World War II

One of my annual diaries (when I remember to do them) is honoring the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during WW II, which happened to coincide with Hitler's birthday in 1943. I happen to feel that it was a particularly good birthday present for Hitler: the defeat of his elite force by a bunch of half starved, barely armed Jews.

This year the anniversary is particularly poignant because, as in 1943, Passover began at sundown on April 19th and April 20th, the day the uprising took off, was the first day of Passover.

Last night, at the Seder we attended, the hostess compiled her own Haggadah for the evening. Within it she included something that seemed out of place and too modern...except that it was perfectly appropriate for a night that in 1943 was the Passover Seder, such as it was, just before the Warsaw uprising. In her photocopied Haggadah she included this (source unknown):

We remember the heroism of the Jews--men, women, children--who fought in the ghettos, in the forests, on the war fronts, together with all of democratic humanity, to stop the curse of fascism from engulfing the earth. We will be true to their memory by being vigilant in the cause of peace and freedom in our land and throughout the world.

In memory of Passover 1943, here's to the very appropriate gift the Jews of Warsaw gave to Hitler:

April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943. The idea was to eliminate a group of uppity Jews and please Hitler in the process.

Sobibor was almost the forgotten Nazi Death Camp. It was almost forgotten because the SS themselves tried to eradicate all traces of the camp. The camp had become an embarrassment after nearly half the Jews at the camp rebelled and escaped.

That rebellion happened today in 1943.

Sobibor was one of the actual "Death Camps" where extermination was the primary goal. Most concentration camps focused on working the prisoners to death. The "Death Camps" focused on killing them as fast as they could. There were six death camps, all located in Poland: Aucshwitz II, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. More than 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor alone. Both Treblinka and Sobibor were destroyed thanks to Jewish uprisings.

At 4 PM, Oct. 14th, 1943, rebels led by Alexander (Sasha) Pechersky started killing SS soldiers at Sobibor. The first to die was the camp's deputy commander, killed as he visited the tailor's shop to try on a new uniform. Here is an account of that first blow as told by a survivor:

October 14, 1943 was a warm, sunny day and nothing disrupted the routine. Only a very small group knew that this was to be the fateful day. The Nazis in the camp went about their business as usual. At precisely 4:00 P.M., the stage was set. Everything now depended on the nerves of the attackers, their faith in themselves and luck.

First, an apology. When I wrote a piece last January entitled “Re: a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn,” I should have used a better heading. It was a pertinent quote in the review. And then came a bit from a review in the New York Times, which I suggest below at (1). What happened to me tonight was a journey in time and I give some sites at (2).

Two literary giants of my generation were being interviewed by a knowledgeable host who really wanted to know why it took them so long to write a book dealing with Hitler. Gunter Grass speaks very good English in a strong voice but has some difficulty hearing so he had a lady to repeat the questions in German. You will be able to read and perhaps hear what he had to say. Then Norman Mailer came in, and they were to have a dialogue. I’m assuming you, who care to, can find the conversation.

Just the three of us. Me and Norman and Gunter. I didn’t know Mr. Grass very well and I would apologize to him if I could see him in person. In very good shape. It’s the first thing we octogenarians think about. After all those years since 1945 the German people have to remember how things turn out, and it will be until his children and grandchildren’s lives are spent, the author says. I nodded back to him. We here are still in the same boat. Don’t we argue and discuss whether America made it too easy on Stalin? Or gloat about the wall falling?

Some time ago I wrote about Japanese Prime Minister's denial that there was any evidence of Japan's sex slave war crimes during WW II, the reason why he never should have said that, and his later semi-apology. In all, the refusal of Japan to fully face up to its wartime atrocities the way Germany has fully faced up to its wartime atrocities is shameful.

Recently (I meant to blog this earlier but got sidetracked) new evidence has surfaced about Japan's use of "comfort women." From BBC news:

Reports from Japan say documents have been found that suggest the Japanese authorities forced women to work as sex slaves during World War II.

They come from the Dutch government archives and include the testimony of a 27-year-old Dutch woman from May 1946.

The Kyodo news agency says the documents show women were coerced into prostitution in occupied Indonesia.

PM Shinzo Abe had claimed there was no evidence of Japanese officials forcing women into prostitution...

The journalist who found these documents says they contradict the prime minister's denial that the authorities were directly involved in coercion.

April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943.

Instead, the Jews of Warsaw gave Hitler a present that he certainly didn’t want: months of armed rebellion that DEFEATED the German army repeatedly and wasn’t completely crushed until October 1943, though major combat operations, to borrow a phrase, were completed around May. Including the periods of more sporadic fighting, this resistance lasted far longer than the German take over of Poland as a whole, which took scarcely one month. It is pointed out in Melvin Konner’s book Unsettled that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, largely fought by Jews but with some Polish uprisings occurring at the same time and inspired by the Jewish uprising, also lasted longer than the time it took Germany to defeat France, though again you have to include the period of more sporadic fighting as well as the main combat.

The uprising was partly inspired by the Socialist Zionist organization Hashomer Hatzair (coincidentally, my mother briefly belonged to this organization in her youth). Insurgency started in January, 1943. By the end of January the Ghetto was actually controlled by two armed Jewish organizations, one led by Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair, and Zivia Lubetkin (who survived the uprising) and the other led by Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum, a former officer in the Polish army. As Passover began on April 19th, Himmler’s birthday present to Hitler also began, with thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian forces attacking the Ghetto. They moved in at 4 a.m. They moved throughout the Ghetto and believed they had occupied it within 4 hours. Then, at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, the insurgents struck with a single captured machine gun, ample small arms fire, and many Molotov cocktails. The Germans were completely routed by the Jewish insurgents by 2 P.M., providing Hitler with a major embarrassment for his birthday.

I have recently been covering the horrible comment by Japanese Prime Minsiter Abe denying that there is any proof that the sex slaves called "comfort women" used by Japanese soldiers in WW II had been coerced. You can see my coverage here, here and here. From this last one, let me point out that international legal findings disagree with Abe's statement:

"It is indisputable that these women were forced, deceived, coerced and abducted to provide sexual services to the Japanese military ... [Japan] violated customary norms of international law concerning war crimes, crimes against humanity, slavery and the trafficking in women and children ... Japan should take full responsibility now, and make suitable restitution to the victims and their families."

International Commission of Jurists, November 1994

The only response I ever got from my inquiries to the Japanese embassy was that Japan had apologized, set up funds for the comfort women (neglecting to say that these funds were not paid for by the government but mostly from private donors) and that Abe's comments changed nothing.

I have been to Japan four times, including one year living and working in Kyoto. Love the place. But Japan is mired in its own equivalent to Holocaust denial that keeps them from fully moving on from the WW II era. I experienced this first hand more than 10 years ago during the 50th anniversary of the end of WW II, and I see it today in the news headlines. From Salon.com:

March 01,2007 | TOKYO -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set up and ran brothels for its troops.

Abe's comments to reporters came as a group of ruling party lawmakers urged the government to revise the so-called Kono Statement, which states that Japan's wartime military sometimes recruited women to work in the brothels with coercion.

"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe said. "We have to take it from there."

Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in brothels run by the military government as so-called "comfort women" during the war...