positions and to castigate Israel. Given the undeniable fact that it is radical Moslems who persecute Christians and Christianity in the Middle East, this particular line of attack raises serious questions. As Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston, Massachusetts, and president of the ‘Commission for the Message,’ said at a Vatican press conference after the Synod:

‘The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands.’

‘We Christians cannot speak of the “promised land” as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people – all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people. Even if the head of the Israeli state is Jewish, the future is based on democracy. The Palestinian refugees will eventually come back and this problem will have to be solved,’ the Lebanese-born Bustros said.

In a final joint communique, the bishops also told Israel it shouldn’t use the Bible to justify “injustices” against the Palestinians. These are very troubling statements, on many levels. First, because an important member of the Catholic Church uttered them, and they have not been clearly and loudly repudiated by the Church. At best, the Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has attempted to calm the waters, but he did so in such a tepid way that the corrosive effect of these words continues to eat through the advances in Catholic-Jewish relations of the last 45 years. Second, because Archbishop Bustros, in contravention of the official Church position and statements made by Pope Benedict, is now claiming in supersessionistic terms that the coming of Jesus negates the covenant God made with the Jewish people, which among other things, includes the “Promised Land”. This is an astonishing thing to say given that Pope Benedict has clearly stated that God’s covenant with the Jews “has never been revoked.” For Archbishop Bustros there is no longer a “Chosen People” and the land of Israel is “occupied”. Irrespective of one’s theological or political beliefs, objectively this was a colossally irresponsible thing to say.

With the exception of some fringe right wing extremists, no one claims the Jews returned to the Land of Israel following a dictum in the Bible.  The Balfour Declaration, the immigration of Jews to Mandatory Palestine, the UN Partition Plan and the formation of the State of Israel follow a historical claim to the land as the ancestral home of the Jewish people, a land some of them never left. Even though some local Arabs (only some of whom were natives of the region and who did not call themselves “Palestinians” back then) were displaced in the 1948 war that ensued when five Arab countries invaded the newly formed state, the vast majority of those who left did so willingly. Regardless of whether one agrees with Israeli policies toward Palestinians or not, the one thing is certain is that despite what these Middle Eastern bishops believe, those policies are not dictated or animated by the Bible. When Archbishop Bustros talks about the ‘occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands’ it’s not really clear whether he refers to all of Israel as occupied Palestinian land, or whether he refers to the West Bank or Gaza (which in any case are autonomously governed by Palestinians). Based on the context of what he is saying, he seems to be embracing the Palestinian narrative and appears to refer to “Palestine” as the place where Israel stands, which implies Israel should not exist as a Jewish state. Archbishop Bustros also seems to confuse the nature of Israel as a Jewish state and democracy as its chosen political system. There is no conflict there. In Israel Arabs constitute a sizeable minority that has the same rights as Jews, including voting rights. This is also true of many other countries that call themselves Christian and have Jews, Moslems, Hindus and others who vote as well.

It seems Archbishop Bustros believes that Jews have no right to have their own country. According to him, the coming of Christ has nullified the designation of the “Chosen People”, which also means Jews have forfeited their right to the land God had promised them. This is the old theological Christian slander that stated that Jews were doomed to eternal exile as a consequence of their rejection of a divine Jesus. In this view Jews are a fallen people who are not entitled to a state of their own, the only people in the world to be singled out this way. Also, by suggesting that millions of Palestinian refugees will come back to Israel proper and thus change the nature of the Jewish state, the bishop is in essence denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

These profoundly anti-Jewish statements are a violent step backwards that threatens to undo the great progress in Jewish-Christian relations of the last few decades. We can only hope Pope Benedict will step in to authoritatively set the record straight.

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Understanding the Muslim Worldview

Published on November 8, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

All possible evidence seem to point to the fact that Arab nations are indeed monolithic in pretty much everything, and have been that way for 1000 years. There is a glimpse of change among some of those countries’ cultural elite, as somewhat seen in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. But in general all Moslem countries follow a pattern of dictatorial government, reaffirmed by religion.

There seems to be something of a religious war brewing, although ultimately this “religious war” is no more religious than any other “religious war” in history. Religion has always been just the excuse. None of this has anything to do with the values of each religion, or even the value of the religions themselves, and not even with whether Religion has any value at all.

Jihad, or Holy War, has always been in integral component of the history of Islam. The reason why Islam propagated so quickly, and so vastly, is because the Muslims were very good with the scimitar and they were fighting a holy war, that is, one in which the objective was not political but rather religious, the outcome was always conditioned to god’s will, and death was welcome. This is not a subversion of a peaceful, beautiful religion, any more than the oppression of non-Muslims in Muslim societies, the abominable treatment of women and the rejection of any authority that is non-Muslim in Muslims societies—to name a few—are examples of the teachings of a beautiful religion. These, and many examples like these, are not perversions of Islam by right-wing fanatics, but rather are and have always been an integral part of Islam.

Not understanding this is likely evidence of a projection of our own desires, and not a reflection of reality. It is probably natural of us as children of the Enlightenment to try to see goodness even when there is none. We look at Islam and we like to think that what we see is a peaceful religion. We look at the Koran, their holy book, and we convince ourselves that what we see is a wondrous literary masterpiece that exalts love and understanding. However, if we scrutinize all of that with cold, analytical eyes we will actually see 1400 years of bloody holy wars and intolerance (with a short glorious hiatus) and a “holy” book that teaches, among much other similar wisdom:

Koran 47:4-6: “When ye encounter the infidels, strike off their heads till ye have made a great slaughter among them . . . And who so fight for the cause of God, their works he will not suffer to miscarry; He will vouchsafe them guidance, and dispose their hearts aright; And he will bring them into the Paradise, of which he hath told them.”

Koran 2:216: “War is prescribed to you: but from this ye are averse. Yet haply ye are averse from a thing, though it be good for you.” (also 9:41)

Koran 3:157: “And if ye shall be slain or die on the path of God, then pardon from God and mercy is better than all your amassings; For if ye die or be slain, verily unto God shall ye be gathered.”

Koran 8:65: “O prophet! Stir up the faithful to the fight. Twenty of you who stand firm shall vanquish two hundred: and if there be a hundred of you they shall vanquish a thousand of the infidels, for they are a people devoid of understanding.”

Koran 61:4: “Verily God loveth those who, as though they were a solid wall, do battle for his cause in serried lines!”

Koran 4:74: “Let those then fight on the path of God, who barter this present life for that which is to come; for whoever fighteth on God’s path, whether he be slain or conquer, we will in the end give him a great reward.”

It’s true that the Jewish and Christian bibles have somewhat comparable verses. Maybe the world would be better off without any of it at all… With that being said, the Jewish people have not gone in genocidal rampages in the name of god or religion since biblical times and the Christian people haven’t done it in quite a long time either. The reason why the Muslim people are not only capable but also willing to do that today is because the immoral teachings of their holy book resonate loudly with them, because their culture makes them receptive to that, and because so many among them still believe it’s the inerrant and literal word of Allah.

There are entire populations in the Muslim world that have been brought up thinking similarly to absolutist 12th century Christendom, and are stuck in that mind frame. There are entire peoples that relish their cult of death and simmer in a miasma of hatred. When we look at great swaths of Muslim societies we see deep-seated tribal, barbarous attitudes towards their own people and their women. We see internecine fighting for power. We see the cult of death and the pursuit of selfish objectives. What we definitely do not see, as a whole, before or now, is love of life and peace.

The Western World has had, and still has, many examples of how low human beings can get: right-wing militias, the Nazis (even in the US), the religious fundamentalists (regardless of what religion they belong to), and others. But there are many significant differences: for one, none of these is condoned or promoted by the state, and some of them are actively fought against by the state. Not so in the Moslem world.

Let’s be clear here: Islam is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, if you accept that religions are a good thing. Islam has been used as an excuse to perpetrate atrocities, as Christianity has been used to perpetrate numerous atrocities and to a much lesser degree Judaism has been used in the same way. The difference is that the two latter have for the most part advanced past a literal interpretation of their respective holy books and have become less radical. With some minor fringe exceptions, you just don’t see entire populations this side of the Urals calling for the elimination of other people, like large portions of the Moslem world do. You do not see vile racial incitement in the mainstream media, let alone in state-sponsored media like you do in the Moslem world.

Not all Moslems are bad people, of course. Many, if not most of them are kind, family-oriented, peaceful people. But their voices are not heard. They let their radical brethren take over their governments, their societies, and more importantly, the minds of their children. The moderate in their midst usually prefer to keep quiet and support “the party line”, despite their possible conviction that it’s wrong. In essence, they have capitulated and let the bad guys win. They lack the will to fight the fundamentalists that tarnish their religion, their societies and their countries.

It will take more than just a few enlightened Muslims to get them out of that state: it will take a considerable amount of courage to break with the past and it will take an amount of energy and determination directly proportional to the backwardness of the societies in which these enlightened Muslims will operate. In practical terms, the societies in question also have to be receptive and willing to hear a different view but, more importantly, they need to acknowledge that their way of life is backwards and morally corrupt before any progress can be made.

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The Divided Nations: A Look at the United Nations

Published on October 19, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

A cursory look at the history of the world reveals an unending stream of blood. The greed for power, intolerance and the utter disregard for the basic needs of people have led, and continue to lead, to abuse and violence. If these traits are inherent in human nature, we as human beings have failed to acknowledge it and to devise solutions to ameliorate the problem.

After the Great War the Allies created the League of Nations with the intent of preserving world peace. This of course was a well-intentioned and worthwhile endeavor, but came up short of its stated goals. As Germany began an accelerated race to rearm itself in the 1930s, the Allies attempted to stop Hitler by appeasement. After the cataclysmic consequences of WWI, no one in France and Britain was willing to enforce the Treaty of Versailles. No one but Winston Churchill, that is. After the Second World War was over, he said:

“Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool.”

It’s remarkable how many parallels we can find in modern times to the period between the two world wars. Anywhere we look there’s some rogue regime that poses a mortal danger not only to its own people but also to its neighbors. This is precisely one of the things the UN is supposed to prevent.

Both the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations have in their charter the goal to avoid future devastation through war, as both incarnations of this organization were created after WWI and WWII, respectively. From this point of view, the UN has failed as miserably as its predecessor. It has not prevented or stopped any war since its inception. We should not forget that it was the League of Nations that was impotent and failed to prevent WWII, and the UN the wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Arab/Israeli wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973, Iraq/Iran, and India/Pakistan. It was also the UN that failed to prevent the ethnic cleansing genocide in the Balkans, Rwanda, Iraq, Darfur, and disappearances, torture and mass murder in South American military dictatorships as well as the recent inefficient, impotent role they played in disarming the country that constitutes the greatest danger to world peace today, Iran.

Claiming that the UN is not being used to its potential is a gross understatement. The UN is not only not even close to fulfilling the tenets of its own charter, in many cases it has been a hindrance, and through their inefficiency and ineptitude have fostered an environment in which the opposite is true. It is the UN that has allowed and perpetuates the only case in history in which a people—the Palestinians—are kept in squalor in dismal refugee camps for decades, and it is the UN that conveniently looks the other way when in those refugee camps they run, the culture of intolerance and hatred is nurtured and taught to young children.

Saying the UN has not been effective in resolving the Arab/Israeli conflict is a gross understatement too. When the armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel in 1948 after the country had declared its independence (as established by the UN), the new organization looked the other way and let the new nation be slaughtered by the numerically superior and better-equipped invaders. Would those paladins of justice at the UN have acted any differently then and now vis-à-vis Israel had the Arab countries been sitting on just sand?

The problem with the UN is inherent in its composition. Since the UN is formed by all kinds of countries with all kinds of interests, and even all kinds of perspectives on life within and outside of their territories, the organization is unlikely to arrive at a consensus on many thorny issues. This is an organization in which the vote of, say, Qatar counts as much as the vote of, say, the UK. This is a problem, because Qatar is a little country in which most of the population is made up of very poor foreigners whose voices don’t count, and the few princes that rule and do count gang up with other similar small nations to form a powerful bloc of many votes, whose outlook, interests, policies and way of government and life are totally inimical to those of the rest of the world.

Ultimately it’s mob rule. When it comes to the General Assembly’s apparent main preoccupation—Israel—or preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the number of votes of the Western powers amount to a fraction of the number of votes of the Arab bloc. The vote of either Germany, France, Britain or the US counts as much as the vote of Qatar or the United Arab Emirates in the General Assembly, which is one of the reasons why the UN is such an ineffectual body (and in practice worthless regarding its stated goal of keeping the peace). When the Arab bloc votes, they vote together as a brotherhood of countries, so in anything that has to do with the Middle East they count as dozens of votes. This of course is one of the reasons why the UN has always been and continues to be so anti-Israeli.

Other reasons why it’s wrong and unfair that the vote of Bahrain or Qatar (for example) count as much as that of a place like Britain or the US is because there’s the issue of experience and population. Let’s look at these two issues in some more detail: countries that have become very powerful and influential cannot be put in the same bag as countries that have not only no “worldly” experience (in the sense of countries like Britain, France or the US) but also radical and antagonistic views about the rest of the world. There’s no way around it: there’s always some vested interest from some group that sways the vote in some direction, which is not necessarily the right direction.

The facts that on the one hand the UN is in essence mob rule and on the other hand has no real enforcing power makes it useless as a peace-keeping entity. The former is the main reason why it cannot be trusted, while the latter is the reason why it cannot get things done. The constitution of the UN is a relatively new problem since at the beginning the League of Nations and the UN were formed by the Western countries, which share a common interest and outlook on life. However, over time the organization was greatly enlarged by the inclusion of numerous other nations with very different and sometime opposing interests.

The trouble with lack of enforcing power is that nobody really wants the UN to be a powerful world police. No country really wants some external force judging and imposing things on them. So, if the UN determines Kashmir should be independent, or that it should swing back to India or Pakistan, it is clear that no matter what the decision will be, one or more of the three parties will be unhappy. At that point what should the UN do? One possibility is to enforce the resolution with boots on the ground. This, we know from experience, will not and cannot happen with the current organization. The end result is inaction and the perpetuation of the status quo. The same thing applies to Iran, and applied to Hitler: inaction, or ineffective action. The only way the UN can be relevant is if it had the power to enforce. If the UN is to be the world’s police it will have to carry guns. There’s no way around it. Because this seems to be a utopian dream, we must accept the status quo (issue resolutions and live with the consequences of not enforcing them).

The issue of lack of enforcing power could conceivably be fixed by a two-pronged approach. On the one hand the UN would have to be armed with a strong expeditionary army (as opposed to the small “peace-keeping” force they currently have), and on the other hand the way they operate and think would need to be radically changed. Diplomacy is great, but there are cases when it just doesn’t work. When the police faces a psychopath shooting indiscriminately, they use force to stop him. They don’t invite the man over for tea to discuss things. If this policy had been in place in the 1930s Hitler would have been toppled or stopped at the very latest in 1936, Nasser in 1966/7 and Hussein long before he invaded Kuwait.

As Churchill said in a speech to the House of Commons before WWII was over, in order to avoid the horrors of war again, and in order to avoid the pitfalls in which the League of Nations had fallen into, the successor organization—the United Nations—would have to be a very strong organization. He meant strength in the sense of force. Churchill envisioned a UN with a very powerful army that whenever necessary could go anywhere in the world and slap a few dictators here and there and prevent “rogue” states from breaking the peace. The UN not only doesn’t have a strong army, it also wouldn’t use it had it had one. That’s why the organization is worthless as a peacekeeping body.

Even in its somewhat successful humanitarian functions it’s pretty pathetic as far as its other responsibilities, as exemplified by its total failure to enforce the non-belligerent status of its own refugee camps in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. And, in those occasions when they have tried to use force, they have done a dismal job as exemplified by their track record in the Balkans and Lebanon.

So, unless there’s a way in which the UN can (a) determine what’s good or bad based on universal standards of morality, ethics, etc. and not a popular vote and, (b) this organization is armed enough to be able to prevent wars, genocide and protect the human rights of defenseless populations with the use of force when necessary, it seems to me that said organization will continue to be as useless and impotent as it has always been.

If the UN is to keep world peace, then it must have teeth. There’s no way around it. But asking the UN—who received Arafat with wild applause in its General Assembly not too long ago—to adopt this new, radical way of seeing things might be too much. I do not know if it’s possible. My suspicion is that the UN has already become the League of Nations II, having adopted the policy of appeasement. The body has not learned the lessons from its past, and is following the same steps as its predecessors with predictably the same results.

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A tribute to the union of church, state and party

Published on October 16, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

A new exhibit in Berlin, called “Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime” shows, among many other things, an interesting tapestry. As reported by the New York Times, “The tapestry, a tribute to the union of church, state and party, was woven by a church congregation at the behest of their priest”. That is the point I had been making for a while. It was quite common for post-war Germans to claim “we didn’t know” or “it wasn’t us” or “it was just some crazy SS”. It’s also common for Christian apologists to claim that “the perpetrators weren’t true Christians”. Even today some Germans have a hard time understanding how their grandparents or parents could have been swept into that storm, let alone acknowledging that most did. The quote above gives a clue to explain why: when faced with a moral challenge, individuals will accept or reject it based on their preconceived moral notions. In other words, if an individual is already morally predisposed to accept that raping women is a fun, acceptable thing to do, he’ll do it. If an indidual believes some other human being is a subhuman beast of burden that can be bought and sold, whipped and worked to death, he’ll do just that without questioning it. Likewise, if an individual is told an entire ethnic group is evil, demonic, subhuman and a threat to that individual and the rest of his kin, a virus like smallpox and that just like it the entire group needs to be exterminated, he’ll unquestionably do it. As we know, this is exactly what the Germans and their helpers did during WWII.

The Church is the self-avowed protector of morals. During the Nazi period, they seemed to have forgotten that. They not only did not tell the faithful in their congregations that persecuting (and then murdering) Jews was a sin, they often encouraged it by persevering in the dissemination of ancient Christian antisemitism. By encouraging the faithful (and we should keep in mind that even at the end of the war more than 95% of the German population were tax-paying members of their respective churches) to adore their Führer, by stressing the union of state, party and church, by encouraging the flock to fight for the Fatherland and die for Hitler, they ensured that no one questioned the moral validity of Hitler’s commands.

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Going to Mass on Sunday and Killing on Monday

Published on October 12, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

During the Nazi period it was common for ordinary individuals to go about their normal lives, as their Jewish neighbors were harassed, beaten, or worse, literally in front of everyone in every street corner. As World War II began, the persecution of the Jews became much worse, until the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was put into full effect in 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Beyond that point, harassment and serious civil rights violations turned into deportations, ghettoization and systematic genocide. During this period, up until the conclusion of the war in 1945, both ordinary Germans and their local helpers in France, Slovakia, Croatia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere managed to reconcile the persecution and mass murder of Jews with their religion and morality. Over a thousand military chaplains, both Catholic and Protestant, tended the souls of the perpetrators in the field. Franz Stangl, commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka death camps, found solace for his role in mass murder from the involvement of Christian clergy during the assault on the Jews. In essence, the perpetrators went to Mass on Sunday and they murdered Jews on Monday.

Typically, apologists for the Catholic or Protestant churches argue that these were not true Christians. To them, those perpetrators that went to church or participated in field services for soldiers were not honest, true Christians. Are we to believe these men were coaxed to attend religious services, or do they mean no “good” Catholics received these services? Or do they mean to say they did receive religious services, but not in the form of going to Mass on Sunday?

Maybe the German perpetrators did not have a German Church near the concentration camps, but they managed to receive religious solace nonetheless. They celebrated Christmas and other religious holidays, and they had access to priests. It’s misleading to say that field chaplains were restricted to the German armed forces, because even though the Order Police and the Einsatzgruppen killing squads were SS, they were attached to the army and operated right behind the front lines, so the military chaplains tended the souls of both the foot soldiers (who by the way, also often merrily participated in the exterminatory actions) as well as the SS.

I can agree with the claim that many Christians joined the Nazi party due to opportunistic reasons, but to believe they did not agree with the platform is naïve and does not correlate well with the fanatical fervor displayed by them (as everyone else). Or were the tens of thousands cheering Hitler in the party rallies only the ones that joined for ideological reasons while the opportunists stayed at home? Or maybe the opportunists were forced to cheer by the Gestapo? Sure, young Germans were conscripted into the army, but many joined voluntarily, and many joined other organizations, including the SS, because they believed in the platform. The men in the Order Police and the Einsatzgruppen were not coerced to kill, were not forced to pose for the camera while humiliating old Jews, were not forced to act in front of the cameras as they took pictures and movies of themselves and their comrades killing Jewish men, women and children. They were not forced to share the stories of their actions with their friends and families. No SS man was forced to kill if he didn’t want to, and they were given the option to opt-out with no consequence if they felt they were not up to the task.

Defenders of the Church will tell you that the perpetrators were simple, uneducated men. Not so. Many among the perpetrators had doctorates and other degrees, and many were professionals: doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. Some were simple men too, of course.  I mentioned Franz Stangl earlier. What about Otto Ohlendorf, the commander of one of the Einsatzgruppen? He was responsible for the brutal murder of 90,000 people, and he was an economist and a lawyer. Were these “simple SS men”? Apologists often mention that SS men no longer belonged to the church. Again, this is not true. Almost a fourth of all SS men remained in the Catholic faith despite all efforts to make them leave it. Think of Spain in the 15th century for another example of pressure—and failure—to make people abandon their faith. By 1940 over 95% of the German population were still tax-paying members of their respective Protestant or Catholic churches.

Even if the majority of the perpetrators did leave the church, that did not take away their heritage, their education, or their beliefs. This is not something you just switch off. It did not work on the Jews when they were forced to convert to Catholicism in the Middle Ages, it did not work in the Soviet Union, and it did not work with the Nazis.

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The truth about Pope Pius XII: Are we getting it?

Published on September 28, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

When it comes to the role of the churches and of Pope Pius XII during WWII, the world seems to be divided into three camps: those who are neutral or don’t care, those who defend the actions of the churches and the Pope at all costs and sometimes by twisting and stretching facts to make them fit with their position, and by those who think that the churches and the Pope simply accepted the fate of the Jews as something they deserved and/or as an acceptable casualty of war. Most of the times apologists for the churches or the Pope accuse those in the latter group of not “getting it” and of being unable to see that the Pope worked tirelessly to save Jews.

Actually, I think we “get it” all right. I think it’s them that are failing to understand. Why would millions of people around the globe, including the world’s foremost Holocaust scholars and historians fail to be persuaded by their arguments and their documentation? Do they ever ask themselves this question? Are we all malicious, bigoted, or just plain stupid? Apologists for the Pope gather documents and testimonials, and organize symposiums to discuss all this. But none of the most respected Holocaust scholars ever attend these symposiums. Why is that? Historians go to symposiums and conferences all the time, and they would jump at the possibility to get exposure to new documents. But as the defenders of the Pope bitterly complain, mainstream scholars do not attend their symposiums. Not even via teleconference. So, it isn’t a financial reason. No, they simply do not want to attend. Why do you think that is? Could it have something to do with their belief that the research performed by the apologists is poor? Could it be that mainstream scholars believe the interpretation of the data the apologist are presenting is wrong? Could it be these scholars suspect the affidavits they’ve got? Could it be they suspect their motives? Could it be they see an attempt to mislead the layman by presenting facts to mean things they don’t mean?

The reason why papal apologists are not getting traction with mainstream scholars is because scholars think that discussing history with them is akin to discussing religion with religious fundamentalists. In essence, it’s a futile effort, like arguing with someone who believes the Earth is flat. No amount of evidence, no amount of argument and disputation seems to move them form their preconceived, immutable position. So, no reputable scholars want to join them in their symposiums because they do not want to lend their prestige to the event, and because they know they would be talking to a wall.

I think the world would change its mind about Pope Pius if his defenders found that he had acted like the leaders in the Danish and Norwegian Lutheran Churches or the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria, or even like some of his own bishops in the Catholic Church in France, for instance. When the Germans were about to deport Bulgaria’s Jews, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church successfully mobilized the faithful to prevent just that. When the Germans were about to deport Denmark’s Jews, the leaders of the Danish Lutheran Church mobilized the faithful to prevent just that as well. In a letter of protest sent to the German authorities before the deportations from Denmark began in October 1943, which was read from the pulpit in churches in Denmark, Bishop Hans Fuglsang-Damgaard, with the support of all the Danish Church’s bishops, said:

“Whenever persecutions are undertaken for racial or religious reasons against the Jews, it is the duty of the Christian Church to raise a protest against it for the following reasons:

. . . Because the persecution of the Jews is irreconcilable with the humanitarian concept of love of neighbors which follows from the message which the Church of Jesus Christ is commissioned to proclaim. With Christ there is no respect of persons, and he has taught us that every man is precious in the eyes of God. . . .

. . . race and religion can never be in themselves a reason to deprive a man of his rights, freedom or property. . . . We shall therefore struggle to ensure the continued guarantee to our Jewish brothers and sisters [of] the same freedom which we ourselves treasure more than life.

. . . We are obliged by our conscience to maintain the law and to protest against any violation of human rights. Therefore we desire to declare unambiguously our allegiance to the word, we must obey God rather than man.”

Scholarly and world opinion about Pope Pius XII would change in his favor if he were found to have publicly said something like this. His moral standing would be restored if he was found to have spoken plainly and clearly through pastoral letters, encyclicals, Vatican Radio broadcasts or through his bishops from the pulpits of all churches so everyone would know that he specifically instructed the faithful to act, not just to save Jews, but to stop denouncing, hunting them down, deporting them, and murdering them.

But not through veiled messages no one understood. Not through secret missions. Not through silence, which was interpreted as tacit approval. There was nothing “heroic” about the Pope’s supposed “discreet” behind the scenes work on behalf of the Jews. There was nothing “heroic” about his silence, and even less of his obtuse, vague messages. As a consequence of the Pope’s inaction (or at least ineffective action), the Germans deported over 1000 Roman Jews to their deaths with what was perceived to be carte blanche from the Pope. As a consequence of what Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard and all the Danish Lutheran Church’s bishops did, and what Archbishop Krill and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church did, the Danish and Bulgarian people were mobilized to save Jews, which was accomplished in a myriad ways by regular people, without vast resources, and in front of and in defiance of Nazi eyes. These people surely feared the Gestapo as much as anyone else. Yet the Danes and Bulgarians spoke out, they told the faithful in no uncertain terms what was happening and what they should and should not do, they mobilized, and as a result almost all Danish and Bulgarians Jews survived the war. And the saddest part of this story? The rescue of Denmark’s Jews took place two weeks before the deportation of the Jews of Rome. Pope Pius chose not to follow this proven example.

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The consequences of dealing with the Devil

Published on September 18, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

In 1933, shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, the Vatican signed a concordat with the Nazi regime. This agreement gave Nazi Germany much needed credibility and prestige at home and, more importantly, internationally. Even though the Vatican did not meant it to do this, as a consequence German Catholic clergy and the faithful widely understood this agreement to signify Vatican approval of Nazi policies.

In the parliamentary elections that November, the Nazis capitalized on the Concordat. They presented the German people with lists of Nazi candidates and promised the Catholic electorate all sorts of things in exchange for their vote. The Nazis plastered Germany with billboards and posters, one of which gave Catholics answers to the question, “Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler?”

As it turned out, they offered them multiple answers to this question:

1. the Faith is protected,

2. peace with the Church is assured,

3. public morality is preserved,

4. Sunday is hallowed,

5. Catholic schools are maintained,

6. the Catholic conscience is no longer burdened,

7. a Catholic has equal rights before the law and in the life of the nation,

8. Catholic organisations and associations, insofar as they exclusively serve religious, charitable and cultural purposes, can operate freely.

Therefore a Catholic is obliged on 12 November [1933] to vote thus:

Referendum: yes

Parliamentary election: Adolf Hitler

As a result,  93% of the ballots approved the Nazi decision to withdraw from the League of Nations and 92% endorsed the “Hitler list”. This election in essence rendered the German parliament, the Reichstag, politically irrelevant. You may see the poster in the original German here.

This, combined with the lift of the ban on membership in the Nazi Party the German Catholic Church had imposed prior to 1933, but lifted after the Reichskonkordat had been signed, in essence opened the floodgates to an absolute Nazi takeover in Germany with terrible consequences for the Jews and the world just a few years later.

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Pope Pius XII’s Conception of Jews and the Deportation of the Jews of Hungary

Published on August 31, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

By 1944 the Germans and their helpers had already exterminated a large part of all the Jews they would eventually murder during the Second World War. Hungary was the last country with a large Jewish population who had been spared until then. Determined to completely eliminate every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe, the Germans, with the eager assistance of the Hungarian authorities, deported over 430,000 Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp between May and July of 1944, where 90% of them were exterminated on arrival. It was during this period that Auschwitz was killing at maximum capacity, killing about 10,000 Jews every day. Unable to burn that many bodies in the crematoria, the Germans dug pits next to them and burned the corpses there.

During this period many foreign diplomats and heads of state, including Pope Pius XII, urged the head of the Hungarian state, Admiral Horthy, to stop the deportations. Papal apologists often claim that Admiral Horthy stopped the deportation of Hungarian Jews due to the telegram Pope Pius sent him. Not so.

The deportations were halted only after Admiral Horthy had received a deluge of protests from many countries including an ultimatum from President Roosevelt, threatening to be particularly rough in his military treatment of Hungary. An unusually heavy bombing raid on Budapest followed this. The Vatican waited until that time to make a protest to halt the deportations. By then most of the 430,000 Jews the Germans would eventually deport had already been deported. So, claiming that Pius XII’s telegram to the Hungarian head of state asking him to stop the deportations resulted in a halt to the deportations is false and misleading, because someone not familiar with the historical context may think that the Pope’s action stopped the deportations, which it didn’t do. Moreover, the papal nuncio in Budapest, on conveying the message to Horthy, took advantage of the opportunity to clarify that the Vatican’s protest was not at all due to a “false sense of compassion” for the Jews.

One of the salient points about the deportation of the Jews of Hungary is the extent of the involvement of the local authorities, as well as the local antisemites, particularly from the fascist Arrow Cross Party. These people were not brainwashed SS, who had been subjected to years of relentless Nazi racial propaganda. The SS officer in charge of the deportation was Adolf Eichmann, who supervised the operation with only 20 officers and a staff of 100, including cooks, drivers, etc. Clearly the only way just 20 SS men could manage to deport half a million people in about two months was because they enjoyed the close assistance of the local population. Even Eichmann was impressed by the eagerness and zeal of the local auxiliaries. Why was the local population so predisposed to help?

Six years earlier, and after anti-Jewish legislation constituting grave civil rights violations had been passed in Germany, Italy and Hungary, then Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, later to become Pope Pius XII, visited Hungary. There he addressed the International Eucharistic Congress held in Budapest in 1938, where he discussed godless Nazi and communist regimes, among other things. When he referred to the Jews, however, this is what he had to say:

“Jesus conquers! He who so often was the recipient of the rage of his enemies, he who suffered the persecutions of those of whom he was one, he shall be triumphant in the future as well. . . . As opposed to the foes of Jesus, who cried out to his face, “Crucify him!”—we sing him hymns of our loyalty and our love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today.”

As you see, Cardinal Pacelli was not talking about atheist Nazis, communists or “military godless” here (despite the fact that that may have been the thrust of the rest of the speech). No, the “foes of Jesus” who supposedly cried “Crucify him!” that Pacelli was talking about were not middle eastern Nazi ancestors, they were the Jews the New Testament and further Christian writings blame for killing Jesus, for persecuting him, for cursing him and for rejecting him, all false accusations Cardinal Pacelli had no qualms in repeating three years after the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws were passed in Germany, and in the same year they were passed in Italy and Hungary, where he was giving this speech and where he found no objection to raise. Here we clearly see the commonly held traditional Catholic conception of Jews as the enemies of Jesus. We see the Jews presented as not only cursing and rejecting Jesus, but also persecuting him and calling for his crucifixion.

When attempting to explain why Cardinal Pacelli would utter such antisemitic words, papal apologists will remind you that the focus of the conference was on the godless Nazi and communist regimes. One needs to wonder why that would matter at all. Who cares if the conference was about atheist Nazis or the health benefits of eating spinach? Unquestionably Pacelli was talking about the Jews in the passage above. The Vatican Secretary of State was not referring to Nazi lips that cursed Christ and Nazi hearts that still rejected Christ even to that day. He was referring to “the Jews”.

This anti-Jewish passage is not a tragic example of rogue theological and doctrinal absurdity. Instead, that type of statement was the norm. Pacelli was a product of his time. He imbibed these anti-Jewish teachings prevalent in Catholicism. How else could he not have done so? He was steeped in the same Christian teachings about Jews as all other Catholics who hated Jews, except that because of his family history and career he was even more so.

Pacelli felt the need to spread even more anti-Jewish sentiments when he referred to “the Crucifige of the masses, who had been misled and stirred up by a propaganda of lies … the mockeries and curses at the foot of the Cross … the redemptive mission and preaching of the Good News falsely portrayed as a rebellion against earthly powers”. Here we see Pacelli once again accusing Jews of deicide. He attempted to justify their assumed reprehensible behavior to having been “misled and stirred up by a propaganda of lies”, but ultimately that was immaterial. To him, the Jews were Christ-killers. Here we have another instance of Pacelli thinking and talking about the Jews in the same terms as he likely wrote at about the same time for Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge: “. . . the Christ who took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him.”

Given the background of anti-Jewish sentiment instilled in the Hungarian population for centuries by traditional Christian teachings, reinforced by the Vatican’s second most important person on the eve of Holocaust, should we really be surprised at all at the eagerness ordinary Hungarians showed when the Germans gave them the chance to eliminate the Jews?

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Aiming at the Heart of the Arab/Israeli Conflict

Published on August 24, 2010 in General by Gabriel. 0 Comments

The basis of the antagonism in the Arab/Israeli conflict is ultimately the Arabs’ seeming inability to accept even a minuscule Jewish state among a sea of Arab nations. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. Any arguments such as Israel being Arab land, Palestinian refugees in camps, lost homes or a foreign race of European Jews “taking” “their” land are nothing but an attempt to justify their intolerance.

There is little will to change this, of course, because the ruling class is very comfortable where they are, with total control over oil and other resources. The hatred and antagonism against Israel is nothing more than a diversionary tactic that keeps the sheepish mindless masses angry at something and someone else. Instead of those masses worrying about how miserable their lives are, when they could in fact have the highest per capita income in the world, they are made to hate Israel who they are told is to blame for all their problems. This tactic worked very well in Europe for a thousand years; it worked very well for the Nazis, and is working very well for the Arabs.

I think many people wish the Arab countries made peace with Israel, but unfortunately that does not seem to be a priority among the Arab nations. There are myriad indications, including popular polls, which indicate that most Arabs believe that the rightful place for the Jews is at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Certainly there are differences among the different Arab nations, yet they share something quite significant in common: their hatred for Israel and lately their hatred for the Jews. Simply look at their rhetoric of the last few decades: it’s just like Germany in the 1930s.

If you look at the last 50 years of the history of Israel you’ll see that in many regards their accomplishments and lives are quite similar to those of other Western countries. Granted they have to live dodging bombs, but in most other regards it’s quite similar. Certainly from a technological perspective they have made remarkable accomplishments. It just makes me sad to think of what the Arabs could have accomplished in the Oil Century had they had the same drive as the Israelis. Just imagine what peoples like the Americans, the Germans, the Israelis or the Japanese could do with pretty much unlimited funds, if they’ve done what they’ve done with limited but growing economies. So far the Arabs have little to show for their unlimited wealth. It would embarrass their ancestors from their glorious days of a millennia ago!

Only two countries signed peace treaties with Israel, and they both did it after they recognized that they simply couldn’t defeat the Israelis at war. No Arab country entered into an Alliance with Israel: those two countries have at best a “cold peace” status quo. Achieving peace is of paramount importance; the question is how to achieve it when one of the parties has a tradition of outright rejection, vile antisemitism and violent action.

I think it’s hard not to sympathize more with the Israeli side than with the Palestinian because I believe the latter, despite their legitimate claims, has done every single possible thing to discredit themselves as a respectable group. I find it very hard to respect any person that believes that something like a holy war or the indiscriminate murder of “the enemy” is not only acceptable and desirable, but also honorable. Islam indoctrinates its believers with concepts that are anathema to me, such as to die for a god. The end result is always to cheapen the value of life, since the dogma teaches to die—the younger the better—for the god. Can you think of many cultures that teach hatred to their children? That teaches them to use a machine gun instead of a pencil or a plow? That teaches them that nothing could be better than to die young while fighting the enemy?

The problem is extreme fanaticism. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are free of it, unfortunately. But if you took a cross section of the Israeli population at random and compare it with a cross section of the Palestinian population at random what you will find is that at any given time the group that leans toward violence in general is the Palestinian. You know what? Not even among the most radical of the radical extreme Israelis will you find children fighting in the front against any “enemy”, or a preacher venomously instilling hatred among the faithful, or people going into a bus or public market and blowing themselves up while killing indiscriminately dozens of innocent people, including women and children. That is the problem. And those are just some examples of why I believe that the Palestinians did everything wrong from 1948 onwards.

But don’t get me wrong: by no means am I saying that there are no Israeli monsters: Israelis are no angels either. I don’t want you to think I believe Arabs cannot be loving, intelligent people. On the contrary, I think they truly can be. But unfortunately intelligence doesn’t seem to be very prevalent among the Palestinians, at least right now. I wish educated, progressive Palestinians (and they exist—although unfortunately not enough of them) had a louder voice among their gun-wielding fanatic brothers. But personally I think the Palestinians are doomed for the foreseeable future because their leader—who does not believe the Holocaust happened—cannot really coexist peacefully. Even if he could accept to live alongside a Jewish state, there’s no way he could make his own extreme factions (who had been conditioned against this very idea since childhood) to accept this as well.

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