"Denial:" No Making Nazis Great Again Here

Back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, there was much controversy in the world about the American role in the Vietnam War, especially about the bombing of North Vietnam and parts of South Vietnam. Part of the questioning of this bombing led back on the Allies in World War Two, and to the heavy aerial bombing by the Americans and British of the German city of Dresden in mid February 1945. Dresden is located in eastern Germany, and a large, but unknown quantity, of German refugees had flooded into the city as the Soviets advanced into Germany from the east (Germany was far larger in area back then). The bombing had been somewhat controversial earlier, but a book by English writer David Irving, "The Destruction of Dresden," brought the issue to a heightened state.* Irving's book became a bestseller, a copy of which I bought in the late '60s (?) in paperback.** Irving "claimed" that there were more Germans killed in the Dresden attacks than had been killed in the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, or likely even in the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The thing was, I don't recall anyone really challenging Irving's statistics, although Irving did scale back the number of killed in Dresden "a bit" in later editions of his book. 

In the 1970s, Irving published a two part biography of Hitler. With these biographical publications, Irving pursued a course to show "the real Hitler," a man whom Irving felt had been given a bad deal by historians. Irving recounted how he had gone through countless documents from German records (the Allies captured tons and tons of records from the Nazi era), and that he could not find any document where Hitler had ordered a killing of Jews, but, at that point, Irving did not dispute that such killings had taken place. Later, however, Irving began to challenge the overwhelming consensus of historians, let alone survivors of the massacre, as something that had been fabricated, even used by Jews to make money. So a conspiracy theory was pushed out more into open. While many people were appalled, unrepentant old Nazis loved it, as did younger Nazis of the (then) 1980s and 1990s. The most infamous symbol of Nazi murder and horror was Auschwitz, a concentration camp/labor camp complex, that became a death camp, with gas chambers to kill people, and with crematoria to burn the bodies. Often Nazi apologists and deniers of history only admitted that people died there from disease, but not from mass murder. Folks, Auschwitz was the stalking grounds of Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who decided which newly arrived prisoners would live (to work) or die within a short time in the gas chambers. You can't get much lower than that son-of-a-bitch!

As World War Two ground to a conclusion, General Eisenhower, the commander of the Western Allied forces in Europe, made sure the evidence of the concentration camps overrun by his forces was preserved on film and in other documentation, because, he noted, that at sometime in the future, "some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." Folks, David Irving is that bastard! There have been others, too, but Irving chose to take the issue to court, hoping to use the British law to strike a blow at truth.

In 1993, American historian Deborah Lipstadt published a book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." In her book and in some of her public speeches or interviews, Ms. Lipstadt correctly called David Irving what he was, "a Holocaust denier." Within a couple of years, Irving filed a lawsuit against Lipstadt and the publisher, "Penguin Books," for libel.   

So this is some of the background for the 2016 film, "Denial." It stars Rachel Weisz as Deborah Lipstadt, English actor Timothy Spall as David Irving and English actor Tom Wilkinson as the lead attorney, Richard Rampton. The film is about the libel suit filed by Irving against Lipstadt and Penguin Books. In a libel suit in the UK, believe it or not, the burden is on the accused, not the accuser. Hm, I wonder what the members of Parliament have been smoking? Ah, does this mean I have to prove they've been smoking something? Anyway, the attorneys representing Lipstadt and Penguin decide upon a strategy aimed at making Irving the only issue. Irving will represent himself and he agrees to forego a trial by jury; thus, the ruling will come from one judge who will hear the case. Lipstadt does not like the way her own Holocaust research and the views of actual Holocaust survivors will not be presented by the attorneys, who feel Irving will not spare the survivors any pain in his attempt to win the case. As one attorney tells her, if a witness says there was a door on the left in a certain part of Auschwitz, but it was actually on the right, Irving will say the memory of the witness is unreliable. Lipstadt still presses the attorneys, especially because one survivor tells her that survivors don't want to speak for their own benefit, but they want to give voice to all of those who didn't make it. In spite of such a strong argument, the attorneys stick with their plan. 

As the trial drags on, Irving scores some points, but finally attorney Rampton shows, through video of some of Irving's speeches, and excerpts from his writings, how Irving has been more than just casually on the side of vindicating Hitler and the Nazis in general, but how Irving is a racist, who has espoused anti-Jewish views on numerous occasions. He shows how Irving has manipulated historical records to give added weight to his own published works, rather than to the cause of history. Near the end of the trial, the judge causes some uneasiness by asking about what amounts to a person's freedom of speech and entitlement to hold contrary views to much of society, and wonders if a person holding such views can be a liar, if they really believe what they are saying. So we await the verdict.

Finally the judge writes hundreds of pages to his decision, laying out the evidence presented in the case against David Irving as a racist and as someone who denied clear evidence that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz operated with the intent of killing many thousands of people. (Note: In the actual case, the judge found insufficient evidence that Irving kept a picture of Hitler above his desk. Hm, I wonder if they checked his wallet for photos?)

This movie is a docudrama and an important one, not only because of what it shows about David Irving trying to distort the history of mass murder decades ago, but because of the attack on truth we see going on today. Distortions about an elected president of the United States not being an American citizen, allegations about that American's birth certificate being phony, allegations about Ted Cruz's father being part of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, also, "I inherited a mess," "Obama had my wires tapped," "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us (sic). They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Like David Irving, all a bunch of fascist crap!  

* It's good to remember a couple of things here: there was also questioning about the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons. The United States twice used such weapons against Japan in August of 1945. Further, the world, circa 1970, was fraught with the danger of two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. A push of a button could lead to mass destruction, or perhaps even the end of humankind.

** In those times, a paperback book likely would cost less than a dollar, but keep in mind, the value of the money was far different then. I bought the book from money I earned working in a men's clothing shop after school and on Saturdays for a dollar and hour. The minimum wage then was $1.60, but it didn't apply to my employer, as he had too few employees.

Photo is from the 2017 Universal Home Entertainment DVD

 WORD HISTORY:
Deny-The ultimate origin of a part of this word is a bit shaky, but the word is really a suffixed form of a compound word. The prefix part, "de-," is a distant relative of "to," as it was derived from Indo European "de/do," which had the notion, "toward;" thus also figuratively, "for such purpose (of)." This gave Latin "de," meaning, "from, away from;" and also, "of, about." Next we have Indo European "n/ne," which meant, "not, no." This gave Latin "nec," which meant "not," which is distantly related to English "no, not," by way of Indo European. The core word is the problem, but it seems to go back to some Indo European form that meant, "to say, to speak, to speak out," and this produced Latin "aiere," meaning, "to affirm." Put all together, Latin had "denegare;" that is, "to refuse;" literally, "to not affirm." This passed into Latin-based Old French as, "deneier," meaning, "to refuse, to deny." English borrowed the word in the first half of the 1300s. 

Schindler's List, Movie and History

This 1993 Steven Spielberg movie, based on a novel about real life Oskar Schindler, is both depressing and uplifting. Perhaps that is fitting, as Schindler himself displayed actions of darkness and light, but then I suppose we all do to some extent. The thing is, when the final bell sounds, hopefully we will have tallied far more light than darkness, and that certainly was the case with Oskar Schindler. When I look at a couple of examples of characters, one fictional, George Bailey of "It's A Wonderful Life," and one real, Claus von Stauffenberg, who almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler, I see that we need to be broadminded enough to accept the flaws of both men, and thus, others too. George Bailey wanted to leave his small hometown of Bedford Falls and go off to design and build great things, make lots of money and travel the world, but his sense of conscience and service to others had him choose to remain in Bedford Falls, although grudgingly, and to help many of the town's people, and to resist the ruthless greed of Mr. Potter.* Claus von Stauffenberg was a German officer from the nobility and a devout Catholic. As with many Germans, Stauffenberg sided with Hitler's foreign policy goals of regaining lost German claimed territories, and he developed an admiration for Hitler, but he then learned of the terrible atrocities being committed in the name of the German people, and his conscience switch was flipped to "on." Stauffenberg and many others paid with their lives for the attempted assassination of Hitler.**

Oskar Schindler was born in the Czech province of Moravia, which had some German populated areas. He later went into business and joined the Nazi Party in the late 1930s.*** Schindler wanted to make money at an enamelware business he took over in German-occupied Poland, in Krakow (German: Krakau). He used Jews to save labor costs and he paid bribes to various Nazi officials to keep using Jews in his plant. So Schindler's original motive in using Jews was to make money. When he witnessed the brutal, ruthless treatment and murder of Jews in the city, like Stauffenberg mentioned above, his conscience was activated and he saw things for what they really were. One little girl in a red coat stood out to him. The movie was filmed in black and white, except for the scenes of the little girl in the red coat. From then on, Schindler tried to save as many Jews from the Nazis as possible by keeping them employed for him and by paying more bribes to Nazi officials.

The film is generally historical in many of its depictions, including the depiction of Amon Göth, a psychopathic SS officer, who was tried and executed after the war, right near the site of many of his despicable crimes. The executions in the Krakow Jewish ghetto shown in the film are based on fact, as are Schindler's bribes to Nazis to save the lives of helpless Jews. PLEASE watch this movie, if you haven't already seen it, and please watch it again if you have seen it before. The fight against evil never ends and we need to constantly be reminded of the horrors we humans can inflict on the world. We also need to be reminded of the good and brave deeds done by some in opposing evil, at great risk to themselves. If you have difficulty in watching brutality and murder, I do have to advise, this is a very troubling movie, because it is based on fact. However, the ending showing how the real life survivors of the Nazis honored Oskar Schindler is very moving and swings the darkness of the film's and history's truth back to the light. It made me recall a scene in another film based on the life of Solomon Perel, "Europa, Europa," **** where a German soldier tells the German Jewish teenager, "not all Germans are the same, there are other Germans" ("nicht alle Deutschen sind gleich, es gibt noch anderen Deutsche"). "Schindler's List" was criticized by some, but any movie, play, book, or article attempting to depict or describe the horrible inhumanity of those times will be criticized, because there is so much pain and no adequate way to put into words or pictures that pain for those who went through it.

* For more on George Bailey and "It's A Wonderful Life," this is a link to a previous article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/12/its-wonderful-life-showed-conscience.html

** For more on Stauffenberg, this is the link to another article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/07/heroes-against-hitler-colonel-klaus-von.html

*** Germans joined the Nazi Party for various reasons, I'm sure, including for business reasons, to stay "in good" with the regime, and to derive any benefits from that association. Most Germans were not party members, and the process of becoming a Nazi Party member wasn't always easy, but that doesn't mean some non party members weren't supportive or fanatical in some beliefs.

**** Released in most of Europa as, "Hitlerjunge Salomon." For more on this movie, here is the link to the article I did:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2014/12/solomon-perel-staying-alive-among-nazis.html

Photo is from the DVD cover by Universal, 2013. 

WORD HISTORY:
Tear-This is the word pronounced as if, "teer," and meaning "salty liquid that comes from the eyes in droplets." It goes back to Indo European "dakru," which meant "tears," and it is has widespread forms throughout the Indo European languages. "Dakru" gave its Old Germanic offspring "tahra/taghr," meaning "tear." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "teahor" and "teagor," both meaning "tear," which then seemingly merged into "tear," and likely pronounced like "tee-are." This then became "teer/ter," before the modern version. The verb form, meaning "to produce tears, to shed tears," developed from the noun in the 1400s. The other Germanic languages have: German "Zähre," a form that is now very high style and poetic, and also the common form "Träne," where the "r" sound moved ahead of the vowel and the word was then contracted from "trahan" (see also the Low German and West Frisian forms); Low German Saxon "Traan," West Frisian "trien," Dutch "traan," Danish "tåre," Norwegian and Swedish "tår," Icelandic "tár."  

Solomon Perel, Staying Alive Among The Nazis

This was first published on October 1, 2010. I ever so slightly edited it on December 5, 2014, but now, October 29, 2021, I thought I'd expand it to the end of the movie, but I have not covered the movie thoroughly, and it is well worth seeing this great film.

 

Thanks to the Bee Gees for, "And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, Stayin' alive. Stayin' alive.Ah, ha, ha, ha, Stayin' alive;" and to the Moody Blues for "Survival nothing more than survival." You might now guess that this must be something about "stayin' alive" and "survival." You have guessed correctly.

I can't recall when I first saw the movie "Europa, Europa," but I believe it was on that international film channel, with the interesting and unique name, "The International Film Channel." haha

If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. This film is in German, with English subtitles, with excellent translation. Its original title for release in Europe was "Hitlerjunge Salomon" ("Hitler Youth Solomon")*, and it was released there in 1990. The title was changed to "Europa Europa" for release in the United States, although I'm not sure just why that was done. The original title tells the basic story just in the title, since a boy with the name "Solomon," a common Jewish name, being in the Hitler Youth, just doesn't match. So the title also arouses some curiosity.

The story is based on the true story of Solomon Perel, a German Jew (played by German actor Marco Hofschneider) who was able to use some creative thinking to save himself from death at the hands of the Nazis. The movie is not, and doesn't claim to be, a re-enactment of Perel's story, but it is rather something of a historical novel, with many parts of Perel's actual biography providing the framework of the film. It begins with infant Solomon Perel's circumcision. Solomon is also known by the shortened form of his name, "Solek." That the movie would basically open with a young child's circumcision may seem a bit strange to you, but it is very important, because German males tend not to be circumcised, and that was especially true in those times. Jewish males, at least those born to observant Jewish parents, are always circumcised.** This will become important to the story, and at one point later, Solek asks himself if this small piece of skin is what makes one person so different from another.

The movie fast forwards to when Solek is a young teenager, and the Perel family decides to leave Germany for eastern Poland when their little shoe shop, attached to their home, is vandalized by Nazi thugs and Solek's sister is killed. Unfortunately, moving to Poland was not a good choice, since within a few years Germany invaded Poland from the west, and their ally at that time, the Soviet Union, invaded Poland from the east. The father decides to send his two youngest sons (Solomon and Isaak) further east toward the Russians to escape the advancing Nazi armies.*** The two brothers become separated, and Solomon is taken by the Soviets and placed in a Communist Youth orphanage and school in Grodno, an area of Poland that was annexed by the Soviet Union. Solek now becomes fluent in Russian.

In June 1941, here come the Nazis again, as Hitler sends his armies into the Soviet Union. Solek is captured by the Germans, but his native German language makes the officers ask how he knows German so well. As the German troops question him, executions of Jews and certain Russian captives are being carried out right nearby, and we hear the almost constant machine gun fire. Thinking quickly, Solek tells them he is German, an ethnic German (called Volksdeutsche, a person of German ancestry living outside the borders of Germany and Austria) who was forced into a Soviet orphanage. He uses a German sounding name, "Josef Peters," for his own. The Germans hear what they want to hear, believing that since he was in an orphanage, that the Soviets had murdered the boy's parents, and they promise him revenge for their deaths. Since he is now fluent in Russian, he becomes a translator for this German military unit. In order to conceal his identity, he has to be sure that no one sees that he's circumcised, so he always goes off into the bushes to relieve himself. A gay German soldier sees Solek exposed, and he knows that he is a Jew, but he befriends Solek and he never betrays him. It gives the boy some comfort to have someone to talk with without having to worry about his identity, but unfortunately, this soldier is killed in the fighting. The other soldiers all like him, but many of them also have a "Nazi side," and the boy wonders how various Germans can be so nice and kind to him because they believe him to be German, yet how these same Germans can be so nasty and hateful toward Russians and Jews.

The Nazis decide the boy should go to Germany and be placed in a Hitler Youth school.**** He thinks of various ways to avoid anyone seeing that he's circumcised, and he even tries to make it appear that he's not circumcised, which only causes an infection. He meets a girl, a fanatical Nazi, who decides she wants to give a child to the Führer. The boy can't have sex with her, because that would mean she'd know he was circumcised. The Nazis study the boy's facial features and certain physical characteristics, declaring him to be a pretty good "Aryan" specimen, which only shows what a bunch of nonsense Hitler and Himmler espoused. Solek, dressed in his Hitler Youth uniform, travels to Lodz, a Polish city annexed to Germany with a mixed Polish-German population,***** as that is where his parents had been living. Jews have been confined to a ghetto, and the boy uneasily takes a trolley through that ghetto to hopefully get a glimpse of his parents. There is a bit of comic relief when Solek is practicing his heel clicking and Nazi salute in front of a mirror, which causes him to break out into a dance. As the war comes to Germany itself, Solek is sent to the front with other teenagers and he is captured. The Soviet officers are having German prisoners executed, and Solek looks to be doomed, as no one believes his story of being Jewish and the way he survived. Suddenly a voice calls his name from a group of freed concentration camp prisoners. It is his brother, Isaak. The two brothers have survived, but their parents did not.*^ The film ends with the REAL Solomon Perel making an appearance (as of 10-29-21, he is 96 years old!). Even small victories like these against the hatred of the Nazis are always welcome. DON'T EVER LET NAZIS WIN!!!

* Literally, "Hitlerjunge" means "Hitler boy." (See Word History below)

** There is an interesting dream scene in the movie, where the boy's sister hides him from the Nazis in a closet. Who else is in closet? Hitler. He is standing in a common pose of many of the photos of him, with his hands over his crotch. She tells her brother, "Er ist auch Jude, deshalb hält er immer seine Hände davor" ("He's a Jew too, that's why he always holds his hands in front;" a symbolic reference to circumcision and to Hitler's fear of being part Jewish, a claim long tossed about by his political opponents.) See my article about Hitler's DNA, "Hitler The Jew?": http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/10/hitler-jew.html 

*** The Soviets were not as anti-Jewish; after all, part of Nazi ideology was based upon anti-Jewish hate, as well as other racial and ethnic hate nonsense. By the time Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the world had already witnessed Nazi laws and violence directed against German Jews. A fair number of Germany's Jews had left the country (like the Perels) by 1939, but some (also like the Perels) simply moved to adjacent countries, which often proved to be a death sentence when Hitler's armies invaded, and occupied, those countries early in World War Two.

**** The Hitler Youth was fanatical in its Nazi ideology; after all, unlike older Germans, these kids had been brought up under the Nazis and they had never experienced anything else. That's not to say there weren't fanatical adult Nazis, too; as obviously there were.

***** Lodz (Polish: Łódź) is in the middle of modern Poland, and during the World War Two era, the city had a mixed Polish and German population, especially so, because the Nazis resettled a number of Germans there from other parts of Europe. The Nazis renamed the city "Litzmannstadt" after a German World War One general. The city had already had a sizeable Jewish minority and the Nazis forced all Jews to live in an enclosed ghetto and, in order to survive, to produce goods for the German war effort and German citizens. Gradually over time parts of the Jewish population were sent to be murdered in extermination camps, while disease and food shortages were constant threats within the ghetto.  

*^ I have read Solomon Perel's autobiography, "I Was Hitlerjunge Solomon." As I noted above, the movie is only "based" upon Perel's story, and the ending of the movie where the two brothers are reunited was purely written by the scriptwriters for the movie. Also, in real life, Solek's sister was not killed in 1930's Germany, but rather she was killed late in the war while in Nazi captivity. There was also another older brother, and while he is depicted rather briefly in the film, he did survive the war.     

Photo is from the 2003 MGM DVD release.

WORD HISTORY:
Young-This word goes back to the Indo European root "yeu," which had the notion of "vigor, vitality." The Old Germanic offshoot was "jungas," with the same basic meaning. This then gave Old English/Anglo-Saxon "geong," meaning "young," with the soft "g" later becoming "y" (the German, Low German, Dutch and Frisian forms are spelled with a beginning 'j,' but it too is pronounced like English 'y'). In various forms it is quite common in the other Germanic languages: German and Low German have "jung," Dutch has "jong," Frisian "jonk," Danish has "unge," Swedish has "unga," Norwegian and Icelandic have "ung." German and Dutch have used the word as a noun, with the Dutch noun "jong" meaning "child," and German "Junge" meaning "boy, lad."

The American Melting Pot and The Electorate

This was first published in March 2013

The United States has really always been a nation of minorities. These minorities have "usually" joined together to form the nation, although the process hasn't always been pretty. The original American states were a mixture of ethnic and nationality groups,* with a fairly substantial Dutch presence in New York (originally a Dutch possession), a German element in many places, especially Pennsylvania,** a substantial English presence in most of the former colonies, especially in New England and the mid Atlantic, a smaller Scottish and Welsh presence; a substantial Scots-Irish presence in many places, especially in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North and South Carolina.*** Time only added to these numbers, as Europeans flocked to the U.S. in the 1800s and about half of the 1900s, although the variety of people expanded, as Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Swedes, Portuguese, Jews (often of Russian nationality)****, Hungarians, Rumanians, Basques, and others came in fairly high numbers as immigrants. Not only that, the other side of the world provided plenty of immigrants too, in the 1800s especially, Chinese, who formed Chinese communities, not only in the western part of the country, but also in the east, as they settled throughout the country. As the U.S. expanded westward, the number of states grew, as did the inclusion of ethnic minorities already present in some of the newly acquired territories, such as substantial Hispanic populations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as well as a number of people of French background, especially in Louisiana. 

There were also hundreds of thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa held as slaves (they could not vote), primarily in southern states, where they were used as cheap labor, literally slave labor, generally on large plantations. Even in the early decades of American independence slavery in northern states was limited, as laws in these states began to phase out the practice of owning slaves. This split between north and south widened so much and was so contentious, it ended with southern states trying to leave the Union, which resulted in the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued the "Emancipation Proclamation," freeing America's slaves, an act confirmed by the defeat of the Confederacy in the war. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution just after the Civil War helped form the legal basis for former slaves to vote, but at that time, the South was under Reconstruction; that is, occupation by Federal troops. When Reconstruction ended not long thereafter, southern states began to pass laws to restrict black American voting, often under the guise of a poll tax, the non payment of which deprived a person of the right to vote. Not only that, black voters were often threatened, beaten, or even killed, if they tried to vote. In those times, black Americans were almost exclusively Republicans, while white southerners of all income levels were just as exclusively Democrats, as they opposed the party of Lincoln, the Republicans.

Another group that gradually became a minority was the vast indigenous Native American population (initially, of course, they were the majority, although they were spread out). Over time, "undoubtedly" a good deal of that population simply was absorbed into the general population, although determining a number is pretty much impossible, as association of white Americans with "Indians" was often prohibited, or at least frowned upon by society. So if your great, great grandparent was involved with a Native American, which resulted in a child, they probably didn't run out and tell everyone in sight, or ANYONE in sight. The same was true of white association with black Americans, as the cases of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond have demonstrated, as both fathered children with black women. Obviously Thurmond didn't pass out cigars at the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, although he used race as a political weapon for decades. Anyway, something around a million people still inhabit America's hundreds of "Indian" reservations, although most people who term themselves as full or partial Native Americans live outside of reservations.

Then there was America's largest minority, certainly now a majority, WOMEN. They only got to first cast ballots in the election of 1920!!!    

In Part Two, where is the U.S. on voting rights now? Will we go back to excluding legal residents from voting? Obviously, some would like to do just that.

* The actual ethnic and nationality composition of the original states cannot be completely certain, but immigration records available from ports of entry, and overseas records of people leaving for America, plus early land and court records, give what is likely a good picture of what early America looked like.

** The so called "Pennsylvania Dutch" were/are really Germans, largely, but not exclusively, from a region around the Rhine River in western Germany known as the Palatinate (Heidelberg is one of the main cities), who came to America mainly in the late 1600s. The German name for themselves being "Deutsche," with dialect variations, like "Deitsch" and "Teitsch," the then American Colonists pronounced the term as "Dutch." This association with "Dutch" was further reinforced by the fact that a number of the new arrivals had traveled the Rhine River into Holland (the Netherlands) where they then boarded ships for America. Their speech came to be called "Pennsylvania Dutch," or "Pennsylvania German," an amalgamation of Upper German dialects from that general area of Germany, which then also included Alsace (on the western side of the Rhine, but now part of France), and part of the German area of Switzerland. For a little more on Alsace, see my article:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/11/german-question-part-fifty-five.html

*** Scots-Irish, often rendered as "Scotch-Irish" in America, were the people who came from what is now Northern Ireland, or Ulster, primarily during the 1700s. These people generally descend from Protestant Scots and northern Englishmen who were encouraged by King James I in the early 1600s to migrate to the general area of northern Ireland to settle on lands confiscated from Irish nobles (Catholics). The idea was, this would gradually bind more and more of Ireland to the crown and to Protestantism. King James was a Scot, and prior to his ascending the English throne, he was known as King James VI of Scotland. The confiscated Irish lands were often taken over by wealthy English and Scottish landowners and the "Scots-Irish" settlers worked for them. Tough economic times and domination by the landowners saw a couple of hundred thousand Scots-Irish emigrate to the American colonies, with more coming after the founding of the United States.

**** Until the end of World War One, Russia included a large segment of Poland, including Warsaw, as well as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and parts of what is now Rumania. All of these areas had fairly large numbers of Jews who were often persecuted (even violently) by so called Christians in these areas. Primarily in the latter part of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s, Jews who could, left these areas, with a fairly large number coming to the U.S. Some, however, migrated to other parts of Europe, where later they or their descendants were murdered in large numbers when the Nazis controlled much of Europe. Some wisely got out before the massacre started, again with many coming to America, as did some of the survivors in the postwar era. 
 
WORD HISTORY:
Major-This word goes back to Indo European "megh/magh," which had the notion of "great, large." This gave its Latin offspring "magnus," with the same meanings, which then produced "maior," a comparative form; as in, "big>bigger," or "large>larger." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "maiour," before the modern version. Latin "maior" was also used as a noun to mean "an elder," and from that meaning came     "high ranking official or senior officer," rendered as "major," during the Middle Ages, which was taken by French for a military officer. This was then borrowed by English during the 1600s. A verb form developed in American English, circa 1900,  meaning "to take a specific course of study in college, to specialize in a profession or subject;" as in, "to major in business management" or "to major in English." German also borrowed the military rank "major," with the same spelling, but basically pronounced.as "mah-your." 

Traudl Junge, Working For Evil, Part Two

During her interviews, Traudl Junge was asked about how much Hitler and other Nazi leaders talked about Jews. She said the subject was really not discussed, at least not around her or the other secretaries, but it's important to remember a couple of things here. First, neither Traudl Junge nor the other secretaries were involved in Hitler's meetings with Nazi leaders, where the subject most certainly would have been discussed. Second, the Nazis talked in "code," if you will; that is, they used euphemisms about their plans or ongoing operations to murder German and other European Jews, and indeed other people too. Terms like "resettlement" and "final solution" were used in place of "shipping Jews off to be killed" or "extermination." They KNEW what they were doing was an abomination, otherwise, they wouldn't have tried to hide it. Traudl also mentioned how Hitler would tell subordinates to just follow his orders about whatever the subject, that he assumed all responsibility, as if, Traudl noted, "one person can assume the conscience of another." After the war, and really up to recent times, apologists for Hitler have noted that no written order, signed by Hitler, was ever found among the many tons of captured Nazi records ordering the extermination of Europe's Jews. Hitler was a psychopath, but that didn't make him unaware of his criminality. Somewhere deep inside that disturbed mind was the reality of wrongdoing on an incomprehensible scale.

Traudl did cite one telling incident, which took place in 1943 at Hitler's villa, "the Berghof," above the town of Berchtesgaden. She admits that she only heard about it from others who were present, including her husband, who was one of Hitler's personal aides. The Schirachs had been invited to the Berghof, at Henriette von Schirach's request, to see and dine with Hitler. The husband, Baldur, had been head of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s and then the Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leader) of Vienna, and if you've seen any of the documentaries on the Nazi Hitler Youth, you've undoubtedly seen Baldur von Schirach in the films or still photos from that time. By the way, Schirach was under lots of American influence from both sides of his family, as his mother was an American and his paternal grandfather served in the Union army during the American Civil War, and Baldur grew up speaking both English and German. At the time of the dinner with Hitler, Henriette von Schirach had recently been in Amsterdam, where she had witnessed the brutal round up of Dutch Jewish women, who were then packed into railway cars and sent to the "east," which was another Nazi euphemism for "sending Jews to their death," as the extermination camps, designed to kill Jews and others as quickly as possible, were located primarily in Poland. "Auschwitz," the most infamous of all, was located there, and others were too. Mrs. Schirach told Hitler the terrible things she had witnessed in Amsterdam, adding that people there felt these Jews would never be heard from again. She apparently was under the impression that Hitler was unaware of such things. The conversation at the dinner table stopped, Hitler momentarily went silent, then he told Mrs. Schirach not to get involved in matters that she didn't understand, adding that she was "too sentimental." Hitler abruptly arose from the table, left the room and did not return, nor did the Schirachs ever return to Hitler's company, as he never invited them back *

Traudl Junge also talked and wrote extensively about the plot to kill Hitler in July 1944, when a bomb was carried into a temporary conference room by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg inside his briefcase. She and the other secretaries had been out swimming in one of the nearby lakes and they returned to their rooms, located near to where Hitler was holding a major military conference. An explosion shook their building, but at first they thought a deer may have stepped on a landmine. They heard the commotion outside and were told that a bomb had exploded in the military meeting. Since initially they did not know if Hitler had been killed, they fretted about what would happen to them without Hitler. She mentioned how conditioned they had all been to Hitler's thoughts on everything and the idea that he might have been killed left them badly shaken. One of Hitler's aides finally told them Hitler had not been seriously injured and that they could even visit him, which they did. Traudl mentioned how funny he looked, as his hair was still standing on end from the blast and his trouser legs were in tatters. The more ominous thing, however, was that he took his survival as a sign he was  destined to fulfill his "mission," and she noted that she had often thought before this incident, that one day Hitler would say, "Alright, I can't win the war, so I'll make peace," but after he survived the bomb plot, she said he seemed more determined than ever to win or take everyone and everything down with him.

For more on the failed bomb plot against Hitler, see my article, "Heroes Against Hitler/Stauffenberg":

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/11/german-military-leadersheroes-against.html 

Next, the final part and the end in Berlin, but Traudl Junge finds herself.

* At the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Baldur von Schirach was convicted of "crimes against humanity," primarily for transporting thousands of Viennese Jews "to the east," and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served the entire sentence and was released in 1966  He "claimed" he didn't know about the extermination camps, and that he thought Jews were being sent to live in ghettos in eastern Europe, which was criminal enough. It "may" have been an act of "denial," rather than of actually "not knowing" (there is a difference), but I must admit, I've never read all that extensively about von Schirach to give a firm opinion, but it seems rather difficult to believe he didn't at least hear the rumors that circulated about the mass killings, just as his wife saw the mistreatment and heard opinions offered in Amsterdam. Of course, even if he did firmly know about the atrocities, it is unlikely he could have done anything, because once such a criminal regime is allowed into power, it is very difficult to remove it. The key is to keep such people out of power and marginalized at the fringes of the political system, as there will always be extremists, but when they come to be accepted as just politicians and anything like mainstream, this is the beginning of accepting them into governing positions. Von Schirach denounced Hitler as a mass murderer during his trial, and after his release from prison he did speak against Hitler and Nazism, but that's scant consolation to those whose loved ones suffered and died.

 

More in Part Three, the final part, and the end in Berlin ...

 

Photo is from the paperback edition of "Bis zur letzten Stunde" (Until the Last Hour) by Traudl Junge, with cooperation from Melissa Müller, published in paperback in 2003 in German (there have been English language editions also), although there have been various printings since the original paperback. This is the 8th German paperback printing from 2011 from List Taschenbuch.

WORD HISTORY:

Team-This word goes back to Indo European "deuk," which meant "pull" and by extension "lead" (for example, a leader pulls people in his/her direction on issues). This gave its Old Germanic offspring "taugjanan," with the same meaning (it is also the ancient ancestor of "tow," as in "pull something," and "tug"). This then produced Germanic "taumaz," meaning "something that pulls," which came to be associated with animals that pulled carts/wagons, or with the reins used to equip animals for such. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "team," but pronounced in two distinct syllables, "te-am." which meant "animals harnessed together to pull a wagon or cart," and this later became "teme/tem," before the modern version. Later, the notion of animals working together to pull a wagon brought the extended meaning, "people working together toward a common objective," which also came to be applied to players of sporting events. The verb form developed from the noun in the 1500s, although it is sparsely used in American English, and then often as "team up with." Dutch, West Frisian and German all borrowed "team" directly from English, with the meaning "group working together and sports team." The other Germanic languages have: German has "Zaum" (the "Z" is pronounced "ts"), which means "bridle gear for animals," Low German Saxon and Dutch have "Toom," with that same meaning; West Frisian has "team" (also = bridle), Danish and Norwegian have "tømme" (rein), Icelandic "taumur" (=bridle/rein), Swedish has "töm" (rein).

Rolling Back Fascism Is Not Easy, Part Two

This was first published in January 2013. I'm adding this note 5/25/16: On May 22, Austrian voters narrowly defeated a far right candidate for president, Norbert Hofer, choosing instead, Alexander Van der Bellen.

Nazism differed from Italian Fascism, and indeed from most other European fascist movements, at least to some degree, in that Hitler's fascism was strongly based upon "race" and "ethnic" identity, with the fanatical furious Führer the proponent of mass murder against people he deemed to be racially unfit, with his number one target being Europe's Jews. Members of other fascist movements tended not to emphasize this hatred as much as did Hitler, but they acquiesced to the dominant German dictator by participating in many a crime against minorities.* 

A post World War Two Nazi revival in Germany didn't materialize, although the fear of such remained for decades,** and still does for some. First the Allied occupation forces, and then the Germans themselves cracked down on Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, by banning the display or use of the swastika, even banning medals for veterans of the war, as they virtually all contained a swastika somewhere on the medal, by forbidding the Nazi salute (Hitlergruss, in German; that is, "Hitler greeting"), by banning Nazi songs, and by making the third verse of the national anthem the official version, thus removing the first verse, which had been exploited by the Nazis and other super German nationalists to support conquest, as it touted "Germany over all," but it was originally meant to promote German unity, not conquest, and the third verse more clearly defines that principle with the words "unity, justice and freedom."*** The right wing fanatics have stomped, huffed and puffed, but German democracy has flourished, showing that sometimes national law may need to be to some degree undemocratic to protect the basic principle of democracy from those who would destroy that democracy to gain power, and let's not forget, this was all started under the Allied occupation in West Germany, enforced by three democracies, the U.S., Britain, and France.**** The last I checked, Germany was still a model democracy and the tough anti-Nazi laws haven't diminished that, nor ended civilization. Laws must be flexible and what might be good for one country may not be good for all, or others. Similar measures were put into effect in postwar Austria, but right wing political groups in Hitler's homeland have tended to be more successful than those across the border in Germany, but this is in no way meant to suggest that Austrians are about to lead an establishment of a Fourth Reich, as Austria too seems to be a solid democracy.

Next, Rightwing Extremism In The United States

* Croatian fascism during World War Two manifested itself in hatred of Serbs, their close kin. The only real difference between the two groups is, Croats are Roman Catholic and use the Latin alphabet (some call it the "Roman" alphabet), while Serbs are Eastern Orthodox and use the Cyrillic alphabet (most prominently used in Russia). Religion can be used by some as a powerful motivator, including in the motivation and justification of hatred. In this case religion determined the "ethnicity" of people and several hundred thousand Serbs were murdered and many more were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism by Croats, especially by their militia forces. As to fascist collaborators with the Nazis, this could be an article or series of articles on its own, but briefly, the greatest number of Europe's Jews and Gypsies lived in eastern Europe, especially in the then Soviet Union, Poland, Lithuania, Rumania and Hungary. Fascists in these countries eventually helped the Nazis in their murderous deeds committed right in those regions, or in the sending of Jews to "resettlement areas," a euphemism for "concentration camps," where many were murdered. Only a small percentage survived the Nazi defeat. Mussolini, the Italian dictator, was not a racist anywhere near the likes of his Axis partner Hitler, but he too came under the sway of the man with the toothbrush mustache, and I don't mean Charlie Chaplin, and the "Duce" had his fascist thugs persecute and terrorize Italy's small, but vibrant, Jewish community. Hungary, an Axis ally, held out against deportation of their Jews for much of the war, but by 1944 they too gave in to Nazi pressure and outright force. Earlier, Hungary persecuted and repressed their Jewish population, even murdering Jews, but the vast number of the country's Jewish population lived until the Nazi takeover in 1944. This is in no way meant to suggest that Hungary's pre-1944 treatment of Jews was okay.  

** The plot of "The Quiller Memorandum," a movie from the mid 1960s starring George Segal, was based on a neo Nazi group in West Germany and an agent sent to get information on it. As he meets various Germans, you can never be sure if they are Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, or anti-Nazis. The movie is well worth watching. The link to my article on the movie: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-quiller-memorandum-anti-nazi.html

*** For more on the German anthem, see my article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/09/german-question-part-forty.html

**** East Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union and any inclination by former Nazis to regain power would have been met by severe penalties, and possibly death. "In theory" Soviet Communism was not supposed to be racist and bigoted, but in reality, Stalin was another nutcase whose paranoia brought suppression to some of the Soviet Union's many ethnic and national groups, including to German communities living there, like the Volga Germans (German: "Wolgadeutsche"), who had been living in southern Russia since the 1700s. They had been invited and encouraged to settle there by the German-born Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great. 

WORD HISTORY:
Crime-The ultimate origins of this word are unclear. It traces back to Latin "crimen," which meant "accusation of wrongdoing, offense." Some say this was derived from another Latin word, which itself was borrowed from Old Greek, but I'm not really sold on this. Anyway, "crimen" was inherited by Old French, a Latin-based language, the form of which is uncertain to me, perhaps "crimne," which was then borrowed by English in the 1200s, seemingly as "crime," and with the meaning "sin, evil deed." Within a couple of hundred years this had taken on the more legalistic sense of "act that violates the law." 

Rolling Back Fascism Is Not Easy, Part One

This was first published in January 2013


I spent a good part of my life reading about a favorite historical subject of mine, World War Two. People my age grew up at a time when the subject of the war was a very hot topic, and movies and documentaries were common fare at theaters and on television. Books on the subject were frequently on the best seller lists. Our fathers, uncles, and neighbors served in the armed forces during the war in some capacity, likely overseas. I'm not deliberately slighting the women, as many women served during the war, and many more left their homes to work in factories and other workplaces to take the place of the men serving in the military, although I don't recall any of our women neighbors or family members having served in the military back then, but if I've erred on this, I'm sure I'll hear, and rightly so. The common thread was the fight against fascism. Perhaps naively, people seemed to believe fascism had been so badly bludgeoned, so overtly exposed as murderous, it would remain relegated to small groups of fanatics. If there was any likely threat of a fascist resurgence, it was thought to be in West Germany, where unrepentant Nazis still lingered among the populace, or in South America, where a number of Nazi bigwigs and ...ah ... "smallwigs," had found sanctuary, at least to some extent, after the war.* Evil adapts to exploit fear and make itself acceptable. Nazis and other fascists made themselves important in the fight against communism (the Cold War), as they had military or economic information on the Soviet Union or scientific expertise for the new era of nuclear weapons and rocketry. Western nations cut some of them slack to an extent, as communism was the feared enemy after World War Two, not fascism. Like "Jason" in the "Friday the 13th" movies, we may think we've killed evil, but it always comes back. We must be vigilant; thus, we must repeatedly remind ourselves "never forget" and "never again."

So what is "fascism," anyway? Attempting to give a concise and comprehensive definition of fascism is pretty much akin to trying to nail gelatin to the wall. There are characteristics of fascism, but one of those characteristics, "extreme nationalism," makes it impossible to lump all fascist elements in the world together, because the very concept of this nationalism means "my country is better than your country," and that kind of shoots the idea of international fascism in the ass... ah, I mean, butt. Fascism rather seems to be "nationalistic," but also with characteristics that draw people from various nations to other characteristics, often anti-communism. Fascist nationalism may become more palatable to segments of a national population when a nation is seen by many of its people as in decline, real or imagined. Fascism likes to dwell on the past, the good old days, when the nation was riding high (see more further below).

During World War Two there were fascist movements throughout Europe, and many men from these movements volunteered to fight in Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union, even later, when the tide of war had shifted against the Nazi dictator. One of Hitler's devout followers was Leon Degrelle. He was from the Walloon region of Belgium; the Walloons being from the French-speaking southern segment of Belgium, which constitutes nearly 40% of the country. Initially he served in a Walloon unit that had been made part of the German Armed Forces (the "Wehrmacht"), but which then became a part of the Nazi Waffen SS; that is, the militarized branch of the SS.**

Besides the characteristic of extreme nationalism, the two most prominent fascist movements, Italian Fascism and German Nazism, had socialist characteristics. Mussolini had even previously been a socialist and after World War One, Hitler joined the small "German Workers Party," which was renamed the "National Socialist German Workers Party, the shortened form of which became "Nazi." Two powerful characteristics, nationalism and socialism, therefore joined forces and eventually gained power in Germany when Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. The "socialism" of both movements was closely tied to the nationalism and the idea of "national community." Interestingly, fascism is fiercely anti-communist, yet it embraces, in part, the major element of communism... socialism. Hm, you think this might all be about just gaining power, pure and simple?

Other important and generally common characteristics of fascism are domination of the state and anti-democratic ideas, with democracy often seen as weak in the fascist ideal society of "survival of the fittest." Big business tended to support both Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, since once you've got lots of money, "survival of the fittest" doesn't scare you, but workers and those less well off trying to survive, or advance, can be seen as the enemy. Another element is anti-unionism, as unions represent organized workers, and thus they are a threat to the fascist control of the state. Without unions, business had no organized worker groups to fear. As mentioned earlier, emphasis on a nation's past is an extremely important part of fascism. Both Mussolini and Hitler staged parades and rallies promoting their respective national pasts, with Mussolini tying Italian Fascism to the Roman Empire of about fifteen hundred years before. Hitler and the Nazis linked themselves to Medieval times and knights, but also further back to the time of the old Germanic tribes, seemingly in an effort to unite the Germanic peoples in some sort of world domination, but with certain Germanic physical characteristics being an elite. Interestingly, Hitler was dark haired and not like the ideal Nazi racial type with blond hair and blue eyes, more typical of the Nordic Germanic people,*** than many Germans, who, like Hitler himself, were likely of mixed background, including from various Slavic peoples, Latins, Magyars (Hungarians), Baltic peoples, and Jews.****    

More in Part Two

* The most famous, or I should say, "infamous," of these Nazis was Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer charged with overseeing the transport of Europe's Jews to extermination camps in eastern Europe, where millions died. Eichmann was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina, taken to Israel, tried and executed. The trial reminded the world to some degree of how inhuman the Nazis had been, with actual films taken by Nazis themselves and by Allied photographers as concentration camps were liberated late in the war. I say "reminded the world to some degree," because there is really nothing that can convey the mind boggling atrocities and the horrible suffering and terror of those victims trapped by such evil. 

** The German word "Waffe" is closely related to English "weapon," and indeed, that's what it means. Centuries ago, middle and southern Germanic dialects in central Europe, in generally higher terrain, underwent sound shifts, one of which often changed the "p" sound to "f" or "pf." This all happened after the Anglo-Saxons had already left what is now northern Germany and taken control of a good portion of Britain and were founding England; thus, English was unaffected by this shift, although it likely would not have been affected anyhow, as its close cousins, Frisian and Low German, located in the same area of northern Germany (lowlands), were unaffected by the sound shift. Since the dialects affected were in more elevated, even mountainous, areas, the term "High German" is often applied by many people, although that term also equates to "standard German." .

*** Nordic is usually meant of Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.

**** Jews had scattered from the Middle East into North Africa and parts of Europe over time. Hitler seemingly was troubled for some time that he might be part Jewish, a distinct possibility, now that we have DNA testing. One of Hitler's secretaries said in an interview from about a dozen years ago (she may have said it previously, too), that if she had a chance to see Hitler again in this life or in another, she would ask him what he would have done if he had found out that he was part Jewish, gassed himself? For more on Hitler's ancestry, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/10/hitler-jew.html

WORD HISTORY:
Murder-This word traces back to the Indo European root "mer/mor," which meant "die," and its offspring "mertro," which meant "kill." This gave the Old Germanic offshoot "murthran," which meant "murder, death." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "murthor," which meant "sinful act, punishable killing, murder," and also "myrthra," which meant "murder." These later merged to become "murder." The verb form came from Old Germanic "murthjan," which gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "myrthrian." Other Germanic languages have: German "Mord" (noun) and "ermorden" (verb), Low German Saxon "Moord" (noun) and some dialects have "morde" (verb), Dutch "moord(en)" (noun) and "vermoorden" (verb"), West Frisian "moard" (noun) and "moardzje" (verb), "Danish "mord" (noun) and "myrde" (verb), Icelandic "Morð" (noun-essentially equivalent to "morth") and "myrða/myrtha" (verb), Norwegian "mord" (noun) and "myrde" (verb), Swedish "mord" (noun) and "mörda" (verb).

History of Ghettos, Part Three/Final

No series of three articles can cover such an extensive subject as the history of ghettos, and no single article can begin to cover the terrible confinement of Europe's Jews in ghettos by the Nazis during World War Two. By the time World War Two started in September 1939, Germany, which included Austria since March 1938, had seen its Jewish population decline since Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, as many Jews had emigrated. Those who hadn't left were soon to experience an even worse nightmare of Nazi rule. Unfortunately too, some Jews who had left Germany simply crossed nearby borders into countries soon to be overrun by Hitler's armies, which were then followed by Heinrich Himmler's SS units. The Nazi and Soviet conquest of Poland* gave Germany nearly half of Poland, including many Polish Jews, but a part of Poland's substantial Jewish population remained out of Nazi control in Soviet occupied eastern Poland. That all changed beginning in late June 1941, as Hitler sent his forces against his former Soviet ally. Hitler's armies achieved multiple penetrations of Soviet lines and quickly captured the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Not only that, many Jews lived in the western areas of the Soviet Union, including Lithuania, White Russia, and the western Ukraine, all areas brought under Nazi domination.

With millions of Jews now under their control, the Nazi leaders forced Jews into numerous ghettos, often in Poland, or in other eastern European areas. A section of Warsaw was the largest Nazi-created Jewish ghetto in Europe, being established in late 1940; that is, well before Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union. This ghetto contained some 400,000 Jews, but occupied an area of less than one and a half square miles. The internal affairs of the ghetto were under a Jewish Council (German: "Judenrat"), and Jewish leaders, for a time, tried to cooperate with Nazi officials, and a whole system of Jewish administration was set up, including the operation of hospitals, schools, and music performances. To add to the terrible congestion, some Gypsies were also sent into the ghetto. Gypsies were another group targeted by the insane and evil Nazi racial theories. Food was chronically in short supply and disease was rampant, with many thousands of people dying within the ghetto. Perhaps as many a quarter of a million ghetto inhabitants were sent to and murdered in the infamous Treblinka extermination camp during 1942.** As the remaining Jews learned from Polish and Jewish Resistance fighters the fate of the former inhabitants of the ghetto, they chose to fight. Various weapons were smuggled into the ghetto by the Resistance, and during the first part of 1943 Jewish resistance to the Nazis intensified, but the Nazis had all of the firepower, and the "Warsaw Uprising" ended with thousands dead, and tens of thousands sent to be murdered in nearby Nazi extermination camps. The area of the ghetto was essentially leveled.

The Polish city of Lodz lies about 85 miles southwest of Warsaw. It was in an area of Poland that was annexed to Germany by Hitler after the conquest of Poland. It was then renamed "Litzmannstadt" by the Nazis.*** The city contained more than 200,000 Jews, besides a substantial Polish majority, and a relatively small German minority. The Nazis erected a fence with barbed wire around a portion of the city in the spring of 1940, sealing off the area, thus beginning the actual "Lodz Ghetto," with between 150,000 and 175,000 Jews and some Gypsies. Similar to Warsaw, a Jewish Council ruled the ghetto, and in Lodz, the leader of the council cooperated with the Nazis, even manufacturing goods for Hitler's armies. The council administered the ghetto, enforcing  its policies with its own Jewish police force.**** With Jews working long hours seven days a week, and with limited rations, disease and starvation overran the population, and perhaps 40,000, or even as many as  50,000, people died as a result. Gradually the Nazis emptied the ghetto of people unable to work in the war industry there, including children, and they were sent to nearby extermination camps and murdered. By the summer of 1944 the ghetto was emptied of its Jewish and Gypsy population.

As I noted, there were numerous ghettos set up by the Nazis, but too many to cover in this article. For those interested in reading more, you might want to search for Vilnius Ghetto in Lithuania or Theresienstadt in (then) northern Czechoslovakia, for example. Also, you can check out the Jewish Virtual Library website.

* Hitler and Stalin had agreed upon a conquest and division of Poland in a pact signed in August 1939.

** Treblinka was located some 55-60 miles northeast of Warsaw.

*** Karl Litzmann was a German general in World War One who led German forces to a major victory over the Russian army in the Lodz area in late 1914. He later became a Nazi official and he died in the mid 1930s. Lodz was renamed by the Nazis in his honor, but of course, the city's name reverted to "Lodz" after the Nazi defeat. 

**** The policy of collaboration with the Nazis was obviously very controversial, and the Nazi authorities granted better food and supplies to Jewish leaders than to other Jews. The Jewish leader later died in Auschwitz. Some Jewish survivors credited his efforts to work with the Nazis and to produce war goods for keeping the ghetto's population from early annihilation (probably true), while other survivors felt his own strict enforcement policies were essentially as bad as the Nazis.  

WORD HISTORY:
Barrio-This word meaning "a Spanish speaking district or quarter of an American city," or "a ward or district of a city" in Spanish speaking countries, goes back to Semitic "brr," which had the notion of "open land area." This gave its Arabic offspring "barri," with the same basic meaning. The Arabic speaking Moors, a term generally applied to North African Berbers, invaded and conquered much of Spain beginning in the 700s A.D. They brought the term with them and it was borrowed into Spanish as "barrio," then with the meaning "suburb, district outside a city proper," which tied in with the original sense of "open area."  American English borrowed the word prior to 1850, and it later came into even greater use when it was applied to the Spanish-speaking area of Harlem in New York City, also known as "Spanish Harlem."

History of Ghettos, Part One

The idea of separating people from one another for some reason is undoubtedly so old as to be unrecorded in history. The more specific idea of separating humans due to religious, ethnic, or racial background is somewhat better documented as it related to European Jews going back to a time during the Middle Ages in the 1ate 1100s, when Christian officials (Third Lateran Council) decreed that Jews and Muslims were not permitted to have Christian servants, with further implications that Christians should not live among Jews or Muslims. Christian testimony in any legal matter against Jews was the be accepted over the testimony of Jews. The Council also decreed excommunication for Christians who practiced "usury;" that is, "charging interest on loans."* Since Jews were (and had been) excluded from many professions, but not finance, many Jews went into the field, opening new hostility toward them.** So this whole matter led to Jews being more and more excluded from general society, although that had already been going on to some degree even before this time.

By 1516, Venice forced Jews to live in one part of the city (an island) which had a wall built around it and this was the first time the term "ghetto" was used (see Word History). Not long thereafter, Rome and other European cities followed suit, and Jews frequently had to create their own society within the confines of their part of a city.*** Besides the moral issue involved here, Jewish ghettos were almost always restricted in size, thus making for overcrowding and generally poor living conditions. Some cites did not completely restrict Jews to walled in areas, and Jewish living areas then were often called the "Jewish quarter."

The American Revolution, and the subsequent French Revolution, brought changes to the way "some" people thought about separating people, especially Jews, from the rest of society. Gradually some of the barriers to Europe's Jews came down, but bigotry and hatred towards them remained among significant parts of the population, often depending upon the country in question. In Germany, Jews gradually came to be more accepted (I didn't say totally), although less so in the staunchly Catholic areas, particularly in Bavaria and Austria.**** Germany and Austria are obviously important, because of what was to come under Hitler, but my point here is to indicate that many Jews, particularly in central and northern Germany, came to see themselves and be viewed by many Germans, as "Germans." This later became VERY dangerous, as a number of German Jews believed Hitler to be something of a temporary phenomenon, and their ties to Germany also understandably made them highly reluctant to leave their homeland. Needless to say, it cost many German Jews their lives.

More in Part Two.

* Islam forbids charging interest, but the Christian world (although not every Christian) has redefined "usury" to mean "excessive" interest on loans, the definition of which is beyond the scope of this article. 

** Let's face it, while not always true, the basic old saying has much truth, "Lend a person a dollar and you've made a friend, but lend them more than that, and you've made an enemy." We tend to be resentful against those to whom we owe something, usually money, especially if we are having trouble paying it back.

*** You can't have it both ways, folks. If you segregate people, guess what? They develop a culture and society all of their own, likely to be of varying differences from society in general. If you then remove restrictions and permit free movement and living for these previously restricted people, guess what? They ain't (if my former English teachers will forgive me) going to suddenly acclimate themselves to the general population. Such things take time, and the influences typically go in both directions. 

**** Vienna's Jewish population gradually grew, containing much of Austria's Jewish population. For some info on German Jews in the World War One era, see my article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/02/german-question-part-eighty.html   

WORD HISTORY:
Ghetto-The origin of this word is unclear, but it "likely" goes back to "Venetian," technically a Latin derived (Romance) language spoken in Venice and vicinity, that is usually referred to as an Italian dialect. Venetian has "ghet(o)," a word meaning "slag" (a product of making ore into metal) and also used for a foundry producing slag. This came from Italian "gettare," a verb with the primary meaning "to throw," and the extended meaning "to cast/mould" ('mold,' American spelling).^ This traces back to Latin "jactare/iactare," with the same meanings. Whether the Latin word came from Indo European, is unclear. The term "ghetto" was first used in Venice in the modern context in early 1500s, and the original Jewish ghetto there was in the same part of town as a foundry, and the speculation is, the district may have been tagged as a "ghetto," in local usage because of the foundry, and that the term was simply maintained when Jews lived there. The term and meaning then spread to Italian and English borrowed it from Italian in either the late 1500s or early 1600s, and it later came to be applied to an area of a city or town where, compared to the overall population, the dwellers were predominantly minority.

^ English has the similar development of "cast," which means "to throw" (now more often used, but not exclusively, in terms of fishing lines or nets), but with a secondary meaning "pour metal into a mold," as in "cast iron."

Marshal Antonescu of Rumania, Final

NOTE: I failed to mention in the previous article that the Rumanian language is a Latin-based language, which are often called "Romance languages;" meaning, "languages derived from the language of Rome." These languages are part of the Indo European family of languages, and this means Rumanian is related to English, although further down the family tree. Besides its Latin base, Rumanian has borrowed a fair percentage of words from Slavic and also from German, as German settlers inhabited part of Rumania, especially Transylvania (Siebenbürgen in German), and part of Rumania was under German administration through the Habsburg family.

"Ion Antonescu" Part Two/Final

Antonescu was born in a town somewhat to the northwest of Bucharest, the capitol of Rumania. He attended military school and then entered the military in the cavalry, earning commendations from the monarchy for his role in squelching socialists. So early on, Antonescu showed himself as a man of the political right. During World War One, Rumania fought on the Allied side, but the war was pretty much a disastrous affair for the Rumanians, although Antonescu served his nation well and was promoted. After the war, Antonescu set down his views in writing on the unification of Rumanians and about Rumanian expansionism.* He was appointed chief of staff of the army in the early 1930s. Disputes with King Carol II brought a (forced?) resignation by Antonescu, but it also brought him more prominence throughout the nation. He began close contacts with the fascist and right wing organizations that were growing in Rumania, organizations which tended toward anti-Jewish sentiments.

Antonescu was appointed Defense Minister and the failure of Rumania's two main allies, Britain and France, to stand up to Adolf Hitler's territorial acquisitions brought Antonescu and the political right to question the actual value of these allies against the Soviet Union, which they saw as more of a threat to Rumania. They began to look to Hitler as much more of a reliable ally to oppose the Soviets. The German-Soviet Pact of 1939 put Rumania into a serious situation, as Germany and the Soviet Union essentially became allies. One of the secret provisions of the pact gave the Soviets leeway to move into the former territories of the Russian Empire, Bessarabia and Bukovina. This led Hungary to propose and enter into negotiations with Rumania over Transylvania, but the negotiations got nowhere and Germany and Italy were asked to arbitrate, which resulted in Hungary acquiring the northern portion of Transylvania. King Carol, growing more unpopular by the day and threatened by protests, appointed Antonescu as Prime Minister, but with additional powers taken from the King, who finally abdicated in favor of his son, Michael, who was left more or less as a figurehead. Antonescu joined with the Iron Guard (Rumanian: "Garda de fier"), a fascist, pro-Rumanian Orthodox, anti-Jewish political party to rule the country, but just months later, an Iron Guard uprising against Jews and government officials was crushed when Antonescu, with support from Hitler, used the army to restore order.

Antonescu's fervent anti-communism and his developing closeness to Hitler led Rumania into war against the Soviet Union in June 1941.** In August 1944 Antonescu was arrested on the orders of the king. He was taken into custody by the Soviets who sent him to Moscow, but then returned him to Rumania for trial in 1946. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad that year.***

* The Kingdom of Rumania prior to the end of World War One did not include substantial portions of ethnic Rumanians, who lived in parts of Hungary (Transylvania), the emerging state of Yugoslavia (an area known as the Banat), and the former Russian Empire (Bessarabia and Bukovina), which was developing into the Soviet Union at that time. At the end of the war, with the defeat of Austria-Hungary and the turmoil in the Soviet Union, the territories of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina joined Rumania, and these changes were then confirmed by various postwar treaties, although Hungary and the Soviet Union did not forget, and these lands became a matter of tensions between Rumania and these two neighbors.

** There is a brief summary of the war in "Part One" of this article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/04/marshal-antonescu-of-rumania.html

*** One of the charges against Antonescu was his complicity in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Rumanian and Soviet Jews. Under Antonescu, Rumania adopted many anti-Jewish measures similar to those of the Nazis , including requiring Jews to wear a yellow Star of David patch.

WORD HISTORY:
Loose/-less-"Loose" and the suffix "-less," as in "homeless," are closely related to "lose, loss, and the "lorn" of "forlorn." They go back to Indo European "leu/lu," which had the notion of "undo, loosen, separate." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "lausaz," which meant "loose, free of." This gave Old Norse, a North Germanic language,^ "lauss," with the same basic meanings. This was then borrowed into English, circa 1200, as "lous(e)/los," and this later became "loose." The verb form "loosen" developed in the second half of the 1300s and later became "lousen," before the modern version. The same Old Germanic word "lausaz" gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leas," which meant "false, lying," from the notion of "free of validity or truth." This word is now obsolete, but it spawned the suffix "-less," from the original meaning "free of," which gave it the meaning "lacking, not having, without." The suffix form is NOT related to the word "less" which means "fewer." The other Germanic languages have close relatives to the above English words: German has "los" (loose, free, released) and the suffix "-los" ("heimatlos"="homeless," for example); Dutch has "los" (loose), "loos" (false, invalid, empty [from notion "lacking"]) and suffix "-loos;" West Frisian has the suffix "-leas;" Danish has "løs" (loose) and suffix "-løs;" Swedish has "lös" (loose); Icelandic has "laus" (loose); Norwegian has løs/laus (loose), depending upon dialect, and suffix"-løs;" Swedish has lös (loose) and suffix "-lös."

^ Germanic is divided into West Germanic, which includes English, German, Dutch, Frisian, Yiddish, and Afrikaans; North Germanic, which includes Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Faroese; and the now "deceased" (bow your heads) East Germanic, which had Gothic, Vandalic and Burgundian.

Poison Gas & The War On Innocents

Having done a couple of articles on poison gas, I can't finish with the subject without covering the Nazi use of poison gas against innocent, defenseless people, namely Jews and Gypsies (also known to some as the "Romani" or "Roma").* The Nazis murdered many other people, and this article is not meant to diminish their loss, but Jews and Gypsies were specifically targeted for eradication by the insane Nazi racial nonsense, just because of their heritage. Many Gypsies and many Jews lived in communities together in various countries, although they learned the language and customs of their respective country.** Most of these people came to view themselves as being true citizens of the country in which they lived, in spite of periods of persecution, including some outbreaks of intense violence. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, persecution of minorities, especially German Jews, intensified, coming into full view for the world to see in November 1938 with the "Kristallnacht," "the night of broken glass," when Nazi thugs broke into Jewish businesses and religious facilities throughout Germany (which then included Austria, and Vienna had a substantial Jewish population). Many Jewish properties were burned or otherwise severely damaged, many Jews were hauled off to concentration camps, and others were killed.

The Nazis were murderers long before they started using poison gas, but the conquest of much of Europe, and especially of eastern European, where millions of Europe's Jews lived, brought them the desire to come up with a more "efficient" way to kill other human beings. They had tried mobile vans, pumping in carbon monoxide to kill their victims, but for the Nazi nutcases, led by nutcase-in-chief Adolf Hitler and his henchman, assistant nutcase, Heinrich Himmler, the process was much too slow. By 1941-42, the Nazis had discovered that using a cyanide-based pesticide gas, they could kill people faster than ever, an important point to these murderous bastards. The gas was called "Zyklon B," and it was kept in canisters. Usually pellets of the gas were dropped into fake shower rooms filled with victims. The most notorious of the sites where Zyklon B was used was "Auschwitz," a combination labor-extermination camp complex in a part of southeastern Poland annexed to Germany after Poland's defeat in 1939. The Nazis "sorted" people into those who could work, putting them into the labor camp areas, and into those they wanted to eliminate immediately. Once "workers" became too exhausted, sick or weak from malnutrition to work anymore, they too became expendable. The whole thing so boggles the mind, it is no wonder that many survivors and liberators feared the world would not believe such things had taken place. The Nazis used the poison gas in other camps too, but it was in Auschwitz where it has been figured that somewhere between about one and a half million to two and a half million people were gassed, with Jews being the overwhelming percentage of those killed. Records on how many Gypsies were gassed is not known, but it is estimated that about a quarter million Gypsies perished at the hands of the Nazi butchers, with quite a few of these victims having been gassed at Auschwitz.

* Gypsies or the Romani are a people who trace their roots back to India, and indeed, their language is from the Indo-Aryan part of the Indo European language family. English is part of the Germanic sub-branch of the Indo European languages, so Romani and English are related, although much further down the family tree. The Romani people migrated from India and many reached Europe at some point between 1000 and 1100.

** Jews were often forced by European "Christians" (I only use the term because that's what they called themselves) to live in particular areas of cities and towns, usually less appealing areas. Eventually these Jewish areas came to be called "ghettos." I plan to do an article, or a series of articles, on the history of ghettos very soon.

WORD HISTORY:
Lose-This word goes back to Indo European "leu" or "lu," which had the notion of "undo, loosen, separate." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "lausam," with the same basic meanings. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "los," a noun which meant "loss," in the sense "total loss, destruction." From this came the verb "losian," which meant "to lose, to perish." Gradually "losian" overtook the then common word for "lose;" that is, its close relative, "leosan." "Losian" later became "losen" before the modern version. German has "lösen," which means "to solve or resolve (a problem)," from the original notion of 'undo,' and some Low German has "leese," also meaning "solve," Dutch has "oplossen" (also solve, resolve), West Frisian has "ferlieze" (lose), Norwegian and Danish have "løse" (solve), Icelandic has "leysa" (solve, also "untie") and Swedish has "lösa" (solve). Old English also had "liesan," from the same Germanic source. It meant, "to loosen, to free from something," but also had the the secondary meaning, "to redeem," perhaps from the notion of "loosening, or freeing something by giving up something." The related German word, "lösen," also has a secondary meaning of "buy a ticket" (usually for travel), and this is just purely speculation on my part, but tickets are often torn off or dispensed by machines, which ties in with the meanings of the Old English form "liesan."  Interestingly I could not find the Old English word for "solve" (English borrowed "solve"), but I've got to believe it was similar to its other Germanic relatives and thus would be related to "lose." I will keep checking. I will also do the history for "solve" very soon, and it may surprise you to learn that "solve" is distantly related to "lose."

The German Question, Part One Hundred Forty-Nine

Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/C
"Germany In World War Two" Part Three/B
"The Greatest Shame of German History"

Not long after the Nazis took power, the first concentration camps were set up. They were prison camps, often for political prisoners like communists, or opponents of the regime, real or perceived. Since German Jews were seen by the Nazis as enemies of the state, some Jews were also incarcerated in these camps during the earlier years of Nazi rule. Prisoners led a wretched existence, often doing forced labor, where they were mistreated and malnourished. Some were executed for any number of reasons. When the war started, the first country to fall, Poland, contained a large Jewish population, although initially, a good number of these people lived in what became the Soviet annexed areas, as much of this territory had belonged to the former Russian Empire, where Jews had been more concentrated in western Russia.* When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, special execution units, called "Einsatzgruppen" (literally "action groups")** followed right behind the army forces to round up and execute Jews, Communist officials, and anyone perceived as a potential threat to the German occupation. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were executed throughout the western regions of the Soviet Union.

In Germany, German Jews had dwindled in number since the 1933 appointment of Hitler as chancellor. Many had emigrated, although some did not go far enough, as they crossed into other European countries soon to be taken over by the Nazis. Still others had been put into concentration camps or had already been killed by the time of the early war years. With the occupation of Poland and large areas of the Soviet Union, the Nazis then had control over millions of European Jews, and they planned their destruction, as a businessman would plan to increase production in his factory. It is absolutely mind boggling, and no matter how much actual newsreel footage I've seen over the years, or how many books and articles I've read, it is still difficult to get my mind around these terrible events. And by the Germans! (Although often aided by non-Germans.) Nothing I write here can even scratch the surface of this disturbing subject, which is about sheer evil.

The overall plan for the extermination of European Jews was under the control of Heinrich Himmler's "SS."*** In various parts of Europe, but especially in Poland, camps were set up with the purpose of using Jews (Gypsies were also a major target of Nazi racial theories) for labor purposes, but with the ultimate aim of killing them; that is, if they hadn't already been worked to death. Those deemed unfit for work were killed, often within just a short time after their arrival at a camp. The organization for transporting Jews from across Europe to these death camps came under one SS officer, Adolf Eichmann (he had the right first name, if you get my point).**** Of all of the camps set up in Germany and throughout Europe during Nazi rule, "Auschwitz" was the most notorious, and millions died there. Rooms were made to look like shower areas, but once inside, victims were locked in, and poison gas canisters were dropped inside, killing everyone. The bodies were then burned in huge ovens, "crematoria." Any and all valuables were confiscated from these helpless people. Even when dead, gold or silver fillings were extracted.

Amidst all of the hatred and death, there were still some acts of heroism, and if you haven't seen "Schindler's List," please do so; you will never forget it. Above all, DON'T BE A RACIST OR A HATER!

* This area was known as the "Pale" in Russia. It was the western part of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to settle and live on a permanent basis beginning in the late 1700s. Most Russian Jews were not permitted to live east of the Pale (in interior Russia) for any major period of time, but there were exceptions.

** The "Einsatzgruppen" were part of the "SD," the initials of the "Sicherheitsdienst" ("Security Service), which was a branch of the SS.

*** Himmler was a Bavarian, born in Munich, and he joined the Nazi Party in the early 1920s.

**** Eichmann was born in Germany, but his family moved to Linz, Austria when he was just a child. Interestingly, besides the shared first name, Hitler, who was considerably older than Eichmann, had lived in and around Linz as a child, too, and he always considered the city to be his home town, so much so, that he had grand plans to make Linz into one of the primary cities of Nazism, if they had won the war.

WORD HISTORY:
Camp (noun and verb)-This is another one of those words with an uncertain ancient history. What is known is, it goes back to Latin "campus,"^ with the general meaning "open area or field," which then progressed to "field of military contest, battlefield." Old Germanic borrowed the word as "kampan," with this "contest, battle" meaning. This then gave Old English "camp," but with that same "contest" meaning. This also gave Old High German "champf," which then later became "Kampf," meaning "battle, struggle," still in use today, and it is part of the title of Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf," covered earlier in this series on "The German Question." The same word also gave German the verb form "kämpfen," meaning "to fight." English "camp" then got a bit of a twist in meaning via French "camp" (also from the Latin source) in the 1500s, this being a "field used for military training and lodging," which then later in English also came to be applied to non-military situations, and both military and non military senses are still used today.^^ The "contest" meaning died out in English. The verb form, as in, "we'll camp by the river," came from the noun during the 1500s. So here we have English and German with essentially the same word, "camp/Kampf," and both from the same source, but with different meanings; the German word retaining much of the original "contest" notion. By the way, Italian has "campo," obviously from its Latin roots, and it means "field." 

^ "Camp" is related to "campaign" and to "champion" (also the shortened form "champ"), Latin-derived words borrowed by English from French, and to "campus," a word English borrowed directly from Latin.  

^^ Generally, the modern meaning in English means, "a place in the rural countryside, often, but not always, near a lake, river or stream, where people congregate for some temporary purpose, like hunting, fishing, vacationing, recreation, or some educational or instructional purpose, often with tents, cabins, huts or other type of basic shelter. This meaning came from an older meaning in English based around "a place to temporarily stay ("put up/set up camp") to provide shelter to sleep and to fix food around a fire, called a campfire."