Even Fry had to admit that was a bit much, apologising a week and a half later. His words were “as idiotic, ignorant and offensive as you could imagine… I mean, what was I thinking? Well, as I say, I wasn’t. The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will, and marched out of the mouth. I offer no excuse.”
Apparently his geniuship didn't realize who built and operated Auschwitz and that many of the people murdered there were Poles, including many of the Jews who were murdered there. Nor that it was the Nazis stated intention to obliterate the Polish population, both Hitler and Himmler stated in unambiguous words that as the ultimate goal of the invasion of Poland, to replace them with Germans, with orders to kill as many Poles as possible, regardless of gender or age.
Our strength is our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women and children hunted down and killed, deliberately and with a gay heart. History sees in him only the great founder of States. What the weak Western European civilization alleges about me, does not matter. I have given the order – and will have everyone shot who utters but one word of criticism – that the aim of this war does not consist in reaching certain designated [geographical] lines, but in the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space that we need.
Hitler in a speech he gave August 22, 1939 to officers who would be in charge of the invasion of Poland the next week.
While the plans of the Nazis were to murder all of the Jews, in their Generalplan Ost, their intention was to murder up to 85% of the Polish population which they decided were not sufficiently Aryan and could not be "Germanized" over a period of a couple of decades, beginning with the invasion. Given that the murders committed under that plan, of Poles and other Slavic people have been exhaustively documented and successfully prosecuted* it amazing that Fry could have made such a stupid statement without being called on it more definitively
I think before I went online I would have thought everyone who had graduated from college had learned that much about the Nazis but I have the feeling since going online that isn't something you should depend on even from a graduate of the most elite of universities in the English speaking world. I learned as much in history classes in high school and in college, and I wasn't a history major. I know Fry is a bit younger than I am but he must have been raised by people who were around in the late 30s and 40s.
More importantly, the ass, as so many others I've heard snarking about Poles in regard to these matters is totally ignorant of the actual history of Poles hiding and rescuing Jews from the Nazis, even as they, themselves risked being killed for it.
Despite he harshest penalties for aiding and assisting Jews of those imposed by the Nazis, murdering entire families if one member of the family was accused of helping Jews, Poles make up the largest number, by nationality, of those named Righteous Among The Nations at Yad Vashem, 6,394 is the latest number, I've seen. I'm apparently assuming a lot by assuming that Stephen Fry has ever heard of Yad Vashem, not to mention others who share his bigotry. I've gotten some pretty angry reactions online to pointing that out. There are those who love to hate on the Poles as Fry did.
Neither, obviously, do they know about the organized efforts by Poles, many of them Catholics to save Jews, even as they, themselves were marked for murder. The Zegota, the Polish Council To Aid Jews, under The Polish Government in Exile, was one of the largest and most successful of those efforts, believed to have saved almost a half a million Jews. It was only one of those organized efforts, not to mention the large number of individuals and families who hid or shielded Jews, even as they were under threat of genocide, themselves and as they knew their efforts would get them certain death if they were discovered. I would expect few of the people who babble like that online know anything about any of it. For some reason the enormous resistance in Poland is to count for nothing as the far less widespread resistance in France and Holland are exaggerated in size. I say size because anyone who resisted the Nazis, who aided Jews and other people marked for death to live deserves to be remembered and held up as an example of heroism and morality to be emulated.
Consider that it was due to the incredibly heroic Polish resistance fighter, Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to go undercover into Auschwitz as a prisoner, who provided the most detailed early intelligence about its being a death camp, for Fry to have said what he did is especially repulsive. It was certainly not the Poles who are to blame for Auschwitz operating as long as it did, they were begging the allies to intervene to end it for years during the war.**
The issues of Polish resistance and collaboration in that period in which Poland was being fought over and occupied by both the Soviet and Nazi governments has become thoroughly politicized, it being in the interest of many people to reduce an extremely complex and fraught situation into black and white based on ethnic or other identities and pretending that everyone who can be categorized as a member of that group was either a victim or a perpetrator, a resister or a collaborator, an angel or a genocidalist. And, to suit some ideological or political interest, today, almost eighty years later, the actual facts of even the most heroic of resistance is discounted in favor of the use to which ethnic classification can be made. In Fry's case, clearly he wanted to slam Catholics, other people have other agendas. This exchange in the New York Review of Books shows another popular facet of that. Unfortunately, the original review under discussion is mostly behind a pay-wall. Poland is still an ideological football, only the players fighting over it have changed.
The massive vulgarity of discounting the attempted genocide against one group or another, the ideological desire to hold up the Soviet or some other side, comparing one invasion of Poland over another, the incredibly complex issues of various people and groups in Poland as it was being fought over, and dozens of other issues can't be allowed to discount the incredibly heroic sacrifices of the Polish resistance. The denial of history is clearly useful to people who want to oppress other people. In some accounts of that speech by Hitler, he ended with the line
Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?
I think it's probable that line was in the speech, though there are various versions of the speech, some without that line. If Hitler said it on that occasion is a matter of dispute, academic, but also in the attempt by the Turkish government, today, to deny that there was a mass slaughter, an attempt at genocide, committed against the Armenian people after the First World War. That, alone, shows how important it is to tell history accurately, non-ideologically and without self-interested distortions and fabrications.
* The Ninth charge on which Eichmann was convicted in Israel was:
Crime against humanity, an offenceagainst Section 1(a)(2) of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law 5710-1950 and Section 23 of theCriminal Law Ordinance, 1936.
Particulars of the Offence
The Accused, between the years 1940 and 1942 committed acts in Poland, which at that time was occupied by Germany, which are to be defined as crimes against humanity when, together with others, he caused the deportation of more than half a million Polish civilians from their places of residence, with the intention of settling German families in those places. The displaced Poles were transferred, some to Germany and the territories occupied by her for the purpose of employing them and holding them under conditions of servitude, coercion and terror; some were abandoned in other regions of Poland and the German areas of occupation in the East; some were concentrated in labour camps organized by the SS under inhumane conditions; and some were transferred to Germany and were destined for the purpose of Rückverdeutschung ("Germanization"). The Accused committed these acts of his by virtue of a special appointment in the month of December 1939, according to which he was empowered by the Chief of the Security Police in Berlin to act as the person responsible for the "evacuation" of the civilian Population.
** What Fry said is certainly worse than what Brian Williams so stupidly claimed about himself. Apparently exaggerating a war story will get someone like Williams a forced retirement, whereas Fry saying far more outrageously false and clearly bigoted crap is still held up as being some kind of genius and a hero. The least he should get for that kind of thing is for people to stop calling him a genius.
Fry gets away with it because he's a comedian, a clown.
ReplyDeleteIf he says something stupid, we chalk it up to clownishness. If he says something smart, well, he must be a genius, because his reputation is for being a clown.
It's the same reason Bill Maher is regarded as the Delphic Oracle, rather than the dunce he is. Well, part of the reason; the other part is the ignorance of people who think Stephen Fry and Bill Maher sound smart.
Right on, Sparkles. All the Israeli Jews of Polish descent should move back home. Or barring that, to Arizona.
ReplyDeleteL'chaim!
Your dishonesty makes you stupid.
Delete