Monday, September 30, 2024

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. Review

 


Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
Even if you've read many books on the topic, you'll want to read this one

I'm sitting on the couch, next to my brother Greg. I'm about five years old. The TV is our magical portal to old movies. The elegant dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The wit and romance of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. John Wayne's righteous action hero. But not today. I am witnessing horrors that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Naked, skeletal bodies stacked like firewood. Even worse, some still live, in a nether world that strips them of any concept of human dignity. They stare at the camera and at me and Greg sitting there on the couch in suburban New Jersey.

My mother is furious. "This is what they did to us!"

Please Forgive My Absence


I haven't posted in a while. 

I did not "go fishing" and that isn't me in the photo. I did take the photo, at Cape May. 

I haven't posted for a few reasons. 

One is, this blog is a labor of love. It is not an income generating enterprise. I do have to earn money. Income generating activity comes first, and it's been a busy time. 

Friday, July 5, 2024

Green Border 2023 Agnieszka Holland's New Film

 


Green Border
A new film about Europe's migrant crisis is making headlines

 

Green Border, in Polish, Zielona Granica, is a 2023 feature film. The film depicts the Belarus – European Union Border Crisis that began in 2021 and continues today. Polish film industry veteran, 75-year-old Agnieszka Holland, directed Green Border, co-produced it, and co-wrote the script. Polish government officials condemned the film. Holland has received death threats and she requires security. Green Border champions activists who provide food, medicine, foot massages, and legal advice to migrants. This reviewer believes that Green Border is well-made and well-meaning but incorrect.

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Treasure 2024 Lena Dunham Stephen Fry

 


Treasure 2024
 Lena Dunam's Auschwitz tour does more harm than good.

 

Treasure is a tragicomedy starring Lena Dunham, the 38-year-old behind the HBO phenom, Girls (2012 – 2017). Her co-star is Stephen Fry, a 66-year-old English comedian. Treasure opened in the U.S. on June 14, 2024.

 

Treasure takes place in February, 1991. Ruth Rothwax travels with her father, Edek, to Auschwitz, where he and his wife had been prisoners. Their chauffeur is Stefan (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a cabbie. The film ends with Ruth and Edek hugging, crying, and apologizing for past failures to express love. Finally, Ruth and Edek unearth actual, buried treasure.

"Holocaust Death Toll on English Channel Island Is Raised by Hundreds" New York Times

 


Holocaust Death Toll on English Channel Island Is Raised by Hundreds

A panel of academics said it found more conclusive evidence of how many people were killed during the Nazi occupation of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands in British territory.

A panel of historians examining the Nazi occupation of the island of Alderney during World War II settled on a range of deaths that surpassed a previous estimate. It also documented the lack of prosecution after the war.


By Claire Moses

May 22, 2024


A long-running debate about a small part of Britain's Holocaust history has been settled.

A panel of historians tasked with investigating the death toll in Alderney, a British Crown Dependency and one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, has adjusted the island's historical record, adding several hundred people to an official count from the 1940s.

Lord Eric Pickles, Britain's special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, announced last July that a panel of experts would try to settle the — at times heated — debate. On Wednesday, he presented the findings with members of the panel in a packed room at the Imperial War Museum in London.


The panel did not come to an exact number. It concluded that the likely range of deaths was between 641 and 1,027, with a maximum number of 1,134 people. A previous estimate had put the number of deaths below 400.


The panel also answered the question of how many forced laborers and prisoners — the vast majority of whom were men — were on the island during the occupation between 1940 and 1945, concluding that there were between 7,608 and 7,812 people. Most of them were forced laborers from the Soviet Union. That number also included 594 Jewish prisoners from France.

 "We are absolutely confident about these numbers," Mr. Pickles said. "The truth can never harm us.


Although the panel's original remit had been to focus solely on the numbers, that turned out not to be enough, Mr. Pickles said. Over the last nine months, the panel widened its scope and investigated the question of why Britain never held any of the Nazi perpetrators responsible for mistreatment that included beatings, shootings, malnutrition and horrific working conditions...

Read full article here 

Friday, May 10, 2024

George Takei, Candace Owens, and the Keffiyeh


 George Takei, Candace Owens, and the Keffiyeh
Social media reveals the power of the West's new religion

The West has retreated from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Atheists and Marxists demonize that tradition. Their new worldview is not an absence of religion; humans cannot live without religion. All humans believe in dogma; practice rituals; quote scripture; embrace a tribe; elevate teachers, healers, and saviors; model themselves after saints; interpret patterns from apparent chaos; and insist on a larger meaning.

A new religion practiced by many in the West is distinguished by several features. Genesis and Talmudic commentary insist that we are all equally made in the image of God; and we all equally descend, literally or spiritually, from the first couple, Adam and Eve. That is, the Judeo-Christian God did not create better or worse versions of humanity. In Christianity, all humans are flawed because all humans have free will and use that free will to choose away from God. Thus, we are all responsible for the problem of evil. All humans are in need of the salvation offered by Jesus. All humans benefit from humble self-reflection, confession, and repentance. Through God's grace, we are all capable of manifesting God's love in a broken world, no matter how low we have fallen.

In the West's new religion, equality is rejected. Some are good and some are bad based on their ethnicity, sex, or skin color. Guilt, shame, and the problem of evil are assigned to the West. Beneficence is found as far from the West as possible. Non-whites are better than whites. Jews are better than Christians and Muslims are better than both. Human value is relative and depends on context. A black Christian is of greater value than a white Christian and of less value than a white Muslim. Islam is prioritized because it is recognized as a greater threat to the West.

Those influenced by this new faith view moral questions through the lens of relativism. Relativism is applied selectively. Relativism is used, for example through whataboutism, to excuse atrocities committed by Muslims. "Sure, the Muslim Conquest of India is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of eighty million people, but what about the Europeans killing Native Americans?" Leftist relativism, which appears to be a flexible system that encourages open-minded tolerance of human failing, is in fact rigidly intolerant. Leftist Atheists never use relativism to relativize the West's failings. Followers of the Church of the Anti-West never say, "Sure, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas resulted in the deaths of Native Americans, but what about the Muslim Conquest of India that is estimated to have killed eighty million people?"

Atrocities committed by non-whites are often attributed to whites. The Rwandan genocide is all the fault of the white man. "The Rwandan Genocide must first be seen as the product of Belgian colonialism," insists the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In contrast, the same institution's page devoted to the Armenian Genocide never mentions the word "Muslim" and mentions "Islam" only once – as a great monotheistic religion, but not as a factor in the genocide of Christian Armenians, as well as Christian Greeks and Assyrians, by Turkish Muslims.

The Hindu caste system, one of the worst human rights abuses in history, is rooted in the myth of Purusha in the Rig Veda, composed over three thousand years ago. Anti-Western voices, though, blame the Hindu caste system on British colonialism. Again, the reverse process never takes place. No one points out that, for example, whites in North America committed atrocities against Native Americans after the whites' loved ones were kidnapped, killed, or tortured by Native Americans. Similarly, if you mention antisemitism, you must pair it with "Islamophobia." You can, though, mention Islamophobia without mentioning antisemitism.

The Church of the Anti-West renders judgment taboo. One must not judge – non-Westerners. Cannibalism, clitoridectomy, tribal warfare, child marriage, honor killing, and, perhaps most ironic of all, unquestioning adherence to irrational dogma, are all excused with "don't judge," and, of course, with relativism. I've been told numerous times that clitoridectomy is comparable to the Catholic confirmation ceremony.

The Judeo-Christian tradition addresses the problem of evil with the process of confession, repentance, and reintegration. The Old Testament king David sinned grievously, murdering Uriah to gain sexual access to Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David. David confessed, was punished, repented, and was reintegrated. The new religion rejects confession, repentance, and reintegration for whites and for the West. Muslim terrorists can be received back into society. White men must always remain outside the circle of community.

I had three encounters recently on social media that demonstrated these features of the West's new religion. I title these encounters "The Keffiyeh and the Rainbow," "George Takei and Japanese Internment," and "Candace Owens and Catholicism."

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

"Shocked, Shocked" Jews Blame Poles for the Holocaust: New Poll

 

My book, Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype explores the image of Poles and other Eastern European, peasant-descent, Christian populations as the world's worst antisemites. 

A recent poll, as reported in the Times of Israel, provides new verification of one of the main points of Bieganski. 

From the Times of Israel article

Asked whether “the Polish people [are] responsible for their Jewish neighbors being destroyed in the Holocaust,” 47% of Israelis replied: “Yes, exactly like the Germans,” and another 25% said “only partly.” Only 11% of Israelis surveyed said that the Polish nation was also a victim of the Holocaust, and another 18 gave no answer.

Full article is here