Tag Archives: antisemitism

State Terror: How Soviet “Socialist” Police Fueled Pogroms

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(Cont). The Truth about the Kielce Pogrom:

“The Soviet strategists who were in control of Poland saw significant advantage in fostering an animosity between Jewish and gentile Poles. This animosity was used as a tool to aid in the subjugation of Poland early in its capture into the Soviet empire in 1944. After World War II, Soviet machinations in this regard succeeded in converting the image of Jewish victims of German-Nazi genocide into the image of Jewish oppressors (Kersten, p. 130). This was purposely done to put the Polish gentile population between “a rock and a hard place.” Polish gentiles were left with two options: either don’t respond to the Soviet oppression, or respond to the Soviet oppression and thus appear to be anti-Semitic.

Although the image of Jews as oppressors was spread beyond Poland, this phenomenon was very noticeable in Poland, where there was a steady flow of news and often well-substantiated (if sometimes exaggerated) rumors of executions of anti-communist Poles by Jewish executioners serving in the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. Kersten describes this unfortunate development when Soviet policies created the impression that Jews played the main role in the subjugation of Poland and other satellite countries to the communist system. At the same time, the communist propaganda machine equated opposition to the “socialist” regimes with anti-Semitism. So, if a Polish person opposed the socialist Sovietization of Poland, that person was branded as an anti-Semite. This smoke screen was used successfully to obscure the reality of the Soviet subjugation of Poland by the Soviet Union.

The Soviet terror apparatus in Poland included the so-called Polish military counterintelligence. It was initially integrated with the Soviet Smersh [Death to Spies] organization directed against German spying and subversion. However, when the front crossed the prewar Polish territory, Smersh was used increasingly against the significant Polish resistance to Soviet domination. In November 1944, the Polish section of Smersh became renamed Informacja, in which Col. Checinski later served for 10 years. Informacja remained under the close supervision of Smersh and was at first headed by Soviet Col. Nicolai Kozhushko. Soviet officers assigned to the Polish army were considered vulnerable to Polish influence and were under close surveillance by a special Informacja [Information] department. Informacja was clearly a Soviet-led force, not at all an independent force loyal to Poland.

At the time of the most intensive terror, between 1944 and 1955, Smersh used its Informacja branch to have agents pose as members of the military prosecutor’s office. They used this apparatus to conduct political trials in military courts in Poland. Tortured witnesses were “prepared” for these trials and later were secretly executed “to remove any trace of the provocation” (Checinski, p. 57). In that period, of the 120 officers serving in Informacja, only about 18 were Polish-born. Most of these 18 were Polish Jews and the rest were Soviet citizens, some of them Jews.

The Soviets were creative in inventing their own opportunities to manufacture conflict between Polish Jews and gentiles. For example, it was Soviet policy in Poland to change Yiddish names of Jews into Slavic-Polish names. This practice was resented by both Jewish and gentile Poles. An American journalist, Samuel Loeb Shneiderman, who visited Warsaw in 1946, wrote in his book “Between Fear and Hope” (New York, 1946) that under the cover of Polish names Jews were continuing their ethnic identity and must have felt like their ancestors forced into conversion to Christianity during their persecution in Spain (Kersten, pp.76, 108). The name-changing became widespread. It served to deprive the Jews of their cultural heritage in order to form a “progressive Jewish nation,” to use Stalin’s expression.

Checinski describes how Stalin ordered the NKVD to prepare a civilian network of police terror and repression, called the UB [Urzad Bezpieczenstwa), to work in parallel with the Informacja in Poland. The “Polish intelligentsia boycotted the security service, which was treated with universal contempt as an instrument of foreign domination” (Checinski, p. 61). Thus, the NKVD, despite its deep-rooted anti-Semitism, “could not do without Jews. Jewish officials were often placed in the most conspicuous posts; hence they could easily be blamed for all of the regime’s crimes” (Checinski, p. 62). The Soviet strategy of using people with striking Semitic features as the most visible executioners of Soviet policy in Poland was also aimed at presenting understandable anti-communist feelings within Poland as anti-Semitism. In 1945, the upper echelons of the terror apparatus were staffed with Jews. This created the appearance that many Jews in Poland were members of the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. A public proclamation, made at a convention of Jewish members of the ruling communist party [PPR, Polska Pania Robotnicza] on October 7-9, 1945, stated that in postwar Poland, conditions were created for the Jews to find an outlet for their political, social, and national ambitions. Needless to say, neither Poles nor Jews trusted this official statement. The Zionists openly advocated a massive emigration to Palestine (Kersten, p.80), which for different reasons was also desired by the Soviet leadership.”

and

” Is hatred for a person simply because of his ethnicity more acceptable today, as long as the object of the hatred is a Pole rather than a Jew? And once it is decided that it is important to instill hatred against members of a given ethnic group, can there be any limit to the perpetration of lies, myths, and mischaracterizations to drive the hatred home? And once ethnic hatred is started and nurtured in a people, where will it end? The Holocaust itself unfortunately provides one answer, one such ending point.”

Glenn Greenwald On Intellectual Credibility

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Glenn Greenwald never fails. I was just catching up on the infamous Leon Wieseltier-Andrew Sullivan ethno-politico-theological brouhaha of last month that I completely missed while trekking around Latin America, and I found this simple but wise paragraph:

“What one thinks of Andrew Sullivan, or how angry he’s made one over the years, ought to be about the most irrelevant factor imaginable in determining one’s reaction to this TNR attack.  Sometimes, even people you don’t like are the targets of odious and harmful accusations, and sometimes, even your Bestest Friends, fellow party members and listserv pals might do wrong things that merit criticism.  Wieseltier’s polemic is a classic example of anti-semitism accusations tossed around with no conceivable basis and for purely ignoble ends.  It’s the very tactic that has caused significant damage in the past.  So obviously unhinged is this particular assault that it actually presents a good opportunity to discredit behavior like this once and for all.  That’s all that should matter; how many grudges one nurses towards Andrew Sullivan is nice fodder for gossipy listserv chats, but no responsible or even adult commentator would allow it to influence one’s views on this matter.”

And that’s why Glenn Greenwald is one of the very few mainstream writers on politics I can read regularly without a bad case of moral indigestion.

Other good responses to Wieseltier came from Sullivan himself, and from Matthew Yglesias and  Joe Klein.

Yglesias’s post minced no words:

“For the purposes of intimidation, after all, baseless charges work better than well-grounded ones. Nikolai Krylenko, Bolshevik Minister of Justice, said “we must execute not only the guilty, execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.” And it’s much the same here. If you call anti-semites anti-semites, then people who aren’t motivated by anti-Jewish racism will figure “hey, since my political opinions aren’t motivated by anti-Jewish racism, then I’m safe.” The idea is to put everyone on notice that mere innocence will be no defense.”

The only problem was I wasn’t actually clear from reading Yglesias (apparently a long-time sparring partner of Wieseltier’s) where exactly runs the thin red line you can’t cross. Maybe that takes years of hanging out at MSM confabs, a future I’m as likely to encounter as sequestration in a Saudi harem.

Reading Sullivan, on the other hand, I felt I was reprising some of my own intellectual history:

“As a Jew and a Catholic, we read Buddhist scriptures together. We were, in fact, somewhat painfully alike in many ways: religious traditionalists whose reverence for our faiths was also marked by our rebellion within them. We share a commitment to secularism and religion, these days a very rare combination. His mentor was Isaiah Berlin; mine Michael Oakeshott.”

But, finally, it’s Jeffrey Goldberg, taking Wieseltier’s part, who – with minor adjustments-  gets the final word on the whole sad business:

“I wish that he (Lila: all of them) would open up  that their hearts to complexity.”

Is Madoff’s Ethnicity Relevant?

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Dr. Phyllis Chesler comments on the Madoff fraud,at Pajamas Media (originally published at Jewcy).

“Yes, of course, Madoff’s betrayal is unforgivable. He has gutted an entire generation of Jewish philanthropic wealth, destroyed trust within the Jewish philanthropic world but, far more important, impoverished widows, orphans, and the elderly and, in so doing, endangered and shamed the Jewish people at a time when we have many real, not merely neurotically imagined enemies.……..

In the Middle East, graft and nepotism make the wheels turn. Everyone is on the take. Beggars aren’t beggars, entire civil services are staffed by one or two clans. I could tell you a thing or two about corruption in southern Asia today, let’s say in Afghanistan, that would make Heller’s Catch-22 seem like child’s play. Everyone, from the President on down is on the take and opium is a most abundant and attractive cash crop. The Afghan drug lords are addicting, infecting, and murdering entire global populations with their poppies as are those who buy and sell the heroin. No one holds the Afghans accountable. But woe to the Jewish nation that has harbored, abetted, profited from, or has even been fleeced by Madoff, the greedmaster.”

My Comment

This is an interesting commentary from just after the Madoff story broke and it makes some good points.But I think it’s on shaky grounds in one or two other places..

I’m  posting it today because I recently posted two pieces that some might see as critical of the Jewish people. Mind you, I don’t.  I see criticism of Madoff or of US Israeli policy as simply criticism of a conman and of international criminality.

On the other hand, I also don’t think religion or ethnicity is irrelevant to that criticism, any more than religion or ethnicity was irrelevant to criticism of George Bush (hmmm…did I hear any voices raised to protest the attacks on fundamentalist Christianity, whites, Anglos, Wasps? No, I think not).

And  is there any let up whatever in the criticism of Islam (Islamofascists), Muslim extremism, jihadis, violent Middle Easterners, etc. etc? None whatever. Doesn’t the color black get dragged into discussion of crime in the ghetto? Didn’t the phrase “Hindu extremism” pop up in discussions about Godhra?

It seems pretty natural to me that people would point out the religion or ethnicity of conmen, especially when the con men are relying on both to play their con game.

Massive Push to Criminalize Criticism of Israel (Links/Video added)

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Paul Craigs Roberts writes about H. R. 1913 (“Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009”), at Counterpunch:

“It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups.  For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper?  Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”? ……….

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel.  American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel.  Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California  (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime:  his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying.  The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges.  Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison….”

My Comment (May 8, 2009):

H.R. 1913 was sponsored by Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14] and voted on by the House on April 29, 2009 (passing 248-175 with largely Democrat support).

Complaints about the legislation have focused on several things.

  • The bill’s perceived fuzziness in defining the class of protected persons (“sexual orientation”) and in defining “bodily injury.” Both could make the legislation very elastic in application
  • The possibility that the legislation could be used to chill religious speech
  • The possibility that pastors who preach orthodox Christian views on controversial social issues could be prosecuted if an unstable person in their congregation later commits a “hate crime”
  • The granting of even more federal power to oversee, fund, direct, and intervene in local and state authorities
  • The redundancy of new legislation on “hate crimes” (since there are such laws already on the books)
  • The elusiveness of  the notion of “hate crime” and its inherent intrusiveness, since it claim to assess the state of mind of the perpetrator and the victim and of a whole class to which the victim belongs.

Christian groups have been particularly agitated by it, believing that it principally targets fundamentalist/orthodox Christian preachers.

That may well be so, but in the context of the financial scandal and ongoing Middle Eastern policies, I’d argue that the legislation has as much to do with criticism of the US government, especially of Zionist and Middle Eastern policies. For instance, see this effort at ending protests against US aid to Israel, at Muzzlewatch.

H.R. 1913, like H. R. 1955 before it, is meant for home-grown dissidents, a.k.a., people who object to federal government policies.

Action: Please call your  House or Senate representative at 1-877-851-6437 or toll 1-202-225-3121. and urge them not to vote for yet another thought crimes bill HR 1913.

Think of the two initiatives below as further context:

1. US Army Concept of Operations for Police Intelligence Operations, 4 Mar 2009 (see wikileaks)

2. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 1955/S- 1959, a bill sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) in the 110th United States Congress. It was introduced in the House on April 19 2007, passing on Oct 23, 2007, was introduced to the Senate on August 2, 2007 as S-1959, declared dead on arrival there after a powerful grass-roots campaign against it,

but has since been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means, April 2, 2009, according to wiki.

H.R. 1955

Indian Business Students Drive Sales Of Mein Kampf

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“Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru.
Booksellers told The Daily Telegraph that while it is regarded in most countries as a ‘Nazi Bible’, in India it is considered a management guide in the mould of Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese”.

Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year.

Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration.

“Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we’re happy to sell it to them,” said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.

“They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it”.

More at The Telegraph, UK”

My Comment

April 20 was Hitler’s birthday and I suppose the anniversary provides the justification for stories like these.  Mein Kampf is a book that I’ve never read myself and haven’t felt curious enough to read, either . It’s apparently selling briskly to Indian students, not for its anti-semitism but for the inspiration it provides management students.

More mischievously, the article goes on to insinuate a link between Gandhi and the Nazis.

There was one, but nothing that would please any Nazi-hunter. Gandhi was not unusual in seeing the European war as intra-imperial and seemed to think that satyagraha would work on the Germans as well as it had done on the British.

He went so far as to advise  Jews to let themselves fall before the Nazis as a kind of sacrificial gesture that would turn the consciences of their oppressors. Many scholars have – unsurprisingly – reacted to this with repugnance, but the advice was more a symptom of Gandhian quixotry than anti-Semitism – conscious or unconscious.