Friday, July 6, 2007
Adam Holland notes the strange case of the anti-Semitic Polish priest, Rev. Henryk Jankowski, who'd like Mel Gibson to film his life story: Luxury-loving anti-Semitic priest wants Mel Gibson to film his life story. Jankowksi, "erected a model of the charred barn from Jedwabne [where approx. 1600 Jews were burned alive by their countrymen] in his church to symbolize efforts to blame Poles for the crime."
And speaking of Jedwabne, Holland notes this Norman Finkelstein tie to the event 66 years later: Norman Finkelstein on Jedwabne. Quoting from a lengthy must-read at Christian Aid Watch: The innocence of remembering: Norman Finkelstein on Jan Gross’s Neighbors. Here are a few operative snips:
This is a synopsis of a little book which I read recently, entitled ‘Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland’, by Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton, 2001). (A review by George Steiner in the Guardian gives a fuller account)
My emotional response to this tale may be taken as read. Indeed, it is hard to conceive that more than one response could be possible. Such, nevertheless, is the case. When I had finished the book I googled it out of curiosity, and came across a review by one Norman Finkelstein. This is, to put it mildly, a remarkable document, and it is worth examining it closely for what it reveals about its author.
Finkelstein is an important figure among people interested in knowing ‘how far they can go’ in their anti-Zionism without convicting themselves of anti-Semitism. He provides them with a benchmark which reassures them that they can in fact go rather a long way...
...One thing becomes clear in the first couple of sentences. He is very, very angry with Jan Gross. In fact, it’s hard not to conclude that he’s far angrier with Gross than with the perpetrators of genocide in Jedwabne. Without having a single criticism to make of the book’s factual accuracy, he sets out to discredit its author. After six paragraphs of denunciation of Gross, Finkelstein finally makes a grudging acknowledgment that he has told a true story and that it needed to be told...
But Gross contributes to "The Holocaust Industry" you see (by writing compellingly about the Holocaust), so he must be destroyed. Finkelstein's behavior is pathological. More.
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