| The Avon Lady |
10-19-06 12:38 AM |
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Originally Posted by The Noob
What do you want to tell me next, Guenter Grass is nazi?
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He was one and is a fat liar, phony and hypocrite.
Quote:
Disclosure of Waffen-SS Membership
On 12 August 2006, in an interview [1] about his forthcoming book While Skinning the Onion, Grass stated that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS. Before this interview, Grass was seen as someone who had been a typical member of the "Flakhelfer generation", one of those too young to see much fighting or to be involved with the Nazi regime in any way beyond its youth organizations.
On August 15, 2006, the online edition of "Der Spiegel", "Spiegel Online", published three documents from US forces dating from 1946, verifying Grass's Waffen-SS membership. [2].
After an unsuccessful attempt to volunteer for the U-Boat fleet at age 15, Grass was conscripted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and then called up for the Waffen-SS in 1944. He was trained as a tank gunner and fought with the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg until its surrender to US forces at Marienbad. At that point of the war, youths could be conscripted into the Waffen-SS instead of the army; this was unrelated to membership of the SS proper. Grass said [3]:
"It happened as it did to many of my age. We were in the labour service and all at once, a year later, the call-up notice lay on the table. And only when I got to Dresden did I learn it was the Waffen-SS."
Many have come to Grass' defense based upon the fact the Waffen-SS membership was very early in Grass' life. For example, novelist John Irving has come to the defence of Grass and criticised those who would dismiss the achievements of a lifetime because of a mistake made as a teenager.[4] However, as Grass has for many decades been an outspoken left-leaning critic of Germany's treatment of its Nazi past, his statement caused a great stir in the press. Grass's biographer Michael Jürgs spoke of "the end of a moral institution" [4]. Lech Wałęsa had initially criticized Grass [5] for keeping silent about his SS membership for 60 years but in a couple of days had publicly withdrawn his criticism after reading the letter of Grass to the mayor of Gdańsk[6] and admitted that Grass "set the good example for the others". Joachim Fest, conservative German journalist, historian and biographer of Adolf Hitler, told the German weekly "Der Spiegel" about "progressive and left-wing" Grass' disclosement:
"After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."[5]
Rolf Hochhuth said it was "disgusting" that this same Grass, "politically correctly", had publicly criticized Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan's visit to a military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, because it also contained graves of Waffen-SS soldiers. Also, Christopher Hitchens has pointed out that there have been critics who have called Grass' admission to be merely a publicity stunt to sell more copies of his new book.[6]
On August 14, 2006, the ruling party of Poland, the "Law and Justice" party, called on Grass to relinquish his honorary citizenship of Gdańsk. Jacek Kurski stated, "It is unacceptable for a city where the first blood was shed, where World War Two began, to have a Waffen-SS member as an honorary citizen." However, according to a poll [7][8] ordered by city's authorities, vast majority of Gdańsk citizens did not support Kurski's position. The mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, said that he opposed submitting the affair to the municipal council because it was not for the council to judge history.[7]
In September 2006, 46 authors, poets, artists and intellectuals from various Arab countries published a letter of solidarity with Grass, praising his admission of membership in the Waffen-SS as a sign of bravery, worthy of respect and recognition. [9]
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Note that he was gung-ho at the age of 15 (that would be 1942) to try to "volunteer for the U-Boat fleet." This was 2 years prior to his draft call-up at the age of 17-18.
<sarcasm>No signs of Nazi wannabee here. Nope. :nope: </sarcasm>
And I love the last paragraph, which links to this NZZ (Zurich) article, charmingly translated via Babelfish:
Quote:
14. September 2006, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Embarrassing solidarity
Arab writers support Guenter Grass
In a Communiqué, which appeared in several Arab daily papers, stated 46 writers, poet, artist and intellectual one from different Arab countries their solidarity with Guenter Grass: "as we cannot make a pubertierenden young person, who stood under the influence of hoellischen National Socialist propaganda, responsible for a behavior, free choice permitted?" The signers see confession in Grass ' the weapon S to have belonged an indication of the courage, which earns respect and acknowledgment. The criticism at Grass is interpreted as campaign "with the goal of diverting the attention from the crimes the Israeli, which are committed in Palestine and Lebanon,". The Israeli "neo-Nazis" are called: "you kill Palestinians and Israeli, destroy their countries, establish around them partition walls and are them into camps." The wording reminds very strongly of the language of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad.
To the signers of the document prominent intellectual ones belong like the Egyptian Romancier and culture journalist Gamal aluminum Ghitani, the director of the supreme Council OF Culture in Egypt, Jabir Asfur, the Bahrain poet Qasim Haddad or the Moroccan poet Mohamed Bennis.
The Communiqué reveals the unawareness of the involved ones over the debate around Guenter Grass in Germany. It shows however above all that none knows the signer the work of the German Nobelpreistraegers, although for some years some books of him are present on Arab. Also over the position from Grass to political questions, above all its occurring for the existence right of Israel, prevails complete unawareness.
The document says against it much out about the presentness of many Arab intellectual. They live in a world of conspiracy theories, faraway the reality, confound populist slogans and Rhetorik with intellectual discourse and see no necessity to argue with the Holocaust and the crimes of the national socialism.
Some the signer are gladly-seen guests with various meetings to the culture dialogue. It would be to be wished that this most embarrassing solidarity stating is presented for discussion.
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