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New Holocaust deniers: US ambassador to Poland and FBI head

Holocaust denial is not only denying it happened. It is minimizing or distorting it, a la Jean-Marie Le Pen of France. Regrettably, high US officials join the club.

Was George Washington the first president of the United States?

Did Babe Ruth hit 60 homeruns in 1927?

Was there a blizzard in Denver in 2006?

Did two buildings in New York City come down in flames on Sept. 11, 2001?

Did Russia launch the first satellite into outer space in 1957?

One does not regard the true and the undeniable as grounds for lying. That, however, is what the US Ambssador to Poland and the head of the FBI recently did.

They have become the two chief American Holocaust deniers. Stephen Mull and James Comey, by name. The FBI’s Comey, under shameful pressure from Ambassador Mull and the US State Dept., lied when he retracted what he had said at the US Memorial Holocaust Museum.

Holocaust denial is not only to deny that the Holocaust took place.

It is to deny who did it.

Earth to Mull and Comey. This is who perpetrated the Holocaust: masses of Poles, Dutch, Hungarians, Lithuanians, French, Romanians, Italians, Greeks, Austrians, Ukrainians, Croatians and others, besides the German Nazis.

Comey was trying to cover for what should have been taken as his earlier, true and undeniable statement at the US Holocaust Museum: The Nazis had accomplices. He made specific mention of Poles and Hungarians. He did so in an admirable context of explaining why he requires FBI agents to visit the museum.

But then he veered into the untruthful — frankly, there is no other word but the outright lie — maintaining that only Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust.

Even worse, Mull, in apologizing for Comey’s original statement, said:

“[The suggestion that] Poland or any other country other than Nazi Germany bear responsibility for the Holocaust is a mistake . . . Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility.”

Sorry, if a murderer hands me a gun and I willingly kill someone, I am responsible.

Parse the words of Ambassador Mull. See the word: country (as in no other country bears responsibility for the Holocaust). A country is not synonymous with its government. The ambassador did not say that no other “government” besides Nazi Germany bears responsibility for the Holocaust. That might have been true, if totally pointless, since no government whose country Nazi Germany conquered even existed anymore (except, in certain places, as puppet governments).

Again, see that word: country. That’s the people in the location. Yes, Mr. Ambassador and Mr. Comey, many countries besides Nazi Germany bore responsibility for the Holocaust.

Direct responsibility.

Enormous responsibility — as in, responsibility for the deaths of millions of people.

Not every person in the country, to be sure. Not the “Righteous Gentiles” in the countries, to be sure. But check this: When Eichmann came to Hungary in 1944 to implement the “final solution” there, he brought with him some 200 Nazis.

A measly 200 people.

Two hundred Nazis cannot kill 400,000 Jews in a few months!

Two hundred people, with only guns and trains at their disposal, cannot kill 400,000 people scattered in many hundreds of villages throughout a large land mass!

It takes helpers.

Those 200 Nazis needed helpers.

Lots of them.

Thousands of helpers.

The Nazis got those helpers.

Got them easily.

The Nazis got enthusiastic helpers.

Willing helpers. Willing executioners.

They were Hungarians, not German Nazis.

These Hungarians carried out the Holocaust in Hungary, with help from 200 Nazis.

Check this obfuscation: In Comey’s abject, inaccurate apology to contemporary Poland, he said: “The Polish state bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by the Nazis.”

Which Polish state? Today’s Polish state? That would be accurate — and totally irrelevant. World War II’s Polish state? That didn’t even exist after the Nazis invaded it and totally took it over. The powerless Polish government-in-exile? Not the point, obviously.

Comey initially, accurately, made reference to “Hungarians” and to “Poles” — to people — not to states. Comey’s apology is a shameful diversion from his original, accurate, important, non-Holocaust denying statement about people — “Poles and Hungarians.”

To deny the factual linkage between German Nazis and Polish and Hungarian murderers is to deny the Holocaust. Comey’s only slip in this regard was to single out two peoples when, in fact, all nationalities in Europe collaborated with the Nazis; with the heroic exception of the great preponderance of Danes and Bulgarians. Even the “neutral” Swiss agreed to the German stamp of “J” on the passports of German Jews fleeing Hitler, making it easy to exclude them.

Everyone considers the French, right-wing founder of the National Front party — Jean-Marie Le Pen — a Holocaust denier because he minimizes it. He calls the gas chambers a “detail” of WW II.

That is Holocaust denial.

So is turning masses of Holocaust perpetrators, such as Poles and Hungarians — without whose willing participation the Holocaust would have been impossible —into mere victims of Nazism.

Of course, Poles and Hungarians (and others) were victims of Nazism. Absolutely true. Many were also enthusiastic murderers of the Jews. Also absolutely true.

There were more “Righteous Gentiles” from Poland than from any other country. What does this signify, besides the blessed courage of selfless, humane people, before whom we humbly bow our heads in gratitude? It signifies proportion.

There were more “Righteous Gentiles” in Poland because there were more Jews in Poland than in any other place in Europe. Proportion: More Jews killed in Poland during the Holocaust than in any other country (some three million); and, more Righteous Gentiles in Poland than in any other country.

Think what James Comey’s and Stephen Mull’s lies imply about bystanders to the Holocaust. They have been let off the hook. We thought that the world had learned to regard bystanders as participants. No more. They were mere victims of Nazism, say Comey and Mull. It was the Nazis, not the bystanders, who bore responsibility for the Holocaust.

The implicit but perfectly clear message of Comey and Mull is this: If you see evil, don’t get involved. Don’t stand up. You are not responsible. You are just a victim.

The opposite has been the goal of Holocaust education: If you see evil, do speak out. Do stand up. The dismissal of this critical lesson is the ultimate irony about Comey, as he was initially speaking about Holocaust education.

He got it right at the museum, and exactly backwards afterwards. Now we understand how Turkey can get away with denying the Armenian genocide. Even good people, under pressure, can lie.

Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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