[Reader-list] India Current:Notes from the Reich

[Lehar ..]

Notes from the Reich
Letters of the world-renowned Jorge Borges, who saw
the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and world shaping
events through the 20th century,

This is part of an open letter to the current
distortion of education debate in India. It is a
brilliant engineered and pre planned exercise, as
these notes from 60 years earlier demonstrate. They
say practice makes prefect.
India’s ruling party’s founders’ meetings with the
fascists and nazis in the 1930s were definitely
useful.. and laid the base for this.
Most of the events have uncanny parallels with the
propaganda in India at the moment, including Germany’s
war hysteria against England. much like the Indo-Pak
and the Gujrat hysteria here. (And Bollywood
portrayals too.)
It is incredible!
--
Notes from the Reich
BY Jorge Borges.

On the distortion of schoolbooks by the Nazis:
Pedagogy of hatred

Displays of hatred are more obscene and denigrating
than exhibitionism. I defy pornographers to show me
picture more evil than any of the twenty-two
illustrations that accompany the children’s book:
Don’t trust any Fox from a heath or any Jew on his
oath. Whose fourth edition now infests Germany. It was
first published a year ago in 1936 and has already
sold 51,00 copies. Its goal is to instill in the
children of the Third Reich a distrust and animosity
toward Jews.
Verse and color engravings collaborate in this
veritable textbook of hatred.
Take any example: page 5: here I find without
justifiable bewilderment this didactic poem:
‘The German is a proud man who knows how to work and
struggle. Jews detest him because he is so handsome
and enterprising. ‘ Followed by an equally informative
and detestable quatrain: ‘Here is the Jew.
Recognizable as the biggest scoundrel in the whole
kingdom.’
The engraving is more astute: The German is a
Scandinavian 18 yr. old plainly portrayed as a worker.
The Jew is a dark Turk obese and middle aged. The
German is clean- and the Jew is hairy. It is well
known that German Jews are copper haired Slavs..In
this book they are represented as dark half-breeds so
they’ll appear as exact opposites of blond beasts.
These attributes also include the permanent use of fez
cap, rolled cigar and ruby rings. Another engraving
shows a lecherous dwarf trying to seduce a young
German lady.

What can one say about such a book?
Personally I am outraged, less for Israel’s sake than
Germany’s, less for the offended community than for
the offensive nation. I don’t know if the world can do
without German civilisation, but I do know that its
corruption by the teaching of hatred is a crime.

A disturbing exposition: Deletions in the history of
German Literature
Dr. Johannes Rohr of Berlin, an eminent academic has
revised , rewritten and Germanized the very Germanic,
Literature of the German people.
In earlier editions, his work was decidedly mediocre,
now it is alarming.
This perverse catalogue included about 700 authors,
but is silent on the name of some of the greatest ones
of German history.. Heine. . Also obliterated are
Arnold Zwieg, Erich Maria Remarque (all quite on the
western front), Brecht, I do not want to list all the
names, but I recall that omission of extraordinary
writers like Kafka and others are ones which should
not be excluded from the history of Germany
literature.
The (unreasonable) reasons for this manifold silence
are evident: most of those eliminated are Jewish and
none is a member of the ruling Nazi party/ a Nazi.
As for the rest of it, let us examine page number 435.
Written on that severe page is: ‘ rivers of fire of a
verbal potency previously unheard in German soil
inundated the people: the great speeches of the
Fuhrer, swelling with lofty thoughts, yet open wide to
the simple understanding of the people, instantly
revered.’ 
Next we are regaled with a eulogy of the literary
labors of Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda
minister) novel with its ‘chaste youth’ and fiery
language ‘is the book of the new youth and youths
everywhere.’
How immeasurable is Rohr's Anti-Semitism. 
As if that were not enough Goethe and Nietsche have
been distorted and mutilated… there is not even a
mention of Schopenhaur. 
Germany is one of the essential nations of the world.
Hence we feel devastated by its chaotic descent into
darkness, hence the symptomatic seriousness of books
such as these. I find it normal for the Germans to
reject the Versailles treaty. I find it normal to
support anyone who defends their honour. I find it
insane to sacrifice to that honour their culture,
their past, their honesty to perfect criminal acts of
barbarians.
--
Notes on Germanophiles: ‘German patriotic
nationalists’

I have been naïve enough to talk with many
Germanophiles.. fervent supporter of Hitler’s cultural
nationalism. Total ignorance of things German does not
define our Germanophile/ patriotic German. I have
tried to speak of Germany and German things that are
imperishable. Luther and Schopenhauer.. I have
discovered that my Germanophile interlocutor could
barely identify those names.. He is only anti Semitic
and wishes to expel from even Argentina a Slavo
Germanic community where Hebrew names predominate. One
might infer that a Gphile is actually an Anglophobe.
He is perfectly ignorant of Germany and reserves his
enthusiasm for his country at war with England. 
I always discover that my interlocutor idolizes
Hitler, not inspite of bombs and rumbling invasions,
machine guns and lies. but because of these
instruments. He is delighted by evil and atrocity. The
triumph of Germany does not matter to him. He wants
the humiliation of England and satisfying burning of
London. He admires Hitler as he once idolized his
criminal precursors in the underworld of Chicago. The
discussion with him becomes impossible because the
offences and crimes I ascribe to Hitler are for him
wonders and virtues..of cultural nationalism..!
The apologist of other mass murders like Rosas and
Amigas pardon or gloss over their crimes, the defender
of Hitler derives a special pleasure from them. The
Hitlerist is always a spiteful man and a secret and
sometimes shaper of criminal vivacity and cruelty. He
is thanks to a poverty of imagination a man, who
believes that Germany, and the Nazis, now victorious,
cannot lose. He is the cunning man who always longs to
be on the winning side. 
It is not entirely impossible that there could be some
justification for Adolf Hitler: I know there is none
for the Germanophile.
Note: remember Modiites..?
-

The unbelievable indisputable truth is that the
directors of the third Reich are procuring a universal
empire. I will not enumerate the countries they have
already attacked and plundered. Yesterday
Germanphiles/patriotic Germans swore that the maligned
Hitler did not dream of attacking the continent. Now
they justify and praise his latest hostility. They
have applauded the invasion of Norway and Soviet
Union. Who know what celebration they will unleash the
day our shores and cities are razed? Hitler’s charity
is ecumenical and if ‘traitors’ and ‘Jews’ don’t
disrupt him, we will enjoy all the benefits of
torture, sodomy, rape and mass executions. 
--
If I had the tragic honour of being a German, I would
not resign myself to sacrificing mere military
efficiency for the intelligence and integrity of my
fatherland. It is possible that a German defeat might
be the ruin of Germany. It is indisputable that its
victory would debase and destroy the world. I am not
referring to the imaginary danger of a South American
colonial adventure.

- Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non fiction, 
Awards: The National Book Critics Circle Award 
- 
Eliot Weinberger (editor and translator),
Hardcover - 576 pages (September 1999), Viking 
-
Review by Nathaniel Tarn 

The range of subjects touched on in this cornucopia..!
I cannot resist, however, selecting out the "Notes on
Germany and the War" in which Borges, a very
conservative man - in addition to ravaging
manifestations of fascism in the Argentine bourgeoisie
of 1937-44 - suffers the matter of Germany:
desperately trying to keep distinct his great love of
German culture and his recognition of Germany's misery
after Versailles from his absolute horror of Nazi
racism and anti-Semitism. It is not surprising that
such a man was humiliated by the likes of Peron.

Available on:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670849472/ref=ase_thelibyrinth/002-0744346-8259247


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