A phoenix is rising from the Holocaust ashes, a new Warsaw Ghetto is emerging
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Warsaw Ghetto, Final Picture
Today is January 1, 2014. We are far from Israel’s mid-year terror festival, when Israeli media is full of articles about WWII, the foundation of the State and tales of fallen soldiers. Yet, after searching for an open internet kiosk in a wet, cold, and drunken La Paz, I found three articles about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising linked from Haaretz home page.
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Memory Holes+
Two of them were answers to the one that had called my attention, which was entitled “The Warsaw Ghetto Myth.” It had been written by Eli Gat, a survivor.
“New year, new history, same old memory holes,+” I thought, “Israel rewrites history again.”
There is no Holocaust Day in Israel
There is no Holocaust Day in Israel; officially, the country commemorates the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. Outside Israel, the “heroism” part of the name is often overlooked; yet, within the electronics and cement walls surrounding the Zionist state, the heroism is well emphasized.
There is no other option; this institutional celebration of death would be unbearably suffocating otherwise. Despite formally encompassing several events, the heroism refers mainly to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The name “Warsaw Ghetto” is Jewish. The Nazis had created in October 1940 the “Jüdischer Wohnbezirk” or “Wohngebiet der Juden,” both translate as “Jewish Quarter.” The term “ghetto” was first used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were bound to live; nowadays, it is used in reference to a part of a city predominantly occupied by a particular group.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. Soon after its creation, the ghetto population reached 400,000 people, about 30% of Warsaw’s residents while it occupied only 2.4% of the city’s territory.
The ghetto was divided in two areas the “small ghetto,” inhabited by rich Jews and the “large ghetto,” where the poor lived; both were linked by a footbridge. The following November 16, the ghetto was closed with a barbed wire topped wall.
Armed guards overlooked it; escapees could be shot on sight. The division of the ghetto into economical classes is not casual; the internal administration of the area was performed by the “Judenrat” (Jewish Council), led by an “Ältester” (the Eldest). This administrative body was a close collaborator with the Nazis to the extent that it can be considered as an extension of the Nazi administration.
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Joseph Goebbels
On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without forced deportations, the Germans entered the Warsaw Ghetto resolved to perform one. However, they found resistance that deteriorated into a long battle. The final struggle started on April 19, 1943, when several thousand Nazi troops entered the ghetto. Their approach was systematic, destroying all the buildings, block by block. Significant resistance ended on April 23, and the uprising officially ended on May 16, with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw. The official Nazi report claimed more than 56,000 victims.
This struggle is the source of the “heroism” in the name of the Israeli remembrance day. Survivors now claim that much of what Israel tales of the uprising is nothing but propaganda.
Whitewashing History
Can you imagine growing up in a place where all your teachers keep saying that your grandparents—or those of the kid sitting next to you—were made into soap? Do you understand what such a kid sees whenever he uses a soap bar? Can you understand what happens when he discovers later in life that no human genes were ever found in those soap bars? Can you understand what he feels after finding that everything was an evil emotional manipulation performed by a control-freak regime interested in keeping its citizens frightened forever?
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Nazi Camps Soap
In the Israeli Holocaust Day events, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was designed as a counterbalance aimed at giving some hope in an otherwise unbearable day. Now, it turned out to be another soap bar attempting to whitewash history.
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White Washing War Crimes
Myth
In this reality, Eli Gat’s article is extremely important. Imagine Hitler’s nephew writing it. “He is an anti-Semite,” Zionists would say and add, “He wrote it to cleanse his uncle’s reputation.”
Eli Gat is a Jewish survivor of the site, an Israeli citizen, and a former IDF officer. He says that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a myth. Those claiming otherwise should clean their mouths with soap.
“Around 50,000 people were left in the ghetto; they were spared death at the time because they were skilled professionals who worked in German factories both inside and outside the ghetto. These people never thought about revolt, they thought about survival.
“Only a small group of young people revolted, whose size and efforts were inflated to mythic proportions in Israel after the state was established in 1948. More importantly, the uprising, which started on April 19, 1943, contradicted the survival strategy of the masses of Jews who remained in the ghetto.
“The idea of the revolt and armed warfare jibed with the ethos of the prestate Jewish community in Palestine and the young nation. It was exaggerated by the activist part of the Labor movement – the Ahdut Ha’avoda party and its affiliated kibbutz movement – which also laid claim to the uprising while repressing the memory of other movements that took part, like the Bundists, Communists and right-wing Revisionists.
“The uprising was also inflated by a blurring of the numbers: the number of German casualties, the number of ghetto fighters and the length of the uprising. In the first works after the Holocaust, writers talked about hundreds of Germans killed. But the daily reports sent out by the commander who destroyed the ghetto later came to light. Based on these reports from SS Gen. Jurgen Stroop, which no one questions, 16 Germans were killed in the fighting. After these reports came to light, the original writings on the uprising were filed away and never mentioned.
“A second murky figure is the number of people who took part in the uprising, … Prof. Israel Gutman, who took part in the uprising and wrote a book after doing separate research, put the number at only 350.
“Just two days of hard fighting… We were all helpless, shocked with embarrassment. All our plans were ruined. We had dreamed of a last battle in which we knew we would be defeated by the enemy, but they would pay with a great deal of blood. All our plans were ruined, and without any other opening the decision was made: We would leave. It was no longer possible to fight…
“Thus the question has never been raised: What right did a small group of young people have to decide the fate of the 50,000 Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto?” In the article’s last words, he summarizes the horror of the Zionist ethos. What right have the Zionists to impose themselves on Jewry?
Zion Answers
I was surprised to see the article published in the most serious Zionist newspaper. The two answers to it were an attempt to perform some damage control. “Damage” is the key issue here.
Israel acknowledges that the Holocaust is its raison d’être. It doesn’t matter what happened there, the official version led to the UN’s Partition Decision and to the incomplete independence declaration of the State of Israel. Yet, Neturei Karta’s (an ultra-orthodox Jewish group) website displays documents clarifying the responsibility of Jewish leaders of the time beyond doubt. In this context, the activities of the Judenrat were also obvious. Adam Czerniaków was the Eldest of Ghetto Warsaw; aware of his being part of the Nazi regime and a traitor to his flock, he committed suicide.
The point is simple. Destroy the Holocaust narrative and Israel is destroyed. Now, the narrative is being destroyed from within.
This makes the answers to the article even more surprising. One of them was by Moshe Arens, a former senior leader of the Likud party. Expectedly, his piece is entitled “The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt is no myth.”
Yet, he says “Historians should have corrected the exaggerated narrative that developed in Israel about the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto,” indirectly supporting the claim of the original article.
The second answer was by historian Havi Dreifuss, and was entitled “Don’t minimize the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt.”
He criticizes some of the numbers quoted by Gat, but also acknowledges “Eli Gat performed a service, but blaming the participants in the uprising for the deaths of tens of thousands of ghetto residents is a distortion of history and of morality.”
In other words, Israel acknowledges that its narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a myth, a wild exaggeration of a small event acknowledged and reported by the Nazis themselves.
A phoenix is rising from the Holocaust ashes, a new Warsaw Ghetto is emerging. Israel is its name.
Mr. Roy Tov is one of the frequent contributors for The 4th Media.
ENDNOTES
+ History’s Memory Holes
In order for a government to manipulate its citizens easily, they must ignore history.
George Orwell described “Memory Holes,” mechanisms for the alteration or disappearance of undesired documents, photographs, transcripts, and other records.
“Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building,” he wrote.
This allows to rewrite history. He describes how after the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below 30 grams per week, the ration was reduced to 20 grams per week. Thus, the historical record in a back issue of the Times newspaper is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, or that the ration of 15 grams, would soon be increased to 20. After the alteration of history is accomplished, the historical record is thrown into the memory hole.
Are you laughing at the gullibility of Orwell’s Britons? Are you familiar with “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit?” That is an Orwellian memory hole.
See Israel Cancels History for the October 2013 cancellation of History by the Ministry of Education.
* “Holocaust” is a wrong term for the events that took place in parts of Europe during WWII let me state its difference from “Sho’a.” “Holocaust” is a religious word denoting the total burning of an offering to God. Not even Israel claims that this is what happened in Europe.
Derived from Greek, “Holocaust” translates the Biblical “‘Ola.” The Hebrew “Sho’a” refers nowadays to the same events in Europe and appears thirteen times in the Bible with the meanings of “calamity and destruction,” “desert,” and “heavy cloud and storm.”
The image was taken during the December 2013 storm, the worst in the Middle East in more than a century. In the Judean Desert these three apparently unrelated terms became one reality. An almost always dry riverbed floods under a heavy cloud and brings disaster.
+ History’s Memory Holes
In order for a government to manipulate its citizens easily, they must ignore history.
George Orwell described “Memory Holes,” mechanisms for the alteration or disappearance of undesired documents, photographs, transcripts, and other records.
“Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building,” he wrote.
This allows to rewrite history. He describes how after the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below 30 grams per week, the ration was reduced to 20 grams per week. Thus, the historical record in a back issue of the Times newspaper is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, or that the ration of 15 grams, would soon be increased to 20. After the alteration of history is accomplished, the historical record is thrown into the memory hole.
Are you laughing at the gullibility of Orwell’s Britons? Are you familiar with “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit?” That is an Orwellian memory hole.
See Israel Cancels History for the October 2013 cancellation of History by the Ministry of Education.
* “Holocaust” is a wrong term for the events that took place in parts of Europe during WWII let me state its difference from “Sho’a.” “Holocaust” is a religious word denoting the total burning of an offering to God. Not even Israel claims that this is what happened in Europe.
Derived from Greek, “Holocaust” translates the Biblical “‘Ola.” The Hebrew “Sho’a” refers nowadays to the same events in Europe and appears thirteen times in the Bible with the meanings of “calamity and destruction,” “desert,” and “heavy cloud and storm.”
The image was taken during the December 2013 storm, the worst in the Middle East in more than a century. In the Judean Desert these three apparently unrelated terms became one reality. An almost always dry riverbed floods under a heavy cloud and brings disaster.
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Sho’a in the Judean Desert