To Question or not to Question

[The Strategist 1]

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two.

Meller's remarks came after repeated denials of the Jewish Holocaust by Iranian officials and their suggestions that more research is needed to establish the truth about what happened to European Jews.

"Under no circumstances we should allow something like that to take place in Poland," Meller told Polish news agency PAP. "It goes beyond all imaginable norms to question, even discuss or negotiate the issue."

Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported on Friday that Iran wants to send researchers to Poland to examine the scale of the Nazi crimes during the war.

Critical thought, free speech, challenge the dogma... ... ... blah blah blah.

The above expressions are the crown jewels of the West's moral ethic. The media, the freedom of information legislations, the moral police promoting free speech and the publication of caricatures of Muhammad- the prophet, all freeze however when they hear the H word. The Holocaust!

So, what on Earth is the big deal about questioning the accuracy of anything relating to the Jewish Holocaust?

Edited March 1, 2006 by The Strategist

[Rawshni 9]

(bismillah)

(salam)

In worldly politics, everybody has an axe to grind and some skeletons to hide . . . .

قَد قُتل الحسينُ بکربلا

اُجڑ گئ ہاۓ ثانیِ زاہرا وچ کربل دے واويلا

----

نقشِ الا لله بر صحرا نوشت -- سطرِ عنوانِ نجات ِما نوشت

ا ے صبا، اے پیکِ دورافتادگاں -- سلامِ ما بخاکِ پاکِ او رسا

اقبال

Please check links below

(salam)

[Hizbullah 9]

(bismillah)

(salam)

If the holocaust really happened, then why are they afraid?

Subhanallah

[24:49] But if the truth had been with them they would have come unto him willingly.

wassalam

[Mohsin 3]

This is a sign of dooms day, this is beyond morality, this is inhuman, this is crossing all the limits, this is barbaric, this is totally insane to question the truth of Holocaust :wacko:

[wisken 0]

In worldly politics, everybody has an axe to grind and some skeletons to hide . . . .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

which are best left undisturbed....

[Iqra 9]

This is a sign of dooms day, this is beyond morality, this is inhuman, this is crossing all the limits, this is barbaric, this is totally insane to question the truth of Holocaust :wacko:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh stop being so bloody dramatic.

[postmaster1923 18]

The Nazis did gather Jews and kill them. They also gathered homosexuals, mentally retarded people, arabs, and anyone else who didn't have blue eyes, blonde hair, and pink skin, or who didn't agree with their policies. They also captured Nordic women, and "bred" them to produce "Aryan" offspring, which were raised in state orphanages. When there were so many injustices committed by the Nazis, why are they all forgotten except the Jews?

It is unknown how many people were killed, and to what extent the operation was government controlled, and to what extent it was concealed. I do not understand why anyone would object to analysing the available data and records.

[Iqra 9]

The Nazis did gather Jews and kill them.  They also gathered homosexuals, mentally retarded people, arabs, and anyone else who didn't have blue eyes, blonde hair, and pink skin, or who didn't agree with their policies.  They also captured Nordic women, and "bred" them to produce "Aryan" offspring, which were raised in state orphanages.  When there were so many injustices committed by the Nazis, why are they all forgotten except the Jews? 

It is unknown how many people were killed, and to what extent the operation was government controlled, and to what extent it was concealed.  I do not understand why anyone would object to analysing the available data and records.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well said. By the way, do you have any sources to back up the claim that Arabs were killed by Hitler? Not to doubt you, but I was under the impression that Hitler had an alliance with many Arab states.

[postmaster1923 18]

Well said. By the way, do you have any sources to back up the claim that Arabs were killed by Hitler? Not to doubt you, but I was under the impression that Hitler had an alliance with many Arab states.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Aren't gypsies Arab? Perhaps I was mistaken. The gypsies are Christian, not Muslim, but their appearance is certainly very much like Arabs, and they definitely were gathered up in the Nazi containment camps too.

Edited March 1, 2006 by smileynatalie

[Al A'leemu 4]

Why shouldn't it be allowed to be questioned???...anything and everything is being questioned in the west, this can be an addition...so what if someone whats to question something in history...What happened to 'democracy'???...well to me it looks as if its all show...I don't see any democracy in someone being locked up just because they DENIED something...in a so called 'democratic' country, personal beliefs of people should not be invaded, no one should be forced to think in one way only!!!

And if they do want to force you to belive in the holocaust then they shouldn't travel the world and blow their trumpets about being 'democratic' because clearly that isn't democracy!!!

Ugh :wacko:

Edited March 1, 2006 by Al A'leemu

[postmaster1923 18]

And if they do want to force you to belive in the holocaust then they shouldn't travel the world and blow their trumpets about being 'democratic' because clearly that isn't democracy!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, sis, democracy has nothing to do with personal freedom. Democracy means rule of the majority. If the majority chooses to oppress the minority, it still is democracy, according to the definition of the word.

Personal rights and freedoms are an entirely seperate issue from democracy.

[Al A'leemu 4]

Actually, sis, democracy has nothing to do with personal freedom.  Democracy means rule of the majority.  If the majority chooses to oppress the minority, it still is democracy, according to the definition of the word.

Personal rights and freedoms are an entirely seperate issue from democracy.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I understand that sis.

But does that mean that people with those minority ideologies should be oppressed and forced to think otherwise just because they are a minority?...isn't that juat as bad as the holocaust event...treat a minority of people (the jews) unfairly...

Edited March 1, 2006 by Al A'leemu

[postmaster1923 18]

I understand that sis.

But does that mean that people with those minority ideologies should be oppressed and forced to think otherwise just because they are a minority?...isn't that juat as bad as what the holocaust did...treat a minority of people (the jews) unfairly...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Its terrible. And to ignore the other minorities (mentally ill or retarded, gypsies, et c) because it is politically correct to only pay attention to one is just as wrong as ignoring and oppressing one minority, or any, or all minorities.

How many people were imprisoned or killed by the Nazis who were not Jewish?

One of my favorite fiction authors, Hermann Hesse, was imprisoned in a mental hospital for all of WWII, for disagreeing with Nazi policies. He was a secular, white, German. (or was he Austrian? I forgot.)

[Al A'leemu 4]

^exactly so..he was German sis

[Satyam 6]

Aren't gypsies Arab?  Perhaps I was mistaken.  The gypsies are Christian, not Muslim, but their appearance is certainly very much like Arabs, and they definitely were gathered up in the Nazi containment camps too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lol..if only you tried to read more history than in imagining conspiracy theories.. :)

Gypsies are Indians (specifically Northwestern part) who fled the area following muslim invasions around 1000 AD. There were a lot of migrations (both eastward and westward) set off by the barbarous multiple invasions by the likes of Ghazni (13 invasions) and Ghori (8 invasions, I think). The Saurashtra speaking Gujaratis fled as far down south as Madurai in Tamil Nadu. The Banjara and Lombadis are still nomadic groups in India.

Gypsies are the group that fled westwards. They speak Romani - a Sanskrit derived language.

[postmaster1923 18]

^Right. I had just looked it up on internet. The gypsies I had met in Hungary look very much like Arab descended folks. My assumption based on appearance was incorrect.

But that doesn't change my point that Jews were not the only ones terrorized by the Nazi regime.

[Satyam 6]

But that doesn't change my point that Jews were not the only ones terrorized by the Nazi regime.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What is the point in stating the obvious?

[postmaster1923 18]

What is the point in stating the obvious?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm. . . .maybe I was starting to buy into the article posted in another thread, that said if you ignore or deny something enough, you will begin to believe that it never happened.

Why does the media and popular culture only focus on the Jews who were imprisoned or killed by the Nazis? And why do they object to anyone questioning their reports?

Edited March 1, 2006 by smileynatalie

[Satyam 6]

Why does the media and popular culture only focus on the Jews who were imprisoned or killed by the Nazis? 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Which media and which popular culture?

The American media and popular culture would focus on things things that resonate with the American people. There are jews in US but no gypsies. If I make a movie on gypsies, it will bomb.

And why do they object to anyone questioning their reports?

Who is "they"?

[postmaster1923 18]

Which media and which popular culture?

The American media and popular culture would focus on things things that resonate with the American people. There are jews in US but no gypsies. If I make a movie on gypsies, it will bomb.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

False. The US has one of the top 5 gypsy population numbers. They just don't stand out so much here as they do in europe, where they are ostracised and discriminated against.

Who is "they"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've been wondering that myself. ;)

[Abbas_Zaidi 16]

The Nazis did gather Jews and kill them.  They also gathered homosexuals, mentally retarded people, arabs, and anyone else who didn't have blue eyes, blonde hair, and pink skin, or who didn't agree with their policies.  They also captured Nordic women, and "bred" them to produce "Aryan" offspring, which were raised in state orphanages.  When there were so many injustices committed by the Nazis, why are they all forgotten except the Jews? 

It is unknown how many people were killed, and to what extent the operation was government controlled, and to what extent it was concealed.  I do not understand why anyone would object to analysing the available data and records.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

the supporters of Holocaust say that Nazis kept detailed records of their operations and killings...now of all the atrocities committed by them and even after destruction of Europe, the only records saved were which described in detail, the killings of Jews, even the exact count: 6 million ??

[postmaster1923 18]

the supporters of Holocaust say that Nazis kept detailed records of their operations and killings...now of all the atrocities committed by them and even after destruction of Europe, the only records  saved were which described in detail, the killings of Jews, even the exact count: 6 million ??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There are records, or is this one of those "urban legends"? Where are these records? I know they kept scientific records of the tests they did on mentally ill, handicapped, or retarded people. Did they keep names of the people who were imprisoned or killed?

[Abbas_Zaidi 16]

There are records, or is this one of those "urban legends"?  Where are these records?  I know they kept scientific records of the tests they did on mentally ill, handicapped, or retarded people.  Did they keep names of the people who were imprisoned or killed?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

sister it shows their hypocrisy...there must be "some" records saved, how can records be saved when even the people who kept the records were killed ?

I have heard Europe became a bonfire....each house was destroyed in Germany leave alone the government offices..

[IMAnonymous 8]

  WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two.

    Meller's remarks came after repeated denials of the Jewish Holocaust by Iranian officials and their suggestions that more research is needed to establish the truth about what happened to European Jews.

    "Under no circumstances we should allow something like that to take place in Poland," Meller told Polish news agency PAP. "It goes beyond all imaginable norms to question, even discuss or negotiate the issue."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not a holocaust denier but I do happen to know that Stefam Meller is Jewish. It might have been more appropriate if someone else had spoken.

[Satyam 6]

False.  The US has one of the top 5 gypsy population numbers.

What is the percentage in population of gypsies in US. I am guessing it would be like .000001 or thereabouts.

You must be daft if you think that gypsies have any sort of resonation or cultural connection with majority of the Americans of the WASP kind or for that matter any other kind.

I've been wondering that myself.  ;)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Stop wondering about conspiracy theories and grow out of the zeal of the converted. :P

[Cyan_Garamond 6]

People around the world have every right and reason to question the Holocaust--to find out the truth regarding what happened. However, they should not trivialize the suffering of its victims, and they should approach the issue from all angles; understand causes and effects.

Edited March 1, 2006 by Cyan_Garamond

[postmaster1923 18]

^well said!

[mohdali316 10]

Just Today i was watching FOX NEWS and they showed a clip in which this black guy was thier who critisized bush and the US policies against the blacks saying something like we dont believe in Bush's war against Terror because for the blacks the biggest terror has been wat has been going on in the US against the blacks. Then when the clip was over the compare took over and he had an expert with him. The first comment he made was that this guy (The black guy whose clip was shown) is Anti-Semitist and he critisizes our president so y should we listen to him. And after listening to all this i was like wat was the connection bw the guys (Black) being Anti-Semitist and the things he was saying?? Thats the culture of the west. Funny a few days back on some forum other then Shiachat I replied to the following comments:

The Shawshank Redemption 2/14/2006 7:37 AM

Has anyone seen this movie?

its about this honest banker who gets falsly imprisoned for killing his wife and his wife's lover. there's a quote in the movie which is funny and interesting:

at one point Andy Dufrene who is the falsly imprisoned person is telling his friend "On the outside, I was an honest man. Straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." its my case really, before I met some ppl in this community i hated Jews, it took some extreme muslims to make me love them.

My Set of Answers:

Freedom of Speech 2/15/2006 11:14 AM

Yes i agree with u becasue its ur own words that u r not in a position to say which religion is the best but i cannot allow u to represent my perseptions by saying "no one is". may be 1.6 billion muslims -1 are but not me. Some Freedom of speech. Alhamdolilah i m proud to say that my religeon is the divine light which coverged into what we call Islam after the efforts made by the greatest of prophets Jesus and Moses inclusive.

brands 2/15/2006 11:22 AM

Freedom of speech....u can ignore the brutalization of humanity at the hands of ur protectors of this term in the periods of colanization and those who mould world politics according to thier needs and requirements and where it deems fit they can impose and superimpose the most brutalist dictatorships of the world slaming thier basic and fundamental norms of Freedom of Speech. But ofcourse your one dimentional view of world politics could see the so called supression in the east and overlook the indulgence of the Coalition of the willing (most of whome are ur defination of the freedom of speech) kill my breathren in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The weapons used to kill millions by Sadam in Iraq were not eastern brands nor muslim brands but brands of the protectors of freedom of speech. Convergence of intrest based politics. The involvement of the west in backing the iraqi's against Iran where Nixon had predicted was a compulsion to snatch away the IRI's milatary strength is a fact that u may ofcourse overlook.

Recovery and love 2/15/2006 11:34 AM

And we are not here to discuss what u love or what u dislike. So if u love the jews or lets say hate them less them before for us its the same as u saying I love my red T-shirt because for once i have never read such rational comments in my life as i have on this forum by ur labeled by extremists (tht is us) on this platform to ur irrational comments and some times hypothetical immaginations and artciles. The American Bombardment of the Heroshima and Nagasaki or the thousands killed in Iraq by Sadam and miilions during the Iran Iraq war all backed up by the Coalition of the Protectors of Freedom of thought and speech never came to be called a Holoucast and yet the jewish killegs were. What is most astonishing is the fact that no nation recovered as well as the jews in the history of mankind so much so that today 65% MNC's are Jewish. And this recovery took only less then 40 yrs after the Houloucast....astonishing reqcovery like a Soccer or a Cricket Match. Then pfcourse in most of the west if u go to the courts to question the holoucast u shall with be punished by the bearers of the protectors of Freedom of Speech and Thought or else are not permitted to file a case. Some Protectors. These debates diverted u towards loving the jews and they diverted me in loving Islam and my brother muslims even more. So as u beleive so much in love it appears the debates have been benificial both ways.

[ProudAmerican 0]

Aren't gypsies Arab?  Perhaps I was mistaken.  The gypsies are Christian, not Muslim, but their appearance is certainly very much like Arabs, and they definitely were gathered up in the Nazi containment camps too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The gypsies of Europe are mostly Indians

[ProudAmerican 0]

^ sorry, didnt read the whole thread.

Edited March 1, 2006 by ProudAmerican

[renault 0]

We have every right to question the Holocaust, and sometimes even deny it as well.

http://monotheism.us/holocaust_myth.html

http://www.zundelsite.org/english/basic_ar...s/nutshell.html

http://www.kimel.net/pius12.html

http://www.vho.org/tr/2000/3/triosi.html

http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/leuchter-faq-21.html

http://www.natall.com/national-vanguard/assorted/hoax.html

Germans are and were nice folks, and they didn't involve themselves in racial hatred like the Klu Klux Klan infested USA or racist UK against the Irish,Scots and their subsequent massacre of them to be witnessed throughout the history.

The creation of Israel was to serve only the purpose of being a watchdog for the west, to lookout for oil present in the middle east.

[crayon2 0]

We have every right to question the Holocaust, and sometimes even deny it as well.

http://monotheism.us/holocaust_myth.html

http://www.zundelsite.org/english/basic_ar...s/nutshell.html

http://www.kimel.net/pius12.html

http://www.vho.org/tr/2000/3/triosi.html

http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/leuchter-faq-21.html

http://www.natall.com/national-vanguard/assorted/hoax.html

Germans are and were nice folks, and they didn't involve themselves in racial hatred like the Klu Klux Klan infested USA or racist UK against the Irish,Scots and their subsequent massacre of them to be witnessed throughout the history.

The creation of Israel was to serve only the purpose of being a watchdog for the west, to lookout for oil present in the middle east.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Honestly, are you demented? You post National Vanguard as one of your sources.

Jews are pretty good liars most of the time, but they tell so many lies they are bound to trip themselves up sometimes. Their exaggerations, half-truths, and outright inventions about the so- called "Holocaust," easily the most lied-about topic ever, are a good example.

I'm sure that THEIR articles are VERY unbiased and accurate.

[Cyan_Garamond 6]

Germans are and were nice folks, and they didn't involve themselves in racial hatred like the Klu Klux Klan infested USA or racist UK against the Irish,Scots and their subsequent massacre of them to be witnessed throughout the history.

The creation of Israel was to serve only the purpose of being a watchdog for the west, to lookout for oil present in the middle east.

I wouldn't go that far. They did show their ugly side in that era. Even considering the desperate situation of the Weimar Republic, lot of Germans participated in some horrible crimes against humanity.

[renault 0]

Honestly, are you demented? You post National Vanguard as one of your sources.

I'm sure that THEIR articles are VERY unbiased and accurate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And you're probably pro - zionism, so i am sure your posts and comments are very unbiased and accurate.

I wouldn't go that far. They did show their ugly side in that era. Even considering the desperate situation of the Weimar Republic, lot of Germans participated in some horrible crimes against humanity.

http://wsi.matriots.com/weimar.html

The Jews and Weimar Germany

Pre-Hitler Germany, aka Weimar Germany, was nearly a paradise for the Jews. They gained enormous power during the Weimar Republic [1919-1933] [1]. Jews in Germany in that era entered universities and obtained college degrees. They opened large retail stores and newspapers and banks. They formed leftist institutions such as the Frankfurt School. Indeed, Jews dominated Germany's popular culture during the Weimar years. Jews were theater critics, theater producers, newspaper owners, newspaper editors, poets, artists, writers and so on in Weimar. Furthermore, Weimar's constitution was written by a Jew. The success of the Jews in pre-Hitler Germany led directly to the rise of the Nazi party.

How ironic that, in many ways, modern America is Weimar Germany all over again, with Jews dominating U.S. culture and political discourse.

More information about Weimar Germany Here and also Here and Here.

No wonder they were so anxious to get rid of them jews, who took over all the legit businesses of the germans, so their anger at them was justified.

http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/no...ND1276698/print

http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/...CraigOnElon.htm

The Pity of It All: A History of Jews

in Germany, 1743-1933

this page is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/...CraigOnElon.htm

the original was at the website of The New York Review of Books

Review essay by Gordon A. Craig  <gcra@stanford.edu >

Craig's essay, "The Magic Circle", reviews The Pity of It All, a book

by Amos Elon. The review was in the December 5, 2002 issue of

The New York Review of Books. Craig is J. E. Wallace Sterling

Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Stanford University.

      In June 1849, in the last days of the revolutionary German National Assembly, the vice-president, Gabriel Riesser, one of its seven Jewish members, addressed the body during a debate on civil rights. Speaking of the inequality from which he and his fellows suffered, he brought forth thunderous applause from his audience when he cried:

We are not immigrants -- we were born here -- and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Germans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my German fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language -- the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer.

      Riesser was one of a long line of assimilated German Jews whose story is told in The Pity of It All, Amos Elon’s impressive new book, Jews who worshipped German culture and civilization, which they claimed as their own, and who were preoccupied and tormented by the resultant duality. Their enterprise ended badly, but Elon does not believe that this had to be so; nor does he agree with those writers who have seen an inexorable pattern in German history, preordained in Luther’s time and culminating with the Holocaust. “According to this theroy,” he writes, “the Jews were doomed from the outset, their fate as immutable as a law of nature. Such absolute certainties have eluded me.” Instead, he sees only a series of ups and downs and unforeseeable contingencies, and he reminds us at the outset that even Hitler, who wrote the story’s final chapter, was a kind of accident, who confounded the intentions of those who put him in power. [1]

[1] See my article “Becoming Hitler,” The New York Review, May 29, 1997.

      In the nineteenth century, German Jews who worried about their identity had no dearth of models to inspire them. Preeminent among them was Moses Mendelssohn, who came to Berlin in 1743 at the age of fourteen as a student of the Talmud and who could neither write nor speak the German language. As a student of Berlin’s chief rabbi, and later as tutor to the son of a wealthy silk merchant, Mendelssohn taught himself not only German, but Latin, Greek, English, and French, while at the same time beginning a systematic study of the ancient classics and such modern writers as Spinoza, Newton, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. He met and became close friends with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the Berlin publisher Friedrich Nicolai, and with their encouragement began to write works of philosophic-aesthetic criticism, the most famous of which, Phaidon, or The Immortality of the Soul in Three Dialogues, an adaptation of Plato’s dialogue on that subject, became the most widely read book in Germany and made him a European celebrity.

As his book about the Rothschilds has demonstrated, [2] Elon has a special affinity for the period in which Mendelssohn’s reputation grew, and his account of the philosopher’s relations with his contemporaries is as amusing as it is rich in detail. Understandably, Mendelssohn’s company was sought by other intellectuals, and it was not long before the Prussian Academy of Sciences elected him as a member. That body, however, was a kind of private preserve of King Frederick the Great, and his whims decided who was allowed to enter it. The King vetoed the proposal to admit Mendelssohn, although he never explained why he had done so. The Academy’s president, the French mathematician Pierre-Louis Maupertuis, was probably correct when he said that Mendelssohn possessed all of the qualifications for membership except a foreskin. No one dared to suggest, at least not publicly, that Mendelssohn’s stature was enhanced by the King’s silence.

[2] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild and His Time (Viking, 1996); see my review, “Prophets,” in The New York Review, January 9, 1997.

      Mendelssohn was also the target of people intent upon self-gratification. The Zurich deacon Johann Caspar Lavater, a popular disseminator of the pseudoscience physiognomy, concluded after studying engravings of Mendelssohn’s features, which he considered to be unusually noble, that the philosopher was ready for conversion to Christianity and began a public campaign to persuade him to take that step. Despite considerable pressure from well-intentioned zealots, Mendelssohn refused to be cozened into accepting a religion that he privately considered to be filled with dogmas that contradicted reason. “On this occasion, “ he wrote, “I declare myself a Jew. I shall always remain a Jew.”

      Parenthetically, it may be noted that many of Mendelssohn’s fellow Jews did convert, mostly for secular reasons, in order to enhance their social status or facilitate marriage, or to avoid legal restrictions on professional or academic position. Elon points out that “before conversion most converts were nonpracticing Jews; after conversion, they were nonpracticing Christians.”

      Mendelssohn’s friendship with Lessing -- which was celebrated in Lessing’s play Nathan der Weise, with its plea for a common humanity -- and with other leading intellectuals of his age inspired German Jews throughout the nineteenth century and stirred in them the hope of a similar acceptance. They drew comfort also also from the stature of Heinrich Heine. Elon writes of him that no other writer was ever so German and so Jewish and so ambivalent and ironic about being both. And as time went on they were heartened by the intellectual and artistic accomplishments and the wide social acceptance of other German Jews -- one thinks of the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the now forgotten novelist Berthold Auerbach who was read throughout Europe and compared by Turgenev with Dickens. The transformation of the German Jews from a handful of ill-treated peddlers and cattle-dealers scattered through the German states into an industrious bourgeoisie whose share in the country’s social and intellectual product belied the fact that they never made up more than one percent of the population was certainly due in some part to the fact that they had such models.

      Their political emancipation was delayed by the prevailing division of the country. The political agitations of the 1830s were largely devoid of result, but the nationwide revolution of 1848 was different and, despite its failure to achieve its announced goals, it proved to be a crucial turning point for German Jews, strengthening their sense, Elon writes, of finally becoming Germans. The revolutionary year increased the number of Jews who became involved in politics and brought them together with other liberal parties, increasing the pressure for civil rights. The process of emancipation was completed as a result of Prussia’s unification of the German states in 1871, which was followed by a formal emancipation law that abolished all restrictions on civil and political rights derived from religious differences.

      The Jews were for the most part elated by this recognition of their equality. The more perceptive of them soon recognized, however, that, equal or not, they had not gained everything they wanted, and could not do so as long as they were regarded as being different from other people. This was what Heine’s friend Ludwig Börne called “the Jewish misère.” “It’s a miracle!” Börne wrote:

I’ve gone through it a thousand times but each time I experience it as something new. Some reproach me for being a Jew; others forgive me for being one; there are even those who commend me for the same -- but there’s no one able to put this fact out of his mind. They all seem bound by the spell of this magic Jewish circle, from which none are able to escape.

In the years after unification Germany could boast not only of its military and economic prowess but of its unrivaled educational system, its scientific and research facilities, and its rich cultural life. The Jewish contribution to all this was prodigious, and Elon ruminates on the reasons why. Was it “self-conscious marginality” or “the stimulus of suffering and blows,” he asks, or “the interplay of challenge and response” or “tribal pressure”? The simplest explanation was that generations of hard-working merchants and businessmen and what Heinrich von Treitschke called “pants-selling Jew boys” had sons who were not content with those occupations and turned to higher education in order to escape them and seek careers in the sciences and the arts. Albert Einstein once said that the proverbial industry of the younger generation made it appear that they had spent the last two thousand years preparing for university entrance examinations.

      The result was an explosion of talent that contributed powerfully to the expansion of the sciences -- one historian has identified thirty-nine leading German-Jewish scientists born before 1880, nine of whom, including Einstein and Paul Ehrilch, won Nobel Prizes -- and of journalism, publishing, the theater, and the arts. This became so noticeable that a young German journalist named Moritz Goldstein wrote an article in 1912 claiming that Jews now controlled German culture and that “we are administering the spiritual property of a nation that denies our right and our ability to do so.” Elon demonstrates that this was a grossly inflated claim and that most of the country’s leading lights in the arts and literature were non-Jews -- the brothers Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann, the poets Rilke and Stefan George, the composers Wagner and Strauss, to mention only a few. Even so, Goldstein’s article was widely read and debated, and, what was worse, widely believed, and this contributed to the never insignificant and now growing anti-Semitism in the country.

      Compared with other European countries, Germany had generally been considered as the one in which Jewish assimilation and acculturation had the best chances of success. In contrast, Russia was a land of pogroms; France was paralyzed by anti-Jewish feeling during the Dreyfus case; and as late as 1900 the British imposed rigorous limits on Jewish immigration, and in 1916 denied a scholarship at All Souls to Lewis Namier because of his “Polish-Jewish origins.” In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, this situation began to change as German politics began to be affected by what might be called scapegoating, that is, a tendency to put the blame upon Jews for occurrences and ailments in public life over which they had no control.

The first example of this came during the economic crash of 1873, which was due essentially to the overheating of the economy under the impact of the French reparations payments for the recent war and complicated by the Reichstag’s failure to heed the liberal Eduard Lasker’s warnings about corrupt dealing between parliamentarians and the railroad tycoon Bethel Strousberg. As a result, tens of thousands of middle-class and aristocratic families lost their fortunes. In the search for culprits that ensued, the fact that both the villain Strousberg and the well-intentioned Lasker were Jews, as were a good many stockbrokers, gave the victims a convincing explanation for losses that had been due to their own credulity and loosed upon the land an anti-Semitism more extreme than anything the country had seen since the Middle Ages.

      In the years that followed this found expression in the sermons of the court chaplain Adolf Stöcker, who insisted that “if we wish to hold fast to our German national character, we must get rid of the poisonous Jewish drop in our blood,” and in an article in the Preussische Jahrbücher by historian Heinrich von Treitschke, in which he declared that “the Jews are our national misfortune.” Although neither man was a racist and both argued for Jewish conversion to Christianity, they gave spurious respectability to the more extreme forms of anti-Semitism. The end of the economic troubles in the 1890s and the return of prosperity alleviated this situation. Stöcker’s political activities came to an end when Emperor William II became annoyed with them and demoted his chaplain, while Treitschke’s position was roundly attacked by his colleagues, led by Theodore Mommsen. After that, attacks upon Jews became infrequent, and things returned to normal.

      This was only temporary, however, and in the course of World War I scapegoating returned in a more extreme form. German Jews responded to the coming of the conflict with enthusiasm. Even longtime critics of the regime like the popular German-Jewish journalist Maximilian Harden (whose original name was Witkowsky) became super-patriots overnight. The linguist Victor Klemperer, usually a discerning man, was moved to wish the worst of misfortunes upon England, while writing in his diary, “We, we Germans, are a truly chosen people.” The war, it was widely believed, would finally consummate the German-Jewish symbiosis.

      When the tide of battle turned, however, and the strategy of attrition began to wear down the spirit of both the army and the home front, complaints began to be heard that the prolongation of the war was owing to the fact that rich Jews hadn’t yet made enough money from it and that the army’s strength was weakened by large numbers of Jewish draft dodgers. Pressure was put upon the War Ministry to determine the number of Jews serving at the front as compared with those at the rear. In October 1916, by which time, Elon reminds us, three thousand Jews had already died on the battlefield and more than seven thousand had been decorated, it complied.

      The fact that a so-called “Jewish census” was being taken had a devastating effect upon German Jews in the army. Its findings were never released publicly, although distorted versions were leaked to right-wing circles. In consequence, as defeat came to Germany in 1918, the theory that the Jews were in some large part responsible for it became firmly embedded in the German consciousness.

Elons’s account of the final act of this tortured drama could hardly be improved on. The Weimar Republic began, he writes, in a flurry of hope, and this was justified by its intellectual achievements. Nowhere in modern Europe did arts, sciences, and advanced thought flourish as they did in Germany. “In literature, music, film, theater, and design,” he writes, “Weimar evoked a marvelous sense of the new, the vanguard admired to this day,” and in all this German Jews played a leading part. But, culture aside, Weimar was a disaster. As Alfred Döblin once wrote, it was a republic without proper “instructions for use.”

      The government was handicapped from the outset by the lost war, the revolution that put an end to the monarchy, and the crippling peace treaty that was imposed by the Allies. It was fatally wounded by the horrendous inflation caused by its attempt to escape the financial demands of the treaty and finally dispatched when the Great Depression ended its last hopes of recovery. Weimar was from the beginning a republic without republicans, for the members of the middle class democratic parties soon gravitated to the extreme right and left. And it was a republic with only two great leaders, one of whom, Gustav Stresemann, died in 1930 on the eve of a fateful crisis that only he might have mastered, while the other, Walther Rathenau, who hoped to reconcile Germany with its former enemies, was assassinated in 1922, presumably for the crime of being a Jew and daring to serve as foreign minister.

      For an untold number of Germans, the republic was a Judenrepublik. Everything that was disliked about it was blamed on the Jews. Indeed, Elon writes, “. . . every unresolved problem and all the world’s evils from the crucifixion of Christ to capitalism, Communism, syphilis, and the lost war were projected onto a tiny minority representing 0.9 percent of the population.” It is true, of course, that not everyone who made such allegations really believed them, but after 1930 there was a man waiting in the wings who was determined to use them for his own purposes and who would know how to do so.

      Even in the last days German Jews did not waver in their insistence that they were Germans. Some of them may have taken comfort in something Heine had written long ago:

The marriage that I have had with our dear Frau Germania, the beautiful bear-skinner, has never been a happy one. I still remember well several beautiful moonlit nights when she pressed me tenderly to her great bosom with the virtuous nipples. But these sentimental nights could be counted on one’s fingers and toward morning a peevish yawning coolness always intervened and the endless nagging began. And in the end we lived separated in bed and board. But it never came to a real divorce.The stone mason who has to decorate our last resting place with an inscription will have to reckon with no objection if he engraves there the words, “Here lies a German writer.” [3]

^ No wonder, because the 0.9 percent of the population had control over all the business of the country, how come that's possible?

They are like bloodsuckers, these zionists :sick:

[Lester 3]

jews are pillars of society. they have very low rates of things like divorce and alcoholism and are hugely represented in colleges even when they are a small part of the population. My jewish neighbor is always out before veryone else shoveling his snow. But really, jews are hated for being jewish. that they didn't convert to christianity or islam .

renault- the german jews weren't all zionists. obviously if they lived in Germany and not Israel.

Edited March 3, 2006 by Lester