An 89 year old Jewish Holocaust survivor (Adolek Kohn) from the Second World War revisits sites in Poland where millions were gassed by the Nazis. His grandchildren accompany him to the site.
This video has drawn controversy and a rebuke from the American Jewish Anti Defamation League. I see it as a celebration of survival and the continuance of a cultural thread that goes back thousands of years.
thanks for putting it up I saw it on german TV and I think it is okay--it is for everyone to deal with as they see fit--and if I had survived such horror I to would dance there now--:)
ReplyDeleteI agree Heidi. Thanks for your positive feedback.
ReplyDeleteCoverage from the Associated Press on the video:
ReplyDeleteI agree with the Abraham Foxman from anti defamation league that this video could only be made by those who did survive. If a regular citizen did any sort of dance on the same ground, it would be disrespectful.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think it was wonderful for this man and his family to reclaim this place in a joyful manner.
Well put Marianne.
ReplyDeleteAny other music video from a German/Polish death camp certainly isn't needed from anyone not connected in some way to these totally inhuman events.
I think it is a good move to make this video, but of course it was not only Jews that died at these camps so this song is also for the Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, homosexuals and socialists...who happily despite IBM and IG Farben also survived to fight another day.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile who created this problem in the first place?....well here's one well known name anyway....Prescott Bush and before him:-
"George Walker, GW Bush's great-grandfather, also set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust. The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3255.htm
Yes, when it comes to great fortunes, AA, as Balzac once said, there is always a crime. Of course crime doesn't begin to encompass the supporters of the Third Reich.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. Much more to go into there of course.
A great story and a magnificent two fingered salute to the nazis. He's earned the right to do anything he likes there and his children who after all would not be here but for his survival of such inhumanity.
ReplyDeleteThis story must never be forgotten or denied despite the best efforts of the neo-nazis and extreme right wing idiots that we seem to have far too many of these days.
Exactly Jim. Very well put!
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Mr Foxman that only holocaust survivors can dance at Auschwitz (or anywhere else for that matter)....the survival we are celebrating is not only that of Adolek Kohn or his family and as I indicate in my other comment not only of Jews.
ReplyDeleteRespect or disrespect is no simple matter and as an anarcho-communist anti-fascist myself I celebrate the survival of ideologies the Nazi tried desperately to eliminate.
I personally hope one day to dance in Gaza after the final fall of those allies of Nazi Germany the Zionists... who have taken up their mantle and commit crimes against Palestinian humanity every day.
So whilst I think it is great to dance for a survivor of the German concentration camps, I am just a tad concerned that the dancing is premature - until the future survivors of American concentration camps like Guantanamo Bay and Bagram can also join in the dancing....otherwise I think it is a great gesture of defiance in the face of psychopathic warpedness, so good for them.
Let me suffice to say, AA, that, paraphrasing the philosoper, I am for any dancing that celebreates the survival of the innocent over the tyranny of minds and bodies of any oppressed people.
ReplyDeleteI'll drink to that Doug.
ReplyDelete