The Age of the Simpleton

I can remember the forlorn, solitary figures with sandwich boards around their necks who walked the streets of London in all weathers. The message on their boards was simple: "the end is nigh".
Sometimes the presence of these figures annoyed me. I thought: simpletons, why don't you just piss off.
Other times I felt sorry for them.

The advent of the computer and internet changed their lives completely.
They could now come in from the cold, communicate with each other and, as a group, spread their simple message with a keyboard.
The forlorn, solitary figures formed pressure groups and later political parties. 

Nowadays, they walk the corridors of power. No longer forlorn and solitary, but esteemed and worshiped.
Their message is still the simple: "the end is nigh".

And yes, they are right. When simpletons take over, the end is nigh.

Brexit Blues

The politicians are not to blame. They are representative of the people. And the people are suffering from a Dissociative Identity Disorder.

The people want to leave I am told, and they want to remain I am told.
They are willing to revolt and fight for the right to leave and to remain.

If you represent the real will of the people you cannot compromise, because that would be a betrayal of the people.

All hail the revolting people with mental health issues.

Blame it on Bismark, not on the Jews

I wrote about the octogenarian Dutchman who told me Churchill was responsible for the Second World War and that if the Jews had not tried to control the world, Hitler would not have had to kill them.
(As an aside, the Dutch Strasserist leaves the option open of some “good” Jews who did not try to control the world; sounds very modern.)
This is a form of extreme historical revisionism that tries to downplay the evil role of the Nazis, and is only voiced by right-wing and Muslim Jew-haters.

Unfortunately, other forms of revisionist claptrap are supported by more people.
One of the most popular delusions is the assertion that the (draconian) reparations Germany had to pay at the end of the First World War led to the election of Hitler and the Second World War.
Not in the sense of one of the contributing factors, but in the sense of a causal relationship.

On social media everybody is a historian and everything can be explained with a one-liner. In this case: it was the reparations.
The claim paints the German people as victims who chose Hitler because of the persecution of the allies and usually blames the Jews, who are said to have controlled the finances of the reparations system.
It is mainly voiced by historical revisionists. However, there are also stupid, naive people everywhere who lap it up.
I have just seen it presented as “fact” by Jews on a Dutch FB-friend’s site. I did not comment as I have nothing to say to them.

In the following paragraphs I will take a short, casual look at the revisionist claim: there was a causal relationship between the reparations, the election of Hitler and the Second World War.

Did the Germans actually elect Hitler during the democratic period of the Weimar Republic? No they did not.
In the last free elections of November 1932, his party received 33% of the vote. That was a drop of 4% from the previous election.
It was the fragmentation of the vote and the peculiar working of the system of proportional representation, not a majority of the German electorate, that helped him seize power.

What about the reparations then?
Yes the reparations were draconian, but 1933 was 15 years after the end of the First World War.
And, I would add, have you never heard of the Dawes plan and the economic "Golden Years"?

In April 1924, an American economist named Charles Dawes was recruited to help set a new, realistic, target for Germany’s reparations payments.

This was called the Dawes Plan. Besides reducing the reparations, his plan reorganized the German National Bank and called for a loan of 800 million gold marks (emphasis on gold) for Germany.
The loan, financed primarily by America, was given. 

These measures eased the economic pressure on Germany.
The economic improvement led to the years between 1924 and 1929 becoming known as the “Golden Years”.
In October 1929 the Wall Street Crash occurred and the German economy collapsed. 

There are libraries full of analyses of the factors that contributed to the rise of Hitler and the Second World War.
Some refer to political science theories, like the J-curve of frustrated “rising expectations”, to explain the growth of left-wing and right-wing extremism in Germany in the interbellum years.

Even I have tried my hand at analysis. I wrote a paper on the subject that was well–received by my peers. Unfortunately, my epistle was written many years ago and I can only remember the highlights.

I highlighted the fact that Germany had no democratic tradition.
Bismark had united Germany under Prussia through wars. He did not allow any real democracy. The tradition of militarism and autocracy was predominant.
The Weimar Republic created wonderful democratic institutions. However, they were not populated by democrats and were not a buffer to the rise of extremism.

So my one-liner would be: blame it on Bismark, not on the Jews

In Western Europe, Jews have become expendable - again

You may have read about it. It is déjà vu.
May 4, 2019: Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. Official commemorations with deep emotional empathy for the Dutch Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
May 5, 2019: Liberation Day in the Netherlands. There is a public celebration in The Hague. A group of some 50 supporters of the Rotterdam football club Feyenoord chant the usual Jews to the gas chant.

Hundreds of people are there.
Nobody does anything, except one Jewish man.
He tries to talk to the haters.
They rough him up a bit.
He goes to a policeman who is nearby. What does the policeman do? Does he call for more police to arrest the chanters?
No, he sympathizes with the Jew and does nothing.

May 5, 2019 an article by a Jewish columnist, Rosanne Hertzberger. She is not anti-Israel, just against the current Israeli government.

She comments in her article that she is proud of how the democratic institutions function towards Jews in the Netherlands: “I see a lot of concern and involvement with the fate of the Jews, and I appreciate that.”

If I connect the Jew-hating event in The Hague to Ms Hertzberger’s article, then I should appreciate the policeman who expressed sympathy and did nothing.

Many Diaspora Jews, including Ms Herzberger, do not seem to realize you should judge people by their deeds not by their words.
They do not realize that Jews have become expendable. 

The Netherlands endorsed the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Nice words of support for Jews.

Should I be cheering?
After all, hate speech is a criminal offence in the Netherlands.

No, I am not cheering at this “concern and involvement with the fate of the Jews”. 

They did not incorporate it into law. Therefore, it has no validity.

In the centre of Amsterdam, on Dam Square opposite the Royal Palace, stands the 22-metres high National Monument. 

This is the Netherlands’ most important memorial to World War II.
Most of the dead were Dutch Jews who were killed in the death camps.
Yet, there are regular manifestations of hate speech against Jews in front of this monument.
The police do nothing. If you intervene, you may be arrested.

Jews have become expendable - again. Not just in the Netherlands, but in most of Western Europe.

Bloody Foreigners

I went to hospital today for a check-up on my aches and pains.
The start of my journey was a short bus ride to the metro. The only other person waiting at the bus stop was an African Muslim woman who was engrossed with her mobile telephone.
A few minutes later a stocky, light brown, middle-aged male - a North African type - joined us.
He was obviously a migrant or an asylum-seeker.

When the bus came, the African Muslim woman was the first to board. The North African type smiled at me and signaled with his arm that I should get on next.
Now, you cannot pull the wool over my eyes. He was clearly trying to hide his evilness by being polite to strangers.
I put on my best Cheshire cat smile and gestured with my arm that he should get on first. 

He replied with another smile and another arm gesture, signalling that I should board the bus before him.

I thought to myself, two can play at this game, you evil man.

I gave him my Rudolph Valentino smile that I usually reserve for special occasions and entreated him to get on the bus with an expansive arm gesture. 

The bus driver was getting impatient. He glared at us. Eventually the North African type got on the bus first.

Bloody foreigners.

Falling over een reminiscence: Poor San Francisco

Jerry was a Vietnam veteran and suffering from what is now called PTSD. He was living in Sally’s house on Eddy Street in San Francisco.
I met him when we stayed there in 1977.

When we arrived in San Francisco in our pickup we went to the American Express to check for mail. 

Our friends, Jan and Sietske, were also driving up the west coast from Mexico in a pickup. There was a letter from Sietske. She wrote that Jan had been admitted to San Francisco General hospital.
We did not know where that was.

A middle-aged woman dressed in green was talking to a young man with red hair who was sitting on a motorbike.

We thought she was someone official and asked her the way to San Francisco General.
She told us she was Sally, a social worker from Montana. The young man with red hair was her son, Red.
They directed us to the hospital and invited us back to their house for coffee afterwards.

Jan was very ill. They only found out later he had some kind of rare genetic disease. This had been triggered by the loss of his toenails after walking down and up the Grand Canyon in new shoes.

After the hospital we went to Sally's for coffee.

She lived in an old Victorian house that she was slowly renovating with a small group of miscellaneous people who were staying with her.
Sally offered us a room, which we accepted. We stayed there for three weeks.

Jerry said, do you know why Europeans smoke Stuyvesant and Pall Mall?

I replied, no.
He said, because when the Americans liberated Europe they gave all the shitty cigarettes to the people there. They kept the good ones, the Camels and Lucky Strikes, for themselves.

I used to smoke Camel plain. I rolled the pack up in my t-shirt sleeve.

I passed my driving test in San Francisco in a Ford F100 pickup.

The theory was easy.
A lady gave me the test paper and told me to fill it in and come back.
I went out to the pickup and copied the answers from a book. Then I returned to the nice lady and gave her the test paper back.
Congratulations, she exclaimed. You got 100%, the first one today.

Jerry gave me his hand-embroidered jeans jacket as a present.

Then it was too big for me. Now it is too small.

Poor San Francisco, it has changed. Nowadays it is not like the song any more. 

Mary Berg's Diary: The children's home in the Warsaw Ghetto

Mary Berg lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, but her situation was unusual. Though she was born in Poland, her mother was an American. 

Jews with American citizenship could possibly be exchanged for German prisoners of war and were imprisoned, not deported to death camps. 

Mary was imprisoned in the Pawiak prison near to the centre of the ghetto.  

Mary survived. She was nineteen in March 1944, when she stepped off a prisoner-of-war exchange ship from Lisbon in New York. 

During the years she lived in the ghetto, she kept a diary. 

A compelling document.

This is an excerpt from her diary.

"Dr. Janusz Korczak’s children’s home is empty now.

A few days ago we all stood at the window and watched the Germans surround the houses. 

Rows of children, holding each other by their little hands, began to walk out of the doorway. There were tiny tots of two or three years among them, while the oldest ones were perhaps thirteen.

Each child carried a little bundle in his hand. All of them wore white aprons.

They walked in ranks of two, calm, and even smiling. They had not the slightest foreboding of their fate.

At the end of the procession marched Dr. Korczak, who saw to it that the children did not walk on the sidewalk. Now and then, with fatherly solicitude, he stroked a child on the head or arm, and straightened out the ranks.

He wore high boots, with his trousers stuck in them, an alpaca coat, and a navy blue cap, the so-called Maciejowka cap. He walked with a firm step, and was accompanied by one of the doctors of the children’s home, who wore his white smock.

This sad procession vanished at the corner of Dzielimy and Smocza Streets. They went in the direction of Gesia Street, to the cemetery.

At the cemetery all the children were shot.

We were also told by our informants that Dr. Korczak was forced to witness the executions, and that he himself was shot afterward.

Thus died one of the purest and noblest men who ever lived.

He was the pride of the ghetto. His children’s home gave us courage, and all of us gladly gave part of our own scanty means to support the model home organized by this great idealist.

He devoted all his life, all his creative work as an educator and writer, to the poor children of Warsaw.

Even at the last moment he refused to be separated from them.

The house is empty now, except for the guards who are still cleaning up the rooms of the murdered children."

August, 1942