This evening is the start of…
…Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Bookworm writes:
Back in the 1930s, no one could believe that the Germans, considered the most civilized and advanced of all Europeans, could become so bestial.
The tragedy today is that, when we look at the Islamists, we’ve already seen how bestial they are, and still nobody believes their oft repeated goal of reinstating the Holocaust.
I would add that it’s a further tragedy that many people would probably applaud if they achieved that goal.
Here’s some post-Holocaust history:
Charlotte van den Berg was a 20-year-old college student working part-time in Amsterdam’s city archives when she and other interns came across a shocking find: letters from Jewish Holocaust survivors complaining that the city was forcing them to pay back taxes and late payment fines on property seized after they were deported to Nazi death camps.
How, the survivors asked, could they be on the hook for taxes due while Hitler’s regime was trying to exterminate them? A typical response was: “The base fees and the fines for late payment must be satisfied, regardless of whether a third party, legally empowered or not, has for some time held the title to the building.”
Remembering a Polish hero, Jan Karski:
Karski risked his life many times over to bring eyewitness testimony of the conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and of the transport of Jews to death camps to Western leaders. But the point about Karski’s amazing tale is that the people he told about the Holocaust at a time when it was still going on either refused to believe him or ignored his testimony.
[Hat tip: Maetenloch at Ace’s.]
[NOTE: For some relevant posts I’ve written on the subject, see this, this, this, and this.]
This month was alSo the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
A million Armenian Christians murdered brutally by Turkish [The Religion That Must Not Be Named].
Berg’s story is amazing: so great she persisted. Really, government numpties can be absolutely despicable.
“I would add that it’s a further tragedy that many people would probably applaud…”
Actually, the trick is to deny that the Holocaust ever happened and then to bemoan the fact that Hitler and his helpers didn’t finish the job.
Oh, and to blame the Jews—-and especially the Zionists—-for causing the whole thing and benefitting it.
Yep, the best of all worlds!!
File under: Tolerance of ambiguity.
Should be “benefitting from it”…
I don’t like dogs of the government, since they are too weak to survive on their own.
Most Leftists or what people here call liberals, also ignore these things.
Ever seen one of them admit things about Bush’s war that helped women in Afghanistan and Iraq? Ever seen one of them admit Obama’s evil?
They don’t.
They aren’t allowed to. Any more than people in WWII had the capability to make independent judgment and accept reality. Reality was too strong for the weaklings.
The human heart is dark, its courage versus the mob weak. Consider what might have happened to the Japanese in the internment camps if the war in the Pacific had appeared to be lost.
Wow, that was really rich, the part about Amsterdam authorities demanding back taxes on property confiscated from Jews thrown into concentration camps. Talk about adding insult to injury.
This should be Exhibit A why bureaucracies suck and “the law is an ass.” Even the IRS, during the Iranian hostage crisis, issued automatic extensions for the taxes owed by the people held hostage. Of course, that was a kinder, gentler IRS…
“Consider what might have happened to the Japanese in the internment camps if the war in the Pacific had appeared to be lost.”
Mighta, maybe, idle speculation.
Consider instead the charge of genocide levelled against Truman by some serious thinkers for the actual A-bomb drops-10fold more Japanese deaths than all the souls in the camps.
I strongly suspect that the Dutch authorities had deeded said properties over to themselves — personally.
The official line was spewed to get the survivors to go away.
The same schtick occurred in Switzerland — with the monies of the survivors. It took generations and international exposure to get even a fraction of that wealth coughed up.
&&&
I’m reminded of Menachem Begin’s tales. As a young man, he and others were alerting all of the Jews to flee from the Nazis — in the Summer of 1941 — in northeast Poland and the Baltics.
His alert fell on deaf ears almost every time!
The reverse was true. Jewish housewives would commonly denounce Jewish neighborhood boys to the Nazi authorities for spreading malicious anti-German rumors. (!)
Captured SD/SS documents/ diaries indicate that this was a chronic occurrence all the way up the coast. Such accounts are now in the official archives.
The Einsatzgruppen bullet campaign was such a heinous crime that even the repression of the Communists was not enough to convince the populace that such super crimes were possible under an absolute dictatorship.
We see a variation on this with Americans who dully witness our digital tyrant — Barry.
Modern Americans simply don’t comprehend that monster digital databases, NSA intrusions, digitized medical documentation, and all the rest make it entirely unnecessary to operate killing fields or gas chambers.
A digital despot can totally control society by bending the vote tally and the Press(D).
By such manipulations, one can place a chair atop the greasy pole of politics.
Even now, our borders are wide open. Barry intends to empty our prisons, en masse, of serious drug merchants.
One must conclude that Barry is engineering mass civil disorder — as a key step in some scheme to give him plenipotentiary powers.
He just wants to stay on top.
998 days and dropping, he’s on a mission from his Father’s dreams.
Consider instead the charge of genocide levelled against Truman by some serious thinkers for the actual A-bomb drops-10fold more Japanese deaths than all the souls in the camps.
Americans are not responsible for the fate of foreigners under a foreign flag. Americans are responsible for how they treat pows and their own people, however.
This idea that you’re not guilty because the Left did everything to everyone is a mirage.
Gary,
I hope that there is a special spot in hell reserved for bureaucrats. As for a once “kinder, gentler” IRS… I think not. The IRS issued automatic extensions for the taxes owed by the embassy people held hostage by the Iranians because it was politically impossible not to.
Case in point; approx. 20 years ago I heard a story on the radio about a guy who called the IRS at tax time to get their direction on how to handle an aspect of his taxes. He got an IRS supervisor’s advice and filed his taxes. He was audited and the IRS ruled that he had misfiled, specifically in regard to the issue he’d called the IRS about. The IRS told him that he not only owed more tax but that they were assessing him a penalty for underpaying his taxes. Get this; the IRS admitted they’d given him the wrong information, that he had filed according to their direction but that he still owed the penalty… there’s your kinder, gentler IRS.
Couple of relevant images from a blog where I occasionally vent.
http://truthbeforedishonor.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/scan0017.jpg
http://truthbeforedishonor.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/scan0019.jpg
http://truthbeforedishonor.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/veterans-day/
DNW, thanks for the images. It is an important responsibility we have, as human beings, to bear witness both to the victims of monsters and to those who risked their lives to liberate them.
There are some young people I will show the pictures to. When I was a child, in the 1950s, I saw some newsreels I will never forget–it is essential to learn, especially visually, what human beings are capable of. Every generation needs to do this solemn act of bearing witness.
Never Forget. Always Remember.
DNW, you have a cool blog! I’ll be back.
Hi. I thought the photos might be of some interest here given the topic. They’re my uncle’s.
The blog isn’t mine however. I just fill in occasionally by invitation. It’s the property of “John”, an ex-marine, blogger, and former trucker who decided to return to earning a real living and rebuilding his trucking business for a while. Several of us were handed the keys to the place while he was gone and asked to keep it swept up if we got a chance.
I know him in the first place because I was invited by someone else I had earlier known from the big Right to Keep and Bear Arms debates of some years back, to comment on another blog he was involved in.
Eventually I wound up on John’s blog, posting on things like deer hunting, and martinis, and ruminating ineffectually on “the problem of universals” as it relates to the formation of moral predicates.
Probably should stick to hunting themes.
Gary said about those owed back taxes in Amsterdam: This should be Exhibit A why bureaucracies suck…
I agree. But it wasn’t all up to a mindless bureaucracy in that case — from that linked article on Charlotte van den Berg:
Geoffrey Britain wrote:
“Get this; the IRS admitted they’d given him the wrong information, that he had filed according to their direction but that he still owed the penalty… there’s your kinder, gentler IRS.
I’m sure you’re 100% correct. The IRS has had a very nasty reputation for at least the last 50 years. Probably more.
I wrote the “kinder, gentler IRS” tongue-in-cheek, referring to its current targeting of tea party groups, but immediately realized there was never much that was kind or gentle about it, even in the 50s and 60s.
Ann wrote:
“But it wasn’t all up to a mindless bureaucracy in that case … [The linked article claims]:
… Politicians worried granting one claim might lead to more.”
Right. Bureaucracies don’t just suck because they act like mindless zombies. They also suck because they take marching orders from mindless and/or malicious zombies.
DNW, you said, “Eventually I wound up on John’s blog, posting on things like deer hunting, and martinis, and ruminating ineffectually on “the problem of universals” as it relates to the formation of moral predicates.”
The blog sounds even more interesting! I will definitely be back. :o)
Blert-
“A digital despot can totally control society by bending the vote tally and the Press(D).”
I agree with one exception. I don’t think the Press is being bent as much as they are willing enthusiastic co-conspirators. Makes it a whole lot easier when the watchdog is nothing more than a lapdog enjoying the “crease in Obama’s pants. 🙁
A lot of things in life are like the IRS or the NPS park rangers.
They look innocuous, righteous, and socially upstanding. In reality though, the roots are rotten much like the smell in Denmark.