There is a German legend that I remember only vaguely except by its title, "Knüppel aus dem Sack" - meaning "Billy Club (jumping) from the Bag". It came in the form of a poem, as I recall it, and as a child I relished knowing that the principle of divine justice embedded in this tale was valid.
This legend has it that a villain carried this cudgel in his backpack that he could activate at will to beat up on selected targets with certain trigger words, and stop the action with another trigger word. One day it happened that he could no longer remember the mantra - and to its grief his billy club took on a life of its own and started pummeling him. He tried to outrun it - no way! He was carrying it right on his back.
The Zundel saga serves as a contemporary salutary lesson. Had the Holocaust Lobby left Ernst Zundel alone, there would not be Revisionism as we know it today.
But the lesson is getting much broader than that - what with the Holocaust Lobby's incessant monument agitation. For instance, a big deal was made of "ethnicity" having been at the root of what has turned out to be a largely fictitious "Holocaust" - and now other ethnic groups are getting wise to the benefits of monuments, sometimes in unexpected ways, and weighing in with demands of their own.
For instance:
A Reuters Release from Chicago, dated today, titled "Lithuanian-Americans Object to Song Sold at Museum" tells us that Chicago's Lithuanian community called on the Holocaust Museum in Washington to stop selling a compact disc containing a song that the group claims blames Lithuanians for the horrors of the Nazi occupation.
The song is called "Lithuania, Bloody Land." The Reuters release describes it as part of a collection called "Songs of the Kovno Ghetto". It is on sale in the Holocaust Memorial Museum's gift shop.
A group called Marquette Park Neighbors," representing thousands of Lithuanian-Americans in Chicago, charged the museum with "being an accessory to a hate crime".
This group apparently tried to get the Museum to quietly take the compact disc off its shelves, and the Museum refused. The Reuters release continues:
"The lyrics of the song printed by the group laid a "curse" on Lithuania and its people, saying: "Let your blood flow; Like the blood of Jewish children."
We'll monitor this story closely.
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In an August 11, 99 Letter to the National Post, Raja George Khouri, vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation, writes as follows:
"As it concludes the 20th century, Canada seems poised to erect a monument to crimes against humanity. A private members' bill introduced by MP Sarkis Assadourian on Feb. 15 calls for an exhibit 'to recognize the crimes against humanity ... perpetrated during the 20th century.'
"Bill C-479 has been garnering support from MPs of all political stripes, to the dismay of the Canadian Jewish Congress, which has launched a campaign for using public money to erect a museum dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust.
"Will Canada choose to commemorate all 20th-century genocide, or only the European Jewish experience during the Second World War?
"A coalition calling itself Canadians for a Genocide Museum (CGM), formed in November, 1998, has thrown its support behind Bill C-479. The coalition of 24 organizations, representing 17 distinct ethnic communities, has written to MPs and senators calling for an inclusive genocide museum to serve as a monument to man's atrocities against man, and educate Canadians about the human evils of the 20th century. (...)
"(G)enocide continues to happen: Rwanda and Yugoslavia in this decade alone. CGM's message is simple: No genocide should ever happen again. Commemorating all genocide alongside the Holocaust does not denigrate it. ... each memory is unique and enormous; to suggest otherwise is arrogant.
"Creating one monument to the Holocaust, and another combining all other genocide, will send the wrong message: There is hierarchy in genocide. ... Why can't all genocide be commemorated under one roof? ... All genocides are equally abominable and similarly deserving of official commemoration ... (I)t is important to recognize that any form of genocide, against any people, is detestable. <end>
To that, I only want to add that if all true genocides were equally deserving of monuments, then the German expellees and German SS units whose members were murdered after capture by the Allies would get the lion's share of space! And how about the Gulag victims? Where is their monument?
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Meanwhile, the censorship measures continue, with yet another big corporation having caved in.
Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate that owns 40% of Barnes&Noble, has pulled "Mein Kampf" from virtual shelves, according to yesterday's Reuters release.
To quote from this release:
"The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles had filed a complaint with the German Justice Ministry accusing Barnesandnoble.com, Bertelsmann's U.S. online book-selling partner, and rival Amazon.com of violating German law by selling such books to German consumers online.
"Because the Internet ignores national boundaries, BOL said it had opted to stop offering the book at all.
'We are aware that we are operating on the thin line between a publisher's responsibility and the accusation of censorship,' spokesman Christof Erhart said.
"But he said the fact that Bertelsmann was a German company gave it a historical responsibility."
Amazon, so far, has refused to bow to censorship. It continues to offer an English version of "Mein Kampf" in all the countries to which it delivers.
It does not sell the book, however, in German.
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Finally, from the "Revisionist News" section of the August "Power Letter", the monthly publication out of the Zundel-Haus, I glean the following:
"There were 28,846 politically motivated criminal prosecutions in Germany in the last five years. 10,000 of those happened in the last year alone. The repression in Germany against Revisionists is now as virulent as the repression was against political dissidents in East Germany - shortly before the regime collapsed!"
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And finally, a vivid image you are not likely to forget!
This came to me in a private letter from France, pertaining to the anniversary of the death - some say murder - of Rudolf Hess. Police in Europe were out by the thousands to stop official commemorations of this martyr. But here is what happened in Paris:
"In the early morning of Tuesday 17 August, anniversary of the death of the Peace-Martyr, the statue of W. Churchill, on the lawn of the Petit Palais in Paris VIIIème, had its hands painted a brilliant blood-red, with the initials R.H. inscribed in the same colour on the front of the base.
"Things stayed that way until mid-afternoon of the 18th. Quite a few photos were taken of the phenomenon . . . "
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"Where obedience is guaranteed by violence, rulers may tend towards a 'behaviorist' conception: it is enough that the people obey; what they think does not matter too much.
"Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think."
(Noam Chomsky)