Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers do not apologize

At least 75% of Dutch Jews perished in the Holocaust. The highest percentage for western Europe.

Remarkably enough, the Germans were not very involved with the rounding up of the Dutch Jews and sending them to the transit camp Westerbork in the east of the Netherlands.

The civil service informed the Germans where the Jews lived and the Jewish Council drew up a list of names for transportation to the transit camp.
When enough Jews did not turn up voluntarily, Dutch police arrested Jews randomly in "razzias" to make up the numbers.

The resistance did not blow up the rail tracks to stop the transports. Some did want to, but this was nixed by the Dutch government in exile. They said the money the Germans paid for the transport of Jews was needed for the economy.

Eichmann was full of praise. He was very pleased the trains ran on time.

A few months after the end of the war, the Dutch Minister of Transport Steef van Schaik, praised the railway workers for their collaboration with the Germans.
He said they were doing their “duty”.

This Dutch “duty” is one of the main reasons why so many Jews perished.

In 2005, more than 60 years after the transports took place, the CEO of Dutch Railways apologized.

Nice of him.
There have been a stream of apologies from Dutch authorities, organisations and companies for their collaboration during the Holocaust - some 60 to 70 years after it happened.
However, not everybody has apologized.

The Nazis called the Dutch a “brother people” and a lot of emphasis was placed on getting them to cooperate with the German occupation.

They had more success in the Netherlands than in other occupied countries. Especially when it came to the SS.
"...approximately 25,000 Dutchmen volunteered to join the ranks of the German Waffen-SS. This number was not only relatively but also absolutely, the largest contingent of non-German volunteers from all of the Nazi occupied territories in Europe."
(NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Netherlands)

After the war it was claimed that the Dutch volunteers had not taken part in the Holocaust. They said all they did was fight on the front.

The Dutch authorities accepted this. Those who wanted to, were integrated into the Dutch army.

Later some diaries were found that had belonged to the Dutch SS volunteers. They were full of proud stories about how they killed Jews.

Here are two fragments from one diary (my translation):

“..we arrived at a village near Tarnopol.
There were a lot of Jews there. We took some of them and made them polish our car until it shined.

We shaved the Jews. We let one half of their beard remain and cut off the other half with a scissors. Some of the beards we burnt off with petrol.

Then we had some fun. We took a sword and a piece of wood and started beating them until they were screaming with pain.

Then we took them to the commander who led them to the river where prrt, prrt, they and the other Jews were shot with a machine gun.

The next morning we went to the river. It was full of half-dead and dead Jews.
What a wailing and it stank terribly.”

“I forgot to tell you how great it was to hang a chief rabbi from the tower of his synagogue and then torch the synagogue with the Jews inside.”

Nobody apologized for this.

I want you

I have always disliked Ari Shavit. That pompous, arrogant asshole who writes for Haaretz.

It is hard for me to suppress a hateful chuckle at his fall from grace for making passes at American Jewish women.

However, in Leadbelly's words I am, "laughing to keep from crying". This whole sordid episode also reminds me of a deep traumatic experience I had as a young man.

I had difficulty with the permissive sexual mores on my kibbutz. I believed in strict monogamy and sex only after marriage.
I would never ever make sexual overtures to a woman as I did not regard women as sex objects. I was a paragon of virtue, like those fine, upstanding young men in "The Little House on the Prairie".

There were three American Jewish women volunteers on my kibbutz.
They arrived with two suitcases of different sizes. The small one was for clothes. The big one was full of state of the art contraceptive devices.
They were sexual predators.

I was home on leave. There was some kind of festival in the communal dining room. The California one (the other two were from New York) casually swaggered over to me, whispered "I want you" and licked her lips.

I mean, can you imagine my shock. It would have sounded bad enough with a British accent, but that California drawl made it even more menacing.
I have never recovered from this verbal rape experience. It has been a trauma that has haunted me all my life.

Then I got to thinking. They say that parents who beat their children were often beaten by their own parents.

Could that be it? 
Was Shavit, like me, the victim of American Jewish predatory volunteers when he was an innocent young man? 
Is that why he, in later life, became a sexual "pervert" who makes passes at American Jewish women?

Cultural Appropriation

On one of our winter vacations to Eilat we were upgraded to Herods Palace. On the first evening we went down to reception to ask for our free bath robes and slippers.There was a Sephardic French couple with their teenage son and daughter checking in before us. They looked a bit tired. 

We saw them again the next morning at breakfast. The first to come in were the mother and son. They sat down a few tables from us.
After a good night's sleep in a Herods bed, the tiredness of the previous evening was gone and they were smiling vibrantly at each other and the other guests.
The mother was wearing a nice summer dress.

The son had long Lady Gaga-type fingernails that were painted bright red.
He was wearing a cotton "tallit katan", a poncho-like small prayer vest with four fringes. It is worn by religious Jews over or under their clothes.
However, the tallit katan was all he was wearing on the upper part of his body.

On the lower part of his body he was wearing tight short shorts. They were inclined upward at the sides to accentuate the length of his shaved legs.
For footwear he had chosen calf-high cowboy boots with elevated heels.

The father and daughter came in a few minutes later.
He had grown a full black beard overnight. Most of his head was covered by a large multi-coloured knitted kippah (skullcap).
For the rest, he was dressed in clothes usually associated with religious settlers. They looked dirty, but I think they were stained to create a dirty effect.

The girl was voluptuous.
There is an appropriate Dutch expression: “wood in front of the door”. She had enough wood there for a Siberian winter.
I was amazed that it did not tumble out, as her top was skintight with a deep décolleté.
She had an ample supply of wood behind the door as well. This was only partially covered by a skimpy miniskirt. Every time she moved, she flashed an eyeful of her opulent buttocks.

No, I was not foaming at the mouth. That was the froth from the excellent cappuccino that Herods serves.

We badges three

It was the early 1960s. We were 15 years old.
Albert, Glyn and I went to a youth CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) meeting in Herne Hill. In some rich girl’s house.
What a waste of time. Lots of vague hypothesizing.
There were some nauseating Trots (Trotskyists) there as well. They do go on and on. Terrible bores

This aimless chit chat was too soft for us grammar school solidarity-with-the-working-class kids from Brixton. We, who used to fight and heckle Mosley’s fascists when they started coming out onto our streets again, were looking for some real action.
So we decided to wear CND badges, the ones with the “peace” sign, to school. Does not sound much, but for us it was a courageous act of rebellion. Our school had strict clothing rules and badges were not allowed.

We three were the vanguard of a new movement, or so we thought. 
There were other CND supporters in our year. A plot was hatched. We decided that everybody would wear their badges to school on a badge-day of our choice. 
And as agreed, it came to pass.

However, unknown to us, our plans had been betrayed to the gym teacher who was a fascist and a racist.
On our badge-day he went from class to class telling our group of revolutionaries to either take off their badges or go down to the headmaster’s office and face the consequences.
Those of the miserable petite bourgeoisie with no honour complied with his command and removed their badges.

Only Albert, Glyn and I ended up in the headmaster's office. We badges three were Narodnik shepherds without a flock.
We were suspended and sent home.

We got into the national newspapers. The Daily Mail was on our side. Something about the new intellectual elite. I liked that.
My parents sent me to the doctor. Just to make sure there was nothing clinically wrong with me.

As we were now notorious, we were invited to visit youth CND headquarters. We went but I did not feel at home there, had the feeling I was in the wrong place. These la-di-da, wishy-washy armchair socialists were not part of my political world.

I remember one specific occurrence. A delegation of youth peace activists from Leningrad came in. They looked quite old to me. I noticed that they were all stocky, well-built men with close-cropped hair. In any other situation I would have said they were soldiers.

The vision of those "peace" activists stayed with me. After all, I reasoned, the Soviet Union would be very pleased if the UK renounced nuclear weapons. I came to the conclusion that CND was one of the pawns the Russians were using to weaken the West in the Cold War.
As I shared George Orwell's intense dislike of the Soviet Union, I threw out my badge. Away with you, "o viper vile".

The old CND was basically an elitist fringe group of misguided, naive dreamers who peacefully protested a lot. It has morphed into the Stop the War Coalition.
StW is different. It is hard-left, violent and bigoted. The stooge of any organisation or country that is anti-West. The Trots/Lenninists are no longer just a boring minority. They are running the show.

They want power and will use any means necessary to get it.

According to the Telegraph, they are taking over the Labour party.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/12/labour-alarm-at-stop-the-war-coalition-figures-growing-influence/

Halkidiki

Our peaceful, empty hotel has been invaded by hordes of small people. Their coaches are in the car park.
When we went for dinner, I asked the manager if they were new Russians. 
He said no, lowered his voice and hissed, Kosovo. Then he changed the subject. 
The Greeks do not seem to like them. 

They are wearing clothes that we gave to the Salvation Army 30 years ago.
They pile as much food as they can onto their plates. Just like Israelis. 
My wife, who is a better person than me, says they must be starving. They do not look underfed.
Quite the opposite. They are all chunky. They look like the bad guys in a Hollywood movie.
For the Kosovarians it may be the holiday of a lifetime. We are slumming.

I prefer to be one of the haves.

I almost forgot

It started with the exposure of the killing fields in Cambodia. After the Vietnamese invasion, the world saw the magnitude of the mass slaughter committed by the Khmer Rouge.

Then I looked around at my acquaintances, my peer group, my subsection of society. Most had marched in support of the Khmer Rouge. 

What was their reaction? Were they remorseful? Upset? Disillusioned? The answer was no, no and no. They were just not interested, it was yesterday’s news. 

That was when I left this political scene. There was no individual responsibility.

Demonstrations were exhilarating and exciting. You could bleat in unison with the other sheep. Fighting the good fight with thousands of other screeching yobs. 

That also made you horny and you had a good fuck afterwards. The best way to get inside a girl’s panties was to take her on a demonstration first. 

It was all a game for spoilt, bored children of the welfare state.

Then you start your adult life: a job and children. New bikes for your kids are more important than the imperialist, colonial machinations in darkest Africa.

Then one day you look around and find that you are now on the wrong side. You have become the target of the bleating sheep. The yobs are screeching at you.

Then you say to yourself, I almost forgot, I am a Jew.

And you are not just any Jew. You are the first generation after the Holocaust. 

Time to wake up from your political lethargy.

That “never again” starts with you.

Mr. Not Nice

I have nurtured my image of not being a nice person.

It is not that I throw stones at drowning people.

It is just that I am not socialized.

It is not that I think everybody else is stupid and that is why I do not converse with people.

It is just that when I talk to myself I am sure that I will have a good conversation.

Being a bad role model for decent people does have its advantages. Nobody bothers me with requests for money. They know it is a waste of time.

I never have to refuse an invitation as I never get any invitations.

I suppose it happens to most people. You are walking to the shops and a neighbor or acquaintance stops you and starts a conversation. Actually, you are in a hurry and the last thing you want is to talk to this person. 

However, you do not want to hurt his/her feelings. So you stand there smiling and making the right noises.

Never happens to me. People cross the road if they see me coming.

Every now and then my idyllic state of libertarian solitude is encroached upon. My family organizes an event. That means lots of people milling around my house, dirtying my floors and sanitary spaces.

They drink immense amounts of alcohol that I have paid for. It is not that I begrudge them the booze.

It is just that I would prefer to drink it all myself.

Even though nobody is coming for me, I still have to be sociable. So, I have been practicing.

Firstly, I have had to change my smile. It usually looks like a sneer or a leer.

A mirror comes in handy. 

The smile must not be too broad with an open mouth. Then it could be a laugh. It must be a bit wider closed mouth expression. The head should be slightly tilted as if you are listening. A few nods every now and then help as well.

Secondly, I have been watching talk programmes on tv. Great examples of smiling and talking for long periods of time without saying anything.

I am getting to be quite good at this empty interaction thing. I may now decide to enter politics.