Warsaw's Fighters and Martyrs - including one in London

GHETTO IN FLAMES. Germans set housing block on fire to drive out or destroy ghetto fighters. "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans", said Marek Edelman.

SEVENTY years ago, on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, the Warsaw ghetto revolt broke out. The Nazis having defeated and occupied Poland had crowded Jews in the capital and some from outside into a small walled off section of the city, of which the boundaries they kept shrinking.

Weakened by hunger and sickness, and subjected to brutality and demoralisation at the hands of police, collaborators and criminals, the ghetto population was expected to fall easy prey to Nazi deportations and genocide.

But the Nazis had underestimated the resilience of the Jewish labour movement, which had a tradition of organising, defiance of authority and defence against racists; and of the cultural community which kept alive people's spirits through underground publications, arts and music through all adversity. To compound their error they brought into the ghetto some youth from movements like Hechalutz and Hashomer Hatzair who had been training for life in Palestine. Deprived of that hope, these idealistic and energetic young people would defend their honour by fighting, and if necessary falling in action, where they stood.
  
At first the Jewish people in the ghetto did not realise what the Nazis had in mind for them, and even the resisters thought "resettlement to the east" might only mean forced labour camps. But as more information filtered back about the Nazi camps, so grew the determination, however hopelessly, to resist. Already in January 1943 the Nazis had to cut short their mass deportation plan, as their forces met armed resistance from the ghetto fighters. By April, they were resolved to complete their plans, but meanwhile the Jewish fighters had readied themselves, preparing bunkers within buildings, and stockpiling what weapons they could, some home-made, some smuggled in from outside.

Marek Edelman, the Bundist and deputy commander of the Jewish Combat Organization, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters; and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one submachine gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition; more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. .

Support from outside the Ghetto was limited. Some commanders in the London-backed Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) were reportedly reluctant to spare arms for the ghetto fighters saying these might "fall into the hands of communists" . The Revisionist Zionists' separate fighting unit may have fared better than the ZOB, having links with the right-wing Polish colonels. The AK and the smaller communist Polish Workers' Party's militia People's Guard (Gwardia Ludowa, GL) did supply some weapons and amunition however, and attacked German units near the Ghetto walls, later helping some Jews escape as the ghetto fell.


On 19 April 1943, police and SS auxiliary forces entered the Ghetto. They were scheduled to  complete the deportation action within three days, but were ambushed by Jewish insurgents firing and throwing molotov cocktails and hand grenades. Two German combat vehicles were set on fire by  petrol bombs.

The German task force dispatched to put down the revolt and complete the deportation action numbered 2,090 men armed with artillery pieces, armored vehicles, minethrowers, 82 machine guns and 135 submachine guns.  Its backbone consisted of 821 Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier troops, and one SS cavalry battalion, reinforced by police battalions and Wehrmacht units, and Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian police units. From what had been planned as an orderly deporation, they turned to setting buildings ablaze, eventually deciding to raze the ghetto to the ground.  
 
As the defence of the ghetto fell before this onslaught, fighters and civilians alike took to the bunkers and sewers. The Nazis used dogs to locate hideouts amid the ruins, then dropping in smoke bombs, and flooding bunkers or destroying them with explosives. Still, shoot outs took place, and sometimes captured women produced grenades concealed under their clothes. Small groups of insurgents clashed with German patrols at night..

On May 8, the Germans discovered the bunker at Mila 18, the ZOB's command post. The ZOB commander Mordechai Aniliewicz was among those who perished there, but his deputy Marek Edelman escaped with a few comrades through the sewers. As late as June 5, 1943 there was a clash between German troops and Jewish fighters in the ruins of the destroyed ghetto. Some of those who escaped the ghetto were able to participate in the Warsaw uprising in June 1944. Jews deported from Warsaw to Treblinka concentration camp also took part in the revolt and break out there.

 Although many ghetto survivors went to Israel after the war, Edelman, who became a cardiologist, insisted on remaining in Poland, through all the difficult years of Stalinism and nationalism, to preserve Jewish life and uphold his ideas of freedom.  

On April 19, 1943, the same day that the Nazis were setting out to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto, the US and British governments convened a conference in Bermuda, to discuss what could be done to help the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. They did not come up with anything.

SZMUEL ARTUR ZYGIELBOJM

One man who had been pleading for help from the day his country was invaded was a Jewish trade unionist and socialist called Szmuel 'Artur' Zygielbojm. Before the war a city councillor in Lodz, Zygielbojm was asked by the Jewish worker's Bund to be its representative in the Polish parliament in exile, in London. He had gone to America in 1940 to raise awareness of the looming tragedy in Poland, and as reports of the ghettos and camps reached him via Polish couriers, he was able to speak in the House of Commons and on BBC radio.

By the beginning of May, it had become apparent that the Bermuda Conference was producing nothing, and with news that the Warsaw ghetto revolt had been suppressed Zygielbojm  also learned that his wife Manya and 16-year-old son Tuvia had been killed there. On May 12, Zygielbojm killed himself as a protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allied governments.
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In his "suicide letter,"  Zygielbojm stated that while the Nazis were responsible for the murder of the Polish Jews, the Allies also were culpable:

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility.

I am obliged to state that although the Polish Government contributed largely to the arousing of public opinion in the world, it still did not do enough. It did not do anything that was not routine, that might have been appropriate to the dimensions of the tragedy taking place in Poland....

I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people.

A monument to Zygielbojm was incorporated into a building on a housing estate on part of what was the wartime ghetto in Warsaw.

In London, a campaign partly led by the Jewish Socialists' Group (JSG) resulted in a plaque commemorating Zygielbojm being put up on the corner of Porchester Road and Porchester Square, near where he lived. Among those who participated in the memorial's unveiling were members of Zygielbojm's family, the Polish ambassador, and the mayor of Westminster.  

This year, on the 70th anniversary the JSG has called a meeting on Sunday 12th May, 7.30-9.30pm
MIC Centre 81-103 Euston Street NW1 2EZ

FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS!

Remember Szmul Zygielbojm
Remember the Warsaw Ghetto resisters
Please come to an event marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and the suicide here in London of the Bundist, Szmul Zygielbojm, who sat on the National Council of the Polish Government in Exile.

The evening will include talks about Zygielbojm’s life, personal reminiscences from the Warsaw Ghetto, and  Yiddish songs, poetry and readings.

Speakers:
Wlodka Blit-Robertson (Warsaw Ghetto survivor)
Robert Szaniawski (Polish Embassy)
David Rosenberg (JSG)
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Ghetto songs from Yiddish singer/performer Rachel Weston accompanied by Carol Isaacs (London Klezmer Quartet)

www.jewishsocialist.org.uk 

See also:Freedom in his Heart: Marek Edelman

Marek Edelman - lifelong fighter for everyone's freedom

Marek Edelman, whose death was reported on Saturday, was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. Throughout his life he fought, as the Jewish resisters manifesto proclaimed in 1943 "for your freedom and for ours '.

There is some uncertainty exactly where and when Edelman was born, in 1919 in Homel (now part of Belarus), or 1922 in Warsaw. But there is no doubt as to his background history and where it would take him. Marek's mother, Cecylia Edelman (died 1934), was an active member of the Jewish workers' Bund, the mass socialist movement that arose in the western regions of the old Russian empire in the 19th century, preceding the general Social Democratic Labour Party, and remained an important political party in pre-war Poland. His fatherNatan Feliks(died 1924) was a trudovik (Labourist) activist, one of a group that broke from the Socialist Revolutionists. Pre-war Poland had the world's biggest Jewish population, and they formed a big part of the country's urban working-class.

As a child, Marek was a member of the Socjalistiszer Kinder-Farband, Socialist Children's Association, then in 1939 he joined Bund's youth organisation, Tzukunft (Future). That year the Germans - and the Soviet Russians -invaded Poland. After heavy bombing, and fierce resistance, Warsaw fell to the Nazis, who then began setting up the infamous ghetto, to which they confined the city's Jewish population. Later they forced many Jews from elsewhere into the Warsaw ghetto, while reducing its area.

Food was short in the ghetto, and people died from hunger and cold. But while the Nazis relied on a stooge Judenrat and police to keep order, underground political and cultural activity thrived under their nose. When the Nazis prepared to deport Jews from the ghetto to camps like Treblinka, the Jewish underground managed d with the help of Polish railway workers to find out just what happened there, and to report.

They decided to resist. A Jewish Fighting Organisation was est up, the ZOB. Mordechai Anielewicz, of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement was commander in chief, Marek Edelman of the Bund one his three sub-commanders. They tried to obtain arms from the Polish underground, and manufactured home-made bombs in the ghetto. Bunkers and underground tunnels were dug. The first action took place in January 1943 when a Nazi unit rounding up Jews for deportation was surprised by a group of them producing concealed weapons. Then in the Passover period, April-May 1943, the Nazis began their planned "liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto". The Bund had smuggled some children out to shelter with families on the "Aryan side". But the Jewish fighters who resisted building by building knew they had little chance of saving themselves or the rest of those remaining in the ghetto. They were determined to make the enemy pay a heavy price.

By the time the ghetto fighting was finished the Germans had found it necessary to employ artillery and aircraft, and the ghetto fighters had waged the longest resistance battle in Europe, at least outside Yugoslavia that is..After Mordechai Anielewicz was killed, Marek Edelman succeeded him as commander, going on to fight in the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising as a member of the Communist-led Armia Ludowa (People's Army).

After the War, Edelman studied medicine at Lodz, going on to become a cardiologist. But he had not abandoned his political awareness. Remaining in Poland despite repressive moves and antisemitism such as met the 1968 unrest, he joined Workers Defence Committee(KOR) formed in 1976, and later supported Solidarnosc. During 1981 when martial law was imposed he was interned. Then in 1983 the authorities asked him to join a committee to commemorate the Warsaw ghetto revolt. Edelman refused. He left it to Israel's representatives, their own government blooded by the Lebanon war and Sabra and Shatila massacres, to join General Jaruzelski on the official platform, while he walked with friends to Mila 18, where Mordechai Anielewicz' resistance bunker had been.

In 1990 the little book which Marek Edelman had written about his wartime experiences, The Ghetto Fights, was republished in English by Bookmarks, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) publisher, with an introduction by John Rose, a Jewish academic and SWP member who had been to see Edelman in Poland. The book was well-received as a contribution to anti-fascist writing and Jewish history, except by some Zionist hacks who, having themselves tried to write both Edelman and the Bund out of the ghetto story, could not.make their mind up now which of his offences was worse, writing the book, or giving the anti-Zionist SWP the right to publish it.

Not that Edelman shared the outlook of the SWP or much of the Left on things. Some in Poland considered him naive about Solidarnosc's leaders and Western 'democracy'. But what really stands out is his speech on the 50th anniversary of the ghetto revolt, when upbraiding those content with repeating "Never Again", the Jewish veteran said: "It is happening again, but to the Moslems of Bosnia. And Europe is behaving as it did to the Jews of the Ghetto". Edelman urged that something be done at least to bring aid to Bosnia's beleagured civilians. That call, which some did their best to meet through initiatives like Workers Aid to Bosnia, was ignored by the SWP which, if not actually siding -as some did - with the Serb nationalists responsible for massacres, was nevertheless opposed to Workers Aid and anyone who tried to help the victims.

What really outraged Israel's Zionist Establishment and its agents however was the letter which Marek Edelman addressed in 2002 "To all the leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerilla
organizations, To all the soldiers of Palestinian militant groups:..." In this the former ghetto fighters' leader drew a distinction between his comrades' battles with the Nazi military, and attacks which targeted civilians. He urged those fighting for Palestinian liberation to play their part in securing a just peace for both peoples. Edelman had probably met Palestinians in Poland, in the course of his professional work if not his political activity. But while his letter was clearly critical of some Palestinian actions, and admonishing them to his standards, what enraged the hacks was that he was addressing the Palestinians as "soldiers", and speaking as a former commander, implying that their struggle had anything in common with the one he had led. How the fire of Israeli condemnation rained down on the "Zionist-hating Marek Edelman"!

It will be interesting to read the various obituaries and encomiums that appear for Marek Edelman, and see who leaves out which bits that do not fit their attempts to appropriate, or dismiss, the man. But though I never met him, and might not have agreed with him on some things, one thing is clear. Marek Edelman was a mensch, a hero, and a man we can not only admire but learn from.

Commando Kieffer, June 6 1944.

Above the quiet beach, these simple stones honour them where they fell.
They belonged to the Commando Kieffer, whose commander is depicted on depicted on the stone above. theirs. (r) .

The significance of their action is marked by the memorial in steel, the German gun emplacement they stormed, transformed into the flame of freedom.


OUISTREHAM, is just behind Riva Bella on the Normany coast,some 14 km. north of Caen. It was raining heavily when I arrived early one morning just before Easter, several years ago, and even after the rain stopped the beach was fairly quiet, apart from a few riders. It was not so quiet 65 years ago, when a different kind of rain was falling on Allied troops coming ashore here, at the eastern end of 'Sword' beach.

Because of Ouistreham's strategic position, by the mouth of the river Orne and the Caen canal, it had been heavily fortified, and the German guns could sweep along the beach.

It was given to 177 French soldiers under Commander Kieffer, part of the Royal Marines no.4 Commando, to be first to tread the Normandy soil and take out this obstacle. They left 40 men killed or wounded on the beach, and Kieffer himself was hit, with shrapnel in his leg, but carried on with his men. They were supported by a tank from the 13/18th Hussars of the 27th Armoured Brigade.

The German blockhouse was taken out, and by late morning. Ouistreham had been liberated.

Philippe Kieffer, born in Port au Prince, Haiti, and as his surname suggests, of Alsatian origin, had begun his career as a naval officer before he decided to persuade his superiors to let him create and lead a force modelled on the British commandos. They trained at Achnacarry in Scotland. Commander Kieffer was awarded a Croix de Guerre for his D-Day action and went on to be a Commander in the Legion d'Honneur.

Earlier in the morning that Ouistreham was freed, a battalion of the Oxfordshire and Bucks Light Infantry, part of 6th Airborne Division, accompanied by a Royal Engineers platoon and the Glider Pilots, altogether forming a force about the same size as the Kieffer Commando, made their glider-born assault to secure the Pegasus bridge, as it became known after the airborne division's winged horse badge.

Some Free French and British forces advanced inland towards Caen, but were driven back by counter-attacking Panzers. It was to be some months before the Normandy city, heavily bombed and suffering high civilin casualties, was finally captured.

On my second day at Ouistreham I walked along the canal to the new Pegasus bridge, and went into the old Gondree cafe besides it, which served the British airborne troops and claims to be the first place in France to have been liberated. The furniture seemed unaltered, but the coffee was fresh. I'd hoped to get some film for my camera too, but was out of luck till I got back to Ouistreham, so did not get any photos. I did get a postcard of the bridge which I posted to my old history prof, the late Austin Woolrych, who took part in the Normandy landings. I didn't realise it at the time, but I've since read that my Dad's old regiment, the Loyals, were engaged in the operation to secure the bridges, though he was on other duties by then with the Royal Signals.

Raised voices and proud pedigrees

L'AFFICHE ROUGE - infamous poster denouncing the Manouchian group of resisters (see notes below) as foreigners and criminals.
The Zionist settler Right must make do with its hate lists of Jewish left-wingers and anti-Zionists.

LAST weekend I was at the Jewish Socialists' Group conference, discussing among other things the gains made by the Right in British politics, the Israeli security ban on Professor Norman Finkelstein, the alliance between Zionist lobbyists and right-wing Chistian fundamentalists, and the "arrogant interference of both Israeli and American-based organisations in Jewish communities' affairs".

On the positive side we welcomed the rise both here and in other countries, including the USA, of "independent Jewish associations raising their voices for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine". On the Saturday evening we had a guest speaker, Brian Klug, one of the founders of Independent Jewish Voices, which has gathered some of the best-known Jewishartists,writers and academics, no longer prepared to be ornaments for the establishment and keep quiet about what Israel is doing. His talk was entitled "Next year in Hackney - Reclaiming our futures".

In the past week I've had e-mails from Jewish Voice for Peace, in the United States, which is calling on the lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC) to dissociate themselves from protestant pastor John Hagee, who says Hitler was sent by God to make Jews go to Israel. Republican presidential hopeful Senator McCain has renounced Pastor Hagee's support; but the pastor, who heads Christians United for Israel gave the keynote speech at AIPAC's conference, and unlike Norman Finkelstein, had no trouble visiting Israel, where his "no compromise" message was welcomed by right-wing politicians.

I've also received an e-mailed newsletter from the Union Juive Francaise pour la Paix(UJFP), part of European Jews for Just Peace, which is working with the Association des Travailleurs Maghrebins de France, representing North African workers, and the Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique(UPJB) to host a series of meetings with Suhad Bishara, of the civil rights group Adalah, campaigning for equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Suhad Bishara, who takes a special interest in women's rights, will be speaking at the Assemblee Nationale in Paris next Wednesday evening, and on Thursday in Brussels, going on to meetings in Lyons and Marseilles.

What sort of people are active in UJFP and organisations like it? The ones I've met come from varied backgrounds and across generations. But there are none of the "self-haters" , Holocaust deniers or people having problems with their parents that the Zionist hacks (the kind who lick Pastor Hagee's tochas ) would have us believe. This item from the UJFP newsletter, to which I've added a few notes, makes that clear.

Our Own

This Spring, we also commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto rising. Five militants of the UJFP dedicated a tet of homage to the fighters of the ghetto. They wrote:

"Sixty five years after the Warsaw ghetto uprising we pay tribute to all those modest heros and heroines who pitted their lives in a battle against the army that controlled nearly all Europe. .
" Faced with oppression there is always resistance: against Nazism in France, in Vilnius, in Germany even and, in later years, in Egypt and in Algeria against the colonial power, as well as in South Africa against Apartheid. It is the same today: the masks change but it is always the same struggle. We, daughters and sons of resisters against Nazism, affirm our support for Palestinian resistance, because the Zionist power in Israel, usurped our collective name (Jews), claiming to be acting on our behalf, to follow a policy of ferocious colonial repression and apartheid.
The homage to our parents, martyrs or survivors, has been as one with homage to the resistance of the Palestinian people whose basic rights, human and national, were mocked, day after day for 60 years ".

As UJFP notes, what speaks as eloquently as the words in this short message are the names of the signatories, and the "CV" of their parents. This tells you something about where their commitment comes from.

Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, daughter of Schmerke Kaczerginski who took part in the creation of the F.P.O., Fareinigte Partizaner Organizatie (United Partisan Organisation) in the ghetto of Vilnius in 1941. After his escape from the ghetto through the sewers, he fought in the ranks of the Lithuanian guerrillas in Bielorussia under Soviet command; took part in blowing up 50 Nazi military trains. Died in Argentina.

Sonia Fayman, daughter of Lucien David Fayman, member of the Sixth, resistance network of the Eclaireurs Israélites of France(Jewish scouts), hiding children, and of the Buckmaster network (parachuting of weapons and attacks against the Nazi occupiers), arrested by Gestapo in Toulouse, tortured, imprisoned at Fresnes then in Compiegne. Deported to Buchenwald, Dora,, Hartzungen until the liberation. Devoted his retirement to decorating the good people who hid children, at the risk of their lives. Died in 2007.

Patrick Feldstein, son of Mordechaï Feldstein born in Paris in 1927, died in 1993 and grandson of Pinkus Feldstein known in the network under the name of Louis Lefèvre, born in Ploeisti in 1895 in Romania, died in 1971, both of them resistants at Lyons in the network FTP-M.O.I Carmagnole and later in the UJRE in 1943. Pinkus Feldstein, veteran of the Fraenkel battalion of the Dombrowski brigade until 1937, during the war in Spain. Both refused all medals and honors which France proposed to them.

Josiane Olff-Nathan, Martine Olff-Sommer and Perrine Olff-Rastegar, daughters of Raymond Olff, combatant of French resistance F.T.P. (Franc-tireur et Partisans) during the Second World War.

Pierre Stambul, son of Jacov Stambul (Bessarabien), member of M.O.I and the Manouchian group ("triangle " of Boczor). Arrested in November 1943. Tortured by the French police force (show of execution). Deported to Buchenwald, released in May 1945. Died in 1989. And son of Dvoira Vainberg (Bessarabienne), member of M.O.I in Paris, deceased in 1997.

Notes:

Buckmaster, Colonel Maurice - head of British Special Operations Executive(SOE) activity in France, assisting resistance, spying and sabotage.

Dombrowski Brigade - the thirteenth International Brigade, Polish, with large proportion of Jewish volunteers.

FPO - Jewish partisans in the Vilna ghetto. (Vilnius is the modern name for the Lithuanian capital). Hirsh Glik, author of the Partisaner Lied, was from Vilna.
The FPO included communists, left-zionists and Bundists. But the head of the ghetto police who collaborated with the Germans was Jacob Gens, a Revisionist Zionist (forerunner of the right-wing Likud).

FTP - Francs-Tireurs et Partisans - French resistance network led by the Communists.

Manouchian, Missik - Armenian communist whose resistance group, comprising mostly immigrant Jews and Armenians, struck some of the first blows against the occupation, and aroused particular hatred from both Nazis and Vichyites. A notorious poster, l'affiche rouge, identified wanted members of the Manouchian group, and 23 of them were executed in prison.

MOI -Mains d'Ouevre Immigre - Immigrant workers organisation close to the French Communist Party, with sections for immigrants from different nationalities and language
backgrounds.

The Sixth - section of Jewish scouts and guides in France who went underground to help rescue, defence and resistance activity.

UJRE -Union des Juifs pour la resistance et I'entraide (UJRE), Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid.

French organisations's website:
http://www.ujfp.org/

US Jewish Voice for Peace:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

Independent Jewish Voices(UK):
http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/

Jewish Socialists' Group
http://jewishsocialist.org.uk/index.html

A not-so-great Dane, and the Reign in Spain

DANISH NAZI recruiting poster. They fought for Hitler against "Bolshevism" on Eastern front and in Baltic countries.

DENMARK has an almost unique right to pride and claim to affection for what its people did during the dark days of Nazi rule in Europe. On October 1-2, 1943, when the Nazis came for Denmark's Jews they found mostly empty homes. More than 7,000 people, the majority of the Danish Jews and some German refugees, had been alerted and assisted to escape overnight, fishing boats, ferries and tugs taking them over the narrow sound to Sweden.

But Denmark's wartime history wasn't all humanity and resistance. Even before the war the newspaper Jyllands-Posten had earned the name Jyllands Pesten, Jutlands' Plague, by its enthusiastic welcome for Hitler's rise to power in Germany, approving the measures taken against the Jews and the labour movement, and longing to see a similar regime in Denmark.
http://home4.inet.tele.dk/jensguld/JyllandsPesten.htm

Within days of the Nazis invading the Soviet Union a Freikorps Danmark was being recruited to reinforce the Germans. (About a quarter of the recruits were from the German minority).

Jyllands Posten might have been forgotten if it was not still going today, and made its name as the newspaper which published offensive cartoons attacking Muslims. Much was the joy in the United States, as some Muslims reacted as though conditioned to this provocation. Four young men who took part in a 300-strong London protest have been jailed for inciting "murder" and "racial hatred". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6904622.stm In Iran a paper invited cartoons about the Nazi Holocaust by way of retaliation, thereby displaying either ignorance or deliberate displacement of the issues.

Just how misplaced were both the Western enthuthiasm for Danish liberty and the Iranian assumption of blame may be gleaned from this further example of Denmark's freedom of expression:

Holocaust denier using Danish gov't grants to study SS
By Amiram Barkat and Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondents
A Danish Holocaust denier obtained government funding for his studies on the involvement of Danes in Hitler's SS, the Danish newspaper Information revealed Wednesday. The paper reported that Erik Haaest received grants totaling 100,000 Danish krone from the Danish Arts Council, a government-funded body, in 2004 and 2006. In a conversation with the Danish paper earlier this week, Haaest called Anne Frank's diary a "forgery" and refused to renounce earlier publications in which he wrote that the gas chambers never existed and that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated.
The Arts Council said in response that it does not deal in censorship and "it is not our job to judge [people's] opinions." Holocaust denial is not illegal in Denmark, though it is in many other Western European countries, including Austria, which jailed British Holocaust denier David Irving in 2005.

Meanwhile in Spain...

SOME people do take cartoons seriously. Spanish police have raided newsagents across the country to seize copies of a satirical magazine which had a front page cartoon deemed insulting to the monarchy.

The cartoon on the front page of El Jueves commented on a government decision to give families 2,500 Euros (£1,680) for each new child. It showed Crown Prince Felipe, the heir to the Spanish throne, "on the job" with his wife Letitia.

"Do you realise what it will mean if you get pregnant?" asked the prince's speech bubble. "This is going to be the closest thing to work that I've ever done".

Honestly! Is nothing sacred?

Not quite British enough...

AS politicians tell us how important it is that people try to be British, and conform to "our values", and chattering pundits patriotically ponder the poser of "national identity", an 83-year old widow in Southgate, north London, is waiting in her council flat for a verdict from the Court of Appeal, as to how "British" she really is.

For Diana Elias, her "Britishness" is no small matter. It is an issue she has had to live with most of her life. Diana was just 17 in December 1941 when Japanese troops marched into Hong Kong, where she lived with her family. The occupiers decided to round up British and other enemy nationals. They had been given lists. They came to people's homes in the dead of night, dragging screaming women out by their hair. Diana and her family were herded on to a truck, and taken to Stanley camp, where they were among almost 3,000 people interned.

Conditions were grim. People suffered and died from deficiency diseases, and from dysentery and typhus. Diana's mother had a nervous breakdown. Diana still has nightmares about the camp, or wakes in the night thinking about her family's experiences, and cannot go back to sleep.

The family were interned and suffered for being British. Her grandparents had been British, and her father, a textile merchant, travelled the world proudly showing his British passport. Her brothers had registered for service in Crown forces. But Her Majesty's government has insisted that she is not quite British enough. Their argument is that she has no 'ancestral connection' to the United Kingdom.

Back in the days of the British Empire, many families like hers, Jews from Iraq and India, qualified to be British subjects, and some prospered and became famous, like the Sassoons, of Mumbai, or David Marshall, first prime minister of Singapore. No one questioned their British status so long as they were seen as assets, nor when they served, or like Diana and her family, were interned and suffered for being British.

After the war, the family were not able to return to their old home. Diana found work as a travel agent's sales manager in Mumbai. She travelled to Britain frequently, and settled here after her husband Nissim died in 1972.

In November 2000 the government announced a £167 million compensation scheme whereby British citizens who had been interned by the Japanese would each recieve a £10,000 "debt of honour".

Then in May the following year it announced that only those who could show an ancestral "blood link" to this country would qualify. That meant up to 2,400 people whose parents might have worked in the Far East, or served in the British military or colonial administration, could be disqualified because they did not have a parent or grandparent in Britain. Over 1,100 people have already been denied compensation.

Diana Elias complained to the offcial Ombudsman, and in 2004 she took the government to court. An internal government memo revealed during the case half-admitted that the authorities were discriminating by evaluating a person's right to compensation partly on racist grounds. Written in July 2001 by the former head of the MoD's Veterans Agency, it states: 'It is true to deny we are being racist, but we are in fact including race as deciding factor as part of our eligibility criteria.'

Last year Diana did recieve £10,000, after an Ombudsman's report said there had been "maladministration" in her case. But she has continued her legal fight, not for more money for herself, but to establish the principle that what the government is doing is wrong.

'What this "blood link" means is that being British is not good enough. Being interned because you were British is not good enough. You only count if you were born here in the UK, or your family originates from here. If not, then you are another type of British. A type of British whose suffering and rights do not matter one bit. I was born British. I have always been British. My grandparents were British. My father was British and so was my mother. I can remember my father taking great pride in the fact he was British and so was his family. And I was proud to be British. I still am.'

'One of the things that makes me proud to be British and to make this country my home is that people of different races, origins and backgrounds have mixed here and made a success of that. There could not have been more of a mix at my 80th birthday party, but almost all of us were British.'

Diana Elias saw the "blood link" rule for what it was. 'I realised it would discriminate in a way that is racist. I did not need to go to court to realise that. One of my brothers Charlie, was refused under the same bloodlink rule. He died soon afterwards, considered a second-class type of British by his own country.'

On 7 July 2005 High Court Judge Sir Patrick Elias (no relation) said the bloodlink rule breached the Race Relations Act because:
“the criteria involved in this case inevitably involve indirect discrimination on grounds of national origin. They treat less favourably those who are of non-British origin…. here it is plain that the extent of the discrimination on grounds of national origin is very marked indeed.”

But the Secretary of State for Defence appealed to the Court of Appeal who heard the case in April 2006. Even if the Ministry of Defence loses its appeal those denied compensation may not be paid automatically. But Diana Elias has exposed the mean streak of racialism in Whitehall and opened the way for others to demand justice.

see:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1890415,00.html
and for information from the lawyers about this and similar cases:
http://www.bindmans.com/7.0.html


Diana Elias witness statement: extracts

1. Despite me being British all my life, despite my family's details being handed over to the invading Japanese troops in 1941 because we were all British, despite us being interned in Stanley Camp for four years because we were British, despite me facing the consequences both in the camp and for the rest of my life because I was British, I was not, and I am still not, quite British enough in the eyes of the Ministry of Defence. That is because I do not have what it calls a 'bloodlink' to the UK. I do not have a bloodlink because I was not born here and neither were my parents or my grandparents. If you have no bloodlink, then you are another type of British. A second class type of British. A type of British whose suffering and rights do not matter one bit.

2. I would also like the Ministry of Defence to finally accept that its bloodlink rule is racist and to compensate me for the hurtful discrimination I have had to put up with over the last five years. Last but not least, I would like an apology.

3. It was a long time before I gave any thought to the possibility of compensation. When the camp was liberated, my family and I were evacuated from Hong Kong by ship. We were given no opportunity to return to our home where I had lived all my life, or my father and brothers to restart the business. We all had to start our lives from scratch again. No help was on offer. Worst still, my father traveled ahead of us because he was so ill and I never saw him alive again.

4. When I was little my father traveled around the world as a textiles merchant, using his British passport. When he did business with people he would always make a point of letting them know that he was British. Before I was born in Hong Kong the family had traveled there from India. They could do that because they were British and wherever we were in the world, all of us would always be British. It was a constant thing in our lives, a foundation. And I was proud to be British. I still am.

5. I was British when I was interned. I was interned because I was British. So was my family. The Japanese knew I was British. The lists of British people had been handed over to them. Yet here was my own government, the British government, saying that I had yet to be considered to be British enough to be paid like everyone else.

When Dutchmen wore those helmets

ENGLAND soccer star John Barnes has been over in Israel, taking a football kick-about photo opportunity with the kids at Sakhnin, and advising the Israel Football Association on how to "Kick Racism out of football.

Meantime, some UK Muslim groups and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are irate over Arsenal signing a sponsorship deal to promote Israel tourism next season. Having heard some Arsenal supporters singing about what they'd like to do to Jews, and heard about Betar Jerusalem fans who spend the entire 90 minutes chanting "death to Arabs" before going out to beat up anyone they dislike the look of, I'd be happy to see both sets of fans brought together in one stadium. Never mind the football, if they don't kill each other we can always make a Santiago.

Some say the Arsenal chants are just to wind up Spurs, but when they are heard on tubes and buses across London a lot of people, particularly nervous overseas tourists, don't appreciate that. The Gooners are quite a multi-racial crowd, although the gangs I've heard singing away from the park were all-white. Mind you, compared with some Chelsea, say, they're quite an amiable lot. Some of my best friends and family are soccer fans, of various persuasions, so I better be careful what I say, but - well let's face it, it may be "The Beautiful Game", but it has some damned ugly supporters.

Kick racism out of the game, along with mob-violence? Admittedly their causes lie in what happens during the rest of the week rather than on the pitch, but they are what some "fans" go for. And anyone who knows the British media will know that however much papers and politicians affect to deplore "mindless hooliganism", jingoism and thuggery, they will be happy to profit from them wherever possible.

The Dutch Football Federation (KNVB) has barred its football fans from wearing Dutch replica "Nazi helmets" during the World Cup in Germany this summer. Frank Huizinga of the KNVB says the orange-colored helmets which have become a top-selling fan product will be banned from all World Cup stadiums and practice sites of the Dutch national football teams in Germany. "Everything that can be seen as offensive to others whether chants or a product, are banned in the stadium," Huizinga told the daily Telegraaf. "And we find this product extremely offensive."

This has not unduly troubled the manufacturer. "We are now selling three times the previous average daily volume," said Florian van Laar. "We are thinking of sending the KNVB a gold helmet in thanks." His firm sells around 5000 to 7000 orange helmets per week and has added helmets in the national colours of Australia, England, Germany, France and Italy to its range.

"This is simply meant as a joke," Van Laar said. But the KNVB is not amused.
"We don't see the joke in wearing these helmets and think they are in bad taste," said Frank Huizinga. "A lot is possible in Holland, but we will not accept everything."

Germany has launched a marketing campaign to rebrand itself with reference to famous composers, poets, philosophers and scientists, but is still bracing itself for the invasion of foreign fans obsessed, however ambivalently, with Nazi images. Of course there is nothing intrinsically "Nazi" about a helmet. Helmets this shape were worn before the Nazis came, and worn by other forces than Germans, but what would be the point in wearing them if it was not to wind-up the Germans, or, paradoxically, because some like dressing up as Nazis, even if orange seems a surreal colour.


If German fans are riled by the arrival of Dutchmen wearing these helmets they could find some way of reminding the Dutch fans that last time this happened the Dutchmen thus attired were being sent to fight on the eastern front for Germany. It's said the Netherlands produced the highest recruitment of any occupied country. SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Brigade Nederland brigade comprised two Regiments, the 48.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Regiment General Seyffardt in honour of their dead figurehead, and the 49.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Regiment de Ruyter named after the seventeenth-century Dutch Admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter.

Dutch forces served on a wide front, from Latvia to the Caucusus, and were also sent into Yugoslavia. A military historian writes: "During its time in Croatia, elements of the brigade were engaged in anti-partisan operations against Josip Broz Tito's forces. The fighting was brutal and no quarter was given on either side, however the Brigade showed itself capable in combat". Which is more than Dutch UN forces did when surrendering Srebrenica to Ratko Mladic's Serb nationalist butchers (Though admittedly because that was what French and British UN commanders expected them to).

Dutch SS men also ran their own concentration camp and took part in actions against their own countrymen in Holland. I should add that it was Dutch anti-Nazi resisters who killed General Seyffardt. Also, SS Haupsturmfuhrer Henk Feldmeijer, who had been responsible for killing Dutch civilian hostages in reprisal for resistance attacks was himself riddled with bullets on 22 February 1945. Some say his car was strafed by an Allied plane, others that he was killed by his own men.

Holland has not had a bad press, compared with say Croatia or the Ukraine, or even the Flanders region of Belgium. So it is time we restored some balance, even if it means recalling unpleasant things. It may be not quite the aggressively liberal, secular and progressive image that the Dutch government is currently promoting, but it suggests those hemets might not be as ironic as the wearers pretend, or intended.