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Oliver Stone: "I've Walked in Hitler's Shoes and in Stalin's Shoes"

American director's upcoming Showtime documentary promises to put mass-murderers 'in context'. According to Stone, 'Stalin, Hitler, Mao and McCarthy have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history'

American director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass-murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context."

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, (US Senator Joseph) McCarthy - these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.'

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between World War I and World War II ...

"I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

The controversial director's 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years." An airdate has not yet been set.

Read more at YNet.

This is the guy who portrayed President Bush as a war criminal who deserved to be assassinated.
 

Iraq to Sue Israel Over Nuclear Reactor Destroyed in 1981

Iraq to sue Israel over destroyed reactor

Iraqi MP says UN resolution backs suit against Israel for bombing Tammuz nuclear reactor in 1981

An Iraqi parliament member said Tuesday that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki plans to sue Israel for damages done to his country following its destruction of the Tammuz nuclear reactor.

The Air Force bombed the site in 1981. Now, 29 years later, al-Maliki has instructed the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad to clarify with the UN whether it would be possible to extract compensation from Israel.

An Iraqi source told the German DPA that MP Mohammad Naji said UN Resolution 487, approved after the strike, allowed his country to sue Israel.

"Al-Maliki's appeal follows an answer received from the UN Secretariat by the government of Iraq on November 25, which says Iraq has a right to demand compensation for the damage Israel did to it with the attack on the reactor, through a neutral committee which will assess the extent of the damage," the report says.

Read more at YNet.
 

94-year-old Satmar Holocaust Survivor Passes Away, Leaves 2,500 Descendants

KIRYAS JOEL — A few hundred mourners gathered in the frigid cold Monday morning for a funeral for a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor said to have left behind more than 2,500 descendants.

Yitta Schwartz, who died about 6 a.m. at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, is thought to have had the largest extended family of anyone in the generation of Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe who escaped annihilation by the Nazis during World War II.

Unlike most survivors, Schwartz and her late husband, Yosef, left their native Hungary with their family intact. They came to the United States with eight children and added nine more in the years to come, one of whom passed away as a child.

Schwartz left Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1978 after her husband died and settled in what was then the fledgling Satmar Hasidic satellite community of Kiryas Joel. At the time, she already had more than 170 grandchildren.

By the time of her death, her grandchildren had grandchildren.

Times Herald Record

Oh Noes! Israeli Arab Schools do not Observe Holocaust Remembrance Day

Report: Arab schools fail to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day

House report to discuss minimal attention given by Arab schools to Holocaust studies, commemorative activities

The majority of Arab schools do not commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and the number of students taking part in any commemorative activities is minute, a Knesset report has found.

The data suggests that in 2008, only 1,595 students of the 134,672 taking part Holocaust commemorative activities were Arabs, and only 150 took part in the annual mission to Poland.

Holocaust teaching has been a controversial issue in the Israeli education system for years, with the main question being how to expose the student to information: through history lessons, ceremonies, tours, overseas mission etc. The methods used today calls for gradual exposure to the subject, especially when explaining it to the younger student body.

The Education Ministry has ordered mandatory 30 annual hours for Holocaust studies, but while Jewish schools start thoroughly exploring the subject from the sixth grade and on, sixth grade history lessons in the Arab sector focus on Arab heritage and history. Holocaust studies are given about 27 annual hours in ninth grade, but it is detached form the wider historical connotation of pre-WWII Nazism and the war's immediate implications. Grades 10-12 see just seven annual hours of Holocaust studies.

Ahmed Badran, the Education Ministry's Arab school supervisor in northern Israel, said that in general, Arab schools do not mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and that the matter is left to the teacher's discretion.

Read more at YNet.

Why should the Arabs observe Holocaust Memorial Day when they observe "Naqba Day" that the Holocaust did not succeed?

Many Haredi schools in Israel also do not observe the government-mandated "Yom Hashoah" preferring instead to include the Shoah on Tisha B'av.
 

German Historian Corrects False Media Story About Hitler's Mother

 
This is not Hitler's mother.

This is Hitler's mother. 

German historian Joachim Riecker recently published a book about Hitler's hatred of Jews. British newspapers soon printed articles containing inaccurate information about the book. Now the researcher is battling to save his reputation. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Riecker expresses his frustration and demands a correction.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Riecker, you wrote a book about Hitler and the Holocaust. Your central thesis in "Hitler's November 9," is that Germany's defeat in World War I is one of the main reasons for Hitler's anti-Semitic delusion. Now the tabloid Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph newspapers claim that you wrote in your book that one of the causes of that hatred of Jews was the "harmful treatment" Hitler's mother received from a Jewish general practictioner. You were even quoted directly. Did the Daily Mail ever talk to you?

Joachim Riecker: No. The author appears to have taken the information from an obscure Austrian Web site with English-language articles that included incorrect information about my book in a review. That was the first place I read the quotations that had been attributed to me.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Anyone who reads your book with any attention to detail will not find any indication that you support the thesis of US historian Rudolph Binion, who attributes Hitler's hatred of Jews to, among other things, the treatment methods used by the Jewish doctor. You even reject his theory outright in one chapter. Nevertheless, the Daily Mail quotes you as saying that Hitler "never forgave the Jewish doctor" and became anti-Semitic for that reason.

Riecker: This claim is simply nonsense. General Practitioner Eduard Bloch, who treated Hitler's mother in 1907, still lived in Linz during the occupation of Austria by the Wehrmacht in 1938. He was placed under the protection of the Gestapo and was allowed to sell his property in a normal manner and emigrate to the USA with his wife in 1940. Historian Brigitte Hamann recently wrote a book about Eduard Bloch and even quoted Hitler as commenting that his mother's former practitioner had been a "noble Jew."

Read more at Spiegel.de 

Auschwitz Sign Stolen By Deranged Souvenir Collector

Polish police are interrogating a gang of five professional thieves to find out whether a foreign collector commissioned them to steal the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp.

The wrought iron sign — which means “Work sets you free” — was recovered 72 hours after being stolen from the camp where more than a million Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Its cynical wording raised the possibility that it had been taken for ideological reasons or at the behest of a far-right mastermind.

Five men, aged between 20 and 39, from the Torun area of northern Poland, have been arrested for the theft. Andrzej Rokita, the deputy commander of Cracow police, described them as nonpolitical. All had previous convictions for theft or assault.

“We can say that none of the five are members of a neo-Nazi group,” Mr Rokita said. One suspect owns a construction company; the others are unemployed.

They are being interrogated in Cracow, the city responsible for the nearby Auschwitz camp museum. If charges are pressed, they could face up to ten years in jail for the “theft of a cultural treasure of particular significance”.

Read more at UK Times.
  

Montana Police Officer Learns Hebrew: So He Can Talk to His Dog

HELENA, Mont. — In Montana, a rabbi is an unusual sight. So when a Hasidic one walked into the State Capitol last December, with his long beard, black hat and long black coat, a police officer grabbed his bomb-sniffing German shepherd and went to ask the exotic visitor a few questions.

Though there are few Jews in Montana today, there once were many. In the late 19th century, there were thriving Jewish populations in the mining towns, where Jews emigrated to work as butchers, clothiers, jewelers, tailors and the like.

The city of Butte had kosher markets, a Jewish mayor, a B’nai B’rith lodge and three synagogues. Helena, the capital city, had Temple Emanu-El, built in 1891 with a seating capacity of 500. The elegant original facade still stands, but the building was sold and converted to offices in the 1930s, when the congregation had dwindled to almost nothing, the Jewish population having mostly assimilated or moved on to bigger cities.

There is a Jewish cemetery in Helena, too, with tombstones dating to 1866. But more Jews are buried in Helena than currently live here.

And yet, in a minor revival, Montana now has three rabbis, two in Bozeman and one (appropriately) in Whitefish. They were all at the Capitol on the first night of Hannukah last year to light a menorah in the ornate Capitol rotunda, amid 100-year-old murals depicting Sacajawea meeting Lewis and Clark, the Indians beating Custer, and the railway being built. The security officer and the dog followed the rabbi into the rotunda, to size him up.

Read more at NY Times.
 

UN Marks "Day of Mourning" For Its Own Creation of Israel

1947 UN Partition of Palestine Mandate

UN marks November 29 'day of mourning'

While Israel celebrates date on which it was given a state by UN, latter plans anti-Israeli resolutions

WASHINGTON – The UN is currently marking the historic date of November 29 1947, the day in which it approved the partition plan separating Israel into two states – Jewish and Arabic.

But while in Israel the date is celebratory, as it marks the end of the British mandate and the beginning of independent rule, the UN headquarters in New York and Geneva are holding ceremonies of mourning and solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The General Assembly in New York has embarked on a two-day marathon of anti-Israeli debates and votes, during which it plans to focus on the promotion of the Palestinian issue. Hearings will be held on subjects such as sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Israel has traditionally boycotted the debates due to their one-sidedness, but in recent years has changed its tune. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, is scheduled to speak before the assembly Tuesday and condemn the UN tradition of memorializing the date on which Israel was given a state as a day of mourning.

The Palestinian Maan news agency reported that the Palestinian observer at the UN, Riyad Mansour, is expected to announce a "new diplomatic strategy" and ask the Security Council to define the 1967 borders as the new borders of a Palestinian state.

Last year the former president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, accused Israel of apartheid during a speech before the UN.

Read more at YNet.

 

Doofus of the Day: Tel Aviv University Professor Spews Anti-Semitic Propaganda

An Israeli academic has been accused of contributing to anti-Semitic discourse and incidents following his book tour in London promoting the thesis that Jews never existed as a people and the Palestinian Arabs are the true heirs of the biblical Jews.

Shlomo Sand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, spoke at a number of events in London last week to sell his book The Invention of the Jewish People, in which he writes that the Israelites were never exiled from the Promised Land and therefore have no right to return.

Jewish community figures questioned Sand's work and noted that no opposing view or contextualization was offered at his events.

"Sand's agenda is to sever the historic link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel," said Jonathan Hoffman, co-chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. "To promote that agenda his book ignores archeological and genetic evidence. At none of his three London appearances was there a historian or Jewish history expert on the platform to counter his distortions, evasions and sensationalism. The result will contribute to anti-Semitic discourse and incidents in the UK, already at a record level."

A guest on BBC Radio Four last week, Sand told presenter Andrew Marr that he compares Israel's birth to "rape"

"I'm not a Zionist. I don't define myself as an anti-Zionist... but I'm not a Zionist... I don't put into question the existence of Israel," he said. "I compare when I am speaking before Arab students the birth of the Israeli state to an act of rape. But even the son that was born of the act of rape... you have to recognize him... the existence of Israel I don't put in question today, you understand me?"

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

Of course Sand's historical kitty litter will be prominently featured on academic websites such as Stormfront, Judicial-Inc, Michael A. Hoffman and their comrades in arms.
 

Biased Media Caption of the Day: The Difference Between the Berlin Wall and the Israeli Wall

Local and international peace activists pull down a concrete block, part of Israel's controversial separation barrier, during a protest in the Qalandia refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, on November 9, 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. Palestinians are using the anniversary of the end of the Berlin wall to press their campaign against Israel's 'wall', mostly a razor-wire fence interspersed with concrete barricades which Israel began building around the West Bank in 2002. The Jewish state has come under international censure for the barrier's de facto annexation of occupied West Bank land. Getty Images. 

Berlin Wall:

What's the difference between the Berlin Wall and the Israeli Wall?

The Berlin Wall was built to keep people on the Communist side from experiencing the freedom and prosperity on the Western side. People from the Western side of the Wall were not going into East Berlin and committing acts of mass murder against the East Berliners.

The Israeli Wall was built to keep people on the Israeli side from being mass-murdered by people from the Palestinian side.

How difficult is that to understand?
 

Last Member of Hitler's "Inner Circle" Finally Kicks the Bucket at 96

 

Memoirs of Hitler aide could finally end Holocaust claims

The memoirs of the last SS adjutant to Adolf Hitler are to be published in a move historians say could cast away the last shred of doubt over his personal involvement in the Holocaust.

Fritz Darges died at the weekend aged 96 with instructions for his manuscript about his time spent at the side of the Führer to be published once he was gone.

Darges was the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle and was present for all major conferences, social engagements and policy announcements for four years of the war.

Experts say his account of his time as Hitler's direct link to the SS could discount the claims of revisionists who have tried to claim the German leader knew nothing of the extermination programme. Right-wing historians have claimed the planning for the murder of six million Jews was carried out by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Mainstream historians believe it inconceivable that Hitler did not issue verbal directives about the mass killings in Darges' presence. Other courtiers, such as armaments minister Albert Speer and propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, had their diaries published post war with no reference to hearing Hitler ordering the "Final Solution".

Darges died on Saturday still believing in the man who engineered the Jewish Holocaust as "the greatest who ever lived." His memoirs will be published now in accordance with his will.

Read more at UK Telegraph.

I have two questions. Why did this asshole not die in prison? Why did he not die on the prison gallows in 1946?

 

Nazi Descendant Offers Holocaust Memorabilia to Yad Vashem

JERUSALEM – The offices of Yad Vashem, the Israeli agency that memorializes the six million Jews murdered by their Nazis and their allies, received an extraordinary and even infuriating proposal recently. The grandson of Rudolf Hoess, the notorious commander of the Auschwitz death camp, offered to sell some of his grandfather’s personal effects to the museum.

The letter to the museum, which was sent several months ago and entitled “Rare objects, Auschwitz, Commander Hoess,” was short and succinct, saying: “These are several objects from the estate of Rudolf Hoess, the commander of Auschwitz: A massive, fireproof box with official insignia – a gift from Henrich Himmler, the commander of the SS, weighing 50 kilograms, a letter opener and folders, slides from Auschwitz that have never been seen publicly, letters from his period of imprisonment in Krakow. I would be very grateful for a brief answer. Sincerely, Reiner Hoess.”

The management of Yad Vashem responded with shock to the proposal and rejected it out of hand. The management of the museum expressed disgust over the desire of the criminal’s relative to profit from Holocaust memorabilia.

A high-ranking official of Yad Vashem said, “Here we must ask: did you murder and profit as well?” (The reference is to 1 Kings 21:19—INT)

However, museum officials told Rudolf Hoess’s grandson, Reiner, that he may donate the original items to the museum in order to commemorate the Nazi horror.

In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth last night, Mr. Hoess, 44, said the idea of selling the items to Yad Vashem came up following a conversation that he had with a friend, the grandson of Baldur von Schirach, who was the leader of the Nazi youth movement, the Hitler Youth.

“These items were in the family’s possession,” Hoess said in a telephone conversation.

“We knew about them, people outside the family knew about them for a long time as well. Quite a few organizations wanted to buy them from us, including well-known media such as Der Spiegel and the Axel Springer publishing company. In the wake of Mr. von Schirach’s recommendation, I thought that it would be appropriate to sell the items to Yad Vashem. I do not want these items to get into the wrong hands.”

Read more at Philadelphia Bulletin.

I don't understand why this is "horrifying" as long as the collection does not include soap or lampshades. The museum is angry that he is offering to sell these items instead of donating them, although he appears willing to donate the collection so that it should not get into "the wrong hands."
 

Extensive Western Wall Tunnels Displayed for the Media

 

Who is Responsible for the Palestinian Refugees? Shocka: "The Independent" Admits the Truth!

h/t Elder of Ziyon

No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora

You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship

A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.

Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel – and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe – this one at hands of the Arab governments. "Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb."

Read more at The Independent.
 

Happy New Year 5770

Vicious Babushka Blog wishes everyone a sweet and happy Rosh Hashanah, from Israel!

Austrian Museum is Afraid it Might Lose Vermeer, Looted by Nazis

VIENNA — Three years after a Vienna museum had to restore five Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis to their Jewish owners, the city's art museum is fearing the same fate for a piece by Vermeer.

Austria's culture ministry admitted last weekend that it had received a request for the restitution of "The Art of Painting" by 17th-century Flemish artist Johannes Vermeer, which has been on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) since 1946.

The painting was bought in 1940 by Adolf Hitler himself for his planned Fuehrer's Museum in the northern Austrian city of Linz.

It would be a "painful loss", KHM director Sabine Haag said of a potential restitution.

"It's an absolute jewel," she added about the painting, noting that it was still too early to even consider giving it back.

Under a 1998 restitution law, Austria has already returned to their rightful owners some 10,000 artworks stolen by the Nazis after they annexed Austria in 1938.

In the latest case in April, the city of Linz returned a painting by Viennese master Gustav Klimt to the Jewish family who was robbed of it under the Third Reich.

In 2006, Vienna's Belvedere Museum had had to restore five major paintings by the artist to the descendants of the previous owner.

The Vermeer piece however is more debatable, according to experts.

The painting, which had belonged to the Czernin family since the 19th century, was officially sold to Hitler in 1940 by Jaromir Czernin for 1.65 million Reichsmark.

Requests to have it returned to the family in the 1960s were rejected on the grounds that the sale had been voluntary and the price had been adequate.

But a new expert's report commissioned by the family has concluded that the sale was made under duress.

"(Jaromir) Czernin had no choice: he had to sell in order to guarantee his family's safety," the family's lawyer Andreas Theiss told the daily Der Standard.

The brother-in-law of chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, who ruled Austria with an iron fist from 1934 to 1938 and attempted to oppose Hitler's annexation of his country, Czernin was also married to a woman of Jewish descendance.

Read more at AFP.

Israeli Astronaut's Son Killed in Plane Crash

Late astronaut's pilot son killed in crash

Son of first Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died in fatal mission of Columbia, killed in training accident when his F16 jet crashes over Mount Hebron. Lieutenant Asaf Ramon recently finished IAF pilots' course with honors, just as his father did 35 years ago

Tragedy strikes the Ramon family again from the air. Lieutenant Asaf Ramon, son of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, was killed Sunday when the F-16 fighter jet he was flying crashed just south of Mount Hebron during a routine training exercise.  Rescue forces found the remains of the fighter jet and Ramon's body in the surrounding area.

Following his death, the Israel Defense Forces decided to promote Asaf to the rank of captain.

At 4:30 pm, Rona Ramon received the news she feared most. Her eldest son, Asaf, who recently completed the IAF's pilots' course, was killed in a training accident Sunday afternoon. Her son's dream to be a pilot like his late father, Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, was cut short in circumstances horrifically similar to his father's death. Six years after his father's death when his space shuttle crashed as it returned to earth, Asaf Ramon met a similar fate.

Israeli Air Force Commander Ido Nehushtan and IDF Personnel Directorate Chief Brigadier-General Avi Zamir delivered the sad news to Rona Ramon. Accompanying them was former IAF Commander Eliezer Shkedy. IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz arrived at the house as well.

In the past hours, friends and family have flooded the family's home to offer comfort to the mourners. Classmates of Yiftach, Asaf's younger brother, gathered in a square next to the family's home. Their teacher reported that they are sitting and crying together in the square as they share memories of Asaf.

Read more at YNet.

 

September 11, 2001: NEVER FORGET

It's Not the Settlements, Stupid! It's the Jews Who Live in Them.

By Sarah Honig

Without historical context there can be no real understanding of existential issues, certainly not of essential continuities. That's why those who seek to obfuscate and skew do their utmost to erase telltale fundamental perspectives and present whatever they focus upon as cogent isolated concerns.

Case in point: US President Barack Obama's fixation on settlements, whether they be a collection of squatters' makeshift lean-tos on a stony hill in the middle of a barren nowhere or entire populous urban quarters of Jerusalem.

The real issue is a layer deep beneath surface palaver. It's a layer which Arabs implicitly understand, which Jews pretend (or prefer) not to understand, and which Obama righteously denies. To paraphrase what Bill Clinton hectored during his first presidential campaign: "It's not the settlements, stupid."

Settlements are mere transitory pretexts, alleged irritants which in fact conceal a far darker but basic truth.

Obama hints at it when he admonishes against creating "new facts on the ground" ahead of the deal he proclaims he's about to concoct. Peace is feasible providing Israelis effectively stay inanimate and refrain from altering reality beyond the non-border (1949's armistice line, a.k.a. the Green Line). Otherwise they jeopardize Obama's magic remedy to all that ails the region but which thus far eluded cure by lesser healers than himself. His unspoken apparent assumption is that whatever betokens Israeli/Jewish life and vitality perforce undermines harmony and bliss. Bottom line priority - weaken Israeli/Jewish interests.

THIS HAS been the Arab subtext since the very advent of Zionism, though at different intervals the casus belli assumed different facades. In all instances the pro forma grievance was that Jews were "changing facts on the ground," just as now.

On occasion, as currently, the outcry centered on settlements, or more specifically on land purchases. (Jews weren't always accused of robbing Arab land. Sometimes their crime was buying stretches of wasteland.) At times it was immigration.

Often, it was both, as in the days of the infamous White Paper, published by Britain just months before the outbreak of World War II, when the Holocaust was about to be kick-started. Germany's Jews were already shorn of citizenship and stateless. Hitler's threats were well recorded, shouted in the world's face and hardly kept a secret.

Read more at Jerusalem Post.