Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland?

This is a disgrace. To deny people freedom of movement or speech in 2010 is just plain sick. Whatever he said or did. He paid his price in court, and he did his time in jail. It's the same thing for the mosque in New York, the same people who defend building the mosque in New York, are the same people who would ban or "closely monitor" David Irving in Auschwitz. What about installing cameras and microphones in every mosque/church/synagogoue in the world, and directly link it to the CIA, NSA and Homeland security? No? Why not? If someone is lying/practicing hate speech wouldn't you want to know about it?

The jewish torah tells of jesus boiling in his own excrements and that his mother, the virgin Mary, was a *****. The koran tells of non-belivers as infidels and that they should be subjugated to force of conversion or taxed/killed if not. The catholics tells us of purgatory for non-beliverse and that all are born with sin. Now if that's not hate speech, then I don't know what is. But still, priests/rabbies/imams from all these faiths come together in all western countries and talk about peace and understanding. The media goes along, and no goverments or public officials monitor them 24/7, when they preach. Noone bans their books or speeches, although what they claim IS hatespeech!

But if some 72-year old fart comes along, challenging some historical facts/myths/whatever, oh la la, sound the air raid sirene! Here comes some geriatric fool with a tailgate of 12 people who represent 0.00000001% of the population. Hold the headlines! Clear the police cells! Democracy is under attack! Western democracy can celebrate itself in it's self-indulgent glory of double standards and lack of reality...

Are you going to closely monitor catholics in protestant churches? Are you going to closely monitor jews in mosques? Are you going to closely monitor homosexuals in straight bars? Are you going to closely monitor Africans/Europeans/Indians/Aboriginees/Martians if they are out of their areas? Who draws the line, and for whom? They all preach/think/believe contradictory to eachother, they all disagree, and they all "lie", if one looks at it from that perspective.

What about the Israeli school tours to Krakow/Auschwitz that have been exposed as pure "hate-tours"? The students are being instilled hatred from day 1. All poles are evil, anti-semitic and want to kill them! They are being "protected" by security staff so the people waiting for them can't reach them with pitch-forks and zyklon-B! They bring with them mossad/bodyguards who attack innocent bystanders in the streets, block off peoples homes with their buses/entourage, and create tension among the local population. Then they defecate in the hotel beds and throw food on the walls and ceilings and destroy hotel property. When they encounter local people they who ask who they are, they hysterically think that they are being verbally attaced, while the fact is nothing could further from the truth. After crying their way through the camp with their oversized flags and plakards, getting "vicitmized" enough for ten life-times, they all get back on the bus, singing "Shalom Malechem", feeling like the "chosen ones", while the rest of the goyims/non-jews are being thought of as worthless, anti-semitic trash. If ANY other country/people did this to their school-children, they would be labelled crazy/nazi/racist/fascist/new popular word to stifle debate.

Now, THOSE tours are accepted, both by the Israeli governement, the Polish governement and the media, and as the article mentioned, they have what is most important, they have "acknowledged tour guides". Whatever that means. How about freedom of speech? And how about people like Simon Wiesenthal, Misha Defonseca, Herman Rosenblat or Elie Wiesel? They all lied too in their memoirs, would they be "monitored closely" showing people around in Auschwitz, in case they said something that wasn't correct? (Emphasis on "like", as some of these people are not longer alive).

It all smells like rotten fish to me.

DariuszTelka

They still are. Almost all Poles refuse to admit that even a single Pole ever passed through Trawniki as a guard, even when those men were more Polish than Chopin!


Anybody got any piano wire?

Chopin was half French. Now give me a list of Poles from Trawniki. From a reliable source.

Bronislaw Hajda: cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/135/439/507558/
Jakiw Palij: New York Times says he was "Polish born"

Walter Obodzinsky: unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRC,,CAN,,47975af618,0.html
Jaroslaw Bilaniuk New York Times points out that he was born in same village as Palij

Of course, to almost any Pole, the above men are not Polish (and neither are the likes of Antoni Sawoniuk or Szymon Serafinowicz).

One of Irving's revisionist histories:

In 1967 Irving published Accident: The Death of General Sikorski. In the book, he claimed that the plane crash which killed Polish government in exile leader General Władysław Sikorski in 1943 was really an assassination ordered by Winston Churchill, so as to enable Churchill to betray Poland to the Soviet Union. Irving's book inspired the highly controversial 1967 play Soldiers by his friend, the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, where Hochhuth depicts Churchill ordering the "assassination" of General Sikorski.

But all that is 100% true! Just ask any of the Polish posters here!

Those two are not polish judging by their names first one for 100% and second for 90%!

The others could be polish but you never know, what about Polish Underground Court - any sentences passed on any above? Polish traitors were eliminated as the first by Polish Underground State!

Typical Polish names. So you got one 'Polish born' according to NYT, one Ukrainian, and one Jew.

Regardless of that, consider:
It must be remembered that these "Hiwi" often had no other choice, that they served under duress and that the alternative for them was being starved to death or murdered in one of the Nazi concentration camps, the fate of over 3 million Soviet POWs.

You feeling good now, safe behind your keyboard wherever it is you ooze, and spurting opinions of people long dead, who had basic choices to make - live or kill. I have no much respect for those from Trawniki, Soviets or not, but I do remember their life was that of **** and blood, stench and hate, booze and no future.

Think of that enema. They say it doesn't hurt, really.

Edit: **** means sh1t.


Suspicions were there from the very beginning, and, well, the documents are kept secret still. Exceptionally so.

He just sounds like another dude out to get attention, fame and money for himself. Hell, if I were a historian and thought I could make a lot of money denying the holocaust and going on tours denying it, what great incentive to deny it happened that would be!

Greedy denier!

Historians are a dime a dozen and typically do not make a lot of money, so what are they going to do? Think of ways to challenge history so people pay attention to them and pay to see them give a lecture. With all those historians lecturing on the same thing from the same historical point of view, it's hard for a dude like D. Irving to make a buck, so he twists history around, gives a different perspective, and suddenly people are interested in hiring him to lecture above other historians. He's got the perfect schtick.

As for him being allowed to give tours, the best way to stop him is to not show up at his lectures and tours. That way he sells no tickets and he has no reason to continue.

Greedy sense maker!


Oh, so now you want the free market to decide. I see!

Thing is, he loses money on it. Stubbornly.


Sold out already, as they say.

Prove it and I will consider reading the rest of your post.

He loses money on it when he sells out his venues...that doesn't make a lot of sense...and I wouldn't believe for a minute that he loses money despite what he says. He is going to say anything to make himself seem legitimate and not after attention and income.

It's worth reading, though.

Do not waste time on alleged histories of Mr. Irving. Read something real.

I read Borowski. What Wiki doesn't say, he was a kapo.

Borowski was not a Jew and this was reflected in his writings. In sharp contrast with Anne Frank's type of perspective which has certain dignity with the victims and the events they endured, Borowski does away with any ideas even approaching nobility, portraying as bleak a picture of humanity as it would seem possible to paint. In his stories, everyone is debased, whether they be Nazi or Jew, for within the concentration camps the outside world modesty has been stripped away leaving only a human nature that is completely corrupt. No-one is virtuous and everyone has a degree of complicity, including Borowski himself, for his own sense of guilt shows through.

Some fragments:

Showing how the prisoners become as, if not more, morally bankrupt than the Nazis:

I don't know why, but I am furious, simply furious with these people - furious because I must be here because of them. I feel no pity. I am not sorry they're going to the gas chamber. Damn them all! I could throw myself at them, beat them with my fists.

Harrowing images. He avoids however any explicit judgmental language:

Several other men are carrying a small girl with only one leg. They hold her by the arms and the one leg. Tears are running down her face and she whispers faintly: 'Sir, it hurts, it hurts...'. They throw her on the truck on top of the corpses. She will burn alive along with them.

The guilt and bewilderment of the situation:

Why is it that nobody cries out, nobody spits in their faces, nobody jumps at their throats. We doff our caps to the S.S. men returning from the little wood; if our name is called we obediently go with them to die, and - we do nothing. We starve, we are drenched by rain, we are torn from our families. What is the mystery? This strange power of one man over another? This insane passivity that cannot be overcome?

As a truck of women are driven to their death through the male camp, they shout out:

'Save us! We are going to the gas chambers! Save us!' And they rode slowly past us - the ten thousand silent men -and then disappeared from sight. Not one of us made a move, not one of us lifted a hand.

Life that is completely devoid of any reason to hope:

Do you really think that, without the hope that such a world is possible, that the rights of man will be restored again, we could stand the concentration camp even for one day? It is that very hope that makes people go without a murmur to the gas chambers, keeps them from risking a revolt, paralyses them into numb inactivity.

The population is regularly trimmed of those whose 'useful' lives have ended, through selections:

They already knew about the selection. Secretly, they dressed their wounds, trying to make them cleaner and fewer; they tore off their bandages, massaged their muscles, splashed themselves with water so as it be fresher and more agile for the evening. They fought for their existence fiercely and heroically. But some no longer cared. They moved only to avoid being whipped, devoured grass and sticky clay to keep from feeling too much hunger; they walked around in a daze, like living corpses.

Borowski questions how justice in the traditional sense would be an adequate concept within this exceptional context:

'But do you think that they', she pointed with her chin in an indefinite direction, 'can go unpunished?' 'I think that for those who have suffered unjustly, justice alone is not enough. They want the guilty to suffer unjustly too. Only this will be understood as justice'

This idea is reinforced later as a character who talks of the hope of things returning to a civilised and just world states:

'And yet, first of all, I should like to slaughter one or two men, just to throw off the concentration camp mentality'

Is this the same Tadeusz Borowski that wrote the book titled "The Death Of Schillinger", where he claims that "Lagerfuhrer" Schillinger, killed tens of thousands of people by hugging them with his iron grip?

codoh.com/newsite/articles/bradleysmith/adoc02a.html

(From Borowskis book)

"Schillinger reigned over sector 'D' with an iron hand. He could strike a blow as hard as a metal bar; he could crack a jaw or crush the life out of a man [by hugging him to death] with no apparent effort".

But somehow, only Tadeusz Borowski knew who this "hugging-murderer" of tens of thousands of people was;

(Comment from Codoh)

"You would think such a monster Jew-killer would be mentioned in some of the well-known titles in the literature of Holocaust cultism. Maybe he is. But his name is not indexed in Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews . He's not mentioned in Leon Poliakov's Harvest of Hate , or The Holocaust Years: Society On Trial " by Chartock and Spencer, or Reitlinger's The Final Solution , or Levin's The Holocaust , or in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer".

I'm just saying....use some common sense people. One can be a great writer, a poet, but it doesn't mean you should take everything he/she says for granted. So many of the writers on the Holocaust have been exposed as liars, too many, for me to accept their memoirs without some proof.

It also says in the article that the Russian newspaper Pravda now has distributed a pamphlet called "On the Path of Aggression and Racism", in which it states that the jews in Palestine and America denied the European jews help, in order to fast-forward the establishment of a jewish state, and that the holocaust would help with this. Here's a quote from Yitzchak Greenbaum, who in February 1943 was acting chairman of the Zionist Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry;

"When they [Diaspora Jews] come to us with two plans-the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe , or the redemption of the land [ Palestine ]-I vote without a second thought for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraization of the land [ Palestine ]. If there were a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the [United Jewish Appeal] to send it through Lisbon [to the concentration camps], would we do such a thing? No! And once again, no!"

It also mentions that the numbers of killed jews were inflated to help with the propaganda.

DariuszTelka

Borowski was a kapo, which doesn't show in his books. Some witnesses showed up and debunked his 'personal experiences'. This was the reason of his suicide, and not 'being disillusioned with communism'.

Whatever the great humanistic value of his books, they are not a historical source. Unless you treat them as an example of what extreme situations can do to a man. A tragic character, definitely, but not a witness.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Borowski

Just one information from this source:

Imre Kertész, while receiving the Nobel Prize stated that all his works were written because of his own fascination with Borowski's prose.

There is no account of Borowski being a capo. In his account of himself he is much more harsher to himself than any other opinion about him during his stay in the concentration camp. It may be due to his clinical depression after the war.

He has his place in literature, no doubt. Question is about his place in history.

Schillinger - His name was usually linked with the names of Palitsch, Krankenmann, and many other Auschwitz murderers who boasted that they had personally succeded in killing with his fist, the club, or the revolver, at least ten thousend people each.

Just read about Gerhard Palitsch, first from that list.

Interesting the way that you two can tell who is and is not a Pole just from the name they use. I assume you agree that neither Frédéric François Chopin nor Nicolaus Copernicus are Poles, given that their real names are so unPolish that Poles had to create Polish versions!


No, I've got six Poles born in Poland to Polish parents. Feel free to make all the excuses you want about how none of them were Polish because they were black/gay/not Catholic/whatever: you can not change the fact that all of them were Poles who were born in Poland to Polish parents.


I know far more than you do about both Trawniki and the Poniatowa camp that preceded it. However, there's a tiny problem with your thesis: none of Sawoniuk, Serafinowicz, Palij, Obodzinsky, nor Bilaniuk were ever prisoners of war (the closest any of them came were when Sawoniuk and Serafinowicz deserted from the SS and immediately joined the Polish army).

I feel calling these people "Polish" is a bit harsh, as in Norway, these kind of people who joined other armies or did not support the Norwegian government were branded "Traitors", even to such as extent that the bigges traitor in Norway before and during the second world war, Vidkun Quisling, got his name in the international dictionary as being synonym with "traitor"!

I am not schooled about the people mentioned here, but I would believe if they served in the SS or in any foreign army, and against "The real Poland", they were traitors. No?

So, calling them "Polish", as in that they represent the real Poland, is something I would argue about. In Norway, the traitors lost their citizenships, lost their rights to vote, to own property and even to work in certain areas. They were lost souls, and rightfully so. All countries have such people, but to brand Poland as a nation with these peoples actions and say it reflects something more than a posse of unpatriotic hodlums is going a bit too far.

Many countries would be guilty of many things if this was the norm, or the standard of which a country/people are being measured up against.

Some jews are swindlers and crooks, are ALL jews swindlers and crooks? Is Israel a criminal nation, because SOME of it's inhabitants kill small children with machine guns?

Are Americans bad and evil, because they took much of the land from the Indians?

Should the British today be held responsible for what the Catholic church did during it's heydays, when they were torturing and killing people in the name of god?

Should Poland be held responsible for these 5-6 individuals if they were rotten apples? Is it fair, that Harry uses their actions against Poles 50-60 years later?

If Poland dealt with these people, and did whatever was correct to make them answer to their crimes, then I don't think Poland should be as a hostage for their actions. Yes we can learn from them, we can try to prevent such things from happening again, but I would never be so bold as to use horrendous crimes perpetrated by "traitors", and paint a whole people and nation with their crimes.

DariuszTelka

Could you perhaps quote the part where I say that Poland is a criminal nation? Or even the part where I say anything about Poland as a nation?


The real Poland has good people, and it has bad people. All nations have good people and bad people. Saying that there has never been a bad Pole is as untrue as saying that all Poles are bad.


Poland didn't deal with those people (although it didn't have much chance as none of them came back to Poland after the war). From memory Hajda was investigated after the war but as he wasn't in Poland nothing could be done. Sawoniuk and Serafinowicz both joined the same regiment of the Polish army.


You dont seem to have much of a problem with painting entire ethnic groups on the basis of the actions of a few people.

I just assume it from the way you write. You say "Poles", but you don't specify who you mean. You say "Polish people". From that I guess/think that you mean "Poles" as in ALL Poles.

Like here;



I agree.


I know Poland has tried to convict war-criminals and sent out papers to international police forces and other nations to return these to Poland, but from what I've read, it's been hard. Especially the jewish war criminals who fled to Israel. Israel has a policy of not sending any Israely citizen out, for whatever reason, to stand trial in another country.


If you refer to islam, then it's not an ethnic group, but a political evil, disguised as religion. I only have to ask you to read their "holy book", there you will find racism, sexism, homophobia and the worst forms of derogatory language about non-muslims. It makes Mein Kampf, which by the way sells very well in islamic states, look like a sunday prayer book in a Quaker village.

And if you look at the amount of terrorists, terror-attacks and violence people who are of muslim faith stand for in all the European/Western, not to talk about their own nations. I don't think we are talking about "the actions of a few people", Harry. More like hundreds of thousands. (9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Beslan, Bali, Moscow, Mumbai...)

DariuszTelka

Given that I use phrases such as "all Poles" and "the Poles who trained at Trawniki", you might like to read what I actually write before concluding you understand what I mean.


Neither Sawoniuk nor Serafinowicz were Jewish but Poland made no attempt to extradite either: instead they were both charged with war crimes by the British government (and yes it was post-1989).


If as you claim 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Beslan, Bali, Moscow and Mumbai suggest something about all Muslims, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, Auschwitz and Majdanek must prove the same thing about all white Europeans. Of course it proves no such thing and thus shows that your logic is utterly worthless tripe designed solely to excuse bigotry.

Ukarinians born in Poland still identified as Ukrainians. Hiwis were Soviet POWs and whatever good or evil they did, they did it in the name of the Soviet nations, not Poland. I shall respect their choice and refrain from calling them Polish.