It is no small task and I know that readers of my blog will be sensitive as to how enormous this undertaking is. Because of Yad Vashem's determination to ensure that Holocaust history fits their preconceived ideological framing, Yad Vashem has had to reject a number of books that they might have published which any holocaust institute worthy of the name would have grasped with 2 hands.
The first such was Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews. First published in 1961 and updated since it remains the most comprehensive history of the holocaust. Even Yad Vashem's academic advisor, Professor Yehuda Bauer was forced to admit it is 'unsurpassed'. It is not for nothing that Yad Vashem is incapable of producing a general and comprehensive history of the Holocaust.
Hilberg, who became the Professor of Holocaust History at Vermont University, saw the Judenrate as an instrument of the Nazis who were essential to the implementation of the Final Solution. Yad Vashem didn't appreciate such an analysis since two-thirds of the Judenrate were Zionists!
Polish [neo]fascist Michal Kaminski who justified the murder of Polish Jews in Jedwabne visits Yad VashemLikewise Yad Vashem didn't appreciate Hilberg's dismissal of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust as minor as Zionist history consciously magnifies it and on occasion invents it in order to provide itself with a retrospective justification and back story.
When it came to the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler from Auschwitz in April 1944 Yad Vashem decided that the best thing to do was to ignore them. Not only were they not Zionists but they came into conflict with Zionist collaborator, Rudolf Kasztner who, in the words of Israeli Judge Benjamin Halevi in 1955, 'sold his soul to Satan' when he agreed a deal with Eichmann for a train out of Hungary for 1684 of the Zionist/Jewish elite in return for silence about where the deportation trains were heading.
Kasztner, who was the plaintiff in a libel trial in Israel in 1954 when accused of collaboration, rapidly turned into the de-facto defendant. When Israel's second government led by Moshe Sharrett decided to appeal the verdict of the first trial, that Kasztner was a collaborator, it promptly fell. Kasztner has nonetheless been rehabilitated by Yad Vashem.
No matter that Kasztner’s deal with Eichmann led to the truth of Auschwitz being kept from Hungary’s 700,000 Jews resulting in nearly ⅔ of them being deported to their deaths. This is a minor matter. What is important is that his deal with Eichmann saved 1600 Zionist and Jewish leaders. The fact that he went to Nuremberg after the war to provide testimony for major [Axis] war criminals is erased from history.
Suffice to say YV wouldn't publish Vrba's memoirs 'I cannot forgive'. In fact they were determined to erase Vrba and Wetzler's very names from Yad Vashem. It is with difficulty that one could find any mention of them until, the late 1990's when Ruth Linn, Professor of Education at Haifa University, began a campaign in their favour. At one point Yehuda Bauer called Linn an 'anti-Zionist'. There is no worse insult in the Zionist dictionary than that!!
Suffice to say Yad Vashem weren't interested in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt by its last Commander, Marek Edelman. Edelman's misfortune was being a member of the anti-Zionist Bund and a supporter of the Palestinian resistance.
In the words of Daniel Blatman, an Israeli holocaust scholar, Yad Vashem is a 'diplomatic laundromat for every fascist and anti-Semite who darkens its doors.' And there have been a lot of them – Trump, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, the Philipenes Duterte and assorted neo[fascists] from Germany and Austria.
In 1976 South Africa’s Prime Minister, John Vorster, who had been interned during the war because he was a member of the neo[fascist] Afrikaner Broederbond and Ossewa Brandwag, visited Israel as a guest of the Israeli Labor Party government. Naturally he was taken on a tour of Yad Vashem.
Israel Shahak, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen-Belsen wrote
Of the Yad Vashem… theatre, I do not wish to speak, at all. It, and its vile exploiting, such as honouring South Africa collaborators with the Nazis, are truly beneath contempt.
Capitalism in Decay
Fascism is capitalism in decay. As with anticommunism in general, the ruling class has oversimplified this phenomenon to the point of absurdity and teaches but a small fraction of its history. This is the spot for getting a serious understanding of it (from a more proletarian perspective) and collecting the facts that contemporary anticommunists are unlikely to discuss.
Posts should be relevant to either fascism or neofascism, otherwise they belong in !latestagecapitalism@lemmygrad.ml. If you are unsure if the subject matter is related to either, share it there instead. Off‐topic posts shall be removed.
No capitalist apologia or other anticommunism. No bigotry, including racism, misogyny, ableism, heterosexism, or xenophobia. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades should feel welcome.
For our purposes, we consider early Shōwa Japan to be capitalism in decay.
