I'd prefer to talk about the actual proposal, reported in The Jerusalem Post:
Earlier this week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation called on Veterans Affairs to replace the headstones on the graves of German prisoners of war who died in US internment camps during World War II. Two are in a Houston cemetery and another is in Salt Lake City. In addition to the swastikas, the tombstones include the phrase “He died far from his home for the Führer, people, and fatherland.”...So there are 3 tombstones — in all of the cemeteries tended by the VA — and they stand over individual bodies of young men who died — long ago — as prisoners of war. Is it an "antiquated policy" to leave these old monuments alone? Respect for the dead, for their (or someone's) freedom of speech, and for leaving historical things as they are — what is "antiquated" about these reasons?
In response, a VA spokesman cited an agency policy “to protect historic resources, including those that recognize divisive historical figures or events.”
“I call on the VA to eliminate this antiquated policy and immediately replace these inappropriate and insensitive headstones,” Wasserman Schultz said.
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86 comments:
“First they came for the Confederacy statues....”
Looked at pictures of the graves. The swastika is rather small, inside an outline of an iron cross. I'm not sure where the writing is -- it appears there some on one tombstone near ground level that's difficult to see because the grass hasn't been trimmed.
Given the antisemitism positions adopted by his fellow Democrats, Rep. Wasserman Schultz should remove the swastika from her party first. It's much larger and more easily seen.
Could do like we did at Shiloh
Union dead got graves, and Stones
Rebels got unmarked holes
Didn't seem to bother anyone... except rebels
Headstone headlines - one of them is Kafka's headstone.
"and comes at a time when documented antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached a new high."
That's probably not true, but removing the headstones of dead Germans because blacks are attacking Jews in New York sounds like a good final solution to the problem of documented antisemitic incidents.
Confederate memorials etc etc.
We are on moderation, so I figure this has already been covered.
I am Laslo.
Ah, the never-ending escalation of virtue signalling.
The sine qua non of political correctness: Freedom of speech, conscience, and religion belongs only to good people — living or dead. Bad people must be silent — forever.
I'm guessing it won't be long before they come for the tombstone of my great great grandfather who served in Co A of the 2nd South Carolina regiment of Kershaw's brigade of McLaw's Div of Longstreet's Corp of the Army of Northern Virginian under the command of Gen R.E. Lee. Enlisted 1861. Wounded at Gettysburg. At Appomattox with Marse Robert in 1865. My gg grandfather's headstone has the Southern Cross of Honour symbol.
The flag of tbe Confederacy flies over his section of the cemetery in South Carolina where he is interred.
I'm guessing it's just a matter of time now before history is erased.
.
Ironic this is happening near Memorial Day. The story goes that Memorial Day ("Decoration Day") began with southern women putting flowers on graves of Union soldiers. I am sure many of their fellow citizens felt that those soldiers didn't deserve anything and had died in a bad cause. But the country was entering a "let bygones be bygones" period.
Talk about digging deep to find something to fight about. Debbie W-S clearly doesn't have enough real worries. Or maybe she is one of the shock troops on another wave of Prog Crazy that aims to show what a racist hater Trump really is.
Se need to stop indulging these brats who are constantly inventing new indulgences for themselves.
Erecting indulgent memorials to themselves by destroying other things.
So, there are THREE graves in the US with these swastikas
How many German POWs died in the hundreds of camps we had?
That is a funny headline, yes. Does it increase the likelihood that it'll be clicked on? Was it intentional?
DWS is an idiot and apparently has free time on her hands. She "can't handle the truth!"
Also all the headstones with nooses on them.
When I worked for the Army in Germany (to be absolutely clear, I was a civilian contractor, because I know some asshole here will later say that I claimed to be a vet), many of the buildings were left over German facilities from both world wars. The barracks in Schweinfort still had German Eagles as architectural elements, but you could see where the swastikas had been sandblasted off. When they renovated the Hospital in Wuerzburg, they found a huge mural with nazi motifs.
She is an idiot. Why anybody listens to a word that liar says is beyond me.
This is basically the same as the Confederate graves. I highly doubt they are high ranking Nazis. Far more likely they were young, powerless men caught up in a war machine, much like everyone on both sides.
Good people can recognize the deaths as tragedies without supporting the cause that led to their deaths.
How are people supposed to know which graves to piss on? I mean usually, when you go out there, you're frigging hammered, it's dark, you gotta piss like a race horse...they should be making it easier, not harder. This will only increase the number of unfortunate errors.
The first thing that came into my head was - Wow we were good to German POW’s.
The flag of tbe Confederacy flies over his section of the cemetery in South Carolina where he is interred.
There are lots of German military cemeteries in Europe. You won't find a Nazi Flag flying over any of them, yet they somehow still manage to remember the war.
Here's a little fun fact. There are no U.S. military cemeteries in Germany. The U.S. (but not the Brits) shipped their dead back to cemeteries in France, Belgium, or England. I don't know the status of captured U.S. soldiers who died in captivity in Germany.
If you’re mode is outrage, you always have to find something to be outraged about.
As opposed to just living life, enjoying friends and family, and celebrating this wonderful world.
Wow we were good to German POW’s.
Yes, we often treated them better than our own African American soldiers.
Why would the Congresswoman care about this? It strikes me as one step from mental illness. And If its so important, why don't they contact the relatives of the dead men, and see what they want? Why not have some respect for the dead?
Oh, that's right. She's a liberal. Got it.
I can see how a swastika could be considered offensive, but the inscription on the grave was how the German soldier wished to be remembered. "He died for his fuhrer." To be thus remembered for the ages is its own punishment and should be allowed to stand....Perhaps all those government sponsored little white crosses violates the Constitution. Perhaps we need some non denominational symbol to signify the resting place of veterans. Also veterans who died for imperialist causes are no more deserving of honored interment than Nazi soldiers. The only graves that should be honored and preserved should be those of Union and WWII soldiers. The other grave sites should be abandoned and the money formerly misused for their upkeep should be used to compensate the victims of these unjust wars. (sarcasm is being used here)
And that is bad writing. I had to read it twice. My first reaction? WHy would a congresswoman want swastika on headstones? LOL.
What if a Palestinian objected to a star of David because it was "offensive"? Would you consider that, and blast off the star of David in a military cemetery. Like I said, this is one step away from mental illness. Pandering to it, with "Gosh, I understand..." just encourages it.
Pretty soon, people will be blasting American flags off vets tombstones because it "offends them". And then they'll dynamite the Jefferson memorial and remove it because he was a slave holder. This craziness needs to be stopped.
Oh, that's right. She's a liberal. Got it.
She is also Jewish. For some reason Jewish people seem to have a beef with Nazis.
To people like Wasserman Schultz, the idea that you to the polls to vote or assemble peacefully to protest outside government buildings is antiquated. She doesn't respect voters in her party that prefer Sanders, so why expect her to respect dead voters (other than she wants their votes too).
Austria still had swastika pfennings in circulation in the early 60s. They were remembered as from the nazi shit (unquote), referring to the authorities, but nobody was offended.
This article ends for me in the first 4 words: "leading Jewish congresswoman". How do they arrive at that? If she had been a Republican, would she have been considered a 'leading' Jewish congresswoman? Who exactly considers her a leading anything?
Her storied history is full of bumbling and illegalities, the most crucial of which have been painted over as if nothing happened. Remember this? IT Guy.
She was a horrible leader of the DNCC, and was eventually relieved. She's not particularly smart. And in this case, I certainly could have gone through my entire life without worrying about 3 headstones of dead Nazis who happened to be buried here in the US. Let them rot. And let generations who might have some curiosity learn about what that side actually did. Yes- it would make for a good grave to piss on. Nothing more.
I was stationed at a small kaserne in Germany in the early Nineties. It had been around for a hundred years, variously occupied by French, German and American troops over the years. The front gate included a large frieze including Nazi imagery. The swastikas and a few other symbols were chipped off of it by the time I got there. We were told the townspeople did it after the war, but no way to know for sure.
Attempt at link to image of the frieze...https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk01oUcZBM9h3ckrVWipsBqIxExy9Dw%3A1589637695099&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=571&ei=P_K_XomlA5Ln_Qbz06CQCg&q=strassburg+kaserne&oq=strassburg+kaserne&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJzICCAA6BQgAEIMBOgQIABAeOgYIABAIEB5Q2wZY7ChgpSxoAHAAeACAAdIBiAHPDZIBBjEyLjUuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1n&sclient=img&ved=0ahUKEwjJwIrxxbjpAhWSc98KHfMpCKIQ4dUDCAY&uact=5#imgrc=TswDrbGKM0rOoM
Bob Boyd@8:25: "How are people supposed to know which graves to piss on?...This will only increase the number of unfortunate errors."
THREADWINNER
The Nazi German government erected a monument in a Chattanooga cemetery in 1935 to memorialize German prisoners of war who died in America during World War I. The liberals should totally destroy it!
Also, some German towns have empty graves for soldiers who were buried in mass graves during WW2. Because the empty tomb is symbol of the resurrection, the liberals should also destroy these monuments.
Wait until Debbie learns about symbols used by persons from the Indian sub continent..it could turn into an international incident...racist...
It's Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Did she fry her brain on cocaine or did she never have a fully functional brain to begin with?
Yes- it would make for a good grave to piss on. Nothing more.
And that would be less offensive than removing the swastika, how exactly? Seems it would be a good thing to remove the swastika, if only to prevent assholes like you and Bob Boyd from pissing on this poor guy's grave.
We blew up and bulldozed a lot of Nazi shit after the war, including the entire huge stage where the Nuremburg rallies were held, the Eagle's Nest and a good chunk of Berchtesgaden. Why are you getting all bent out of shape about it now?
Stalking horse for digging up confederate graveyards.
Unexpectedly
Berchtesgaden was a U.S. Army vacation spot when I went there. We skied, ate and drank right where Adolf used to hang out. I always thought that was kind of cool. We took his shit and now we party there.
Seems it would be a good thing to remove the swastika, if only to prevent assholes like you and Bob Boyd from pissing on this poor guy's grave.
That's easy for you to say. Nobody's going to be pissing on your grave by mistake.
There was a POW Camp near where our family cabin is in Pine Grove Furnace State Park outside of Carlisle, PA. We went to a special tour of the site, but not much remains. If I recall correctly, it was mostly Germans and Italians, but I think it was one of the few camps to have Japanese Interpreters, so maybe some of the few Japs who surrendered were sent there. The POWs mostly worked on the local farms and fruit orchards common in South Central PA, think Musselman's Apple Sauce and such. I've a pamphlet somewhere, but I cannot recall any Camp cemetery or burials. There is a Memorial to 'The Three Babes in the Woods' nearby, where some desperate Depression single father killed his three daughters because he couldn't feed them. I suppose a number of workers also died during the operation of the Furnace, but they're not recorded anywhere that I can remember.
"a good chunk of Berchtesgaden"
When my student group toured Germany in the late '70s, we visited the Eagle's Next (Hitler's hilltop home, reached by an elevator built in the middle of a mountain). It's now a restaurant. You could step off the patio onto the rocks and look down the mountain. No fences, no warnings. If you get blown off the mountain or slip down, it's your own damn fault.
Then we visited Berchtesgaden. The home was blown up and the remains carted away. All that's left is, IIRR, the driveway, and one wall of the basement foundation, overgrown.
I have sympathy for headline writers, who operate under tight deadlines and lots of constraints - but doesn't anybody read this stuff before they hit Print? As for Debbie Downer, anything she doesn't like is necessarily inappropriate and insensitive.
Attempt at link to image of the frieze...https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk01oUcZBM9h3ckrVWipsBqIxExy9Dw%3A1589637695099&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=571&ei=P_K_XomlA5Ln_Qbz06CQCg&q=strassburg+kaserne&oq=strassburg+kaserne&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJzICCAA6BQgAEIMBOgQIABAeOgYIABAIEB5Q2wZY7ChgpSxoAHAAeACAAdIBiAHPDZIBBjEyLjUuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1n&sclient=img&ved=0ahUKEwjJwIrxxbjpAhWSc98KHfMpCKIQ4dUDCAY&uact=5#imgrc=TswDrbGKM0rOoM
Expialidocious!
I still remember from German class: "Schmuck wird in Idar-Oberstein hergestellt. Was passiert mit einem Stein? Es wird geschitten, geschiffen, und poliert ..."
Berchtesgaden was a U.S. Army vacation spot when I went there.
The Army Recreation Area closed in '93. I think Garmisch is still open though.
“First they came for the Confederacy statues....”
And when they came for me there was nobody left to protest because they took all the Nazi tombstones away ...
We could have just sent the headstone and the bodies back to Germany at that country's expense and let them worry about it, but we may not be able to get away with that now.
"She is also Jewish. For some reason Jewish people seem to have a beef with Nazis."
He said, trollishly.
Wasserman test Schutlz = Syphilis? I know nothing!
Lot of Confederate statues at Gettysburg. Maybe we should bulldoze them. In fact, most of those Union Soldiers were racists. Lets Bulldoze the whole park down and turn it into a Climate Change Education Center.
The liberals would love that.
There's not much left for professional "Nazi Hunters" to do, other than things like this. The demand for Nazis to hunt greatly exceeds the supply.
The demand for Nazis exceeds the supply.
The demand for Nazis exceeds the supply.
That's easy for you to say. Nobody's going to be pissing on your grave by mistake.
An instant classic. For sure I'm going to be stealing this one.
If you want to know who rules you, ask whom you may not criticize.
Idar-Oberstein was a great place to be stationed. It was just our single Artillery Battalion on post, so everybody knew everybody and the town was right outside the gate and down the hill. Plus, Bruce Willis was born there. Nearby Baumholder was a much larger base, and was once home to a medic named Jeffrey Dahmer.
“and comes at a time when documented antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached a new high."”
If that’s true then it’s probably mosques that we need to be removing.
“The demand for Nazis exceeds the supply.”
The demand exists to divert attention from what’s coming out of the mosques.
Too stupid for words. D W-S and her notions, I mean.
We brought several hundred thousand German and Italian POWs here, and most were kept in camps in the South and Southwest. They were very well treated under the terms of the Geneva Convention, though sticklers objected that the US Army tried to indoctrinate them politically, which is not allowed, under cover of educational programs.
Enlisted POWs were contracted out to farmers for labor. The late Benjamin Hooks used to talk of his experience guarding German POWs in the South--they were allowed access to places the African-American guards couldn't enter. From the other side, there's a published diary entitled "And Still We Conquer" by a German noncom POW who notices the same thing, and remarks on American hypocrisy.
As for US wargraves, in the late 194Os next of kin could choose whether to have their relative remain in a US military cemetery overseas or repatriated for burial in the US.
About half chose repatriation IIRC.
Swastikas, fylfots, sunwheels . . .
Narr
Symbols are for the symbol minded
Maybe some volk don’t want a reminder that we fought and defeated Nazism decades ago,
What's clearly antiquated is the whole idea of maintaining graves, cemeteries and tombstones. They are nothing more than a testament to religious superstition involving resurrection.
Sure, they are memorials to the fallen, but they pollute the landscape, pollute ground water, reserve land that could be better used by living people and memorials could consist of a complete set of Wikipedia obituaries that might actually be visited from time to time.
If it has not been wasserman, I would have questioned my reading.
But with her you can never tell.
John Henry
"Maybe some volk don’t want a reminder that we fought and defeated Nazism decades ago,"
75 years ago, actually. But I'm more worried about those damn Sioux Indians. Weren't they scalping Custer like yesterday? Maybe they need a reminder. Lets desecrate their graves. That'll teach 'em.
PS - Can you recognize sarcasm, boys and girls?
"Maybe some volk don’t want a reminder that we fought and defeated Nazism decades ago,"
75 years ago, actually. But I'm more worried about those damn Sioux Indians. Weren't they scalping Custer like yesterday? Maybe they need a reminder. Lets desecrate their graves. That'll teach 'em.
PS - Can you recognize sarcasm, boys and girls?
she was my congressperson for 15 years, it explains my jaundiced attitude some times,
reder Frederson said...
When I worked for the Army in Germany (to be absolutely clear, I was a civilian contractor, because I know some asshole here will later say that I claimed to be a vet), many of the buildings were left over German facilities from both world wars. The barracks in Schweinfort still had German Eagles as architectural elements, but you could see where the swastikas had been sandblasted off. When they renovated the Hospital in Wuerzburg, they found a huge mural with nazi motifs.
The archaeologist in me hopes it was preserved.
Do we also need to exhume the bodies and hang them?
They are nothing more than a testament to religious superstition involving resurrection.
But the carbon!
creepily enough, there was an article from a German Magazine hanging outside of our Mess Hall. It detailed a story that had Josef Mengele hiding out at Strassburg Kaserne for a few days before making his way to S. America. I've never found any corroborating evidence, and haven't seen the wall hanging for 25+ years. We were on top of mines and tunnels, so it's not like it's impossible. Good hidey holes.
Europe, including the Russias, is full of the graves of German and other soldiers. Google (if you must) German military cemeteries--they're everywhere.
There are Russian and Soviet cemeteries and memorials in the former East, and they seem to be maintained complete with symbology, without a lot of hand-wringing.
When Confederate soldier remains are discovered around here--which happens every few decades--they are interred with honors provided by SCVers and/or Civil War reenactors. And just last week the NB Forrest family dropped a lawsuit that clears the way for the removal of General and Mrs from their place in the city park formerly known as Forrest.
Narr
My Uncle Jimmy earned a UDC-sponsored Cross of Service for his role in WWII (15th AF, radioman-gunner on a B-24)
John Borell: "If you’re mode is outrage, you always have to find something to be outraged about."
5/16/20, 8:30 AM
Indeed. Even if you have to make it up.....
Freder Frederson: "When I worked for the Army in Germany (to be absolutely clear, I was a civilian contractor, because I know some asshole here will later say that I claimed to be a vet),......" 5/16/20, 8:21 AM
I wonder what was the process of these tombstones' creation. Was this an American burial committee which decided on this language? Was it via the Red Cross? Did diplomacy transmit the desired form of the memorial from Hitler's burial committees to Roosevelt's?
It's curious to think that Americans would have chosen to decorate graves in that way. Not sinister, but polite/considerate very much to a fault.
Jupiter, your comment disappoints: James Bacque's "Other Losses" thesis of mass starvation of German POWs by the Anglo-Americans has been demolished by competent historians.
And you misremember anyway- The Brits and Amis supposed victims were in the "Rhine meadow" camps. The French did have many German POWs too, in France, and they WERE treated very brutally.
And please elucidate on the millions of starved German civilians. Do you mean people went hungry? The winters of 1945-46 and 1946-47 were tough and there was widespread hunger. Or do you mean millions of German civilians were starved to death?
In the East, some 2/3rds of Soviet POWs died in German captivity; about 1/3 of Germans captured by the Reds perished also. The statistic often thrown about regarding Stalingrad POWs (5000 lived out of 90k) is very misleading, as those guys were the first big batch and they were half-dead when captured. The big POW bags later in the war were too useful as labor to massacre.
And here's an odd thing. To the last day of the war, on the Eastern Front, Soviet and German soldiers surrendered and accepted surrenders in spite of what they knew about themselves and each other.
Narr
Sometimes they guessed right
For some reason this reminds me of when the Navy properly washed Osama bin Laden's body according to Islamic customs before they threw it overboard.
I guess it's because when the government tries to be culturally correct they just don't see the forest for the trees.
The VA should never have put a swastika on any headstone in the first place paid for by the government. Simply his name, dates of birth and death if known, and a statement that he died as a POW would've been enough, like a pauper's grave, but even simpler. Anything more is a sacrilege to the veterans of that war. Not to mention Jewish people.
But, then, the VA puts pentacles on the headstones of Satanists for veterans who request it, so what's the use.
"Who exactly considers her a leading anything?
Let’s be fair. There has to be someone at the front of the herd as it charges over the edge of the cliff.
After the war was over, Americans and British starved hundreds of thousands of German POWs to death in camps in France.
Yes, a decision was made not to treat German soldiers who surrendered at the very end of the war as POWs. Food was very short in Europe at the end of the war and if the Allies had treated the surrendered forces as POWs, they would have been in the strange situation where all the food would go to former combatants (as they would be entitled to the same rations and housing as their captors) and the civilian population would face mass starvation. There was no good solution available.
"Wow we were good to German POW’s.
Yes, we often treated them better than our own African American soldiers."
That would be the ones here. After the war was over, Americans and British starved hundreds of thousands of German POWs to death in camps in Germany. "We" also starved millions of German civilians. This was not an accident, or an unfortunate lack of supplies, it was policy. Set by Ike. His good friend Uncle Joe did the same in Russia. It wasn't really a Final Solution to the German Problem, like the Morgenthau Plan, but they felt it was a step in the right direction. Victors' justice.
(Sorry about the errors in my earlier post).
"James Bacque's "Other Losses" thesis of mass starvation of German POWs by the Anglo-Americans has been demolished by competent historians."
Always nice to have some competent historians around. Do you keep them at your local institution of higher education? What flavor of Marxist are they?
Jupiter (the gas giant) thinks he can play the Marxist historian card! Against real historians!
This is fun. I named a source and stated facts, and all you have is childish insults.
The Wikipedia article on "Other Losses" is actually pretty good--take a look.
You tell me if Ambrose, Bischoff, Overmans, et. al. are Marxists. Now tell us why Marxists would cover up American warcrimes.
"Do you keep [competent historians] at you local institution of higher learning?" Yes, Jup, and I'm sure there are some near you too. But even if there aren't, there are things called "libraries" and "bookstores" where you can find, read, and judge their work for yourself.
Narr
Glad to help!
Wikipedia says;
"Stephen Ambrose, a historian enlisted by Eisenhower in efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency...". So, there's that. The guy Ike hired says, "I like Ike!".
Wikipedia also repeats the ridiculous lie that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, used for executing prisoners. Not exactly a reliable source of unbiased information, especially not on the Second World War.
What have you got, Jup? You haven't named a source for anything you've said so far, unless we count your ass as a source.
I don't need to critique Wikipedia for you-- I already said the coverage of the Bacque thesis there was adequate for our purposes.
It's well known that Ambrose was an Ike fan. Big deal. He was also prone to taking every veteran's tale at face value, where every German tank was a Tiger, and every German gun was an 88; he wrote too much and too widely. But I guess for a Marxist like him, defending Ike's reputation from Canadian cranks was job one.
So you can return a slow lob; now give a source for your claims that Ike orchestrated mass murder and Ambrose covered it up. I'll wait.
We can talk about Auschwitz later if you insist, but not until you stop bloviating and making things up about "Marxist history professors."
Narr
As if you know anything about Marxism, history, or professors
So give us a list of unbiased sources on the Second World War.
What historians or books would you recommend to start with, and why? Which would you advise interested people to avoid, and why?
General histories from say the last 30-40 years. Ought to be easy.
Narr
Take your time
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