Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Memory Laws and Historical Justice: The Politics of Criminalizing the Past, edited by Elazar Barkan and Ariella Lang. 2022. Palgrave MacMillan, Switzerland

Politicized Holocaust Promotion and the Well-Earned Pushback Against It

This book raises familiar topics. I focus on some distinctive ones.

HOLOCAUST PROMOTION: THE HOLOCAUST LEGITIMIZES THE STATE OF ISRAEL

Jewish Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov makes this eye-opening statement, “Indeed, for the State of Israel, the Holocaust exists not only as a past event whose memory must never be denied or erased, but also as the most powerful tool in its arsenal in the constant struggle to legitimize its existence and policies.” (p. 199).

What Bartov said is nothing new or extraordinarily. What is extraordinary is the fact that a Jewish scholar is so frank about it.

INTERNATIONAL JEWISH PRESSURE TO IMPOSE WESTERN-STYLE HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY ON EASTERN EUROPEAN NATIONS

Eva-Clarita Pettai makes this ironic then true comment, “To be sure Baltic governments have been reluctant to address issues of local collaboration and complicity in the mass killing of local and European Jews during World War II with the same vigor that they showed in pursuing justice for Soviet-era crimes. At the same time, the force with which Western governments and international organizations pushed the young Baltic democracies towards confronting the Holocaust had rather counterproductive effects, in large part because they occurred at a time (during the 1990s) when these societies felt urgently the need to reveal and assess the enormity of Stalinist crimes against the local populations.” (p. 177. Emphasis added).

The irony is farcical. Jews have done literally NOTHING to condemn, let alone prosecute, the Jewish Communist murderers, all the while looking for 95-year-old Nazis under every rock! But at least she admits the fact that Jews have the international power to force their version of the Holocaust on other nations. It is out in the open. Who needs conspiracy theories about Jewish influence and power?

EASTERN EUROPEAN MEMORY LAWS ARE A REBUFF TO HOLOCAUST PROMOTION AND JEWISH AGGRESSION

Authors Elazar Barkan and Ariella Lang perform the usual running-down of Eastern European memory laws, but at least they partly admit that such laws were caused by the constant Jewish accusations hurled against Eastern Europeans, especially those that attempt to transfer German guilt onto Eastern Europeans. They write, “The phenomenon of memory laws that promote a nationalist identity should thus be considered primarily a legal development, but foremost political propaganda that has its origins in expanding the memory of responsibility for the Holocaust. This was amplified by the turning of the Holocaust into a synecdoche of universalist memory of evil. Such representations of the Holocaust in Western Europe have become a rhetorical lighthouse for ethics…” (p. 15. Emphasis added).

Of course, none of the genocides in Eastern Europe are ever made into a “universalist memory of evil”, much less “a rhetorical lighthouse for ethics”. The Jews’ Holocaust reigns. That is all the more reason that Eastern European nations should resist some more.

THWARTING HOLOCAUST PROMOTION: DO NOT DIVIDE THE DEAD

Author Nikolay Koposov quotes a Russian-language work by Ksenia Poluektova-Krimer. It concerns the common Russian reaction to the Holocaust being shoved down their throats. He writes, “‘We are bored with your Holocaust, stop puffing out your tragedy, we have our own twenty-seven million dead.'” (p. 156. Emphasis added). Well said, Russkies!

Note that twenty-seven million is an official estimate of the Soviet military and civilian casualties of World War II. (p. 156. Footnote). Clearly, the Russian repudiation of the Holocaust supremacy that infects the West was no product of Communism. The “Do Not Divide the Dead” common-sense thinking resoundingly survived Communism and persists right into the present.

POLITICS OF MEMORY LAWS IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE

Note that the very first memory law was the one that criminalized Holocaust denial (Barkan and Lang, p. 3). It is classic propaganda; a Holocaust promotion existing in order to sanctify the public image of the Holocaust. It has nothing to do with protection of the 6-million figure, which is very rarely questioned with or without a law against Holocaust denial. It exists as an exercise of Jewish political power. Finally, if Jews can enact memory laws for their benefit, as they were the first to do, then so can everybody else. So, Judeocentrists, stop complaining about Eastern European memory laws!