Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“Almost certainly there was no written order to destroy European Jewry. There didn’t need to be. The word of the Fuhrer had the force of law: Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft. When one judge, Lothar Kreyssig, complained to Justice Minister Franz Gürtner about the immunity of the SD and Gestapo he was told that ‘the will of the Führer is the source of law’. ”

“Eichmann was told by Heydrich in late summer 1941 that ‘I have just come from the Reichsfuhrer: the Fuhrer has now ordered the physical annihilation of the Jews.’ Radio reports from the field of operations contained exact numerical reports of executions. On 16 December 1941 Hans Frank told leaders of the GG of the need to ‘exterminate the Jews wherever we find them.’ ”

“The Nazis never admitted to the Holocaust. Terms such as ‘special measures’ and ‘resettlement’ were devised as euphemisms for extermination. Occasionally the Nazi leaders let the truth slip. ... Victor Brack, the leading organiser of the Euthanasia programme, admitted it had been an open secret in senior party circles.”

“The Final Solution was a product of fascism, war imperialism and the quest for lebensraum. It was: an economically driven plan of mass population resettlement and extermination to benefit ethnic Germans, which included the state-sponsored starvation of tens of millions of Slavs.”

“It is arguable that the Final Solution in the East, Germany’s India, had been decided upon as soon as Poland was invaded. At Nuremberg Erwin Lahousen of German Counterintelligence testified that, ‘As early as September, 1939, Hitler had decided the murder of Polish Jews.’ ”

“Despite the fact that the leaders of the Reichsvereinigung [RV], the Nazi-imposed Jewish Council, were becoming aware in 1942-43 of what ‘resettlement’ in the East meant, they continued organising the transports. As death notices began arriving back and rumours of mass shootings spread, Jews chose to go into hiding. RV staff were ‘under orders to inform their functionaries… who in turn informed the Gestapo.’ ”

“In their hatred of Jewish ‘assimilation’ the Zionist movement had ended up welcoming the Nuremberg Laws.”

“For most Jews the preservation of life came first. For Zionism, the preservation of the Jewish nation/race was more important. Reinhard Heydrich, who became the head of the Reich Security [RSHA] explained that the Nazis were: in agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, Zionism, whose position is based on the recognition of the unity of Jewry... and the rejection of all ideas of mixing in.' "

“On 15 September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws, ‘the most murderous legislative instrument known to European history’ were enacted, depriving German Jews of their citizenship and forbidding sexual relations between Jews and Aryans. From now on the Jews were subjects. Twelve days later they were amended to include Romanis and Black people.”

“Expressions of ‘sympathy, abhorrence, and shame’ were the reaction to Kristallnacht. The SD's annual situation report for 1938 spoke of how: ‘the actions against Jewry in November have been received very badly…. Out of liberalistic principles many people found it imperative openly to intervene on behalf of the Jews’ ”

“In Berlin and Vienna, ‘the SD ordered the release from jail of all Jews arrested during the Kristallnacht pogrom who were... connected with the Palästinaamt.’ The only way Jews who had been imprisoned in concentration camps after Kristallnacht could gain their release was by producing proof of entry to another country. Of the 300,000 Jews who left Germany between 1933 and 1939, 150,000 left after Kristallnacht.”

“Remembering, once again, that doing the work of repentance presumes neither forgiveness nor atonement, it is nonetheless worth asking about the obligations of repentance if the victim is not present, if the victim has died, if the victim has been murdered. Regardless, the perpetrator is obligated to do what is possible—in public, and with an awareness that a debt may be carried down the generations until it is paid”

“The Department of Warfare Against Jewry (II 112 SD) spoke about how violence against the Jews was having a ‘repulsive effect on the enlightened population’. Otto Dov Kulka reported that ‘in some places the police stepped in to halt acts of terror only after the maltreatment of Jews aroused spontaneous popular opposition.’ ”

“Anti-Semitism met its greatest resistance where the Nazis tried to destroy traditional economic relationships between Jews and non-Jews. ‘Peasant attitudes were determined almost wholly by material considerations and self-interest.’ In one... village, peasants who worried that Hitler Youth posters ‘Jews not wanted here’ would result in a loss of Jewish customers replaced them with ‘Jews very much wanted here.’!”

“It is no accident and no mistake that immigrant populations understood their "Americanness" as an opposition to the resident black population—and still do.”

“This repentance did not happen, and neither did the profound, and profoundly hoped for, social transformation. Archbishop Emeritus Tutu reflected in the South African Mail & Guardian in 2014, "Today, as we reflect on the commission's contribution to reweaving the fabric of our society, we do so... against a backdrop of a hopelessly inequitable country." ”

“Eugene Baron, a Black South African theology professor and minister, argued that one obstacle to more reconciliation across society was the fact that the TRC demanded truth, but not repentance, from those to whom it granted amnesty." ”

“The TRC's choice to treat apartheid as a discrete harm with individual victims, rather than a mass oppression perpetrated by the state against a critical percentage of its population was considered by many to be a major failure; something that failed to help facilitate reconciliation on a widespread social level, despite Tutu's hopes to the contrary.”

“But as [Tutu] understood it, this repentance work should not be limited to those confessing to profound brutalities; it had to encompass all recipients of economic and social privilege. He suggested that the white South Africans who were, to whatever degree, previously ignorant of some of the evils of apartheid were very much "the ones who ought to be saying, 'We benefited from an unjust system…" ”

“For Archbishop Tutu, the possibility of repentance was a critical part of the commission's work and the society he hoped it would engender. As he put it…"Those who committed the most ghastly [crimes] have the capacity to be different. They have the capacity to be saved. If you become deterministic and say, 'Once a perpetrator of evil, always a perpetrator of evil, then let us shut up shop." ”

“So often when harm is committed—on the individual, institutional, or nation—is a desire by perpetrators to minimize, to mitigate, to downplay. To gaslight the victim. Public confession invites the perpetrator to dates the victim's experience.”

“Those who supported the decision to make amnesty conditional on truth-telling argued that doing so enabled the country to undergo a process that would have been impossible otherwise, and many believe that the concessions offered around amnesty helped prevent civil war.”

“Some monstrosities were less "official" but were nonetheless perpetrated by government officials. They included arson, the bombing of the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, firing on anti-apartheid protesters, massacres, torture, assassinations, the brutal murders of activists, and of course, creating conditions of terror, poverty, and desperation.”

“Many of the horrors of the apartheid era—collective expulsion; forced migration; the bulldozing, gutting, or seizure of homes; restrictions on day-to-day movement; forced removal into rural ghettos; dispossession of land; coerced labor through administrative and statutory regulation; the banning of political parties and organizations and detention without trial—were sanctioned by the government.”

“"Can and should a nation repent?" is a very different question than "Can and should that nation be forgiven?" ”

“Kelly Brown Douglas...writes, "The fact of the matter is—after the money has been paid... for scholarships and other programming—systems and structures are not disrupted. Life goes on as usual and these institutions continue to benefit from the ongoing legacy of white supremacy to the detriment of people of color." ”

“Although university initiatives and legislative resolutions are not the exact same thing, one can see how in the former case, projects aimed at making apologies or acknowledgments might "covertly thwart reparations or other racial justice for [B]lack Americans while providing the illusion of substantive racial progress" and make it more difficult for those seeking more substantial redress to attain it.”

“These apology resolutions... serve to covertly thwart reparations or other racial justice for [B]lack Americans while providing the illusion of substantive racial progress. Through general calls for reconciliation, recognition, and healing they give the appearance of recognizing the harm while doing nothing to repair it.”

“Sometimes rebuke cannot, however, be limited to the private sphere. When harm happens in more public spaces, there is great value in making sure that both victims and witnesses hear someone name that harm.”

“Someone didn't know better! They're more likely to listen and not get defensive if you speak to them privately. Protecting the victim doesn't mean we run to injure the harm-doer! And shame can powerfully inhibit repentance. The writer and researcher Brené Brown somewhat famously defines guilt as the feeling that I did something bad and shame as the feeling that I am bad." ”