A talk I gave at the Holocaust Centre on May 14, 2017, as part of an Adult Education series.

 The invasion of Poland and the murder of Jews

       To this day, imagining the murder of so many people, by mass shooting and gassing with carbon monoxide or rat poison gas is unbelievable. You know that it happened, but cannot imagine how it could have happened. Though the Germans did their best to conceal the evidence, they used language that obscured the true facts, 'final solution' for mass murder, 'resettlement' for concentration camps, but eye-witness accounts of the atrocities emerged. People knew what was happening, but refused to believe it. How could these things happened in enlightened Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, perpetrated by civilised, educated Germans, and why these happen not only in Poland, Russia, Roumania, Lithuania and Latvia, but in Central or Western Europe?

       People today visit Auschwitz and see a theme park of atrocities, but they can't smell the smoke of burning bodies, can't sense the fear, hear the dogs barking. You have to put yourselves into the shoes of the victims, however hard this is, to gain some understanding.

     Hitler talks of Jewish annihilation

                January 30, 1939

    “Today I will be once more a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then then result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of the Jews, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”

Sources:N.H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, I, London, 1942, pp. 737-741; Yad Vashem

       There was much in common between Nazi Germany and right wing nationalist Poland, anti-communism, Antisemitism. For years the Nazis tried to form an alliance with Poland but the Poles rejected these overtures. They didn't like Jews, but the Jews they didn't like were the real Jews living among them, one of the ethnic minorities that made up the Polish state that diluted the Polish national unity. It was not the mythical imaginary Jew that the Nazis wanted to get rid of. The Poles appreciated the problems of getting rid of large numbers of Jews. As to the antagonism towards the Soviet Union, they realised that any war fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would be fought on Polish soil.

   Jewish population of Europe 1933

        US Holocaust Memorial Museum

 

Almost immediately after the invasion of Poland, the Germans established the first ghetto.

To get rid of Jews, Jews had to be identified and separated from the rest of the population. Yellow stars or arm bands were introduced to mark out Jews. Then Jews were concentrated into urban ghettos. This destroyed the small shtetls, Jewish communities scattered through the countryside that had existed for many generations, in some cases, for hundreds of years. Notably, at the time, there were no ghettos in Western Europe.

Ghettos were planned to be temporary. Jews were to be exiled

1. to Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean, a French colony. This was contingent on an understanding with France and the defeat of Britain, who controlled the sea routes.

2. to some unspecified remote place in the east, beyond the Urals, perhaps somewhere in Siberia. This was contingent on the defeat of the Soviet Union.

         Largest ghettos in Poland

            April 1940, Lodz ghetto (pop. 164,000)

                November 1940, Warsaw ghetto (pop. 445,000)

                March 1941, Lublin and Krakow ghettos

Altogether, the Germans created at least 1,000 ghettos in occupied territories. Many ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jews were already concentrated.

       The vast majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe. The Jews of Western and Central Europe were largely assimilated, but the Jews of Eastern Europe had their own language, Yiddish, their own culture and distinctive customs. They were a readily identifiable ethnic minority.

Right from the beginning, from the time Hitler and the Nazis assumed power, their clearly stated aim was to get rid of all Jews, with no exceptions. 

How to do this went through four stages of planning:

1. Exile

2. Expulsion

3. Deportation

4. Extermination

      The fate of the German Jews was to be decided after the triumphant victory, but by the end of 1941 Hitler was so confident of winning the war that he authorised the deportation of the Jews of the Reich. This put great pressure on the existing ghettos in Poland, and in particular, the Lodz ghetto. To accommodate the new arrival, they had to get rid of, murder some of the Jews already there.

The Wannsee conference and the final solution

      By the end of January 1942 over a million Jew had been murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units. But these killings were not centrally coordinated. They were, to some degree, haphazard. They were not governed by a centralised clear policy. Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Security Service, (SD), and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia convened a conference of high ranking Nazi Party and government officials in a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and implement the 'Final solution', the mass murder of Jews. The fifteen officials who attended the conference did not touch on the rightness of the policy, they only discussed the means. The entire session lasted only about an hour.

Extermination of the Jews of the Reich

OCTOBER 15, 1941

After Adolf Hitler's authorisation in September 1941, German authorities began deporting German, Austrian, and Czech Jews from the Greater German Reich

From October 15, 1941, until October 29, 1942, German authorities deport approximately 183,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to ghettos, transit ghettos, killing centres, and killing sites in the Baltic States, in Belarus, in the Generalgovernement, and the Lodz ghetto.

Beginning in September 1941, with the deportation of German Jews, Jews were transported country by country to the newly established killing camps. By 1944 the only significant Jewish community left in Europe was the Hungarian Jewish community. After the German occupation of Hungary, between May and July, 1944, in 56 days, 437,000 Jews were transported, mainly to Auschwitz, and about 360,000 were murdered immediately on arrival there. There were four trains, with 3000 on each, 12,000 a day leaving for Auschwitz. The concentration camp had trouble killing and cremating such a large number. People had to wait in the birch forest - waiting for their turn to be killed.

Operation Reinhard

October 15, 1941

Heinrich Himmler tasks the SS and Police Leader in Lublin District, SS General Odilo Globocnik, with implementing what later becomes known as

“Operation Reinhard,” the physical annihilation of the Jews residing in the Generalgovernement. The Operation Reinhard team is ultimately responsible for the murder of approximately 1.7 million Jews, most of them Polish Jews.

Killing Jews by shooting was an inefficient means of murder. The numbers to kill were just too great. The killings took a toll on the troops who had to shoot men, women, young and old, and in particular, children. It was also impossible to keep it secret. To find a more efficient way of killing large numbers, the Germans drew on experience they gained from the by then abandoned euthanasia programme. They murdered intellectually and physically handicapped who were not deemed to be worthy of life, but this programme was terminated due to public and Church opposition and pressure. However, the techniques developed for the euthanasia programme could be used to murder large numbers of Jews. First they were killed by carbon monoxide fed into moving trucks full of prisoners,then by feeding carbon monoxide into sealed gas chambers, and finally they found that using Cyclone B, a gas used for pest eradication, the most efficient.

Killing centres

December 8

Killing operations begin at the Chelmno killing centre, located about 30 miles north-west of Lodz.

January 16

German authorities begin the deportation of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) from the Lodz ghetto to Chelmno. Between January 1942 and March 1943, the SS Special Detachment Lange kills at least 145,000 Jews and a few thousand Roma (Gypsies).

The Reinhard camps were located in isolated places near railway lines. There were no barracks to house the inmates. They were all killed on arrival. These camps later were all levelled to destroy the evidence.

Belzec

March 17, 1942

First deportations of Jews, from the ghettos in Lublin and Lvov, to the Belzec killing centre. At least 434,508 Jews were killed in gas chambers with carbon monoxide gas between March 17 and December 31, 1942.

Sobibor

May 7, 1942

Sobibor begins gassing operations at the Sobibor killing centre. By November 1943, the special detachment killed at least 170,000 Jews and an undetermined number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war at Sobibor by means of carbon monoxide gas or by shooting.

Treblinka

July 23, 1942

SS Special Detachment Treblinka begins gassing operations at the Treblinka killing centre. Between July 1942 and November 1943, the SS special detachment at Treblinka murders an estimated 925,000 Jews and an unknown number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war.

Auschwitz - Birkenau

March 1,1942

Auschwitz – Birkenau camp opens. It was originally designated for the incarceration of large numbers of Soviet prisoners of war. Although it continued to serve as a concentration camp, it also functioned as a killing centre from March 1942 until November 1944.

Auschwitz was originally set up for Polish political prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war. Once it was expanded with the addition of Birkenau and a network of sub-camps it realised the main objectives of the Nazis:

1. Expropriate, i.e. steal Jewish property
2. Exploit Jewish manpower; work them while there is value in their labour
3. Kill them
4. Make use of their hair, the gold in their teeth, their spectacles, shoes whatever was left of their belongings.

After Auschwitz

After the war it was evident that not only were a large number of Jews murdered, but that an entire Jewish world, with its own traditions, culture, customs and values was destroyed. But the liberal humanist tradition going back to the 17^th and 18^th centuries was also called into question. The great German sociologist and philosopher, Theodor W. Adorno said 'to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric',

The great centres of European learning, arts and creativity were scattered, with its focus moving to America, but Britain, South Africa, Australia, Latin America, and to a limited extent, New Zealand also benefited from this dispersal of talent.

Jewish by choice

Amsterdam based Israeli journalist, Cnaan Liphschiz gave an interesting talk at last night's Kia Torah session at the Holocaust Centre in the Wellington Jewish Community Centre. He talked about antisemitism in Europe, but in particular, in France and Holland. He attributed this to Muslim immigration. He acknowledged that antisemitism is rife in Eastern Europe too, in Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, perhaps also in Latvia and Estonia, where there are no, or very few Muslims, but in these countries antisemitism manifests itself in nationalist rhetoric, but not in violence unlike in Western Europe. He also acknowledged that though Jews are under threat throughout Europe, there are also many hopeful positive developments, a resurgence of Jewish life in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Hungary has the largest Jewish festival in Europe, and politically, there is a close relationship between Israel and Russia, Netanyahu and Putin, a significant turnaround in light of the past history of Russia and the Soviet Union. 

The outlook is tough for Jews in Europe, but despite this, only a small proportion of them choose to leave. These, however, are the most committed, observant members of their communities, who keep the light of Judaism burning. 

Cnaan Liphshiz made an interesting observation about the New Zealand Jewish community. New Zealand is one of the very few places in the world if not the only place, where Jews are Jewish by choice. They are not singled out, they can completely assimilate and disappear as Jews, they don't face antisemitism, not compared with the rest of the world at any rate, so if they are still involved with Jewish life they do so by choice. Liphshiz made no mention of those who chose to be Jewish by conversion, and the important roles they play in their communities. Jews are completely integrated in the society they are part of, they do not live in ghettos isolated from their neighbours, a Jewish bubble, yet they maintain a semblance of Jewish life and hand on their tradition to their children.

The Holocaust Centre of NZ is 10 years old

The Holocaust Centre of NZ survived ten years, and grew into a wide reaching vibrant institution. This is something to celebrate, This week I gave the monthly talk at our retirement village, Village at the Park  about the origins of the Holocaust Centre, the problems of facing the horrors of the past and previous efforts to confront the Holocaust. The audience of some 50 people listened intently, and as often happens, came up to me afterwards and told me their own personal stories.

Here is a link to my talk, The Holocaust Centre is 10 years old.

The Book of Ruth - some thoughts

I have been honoured and flattered to be asked to share some Torah thoughts appropriate for Shavuot at the Shavuot dinner. I am not a Torah scholar, compared with my sons, compared with some of my friends, I am an ignoramus, am ha'aretz. In the land of the blind, however, the partially sighted is king. There is not much that I could say about the Ten Commandments that has not been said already, but I can relate to the Book of Ruth, the quintessential immigrant or refugee experience. This is what I will be talking about, shamelessly borrowing from Margo Schlanger and her article, Illegal Immigrants and the Book of Ruth, published in Tablet. My slant is different from hers, in so far as I have a message, it is different from hers, but we have in common seeing in Ruth the difficulties faced by someone fleeing her country. Here is the text of my talk, feel free to comment and disagree.

The story of Ruth – some thoughts

Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people are my people, and your God is my God, where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

These are the words Ruth said to her mother-in-law, Naomi. They were both widows left bereft in an inhospitable land. So starts a story about immigration, about being a refugee, that has a contemporary resonance.

Ruth was the best kind of 'receiver of the Torah': she is simultaneously brave and kind. She makes compassion her guiding value, and she boldly ventures to join a community that in turn accepts her fully. Her kindness, her chesed, awakens corresponding compassion in those around her.

Briefly, the story tells us that in a time of terrible famine and political insecurity, Elimelech left Bethlehem with his wife, Naomi, and their two sons and went to Moab, on the other side of the Dead Sea. Elimelech died, and his sons died. The Megilla doesn't tell us how or in what circumstances they died. Was it violence, disease, war, epidemic, we don't know. Moab was a violent place, the country of Balak and Bilam, a place where witchcraft was still practised, and in times of crisis human sacrifices were offered to the Moabite god Chemosh. Nor do we know why the wives of the sons of Elimelech were childless, or perhaps they had children who had also died. In a place like that a religion with humane laws, that extend protection and Sabbath, the day of rest not only to the immediate members of the clan, but also to 'your slave, your maid, your animal, and the foreigner in your gates' would have had a powerful appeal. We are only told what we need to know about Ruth, her acceptance in the Jewish community, her conversion, and her role in the Jewish chain of history.

Naomi and her two Moabite daughters-in-law were left alone—without children, without male heads of household, without economic or social standing. Naomi decided to leave Moab and travel home to Judah. One daughter-in-law, Orpah, returned to her own mother. Ruth, by contrast, stayed with Naomi. The key word in the Book of Ruth is chesed, kindness or compassion. Naomi says to Ruth: 'May God kindly deal with you as you have dealt kindly with the dead and with me.' Ruth’s kindness is vital to Naomi’s survival. Without Ruth, Naomi would have been friendless and helpless on the journey, and perhaps even at its end. Even with Ruth’s help, the two arrived in Bethlehem poor and hungry, dependent on others for food. For others, however, it was a time of plenty. The barley harvest was underway. Ruth went to the field of Boaz, close kin to Elimelech, and gleaned the barley left behind by the reapers who were harvesting the bulk of the yield. Boaz was so taken by Ruth’s kindness and care for Naomi that he made sure she was able to gather more than enough.

Boaz also protected the vulnerable Ruth from the threat of sexual violence and offered her the safety of other women. But she wanted to be a full member of her adoptive family, the family of her dead husband. She tempted Boaz, a relative, a much older man to marry her and give her children. For Boaz this is an act of kindness, chesed: 'Be blessed of God, my daughter,' he said, 'you have made your latest act of kindness, greater than the first, in that you have not gone after the younger men, be they poor or rich.'

And so Ruth the Moabite went first from gentile to Jew, and then from widow to wife, stranger to citizen, gleaner to matriarch. It’s the ultimate immigration story. But the greatest reward granted to Ruth for her kindness and unfailing devotion was the most precious blessing any woman can hope for, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a great-great grandson who became the King of Israel and the model for all future kings.

¹

1Some of these words and ideas were borrowed from ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND THE BOOK OF RUTH

Shavuot offers an important lesson for politics today.

By Margo Schlanger

Tablet, May 26, 2017

Manchester

It is hard to get my head around the terror attack in Manchester. At this stage the attacker is unknown, and so are his motives, but what we do know is that his home made powerful explosive device killed at least 22 people and injured many others, They were young people attending a rock concert. It is unlikely that any of them knew much about ISIS or the cause it was fighting for. We don't know what motivated the killer, or what he had hoped to achieve. The explosion and the murder of these people would not hasten the fall of Assad and the Syrian government, the enemies of ISIS. What was in the mind of the killer? Was he gullible, easily persuaded by some fire breathing Iman to sacrifice his life? Was he unhinged, suffering from mental disorder? There is no simple explanation for such an act of random murder. But looking back on history, there were the Nizaris, the second largest largest sect of Shiite Muslims in the eleventh century. They posed a threat to the Sunni Seljuk Empire. With the unrest in the Holy Land caused by the First Crusade the Nizaris found themselves fighting not only other Muslims, but also the invading Christian Crusaders. Not having the military forces to wage such a double war, they turned to the assassination of prominent enemies or prominent leaders perceived as enemies. These random killings went on for some 300 years, until the Nizari declined internally and eventually succumbed to Mongol conquest. Can we perceive parallels between infighting among Shiites and Sunnis, invading Christian Crusaders and aimless random murder? Does history provide answers, or do we just have to sit back and accept that this is a cruel, senseless world and terrible unjust things happen?

Poor newspaper proprietors, poor journalists

The Commerce Commission refused to allow the merger of NZME, owners of the NZ Herald, and Fairfax media, owners of the DominionPost. They, very reasonably, argued that the merger of the country's two major newspapers would create a monopoly that is bad for the country. The proprietors of the two media empires cried foul. They invested their money in these businesses, reaped large profits, now that the profits are drying up they want to squeeze a few more drops of juice from their investments. They lost sight of the purpose of newspapers, to disseminate news, not to create a vehicle for advertisers. There will be always news, and there will always be an appetite for well informed reporting and analysis. If the Herald and the DominionPost have to change the way they operate and work out a new, more appropriate business plan so be it. Now the vultures, investors out for a quick buck are circling these two wounded behemoths. It is likely that they would strip the assets of these businesses, cut their staff, but it is very unlikely that they would do much to improve the standards of journalism.

Down by the river side

I had such a good time last night. Our neighbours, Val and Bob, jazz enthusiasts, organised a jazz concert in our Village. They invited the New City Stompers to play for us as a fundraiser for the Wellington Free Ambulance. Jazz can cover a multitude of genres, Swing, Dixie, Big Band, Individual Virtuosos like Theolonius Monk, Stephane Grappelli, Dave Brubeck. I didn't know what to expect,
The Stompers were seven elderly men who would easily qualify as residents in our retirement village, and a slightly younger woman vocalist, but they are all very skilled musicians,
There was a trumpet, a trombone who drew a wonderful rich sound from his instrument, a nimble fingered pianist, who to show off  played a Winifred Atwell number for an audience that still remembered Winfred Atwell. There was a guitar, a drum who also played a washboard to the amusement of all, and a sousaphone, an instrument that could have been designed by the cartoonist Gerard Hoffnung. I went partly to support Val and Bob and make sure that there were at least some in the audience for the concert. I needn't have worried, the room was so full that we had to bring in more chairs from the dining room. There must have been some 80 people there and when I arrived almost all the seats were taken. After a while some of the women and then a few couples got up to dance. Some were dressed casually, some of the women were dressed up for an evening out in long evening dresses. The woman in casual trousers who got the others to get up and dance shimmied over to me and got me to join in and dance. (A round of applause) I was never much of a dancers and my dancing days were over at least fifty years ago, but I didn't want to seem stand offish, too proud, or too high and mighty so I got up and did my best to dance. It took me back to when we were newly married and I attempted to shuffle around on the dance floor. The music, some of the numbers they played, took me back sixty years or more. The song 'I left my little bright eyed doll down by the river side' was the hit of the day in 1948 when we arrived in New Zealand. I knew the tune, I hummed and whistled it at the time, but could never get the words. Last night we were given song sheets and we all joined in in the singing. I suppose when friends said that Judy and I would be happy in our retirement home this is the sort of happiness they had in mind.  I thought that seeing people, my contemporaries, enjoying themselves, despite all having their personal baggage was wonderful. Most of the women are widows, some perhaps retired and successful professionals. They all have had lives full of sorrows, tragedies, yet here they were making most of the moment. I thought that there is a story in last night's concert, In fact there are many stories, a film like The Quartet about the retirement home for old musicians could be made from the stories in this Village. 

Looking back sixty years when I last  joined in in the singing and dancing, trying to be one of the guys, trying to belong, I thought of the promise of happiness and success that lay ahead, and the disappointments and hardships that we encountered later. I thought of the music and the good times. I am not sure whether my children and their generation still play music and sing when they get together. When Bartok collected folk songs from all parts of the Balkans, he was aware that these songs were about to disappear as the feudal societies with their peasant culture were disappearing. The coffee house gypsy music that he so despised has also disappeared except as a tourist attraction.
As the whole world becomes one global village, dominated by Hollywood and mass produced culture, old men playing music of the 1920s and 1930s is precious, and we, the audience, with all our aches and pains, mobility trundlers and complaints can celebrate that we have attained a stage in our lives when we have no longer responsibilities, duties, cares, and if we  no longer look forward to a bright future, at least we can enjoy the present.

Refugee children, hospitality and exploitation

Amy Williams, a young British scholar, talked about her research of the comparative narratives of the Kindertransport. The emphasis of these narratives were, by and large, on the hospitality of the kind British people in welcoming and receiving these poor German and Czech Jewish children fleeing for their lives. The narratives left out accounts of children trying to be brave, but spending their time in the toilet so that people wouldn't see them crying, they left out the stories of the parents these children left behind, most of whom were never privileged to see their children again, they didn't touch on the many children who had lost their Jewish and German identity, and they certainly didn't talk about the exploitation of some of these children. These certainly don't talk about the hundreds of Jewish refugee children who were interned as enemy aliens and were shipped off to Canada, and notably to Australia on the troop ship Dunera on which they were ill treated, and were subsequently exploited by their Australian hosts. Nor do the narratives tell you that these children gained only temporary admission, and were only granted residency after the outbreak of the war. Their stories were used as one of the many justifications for Britain fighting Nazi Germany. 

Every feel good story as an underlying dark side. We celebrate on our Timeline in the Holocaust Centre, that in 1943 'Prime Minister Peter Fraser publicly expresses sympathy over the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe and his interest in the development of Palestine as a Jewish state', yet we make no mention of the same Peter Fraser bending the rules in 1944 and admitting 734 Polish orphans with teachers and priests who washed up in Persia after tracking through vast stretches of Russia and Siberia,  yet the many Jewish children who travelled with them were excluded from New Zealand and rerouted to Palestine. We do not mention that although Jews lived in New Zealand since the 1830s, and were completely and very successfully assimilated, in 1930 Jews were thought of as hard to assimilate. We do not talk about the deeply ingrained latent antisemitism of the 1930s in New Zealand. We talk about Annie and Max Deckston, who saved twenty Polish Jewish orphans from Bialystok, but do not mention that they were only granted permits for these because they failed to find children in British Jewish orphanages who were prepared to come to New Zealand. The permit was initially issued for British children only.
When you see a feel good story take a critical look and see what is left out, why the story is there, what is it trying to say and what is hidden behind it.

Immigrant bashing - it must be election year.

New Zealand has a population of 4596 million (2015, a few thousand more now), less than one suburb of Shanghai, Karachi, Beijing, Dhaka, about the population of Sydney, slightly more than that of Melbourne. Yet our senior geriatric politician who is way past retirement age trots out his xenophobic concern about the large number of immigrants, particularly those coming from Asia. They push up house prices, overcrowd hospitals and schools, clutter up roads. The other main political parties, instead of ridiculing his concerns, which should be the right response, try to finesse their immigration policies to make them look like they are doing something about keeping immigrants out. The reality is that much of the increase in the number of arrivals in New Zealand are New Zealanders returning home because the grass is greener here than in Australia, England or wherever they went in search of greener pastures. Others come here because New Zealand is a good and peaceful place to live in. That is not a bad thing and politicians should be proud of it. What's more, industries that underpin New Zealand's prosperity are dependent on immigrant labour. The vast farming conglomerates would come to a standstill without Philippine labourers, orchards, kiwifruit farmers depend on Pacific Islanders for seasonal workers, our hospital would not be able to cope without Philippine nurses and Indian doctors. All this is out there for everybody to see, yet politicians think that there is something to be gained from immigrant bashing. True, immigrants need housing and there are not enough houses built. There is tax free money to be made from the housing shortage. The housing shortage could easily be alleviated, as the Labour government did in the late 1940s and early 50s, by building more houses, but this goes against entrenched interests of property speculation on which New Zealand fortunes were built right from the beginning of Europeans settlement in the 1840s. Investors in the New Zealand Company in 1840 expected huge profits from the enhanced value of their land due to controlled settlement. Auckland was built on land expropriation, exploitation of native greed, and monopoly of land. The last thing speculators want is a mass housing project on land ripe for development. This is not new, but the housing shortage has little to do with immigration. Talking about immigration is a distraction from real issues that face New Zealand. What happens if the Chinese cut back on their consumption of milk powder or get these from other sources? This would bankrupt the New Zealand economy. What would happen if poverty and inequality reaches a point where there is large scale of dissatisfaction tat leads to social unrest? How long can the country subsidise the wages workers whose values has been undermined by cheap labour in other parts of the world. Our education is undermined by emphasis on trade or technical skills for the present while downplaying the liberal arts, which are at the heart of future creative thinking. Instead of debating such issues that really matter for the future of the country, politicians on all side jump on the immigration bandwagon, whihc is a distraction.

Universal Basic Income, what to do with your spare time.

An opinion piece in today's Dominion Post by Gwynne Dyer about Universal Basic Income raised some challenging questions. Paying a wage to people who are not in paid employment goes against the deeply ingrained Protestant culture and values. There is no problem with people making money from land speculation without working for it, see the opinion piece about High Country land tenure, there is no problem with people making a mint out of speculating in shares or property, but to pay everybody a living wage so that they could live in dignity, whether in employment or unemployed goes against the grain. Yet unemployment is a feature of the global capitalist economy. It is also a product of technology, automation. No matter what Trump says, the jobs he wants to bring back to America no longer exist, and both he and the people who voted for him know this. There is a permanent divide between those who are fortunate to have a job and those who are thrown on the job scrap heap. However paying everyone enough to live on raises the question of what would people do who have no paid job. How would they use their leisure. The wealthy, who have spare disposable income, learned how to enjoy their leisure, but the working man, not used to leisure, whose whole life centred around his work, would have to learn what to do with spare time. The elderly, the retired, who live on their pension, have a lot to teach them. Those over 60 or may be 65, have the remaining possibly as much as the third of their lives to fill in. They take up hobbies, interests, and feel no guilt for not working, or at least not working for money. Society would also have to address the role of money and such institutions as continuing education, fitness programmes, broadcasting, television, the internet and libraries. In our present state of libertarian capitalist thinking we lose sight of these, that the air waves are not there to be exploited for advertising and money, but for public education and enjoyment, that Facebook and other similar programmes are there to bring people together, to communicate with others, not to generate profit for those who gained a monopoly over these facilities. These are big challenges for the future, yet curiously, none of the political parties are interesting in confronting them.

Holocaust denial - do I care

With the film Denial on, a discussion of Holocaust denial next Sunday, and incidents of Holocaust denial, and a very interesting, well attended talk by the MP, Chris Bishop on his Honours paper on the legal aspect of Holocaust denial last night, Holocaust denial is the topic of the day. I found my letter to the Editor of the New Zealand Herald about David Irving's proposed visit to New Zealand in 2004, and David Irving's comments on it. I still stand by my letter, and I am proud to be associated by Irving with my much more famous namesake, Stephen Sedley. But now I wonder whether we should care about Holocaust denial. In the age of Trump, fake news is all around us, and spreading it through Facebook and Twitter is so easy and unstoppable. So what does it matter if some people believe that Elvis is still alive, the moon landing was faked, the destruction of the two towers on 9/11 was an inside job. David Irving said in his comments on my letter that he gave a talk to a small audience in Lower Hutt on his previous visit and no one was hurt, no one was killed. He didn't say what the purpose of his visit was, or who financed it, but clearly not many people noticed it and no harm was done. But then David Irving is just a shoddy historian with an oversized ego. Only his followers take him seriously. He doesn't matter, because he has no power. Joseph Goebbels on the other hand, an even greater liar, had great power, and his lies caused unspeakable harm. I am happy to completely ignore the Holocaust deniers of the lunatic fringe as long as they exercise no power. I would not argue or debate with them, I would treat them as complete meshugas and would lose no sleep over their utterances. It is so easy to ring up the radio station and say that the world's ills are caused by the Jews, put it on the Internet and swamp your lies with lots of 'likes' to advanced them on the search engine. As long as they do no harm, don't hurt people, I treat them as they deserve, put them on the box marked 'crazies'.

Is Jewish an adjective like Spanish?

If you describe someone as 'Spanish',' Danish' 'Polish' you imply a historical link to a land, a piece of real estate. This does not apply to Jews. Describing Jews always presented a problem. I am described on my birth certificate as Israelite, though there was no Israel in existence till many years later. The term 'Zsido' Jew, just as the term 'Yid' had many negative connotations, exclusiveness, poverty, lack of genteel good manners. As an acculturated, assimilated Hungarian, 'Israelite' was a description akin to Catholic (in fact, Roman Catholic to distinguish it from other forms of Catholicism) Protestant (with its different variants, Reformatus, i.e. Presbyterian, Lutheran, Sabbatarian). It implied that I was part of a happy family of different ethnicities. The price my grandparents, or more like great grandparents had to pay for it this was that they had to give up their language, in the case of my grandparents, German, their Jewish culture, and their religion was viewed through Christian eyes and norms. The notion that we were all part of a happy, civilized, liberal family whatever our religion and ethnicity was blown out of the water by the deeply ingrained anti-Semitism of European Christian society and ultimately the Holocaust. We have to face that we are Jews, with all that the term implied. 

The Zionists also faced these issues. They were not happy to transfer their European Jewish culture and traditions to a new land. They deliberately abandoned Yiddish, the language of Eastern European Jews, they abandoned the religious practices, they abandoned, or tried to abandon the high culture of Western European Jews, Herzl wanted the language of Israel to be German, Weizmann had difficulty persuading the Zionist leadership to set up a world class university in Jerusalem, they wanted peasants with socialist leanings,  Hubermann faced great obstacles getting visas for Jewish musicians to set up a symphony orchestra. The last thing the Zionist vision needed is more Jewish fiddlers. The term Israeli doesn't conjure up an image of a Talmudic scholar, a shop keeper, a cobbler, a wine merchant (as were members of my family) a violinist, a professor, or for that matter a ganev, a thief, a crooked operator, yet the term 'Jew' has all these associations. A Jew is, to a greater or lesser extent, and outsider, with no attachment to the land, and the less he is an outsider the less he is a Jew. His value to society at large is exactly this outsider's perspective.

A Jewish Jew

Mark Oppenheimer, host of the podcast 'Unorthodox', wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. In this he questions why commentators, politicians, and people in general talk about the 'Jewish' people, 'Jewish' neighbours, 'Jewish' writers, 'Jewish' artists, and not simply about 'Jews'. 'Jew' is a term that is used in many instances as 'something bad', not something to be proud of. This is the price Jews paid for acculturation and assimilation. They think of themselves as Jewish New Zealanders, Jewish Hungarians, Jewish Englishmen, Jewish Americans. It is a steep price. It enables antisemites to pick on Jews, to imply that there is something phoney about them, neither quite one thing, nor quite another. I much prefer to think of myself as a Jew, who happens to live in New Zealand. Being a Jew defines me not only in my own eyes but also in the eyes of my fellow citizens, the Scottish, Irish, English, Maori, Polynesian, Chinese and Indian New Zealanders. It makes me impervious to antisemitism. I am who I am and don't want to join someone else's exclusive club. There is a lot I can take pride in as a Jew. If there are some idiots in the world who take exception to Jews, so be it, I am not going to lose sleep over that. If antisemitism is on the rise in the world it is not a problem for Jews, it is a problem for those who subscribe to it.

Story telling

Many years ago I went to Hamilton for a weekend of Jewish learning. This was before we started Devarim in Wellington, a long time before Limmud in Auckland and Kia Torah in Wellington. It was organized by Norman Simms, an eccentric, challenging scholar ( I hope that he won't mind being described as such) I don't recall the topic of the talks apart from Norman talking about Mendel Beilis, the victim of the last Blood Libel in Kiev in 1913. I don't think that there was much Talmudic or any other rabbinic discussion, but it was a very pleasant weekend of talkfest. One of the guest speakers was Morris Lurie, Australian writer of 27th Annual Hippopotamus Race fame. His talk on writing must have clashed with something more topical or controversial, because I was the only one who turned up for it. Thus Morris and I had a one on one conversation about writing. The one thing that I remember form this conversation is that he said that a story, a work of fiction, must be true. I can't say in what sense it has to be true, because after all, fiction is made up. But Morris Lurie quoted the work of William Trevor, a fine stylist and good story teller, who had just published a new collection of short stories as an example of a story that was patently not true. I suppose that what he meant was that an event, an incident that caused a disruption, deflected from the natural flow of the story was artificial imposed on the story line. 

I think of this because I am struggling to explore a very short story I wrote a while ago. It came to me in the middle of the night almost as I wrote it down. It is about the experience of an old man who can no longer orient himself, who is suffering from a degree of dementia. To unpack this story I need to know more about his circumstances, his relationship with his son, perhaps also with his absent daughter, his life with his late wife, his sense of both loneliness and self-sufficiency. All this must seem true and not contrived. 

Why I bother working on this story I don't know. I gave up writing fiction some time ago. I have a folder of unpublished stories, none of them good enough, though some are better than others. They could be revised, I could look for a publisher or publish it myself on the Internet, but who cares. It is all vanity. Yet here I am, back to writing. It has no purpose. It will not bring me fame. It is like my violin playing. I just do it because I am still alive and for better or worse I can do it.

Wisdom of the people

I have been playing Bartok's Violin Duos with a friend, and this made me want to know more about Bartok. I borrowed David Cooper's detailed biography of Bartok. It is a portrait of an era, not only a very detailed account of Bartok's life and music. It also raises questions about Hungarian and generally European liberal history. Hungarians were a minority in lands that were inhabited by many different ethnic groups, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Wallahs,  Germans, Gypsies and Jews. Whatever their ethnic roots, people were defined by the language they spoke. Those who spoke Hungarian were deemed Hungarian. Language defined people's station in society. The aristocracy spoke German, French, even English, the gentry mainly German. The people of the land, the peasantry spoke by and large, Hungarian. Thus Hungarian nationalism was rooted in this class structure.  So Bartok, whose mother was German, developed an interest in Hungarian, and ultimately other ethnic music of the Balkans and North Africa, thus siding with the peoples of the land. This was also a rebellion against urban bourgeois and aristocratic culture, which relished ornamented, decorated, virtuoso gypsy music, the music of banquets at country estates and the music of the city coffee houses. Searching for real Hungarian, and real ethnic music, rejecting the prevailing romantic idiom made a statement about cultural values. 

Listening to Bartok music, some of it still sounds 'barbaric', 'primitive', but some of it is exquisitely beautiful and haunting. I have listened to the First Violin Concerto that he dedicated to Stefi Geyer and the First String Quartet. These are just sheer beautiful music. But embracing nationalism and national music, Bartok was treading on dangerous ground. Bartok's music embraced the music of many different people, without asserting the superiority or inferiority of any. But once nationalism glorifies a mythical past that impies the superiority of one people over another, it becomes poison.

The general who saved me

'How did you survived' the man asked me. He was originally from Odessa. The mother of his daughter-in-law was from Hungary. She was six years old when she was taken to Auschwitz. Somehow she survived and is still fit and well. The man from Odessa knew that few Hungarians survived. How did I survived? Through a series of miracles, I said. What did I know about miracles? I vaguely knew that the Budapest ghetto was mined, that at the end Eichmann planned to blow it up, and send in his Arrow Cross thugs to kill anyone who might have survived.If this didn't happen it was due to the commander of the Wehrmacht forces in Hungary, Generalmajor Gerhard Schidthuber. Raul Wallenberg, the Swedish emissary and possibly CIA spy may, or may not have talked to him and threatened to hold him personally responsible if the 70,000 inhabitants of the ghetto were massacred, and would make sure that he would be hanged after the war,  but it was only Schmidthuber who could stop the slaughter. While Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust vacillated and thought of saving his skin after the war, Hitler and some of his henchmen, and notably Eichmann, were adamant that the Jews of Europe had to be finished off, whatever fate awaited Germany, Schmidthuber far outranked Eichmann and probably thought little of the arrogant SS Lieutenant Colonel SS Uberstrumbannfurher, still going against his instructions straight from Berlin was a major decision. 

Schidthuber took over the command of the 13th Panzer Division in September 1944, by which time Budapest was virtually surrounded by Soviet troops. 

He was a soldier with a distinguished carrier. He served as a junior officer in the First World War, After a stint in civilian life during the 1920s, he rejoined the army in 1933. He was a captain in an infantry regiment, then in 1939 was promoted major, and commanded an infantry battalion. He took part in the Polish campaign in 1939, in 1940 served on the Western front, and later in the Balkan campaign in Yugoslavia. From 1941 he was on the Eastern front, and was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1943 he was involved in heavy defensive fighting near Kiev. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of Iron Cross for his contribution. 

In September 1944, after taking command of the 13th Panzer Division in Budapest he was promoted to Generalmajor. [http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Personenregister/S/SchmidhuberG-R.htm] Who would have wanted such a job? The odds were vastly stacked against the German troops, the war was as good as lost. Yet as a soldier, he had to continue to lead his troops and fight. Perhaps being ordered to allow the slaughter of the last remaining Jews left alive was one step too much for him. Allowing the rampant rebel to slaughter civilians was something too much for his soldierly conscience. He stepped in and stopped the killing. On January 21 he was awarded Oak Leaves as the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his leadership,  three days after the ghetto was liberated. Three weeks later he was killed in the battle on the Buda side of the city. Perhaps he no longer wanted to live with all the burden on his conscience. Generals are seldom killed in battle, but this was a fitting end for a loyal soldier fighting for an unspeakable regime.

Turbulent times

I knew a lot about politics when I was about fifteen, sixteen. I had faith in Stalin as a benevolent father of the free world. When my social studies teacher questioned the influence of Stalin, and portrayed him as an evil dictator I knew that it was not Stalin but his misguided advisers who were responsible for Stalin's dastardly acts. Not only I, but millions of people, and in particular, teenagers who thought about the troubles in the world thought of Stalin as I did, and when Stalin died in 1953, they mourned his passing and were worried about what would happen to the world.Those were amazing times. The Americans were engaged in wars to topple regimes, undermined the communists of Italy and France, sided with brutal dictators. went to war in Korea in support of the corrupt premier Syngman Rhee, They worked on the development of the Hydrogen Bomb and Klaus Fuchs passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. I make this embarrassing confession, because I am reading Khrushchev Remembers, his kind of autobiography with notes by the eminent commentator on Soviet affairs, Edward Crankshaw, It was John Le Carre who aroused my interest in politicians who changed the world. I started with Mikhail Gorbachev. To understand him I had to understand his predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev's story has an epic dimension, the son of an illiterate minor from Donbass, in the industrial part of Western Ukraine, a simple man with very little education, who had the talent for getting things done. He came under the wing of Kaganovich, one of Stalin's henchmen, Stalin took a liking to him, perhaps he saw in him the ultimate worker who rose to power in the workers' communist state. Not being an old-time party leader, and being a man of limited education, Stalin didn't feel threatened by him. Khrushchev moved among terrible, brutal men in Stalin's circle. His life was in constant danger. But he had a touch of humanity. He could relate to simple soldiers, and working with Zhukov and other Russian generals, had a great impact on the Russian victory at Stalingrad. This simple man in his ill cut suits and coarse peasant manners, changed the world by acknowledging the crimes of Stalin. He also opened my eyes. His narrative, his picture of Stalin's inner circle, men who were household names when I grew up, has a Shakesperean dramatic quality. Perhaps only those who lived through those times can appreciate this. Remembering times past is one of the rewards of old age.

Culture vulture

I chatted with an old friend about university education. Though we go back many years, almost his entire life, he is my son's age, by the time he went to university university was almost unrecognisably different from the university I went to and society was very different too. My friend asked me what I studied at university. I left school believing that there are only three things worth studying, Latin, Greek and Mathematics. Where I picked up this piece of nonsense I don't know, but it was in line with my idea of becoming a cultured person. I was quite unprepared for university, but had enough of school. I thought that I was a grown up. Schools were for kids. The thought that I need to learn something at university that would help me earn a living never crossed my mind. You could leave school and walk into a job any day. Making money didn't concern me either. There were more important things in life than getting rich. I wanted to be a cultured, civilised man, and to attain that I had to understand ancient civilisation, language, and to understand science and rational thinking I had to understand mathematics. The reality was that I didn't have enough grounding in mathematics to cope with it at university level and had to give it up, and although I persisted with Latin, and a smattering of Greek, I didn't have a real flair for either. Ironically, I had just enough Latin to teach it, though at least one of my students far outstripped me in no time. He ended up becoming a Professor of Russian. However it appears that I somehow, far from intending to, projected an image of someone who knew much more than in reality I did. People thought of me as an 'intellectual' whatever that is, someone who has views out of step with popular views. Someone who knew me when we were both young, someone whose learning far exceeded anything I could ever aspire to said that at the time he was terrified of me. I must have had the look of a classical scholar that concealed my ignorance. Yet deficient as I am in scholarship and education, I have huge problems with the celebration of post-truth. I can't accept the idea that truth is negotiable, that my gut feeling is as valid as that of the opinion of scholars, scientists, experts. We don't know where this scepticism, doubts about empirical evidence might lead to, but decisions based on gut feeling, ignoring historical and scientific evidence caused tremendous harm in the past.

The burdens and frustrations of office

The failure of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

Yet again, my old friend, The New Yorker, provided me with food for thought. An article about El-Sisi, the military ruler of Egyptian, by Peter Hessler, who spent five years reporting  from Egypt raised questions about the challenges of democracy, the obligation of a man with power to step in and take control, and the pernicious effect of dependence on charity. The promise of the revolution that heralded democracy and brought to power Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood resulted in chaos and political paralysis. In stepped the army and the general in charge of intelligence, the self-effacing General El-Sisi, seemingly untainted by corruption. He proved to be ruthless in face of military challenges. He confronted threats by Islamist extremists in Sinai, terrorism on the ground and in the sky. As a soldier he was trained to fight the enemy, whoever that may be. What he was not trained to do was to address economic challenges. Egypt's economy is entirely dependent on largess from the Arab states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, and Qatar, which consider Egypt a a bulwark of Suni Islam against the threat of Iran and the Shiites. The United States funds the Egyptian military. But this dependence on hand-outs stunted the development of the economy. People with education and skills cannot find outlet for their creative talents, and unemployment or underemployment as well as a lack of hope and prospects leads to restlessness and ultimately threatens El-Sisi's rule, and political stability. There is a parallel with the threats faced by Mickhail Gorbachev, whose initial promise and success was undermined by his inability to manage the economy. It is failure to address unglamorous micro-details while focusing on the grand overall schemes that result in failure.

Jews are news

Guilty as charged! I wrote a letter to the Editor, which elicited replies and added to the controversy. My letter pointed out that the term 'Occupied territory' as it applies to the former land of Palestine has a different meaning for Arabs, Jews, and the rest of the world. When Arabs, i.e. Jordan occupied East Jerusalem, drove the Jews out, destroyed the synagogues, that was OK, but when, after 1967, the Jews moved back to Jerusalem, that was 'occupation' Although some people approved of my letter, and others had disagreed, no one picked up on the obvious historical truth that was my point. Suddenly the newspaper is full of letters about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. When there is no news, bash Israel, and by implication, the Jews. Today there were two long opinion pieces on the subject, one presenting the Palestinian side, arguing on points of international law, the other presenting the Israeli side, taking a broad historical perspective, going back to the Ottoman Empire, the creation of the Arab kingdoms by the British after the First World War, and the promise of a homeland for the Jews.  Both articles are right in essence, but neither comes to grips with the present reality, that the Jews are there to stay in the land formerly known as Palestine, and the Arab refugees who fled from there have nowhere else to go and have lived on international charity for the last sixty years. The New Zealand government's official position is that it support a two state solution  and sees Israel's, and especially Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigence as the one great obstacle to this ideal solution. Hi presto! Murray McCully has the answer to this intractable problem that had eluded all the other great statesmen for two generations. Well, Mr, McCully, I am entirely on your side, I totally agree with you. A two state solution would be an admirable resolution of the problem of two people sharing the same land, but only if Jews can live in peace among Arabs without fear of being murdered just as Arabs live among Jews in Israel. Unfortunately such a radical solution has not proved to be acceptable to the leaders of the Palestinian Arabs (don't call them Palestinians, because that implies that only the Arabs who fled from Palestinian are Palestinians). Unfortunately understanding the issues confronting the Jews of Israel is beyond many New Zealanders who read the newspapers and listen superficially to the news. Even Tom Scott, a prodigiously talented left leaning cartoonist, playwright and film maker, depicted the Arab Israeli conflict in images reminiscent of the images of the Jew in der Sturmer, a huge, overpowering, Israel bullying poor wee, small Murray McCully.

Learning from history to understand the present

John Le Carre is a writer who always intrigued me. He is a convoluted but wonderful story teller, and in his Cold War, Smiley novels he created an imaginary world which somehow seemed to have an uncanny resemblance to a secret but real world of the Cold War. Were Smiley and his crew like real spies, and how real was his nemesis, Karla? Le Carre's latest book, The Pigeon Tunnel, is a series of essays about people he had met and incorporated in his fiction. As always, John Le Carre tells great yarns. Reading The Pigeon Tunnel led me to read about the man who killed off the Cold War, Gail Sheehy's very readable Mikhail Gorbatchev, The Man Who Changed the World. Gorbachev was the protege of Yuri Andopov, head of the KGB, the only institution in Brezhnev's Soviet Union largely untainted by corruption, until he became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet Union in 1982. Was Andropov Le Carre's Karla? Andapov fostered Gorbachev's vision of an egalitarian communist society free of corruption. To understand Gorbachev, you have to understand Andropov, but also Khrustchev, who in his 1956 denunciation of Stalin, attempted to steer the Soviet Union away from Stalin's bloody legacy. And to understand Putin you have to understand Gorbachev. Khruschev, Gorbachev and Putin.all tried to free, not successfully, Russia and Russian communism, from the stranglehold of corrupt apparatchiks, servants of the regime who peddled influence and used their power, often petty and pernicious power, to feather their own nests, while impoverishing their society, the people all around them. Both Khruschev and Gorbachev ultimately failed and were defeated by entrenched forces, Khruschev by Brezhnev, Gorbachev by Yeltsin and his supporters. The jury is out on Putin. He managed to survive and project the image of the strong leader, who enjoys popularity because a strong ruler makes for stability. But reading about Gorbachev prompted me to ask questions about other leaders who took strong stands and were maligned for it. What do we know about Assad who was undermined by fundamentalist Islamist rebels enjoying American patronage. He may not be a good guy, may not have the charm of a Gorbachev, but he is an educating, intelligent man. Syria would be a happier place had his autocratic rule not been undermined. This is something that Putin understands, but Western leaders don't.

The meaning of words

Dave Armstrong, musician, playwright and left leaning weekly columnist of the DominionPost is a writer whose prejudices I, an unreconstructed socialist, often share. Yet when this week's article was entitled 'Three cheers for a brave Murray McCully' I wondered what he was on about. I have some idea of the meaning of the word "brave", as in 'Brave Soldier Janos' who, in the story of Hari Janos captured Napoleon single handed and saved the Emperor's daughter. Brave, for me, means facing great danger with fortitude. I am not aware of Murray McCully facing such danger in proposing New Zealand's resolution on Israeli settlements in the last few days of New Zealand's tenure on the UN Security Council. So what was Dave Armstrong on about? John Kerry, the US Secretary of State whispered a few words in McCully's ear during his very brief visit to New Zealand, and McCully, like a good colonial petty chief, jumped to attentions. You want us to solve the world's most pressing problem, kick that uppity Jew, Benjamin Netanyahu in the teeth, or any other part of his anatomy, we will be glad to oblige. And what would be the down side? At the worst world peace would not break out. At best, we might be able to sell a little more meat to Arab countries. Certainly not to the United States, because that would displease the American farmers and would look bad to the electorate. 

So where is the bravery? Should McCully get a medal, or be just pensioned off to a comfortable diplomatic post where he may not have to face such dire danger, but would perhaps not be able to do much harm either.