ZGram - 2/5/2002 - "Dershowitz on Torture"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 5, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Unlike some folks we all know, German people who experienced World War II
are not on a perpetual wailing trip about the cruelties they saw and
experienced - during and after the war, inflicted by the Allies.  Certainly
in my own immediate family - consisting of my grandmother, my mother, my
four-year-old sister and myself - very little was ever discussed, even
though we witnessed some of the worst atrocities inflicted on the German
population, soldiers and civilians alike, in the very last days of that war
when the Red Army overran the villages at the outskirt of Berlin in what is
called the Greifenhain Forest.  Much of what did happen, I have long
forgotten - maybe deliberately suppressed because it is too painful to
remember.  I certainly don't dwell on it, much less cash in on it.

There is one memory, however,  that is embedded in my psyche that it
behooves me now to share with you.

=====

Let me describe what I saw as an eight-year-old child.  On April 20, 1945,
with the thunder of the artillery barrages of the advancing Red Army in our
backs, my  family and I had tried to flee the onslaught of this murderous
wave of Red Armists, hectored into a bloodthirsty rampage by Jewish
propagandist, Ilya Ehrenburg, who told the Russian Army:  "Kill, kill and
kill!  Nobody is innocent!  Nobody!  Nobody!  Neither the living nor the
yet unborn!"  We found ourselves running for shelter into an abandoned old
farm house while all around us bullets and shrapnel flew about like leaves
and branches in a fierce hurricane.

Likewise, some desperate German soldiers of a horribly decimated unit
caught in a battle of encirclement sought refuge in that farm house.  For a
day and a night, all around us, wounded soldiers fell and died.  In days to
come, my mother and grandmother assisted some of the wounded and sometimes
even dragged others by their legs, into this farm house and tried to
comfort them as best they could under the circumstances.  There must have
been fifty or sixty of these Wehrmacht soldiers when the war finally came
to an end.  They lay about in several rooms and in the halls, and I
remember that at least one of them died right outside in the hall, a young
lad who could not have been older than eighteen.

I do remember quite clearly that some Red Army officers, once they had
overrun the area, set up a station for "interrogation" of the German
soldiers trapped in that farm house, and that additional captured German
soldiers were brought in from the surroundings.    What happened next,
invariably, were howls so horrible that sometimes I still dream about those
almost inhuman screams.  When the "interrogation" was over, some of the
German soldiers held up  their hands, their fingertips mangled and bloody,
and sometimes even crushed.

I don't remember when or how I found out how it was done:  by putting their
hands in the door jamb and repeatedly banging the door shut!  Why was it
done?  After a few weeks or so, several Red Army soldiers came, yelled
"Davay!"  and took those away who still could walk.  Those who no longer
walked were dragged outside and simply shot in the ravine below my bedroom
window.

That's what I remember of torture.  The trigger for that memory was a
Jewish World Review, January 30, 2002, featuring Alan Dershowitz, titled
"Let America take its cues from Israel regarding torture."  Alan
Dershowitz, as you will remember, is a Jewish Harvard law professor.  His
latest book is "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age.'' You
can go and read it yourself in its entirety at
http://www.jewishworldreview.com, but just to give you a taste for where
this man's mind dwells, let me give you a few quotes:

[START]

"IF AMERICAN law enforcement officers were ever to confront the law school
hypothetical case of the captured terrorist who knew about an imminent
attack but refused to provide the information necessary to prevent it, I
have absolutely no doubt that they would try to torture the terrorists into
providing the information.

"Moreover, the vast majority of Americans would expect the officers to
engage in that time-tested technique for loosening tongues, notwithstanding
our unequivocal treaty obligation never to employ torture, no matter how
exigent the circumstances. The real question is not whether torture would
be used ... it would ... but whether it would be used outside of the law or
within the law."

"In my new book, "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age,'' I
offer a controversial proposal designed to stimulate debate about this
difficult issue. Under my proposal, no torture would be permitted without a
"torture warrant'' being issued by a judge."

"An application for a torture warrant would have to be based on the
absolute need to obtain immediate information in order to save lives
coupled with probable cause that the suspect had such information and is
unwilling to reveal it."

"The suspect would be given immunity from prosecution based on information
elicited by the torture. The warrant would limit the torture to nonlethal
means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause
excruciating pain without endangering life."

[END]

Think about what this man proposes!

It took the world thousands of years to dig itself out of this cave man
mentality.  Even a Christianized Europe, to its shame, used these barbaric
methods during the Inquisition and the infamous witches trials to obtain
mostly useless confessions - for no one was having sex with the devil, even
though many confessed that they did.

The Victorian Age brought temporary relief, but torture became commonplace
with the coming of atheistic Bolshevism.  Millions - some say a hundred
million - died after the most gruesome tortures, the bloodcurdling howls of
the victims echoing through the labyrinths and corridors of the dreaded
Chekas' blood cellars and prisons all over Soviet's Evil Empire.

With Germany's defeat, torture was introduced to Western Europe on a
massive scale by the Allies.  Germans in Poland were hideously tortured
after areas like East Prussia, Pommerania and Silesia were occupied by
Communist forces.  It is well documented that the torturers were mostly
Jewish Communists and Partisans.  Read John Sack's gruesome revelations in
his book, "An Eye for an Eye", in which this Jewish writer details the
horrors and names the names of the torturers, some even now still living in
Canada, the USA and Israel.

In Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany the torturers, and
their methods employed, were the same - until those torture regimes
collapsed!  In the Western Occupation zones of Germany, in Holland, Belgium
and France, the victors unleashed a torrent of pain and unspeakable
suffering on the defeated Germans and their Allies victimizing millions and
ruining the health and psyches of more millions.

It must be stated to the credit of America that in the late 1940s and early
'50s, a special Commission was set up by US authorities - called the
Simpson van Rhoden Commission made up of high-ranking US judges - who found
that torture, hooding, beatings, taking confessions by fake priests prior
to threatened execution were common during "interrogations" of accused
people after the end of World War II.

The revelations of this Commission shocked America to the core!  Immediate
steps were taken to stop the abuses.  Cases were re-opened.  Hundreds of
torture victims - at least those still alive - had their sentences reduced
or completely thrown out.  However, none of the Allied torturers were ever
tried for their fiendish crimes.  They still live among us.

For tens of thousands of torture victims, this rectification of a massive
return to barbarism came too late.  Their graves are mute witness to a
process gone mad.

It gives one pause to ponder why it is only Israel which officially
practices and admits to its torture of prisoners - with the blessing of
Israel's highest court.  It is even more significant why a distinguished
academic like Allan Dershowitz, graduate of Harvard, one of America's elite
institutions, a man who proclaims his Jewishness loudly and at every
opportunity, would advocate this kind of barbarism - why he, without
batting an eye lash, should advocate the introduction of a "torture
warrant" - torture supervised by a judge!

That is an exact repeat of what happened during the Inquisition and the
witches' trials - torture was a state instrument, supervised by state
judicial officials.

The Red Cross and International Human Rights organizations have already
condemned the US treatment of the Taliban prisoners - their hooding and
forced sedation, and being kept in cages like wild animals.  What was
condemned by the Simpson van Rhoden Commission in the 1950s as an
aberration has no place in America in the new Millennium.  Torture must
never be allowed and protected by law.  The concept is uncivilized.  The
whole idea is alien to the traditions America was founded on - thus, it is
Un-American!  Those who advocate it, and those who practice it, should be
publicly condemned and pilloried by citizens who still know right from
wrong.

The Dershowitzes of the world are perverting and corrupting American
tradition and are giving America a very bad name.  Is that their thanks to
a country that has been so good to them?

=====

Thought for the Day:

"And  yet the prisoners in Cuba are not prisoners of war - they are
detainees.  So  I guess we are fighting a detainee action.  Shades of
Eisenhower."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)