Anti-semites who saved Jews

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UncleBourbon
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Anti-semites who saved Jews

#1

Post by UncleBourbon » 12 Oct 2019, 01:16

Obscure subject, and one I'm not too sure what forum it belongs to, but what are some examples of anti-semites who ended up rescuing or saving Jews?

Head of the Abwehr Wilhelm Canaris is one who comes to mind. He proposed the idea of marking Jews with the Star of David, but after witnessing atrocities in Warsaw he used his Abwehr connections to get at least 500 Dutch Jews to safety.

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Annelie
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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#2

Post by Annelie » 12 Oct 2019, 17:54

always wonder why people are described as anti-Semitic and then
we are told they save Jewish lives. Maybe they are NOT anti -semitic
in the first place?


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Max
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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#3

Post by Max » 13 Oct 2019, 09:52

Annelie wrote:
12 Oct 2019, 17:54
always wonder why people are described as anti-Semitic and then
we are told they save Jewish lives. Maybe they are NOT anti -semitic
in the first place?
Maybe so, but it's not a matter of one thing or the other. It seems that in the case of Canaris, he was probably "casually" anti-Semitic enough to ingratiate himself to Hitler.
According to biographer Heinz Höhne, Canaris subscribed to most of Hitler's views.[41] Hitler's nationalism, his social-Darwinist beliefs, his opposition to the Versailles Treaty, his belief in rebuilding a Greater German Reich, and his anti-Semitic ideology appealed to the Abwehr chief.[42] Prompted by anti-Semitism, Canaris first suggested the use of the Star of David to identify Jews during 1935–1936, setting them apart from German citizens within the Reich, heralding their isolation, presaging their compulsory resettlement, and ultimately leading to their physical annihilation.[43]

[41],[42],[43] Höhne, Heinz (1979). Canaris: Hitler’s Master Spy. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-08777-2.

However;
he clearly changed his mind after realising the appalling consequences of his former thinking.

Canaris was more or less anti-Semitic and then later, became much less so [or even not at all].

After the outbreak of war between Germany and Poland in September 1939, Canaris visited the front, where he saw the devastation rendered by the German military—seeing Warsaw in flames nearly brought him to tears and it was reported that he exclaimed, "our children's children will have to bear the blame for this".[73]
[73] Höhne, Heinz (1979). Canaris: Hitler’s Master Spy. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-08777-2
Canaris also intervened to save a number of victims from Nazi persecution, including Jews, by getting them out of harm's way; he was instrumental, for example, in getting five hundred Dutch Jews to safety in May 1941.[91] Many such people were given token training as Abwehr "agents" and then issued papers allowing them to leave Germany. One notable person he is said to have assisted was the then Lubavitcher Rebbe in Warsaw, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn.[92] This has led Chabad Lubavitch to campaign for his recognition as a Righteous Gentile by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.[93]

[91]Höhne, Heinz (1979). Canaris: Hitler’s Master Spy. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-08777-2.
[92] Altein, Rachel (2002). Eliezer Y. Zaklikovsky (ed.). Out of the Inferno: The Efforts That Led to the Rescue of Rabbi Yosef Schneersohn of Lubavitch from War-Torn Europe in 1939–40. New York: Kehot. ISBN 978-0-82660-683-9.
[93] Wagner, Matthew (2009). "Chabad: Make Nazi Commander a Righteous Gentile". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 22, 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris
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Annelie
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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#4

Post by Annelie » 13 Oct 2019, 14:23

I understand your point Max.

I am assuming the time period they lived in it wasn't something until Hitler
made his thoughts clear that anyone (excluding opportunist criminal element) actually gave it much thought?
As now most rational people will observe some people regardless of religion etc
in a bad light if they do things to cause that and not on whole group people?

As I have always felt just because I don't like someone and they are of any one
group doesn't mean I dislike the whole group. Hard to be casual about being
anti Semitic?

Perhaps in those times it was prudent to keep your opinions to yourself?

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#5

Post by UncleBourbon » 14 Oct 2019, 06:31

Annelie wrote:
12 Oct 2019, 17:54
always wonder why people are described as anti-Semitic and then we are told they save Jewish lives.
I think it makes sense to dislike a culture or group while also not wanting to see them killed.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#6

Post by gebhk » 14 Oct 2019, 10:39

always wonder why people are described as anti-Semitic and then we are told they save Jewish lives. Maybe they are NOT anti -semitic in the first place?
I think we are trying to reduce an immensely complex set of thoughts and emotions into a 0-1 sum or, put another way, stuff a long and ever-shifting continuum into just two pigeonholes.

People's opinions change and situations change.

People say and do things when isolated from the reality of their actions that they could never enact personally (It's one thing to say "I'd like to kill that *******" and an altogether different thing to actually do it).

People say and do things under peer pressure (and I would include cultural norms and values in that) that they would not do otherwise.

There are degree's of 'anti' in whichever field. Although I am generally an animal lover, I wouldn't want a dog in my house. They smell, leave hairs all over the place, crash about and bark. In that respect I am anti-canine. Doesn't mean will go out and kill dogs or abuse them. I certainly don't believe dogs should be removed from the face of the earth. I also would not walk by a dog in distress or tolerate others abusing a dog. I think it is fair to say that I am 'casually' anti-canine.

There is an easily muddied distinction between disliking groups of people for who they are as opposed to for what they do and say. I don't feel my objections to FGM make me a racist but even if they do, I certainly won't apologise for that. Which leads us to another point, that:

People often equate appearance and cultural-based behaviours with race. However, in reality, the two are not universal. So the animosity a racist may feel towards another group because they 'all do X' or 'all look like 'Y', will not necessarily extend to individuals who do not correspond to the stereotype. Thus even a virulent anti-Semite like the composer Richard Wagner ended up with a number of Jewish friends - and that leads onto:

Just because you are an anti-something by conviction of either logic, emotion or both, does not mean that there may not arise competing logics and emotions - such as love, lust, empathy, self-interest etc.

And so it goes on.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#7

Post by Gorque » 14 Oct 2019, 15:09

So did suggesting the wearing of the yellow star make Canaris an anti-semite or was he responding with a solution to a problem posed regarding the easy identification of Jews?

That's a tough call based upon his later actions.

Are there any writings by Canaris or observations of Canaris that can either reinforce or dispel his perceived points-of-view?

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#8

Post by wm » 19 Oct 2019, 22:59

Max wrote:
13 Oct 2019, 09:52
After the outbreak of war between Germany and Poland in September 1939, Canaris visited the front, where he saw the devastation rendered by the German military—seeing Warsaw in flames nearly brought him to tears and it was reported that he exclaimed, "our children's children will have to bear the blame for this".
Did he really say that? A career officer was offended by a sight of a burning enemies' fortress? btw in Warsaw normal life was restored in a matter of days. Actually Polish survivors of both bombing of Warsaw and bombing of German cities said there was no equivalency at all. The bombing of German cities was like the ultimate Apocalypse, like Sodoma and Gomorrah once more.

Canaris also intervened to save a number of victims from Nazi persecution, including Jews, by getting them out of harm's way; he was instrumental, for example, in getting five hundred Dutch Jews to safety in May 1941.

He saved them from what? The Holocaust wasn't a thing in May 1941. The Dutch Jews were still perfectly safe.

Many such people were given token training as Abwehr "agents" and then issued papers allowing them to leave Germany. One notable person he is said to have assisted was the then Lubavitcher Rebbe in Warsaw, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn.
Again Schneersohn was saved from what? The Holocaust wasn't a thing in 1940. It was quite easy to leave Poland in 1940 and many Jews did. It just required money, and the Nazis were quite ok with it.

In 1940 even for the Nazis, for Himmler and Hitler, the Holocaust was unimaginable ("one rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people"), the planned to resolve the Jewish question by other means.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#9

Post by Max » 21 Oct 2019, 05:21

wm wrote:
19 Oct 2019, 22:59
He saved them from what? The Holocaust wasn't a thing in May 1941. The Dutch Jews were still perfectly safe.
Give us a break! Perfectly safe? They only had to look to recent events in Germany to understand how "safe" they were

Again Schneersohn was saved from what? The Holocaust wasn't a thing in 1940. It was quite easy to leave Poland in 1940 and many Jews did. It just required money, and the Nazis were quite ok with it.
What ever it was, there were many concerned that Schneersohn was in danger.
Following Nazi Germany's attack against Poland in 1939, Rabbi Schneersohn refused to leave Warsaw. The government of the United States of America, which was still neutral, used its diplomatic relations to convince Nazi Germany to rescue Schneersohn from the war zone in German-occupied Poland.[19] He remained in the city during the bombardments and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. He gave the full support of his organizations to assist as many Jews as possible to flee the invading armies. With the intercession of the United States Department of State in Washington, DC and with the lobbying of many Jewish leaders, such as Jacob Rutstein, on behalf of the Rebbe (and, reputedly, also with the help of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,[20] the head of the Abwehr), he was finally granted diplomatic immunity and given safe passage to go via Berlin to Riga, Latvia (where the Rebbe was a citizen and which was still free) and then on to New York City, where he arrived on 19 March 1940
[19]Rigg, Bryan Mark, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Yale University Press 2006)
[20]Altein, R, Zaklikofsky, E, Jacobson, I: "Out of the Inferno: The Efforts That Led to the Rescue of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch from War Torn Europe in 1939–40", p. 160. Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, 2002 ISBN 0-8266-0683-0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Yit ... chneersohn



As for this
In 1940 even for the Nazis, for Himmler and Hitler, the Holocaust was unimaginable ("one rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people"), the planned to resolve the Jewish question by other means.
To suggest that Jews had no reason to fear for their safety and to take Himmler's words on face value,[ especially in light of subsequent events] is naïve or disingenuous .
viewtopic.php?p=570635#p570635
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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#10

Post by wm » 21 Oct 2019, 11:44

You wrote: recent events in Germany - please name one ( post-Kristallnacht - which wasn't even a minor atrocity in comparison with the events in the USSR, China, Ethiopia - Nanjing Massacre anyone? ).

From occupied Poland, 2,500+ Jews legally emigrated to Palestine and even more to other countries. You just had to have an entry visa, pay 500 zlotys (about $3000 in today's money) of emigration tax to the relevant Jewish authority (Judenrat), and get German permission - which was relatively easy because the state policy at that time was forced Jewish emigration. Only in the Warsaw Ghetto, they collected 300,000 zlotys thanks to the tax.

That Schneersohn needed an intervention of the United States Department of State is fake history, although obviously such an intervention couldn't hurt.

It would be an exaggeration to say Schneersohn wasn't in danger but actually he wasn't. As an international celebrity, he was too important to be killed wantonly.

Schneersohn was saved but many saw that as a betrayal, that he left his flock in time of need when they needed him the most.
About such people, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto Adam Czerniaków said: You piece of sh., I remember that you Sir played a lordly leader pre-war and now you and your ilk flee leaving alone the living in dreadful circumstances masses.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#11

Post by wm » 21 Oct 2019, 12:08

From The Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher R. Browning
The systematic liquidation in 1939-40 of Poles noted for their education, nationalism, or social status made it clear that the Nazis were capable of murdering by the thousands. By one estimate, the number of Poles executed by the Germans had reached 50,000 by the end of 1939."
In the Germans' view it was but one step to ensure the permanent rule of Germany in the conquered Polish territories. Complementary to this murdering of thousands was the "resettlement" of hundreds of thousands, eventually even millions. The expulsion of undesired elements—Poles, Jews, "Gypsies"—to the east and the recovery of valuable German stock to be settled in their place were to provide the real biological basis for the consolidation of German Lebensraum.
Nazi Jewish policy was at least temporarily subsumed into these experiments in demographic engineering.
So the Poles were killed by thousands in an attempted cultural genocide and the Jews were merely resettled. The situation was so bad that even the Wehrmacht protested:
The prestige of the army, which was forced to stand by helplessly in the face of these atrocities, could never be restored in the eyes of the Polish population. But worst of all was the "moral depravity that will spread like a plague in the shortest time" among good Germans. At the moment "the attitude of the troops to the ss and police wavers between loathing and hate," but
"when the highest officials of the ss and police demand violence and brutality and praise it publicly, then in the shortest time only the brutes rule. Surprisingly quickly the like-minded and the deviant personalities come together, as is the case in Poland, in order to give full vent to their animalistic and pathological instincts."
The Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher R. Browning
Our good Admiral wasn't among those who protested. Did he know? Of course. And he did nothing.
It's nice he shed a tear, but curiously it looks like the standard hagiographers' efforts:
After this the Sultan entered the City and ... saw what a large number had been killed, and the ruin of the buildings, and the wholesale ruin and destruction of the City, he was filled with compassion and repented not a little at the destruction and plundering.
Tears fell from his eyes as he groaned deeply and passionately: “What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction!”

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#12

Post by Max » 21 Oct 2019, 14:00

wm wrote:
21 Oct 2019, 11:44
You wrote: recent events in Germany - please name one ( post-Kristallnacht -...…)
Why forget Kristallnacht ?
Lets start at 1935 - only 5 years previously - fairly recent in my opinion.
1935 - Nuremberg Laws - withdrawal of German citizenship for Jews.
1936 - Roma declared "anti-socials" -wave of arrests and detentions.
1937 - German Jews encouraged to emigrate provided they surrender most of their property.
1938 - Decree that Jews be extracted from German economic life.
Jewish property to be registered, inventoried and seized.
Jewish lawyers forbidden to practice or conduct any business in Germany.
Kristallnacht.
All Jewish students remaining in schools expelled.
1939 In a public speech Hitler forecasts the "annihilation of the Jewish Race in Europe".
Poland invaded.
1940 Warsaw Ghetto.

These events would give any Jew in The Netherlands cause to fear for their future, if not for their lives.
From occupied Poland, 2,500+ Jews legally emigrated to Palestine and even more to other countries. You just had to have an entry visa, pay 500 zlotys (about $3000 in today's money) of emigration tax to the relevant Jewish authority (Judenrat), and get German permission - which was relatively easy because the state policy at that time was forced Jewish emigration. Only in the Warsaw Ghetto, they collected 300,000 zlotys thanks to the tax.
So why didn't they all leave if it was so easy?
That Schneersohn needed an intervention of the United States Department of State is fake history, although obviously such an intervention couldn't hurt.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-a ... cher-rebbe

It would be an exaggeration to say Schneersohn wasn't in danger but actually he wasn't. As an international celebrity, he was too important to be killed wantonly.
Was he in danger or not?
No doubt Schneersohn thought he was in danger and would not take the risk that he was too important to be murdered.
Schneersohn was saved but many saw that as a betrayal, that he left his flock in time of need when they needed him the most.
About such people, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto Adam Czerniaków said: You piece of sh., I remember that you Sir played a lordly leader pre-war and now you and your ilk flee leaving alone the living in dreadful circumstances masses.
Source for this quote?
Czerniaków did not stay long as a leader either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Czerniaków
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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#13

Post by wm » 21 Oct 2019, 17:08

He wrote that himself in his diary.

They didn't all leave because they couldn't afford it and had nowhere to go. Only rich folks could do it and only rich folks were admitted in most countries.

The Polish Jews weren't like the people on the top Nazi ocean liner the Motorschiff St. Louis that were sailing the oceans for weeks sipping champagne. They seriously couldn't afford it - even in pre-war Poland.

Your list is mostly inconveniencies and some benefits (they didn't have to serve in the Army and they didn't have to die by tens of thousands for der Führer.) Yes, they weren't free but it wasn't like the Germans were free either.

"provided they surrender most of their property" is false. They could take their money with them (after they had paid, like everybody else the emigration tax) but German money was worthless outside Germany - and that was a huge problem.

But thanks to a clever deal between Jewish groups and the Nazis (called the Haavara Agreement) the German Jews were able to transfer about $650,000,000 abroad (in today's money.)

In my opinion that article on tabletop is mostly Hasidic legends. They love those things, they live in their own unreal world full of legends, miracles, and God speaking to them.

Objectively Schneersohn wasn't in danger. The Nazis left the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto to their own devices, you could spend a year there and never met any German.
In my opinion, he had a good chance to survive the Holocaust. Of course, his and other Jews' fears about their future were reasonable and understandable.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#14

Post by Futurist » 22 Oct 2019, 00:59

wm wrote:
19 Oct 2019, 22:59
He saved them from what? The Holocaust wasn't a thing in May 1941. The Dutch Jews were still perfectly safe.
It became a thing in the Netherlands, what, a year later?
In 1940 even for the Nazis, for Himmler and Hitler, the Holocaust was unimaginable ("one rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people"), the planned to resolve the Jewish question by other means.
Please note how quickly the Nazis were willing to abandon their previous position in regards to this once it became less clear that they were actually going to win the war, though.

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Re: Anti-semites who saved Jews

#15

Post by wm » 22 Oct 2019, 01:59

It's not about what happened two years later.
It's about the fact that in May 1941 Canaris didn't know anything about the Holocaust so he couldn't possibly consciously save them from it. He merely helped them to emigrate (assuming it's true,) he saved them accidentally.

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