History repeats itself with anti-Jewish propaganda.
How Genocide Was Made Acceptable to the Masses
On November 10th, 1938, the Führer made an important speech to the German press. Although he made no direct reference either to the Reichskristallnacht itself or to Jews in general, the whole speech can be regarded as his comments upon the lack of support for the pogrom he was getting from the German public. Hitler rebuked the propaganda makers for not having understood his strategy - aiming at war - and he made it unmistakably clear to his audience what exactly he expected them to do in the future:
The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph Goebbels, who for the first time decided to use the film medium as a tool for inducing anti-Semitism into the German people. Being responsible for Nazi film production he had, however, earlier preferred other topics (including easy entertainment and more "positive" presentations of Nazi world view) , but immediately after Hitler's speech he called upon the production companies to present scripts for anti-Semitic feature films. His wish for a "documentary" could only be fulfilled after the Campaign in Poland in September 1939, because he lacked footage of Jews actually looking like the Nazi stereotype of the Jew, of services in the synagogue and of ritual slaughtering.
From his diary as well as other sources we can follow the production of this particular propaganda film - "Der ewige Jude" - which right from the beginning was intended to become the ultimate public legitimation of anti-Semitism, in accordance with Hitler's afore-mentioned demand.
There are strong reasons to believe that the film and its production history should be characterized as a mirror of the decision-making process to launch the Holocaust itself, because the final version of the film can only be interpreted as a deliberate call for annihilation, through it's juxtapositioning of ritual slaughtering - staged as cruelty to animals - and Hitler's notorious prophecy of January 30, 1939.
In order to create the strongest effect on the public as possible Joseph Goebbels had ordered ritual Jewish slaughtering to be filmed in the Lodz ghetto, and when he saw the rushes of these scenes on October 16, 1939, he wrote in his diary:
- An excerpt from a paper presented at the 27th Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA, March 2-4, 1997 by Stig Hornshøj-Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/tampa-19970302.shtml
Coercion was the reason why for years I only talked about peace. But gradually it became necessary to condition the German people psychologically and slowly make it grasp that there do exist things that one has to solve with violent means when they cannot be solved by peaceful means. To do so, however, it was necessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to elucidate certain events of foreign policy to the German people in such a way that the inner voice of the people by itself slowly began to call for violence. Accordingly, it meant to elucidate certain events in such a way that totally automatically the conviction would gradually evolve in the brains of the broad masses: What one cannot solve with fair means, one has to solve with violence, because it cannot go on like this.
The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph Goebbels, who for the first time decided to use the film medium as a tool for inducing anti-Semitism into the German people. Being responsible for Nazi film production he had, however, earlier preferred other topics (including easy entertainment and more "positive" presentations of Nazi world view) , but immediately after Hitler's speech he called upon the production companies to present scripts for anti-Semitic feature films. His wish for a "documentary" could only be fulfilled after the Campaign in Poland in September 1939, because he lacked footage of Jews actually looking like the Nazi stereotype of the Jew, of services in the synagogue and of ritual slaughtering.From his diary as well as other sources we can follow the production of this particular propaganda film - "Der ewige Jude" - which right from the beginning was intended to become the ultimate public legitimation of anti-Semitism, in accordance with Hitler's afore-mentioned demand.
There are strong reasons to believe that the film and its production history should be characterized as a mirror of the decision-making process to launch the Holocaust itself, because the final version of the film can only be interpreted as a deliberate call for annihilation, through it's juxtapositioning of ritual slaughtering - staged as cruelty to animals - and Hitler's notorious prophecy of January 30, 1939.
In order to create the strongest effect on the public as possible Joseph Goebbels had ordered ritual Jewish slaughtering to be filmed in the Lodz ghetto, and when he saw the rushes of these scenes on October 16, 1939, he wrote in his diary:He showed the scenes at Hitler's dinner table on October 28, 1939, and those present "were all deeply shocked." Two days later, Goebbels himself went to the ghetto of Lodz - and commented on his impressions in his diary:
Scenes so horrific and brutal in their explicitness that one's blood runs cold. One shudders at such barbarism. This Jewry must be annihilated.
Goebbels pursued this idea of a genocidal solution during the whole production of a film which can only be seen as his personal advocacy for prevailing on Hitler himself to draw the "natural" consequence of his own - exterminist, yet still theoretical - ideology. The film was recut, rephrased and tested several times in accordance with Hitler's wishes before the Führer finally approved the film for public screening, probably on May 20, 1940.
It is indescribable. They are no longer human beings, they are animals. It is therefore no humanitarian task, but a task for the surgeon. One must make cuts here, and that in a most radical way. Or Europe will one day collapse from the Jewish disease.
- An excerpt from a paper presented at the 27th Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA, March 2-4, 1997 by Stig Hornshøj-Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/tampa-19970302.shtml
PETA Accuses the Jews of Cruelty
After receiving complaints alleging violations of kosher and federal law at AgriProcessors, a massive Iowa slaughterhouse that produces Rubashkin's, Aaron's Best, and Iowa's Best meats, PETA wrote to company officials and asked them to take steps to make certain that cruelty was not occurring. We suggested that the plant hire Dr. Temple Grandin, the country's leading slaughter expert, who has helped advise on matters of kosher slaughter systems, to advise them on how to avoid some of the worst abuses. AgriProcessors had its attorney, Nathan Lewin, write back to us asserting, "Kosher slaughter is being conducted in accordance with the letter and spirit of Jewish law, which prescribes the most humane treatment of animals that has been known throughout human history." The tone of the letter was not persuasive, so we took a look ourselves.-From PETA's GoVeg website http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/index.asp
PETA claims the video, posted on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, shows repeated acts of animal cruelty at AgriProcessors Inc. in northeastern Iowa. The organization filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that alleged improper slaughtering practices. "They're ripping the tracheas and esophagi out of fully conscious animals, dumping them out of pens into pools of their own blood. The animals stand and bellow and attempt to escape for up to three and even four minutes in some cases," Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said late Tuesday.
But Rabbi Chaim Kohn, the plant's supervising rabbi, told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions that the tapes were "testimony that this is being done right." In kosher slaughter, the animals' throats are sliced with a razor-sharp blade, intended to cause instant and painless death. Jewish law forbids stunning them first. Federal law considers properly conducted religious slaughter as humane, and allows Jewish and Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But the rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious for an extended period of time.
The PETA Web site describes the videos as showing AgriProcessors workers ignoring "the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer." In it's complaint, PETA said its investigator filmed the slaughter of 278 animals, 25 percent which remained conscious "for a significant period of time." "I think we should attempt to ponder how we would feel in similar situations. The level of cruelty is absolutely outrageous," Friedrich said. PETA told the Times that a volunteer was hired at the plant last summer and used a hidden camera to obtain the footage.
- From an article by the Associated Press on Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140117,00.html
What the Officials Say
The United States Department of Agriculture, with which we have a very cooperative working relationship, supervises this slaughterhouse and has found nothing amiss in its practices. Its on-site inspector, Dr. Henry Lawson, has confirmed to us his opinion that the conditions there are humane and that the shechita method of slaughter employed there renders the animal insensate.
- Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU Executive Vice President http://www.ou.org/other/5765/shechita65.htm
PETA's "Holocaust on Your Plate" Campaign
When "Holocaust on Your Plate" was originally launched, we knew that it would be emotionally charged and intellectually provocative. Even if we had used more conventional tactics, people don't like to have it pointed out to them that they're causing unnecessary pain and suffering by eating meat. We did aim to be provocative. We did not, however, aim simply to provoke.
Hard as it may be to understand for those who were deeply upset by this campaign, I was bowled over by the negative reception by many in the Jewish community. It was both unintended and unexpected. The PETA staff who proposed that we do it were Jewish, and the patronage for the entire endeavor was Jewish. We were careful to use Jewish authors and scholars and quotes from Holocaust victims and survivors.
-PETA President Ingrid Newkirk http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/5475.htm
Scene from Nazi propaganda film of Jews being cruel to animals next to scene from PETA propaganda film of Jews being cruel to animals. Can you tell which is which?
6 comments:
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As both the founder of PETA's "Holocaust" campaign and a Jew with family who were murdered in the concentration camps, I think that the most damaging way for someone to grieve is to hold their grief and pain as entirely unique. That is what prevents us from progressing and learning from our tragedies. Rather, we must ask ourselves how we can use our painful experiences to teach lessons so that we may prevent future injustices.
This is precisely what I aimed to do through the "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign. The fact is that animals are abused today as Jews were in the concentration camps. This is exactly why so many survivors first come to this very comparison, saying, "We were treated like animals." Our point is that no one--human or non-human--deserves to be treated in such awful ways.
Moreover, the mentality that allows us to separate ourselves from other animals and dismiss their suffering (or least comparisons of it to our own) is the very mentality that allowed people to watch trains filled with Jews head to the concentration camps without speaking out. Throughout history, those who aren't the victims of injustice have too often stood by and watched suffering without speaking out, saying, "They're just Jews" or "They're just women" or "They're just animals." They say "We (gentiles or men or humans) are different." The mentality stays the same--its just the victims who change.
Jews, however, are generally taught to have compassion for all beings; kindness toward animals is a fundamental aspect of our faith. So it is especially appalling when animals are forced to suffer in the ways documented at numerous kosher facilities (i.e. AgriProcessors) in the name of our religion.
As Jews, we're duty bound to not only speak up against all suffering, wherever it may be occuring and whoever the victims may be, but also (and perhaps especially) to look at the practices of our own faith and ask the important question: Is this acceptable?
Anyone who visits www.GoVeg.com and views slaughterhouse footage--both inside kosher and non-kosher facilities--should undoubtedly answer "No."
Hey Matt, I want you to see something I created. If you go to facebook.com and search for putpeta, you will find my group and the response to your little "Holocaust" campaign can be found in the groups description. I also happen to be a religious jew, and I am thoroughly upset about this obnoxious campaign.
You should be ashamed of yourself. You yourself point out how survivors say, "We were treated like animals." Did it never occur to you that they are clearly saying that this is how animals should be treated? Perhaps you see no difference between humans and animals. Perhaps this is because, while my great-grandfather starved in the camps before eating meat that was slaughtered improperly, because, as our sages teach, this hurts the animal more than is needed, you were busy eating pig in the vomitoriums of gentile culture. Perhaps there IS no difference between that kind of human and an animal.
To suggest that the distinction between human and animal is false, simply because such a distinction has been made in other cases, if completely ridiculous. If some children are ridiculed in school, and called stupid, does that then mean there are no children of lower intelligence? The fact that the logic is wrong in one case means nothing to another. How dare you compare the killing of Jews, because of hatred, to the slaughter of meat for food? Did the Nazis eat the Jews? Was this some sort of survival tactic? They hated the Jews because we are the physical manifestation of G-d, and they hated Him. If you have no love left for Him, then you are joining their ranks.
for every animal the peta members don't eat, my friends and i will eat 5
For most Americans, Nazis represent military force, not propaganda.
PETA-sympathizers, part of the ambitious counter-culture, have an emotional commitment to their personal views of cruelty. Objective understandings don't matter.
America is over the edge of cultural change. The '60s counter-culture has taken over cultural institutions. And that includes, or soon will include, the military. Frustrated utopians resorting to force when it is available to them is completely normal.
If PETA's 'Meat is Murder' campaign is simply impractical, then the compromise position that 'Kosher Meat is Murder' will draw more widespread support. Especially given that Jews are heavily represented among PETA activists. And a perfect excuse for antisemites.
The Soviet Union's 'Jewish Section' has already set the precedent of brutal repression of religious Jews by secular Jews.
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