US PBS Special on Berga-US Jewish POWs

[witness]

The Holocaust, for example, keeps Jews being Jews when more and more are just giving up the Faith and the Idea. The Big-H is also Biblical Fundamentalism articulated for the Last Days, according to Evangelical Christians, who see the return of Christ to the Holy Land as imminent and articulated by American-Israeli chauvinism and mischief in the Mid-East.

The Big-H is also a symbolic means for the Democracy-Capitalist plutocracy of undermining the idea of national sovereignty in order to promote the expansion of global financial markets and exploit labor markets abroad. We see this, for example, in Germany where nationalism is very, very baaad (if not anti-Semitic) and in the United States where economic-nationalism is akin to Genocide, or atavistic at best. We are supposed to want to buy shoes made with foreign sweatshop labor, either here or abroad, otherwise we are racists and xenophobes. Capitalism makes profits for the few; it cannot manufacture national culture, whether German, Turk, American, or Mexican. If you don't like it, Buy Stocks!

Globaloney sucks.

Blah balh blah.
Conclusions ,conclusions ,conclusions.How Scott Smith arrives to these
conclusions which are nothing else but Propaganda remains unclear.
For example what are the starting premises for this statement of Smith
"The Big-H is also a symbolic means for the Democracy-Capitalist plutocracy of undermining the idea of national sovereignty in order to promote the expansion of global financial markets and exploit labor markets abroad. "...?
One might assume that before Holocaust there was no promotion of global financial markets and exploitation of labor markets abroad..

Capitalism makes profits for the few;

Such an opposition to Capitalism..Capitalism is baad .
So what the other alternatives would Scott Smith prefer ?
Probably National -Socialism which is of course the most humane political movement for him.
But didn't not National-Socialism incorporate Capitalism relations as well ? Maybe it was against Private enterprize ? Or against Exploitations of financial markets abroad ? And not only markets ?

[chalutzim]

Basically, all modern history is tainted from the Holocaustian glass. There are many reasons for this: Interventionism, Zionism, Victimology, are some of them.

Please, Scott, could you enlighten me about who wears these glasses besides you?

Globaloney sucks.

Yes, indeed.

[Roberto]

The Geneva convention, like all treaties, is nothing more than an international agreement.

International law, unlike national law, is made up of such agreements and of customs observed by a majority of nations over a given period of time. These agreements and customs have the force of law, and their breach is a violation of law subject to sanctions.

Treaties are based first of all on mutual self-interest and reciprocation; and secondly, upon trust, i.e., that the interests of a long tradition of friendship outweigh any disadvantages of an agreement in the interests of peace and ending continued conflict or potential conflict.

How about showing us, on hand of the texts of the respective instruments, to what extent the signatory’s obligations under the Hague and Geneva Conventions depend on reciprocity, instead of throwing your unsupported wisdom around? You may find the former under this link:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm

and the latter under this one:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva02.htm

Simply put, the Germans mostly upheld the Geneva convention with their Western enemies because they mostly upheld these agreements with the Germans.

I presume Smith can show us some kind of evidence – a memorandum, or something of the sort – from which it becomes apparent that reciprocity was the reason for the Nazis adhering to the Geneva Convention in regard to the Western Allies. Or is the above just his irrelevant personal opinion?

This was not the case with the Soviets who did not sign the Geneva convention before the war,

So what? As I explained, the rules of the Hague and Geneva Conventions had become customary international law by the end of the 1930s, according to contemporary prevailing legal opinion. This meant that a belligerent’s obligations to abide by them were not dependent on his or his opponent’s having expressly adhered to either of these conventions.

and neither side tried to fight under those rules.

So often has Smith been told about the Soviet offer to the German Reich to keep the Hague Rules of Land Warfare on a mutual basis and the Soviet directive on the treatment of POWs dated 1 July 1941, which largely corresponded with the fundamental principles of international law, that the above statement can be called a plain and simple lie.

After the first German reversals, when the SS wanted Russian POWs for labor in the winter of 1941-42 as the Germany economy started to gear for Total War, it found that the Wehrmacht had let them all perish (because the General Staff had not planned for such huge intakes nor for a long campaign).

No, Smith, it was not because of that, as you well know. It was because Soviet prisoners of war were considered below the level of humanity and thus hardly any provisions to take care of them were made in the first place, and because at a certain point in time it was consciously decided to let all non-working Soviet prisoners of war starve to death in order to at least partially carry out the Hungerplan aimed at making it possible to feed the armed forces out of the conquered Soviet lands and the civilian population to enjoy food consumption as in peacetime. Logistical difficulties resulting from "such huge intakes" are no argument, considering i.a. that the Wehrmacht had in the previous year taken about two million prisoners in France within a short period of time and allowed none of them to starve to death.

And the Russians didn't treat the German POWs any better.

The Russians were in dire straits themselves, as a matter of fact. "One could watch the guards, how in the spring they stood by growing birches, debarked them and fed on the freshly grown bark", reported a German soldier who returned from a Soviet prison camp. The civilian population was even worse off in many places. Numerous Russians even begged to the prisoners when after the war they occasionally received food from the USA and since 1949 also packages from the German Federal Republic.

In the West, when reciprocation was no longer a factor, such as when the war ended and Allied POWs were released, then conditions for German POWs still held by the Allies deteriorated sharply. With reciprocity no longer a concern, there was simply no longer any reason to follow the Geneva conventions.

Can Smith show us evidence that such ignoble considerations led to a worsening of the treatment of German POWs in the immediate postwar period, or is he again engaging in unsubstantiated speculations?

And in fact, Eisenhower declared German POWs as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" expressly so that the Americans would not seem "legally" compelled to follow those prior agreements, i.e., without being seen as such.

The purpose of this step was to free food resources for the starving civilian population until help from abroad could become effective. It was still a violation of the Geneva Convention, of course, with the attenuation that it was meant to help out the civilian population.

If the Victors couldn't feed the POWs after the war, well, the war was over and all, and they had no business holding them in the first place.

This they often took too long to do, for sure.

Of course, Germany was held to one standard of feeding its prisoners at Nuremberg despite the privations and circumstances of wartime.

What’s that supposed to mean?

The Allies had no more war to fight and plenty of American largesse to burn judging by the global role intentionally carved out for itself by the Interventionists.

Smith’s diatribes against "Interventionists" don’t interest me. As to America having plenty of "largesse to burn", he may be understating the Allied military government’s problems.

[…]The fact is that in 1945 there was a worldwide shortage of food and that the transportation system in Europe was largely destroyed. Already on 14 February Eisenhower had called the attention of the Allied governments to the fact that he feared a severe shortage of food throughout Europe at the war's end. He even feared that there would be famine - and he had no food reserves to feed the Germans, the "displaced persons" and the Allied civilian population. He "urgently" requested immediate food supplies from Great Britain - this at a time when in Great Britain food was still rationed.[…]

I translated the above from an article by German historian Rolf Steininger in: Wolfgang Benz et al, Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile, 12th edition 2002 by dtv Munich, page 128.

[Roberto]

Of course, the storytellers convert another of the atrocities and hardships of war into the Holocaust™.

The imbecile and rather offensive term at the end aside, what other examples can Smith show us of "storytellers" converting "the atrocities and hardships of war" into what is commoly know as the Holocaust?

Basically, all modern history is tainted from the Holocaustian glass. There are many reasons for this: Interventionism, Zionism, Victimology, are some of them.

The Holocaust, for example, keeps Jews being Jews when more and more are just giving up the Faith and the Idea. The Big-H is also Biblical Fundamentalism articulated for the Last Days, according to Evangelical Christians, who see the return of Christ to the Holy Land as imminent and articulated by American-Israeli chauvinism and mischief in the Mid-East.

The Big-H is also a symbolic means for the Democracy-Capitalist plutocracy of undermining the idea of national sovereignty in order to promote the expansion of global financial markets and exploit labor markets abroad. We see this, for example, in Germany where nationalism is very, very baaad (if not anti-Semitic) and in the United States where economic-nationalism is akin to Genocide, or atavistic at best. We are supposed to want to buy shoes made with foreign sweatshop labor, either here or abroad, otherwise we are racists and xenophobes. Capitalism makes profits for the few; it cannot manufacture national culture, whether German, Turk, American, or Mexican. If you don't like it, Buy Stocks!

Globaloney sucks.

I asked for an example of converting "the atrocities and hardships of war" into what is commoly know as the Holocaust.

Can anyone show me where to find that example in Smith's above bubbles of soap?

Some pathetic need to get worked up about "Greuelpropaganda", or just too much time on your hands?

When I turn on the tube I want to learn something.

Turn on the tube to "learn something" - a truly American attitude, one that reminds me of a song by Chilean chansonist Piero, with a line that translates, "if they know something about history, it's not because they've read it, but because they saw it in American cinema" (followed by the audience's roaring laughter).

Over here people are more realistic than that. Nobody expects anything other than entertainment at best and exhausting nonsense at worst when turning on the tube.

But I am concerned about what drivel is force-fed to the country, given that rebuttals would be considered Hate.

Relax, Smith. No force-fed drivel could be as bad as what you would feed the audiences if you had your own "Revisionist" TV-channel.

[Tarpon27]

Scott wrote:

I watched some of it and found the story hard to believe.

Gee, there is a shocker.

American POWs were separated because they were or "looked" Jewish. Nonsense.

Scott, just as a question, did American GIs who were Jewish have the SAME dog tags as their gentile counterparts?

And why only 80? More likely they were selected for the hard labor quota because they had pissed off the commandant or something.

Apparently, "80" was the number of actual Jews taken for the work detail of 350. When you ask, "why only 80", what is the question?

That there were MORE Jews that they missed?

The rest were "undesirables". Whatever that means.

The Geneva convention allows forced-labor for enlisted men as long as it is not in war industry. Digging bombshelter tunnels is technically not war industry but they would have been better employed clearing rubble from bombed cities or on farms, as was the case with German POWs in the USA.

Wait...you are saying the excavation work at Berga was for "bombshelter tunnels"? Can you source that, please, or are you just attempting to be diversionary?

Berga was a such a heavy Allied bomb target that it required bomb shelters carved out of rock for the local populace, or was there valuable military installations and personnel stationed near that needed such bomb shelters?

Of course, the storytellers convert another of the atrocities and hardships of war into the Holocaust™. I fell asleep during the program, which was presented in somber, funerific black & white.

Well, it may appear to the average reader that:

1) You cannot use your usual excuses per the Genava Convention on this one;

2) You appear to be deliberately obfusticating the issue;

3) You cannot define American GI POW Jews as "enemies of the state" by being "unwanted Jews"

4) Your opinion appears that the doumentary is fiction but you have absolutely zero evidence presented to refute it.

Of course, the standard rebuttal of it being falsified, as in false documentation, or the Jewish International Conspiracy makes the men on the documentary, as well as the film maker, liars.


Regards,

Mark

[Scott Smith]

Basically, all modern history is tainted from the Holocaustian glass. There are many reasons for this: Interventionism, Zionism, Victimology, are some of them.

Please, Scott, could you enlighten me about who wears these glasses besides you?

Anybody who wants a piece of the Holocaust Pie, which is just about all of the mass-media. May was sweeps month, for example. During sweeps month you get lots of canned stories about child molesters stalking the Internet and teachers seducing children, among other sensationalistic drivel.

[Dan]

Whenever I see American Jewish soldiers who were captured interviewed, they were shocked that they were treated like all the other soldiers. This whole idea of the Germans grabbing people who looked Jewish seems silly. Also the idea that old people had repressed memories which just sort of came back during interviews, come on. This it just another big lie, isn't it?

[Dan]

Many revealed that they had repressed their memories for more than 50 years and never talked about their imprisonment, not even to spouses and family members.

Everyone wants to be a victim. Is there any documentation about this?

[Scott Smith]

I asked for an example of converting "the atrocities and hardships of war" into what is commoly know as the Holocaust.

How about a picture of a delousing cubicle door called a gaschamber? Or a bombshelter door placed in a museum and called a gaschamber door. Or tales of the laundry at Auschwitz, or anywhere really, being confabulated into stories of Human Soap manufacture. Vellum lampshades made of human skin. Piles of dead shoes proxying for millions of victims. The list is endless.

Some pathetic need to get worked up about "Greuelpropaganda", or just too much time on your hands?

When I turn on the tube I want to learn something.

Turn on the tube to "learn something" - a truly American attitude, one that reminds me of a song by Chilean chansonist Piero, with a line that translates, "if they know something about history, it's not because they've read it, but because they saw it in American cinema" (followed by the audience's roaring laughter).

Over here people are more realistic than that. Nobody expects anything other than entertainment at best and exhausting nonsense at worst when turning on the tube.

Well, I subscribed to cable for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Learning Channel mostly. This program was on PBS, the educational channel. However, mostly the history from all of these is dumbed-down to the third grade and is an excuse to hold your attention between commercials, except PBS, which makes a fifteen minute program last an hour without resorting to commercials. ZZZZZZZZZ!

[Roberto]

I asked for an example of converting "the atrocities and hardships of war" into what is commoly know as the Holocaust.

How about a picture of a delousing cubicle door called a gaschamber?

An erroneous contemporary assumption regarding Dachau concentration camp at worst. Dismissed, next one.

Or a bombshelter door placed in a museum and called a gaschamber door.

If what they show at the USHMM was really a bombshelter door, big deal. Doors of this type were used in the gas chambers of Birkenau. Care to have another look at the correspondence between the AB Bauleitung and its suppliers related to such doors, and give it another try at answering some questions related thereto?

Or tales of the laundry at Auschwitz, or anywhere really, being confabulated into stories of Human Soap manufacture.

Don't know what Smith is talking about. The human soap rumors that circulated at Auschwitz were never seen by criminal justice and historiography as anything other than what they were - unconfirmed rumors.

Vellum lampshades made of human skin.

The existence of lampshades from tatooed human skin at Buchenwald concentration camp is well documented. It was an individual nutcase that no one other than "Revisionist" howlers make a big deal of. Care to have another look at the evidence, Smith?

Piles of dead shoes proxying for millions of victims.

Of course Smith can plausibly explain how those shoes got there, other than on the feet of their wearers who disappeared. Or then he can show us evidence as to what, if not murder, is supposed to have happened to all these people.

The list is endless.

The list of monotonous repetitions of imbecile assertions that Smith is capable of is endless indeed.

Some pathetic need to get worked up about "Greuelpropaganda", or just too much time on your hands?

When I turn on the tube I want to learn something.

Turn on the tube to "learn something" - a truly American attitude, one that reminds me of a song by Chilean chansonist Piero, with a line that translates, "if they know something about history, it's not because they've read it, but because they saw it in American cinema" (followed by the audience's roaring laughter).

Over here people are more realistic than that. Nobody expects anything other than entertainment at best and exhausting nonsense at worst when turning on the tube.

Well, I subscribed to cable for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Learning Channel mostly. This program was on PBS, the educational channel. However, mostly the history from all of these is dumbed-down to the third grade and is an excuse to hold your attention between commercials, except PBS, which makes a fifteen minute program last an hour without resorting to commercials.

If this is what Smith thinks of the mentioned channels, I suggest he unsubscribe them and save himself the money, instead of wasting it on something to bitch about.

[Scott Smith]

Scott, just as a question, did American GIs who were Jewish have the SAME dog tags as their gentile counterparts?

I don't know. My uncle's said Protestant but he wasn't a Protestant. It also gave his home address, which dog tags don't do today.

And why only 80? More likely they were selected for the hard labor quota because they had pissed off the commandant or something.

Apparently, "80" was the number of actual Jews taken for the work detail of 350. When you ask, "why only 80", what is the question?

I meant surely the Germans captured more than 80 Americans who were Jews (in the war).

Like I said, I think the Jews at this camp are confabulating the story. Everytime a German got pissed off at them it was (in their mind) obviously because they were Jews, right? Besides only 80 of the work detail of 350 were even Jews! No problem--those awful Krauts picked guys that "looked Jewish."
:roll:

The Geneva convention allows forced-labor for enlisted men as long as it is not in war industry. Digging bombshelter tunnels is technically not war industry but they would have been better employed clearing rubble from bombed cities or on farms, as was the case with German POWs in the USA.

Wait...you are saying the excavation work at Berga was for "bombshelter tunnels"? Can you source that, please, or are you just attempting to be diversionary?

Either way they are "bombshelter tunnels," but I think the program said it was for military use. That's why I said that a better use of POWs would be in farming or picking up rubble from bombing people's homes--or for that matter, even digging civilian bombshelters. (Crappy work that I wouldn't want to do, but I wasn't an officer when I was in the military either. Yeah, we still have a class-system, don't we?)

Of course, the storytellers convert another of the atrocities and hardships of war into the Holocaust™. I fell asleep during the program, which was presented in somber, funerific black & white.

Well, it may appear to the average reader that:

1) You cannot use your usual excuses per the Genava Convention on this one;

You can if you have any German civilians that might use the shelter. It hasn't been demonstrated otherwise.

2) You appear to be deliberately obfusticating the issue;

Your failure to understand my points is not my problem.

3) You cannot define American GI POW Jews as "enemies of the state" by being "unwanted Jews"

I never said they were.

4) Your opinion appears that the doumentary is fiction but you have absolutely zero evidence presented to refute it.

It's just a bunch of old farts telling atrocity stories with tears in their eyes, Mark. Old men do that in their sentimental years.

Over the Memorial Day weekend I went to a family reunion in Paradise Valley. I saw old people that I haven't seen in twenty years. People in their 70s and 80s. They told some of the same family stories that I've heard all my life and remember after hearing them so many times. They could remember things from sixty or seventy years ago but not what happened yesterday. However, the older ones would tell the stories and get them wrong because the younger ones remembered the stories canonically. Which story is right? The one that the old fart just told with tears in his eyes or the one that his Granddaughter has heard for the last twenty years and corrects? Also family stories tend to be sanitized a little and only by comparing different versions and when they are made can you approximate the correct story.

So which story is more realistic? One made at the time when there may have been an axe to grind. One made years later upon reflection. Or one made in the sentimental years, and after sixty years or so of relentless Big-H propaganda (especially since 1967). Plus, people want to be part of "history" so they tend to put themselves "into it" when they reflect.

Of course, the standard rebuttal of it being falsified, as in false documentation, or the Jewish International Conspiracy makes the men on the documentary, as well as the film maker, liars.

Now who is obfuscating?

[Scott Smith]

If this is what Smith thinks of the mentioned channels, I suggest he unsubscribe them and save himself the money, instead of wasting it on something to bitch about.

As I said, that's why I'm not renewing my cable this month.

[Roberto]

If this is what Smith thinks of the mentioned channels, I suggest he unsubscribe them and save himself the money, instead of wasting it on something to bitch about.

As I said, that's why I'm not renewing my cable this month.

When did you say that, buddy? Did I miss something?

Well, I subscribed to cable for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Learning Channel mostly. This program was on PBS, the educational channel. However, mostly the history from all of these is dumbed-down to the third grade and is an excuse to hold your attention between commercials, except PBS, which makes a fifteen minute program last an hour without resorting to commercials.

[Tarpon27]

I don't know. My uncle's said Protestant but he wasn't a Protestant. It also gave his home address, which dog tags don't do today.

They had an "H" for Hebrew on 'em. Jewish bomber crew members that were shot down were instructed to get rid of their tags before capture...but then again, an enemy POW captured without dog tags was technically a "spy" and therefore could be subjected to death.

The simple point is, simply, that that were Jewish American POWs whose dog tags were marked with an "H". Therefore, it makes it relatively difficult to evade being marked as a Jew with dog tags with an "H" on 'em, whether they are like your uncle or not with mislabled tags...'course, I suppose many GIs had "H" coded tags by choice or mistake...

I meant surely the Germans captured more than 80 Americans who were Jews (in the war).

I see. But then I am interested in the singular facet of one required detail of 350 men from one Stalag sent to Berga am Elster...which was what the program was about.

If you wish to make some point, start your own thread on the thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Jewish American POWs captured by the Germans and their subsequent treatment. It is immaterial to this thread and this incident.

Either way they are "bombshelter tunnels," but I think the program said it was for military use.

I see...a semantics game.

It goes like this:

Scott originally wrote:

The Geneva convention allows forced-labor for enlisted men as long as it is not in war industry.

Now, this late in the war, I don't think the Germans gave much of a hoot for building "bomb shelters" to protect a vulnerable population. I think they cared a great deal about building relatively survivable facilites for, gasp the "war industry".

Since cutting 17 tunnels through solid rock was more than likely to be used for production purposes for the German war effort, your assertion that somehow Berga was NOT for the "war industry" is just being slippery, and semantics.

That's why I said that a better use of POWs would be in farming or picking up rubble...

Maybe, but the use of American POWs at Berga was, according to what you posted, a violation of the Geneva Convention on POW labor for the war industry.

You can if you have any German civilians that might use the shelter. It hasn't been demonstrated otherwise.

Oh, please, Scott.

Demonstrate first, that it was a bomb shelter for civilians and not for the war industry. Why was it being built?

Your failure to understand my points is not my problem.

I don't think I have failed to understand them. Please point in the direction that will provide the evidence that the tunnels at Berga were being NOT built for the purposes of the German war time industry vs. your benign bomb shelters.

I never said they were.

Not here.

It's just a bunch of old farts telling atrocity stories with tears in their eyes, Mark. Old men do that in their sentimental years.

I see.

From earlier:

Like I said, I think the Jews at this camp are confabulating the story.

Apparently, so are the non-Jews, that were featured on the program.

Mark

[Scott Smith]

I don't think a soldier has to have his dogtags but he must have his uniform or he can be considered a spy under the Geneva Convention. An armed soldier with I.D. but no uniform could certainly be a "spy."

Please point in the direction that will provide the evidence that the tunnels at Berga were being NOT built for the purposes of the German war time industry vs. your benign bomb shelters.

The program never demonstrated beyond a mere claim (if that) that they were not bombshelters for civilian use--unless I missed something, as I fell asleep in the middle. Therefore we can only assume. Oh those wicked Nazis, building tunnels for nothing but just to punish those ugly Jews and non-Jews that "look" like Jews... (Cue tears.)

I meant surely the Germans captured more than 80 Americans who were Jews (in the war).

I see. But then I am interested in the singular facet of one required detail of 350 men from one Stalag sent to Berga am Elster...which was what the program was about.

Obviously the purpose of the program was to make our little noggins generalize. They found a few old farts (Jews and non-Jews) who see the universe and the entire history of the war through the Holocaust sphincter, and then we have a fluff piece produced for sweeps month for our education and delictation about the Nazis mistreating American Jews who served our country (not those greasy foreign types, you know). A great Memorial Day tribute! Raise high the Stars and Stripes and let's go git Saddam.

Oh, wait, that was the last Intervention...

Who does Bush bomb now?

Anyway, "Triple Chai," make out your check to Edgar Bronfman for $54 and he will match it (up to $25,000) to ensure that we Never, Never Forget™ and that Israel is kept safe from those nasty Gentiles.

Isn't that about the size of it?

Not conspiracy, just confluence-of-interest in a modern spoils-system Democracy.