From Wikipedia ...
In 1945, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize the
Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it:
The same day
[18] I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never been able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain however, that I have never at any time experienced an equal sense of shock.
I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda". Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through with the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to
Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and the British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.
[19]
Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of the death camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He wrote the following to General Marshall after visiting a German internment camp near Gotha, Germany:
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to "propaganda."
2 comments:
Mr O'Brien:
I have been a long time admirer of your work (particularly your amusing video parodies) so I hope you will accept these words in the spirit of charity.
I believe here that you are entering upon ground in which you need to be ever cautious and always fraternal. I have seen recently a sort of resurgence of - I hate to use the phrase - witch hunting, when it comes to Catholics who have not forgotten their 2,000 year history vis-a-vis the Jews. It is understandable, considering the incessant, never-ending propaganda that has been beaten into our skulls since 1945. I do not wish here to enter into a discussion of Jewish suffering under the Nazis. I accept the fact that many of them suffered, just as I accept the fact that many others suffered as well (even though we don't see films, books and PBS documentaries every other day on those others who have suffered). I merely wish to say that history is very clear about the Jewish intentions towards the Catholic Church and it is those intentions, which are often malevolent, which cause concern to many Catholics. Available to you as well as everyone else are reliable, calm and historical reports of this "tension" between Christ's Church and the synagogue and to deny that such tension exists is to live a delusion. Jewish Sources and Catholic sources agree on these matters. One of the greatest historians of the 20th century, William Thomas Walsh, very soundly discussed these matters in his famous books ISABELLA OF SPAIN and PHILIP II. You could do no better than to read these fine works.
The Catholic response to Judaism is quite simple: these are unbaptized people who will not attain Heaven until they convert to the true Church, the Church that was in fact their birthright, Catholicism. Despite the idiocies coming from such Cardinals as Koch, Kasper, Wuerl, Dolan and others the Jews need to come into the Church in order to be saved. Antisemitism, as defined as a hatred of the Jewish race, is a sin in the eyes of the Church; on the other hand, the Church has always (until recently) fought against Jewish supremacy and Jewish power. If this sounds like a contradiction, it is not so and a deeper study of revolutionary Judaism will show you that there is much to fear from this tragically misguided but extremely powerful people. The Church, even in the face of the persecutions it has suffered at their hands still loves them, and still wishes them to renounce their false religion and come to the Church.
But I am getting long-winded. My advice to you is to hold your fire against "traditionalists" whom you find to be not sufficiently pro-Jewish. Yes, some of them express their views clumsily...but haven't we all at one time or another? Hold your fire for now and try to familiarize yourself with the historical record. It is all there for you to see, if you want to.
My very best wishes to you and yours with my hopes that you continue on with your fine work.
Schmez,
When Gonzalez denies that there was a systematic persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, is that being "not sufficiently pro-Jewish"? When a Facebook friend says that the Jews have elected every president since WW2 and that Jews assassinated JFK is that "expressing his views clumsily"? When, on Holocaust Awareness Day, a trad Catholic posts on his Facebook wall a snide condemnation of the Jews from a strained theological position is that an example of the Church standing firm against her persecutors?
I have defended Belloc and Chesterton, who both engage Jews and Jewish issues fairly, but this nonsense I will not excuse.
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