Don Krausz to the Mail & Guardian:HOLOCAUST FANTASIES DISTORT TRUTH

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: HOLOCAUST FANTASIES DISTORT TRUTH – by Robyn Sassen.

Robyn’s analysis of David Cesarani’s research is to the point as are the conclusions reached by the late author. It conforms to the realisations reached by researchers of similar erudition.

I must admit not having read Cesarani’s book and am merely reacting to Robyn’s analysis thereof. So in questioning some of her ideas I am not necessarily criticising Cesarani.

She offers the thought that more Jews may have been shot on the streets of their hometowns than died in the death camps to which the trains conveyed them. Six million Jews are estimated to have been murdered, of which four and a half million died in the camps leaving one and a half million to have been murdered elsewhere.

Under circumstances of starvation coupled with incredible brutality, where a victim’s lifespan often consisted of either two hours or at best three months, it is not inconceivable that victims turned on each other IN THEORY. But I feel that this must not be allowed to detract from the fact that the prime instigators and executioners were the Nazis and their oh, so willing helpers.

Why point a finger at that tiny minority of traumatised Jews when the whole world averted its eyes? Britain took in 10,000 German Jewish children before the war started, the so-called Kinder Transport. The mighty USA under the venerated President Roosevelt, 50.

Under Arab pressure, entry of German/European Jewish refugees literally fleeing for their lives to Palestine was limited by a British White Paper in 1939 to15,000 Jews a year, at a time when there were thousands of concentration camps and the DAILY death toll in Auschwitz/Birkenau alone was upwards of 10,000 men, women and children.

 

This limitation was enforced by the British navy and armed forces until 1948, when the State of Israel was established. And don’t try and suggest that tiny Israel with its 600,000 population could never have accommodated that influx. When after the 1948 War of Independence surrounding Arab countries vented their vengeance for their defeat on their own resident Jews, attacked, expropriated and expelled about 700,000 of them, these totally innocent refugees fled to Israel which absorbed and rehabilitated them.

Palestinian refugees from that war are still confined to camps in Arab lands.

Robyn writes of the “ROMANTIC HIATUS” after the war in which lovers find one another.

Yes, they did everything possible to recreate their lives and lost families.  But Robyn, can you imagine for one single moment what trauma was involved in taking your new spouse in your arms, or holding your new children without the memory of those you lost coming to the fore? I have known many that fall into that category and were not able just once to mention those they lost to their new ones.

Cesarani was well aware of this tragedy and so wrote of what this so-called “Holocaust Romance” was doing to the ghastly truth.

Don Krausz. Chairman. Association of Holocaust Survivors in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Victor Gordon to The Weekend Argus:ANC takes “racists” to the Equality Court”

While Gwede Mantashe’s endorsement of the ANC’s action against their provincial employee, Velaphi Khumalo is commendable the former gets unstuck when he quotes from his obviously limited knowledge and appreciation of history.

Khumalo is the genius who called for the cleansing of white South Africans, suggesting that the same policy should applied to whites as that, by Hitler, against the Jews – Genocide. The ANC have quite correctly charged him with hate speech which Mantashe heartily and correctly endorses.

Where things become questionable is when Mantashe says; “Hitler subjected Jews to the most inhumane forms of human rights violations, identical to what Africans were subjected to in South Africa under P.W. Botha and Hendrick Verwoerd”.

If Mantashe is referring the notorious Nuremberg Laws which stripped German Jews of all their rights, barring them from attending public schools and Universitie; from practising their professions except amongst their own people; robbing them of their businesses; burning down over 1500 of their synagogues, murdering them on the streets at will and herding them into ghettos, indeed it could be argued that, at a stretch, some similarities might exist.

But it would appear that Mantashe has either forgotten about – or is simply ignorant of – the death camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmo etc; the Einsatzgruppen killing squads that were set up following the Nazi invasion of Poland and Russia (which accounted for an estimated 1.3 million Jews) and the crematoria which, at one stage incinerated 25,000 Jews in 24 hours which, I would humbly suggest places the Holocaust on another level when compared to the obvious horrors of Apartheid.

It is because of glib comments and comparisons by people of influence like Gwede Mantashe that one is led to believe that there is some sort of moral and subjective equivalence between situations when they plainly do not exist.

Don Krausz to The Times of Ladysmith: Issues at dinner

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

RE: ISSUES AT DINNER: 18-1-2016, page 4.

Your paper reported on a “Palestinian” dinner held last Saturday at the Crown Hotel and hosted by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee. Your reporter stated that the theme “centred on the International Violation of Human Rights, the “Illegal Seizure of Palestinian Land” and the “Ongoing Terror Cast on the Palestinians.”

As was to be expected, the proposer for these totally unfounded allegations was Mohamed Desai.

Let us start by examining the title “Palestinian.” I refer you to page 415 of the British Encyclopaedia.

At the time of the Roman occupation in 67 AD the area now called Palestine was named Judea, and its occupants Judeans, hence Jews. After the bitter, costly and unsuccessful   revolt of the Judeans against the Romans the latter renamed the territory Syria Palaestina after the long time enemies of the Jews, the Greek Sea People, who inhabited the Coastal Area without one Palestinian in sight. These were the people that the Judean Samson fought.

It is known that the territory was conquered by the Assyrians, the Persians the Greeks and the Romans, and that a great many of the resident Jews were captured and removed. But a point that is seldom taught is that these occupying armies left their armies in situ. Those soldiers had to be fed which was done by the Jewish farmers left behind for just that task.

It was not until the end of the Ottoman Empire that Palestinian Arabs appeared. After WW1 the Arabs claimed that Britain had promised them independence in their Husayn-McMahon correspondence while the Jews held Britain to the Balfour Declaration expressing “Sympathy for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” with certain safeguards for the Arab population.

I lived in Israel from 1954 and the older Jewish inhabitants told me that the earlier Arabs

claimed to have Syrian passports. They did not regard themselves as Palestinians at all.

Yet by 1920 Palestinian nationalists began to attack Jews in the area and the increasing strife resulted in many casualties. The British implemented the Balfour Declaration which resulted in greater strife. This eventually resulted in the British appointing the Peel Commission, a Royal Commission which recommended the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jews accepted, despite the allocated area being miniscule in comparison with what they had been promised in the Balfour Declaration.

Although their allocated area was larger than the Arab one, 60% of it consisted of the Negev Desert. The Arabs downright rejected the partition proposal. Did they want all the land for themselves?

It appears from your article that one of the themes for discussion is the “International
Violation of Human Rights.” When the State of Israel was declared the +/- 600,000 Jews living there were promptly attacked by the local Palestinians and comparatively well armed armies of between 5 and 7 neighbouring Arab states. 6,000 Jews died in that unprovoked and unequal battle and 30,000 were wounded. (cf. British Encyclopaedia page 420.) One percent of the total Jewish inhabitants. Perhaps that is why the discussion is being named the “International Violation of Human Rights.”

I do not have space for responding to the other allegations which are also not factual.

As for the “Ongoing Terror cast on the Palestinians,” almost every day there is a terror   attack on Israeli Jews, from the slitting of the throat of a three month old baby, the barbaric hacking to death with cleavers of Rabbis at prayer in a synagogue to the stabbing to death of a pregnant mother in front of her children.

The Palestinian leadership venerates these murderers as heroic and lauds them.

Victor Gordon to The Cape Times: Palestinian killed in stabbing bid”

THE CAPE TIMES

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 

Re:  “Palestinian killed in stabbing bid”

 

Why is it a problem for The Cape Times to report things as they are when it comes to Israel?

Not only is the headline “Palestinian killed in stabbing bid” a misleading reflection of what actually occurred,  it deliberately gives the reader the misleading impression that the victim of the stabbing was a Palestinian, perpetrated by whom could only have been an Israeli.  In fact, the attacker was the Palestinian.

To obfuscate matters further, The Cape Times states that “A Palestinian man allegedly attempted to stab Israeli soldiers before being shot” when every other report that I’ve examined on the internet presents this as fact and not a mere allegation.

It would appear that the Cape Times knows something about this matter unknown to anyone else.

In contrast, there is no report by The Cape Times about Dafna Meir, a 39 year-old Israeli mother of six who was stabbed to death in her home by a Palestinian, in full view of some of her children. While these stabbings have become a daily occurrence in Israel the coverage in the local media is almost non-existent.

Perhaps The Cape Times will surprise us yet.

Victor Gordon to the Daily Dispatch:Refers: “PE Lawyer in trouble over anti-Jews remarks”

As a Jew, to be confronted by the hateful utterances of Port Elizabeth attorney, Maureen Jansen, comes as shock leaving one feeling angered and depressed at another reaffirmation that bigots like Jansen exist within our society.

Anti-Semitism is clearly recognized by any Jew confronted with it. Throughout its foul 2000 year existence, little has changed within the inherent hatred itself, except those who continue to mindlessly practise this scourge which has resulted in so much persecution, pain and death throughout the ages.

While we must accept that this irrational hatred has become an inbuilt feature of mankind, destined to remain with us no matter the horrors perpetrated in the past and the obvious lessons offered but largely ignored, Jews need not accept such blatant threats and insults from someone seemingly mentally unhinged without taking whatever lawful action is available within our democratic society.

In the case of Maureen Jansen there is nowhere to hide – no claim of misinterpretation, a misunderstanding or a misquote holds water as her abominable reference to Jews being “monster” who should be “exterminated” is on social media for all to see.

One can only hope that Jansen represents a minuscule portion of South African society found generally on the lunatic fringes and is not representative of our nation as a whole. One also hopes that the SA Human Rights Commission will take appropriate action while underlining its commitment to stand against all forms of racism.

Don Krausz:RE: POPO MAJA – WE MUST FORGIVE BUT NOT FORGET. 14-1-2016.

  14 January, 2016.

               The Star,

               The Letters Editor.

               Dear Sir,

               RE: POPO MAJA – WE MUST FORGIVE BUT NOT FORGET. 14-1-2016.

It is seldom that we come across such a perceptive, understanding and farsighted article such as this one by Popo Maja.

               She went to the places of massacre and suffering of another race, another people, identified without having to do so and drew the right conclusions.

               She realised the truth and profundity of Elie Wiesel’s words:

   “DO NOT DEHUMANISE PEOPLE!”

 

To forget is impossible and there are things that are unforgivable. What kind of person murders a child? A psychopath?  Were all Germans and other anti-Semites psychopaths? Of course not, but the Holocaust happened and six million human beings, including one and a half million children were either shot, burned, beaten, asphyxiated or starved to death.

And if the Death camp that Popo Maja visited was Auschwitz then it was only one of six such death camps, part of a Hell of death that included 42,000 concentration camps in which an estimated 17,000,000 people died

(cf. Archives of Bad Arolsen). Auschwitz alone employed 7,000 guards that murdered more than one million human beings. How many Germans and their collaborators were employed in the rest of those 42,000 camps?

Not by pressing a button, firing a cannon or a missile or by opening a bomb bay from 35,000 feet up, but face to face, hands on, with the blood and brains of the victims spurting over one.

Not one man, child or woman, but six and a half million. I mention that figure although they were part of at least fifty million victims of that unimaginably horrific war. But they stood out for being murdered because of their religion, not their nationality or uniform. They had not declared war on anybody. Like the other innocents who perished because of an accident of birth, being in the wrong place at the wrong time or because lunatics and psychopaths reigned while the whole world averted its eyes.

And did those haters and murderers not also kill something within themselves?

Were they monsters, creatures from outer space? No, they were people like you and me who had been brought up to fear, hate and eventually kill without compassion or mercy.

By that time repenting and forgiving are too late.

With the first manifestation of racialism, hatred or xenophobia we have to know what it can lead to. Even if we think that we are justified in our negativity we must know that the end result is much worse than we can ever imagine.

It will destroy our souls, our humanity. Beasts survive by killing.

Don Krausz to the Cape Times on Breaking the Silence

The Cape Times

            The Letters Editor.

 

            RE: BREAKING THE SILENCE by Ben Lynfield. – 5/1/2016.

 

            Dear Sir/Madam,

 

            I am responding to Lynfield’s article on the allegations of Achiya Schatz, an Israel soldier.

 

Israel is a country at war. It has fought many major wars, first the totally unprovoked attack in 1948 by its own Palestinians and five neighbouring Arab countries in which it suffered 6,000 killed and 30,000 wounded (cf. British Encyclopedia page 142.) One percent of its total Jewish population. You will never find the Palestinians mentioning this. Why? Because it harms their reputation as the victims.

 

Since 1948 Israel has had to endure many other wars as well as 40 major terrorist attacks. So what? The past century has seen plenty of warfare with one difference. In all the other wars the belligerents can recover and even make peace. If Israel loses once then there is no more Israel, hence its absolute determination that Iran shall not produce atomic bombs. Yes, Israel has them as well but she is not threatening any other country with utter destruction.

 

There are casualties in war. A soldier’s duty is to defend his country against aggressors, not to aid them, and accusing only his own side  of wrongdoing while ignoring the crimes of the enemy which may have caused the war in the first place is dereliction of duty. Israeli military authorities have pointed out that such instances must be reported to them for investigation and action, not be used for propaganda. The latter the enemy will see to without Schatz’s help.

 

Lynfield uses the term: military occupation when referring to the West Bank. That area constitutes the Biblical regions of Judea and Samaria, parts of the ancient Kingdoms of Israel. It eventually became part of the Ottoman Empire, then was under the British Mandate who used it to create the State of Jordan. Gaza likewise belonged to Egypt. When was it ever part of Palestine? And if it ever was, then where was the Palestinian protest against its occupation by Jordan and Egypt?

 

Breaking the Silence! Only when Israel can be attacked. Where is their protest against the many Arab, terrorist and Palestinian atrocities?

The massacres of Kfar eTzion, Maalot, the cutting of the throat of a three-month old baby in Itamar, the terrorist attacks since 1948 that caused 3817 deaths and 25,000 wounded amongst Israeli men, women and children. Yes, atrocities that Achiyah Schatz was conscripted to prevent, not to enable.

 

His denunciation of the army of Israel is shortsighted, if not treasonable, because the occurrences that he highlights unfortunately are common to any conflict. In WW2 the Luftwaffe bombed Britain, causing 51,000 casualties amongst civilians. Churchill then promised the British that he would return every bomb tenfold and he did. Disproportionate? Schatz has the good sense not to condemn his fellow soldiers, only the politicians. Would he have condemned Churchill?

 

He sites a settlement built on what once was a Palestinian village whose inhabitants he describes as “innocent neighbours.”

Is he aware that poll after poll has interviewed these innocents and recorded that 80% of them are in favour of terrorist acts against their Israeli neighbours?  He describes the effect of explosives used on the “wrong Palestinian home.” Man, there is a war going on!

Have you seen the results of a 1,000 American bomber raid on a city, killing 35,000?

 

I don’t know the story behind the settlement built on top of a Palestinian village but can tell you this: had the Palestinians accepted the partition offer made to them in 1947 instead of murderously attacking Israel, that Palestinian village would still have its inhabitants.

 

So whose fault is that? Think, man, think!!