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Ingrid Rimland |
I was five, my sister Wally a baby of less than a year, when my father was taken as one of the very last victims of the Communist purges, in the mello fall of 1941. Three weeks later, while my family was waiting at the railroad station to be exiled as well, the German Wehrmacht swept through our streets and into our hearts and our lives. Often, an audience will challenge we on this very point: didn't we suffer horrendously at the hands of the Nazi oppressors? Truth compels me to say, we did not. There was no reason to hurt us. We were a pacifist, non-political group of frightened, helpless women and children that went by various names: njemtse, kulaks at first, later called Ostflüchtlinge, Schwarzmeerdeutsche, Volksdeutsche -- remnants of a vicious Soviet persecution, the fear of which in time would push us out of the Ukraine and back into a Heimatland at arms, a Germany, that turned into a molten holocaust, and finally a Germany in ruins and dust and ashes and blood and tears and shame.
Of Russia, I know very little firsthand other than what my grandmother Katja told me, but I remember a great deal of our flight. My own conscious journey began in 1943 when, at the age of seven, I joined the long, cold, bloody trek westward from where more than a century ago my German ancestors had come. Through two vicious winters did we thus trek -- always westward, always hungry, always cold. We trekked on wagons and on foot, in trains, on our parents' backs, and finally on sleds and boards and overturned tables and chairs in the icy January of 1945, alongside the battered vehicles of the retreating German army -- through Russia, Rumania, through Poland, into the eastern part of Germany, across the frozen-over Oder River. Always there were the Russian guns at our backs, the underground resistance left and right, around us the rain-dripping or ice-crusted forests, above us the bombers from a place called "America," in front of us, eventually, the holocaust that was Berlin. Not a great many made it that far, but we did: my grandmother, my mother, my young sister, and I.
I was nine when, at last, the Russian terror bulldozed its way over the last living flesh, and what happened in those days near Berlin, I can still not totally remember. Suffice it to say that what I saw and experienced made me lose speech for a week -- for rapings, beatings, systematic torture, wholesale executions were facts of everyday life all through that summer and into the fall. I remember the later days all too well -- nature's abundance closing its green, impartial cover over the dead and the dying of the war. I was left to my own daring, dangerous, scavenging devices, for no one had time for me. My mother was in hiding to save herself from the repeated Russian abuse, my grandmother was stoically tending to the dying soldiers underfoot, my sister too little to be of use or comfort. Thus I was on my own until late in the year when the threat of repatriation made us flee westward once more, in night and in fog across a mine-riddled field into the British-occupied sector. Here we were found by Mennonites from abroad who had been sent by their churches to find out if any of us had survived.
We were sheltered, and clothed, and fed, and relocated in countries that would have us. North America in those years did not. The United States and Canada had strict immigration laws that kept out the widows and children who lacked strong sponsorship. But South America was willing. Paraguay would take us all -- the old, the crippled, the many widowed families, the many scroungy kids. My adventurous, young, still beautiful mother turned her back on Germany without too much ado, but my grandmother Katja cried bitterly the day we pushed off the shores of the country we had called our Heimat for more than a century on foreign Russian soil. It was our Heimat no more.
I was twelve when I set foot in hot, sweltering, insect-infested Volendam, a virgin Mennonite colony in the eastern part of Paraguay. I had just started school in Russia when we set out on our journey, and in the following years, wherever possible, my hungry mind would grab a bit of schooling here and there. But it was pitifully little education that I could claim -- and in Paraguay, in the beginning, there was none. Sitting on a tree stump and writing on my knees -- for in the pioneer years there were no buildings, no stores, no roads, no wells, no books of any kind -- impatience and youth got the better of me, and I asked what any bright teenager might ask: Wasn't I entitled to life? Wasn't there more in store for my future than what I had here: grinding poverty, backbreaking work, intellectual starvation coupled with a certain religious dogmatism that had found a flourishing life by design and by default for a variety of reasons too complex for me to sort out at that time? I quit "going to school" over a trifling matter with "Ohm Jasch" (the villain in my book). And afterwards I drifted through odd jobs here and there, without much purpose or intent, but with my eyes securely fastened on the most handsome boy that I could find. There was nothing else on which to fasten my considerable young energy and verve.
When many years later I found myself in Canada, I was married: with an infant so sick he could not hold his head on his own, with a second baby on the way, and with an "education" of no more than three years, were I to add the days and weeks I had been in school. I could read and write, to be sure, but that was as far as it went.
Had circumstances been a little more benevolent, I think I would have picked up school on my own as soon as I set foot on civil land. But on my hands I now had a child that was no human being -- or so the doctors told me in varying degrees of tact and concern.
The entire thrust of my considerable energy thus went into a dark, narrow, frustrating tunnel -- how to get help for my child. The costs for me were horrendous in terms of mental health -- five, six, seven, eight years of a hopelessly frustrating struggle until I finally did find a school that promised to give my youngster a start.
That day came in the fall of 1967, after we had managed to move to Wichita, Kansas. I was thirty-one years old by then, when I took a look at myself for the first time in my life.
I went home that day, and closed the doors and windows, and cried as I did not know I could cry. When I was sure that I could breathe, I picked myself up and took myself to Wichita State University, where there was, I had been told, "a German-speaking professor." I told him: I am here, and that is that." I did not know what a university was. I did not know what I was going to do there. I did not know that I would get a degree. I did not know how long it would take, what I would do with it once I had earned it, what kind of work might be involved. I knew only one simple, overwhelming certainty: this was an institution of higher education, and that's where I belonged!
This man, who happened to be a dean of one of the colleges, said simply: "You can't. You don't speak English. You don't have a high school diploma. What will you do?" I said: "What will you do? For I'm not leaving!"
Last summer, while on a tour in behalf of The Wanderers, I met him again. He told me that when he saw me first that day in the fall of 1967, he thought I would fragment like glass in his office.
Those were heavy, heady, heavenly years, despite the mind-boggling struggle with English. Four years and two summers later I had my BA, magna cum laude at that, with a double major in Psychology and German.
Halfway through my undergraduate years I began to realize that I had a story to tell - a tale of epic proportions. I was a human fragment with a voice, having come out of the midst of a destructive hurricane that had swept me through countries and across continents and oceans and hurt and despair and disasters and more tears and suffering than I could ever recount -- but here I was, still firmly on my feet, still thinking and feeling. And I came to feel very clearly, even while I was groping and struggling with a foreign language: this was a struggle not in vain! To paraphrase a passage in my book -- to have a purpose in life meant being blessed abundantly. There was not one family of my times and my background that had not been scarred for life by heartbreak untold and nowhere recorded. Why did it have to be? The war had been for naught. The war had choked truth and brutalized conscience and cut with deadly knives into living, quivering flesh. No one was left untouched. It would take decades to heal the wounds.
This story had to be told. This struggle
would never be told, were it not for me and my considerable singleness of
purpose -- my conviction that this was a story worth telling, controversial as
it might turn out to be. No one else was left to tell it -- for the people who
could have told it with sensitivity and intelligence and passion and, most of
all, a measure of some ethnic distance, were no more. Our intellectuals, our
finest minds, our leaders, were left along the way -- in the icy soil of
Siberia, in the wet trenches of the retreating German armies, in the ashes of
1945, even in the red, dry soil of Paraguay. Some of the strongest of us were no
more, but I was alive, and so help me, with English I was finding a voice to
tell it. And I was going to tell it my way. I wrote The Wanderers first
and foremost for myself, using a new-found language to make sense out of
senseless disaster. But I also wrote it for my ancestors and for the ones who
will come after me, in reverence and out of respect for my German-Russian
heritage that is so rich and so unknown. And when my novel was finished and
started to get some acclaim, I felt a choking, bitter pride -- for were it not
for the strength inherent in my German-Russian genes, were it not for my
German-Russian heritage and its uncompromising, awesome, stubborn strength, I
would most certainly today not be here to taste it.
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This article was reproduced from: http://www.grhs.com/data/hrsample/hr23.html
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(reviewed by S. Michael McMillen)
Push-button critics and sound-bite sages tell us that the age of the epic is past. They are wrong. Ingrid Rimland has written an inter-generational, moral panorama - an epic in prose depicting what people can be when they embrace both freedom and responsibility.
Like the poets of ancient Greece, she does not evade evil. This author knows the human condition. She tells her story in galloping, staccato prose that sometimes slows to a trot, but seldom gets bogged down in pools of exposition. She illustrates what it takes for man to earn his bread - and what happens when a dash of leaven is added to the whole. wanton cruelty.
"Lebensraum!" is her trilogy, which traces the lives and deaths, the loves and hates, the hopes realized and the dreams dashed of people from two German families, the Neufelds and the Epps.
The first book follows them from their successes in the Ukraine during the early 19th century and closes on the brink of the war that tore Western civilization asunder and the revolution that was Russia's undoing.
The story opens with a prologue by the novels' narrator, Erika, a descendant of the noble Neufeld clan and a survivor of the Soviets' rape of Berlin in 1945. Erika is somewhat estranged from her family and has chosen to work in Hollywood. She and her mother, Mimi, another woman who has lived through the bestial Soviet victory, both know first-hand the degradation and suffering visited upon the German people in World War II.
Yet, like Cassandras in reverse, these two women bear the guffaws and sanctimonious calumnies of contemporaries who will not believe them or even consider that the Germans could be anything but sadistic murderers.
Erika, however, has written a script for a film called *Left and Right,* the precise nature of which the reader must deduce from hints in the text. There are indications that the theme of this film is Revisionist and may expose the brutality suffered by the German people during the Second World War. We learn that the film has gained some public acceptance. Given what Americans have been told about the war, this is a significant breakthrough.
Nevertheless, the story is not set in the present day. It commences with a history lesson recounting the migration of peace-loving German pioneers. Early on, one of the epic's tensions comes screaming into the fore. This group of pacifists bases its creed on the Bible-sola scriptura-with no need of intermediaries. They refuse spiritual tribute to Papa, and they refuse military service to Caesar.
Hounded, taxed, persecuted, martyred, the sect clings to life with a robust ardor born of pure Scriptural faith. Their tenacious confidence in their ultimate deliverance helps them forge a stoic endurance and determination in the face of furious persecution.
The hounded pilgrims look to the East for living space, the land, liberty and peace needed to survive and prosper. Eventually they find a patron in the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who needs people to cultivate the lands along the Black and Caspian seas. She offers the German pacifists free land, self-rule, protection and exemption from conscription.
>From the start, the novel focuses on two complementary approaches to the business of living. "Some dug in deep, as Peter Neufeld did, a man with expert hands and fierce ambition." These are the men of active, curious, inventive minds, men of accurate reckoning and rolled-up sleeves who survey the problem, spit on their palms and get to work.
"Others," we are told, ". . . stayed in their covered wagons from where they prayed to Heaven day and night." Among these people is one of the Elders, a man named Hans Epp.
There is a division of labor among these hearty pioneers. Some dig and reap; others meditate and pray.
Eventually the grave and ambitious Germans establish their settlement and sink firm roots in their adopted land. The story moves steadily through that century of progress when even the land of the Tsars felt something of the heady aroma of freedom.
The peace was not to last for long-on the Eastern front or the Western. The protagonists fall prey to the twin snares of those who cling dogmatically to peace: beclouding, complacent pride in the lasting conditions of contentment and vulnerability to aggressors.
Thus, in the very nature of the people who are to enact this vast drama, we see the seeds of later suffering. Why do the innocent often end up crushed in the bloody mud? The search for "Lebensraum!" is partially the quest for an answer to this moral conundrum.
One of the themes at the heart of *Lebensraum* is that virtue is a necessary condition of life, prosperity and happiness. The pilgrims grow and prosper in a community they name Apanlee, which will become the spiritual magnet, the inspirational font, the symbol of life and "Lebensraum" for the good offspring of the Neufelds and Epps.
Yet early on, a smoking fissure is apparent. As the productive and ambitious-represented by Peet Neufeld, Peter's son-hew a cornucopia out of the rich soil of Apanlee, the pious-represented by Hans Epp's son Willy-begin to chastise and warn that the judgment of God must soon descend and crush the pride of the successful farmers and artisans.
These warnings go largely unheeded. After all, doesn't God bless thrift and industry? He's on His throne and the Romanovs-now the Apanlee Germans' staunch patrons-are on theirs.
In a heartrending scene, Peet Neufeld and his wife Greta are entertaining a Romanov prince who says, beaming with gratitude, "Peet Neufeld, see that sun? As long as it hangs in the sky, we of the house of Romanov vouch for protection. Always." Sadly, within decades, the devil himself will smash that pledge to dust, dethrone and massacre the Romanovs and unleash terror and death upon Apanlee and all of Russia.
Living space is the call that the industrious heed and follow. Another of the epic's contrasts opens up when some of the Apanlee Germans decide to seek their Lebensraum on the abundant prairies of America.
The cavalcade continues as new babies are born to replenish the souls of those who have died. America appeals to Peet Neufeld's son Nicky because it offers virgin opportunity to people who are willing to stand on their own and earn their keep. Nevertheless, the American apple is not immune to the vicissitudes of life or the rot and corruption engendered by second-handers, parasites and outright thieves.
Nicky and his wife, Willy's daughter Lizzy, set sail for America. Nicky is drowned. Upon arriving in America, the widow Lizzy is swindled by a man named Donoghue for a quick buck and left with a piece of seemingly worthless prairie wilderness for her troubles.
Under Lizzy's maternal guidance, however, her strong and noble son Jan leads his community in building a breadbasket of the Kansas wastes that have fallen to their lot. Contempt turns to envy in the mouths of the swindler and his family, who then seek to wrest the land back in order to sate themselves on the achievements of Jan Neufeld.
The Donoghue's goal through the years will be to "prove" that the sale was only a lease.
As the Germans prosper in their new community of Mennotown, Kansas, a word begins to sound faintly like the scratching of a hungry rat among trash and shards: Equality. This word will reverberate and knell throughout "Lebensraum!"
Eventually it will ignite the flames of revolution, explicitly savage in Russia, bureaucratized and sanitized in America. Indeed, it is one of the negative themes of the story, a counterpoint to the thrift, decency and faith that set the builders of Apanlee and of Mennotown apart from and above their fellows.
In scene after scene and encounter after encounter, our author shows us how those who take responsibility for themselves and face their work tenaciously have no need in the world for "Equality" in the sense that is bruited so noisily, that of income redistribution and uniformity of condition.
If equality has any meaning in a political context, it can only be in the sense that each person is an individual with his own rights and must be governed by the same laws and principles and treated by the same standards as all other people.
The heroes and heroines of *Lebensraum* learn to their dismay that the baying wolves about them pervert this principle. Equality functions as a demonic wrench to tighten here, loosen there as the whims of the worthless dictate. It twists and strangles the God-fearing and productive in Russia, as ignorant curs who have half-digested intellectual slogans, try to make milk-cows of their betters.
In America, the cry of equality is heard in the baying of the Finkelsteins, who find it a useful political tool and the Donoghues, who find it a standing meal-ticket. Equality corrodes family structure and banishes harmony from the relations between the sexes. The siren song of the suffragettes is heard in the pages of "Lebensraum!" as a feisty character named Josie-who eventually marries and torments the dutiful Jan Neufeld-despises the vocations of wife and mother and busies herself among the moneylenders and political malcontents.
Finally, those who establish a state religion on the basis of certain peoples' suffering, while ignoring or denigrating the suffering of others, invoke "equality" while seeking to stifle or outlaw even the discussion of truth.
This brings us back to the Revisionist side of "Lebensraum!" Rimland, who has done so much for World War II Revisionism, takes her mission a step further with "Lebensraum!"
A movement certainly needs a professional, systematic development in expository prose. Among the many who are providing this are David Irving, Michael Hoffmann II and Ingrid Rimland herself. Nevertheless, if a movement is to gain popular recognition and become part of the warp and woof of a civilization, it must be given flesh and blood, perceptual form. It must be embodied in art. Just as Ayn Rand illustrated her philosophy of Objectivism in characters such as Howard Roark, Dagney Taggart and John Galt, so Ingrid Rimland has given Revisionism a face in the personas of Erika, Jan Neufeld, Jonathan and others.
"Lebensraum!" is, of course, much more than I have been able to hint here. In its pages are limned the good, bad and ugly feelings of a special band of religious separatists.
The heroes and heroines of *Lebensraum* are in the world, but at odds with it. They are always searching. The allure of productive freedom calls some of them to America; religious forebodings and a misguided spiritual zeal call one group of pilgrims led by Class Epp, Willy's son, on a disastrous trek eastward from Apanlee into the wild wastes of Russia. The old virtues and customs sustain the good folk, even as newfangled ideas and bold experimental values whistle to them and whisper in their ears.
I was personally struck by the vibrant and cohesive family life that is portrayed in Book I. Rimland's depiction of family rings true to man's nature and potential. Hers is no sugar-coated puff job on the joys and sorrows of kinship. The exigencies of daily life and the social corrosion of a hostile society both take their toll on men and women of the best intentions.
The old ways, however, are always the foundation on which the good folk stand. Indeed, one senses that the robust love nurtured in the bosom of family is itself a vital part (of) Lebensraum, living space.
Book I ends on an ominous note, as the First World War and the Soviet revolution hover. The reader must realize that the people of "Lebensraum!" exhibit the full range of human emotions-from the tender to the desperate to the prejudicial.
*Lebensraum* does not omit or evade the suspicions and fears-justified or otherwise-of a misunderstood and often persecuted minority. This minority, however, that grows the world's wheat and mends the world's garments has found few spokesmen or defenders.
In the opening book of "Lebensraum," Ingrid Rimland establishes the groundwork for that defense."
(reviewed by S. Michael McMillen)
The second book of Lebensraum! opens with the German pacifists in Apanlee sowing and reaping as rumors of impending war and revolution sweep across Russia.
Hein Neufeld, one of Peet Neufeld's grandsons, continues to dismiss the threats of upheaval with naive confidence. His own family is already paying for an early mistake, his fathering of an illegitimate son, Dominik. Dominik's mother is a Ukrainian woman, a youthful infatuation named Natasha, whom Hein and his wife Marleen take into their home as a domestic.
In Mennotown, Hein's cousin, Jan Neufeld continues to prosper, even as his wife Josephine throws thrift to the winds and spends recklessly among the moneylenders and "progressives" of Wichita. Faith is still supreme in Apanlee and Mennotown, but it begins to grow flabby and to fraternize with presumption.
Meanwhile unanchored intellectualism masquerades as discernment while seducing its victims in the Ukraine and in Kansas. The physically handicapped but bookish Uncle Benny, an illegitimate cousin to Hein on the Epps' side, compensates for his physical deformity by addicting himself to reading. He also writes articles advocating radical reform.
Like many who choose to soar in the rarefied realm of abstract speculation detached from reality, Uncle Benny will help to unleash the forces of his own destruction. His counterpart and correspondent in America is Jan's wife Josephine, a woman also obsessed with book knowledge and scornful of the robust, rustic virtues of her husband and mother-in-law. With itching ears she lusts after every wind of doctrine, intoning the slogans of "equality," dressing in provocative new fashions, shocking her Christian neighbors by her intimacy with the money-lending Jews of Wichita and agitating on behalf of the suffragettes.
Josephine, however, is in America, and thus has the priceless opportunity to redeem herself, or at least find her senses, before it's too late.
The theme that it is already far too late runs throughout Lebensraum! Book II like a telltale draft in Winter. If civilization and decency are not to wilt and fade from the earth, those who uphold them must overcome manifest temptations and redeem the times.
Book II is a tragedy of errors. Some of the characters put up a valiant fight in the midst of horrendous conditions. Some, whose primary enemy lies within rather than without, succumb and yield the field to their ravenous antagonists.
We are reminded throughout this book that as men sow, they will also reap. The earthly wages of sin, however, are seldom apportioned in any logical or just form. That's because evil itself is neither logical nor just. It does, however, exact a toll. Its effects can sometimes be modified by subsequent reform and repentance, but as everyone in Apanlee and Mennotown knows, not even God can alter last year's harvest.
Much of Lebensraum! - Book II is a horror story. First, the Russian nation is knocked out of the war. Hein's son Dominik, who has grown into a bitter, malevolent and amoral man, temporarily finds a purpose in the military defense of Russia. He ends up in prison and is eventually released upon the coming of the Red revolution. He joins with a group of desperadoes now feeding upon their country.
Resentful of his own illegitimacy and the lack of love bestowed upon him in his childhood, Dominik leads his Red comrades to Apanlee and betrays its inhabitants. The new revolutionaries embark on a blood-soaked spree of unspeakable cruelty and terror. Among the dead is Hein himself, the grower of food murdered by hands that know only force and fury. Uncle Benny, whose own scarlet prose helped fan the fires of this onslaught, and his wife Dorothy are killed savagely by the revolutionaries.
Some do miraculously survive. Among those who live through the first wave of terror are Hein's wife Marleen, her twin sons Yuri and Sasha and her daughter Mimi. A cousin named Jonathan, grandson of the ill-fated Uncle Benny, manages to escape and takes up a life as an itinerant beggar. He will find his way to Germany and return to impose some justice on the hordes that have ransacked and bled his native Apanlee.
Much of the second book recounts the increasingly tight noose of terror that the communists wrap around Apanlee. Wanton shootings and deportations to Siberia begin to clear the land of the productive.
The Reds seek to grow bread by force and issue paper quotas to people forbidden to enjoy even the meager fruits that the blasted land will still yield. The commissars take a devilish delight in exercising arbitrary authority and arresting people who have done nothing.
Apanlee is decimated, but Marleen, the twins and Mimi are able to hang on, partly because the flinty Natasha acts as a go-between with her son Dominik, now elevated to leadership of the collective.
Having betrayed his hometown to brutal beasts, Dominik becomes responsible for fulfilling the quotas for his Soviet masters. His "inheritance" of Apanlee is as illegitimate as he is. Terror, coercion and crude animal cleverness are his only tools.
The thugs and hooligans who rise to fill the ranks of the new party apparatus revel in their chance to dominate their betters and destroy them. People are taught slogans, as if demoralized, terrorized innocents are likely to be inspired by them. The slogans, however, like everything else about the Soviets, are intended to cow and strike fear. In what must be deliberate and cynical irony, schoolchildren are taught to refer to the time of the tsars as that "before the revolution made us free."
In Mennotown the old Faith holds out longer against the new Freedom, but Josephine chafes and pouts under restrictions on her intellectual and social whims. Throughout their marriage, Jan has yielded to her and indulged her every wish. He wants a son however. Their first son died in a freak winter accident and Josie gives birth to a succession of daughters.
Having reached the frontier of middle age, Josephine does not wish to venture another pregnancy. Jan, however, beginning to sense that his marriage is running out of control, has other ideas. Although Josephine will come to idolize her last-born, a son she nicknames Rarey, she will never forgive Jan for the importunate passion that leads to the lad's conception.
Josephine may be a thorn and a trial to Jan, but she is a comely one. She even makes efforts at halting her own slide into modernist depravity. Eventually, she admits that she fought the law of nature - and the law won.
In the meantime, a series of disasters dooms the once proud Jan Neufeld. His wife's expenditures pile on top of his own questionable credit purchases. Previous Neufelds would never have surrendered themselves to the lenders. The Donoghues have not retreated from their aims. The nascent labor movement draws them to itself and they begin to make escalating demands on their employer, Jan Neufeld.
One of Jan's mills is burnt, and suspicion hovers around the Donoghues. It turns out that Jan is not quite in step with modern times. He never bothered to take out the insurance policy on the mill.
Jan's consequent illness symbolizes the malaise and torpor of Western civilization reeling on both sides of the Atlantic. The old verve is gone. He does seek temporary solace in the theology of the elder Dewey Epp, but to no avail. As Jan deteriorates, Josephine hitches her star to one more pipe dream, that of moving to California!
Eventually, Jan is reduced to seeking a loan - now federally subsidized and regulated. In a scene resonating with Randian overtones, Jan draws upon his last ounce of self-respect to negotiate a loan from the Donoghue now arrogantly ensconced at the bank.
The dialogue between a man who is still trying to do business in an honest, straightforward fashion and a moral degenerate who knows only how to function as a conduit of second-hand power is an eloquent summation of the rot that has eaten its way into the entrails of a once proud and independent country.
The scene with the Donoghue "bankster" is prelude to Jan's final fall. Throughout the years, he had turned his back on the firewater offered by his tippling friend Doctorjay. At this point, however, Jan has been broken by his pressing crown of woes. He gets drunk with Doctorjay and takes refuge in the hospitality of Dewey Epp's soup kitchen.
When Jan learns that even the alms he is reduced to accepting there are underwritten by Roosevelt and his raiders, the dam bursts. He shoots Dewey dead and ends up killing himself.
Lebensraum! Book II is an unflinchingly honest portrayal of the early year's of this now hoary century. The aspirations that animated Peet Neufeld and his sons have been snuffed out in the hissing spittle of the architects of the New World Order. The price of joy is not even quoted amid this procession of market collapse, legalized looting, war, revolution and reigns of terror.
If the twentieth century's reflection makes us recoil in disgust, the fault lies not in those who have the historic facts, artistic vision, and courage to hold the glass up steadily. The thick miasma of despair that permeates "Lebensraum!" II is scarcely dispelled by Doctorjay's drunken defiance of the banksters with which the book closes.
But it does show someone still has a spine.
Faith. Hope. Charity. Not even the ravages of Soviet Russia and social-welfare America can annihilate these. Faith hangs on tenaciously in the face of ridicule and persecution. Charity is widely counterfeited, nowhere more piously than in America, where the Old Time Religion gets cozier by the day with Rooseveltian radicalism and sets up tax-subsidized soup kitchens with one hand and dispenses tracts with the other. Genuine charity manages to limp along in its own venerable, unspectacular way. The unflagging hospitality of Lizzie, the bonhomie of Doctorjay-even the mule-like loyalty of Natasha to Marleen and her kin stand out as coin of this realm.
And what of hope? What hope can survive the ruthless Russian bear allied with the crowns and republics of Europe and the languorous strength of America?
Ask a hungry urchin taken in by a stern and loving Hausfrau. Ask Marleen Neufeld, an emaciated prisoner in her own homeland. Ask the emaciated heirs and the ghosts of those who sowed and reaped, who built and nurtured Apanlee.
Their answers will be heard.
(reviewed by S. Michael McMillen)
Of all America's foes in all of her wars, no enemy has been more vilified for so long as the Third Reich. Every now and again, someone wonders why.
If novelty enhances a novel's appeal, Lebensraum! Book III should be a bestseller. The sections dealing with the Second World War will strike many readers as the literary equivalent of a photographic negative. For a change, the Nazis are wearing the white hats.
While writing this review, I came across a relevant quotation from Founding Father by Richard Whalen: "World War II was the liberals' war and they are understandably determined to uphold their version of its origins with all the formidable political and intellectual resources at their command."
Since the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler has been the West's Villain for All Seasons. Books, plays, movies, "docudramas," and television series feature Nazis and Germans interchangeably in the stock roles of archetype of evil and scourge of mankind. The only time National Socialists aren't portrayed as goose-stepping demons is when they are cast as hyperpunctilious, heiling buffoons.
In Lebensraum! Book III the reader will find no such caricatures of the German Volk. He will find instead an army and a people fighting fiercely to preserve their own race, a nation stung to the core by an all-destroying, internationalist foe.
It would be petty to object that Lebensraum! Book III fails to present an objective moral study of Hitler and his Reich. As a novel, the focus of Lebensraum! is not statistical analysis of the motives and actions of its characters. Lebensraum! is not a comprehensive history of World War II. The story is, however, rooted in fact.
History attests that there were people during the Second World War who welcomed the Nazis as saviors and heroes. The German pioneers of Lebensraum! who had once grown prosperous under the Romanovs are their representatives.
When one considers the nature of Stalin's gulag state, its goal of yoking all its subject under collectives directed by a central committee in Moscow, one can understand that the people crushed under its iron boot might have looked upon the armies of the Führer with grateful anticipation.
Lebensraum! III gives us an exciting and heartbreaking glimpse of one people's moment of vindication against a comprehensively brutal engine of oppression. After the hellish terror unleashed by the Soviet revolution, Justice cries out for vengeance from the skies - or from the earth.
Young Jonathan, who escaped from the Soviets and found his way to Germany, grows into a loyal soldier of the Fatherland, and is among the Landsers who reclaim - albeit temporarily - Apanlee for its rightful owners.
Eventually, owing to overextension and strategic errors on the part of the Führer (e.g., his refusal to permit retreat) the Wehrmacht is driven back by the Red Army, now counted among the Allies. One of the tragedies stalking the stoic German survivors is that those who could have helped defend them, side instead with the beast seeking to devour them.
The remnants of the Neufeld and Epp clans in the Ukraine are unable to understand the world's indifference to their suffering. They cannot imagine that the rest of the world is infected with the same notions of international collectivism as the Soviet state.
They are utterly baffled and mystified when America, the land of Liberty, which received their own kin not so many decades earlier, joins forces with Stalin and his Reds.
When people are faced with such an inexplicable fact, they seek desperately to satisfy themselves with some kind of an answer. Lebensraum! records accurately the answer that many fixed upon: international Jewry.
The objective reader will bear in mind that the anti-Judaism expressed by some characters in these novels is NOT an invention of the author. The reader would do well to note that most of the main characters bear no animosity towards the Jews or anyone else. They simply wish to be left alone. Moreover, at one point, young Jonathan starts to tell what sounds like an off-color story about Jews and is quickly chastised by Heidi, the woman who had rescued him from the streets. She explains that some of the good people with whom she had traded are Jews. The point, I believe, is that although bigoted anti-semitism unfortunately existed in Germany and elsewhere, it has nothing to do with the desire of the Germans for freedom and living space.
For centuries, the Jews had been viewed with suspicion throughout Christian Europe. This is not fundamentally because they happened to be adept at trade and finance; these functions are vital to an economy and constitute nothing inherently dishonorable or exploitative. Marked by their refusal to embrace the cross and creed of Christ, the Jews were frozen out of the circle of production by the economically fastidious (and sometimes woefully ignorant) Christians, and they became the exchangers, lenders and middlemen. Not surprisingly, many succumbed to the temptations inherent in such preoccupations and came to regard the people whose money they managed as convenient nuisances- profitable in the collective but of little consequence individually.
Marxism views the mass of men essentially the same way - and excoriates Christianity to boot. Socialist mythology sees its chosen people - the proletariat or working class - scattered and dispersed across the world and mistreated by bourgeois, primarily Christian, society.
Many Jews became the willing spokesmen and penmen for this new global ideology. Many were archly sympathetic to its call for a strictly secular state that would tear down the crosses and churches in deference to dreams of futuristic fraternity and equality.
Marx promised a far-off Utopia to all men in exchange for a radical break with the individualistic, nationalist Christian past. The proverbial wandering Jew became in many instances an ambitious booster for both the international banker and international Bolshevik. The apparent contradiction in this union of "banksters" and rowdies continues to mislead the unwary to this day.
Ingrid Rimland has described the concomitant growth of these two forces vividly and dramatically in Lebensraum!, particularly in Book III. Her picture of an America slouching through the Roosevelt years convinced of the gospel verity of the New York Times is not a flattering one.
Nevertheless, I, as a patriotic American who believes in the founding principles of this nation, applaud the author for penning so blunt a satire of her adopted land.
America has often been described as a country with a great and eager heart. Sometimes her eagerness does her no good: the willingness to believe the glowing and deceptive dispatches from the Soviet Union; the reflexive anti-Germanism imbibed freely from the media outlets of the era; the gullible surrender to state welfarism, so long as it is buttered liberally with prattle of "compassion" and "tolerance."; the sheep-like acquiescence in the quasi-religion of received propaganda concerning the nature and extent of German mistreatment of the Jews during the war.
All this - what one might dub a pathological obsession with acting out good intentions - is symbolized by Rarey Neufeld, who goes enthusiastically off to war to kill his German brethren for Uncle Sam (and Uncle Joe). Book III ends with a touching letter to his wife from this genuinely good man, who is killed in the waning hours of the war by anti-aircraft fire from his own German cousin, Erika.
World War II was a disaster for everyone involved. Nevertheless, the corruption and self-hatred it fomented in the USA and Germany contributed to the unthinkable rise of the clumsy but vicious and deadly Soviet Empire.
Some claim to see in the political fall of the unwieldy beast the death of Communism. Such people are sadly mistaken. Communism today reigns and runs rampant on American college campuses and in the nooks and crannies of government both here and in Western Europe.
Today "internationalism" has become "globalism" and the UN has replaced the Red Army as the socialists' army of choice. I say here in sorrow and in anger that this very trilogy that I am reviewing will probably be banned in some of the "democracies" that helped defeat Hitler and prop up Stalin.
What God's plan for this weary world may be I do not profess to speculate upon. I do assert, however, that the political ideas and ideals that the world needs have already been formulated-and were once put into practice for nearly a century-right here in America.
It's here in America that Ingrid Rimland's trilogy is being published. If America does not speak out on behalf of the rights of man and for the unhindered pursuit of truth, who will?
Ingrid Rimland has spoken out again-eloquently and clearly. Those who do not share her vision of America are free to disagree and to criticize.
Those who care to join her in this literary quest for Lebensraum! will find a good story well told. What more can you ask of a novelist?
Background to "Furies"
As some of you know, I have spent some ten years of my life as a rather feted convention speaker and marginal "celebrity" on the professional lecture circuit. I cannot claim that I was ever a bona fide "celebrity" commanding speaking fees as Jane Pauley may have earned, but I have had prime bookings at national and, three times, even international conventions. At the state level, not infrequently I have had higher billing than their respective senators.
As part of that life on the road, and as a supplemental source of income, I did stock up on previous titles of books and articles I had written, including my autobiography, The Furies and the Flame. I want to talk about that book today, because of all the things I have done, literarily-not counting my Coming Attraction, of course!-I feel proudest of this rather handsome hard cover, now simply nicknamed "Furies".
Furies is a very emotional, personal account of what it took for a young immigrant wife and mother to come to America out of a Third World country, trying to find help for her savagely handicapped child. I am talking about Erwin, of course, born 1959. I wrote this book in the early 1980s, in the wake of the breakup of my 20-year marriage, caused by the pain of having had to place that child, then 13, in a private institution. Furies is a tearful book-and, I believe, a "strictly women's" book, although the greatest compliment that was ever paid me for Furies came from an anchor journalist in the Northwest who, on a weekend, packed his tent to go on a hunting trip and took my book along.
He never got to hunt. To quote him verbatim the following week when he invited me to do his show: "That damn book kept me up half of the damn night!" This show was watched in some five states, and after that interview, my publisher's switch board was jammed.
Unlike The Wanderers, which I featured last month and which has strong historical content but (at least in my opinion) lacks stylistic finesse, Furies was written with my heart's blood and edited by a spectacularly grammatically sensitive lady, then editor of Arena Press which published the title in 1984, and it reads very smoothly. Ernst commented some time ago that he thought the cover is too stark-what with the lightning against an abysmally gray sky!-but I love that book for personal reasons, and I believe it will always be felt by me to be one of my "crowning achievements." (P.S. The cover has since been re-designed by Ernst and now features an elegant dust jacket. . . )
The book ends with a chapter that to this day still makes me cry. It describes my feelings as I had to relinquish Erwin because my emotional reserves simply gave out on me, and I chose to take hold of my own life since I could not live through my child's limitations. This book has a very sad ending, but many things have happened since that day.
When I finished "Furies" and put it on the market, it turned out that it was a good decision to free myself of what was, in effect, a stranglehold on my emotions and my intellect. Now, Erwin, too, lives on his own, and I am free to do what I was meant to do. We are both much, much happier. But for years, I have carried two households on a freelance income, which has been much, much harder than many people know. And to this day, I pay for keeping him safe - more money than I use for myself.
In coming issues, I will talk about Erwin, off and on, because he happens to be still a part of me-and who knows what will happen to me! The road I have chosen as an activist for our kin and our cause is not exactly easy. It could well be , one merry day, when, thanks to the "Zundelsite" and "Lebensraum!" and other projects yet to come, the enemy will "take me out"-though, trust me, not without a struggle!
Those of us who have chosen visibility now stand within the firing line, and the struggle is getting more serious. We know that in our bones. We also know that we will win this one - regardless of what happens to the soldiers!
If that should happen-for whatever reason-I would hope that there will be people out there within my own circle of friends who will help to keep Erwin safe in where he is living now: in a private home affording him both safety and mobility to the extent that he can handle it.
That is, in part, why I am featuring "Furies" today-as a title that tells about me.
Background to "The Wanderers"
Now that I have launched my "triplets", "Lebensraum!", I look at my first "literary baby" a bit askance, thinking what an inexperienced "parent" I was when I first had this title published. How little did I know!
I must admit up-front that I am a bit apologetic about this book. The truth is that I was grass-green when I first wrote it and succeeded in having it published-and even though the title was published to much literary acclaim, I now know that I will come across as a much stronger writer in my new venture, "Lebensraum!"
I started speaking English in 1967. When I wrote "The Wanderers", my English was less than 10 years old. The book was published first in hard cover in 1977 by Concordia Publishing House and re-published by Bantam Books in 1978 in a mass market paperback edition.
Here is the story of "The Wanderers":
As part of my inner awakening in 1967 when I first walked into Wichita State University at age 31 and asked to be "educated", I discovered part of my own heritage by discovering the Mennonite Archives at Bethel College, less than an hour's drive from where we had moved to place my then eight-year-old, Erwin, in a private school for the handicapped.
It was a very painful time for me. I felt awkward and alone, adrift in a "civilized world" after my rather culturally sheltered ethnic existence among the Mennonites. I was trying to heal myself by trying to understand what had happened to me and my child. I needed to understand the forces that had caused this tragedy, and even then I dimly understood that they were vast historical forces.
I started reading ancient documents and started taking notes. I did not know these notes would grow into a novel.
I wrote four sample chapters by hand, mimeographed them on one of those old, ink-stained mimeograph gadgets-remember, this was prior to the widespread use of clean copy machines!-and started circulating them by mailing them to publishers. As I remember it, I got myself a list of publishers, starting with "A" and getting no farther than "C".
Of the ten publishers I approached, three expressed interest in what I was trying to do-and one, Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, wrote me a rather flattering letter stating that I reminded them of Conrad. Well, that is all it took! I was immensely flattered!
We started corresponding, and I received some editorial advice from Jaroslav Vajda, then executive editor of this rather large and very fundamentalist publishing house. Jary came to see me several times, and we became good friends.
My family and I moved to California in 1971, and two years later my marriage dissolved and I placed Erwin in an institution. I will not repeat the story here-for it is one of tears and pain I later tried to summarize and shed in my next title, the 1984 autobiography, "The Furies and the Flame".
Let me just say that in the wake of my having "lost" both husband and child, as I perceived it then, I rented a small apartment with not a stitch of furniture, sat down in the middle of the floor on the carpet and surrounded myself with my handwritten manuscript, resolved it would become a novel that would launch me as a writer and outdo every other novel of its kind on earth.
I had nothing but 73 cents and only a part-time job that barely covered my expenses. I did not even have a typewriter, much less a computer in those years. I did have Ruth, my then volunteer typist who later on became my secretary when I achieved a doctorate. (Ruth is still helping me with "Lebensraum!", although she lives in Central California and she "commutes" by telephone and mail . . . )
"The Wanderers" was brought out as the Concordia lead title for 1977 and caused quite a stir at the American Booksellers Convention. It was sold to Bantam Books shortly thereafter for what was then a princely sum, $25,000, of which Concordia took half, to my dismay and shock. In the flush of having become a bona fide author, of course I hadn't bothered to read the fine print. What first-time author does?
Nonetheless, now I was a "celebrity" of sorts-the flowers and telegrams started arriving, and shortly thereafter the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, which is as elegant as you can get here on the Coast, awarded me the highest literary award for that year, ". . . best first novel by a California writer for 1977."
It was a spectacular luncheon, and Alex Haley was my guest speaker. He was flown in at my request-which tells you where my mindset was in those years. All I knew was that he had written a Roots-type novel, which was my goal as well.
I didn't think "The Wanderers" was "it". I had another book inside me.
We talked a bit afterwards, and I bet Alex Haley on that day that I would outshine his novel. We joked about the fact that a black Roots-type novel had beaten a white one to the finishing line-and in the years to come, when I was on the lecture circuit, as Haley was, we would renew and toast our bet each time we crossed each other's path. I must admit in those years I did not perceive or appreciate the irony of a black ethnic novel sweeping America before a white ethnic novel. I genuinely admired him-and, frankly, do so to this day.
However, even in those early years, the seed of "Lebensraum!" already started sprouting in the initial success of "The Wanderers". I knew that there would be a follow-up. I did not know that it would take me 20 years.
After "The Wanderers" ran its course with Concordia and Bantam Books, I took my rights back from both publishing houses and revised and republished the title in 1988. I did it on a tiny MacPlus with an itsy-bitsy screen. I chose the wrong fonts-which pains me to this day. I had it printed up in Hong Kong and started selling it out of my trunk for many years thereafter while I was on the road.
Now that I am flush with the glory of a much better novel, "Lebensraum!" let me confess I feel a bit apologetic about pitching "The Wanderers" before my newest book comes out. I know it has flaws-flaws grammatically, in sentence structure and in spelling. Now I think the storyline is too simple. Now I think that the characters are a bit stiff. But then I didn't think so-after all, on the West Coast, who had a better book?
Here in America, as far as I know, this was the first book ever of its kind that showed the German soldiers as heroes and not villains and which, despite its being so utterly politically incorrect, still won a lot of acclaim and a fair share of awards.
You may still purchase it. I still have some 500 Hong Kong copies left, and I doubt there will be a reprint. One day, when I am super-famous, this book will be a classic. :)
Paul Eisen and Ingrid Rimland
From:
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2006/02/paul-eisen-setting-some-things.html
Sunday, February 5, 2006
Paul Eisen - setting some things straight Editor's Note: I've known Paul for a few years, presented "virtually" through a paper he wrote, "Silencing Dissent". I can honestly say, I've always liked him very much, even when we have had disagreements. I've never known him to be "disagreeable", and this I like, admire and respect (and wish I could emulate). Paul is blessed with something that is more rare than a hen's tooth: AN OPEN MIND AND TOLERANCE. Yes. Paul is that unique category of a person who has no preconceived notions of things, he has an inquiring mind, a natural curiosity and a humanity that can only inspire. He has been unjustly accused of hate speech, Holocaust Denial, support of Hitler and many other things. He has been attacked and vilified in a way that is nothing short of obscene. And, he has often refused to defend himself. He lets the storm grow around him, and he has stayed out of the fray. This has frustrated me, because I at times have felt the duty to defend him, and that has lead others to vilify and ostracise me, but I can also understand him and why he does it. He has written some papers, and others drag him into their fights, usually ignoring his writing, but latching onto some aspect such as his communication with "Nazis". If he were to spend all his time defending issues which deflect and distort his thought and character, it would be a large burden to bear, so I think he waits for the storm cloud to pass, and he carries on with his other important work.
I have read his papers. I don't agree or like everything in them, but that is not essential. They are interesting, they are thought provoking, and they make some points that are important to consider. I think Paul is promoting investigation, promoting a search for truth and for justice, and this is the basis of his work, not some "bone to pick". I know that many have ideas of him based on his associations. I don't think this is fair either, just as I have been associated with people I am not affiliated with, but still communicate with, largely disagreeing, but attempting to remain civil. This is the nature of activism. We are going to agree on some things, disagree on others, and that is normal. I too have very strong aversions to some people in "the campaign", I think some of them do great damage to it, for the sole and singular reason that they do not put the Palestinians first. To me, that is the primary issue. I don't care as much about the rest, because a true supporter of Palestinians cannot be racist, cannot be full of hate, but inspired by a sense of justice and a love of humanity. Call me closed minded, I might be, but to me, that is what the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is all about. That is where I have my arrows pointed, against those who insist upon putting Jews, Americans, Israelis, the Hegemony, Capital, Power, first. I put the Palestinians first, and so does Paul. This is why I support him.
I am publishing here a
paper Paul sent out, which clarifies issues many seem to have with him. I think
it is a good point for discussion, and hope everyone reads it in the spirit it
was written, and in the spirit in which it was placed here: With an OPEN MIND.
*************************************************************
Paul Eisen
Paul, I don't understand what it means when you say Zundel is anti-Jewish, but
does not hate Jews. Can you elaborate? David
I answered: Dear David Thank you for your note which contains the first interesting question I've been asked since I put out "The Holocaust Wars". Of course, that means that there is no simple answer!
I'm not sure Ernst Zundel hates anyone much. I haven't met Ernst Zundel but I have read a lot about him and some of his writings and I have been in quite extensive email contact with his wife, Ingrid. Regarding Ernst, neither in his writings nor in the very many descriptions of him I have heard and read can I detect any sign of what might be called hatred for anyone or anything. I wish I could say the same for his opponents.
Ingrid, I know a little better, and I must say that what I do know, I rather like. Again, I can't detect any hatred, but in her case I would say that she may well dislike Jews insofar as she approaches any encounter with them with the expectation of disliking them. Of course for both of them (and indeed the entire revisionist community), part of any dislike they do feel for Jews or Jewishness, may, at least in part, be attributed to the appalling way they have been treated by Jews.
Like most people I have been surrounded all my life with very clear, distinct and almost strident moral statements about such things as "racism", "anti-Semitism" and "National Socialism" (there's no grey areas with these things - they are simply evil) so you can imagine, for someone as curious as me, how interesting it was to get to know Ingrid. Imagine! I was talking to a real live "Nazi"!
Regarding their racism, I suppose she and Ernst would say that different groups who have lived together for a long time will inevitably definitely develop some shared characteristics. For example, I remember one exchange when she claimed that, like so many Germans, she had no sense of humour whatsoever, (actually, she does and it's quite delightful) and, when I protested she asked me whether I had ever met a German stand-up comic. I think she also asked me if I had ever met a Jew who could write a poem to a tree!
Another little exchange I remember with some pleasure was when I was describing to her how, at times I found it quite thrilling to be the centre of attention. She thought that this was very Jewish indeed (I can't disagree), but that for her, being the centre of attention was what she most disliked. She wrote how she had on so many occasions appeared before huge and rapturous audiences and each time, as they applauded, her heart was stone cold. This essential difference between us was she felt, partly due to our respective Jewishness and German-ness. Did I fully agree? Probably not, but it was kind of interesting and there is some truth in it.
I think people like her (and me too) believe that these characteristics are the product of very many subtle and interacting factors. Ingrid would include some biological factors in that too. After all, people who live together, breed together. Although I am not all that interested in the subject, I really can't say that it outrages me or even that I particularly disagree with it.
Both Ernst and Ingrid and indeed very many revisionists and so-called anti-Semites know that I am a Jew who actively claims Jewish identity. Both Ernst and Ingrid are, I think, fond of me and respect my choice of identity even if they might wish I would choose another. So, they don't much like the Jewishness but still quite like the Jew.
The last point on Ernst and Ingrid has become something of a mantra that I have had to recite so many times in the last year or so: Neither Ingrid nor Ernst has ever used violence, nor have they ever called on anyone else to use violence. Neither has ever discriminated against anyone on ethnic or religious grounds, nor have they called on anyone else to do so. Finally, and for me, most importantly, neither has ever suppressed anyone's right to think, speak and write freely or called on anyone else to do so. Can the same be said for their opponents - particularly those anti-Zionist, and often Marxist Jews?
Of course none of the above means that all Jews are funny and self-obsessed or that all Germans are dour and diffident or anything else for that matter...... or does it?
My friend Shamir has proposed the existence of a Jewish ideology or spirit which is voluntarily possessed by all who claim to be Jewish and also, he would say, by many who don't. I think he is saying that Jewishness is not an ethnicity or national grouping like any other, but a community of shared feelings and beliefs - and this goes way beyond the obviously religious. Hitler called Jews "a race of the mind" though I would prefer to wonder if they are not a "race of the spirit". I think Shamir would further propose, and I might agree with them, that if such a spirit exists it is concerned with chosenness and specialness, particularly in the Jewish claim of a special history of suffering, and also, in many ways, in a suspicion and disdain for non-Jews. Of course, one can say that many, perhaps all, communities display such characteristics. This is certainly true, but do these other communities have these characteristics as absolutely central to their identity? Which other group positively worships its own specialness and victimhood in the way that Jews, both religious and secular, seem to do.
There are of course millions of self-identifying Jews who, in their daily lives and throughout their lives, display pretty well none of these characteristics. But that is not to say that they do not exist and also that, under certain circumstances, they will not become more prominent. Is it possible for Ernst Zundel, Ingrid Rimland and myself to like these folk whilst still not liking those characteristics? The answer is that we can and we do.
Perhaps the best example is from my own experience. I come from a family of North London Jews. My family, who are very dear to me, are, on the outside at least, pretty ordinary folk. Like so many of their time and place they are smallish traders, business people, family folk etc., etc. But my family is a bit unusual in that, for some reason, they seem to be particularly tolerant people. In all my childhood I don't think I ever heard a racist, sexist or homophobic word or any such term used in my house. This was not because my parents were leftists, or humanists or any other kind of - 'ists.' No-one ever said that racist or discriminatory language was wrong - they just didn't do it - it was just not the way we looked at the world. I also never heard the words "Goy" or "Yok" or "Shikse" (Actually I can remember once or twice hearing the latter from my mum, but only when she was really upset about something.)
But we were Jews and we lived as Jews, albeit fairly non-ideological ones, and, as such I was brought up with unspoken feelings of difference, specialness and with a pervasive unease about non-Jews. At school I, and I'm sure all my Jewish school-mates, felt somewhat different and perhaps a little superior to our non-Jewish classmates teachers etc. (By the way I have spent quite some time looking at pictures of the 16 year old Lev Bronstein, one day to become Leon Trotsky, and wondering what were his feelings in this regard). So I always ask myself: If I with my upbringing could harbour such notions, what must other Jews be feeling? Of course they will all deny it, these fine anti-Zionist Jews, and they certainly will believe absolutely their own denials, but I simply don't believe them.Were my family nice people? Of course they were - they were (and are) wonderful people. Do I love them? Of course I do. Would Ernst and Ingrid like them? I'm sure they would. So again, Ernst, Ingrid and myself are able to somewhat dislike Jewishness but very much like Jews.
One final point: I'm not absolutely sure about any of the above and I certainly would not insist that anyone agree with me. Whatever I say or write is always characterised by doubt and hesitation. Some have said that this is because I'm afraid of coming clean about my beliefs. But that's not true. It's simply that I am never so sure about anything, other than the value of keeping an open mind and tolerating other opinions. Others feel differently. They are sure that they are anti-Zionist and are therefore in solidarity with Palestinians. They are sure that Ernst Zundel is a dangerous neo-Nazi and must be silenced. They are sure that Palestinians need to live in a secular, democratic state. Well, I'm not so sure, and I think that it is our uncertainty, and our lack of any desire to impose our opinions on others which is at the heart of the differences between on the one hand, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and myself, and on the other, those who so attack us. Good luck Paul. Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Rememberedpaul@eisen.demon.co.uk
UPDATE: "Dear Mary"
Dear Mary Thank you once again for your spirited defence of me, my opinions and my right to express them in the face of attacks by the likes of Sue Blackwell and Deborah Maccoby.(see: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/780/op3.htm and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/17465 , respectively)
You're right. The article by Sue Blackwell certainly was not, as Deborah claims, "excellent". For some reason Sue seems to define her left wing credentials in general, her solidarity with Palestinians in particular and her all-round right-on "goodness" by her willingness to accede to the wishes of Jewish activists and by bowing endlessly to Jewish power.
Mary, I realize that you are sometimes exasperated by my reluctance to answer such attacks. And the reasons you cite for my attitude are quite right. But there are other reasons too. Firstly, I don't stand up well to combat. I'm no Gilad Atzmon, who, like Samson amongst the Philistines, seems to be single-handedly knocking out the opposition. Unless you can do "a Gilad" well (and I really can't) I think arguing with these people is an utter waste of time. Tony Greenstein, Roland Rance, Charlie Pottins, Deborah Maccoby, Joel Finkel and many others like them will never change simply because they can never change.
And Mary, I know you don't always like the company I keep, so I approach these next remarks with some trepidation. You know the story of the scorpion and the frog crossing the river to Paradise. The scorpion wants to cross the river to Paradise and tries to persuade a frog to take him on its back. At first the frog hesitates. "You are a scorpion" says the frog, "If I carry you on my back, you will sting me and kill me." "Of course I won't sting you." answers the scorpion, "If I were to sting you, you would drown and cause me to drown as well, so what would be the good of that?" Finally the frog agrees. Halfway across the river, surprise, surprise, the scorpion stings the frog. As both frog and scorpion sink beneath the waves, the frog, in its death throes, looks up to the scorpion and to heaven and asks, "Why? Why?" The scorpion, also dying, replies, "You ask why? The answer is simple; I stung you because I'm a scorpion."
This old tale was recounted to me in a moment of exasperation by Ingrid when we were discussing what her opponents like to call "race" (Actually "identity" would probably be a better description.) For Ingrid, just as a scorpion will never change, so Tony Greenstein, Roland Rance, Charlie Pottins, Deborah Maccoby, Joel Finkel and many, many more will never change simply because they cannot change. Dare I say it? In some ways - complicated, human, subtle ways - a Jew will always act like a Jew. Or perhaps, more obviously and less controversially, a deeply ideological Jewish activist will always act like a deeply-ideological Jewish activist.
I note, that when Ingrid first suggested this, I was a bit put out. I asked, "Are you saying that a Jew is a kind of human, like a scorpion is a kind of insect? "She answered, "Come on. Did I say that Gentiles are like frogs? Fables are shortcuts to facets of human nature."
And later, when I asked, "Are you saying that I can never rid myself of my compulsive and destructive tendencies?" she answered, "No, I am not saying "Paul" is like that, and you know I am not saying that. I am not saying Shamir is like that. And I am not saying Israel Shahak or Uri Avnery or any number of responsible human beings that we know under the label "Jew" are like that. But I am saying and you yourself have alluded to that, that there is an abundance of what you call a corrosive tendency in "Jewishness" that hurts and destroys when there is no need for it."
Now, a lot of people are now going to start jumping up and down yelling "Racist!" and "Nazi!" But, as so often with this kind of thing, whilst neither I (nor Ingrid) would agree literally that a Jew will always act in a certain way, figuratively and allegorically, there's a lot in that tale. (One of the troubles with our opponents is that they have no imagination whatsoever and therefore, no sense of humour. In fact, I'm coming to think that the secret weapon in the Jewish Marxist arsenal is the ability, quite simply, to bore us all to death.)
Another reason that I don't join some of these internet battles is that for me, to do so is to bow to unjust power. Sue calls me a Holocaust denier. But Holocaust denier is just an abusive term for a Holocaust Revisionist - the slur being that Holocaust revisionists have somehow lost touch with all reality and deny that anything unpleasant at all happened to Jews at the hands of the National Socialists and that Auschwitz was just an early-forties holiday camp.
To me, a Holocaust revisionist (denier, if they like) is an entirely honourable thing to be. So why should I rush to deny that I am one? By no means do I agree with everything Ernst Zundel believes, but his flamboyant activism makes me both laugh out loud at his antics while standing in silent awe at his courage. Similarly with Professor Robert Faurisson, whose courage and quest for exactitude puts the likes of Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein to complete and utter shame. Revisionists seem to me to be, along with the Palestinian people, amongst the bravest people on the planet.But let's set the record straight about my own "Holocaust denial".
I wasn't at Auschwitz so I don't know for sure exactly what did or did not happen there. But I have had a fair look at the evidence and it looks to me that the revisionists are more right than they are wrong. Now, I'm not 100% sure, so technically I suppose I'm not a denier, but what the hell? One last reason why I don't respond to such attacks is that to do so would be to obscure their message and I don't want to do that. I want the world to hear these people loud and clear and for that, they need no help from me.
In a widely circulated Arab publication Sue told the entire Islamic world to bow down to the Holocaust. I judge this to be not the smartest move from someone who professes to be in tune with the suffering of Palestinians. No-one is asking Sue to change her views but, in my opinion, silence would have been a more thoughtful option.
And Deborah is equally misguided. She says I am attempting to spread Holocaust denial within the Palestinian solidarity movement. I can only tell her, "Deborah, you're too late. I don't need to do a thing. The game is up, the cat's out the bag, the Emperor is stark naked and, in the words of that great Jewish master of mimicry, Robert Zimmerman, (a.k.a. Bob Dylan) 'The whole wide world is watching.' "
Take care Mary, Paul
Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Remembered
ERNST ZUNDEL ARRESTED!
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