Jan Ziniewicz' Longest Night

A Different Kind of Memorial

Last night, 63 years ago, the glorious city of Dresden was turned into a heap of rubble.

I would like to post a little memorial beyond any "We poor Germans have all been hijacked by some evil Nazi aliens"-whining and "No Tears for Krauts" or "Bomber Harris Do It Again" self-hatred.

This is about a survivor of the bombing, a young Polish man named Jan Ziniewicz, and about hope.

To appropriately explain who Jan Ziniewicz was (or is, he may well be still alive) I have to digress.

Breeding pure Arabian horses had a 400-year tradition in Poland already when Germany raided Poland in 1939. In 1817, after the Congress of Vienna on the initiative of Administrative Council of the Congressional Kingdom of Poland, Janów Podlaski, the first and most important Polish state-stud was founded and it was mainly from here that the Arabian horse, gentrified by Polish breeding genius, went to pass on its beauty, toughness, athletic ability and kind disposition to the indigenous breeds of Europe.

More than 80 percent of Janów's horses had perished in the war campaign of 1939. In 1944, as the Sovjet army was approaching the River Bug, the German Command ordered an evacuation of the horses. The farm, including its staff, was relocated to Sohland in Saxony where it remained until February 1945. With them were the stars among the stallions, the half-brothers Witraz and Wielki Szlem – and Jan Ziniewicz, their groom.

The evacuation continued westward when the Russian army crossed the River Oder. Arriving in Dresden on the night of February 13th, 1945, the entire group of 80 stallions were swallowed by the firebrand that destroyed the city. More than half of the stallions were lost in this pandemonium, a fate that certainly would have befallen Witraz and Wielki Szlem too, had it not been for the courage and determination of Jan Ziniewicz. With Witraz' reins in one hand and Wielki Szlem's in the other, the slip of a lad (as he was described) hold tight to his treasured charges throughout the entire horrific ordeal. He didn't let it go, the pride and the future of the Polish Arabian breed, not among fire, bombs and dying people, not even when Witraz's tail caught fire, not when his hands were chafed to raw meat and not when he must have realized that he was very probably going to die.

But he didn't.

Stud manager young Dr. Andrzej Krzysztalowicz (1915 – 1998), later to become Janów's Director from 1958 to 1991, arrived early the next morning, riding another one of the stud's priceless stars, Amurath Sahib, to find his two precious stallions deeply upset, but basically unharmed. Of 80 stallions 38 survived, 22 were found dead and 20 were never found at all. When he rode along the 22 dead bodies of his stallions, it can be safely assumed that he wept.

Mares and foals had remained unharmed. They had arrived only after the firebrand because of the slow travelling speed imposed by the presence of very young foals.

The horses, including Witraz and Wielki Szlem, were repatriated to Poland in 1946. They were to establish historic legacies of unmatched importance to their breed, not just in Poland but all over the world.

On October 30, 2005, the Frauenkirche, Dresden's landmark and most glorious architectural gem, was consecrated anew after more than a decade of rebuilding, helped by donations from Britain and the United States.



Jan Ziniewicz with Almifar (Witraz' grandson) and Czort (Wielki Szlem's son). Judging from the birthdates of the stallions, the picture must have been taken in the early Sixties.

My thanks for this picture go to Betty Finke, one of the greatest experts on Arabian horses alive.

Posted first last year today at Roncesvalles.

A Pundit with an Agenda

The Times used to be, long ago, a great newspaper when it was still the mouthpiece of the British establishment, or rather when the British establishment had a different face. Today, Times Online publishes the comment of one Sunny Hundal, headed Burning Satanic Verses lit the flame for better race relations, and yes, he means it exactly like that. To summarize: Frightening the living daylight out of Salman Rushdie and the stupid, white- and colonial guilt-ridden Brits in the same process was a good thing because it paved the way to the total submission we now see in Britain and what Hundal calls "remarkable civility". The entire comment is so incredibly full of politically correct leftist-liberal bullshit that it could as well be published at The Onion as a travesty and nobody would notice.

It has become such a frequent occasion that some profiteer from the fact that the Brits once, long ago, shouldered The White Man's Burden spits on that very tradition, that I have given up following it. However, Hundal didn't limit his bias to the country that gave him his passport and that irritated me:

Despite the rows and arguments, the British experience has been much better than that in Europe. France sticks to its official colour-blind approach but it has failed to make minorities feel that they have a stake in mainstream society. Germany has yet to shake off its history of associating nationality with bloodline and makes it difficult for even third or fourth-generation Turks to be full citizens. The Netherlands has careered from extremely liberal attitudes to much more xenophobic ones. Britain, in marked contrast, has conducted itself in remarkable civility.

Does this Times columnist really not know that France did not fail "to make minorities feel that they have a stake in mainstream society" but that the problem lies just with one of several minorities that prefers to burn cars instead of taking up its stake in mainstream society? That the Netherlands have not "careered from extremely liberal attitudes to much more xenophobic ones", but are trying to make up for their past mistakes, namely confronting a minority, that considers any liberal attitude as weakness, with such a despised and, at the same time, easily exploitable concept?

And Germany? Does it really have "yet to shake off its history of associating nationality with bloodline" that "makes it difficult for even third or fourth-generation Turks to be full citizens"? The cliché of the "racist" German is always gladly taken up, but that doesn't make it any more real. Germans are probably less racist than those European people with a colonial past -- or most third-worlders, for that. Germans are traditionally antisemites. That is a huge difference, which is hardly ever acknowledged. Germany, the only major European country without much of a stake in colonialism, is deeply provincial, always has been and after reunification even more so. Any cosmopolitanism is a totally alien concept to us, as is thinking in international terms. When the first Turks arrived in larger numbers in the early Seventies, nobody bothered to waste much thought on them because they were supposed to go back to their native country sooner or later anyway. They didn't, but at first it seemed as if Turks, coming from a secular country, didn't do so badly in the field of assimilation, no bearded men, no burqa-wearing women, they kept themselves to themselves, but their children, so it seemed, were going to do well.

And then, somewhere along the way and the Germans being tired of being branded forever as the world's premier racists, the suicidal family reunion schemes were started and instead of sending those who hadn't grown any roots in Germany, back, spouses from the deepest Anatolian sticks were imported while at the same time the alarming signs of a re-Islamisation of the Turkish minority were ignored. Again, at the same time, our little country took in Asians, Russians and other immigrants from non-Muslim countries without major problems, with the result that a Sikh in a British newspaper may ride now the old nag of German "racism" to death and nobody laughs.

Angry, I commented at the Times website:

This is an insult to your readers. How can one write a sensemaking, literate and informative comment covering such a complex topic having just 300 characters at one's disposal? But then, "You have no idea about what you are talking" only needs 40 odd characters and says it all.

I think I was wrong. Some hours and a bit of online search later, I have to concede that Sunny Hundal knows very well about what he is talking. He is a man with an agenda.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Matters of Family Honour

Ali Kur, the "alleged" murderer of an eight-year-old "girl of Turkish origin" in Germany was taken into custody by Turkish police last Tuesday night. In the Turkish town of Didim, that was. The German media are full of it, specifically because the father of the alleged one's wife had helped decisively in tracking him down. Kadir Ayaz, 49, had hired a detective and a group of 20 people to find his son-in-law. "I promised not to return to Germany unless I found Ali," Ayaz said to an unquestioningly attending German media. "For me it is a matter of honour." A divorce lawyer for his daughter has been hired.

Before Kur, a neighbour of the victim's family, could be indentified as the murderer of little Kardelen, the marked sense of honour within the Turkish community had caused some stir of a different kind in Germany already.

The writer of Turkish origin, Serap Cileli ("We Are Your Daughters, Not Your Honour") had made the guess the perpetrator might be a Turk. For that, she is now criticised in the Turkish dailies with the highest circulation in Germany, "Hürriyet" and "Sabah". The Turks in Germany are appaled at the statements, "Sabah" wrote ... Cileli had stated that it is not likely that a traditionally brought up Turkish girl will enter the car of a stranger.

The unlikely perpetrator Kur had fled Germany after Kardelen had disappeared on January 12. The child's naked body had later been found near a reservoir about 60 km away from the city of Paderborn where Kur lived. It turned out that DNA found in the unlikely alleged's home matched evidence from the crime scene.

(By the way, the unemployed Kur is a textbook example for the German family reunion scheme that allows for the relocation of a Turkish spouse to Germany. Kur's wife has German citizenship.)

Public prosecutor Horst Rürup said last week that Turkish prosecutors had warned they could not extradite Kur, but would try him in a Turkish court if he were caught. Turkish law stipulates life imprisonment for such crimes and I have a hunch that this means, different from German law, that Kur will leave prison only in a coffin. It gives me a good feeling being able to say something nice about Turkish circumstances.

What I hope for, though, is that the German media, who hadn't much to say about the arrogance of "Hürriyet" and "Sabah", and who are now gushing enthusiastically about Turkish honour, will, from now on, report as stridently all those cases where Turkish (or Muslim generally, for that) family honour plays a somewhat different part, or speak up the next time somebody like Serap Cileli, who has to live in hiding, is attacked by the honour-conscious Turkish media.

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This, this, this, this and this entry may be helpful.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Clarifying a Calculated Disaccord

The following letter is by Mrs. Rosa Gillibrand to the German media-personality Michel Friedman, first posted at her husband's blog Catholic Church Conservation, which is among the few we have blogrolled. Roncesvalles is not a Catholic blog in the sense Catholic Church Conservation is. As the description in the header says, it is about news and views from the German backwaters, and biased ones, for that. So let me put Mrs. Gillibrand's letter in a German perspective by providing information, which a blog that focuses mainly on theological matters can and will not provide.

Michel Friedman, in his early fifties now, used to be a German lawyer, CDU politician and Vice President of the Council of Jews in Germany. He then broke into chat-show hosting and was, with his razor-sharp mind, aggressive interviewing style, flamboyant looks, and an ego as big as the Mount Everest, a huge success. Friedman's family had been saved by Oskar Schindler.

In 2003, he was trialled and convicted in a case of cocain usage, involving forced prostitutes from Eastern Europe. He then withdrew from all public offices, publicly apologized and asked for "a second chance". Predictably, German television, shallow and whorish as it is, allowed him a comeback. Recently, he has, somewhat predictably as well, acquired new attention through his vocal condemnation of Pope Benedict.

Michel Friedman is, to put it cynically, important, even invaluable for the German society. Why? Because he mirrors, like nobody else, the deeply ingrained antisemitic resentments of the otherwise oh-so tolerant and enlightened Germans who see, by Friedman's mere existence, their credo once again affirmed that antisemitism is the Jews' fault. I have a hunch that Friedmann deliberatelly caters for this resentment, but I may be wrong.

However, here is Rosa Gillibrand's remarkable letter:

Dear Dr Friedmann

I have always carried the name Friedman with pride; I am a Catholic and received the name Friedman by marriage. So dear was this name to me that I kept my passport with the name Friedman for four years after my husband had died, because it seemed to me an honour as an Austrian to carry this name. It therefore stands to reason that I cannot be an anti-Semite; at present, I am writing a book about the Jews of Linz in Austria.

I am ashamed of what you have said in your highly emotional and angry statements in the broadcast of the Kerner Show on ZDF. You call the SSPX, nazis, fascists and anti-Semites. It seems to me that you do not understand what the whole affair is about as I assume that you are a secular Jew and you have no knowledge of what is actually taking place. Just as the Germans under National Socialism have attacked the Jews without any reason, you have attacked and defamed a group of deeply believing Catholics.

It is apparent for you Vatican II means an opening to the world- you are an outsider and this is a simplistic view. I, as an insider, have experienced what had happened to the Catholic Faith- the removal of everything symbolic and sacred from the liturgy. What does this in actual fact mean? I have tried for over twenty years to come to terms with it and to overlook the shambles in the Rock Masses, Carnival Mass, Clown Masses, Sing-song Masses- everyone holding hands and Dance Masses, until I could not bear it anymore. Vatican II Masses became more and more banal, saying less and less and becoming emptier and emptier of spiritual content with a self-made and truncated rhetoric from the priest and a happy-clappy community. If I wanted to hear rock music, I would go to a rock concert- I don’t need the Church for this.

In my search for a Mass with content, where the sacred is still sacred and where the liturgy is still treated in a decent and dignified manner, I found by chance the Fraternity of St Peter. As however most of the liberal inclined bishop held them down with an iron fist and permitted few Masses in the Roman Rite, and as, for instance, in Brussels the Fraternity of St Peter is forbidden to celebrate through the obstinacy of the local Cardinal, I have found again by chance, the SSPX who possess their own church in Brussels independent from the grace and favour of the Diocesan bishops. The latter are set to continue their secular and liberal course, free and cheerfully, despite the fact that their churches are becoming emptier and emptier.

My religion matters to you- it possesses a liturgy which according to Michael Davies, “is the most beautiful thing this side of heaven”. I do not expect any understanding from you but I expect, at least, the respect that you would give to Orthodox Jews. To simply pour dirt onto the SSPX and call them nazis, fascists etc. which I must ask you to withdraw. You are making this statement solely on the basis of an eccentric bishop who denies many other things besides the Holocaust, (9/11, Pearl Harbour) or wishes to impose on them a different interpretation. As far as I know, the US has not taken him to court for this. In any case, should I meet him here again in Brussels- he was here a year ago- I would assure you that I would speak to him that I was married to a Jew and that 45 of his relatives perished. This would mean 45 of the 300/400 thousand that he specified.

You are attacking a group of faithful Catholics (the same disposition and more, you can find in your own faith, among the Orthodox Jews, but you are silent about them.) When I accompanied my husband to Stamford Hill in London- as a doctor, he had to visit an old Jewish lady who had been in a concentration camp, my reception there was not in the least friendly- no-one shook my hand, I was left standing in a corner and the children were clearly afraid of me (as I was not Jewish) and they tried not to come near to me. Contrary to you, I have not criticised their environment or behaviours but tried to explain it to myself.

Why don’t you come forward with the truth why you pour your hatred over the SSPX- because of the Good Friday prayers which are only prayed once a year by the priest in Latin for the Jews. Nb it is the priest who prays this prayer together with ten other bidding prayers. I would appreciate it if you could just once also say prayers for us, the unbelieving gentiles, or do you not pray any more....

I should be grateful.
Mrs Rosa Gillibrand, formerly Friedman

Thank you, Mrs. Gillibrand!

Gudrun Eussner says in an email that she found many of those things in a synagogue that are dear to a traditional Catholic with his Latin Mass as well (article in German).

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Germans love Jews -- dead, that is!

I am probably the last person fit to comment on theological matters, so I refrained so far from saying anything in view of the ongoing discussion about the ex-excommunication by Pope Benedict XVI of that Holocaust-denying renegate bishop. However, the discussion here in Germany has become so strident, hysterical and impertinent, that I'd like to comment, even if only briefly.

While the statement, that the Pope hadn't known about the Holocaust-denial of Williamson (the much-publicized interview was, in fact, given AFTER the excommunication was revoked, but his stance wasn't new) shows that the information system of the Vatican leaves a lot to be desired, it wasn't in any way discussed, let alone the not entirely outlandish conspiracy theory that the pope was conned.

The instead ensuing anti-Catholic hate orgy in the media violated, and is still violating, any common standard of journalistic ethics (an oxymoron if I've ever heard one). I can not tell how many times I had to listen to the tale of the "rehabilitation of the Holocaust denier", and even the very last theological troll was allowed to let loose his inner child. Hans Küng, who called for the "resignation" of the pope and who is particularly qualified to comment on Jewish topic as he considers, for once on the side of traditional Catholicism, "the international law-violating occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel since 1967" a reason for the deterioration of the Jewish-Catholic relations, concluded in an interview with the "conservative" newspaper Die Welt: "The number of Christians who have left the Holy Land is speaking for itself", conveniently forgetting that it isn't Israeli-Jewish "occupation" who does that but Palestinian-Muslim atrocities, lauding, eerily befitting, Islam's forceful Monotheism in the same interview.

And nobody laughed.

So what is the ex-excomunication really about? The four men may now attend again confession and receive absolution. They may receive communion and will not have to die without the solace of the sacraments of their church. That is all.

All, but very much for a Catholic.

But the public discussion is not really about that, it is about the authority of the pope and the Catholic church, who doggedly refuse to surrender their values to secular ones. The world will cease to despise Catholics once they've accepted the rules of political correctness as above the word of Jesus Christ, in other words, when they have ceased to be Catholics.

Germany is a secular country. Since the revision of paragraph § 166 StGB of the penal code in 1969, blasphemy has been abolished as a punishable crime. Holocaust denial, in contrast, has been elevated to a status where it is liable to prosecution, and the European Union, in the same spirit, refrained to include any reference to God in their constitution but made Holocaust denial a punishable crime as well.

Have superior ethics and morality been thus achieved?

Well, what can I say? There is certainly a difference between the importance that is given to the denial of the past Holocaust and the call for a future one.

If a Muslim-mob haunts the streets of our country chanting "Death to the Jews" it doesn't seem to be a big matter. If German politicians are rubbing shoulders with the Middle Eastern scum who are ready, willing and able to commit a second Holocaust, most of them deniers of the first one themselves, it's mostly a good thing. If a dialie dialogue with Islam is promoted, it's received with enthusiastic acclaim. Hasn't it, after all, been exceedingly fruitful in the past already?

Thus, the "Never Again" solemnly and hypocritically sworn at any Liberation-of-Auschwitz-Day, turns well-nigh into the precondition for the "Way to go" for the next one.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Family Gathering on Grandpa Rapist's Obit

The inimitable Henryk M. Broder has reacted to the decision of the Central Council of Jews in Germany not to attend the official Berlin ceremony marking International Holocaust Memorial Day due to organizers' failure to greet the survivors present in previous years. The Secretary-General of the Central Council, Stephan Kramer, a convertite and, to put it politely, intensely media conscious, said he had asked the parliament years ago for Holocaust survivors to be welcomed formally at the event. His request, he said, had been turned down as it went against the protocol of the parliament. Broder stated in an "open letter" to Kramer that, while the decision not to attend was right, the reasons were all wrong.

... I can understand the disappointment of our representatives who would have liked to be greeted personally and by name. If we are prepared to share "our" Holocaust with others, we want to sit now in the VIP-box and not somewhere at the end of the aisle.

However, it isn't "our" Holocaust. If it had been a parcel, our parents and grandparents could have refused to accept it. But that was an option they didn't have. Nowadays, it's different. "We" can say now: "Thank you very much, not with us. Do your own Holocaust among yourselves!"

[...]

If the offspring of the perpetrators want to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust is that an honourable thing to do. It speaks for "The Germans" that they have faced their history more boldly than any other people in Europe. However, they have more reason for it. "The Jews" have done their bit when it comes to the Holocaust. They may now sit back and relax and say: "It's your turn now. Go on, you do it."

That they don't do that, that they dance at any after-show-party, is a sign of lack of character. It is as if the children and grandchildren of a raped woman would meet with the children and grandchildren of the rapist at a family gathering on every anniversary of grandpa's death.

There is another good reason to refuse to go on such a memory-retreat. You mention yourself the growing antisemitism, which is apparent in a growing number of hate-mails to the Central Council. If that were the whole story, we wouldn't need to worry.

Worse is that they want to prevent retroactively the last Holocaust in Germany ("Resist the beginnings!" "Never again 1933!") without letting the possible next Holocaust on the horizon rain on their parade. No matter how clearly, unambiguously and unmistakably the Iranian president announced Israel's soon-to-come end, nobody in Germany takes his threats seriosly and dismisses them as political rhetoric for domestic use.

IF Broder is good, he is great. (Translation mine!)

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

The Holcaust Never Happened

Meryl Yourish reports in her blog entry Swedes: Who cares about old, dead Jews when Gazans died last month? today:

See if you can follow this logic, because it’s pretty much escaping me. A town in Sweden has decided to cancel its Holocaust remembrance procession because of the Gaza war.

A northern Swedish city has decided to cancel a planned Holocaust Memorial Day torchlight procession due to the recent IDF offensive in Gaza, it was reported Tuesday.

The official reason given for the decision, made by the municipal board and local church in Lulea, was safety concerns, but Bo Nordin, a clergyman and spokesman for the church, cited the war in Gaza.

“It feels uneasy to have a torchlight procession to remember the victims of the Holocaust at this time,” Nordin told Swedish National Radio. “We have been preoccupied and grief-stricken by the war in Gaza and it would feel just feel odd with a large ceremony about the Holocaust.”

I’m sorry, could you please explain that logic to me again? It would feel wrong to remember the victims of the Nazi genocide because Palestinians died in Gaza last month? Do you mean that it would feel wrong to remember people who were killed because they were Jewish because people who were Jewish killed Gazans?

Would someone kindly tell me again how criticism of Israel is not related to anti-Semitism, because I’m really missing that vital blind spot.

The decision drew fierce criticism from various organizations as well as residents of the city, and a defiant group of Lulea locals has decided to hold the torchlight procession anyway.

Good for you. And hey, Bo Nordin, way to show the compassionate side of Christianity—by being unable to feel sympathy for two disparate groups at the same time. You’re some religious leader, all right.

I will give explaining a try. This is the typical German way of thinking, which has been more or less adapted by the rest of Europe as well. It has to do with the psychological mechanism of self-exculpation that lets every single misdeed by Jews, real or perceived, and by Israel, the über-Jew, somehow magically lessen the German/European guilt of the Holocaust. Therefore every single misdeed by Jews, real or perceived, has to be duly noticed, given its due "importance", and charged up against the genocide of the European Jews.

This thinking is, too, based on the deeply antisemitic premis that Auschwitz was a reformatory, a premis that has always been an accepted fact for the German-, and now for the European mainstream as well.

It seems that what Israel, the über-Jew, has done in Gaza has finally nullified the Holocaust in the mind of the Nordins of this world. The charging-up has finally come to a satisfactory end. I don't think that it will remain an isolated case. Watch Roncesvalles and this space for more.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles!

Who Botched the Oath and Why?

Some say that Roberts botched it, some say Obama. One thing is sure: It was an unusual swearing-in:

Roberts: Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator?
Obama: I am.
Roberts: I, Barack Hussein Obama…
Obama: I, Barack…
Roberts: … do solemnly swear…
Obama: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear…
Roberts: … that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully…
Obama: … that I will execute…
Roberts: … faithfully the office of president of the United States…
Obama: … the office of president of the United States faithfully…
Roberts: … and will to the best of my ability…
Obama: … and will to the best of my ability…
Roberts: … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Obama: … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Roberts: So help you God?
Obama: So help me God.
Roberts: Congratulations, Mr. President.

My friend Gudrun Eussner, who owns one of the most serious and competent Islam-critical German-language websites, has a theory, a theory that may appear far-fetched to many, but here it is anyway: She says Obama stuttered because he intended to swear as "Barack Obama" and not as "Barack Hussein Obama". Thus, his Muslim part wouldn't have been included in the oath and set the Muslim Obama free to do what he has to do. "Hussein Obama" didn't, after all, swear the oath.

Judge Roberts, so Gudrun thinks, (Gudrun holds a doctorate in political sciences. Now retired, she used to work for many years for NGOs in the Middle East and is well versed in the ways of taqqiya...) has unmasked him and Obama has shown in front of millions of viewers what he is.

Roberts is the man of whom Senator Obama said:

...when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak. In his work in the White House and the Solicitor General's Office, he seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process. In these same positions, he seemed dismissive of the concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this economy when you are a woman rather than a man.

Should Gudrun be right, Roberts has used his formidable skills here on behalf of a desperate attempt to unmask a dangerous fraudster.

But then, maybe Judge Roberts has never heard of taqqiya and really just fouled it up.

We will, I am afraid, see.

Plenty of video clips online to get an own impression.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles!

What Makes a Hero?

An interesting point was made at VFR. Lawrence Auster asked:

Was Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III's safe landing of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River an exceptional accomplishment, even a miracle, as many believe, or, as a correspondent has put it, the outcome that would be expected of a typical, experienced airline pilot? To answer the question, we need to strip the situation down to its essentials, leaving only the water landing itself. That is, we need to eliminate the initial shock experienced by the flight crew when the flock of Canadian geese collided with the plane and destroyed the engines; eliminate the uncertainty about whether to turn back to La Guardia; eliminate the pilot's sighting of Teterboro airport in New Jersey and the discussion about whether to try to land there; eliminate the plane's curve from a northern to an eastern to a southerly course to head down the Hudson; and eliminate the challenge of keeping the engineless plane aloft long enough to maneuver it over the Hudson.

Once we've gotten rid of all those factors, we're left with this "pure" scenario: An airliner has just taken off and climbed to 3,000 feet and both its engines go out. It has several miles of a mile-wide, relatively calm river in front of it. Under those circumstances, what kind of landing would be expected? Would the smooth landing that Capt. Sullenberger achieved, with the plane left floating intact on the water, be the expected norm, or would it be very unusual?

Auster regards

...the talk about "heroism" in this and so many other cases as the hysteria of the dopey and lazy press.

Although there is a lot of merit in this opinion, I think it is just one angle from which one can see the remarkable event on the Hudson.

I do not think that one should strip the immediate understanding of the situation in a shock situation and the following lightning quick decisionmaking from the event. It was as important as the landing itself which was, indeed, "only" what can be expected from a fully trained pilot of that calibre. Still, Sullenberger was not a hero. Heroism needs, so I think, some ethical component which is lacking here. But then, to go back and search the sinking aircraft again and again to make sure that nobody was left behind has an element of heroism. John Maynard, and those for whom that fictitious character stands, are heroes. The British fighter pilot who crash landed his jet in an open field when he could have saved himself by the ejection seat at the peril of having the abandoned jet crashing into a village was a hero. That happened about 40 years ago in Eastern Westphalia and I have never forgotten it, although there was only a minor notice in our regional newspaper.

To me this is another instance of the somewhat natural reaction to a feminized world of mediocrity, self-centeredness, bitching and complaining, where a difficult job superbly performed must appear as heroism. What a "pilotesse" suffering from PMS or post-menopausal complaints would have done in Sullenberger's place I hate to think. We are so starved of heroes that any politically correct, widely accepted instance remotely touching heroism will trigger off a deluge of admiration.

An interesting bit of insight into the mind of one from that remarkable class of men gives the interviewwith Jürgen Vietor, the first officer of the legendary flight LH 181. In 1977, during the "German Autumn", after the cold-blooded murder of his captain by Arab terrorists at Aden, Yemen, the young first officer (like Sullenberger a former military pilot) had to fly the 737, which had just undergone a gruelling emergency landing, solo to land safely at Mogadishu, Somalia, an airport, that had before, literally and metaphorically, not been on his, a Boeing 737 pilot's, map. Vietor is adamant that he is no hero. Maybe not, but anyway, I strongly oppose his definition of what makes a hero. HERE is the interview.

Urgent Appeal

ASSOCIATION FOR WORLD EDUCATION
WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM

Urgent APPEAL

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
UN Director-General Sergei Ordzhonikidze
UNHRC President Martin I. Uhomoibhi; UNHCHR Nevanethem Pillay
UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura

International Commemoration Day: Victims of the Holocaust: 27 January 2009

20 January 2009

Your Excellencies,

As reported by Reuters from Teheran on Sunday, two days ago (18 January 2008: 16:53):
A student-linked Iranian publisher plans to launch English – and Arabic – language versions of a book of caricatures and satirical writings about the Holocaust (…). The book deals with the "big historical distortion" of the Holocaust and the English and Arabic editions would be published at a ceremony in Tehran later this month when a message from Ahmadinejad would be read out, Fars News Agency said. It appeared to be translations of a book which official media in September said had been published about the "fiction" of the Holocaust. "The presentation ceremony will be held on Jan. 27 ... with the attendance of a number of government officials," said Mohammad-Mehdi Hemmati, who is involved in the project. (…) Iran's IRNA news agency said in September the book had 52 caricatures plus satirical writings over 108 pages. It was published by Martyr Shahbazi Publications and the Islamic student movement of the Science and Industry University. (...) Iran staged an international competition and exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust in 2006.

On 26 October 2005, at a conference on "The World without Zionism" in Teheran, President Muhammad Ahmadinejad demanded that Israel be "wiped off the map." He also menaced all peacemakers: "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury."
The Iranian president’s call was part of a prepared address. His statement was not an emotional ad hoc addition as a response to a chanting crowd, but an element in a world view that denies the possibility of any peaceful coexistence with the State of Israel. In the same speech, he provided an Islamic historical overview: "The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world. The skirmishes of the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land." Since then, he and other Iranian leaders have expressed similar views – in total contradiction with article II (4) of the UN Charter – while promoting, with the OIC, “Dialogue" and an "Alliance of Civilizations".

A week before this solemn moment – the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust – we appeal to you to heed the words and the constant acts of the Iranian President’s "direct and public incitement" for the annihilation of a Member State – punishable under article IV of the Genocide Convention. Article III states: "the following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide."

Those who drafted the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide had in memory the long incitement to hatred against the Jews by the Nazi leadership. Few took the Nazis seriously in the mid-1930s and did not foresee that hate constantly repeated would lead to systematic genocide. This book of caricatures and satirical writings on the Holocaust is more writing on the wall.

Yours respectfully,
René Wadlow David G. Littman
Representatives of the AWE and the WUPJ to the United Nations Office in Geneva

Cross-posted at Roncecvalles.

Submissive Salami Slicing

Under the header Muslims in Germany Seek Clarity on Religious Law, DW-WORLD.de sells us the following information in an article that merits its copying in full:

For years now, the teachings of imams in Germany have been hotly debated.

The vast majority (90 percent) are of Turkish origin, but there are also imams from Morocco and Iran. Frequently, imams speak little or no German, nor are they acquainted with the political, social and cultural norms in Germany. Many politicians -- as well as many Muslims living in Germany -- are now demanding that this situation change.

Ferid Heider grew up in Berlin and serves as imam at two of the city's mosques. "Every Muslim can decide for himself who he recognizes as an authority figure," Heider said.

As a Muslim and an imam, Heider is under no obligation to follow the fatwas issued, for example, at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo -- one of the most significant educational institutes in the Islamic world -- or any other scholarly community for that matter.

His task, he said, is to do the best he can according to knowledge and his conscience. For him, that means taking the German way of life into account when offering opinions and advice. A fatwa, he stressed, should always refer to a specific case and set of circumstances.

Challenges of life in Germany

Heider said he's often asked by those in his religious community about which behaviors should be permitted or forbidden for Muslims. Everyday life in Germany is not without conflict for Muslims. Prayer times and working hours often don't mesh, nudity -- whether in parks, gyms or the media -- is pervasive, and alcohol is freely available.

The imam listens to people's problems, and then refers to the Koran and examples from the life of the prophet Mohammed. Based on these sources, he then issues an Islamic legal opinion.

For fatwas issued in Europe, Heider said it's important to have "Islamic scholars in Europe that have either grown up here or have lived here for a long time." In his view, only those who are intimately acquainted with the political, social and economic situation of a place can issue adequate fatwas.

Fatwas issued in Germany often vary greatly from those issued in countries with a majority Muslim population. That's in part due to the nature of a fatwa, says Bettina Graef, an Islamic scholar at Berlin's Center for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO). A fatwa may be a ruling in an individual case, but its significance is often much larger.

"Everything that's not forbidden is, in principle, allowed," said Graef. "And so of course people try to push the boundaries."

Fatwas are of central importance to the Islamic identity, says Graef -- an identity that has become particularly important in Europe and the US since the 1990s.

Fatwas imposed from abroad

Many legal scholars in traditional Islamic countries view the new Islamic practice of law in Europe with concern. They're worried that their brothers in faith are straying too far from the right path, and may be jeopardizing Islam. In order to prevent this, they issue their own fatwas about how Muslims in Europe should lead their lives.

These fatwas may be issued in far-off countries, but they're nonetheless a source of concern for law professor and expert on Islamic law Mathias Rohe. It's a worrying development, he said, adding that it has its roots in Saudi Arabia. Imams there have issued opinions demanding that Muslims in Europe hold themselves apart from what is, in their view, a faithless world.

Islam is a religion without a highest authority. There's no position that is comparable to the Catholic pope. Instead, the faithful can choose from a multitude of voices: the imam from the nearest mosque, scholars at Al-Azhar University, prominent TV sheiks, and superregional fatwa committees. Islamic extremists can just as easily find fatwas to confirm their beliefs as can moderate Muslims who believe in peaceful coexistence with members of other religions.

Islamic organizations representing Muslims in Germany have also attempted to convince their followers to subscribe to a set of basic principles. The variety of opinions and degree of individualism hampers Muslims' efforts to successfully represent themselves as a group, said Burhan Kesici, the secretary general of the Islamic Council in Germany.

In his view, having some commonality on fatwas is beneficial to the credibility of Islamic spokespeople in Germany and Europe. A common Islamic organization could very well influence the beliefs of individuals, Kesici said. In addition, it would make it possible to exclude Muslims with extremist views.

Does that sound reasonable? Is that a balanced article as it should be expected from a mainstream medium? I don't think so. Why? Let me first deliver some additional information regarding the experts quoted. It will clarify a lot.

Bettina Gräf M.A., who sounds like a convert (or at least like an about-to-be convert) to Islam, a "scholar" of Islamic studies appears to be without the slightest distance to the object of her supposed-to-be scholarly research. Her recently submitted doctor's thesis is about "Media-Fatwas by Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Popularisation of the Islamic Understanding of Law. That is the same Al-Qaradawi who, so Gräf herself informs us in her own words in an 4 year old article in the leftwing taz

... supports the fight for independence of the Palestinians... initiates solidarity campaigns, collects money and decries at any opportunity the ongoing occupation of Palestine... He goes pretty far here: In an Islamic legal opinion he justifies Palestinian suicide assassinations as a means to the end of self-defense against Israel's policy.

In the same article, Gräf describes the object of her scientific research as a "scholar of law" who

... promotes Islam and the rights of Muslims since his boyhood, but speaks up against extremism and violence as well. Al-Qaradawi claims for himself the term "center school of thought". That means that he equally recognizes and consults all the different Islamic legal traditions.

We can safely assume that promoting the "rights of Muslims" means, as it always does, overriding the rights of people from other cultures, and we are slowly about to get a whiff of where Gräf stands.

Mathias Rohe, the other Islam expert quoted in the above article, is of a different calibre than Gräf, which makes things worse. A highly qualified scholar of law, he holds a chair for international civil law at the old and respected Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. His secondary subject was Islamic science, which makes him a sought-after expert on Islamic law and he is, as such, a consultant to the German office for the protection of the constitution (Verfassungsschutz), a rather creepy thought in the light of the fact that Rohe promotes a speedy equal legal treatment of Islam and the Chritian faith on the grounds of the same constitution his client is supposed to protect.

Rohe, too, condiders the Islamic sharia as law with the same functions as the legal systems of Western societies, namely "to establish a societal order of peace and to coordinate and harmonize the different interests of the people". Rohe sees no conflict of interests between sharia and Western law. Case in point: An immigrant who brings his four (by Islamic law legal) wifes to this country, has no legal consequences to fear. We are accepting this polygamous marriage already for a considerable time now and German social legislation does indeed provide for all four wives widow's retirement pension expectancy. Not ONE expectancy divided by four, mind you, but four full ones. Because of that, Rohe argues, it is only logical to accept the rest as well.

The positivism out of the loony bin of Rohe's argument, that sharia is a good thing worth further promotion because parts of it are already applied, makes the mind boggle. Instead of asking for the abolition of such violation of the rights of the German people and our Western culture, this German (doubtlessly eminently highly qualified) scholar of law states that it ought to be applied even further. Rohe says now that beheadings and amputations are something the "German sharia law" will not allow. How can he know? Because all his nice, moderate, peacefully-minded Muslim friends are telling him so?

If a common organisation of all Muslims in Germany and the legal recognition of sharia law really aims, as it is nauseatingly often claimed, to promote moderate Islam by offering an alternative network to that of "militant Islamists", we don't need it. A truly moderate Islam would be able to cope with the Western laws, if it can't, it would be suicidal to allow it. We all know fully assimilated Turks, we even believe that they will never pose a threat to us. But where are they when it is about distancing themselves from Muslim claims, demands and atrocities? Where are the 100%-assimilated Muslims when their brethren rally all-but-peacefully against Israel? That said, where are the GERMANS speaking out against Muslim verbal and physical violence towards Israel?

Read the full article at Roncesvalles.

Easy, Cheap, Effective and Absolutely Nonhazardous Redux

We reported that the police chief of the Bavarian town of Passau, Alois Mannichl, had become the victim of a stabbing on December 13. Mannichl was released from hospital before Christmas. He said he had been stabbed at his front door by a man who vaguely fit the description of a neo-nazi. A neighbourhood witness had stated she’d seen a man with a snake tattooed behind his ear. His attacker, Mannichl claimed, had said something along the lines of "Greetings from the national resistance" and "You leftist pig cop, you won't trample on the graves of our comrades anymore".

The entire German media have their collective knickers in one big knot because the police chief of the Bavarian town of Passau became the victim of a stabbing on Saturday night. Local right-wing extremists are suspected because the police chief was known for taking a hard line in tackling them, as one does in Germany.

Mannichl, 52, ... was stabbed after opening his front door to a bald man who launched into a torrent of abuse, calling him a "left-wing police pig" and declaring "greetings from the national resistance movement" before ramming an 11-centimeter (4.3 inch) blade into his stomach.

Everybody is outraged. Outraged! With all the cheap and foreseeable standard reactions, from a rally of more than 300 people "against far-right violence" on Monday afternoon via the predictable calls "for a crackdown on neo-Nazis and tougher sentences for far-right offenders" to the Bavarian interior minister's original statement that "the assault showed that far-right violence had reached a new dimension".

Two men from the right-wing scene were quickly arrested but had to be released soon. No other suspects have been found yet.

The Neo-Nazi party NPD, who was able to clock up a whopping 1.2% at the elections for the Bavarian state parliament last September, issued a statement on its website condemning what they called the "insidious attack on the father of two children" and "Whoever pulled the knife on the Passau police chief has done a major disservice not just to the NPD, but to the entire national resistance movement", which is true.

Now it expired that it was probably not quite so. In cases like this, it is common (and good) police practice to work from the inside out and family members are usually the first to be investigated. However, the Passau police, we can safely assume overawed by their chief's involvement, did nothing of that sort. Instead, they began immediately looking for "right-wing extremist suspects". Arrests that were, as usual in such cases, quickly made, led to nothing. In the meantime, external investigators found discrepancies in Mannichl’s claim and are thinking now in the direction of a relationship-related crime.

First, the police chief – the only witness to the crime – was able to provide only a vague description of his attacker who he said was about 6 feet tall with a round face with a shaved head, the paper said. A neighbourhood witness said she’d seen a man with a snake tattooed behind his ear and possibly a cross on his face. But investigators told the paper they can't find men to fit either description and that the witness' information may be unreliable.

"When someone with a tattoo like that commits a crime, it’s as if a bank robber put an identification card on his chest and marches into a bank," one said. "You recognise people like this."

Meanwhile, police in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic have combed through their records of documented neo-Nazis to no avail.

Another questionable element to Mannichl’s account of the crime is that the knife came from his own home and had been used to cut cake at a neighbour’s party a few days before. But investigators have not yet found traces of cake, foreign DNA or evidence that the stabber was wearing gloves, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Whatever may be behind the case of Alois Mannichl, it is eerily reminiscent of only too many cases which have one thing in common: the cheap and easy scapegoating of "right wing extremists". Here are a couple which I remember and which I am quoting from memory and in no specific order:

In June 1997 in the little town of Sebnitz in Saxony, "racist" youths with contacts to the right-wing extremist scene were charged with the drowning of a six-year-old boy in a public swimming pool. The mother had bought witnesses and sold her story to the tabloid shitrag Bild, which painted an amazing picture of 50 sadists torturing the little boy publicly to death. Public "outrage", "dismay" and "shock" was at an formerly unknown high, supported by the fact that the child's father was Iraqi, which added "racism" to general nastiness. It expired in the end that the the little guy had suffered from a heart disease, that the mother had let him go swimming nevertheless, attended only by his older sister, and that he had died from heart failure.

A "migration" background generally helps to reach victim status. In December 2002, the 14-year-old daughter of a Cuban immigrant turned up in at a police station in Guben in Brandenburg because "neo-nazis" had cut a swastika to her cheek and called her "nigger". At first, are we amazed, she was believed. Than it turned out that she had mutilated herself. Neo-nazis had, indeed, in Guben hunted and killed an African immigrant, so that the probability that the claim would receive attention was very high.

1994, in Halle a.d. Saale, a wheelchair-bound (a physical handicap generally helps to reach victim status as well) girl had made a similar claim, just without the "nigger" bit. Thousands rallied against "right-wing violence". This, too, had turned out to be a lie.

In Mittweida in Saxony, a girl had claimed in 2007 that skinheads had cut a swastika to her hip (!). The 17-year old stated that was because she had tried to protect a little Russian girl they were attacking. Collective outrage and dismay ran rampant, the obligatory candlelight vigils and rallies were duly performed. Then is expired that the girl had made it all up and that the injury was self-inflicted. A "civil courage" award from the "Bündnis für Demokratie und Toleranz" she got in 2008 nevertheless.

We have reported at length about the case of the black immigrant from Africa who had been severely injured in a drunken brawl in Potsdam near Berlin on Easter 2007, a case that had blasted even the scope of former "outrage"- and "dismay"-orgies. The alleged perpetrators, who had been blindfolded, shakled, handcuffed and helicoptered contra legem to the federal persecutor in Karlsruhe although the case was outside his competence, had to be released after a lengthy trial because they had nothing to do with the victim's fate. They weren't even neo-nazis. They just had the bad luck to LOOK like "neo-nazis".

Some of the incidents are still sold as cases of "right-wing extremist violence" in the Internet. People need legends, specifically legends of their own goodness. However, the attitude "they may not have done this, but they deserve what they are getting anyway because they are nazis" is not quite as highly ethical as the proponents would like to see it, and that all this is sold as "civil courage" (which implies by definition that it is dangerous) is sickening beyond belief in its hypocrisy. Those incidents are, pre-debunking, often quoted as "touch-stones for our democracy", which only proves what our democracy is worth.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Addendum to "German police break into private home to remove Israeli flag that 'offended' Muslims"

The original entry is here.

I do not think that this happened in the city of Duisburg by mere chance and could just have happened in any other German town or city. Here are some facts: Duisburg, which is located where the river Ruhr meets the Rhine, is the hometown of one of the biggest inland ports worldwide and -- Germany's biggest mosque. Duisburg covers 232,8 km² and hosts a population of 496,665 (December 31, 2007). Statistically, 8% of the population are Muslims, but some suburbs have a population of more than 50% with a "migration background".

I have posted at my blog several times about acts of shameless dhimmitrude related to or happening in that very city. Maybe the background information I provide is of renewed interest in the light of the latest occurences.

Pastorius adds: 

Jihad Watch reader Oao just sent me this:

:16 AM Received from Muqata Blog Reader in Germany, Sebastian M.

Today, 10.000 people demonstrated against Israel here in my hometown Duisburg (Germany) and to express their solidarity with Hamas. So, my girlfriend and me put two Israel flags out of the windows of our flat in the 3rd floor. During the demonstration which went through our street the police broke into our flat and removed the flag of Israel. The statement of the police was to de-escalate the situation, because many youth demonstrators were on the brink of breaking into our apartment house. Before this they threw snowballs, knifes and stones against our windows and the complete building. We both were standing on the other side of the street and were shocked by seeing a police officer standing in our bedroom and opening the window to get the flag. The picture illustrate this situation. The police acquiesced in the demands of the mob.

And as you can see from the video, the mob applauded, cheered, and shouted "Allahu akbar" when the flag disappeared.

From Jihad Watch

Merry Christmas

Pastorius told me it would be a good idea to put up this greeting here, as it fits in with the theme of this blog because it reflects the Hope of Christmas and the beauty of dogs.

I'll let you have a recent picture of Jack, Pastorius! He is four now (he was eight months when the picture was taken), a strapping stud dog and would make an excellent "Infidel Hunk".

The Editrix

Easy, Cheap, Effective and Absolutely Nonhazardous

The entire German media have their collective knickers in one big knot because the police chief of the Bavarian town of Passau became the victim of a stabbing on Saturday night. Local right-wing extremists are suspected because the police chief was known for taking a hard line in tackling them, as one does in Germany.

Mannichl, 52, ... was stabbed after opening his front door to a bald man who launched into a torrent of abuse, calling him a "left-wing police pig" and declaring "greetings from the national resistance movement" before ramming an 11-centimeter (4.3 inch) blade into his stomach.

Everybody is outraged. Outraged! With all the cheap and foreseeable standard reactions, from a rally of more than 300 people "against far-right violence" on Monday afternoon via the predictable calls "for a crackdown on neo-Nazis and tougher sentences for far-right offenders" to the Bavarian interior minister's original statement that "the assault showed that far-right violence had reached a new dimension".

Two men from the right-wing scene were quickly arrested but had to be released soon. No other suspects have been found yet.

The Neo-Nazi party NPD, who was able to clock up a whopping 1.2% at the elections for the Bavarian state parliament last September, issued a statement on its website condemning what they called the "insidious attack on the father of two children" and "Whoever pulled the knife on the Passau police chief has done a major disservice not just to the NPD, but to the entire national resistance movement", which is true.

Another, equally life-threatening, stabbing last year in Frankfurt (we reported) caused less concern. The victim was a Rabbi and the perpetrator a 22-year-old unemployed "German of Afghan parentage". He, too, had delivered the blow together with a message, namely "I’ll kill you, you Scheiß-Jude." [Expletives are hardly translatable: Scheiß=shit, Jude=Jew]. The perpetrator remained adamant, largely supported by the justice system and the maintream media, that there had been no antisemitic motive and that he felt threatened by and physically inferior to the middle-aged, grossly obese rabbi, whose fat layers had prevented worse, and had thus reached for his knife. As the journalist Henryk M. Broder put it: "Here we have another case of self-defense, where the provocateur leaps aggressively into the provocatee's knife as an answer to a friendly "salam aleikum". In the end, the young man was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for aggravated battery and harrassment, the charge of attempted manslaughter had been dropped. The culture-enricher's lawyers stated that the fact that their client didn't stab the Rabbi a second time posed an "abandonment of an attempt to commit manslaughter" and that he was just an ebullient young man who was just too fond of "brandishing a knife".

Will justice be done now? Didn't the policeman provoke the perpetrator by opening the door to him? How do we know that the perpetrator wasn't just another ebullient young man who was just a little bit too fond of brandishing his knife? Will the fact that he didn't hit the policeman a second time seen as an "abandonment of an attempt to commit manslaughter"? I doubt it. Doubt it, simply because police and Inland Security would lose sinecures of enormous proportions would "right-wing extremism" finally granted the marginal importance it has. And, even more important, yacking about "a crackdown on neo-Nazis and tougher sentences for far-right offenders" spreads a feel-good experience no other medium can provide and that's exactly why this shitty little party will never be banned because what would all the many upright and noble Germans, good democrats all of them, do if they hadn't that scapegoat anymore, whom to repudiate is so easy, cheap, effective and absolutely nonhazardous.

---

The following older entries are still extremely topical in this context: Barking up the Wrong Tree as an Art Form and Leave the Poor Nazis Alone.

What if the neo-Nazis didn't do it and what if the neo-Nazis weren't even neo-Nazis:
German Feel-Good-Experience Busted.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

Islam's Intolerance Is the Fault of the West

Now, as the question why young men with a "migration background" beat German pensioners to a pulp, is safely and satisfactorily answered, the question why young men with a "migration background" beat homosexuals to a pulp needs similar processing. This is done by one Hans Peter Pökel who is introduced as somebody who "does research in the field of gender images in the classical Arab literature" and who "works at the institute for Semitic and Arabic studies at the Freie Universität Berlin" in yesterday's Tagesspiegel, a major Berlin newspaper, considered to be on the more conservative side of the political spectrum. Arab sexuality, Pökel says, is...

...paradoxically very much Westernized. With Colonialism, Victorian prudishness was imported to the Orient and there was that mixture of fascination and disgust with the allegedly sensually-wimpish, lascivious Orient. This is a cliché that is fought in Arab countries even today by showing specific strictness and turning sexuality into a taboo generally. And the prosecution of homosexuals is very often quite cruel. For that, the authentic Islamic tradition can hardly be hold responsible, but those who are aiming to see their own rejection justified by the religious sources.

But hey! Pökel can more than just blame the West ex cathedra for some less-than-perfect circumstances in Muslim countries. Muslims really, deep down and when nobody is looking, are very tolerant of gay sex because...

...the penetrating man is even today not really seen as homosexual, a view that is, by the way, not typical Islamic, but part of the culture in the entire Mediterranean. An adolescent is not seen as a man and therefore sex with him is not seen as anything blameworthy. But he will become taboo as soon as the first sign of a beard becomes visible and he will then be expected to marry.

Yes, you are reading this right. This scholar of Arabic studies is not just justifying sex with children, but taking it as a positive sign of tolerance towards homosexuals in Muslim societies.

So we know now, that the reason for the hanging, stoning and flogging of homosexuals (and presumably for the hanging, raping, flogging and stoning of little girls, women and generally everybody who has somehow caused the wrath of the basically tolerant Mullahs, not to speak of the decapitations and mutilations) is not Islam, "but those who are aiming to see their own rejection justified by the religious sources". I am sure Pökel (whose name equals the German word for "pickle" and generates most appropriate Google ads) can explain as well why our own "Westernized" sexuality and prudishness does NOT hang homosexuals but allows something like that...

... and then vilifies those who say that a lifestyle illustrated by the above pictures does nothing to further the cause of homosexual "families".

How absolutely debased and rotten to the core is a man... correction: is a medium... correction: is a society whose media publishes a justification of sex with children with the ultimate goal of excusing Islam of what it is.

To be honest, judging from Pökel's qualifications, it must have taken the Tagesspiegel some time until they found somebody in the deepest bilges of academia ready and willing to forward anything as the above.

---

Read the still topical earlier entries Volker explains what makes the world go round, Islam Is Mercy and If the Mullah Isn't Watching....

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

A bully pulpit to hard-core anti-Zionist Jews

Being Jewish and an "anti-Zionist" is a recipe for media fame that always works out in Germany, however maginal or obscure the protagonist. Doesn't any "crime" of the Jewish state, however subjectively perceived or however marginal, somehow lessen the burden of our own past? And if somebody who is "a Jew himself" says it, it will get acclaim even from those who would otherwise never believe a thing "a Jew" says, or as Benjamin Weinthal and my good friend Alex Feuerherdt put it in more sophisticated words in their Jerusalem Post article from last Thursday:

...major German and European media outlets, as well as university forums and politicians ... seem unable to resist the temptation to offer a bully pulpit to hard-core anti-Zionist Jews.

In Does Jewish anti-Semitism exist? they shed light on a bizarre phenomenon.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

A Self-Hating German's Musings

On November 29, I wrote:

If Germany is very happy with Obama (and it is indeed), it has nothing to do with "too much of [America's] traditional nationhood". It is because Germans either sense or recognize this man's deeply anti-American outlook and effect, and, of course, a deeply ingrained envy of that very traditional nationhood and America's right to enjoy it unselfconsciously.

I hadn't read John Rosenthal's entry at Pajamas Media "German Publishing’s Man in the White House - Obama's ties to Bertelsmann are a massive conflict of interest yet to be fully disclosed" dating November 21, then.

Rosenthal informs us that the

...publicly funded Franco-German “cultural” channel Arte did not waste any time celebrating the dawn of a new era in transatlantic relations. This is the same Arte, incidentally, whose earlier contributions to transatlantic understanding have included a report accusing American soldiers of beheading Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War and a portrayal of President George W. Bush with devil’s horns and fangs. On the day after the election of Barack Obama to succeed the outgoing demon-president, the channel broadcast a 70-minute-long special, live from Washington, with the highly imaginative title “A Black Man in the White House” [Un Noir à la maison blanche]. (To their credit, the editors at Arte-Germany chose to abjure the racist impulses of their French counterparts and titled the show instead “Obama: A New Wind in the White House” [Frischer Wind im Weissen Haus].) The guests on the program included Annette Heuser, the executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s new Washington, DC, office. The influential German foundation set up shop in DC just this past spring, presumably in anticipation of the impending “change.” Host Daniel Leconte revealed that the foundation had even helpfully prepared “a little aide, a little white book” for the incoming president on how to conduct his relations with Europe. He was careful to interject that the “white book” had been prepared for both candidates

to continue:

In any case, Bertelsmann can be sure that Mr. Obama will read its “little aide, its little white book” very carefully. For — as Ms. Heuser failed to disclose and as was not mentioned either in an op-ed on Obama that she published in the Washington Post in July — the Bertelsmann Corporation happens to be the president-elect’s principal source of income. It was Bertelsmann, namely, that agreed to pay Obama a reported $1.9 million in advances for a three-book deal that the then-senator-elect signed with its fully owned American subsidiary, the Random House publishing group, in December 2004. And who knows? The real amount of the deal might well be more than the reported amount. After all, it was only in April of this year that we discovered that a reported $10 million book deal signed by former President Bill Clinton with Bertelsmann/Random House in 2001 had in fact been worth $15 million. (See my earlier PJM report on “Bill Clinton’s German Paymasters.”)

Rosenthal suggests that, in the interest of transparency,

...Obama should surely now release the full details of his contractual relationship with the Bertelsmann Corporation. After all, if one is to judge by his recent tax returns, even as president, he will be paid far more by Bertelsmann than by the American taxpayers. For him to be taking advice from the Bertelsmann Foundation suggests conflict of interest on a magnitude that has perhaps never before been seen in the history of the American presidency.

As one of the commentators put it: And that from the guy who is unable or unwilling to even reveal his birth certificate.

To my great relief, John Rosenthal then does exactly that what has earned me the epithet of a self-hating German when Americans would SO much prefer to listen to "good patriots" and "reliable allies", and exposes the transatlantic relationship as the lead ball it is:

It might be considered irrelevant today that Bertelsmann massively collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II. (For more on this, see “Bill Clinton’s German Paymasters.”) But it is surely not irrelevant that when German researcher Hersch Fischler first brought this fact to light, the family proposed to have the matter further investigated by one Dirk Bavendamm. Bavendamm is the family’s “in-house” historian, having written no fewer than three commissioned histories of the Mohn family and the Bertelsmann Corporation. As so happens, he is also an open revisionist, who calls World War II “Roosevelt’s War” and suggests — à la contemporary 9/11 conspiracy theorists writing on George W. Bush — that Franklin Delano Roosevelt intentionally permitted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to occur. Bavendamm has even written a book on the subject with the curious title Roosevelt’s War 1937-45 and the Puzzle of Pearl Harbor [Roosevelts Krieg 1937 -- 45 und das Rätsel von Pearl Harbor]. “With the events of December 7-8, 1941 [i.e., the attack on Pearl Harbor], Roosevelt … had achieved his most important aims,” Bavendamm has written in an essay on the subject [German link], “America’s entry into the War occurred with the enthusiastic consent of the overwhelming majority of the American people — … Roosevelt had finally convinced them that it was their sacred duty, guns in hand to defend freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world.” (For more on Bavendamm, see Hersch Fischler and John Friedman’s “Bertelsmann’s Revisionist” here.)

The theory that the Pearl Harbor attack was a set-up is, incidentally, standard neo-Nazi fare. Interestingly enough, in his infamous “God Damn America!” sermon, Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright invokes precisely this theory as apparently well-established fact: “The government lied about Pearl Harbor too,” he says. “They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie.”

Gudrun Eussner offers additional information in the comment section:

For those of you reading German here an article about The Bertelsmann Stiftung and its activities in Islamization of our society. Here you find an article from their site in English: “Muslims in Germany are very religious”. Watch the photo, please, to get an idea how they are thinking about Muslim women: two young ladies with headscarfs.

And thus the circle closes with this self-hating German's musings on Obama's involvement with Islam.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

A Delicious Sense of Toying with the Forbidden

or: The Gutter in the Salon

At the blog Z-Word, associated with the American Jewish Committee, Ben Cohen informs us:

An almighty row has broken out in Norway following a monologue by comedian Otto Jespersen - and broadcast on national TV - which resulted in a man who lost nine relatives during the Holocaust phoning the police.

Here’s the joke:

”I would also like to take the opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background.”

That’s about as sophisticated as the interminable joke popular among American white supremacists about black people (”if we’d known they were gonna be this much trouble, we’d have picked the goddam cotton ourselves.”)

As an aside: I fail to see any qualitative connection between Jews being murdered in the gas chamber and blacks picking cotton non-consensually, and thus between jokes about both, but that is not the point here anyway. Ben Cohen goes on:

Ha’aretz reported that a former Norwegian Prime Minister, Kåre Willoch, responded that these claims amounted to “a traditional deflection tactic aimed at diverting attention from the real problem, which is Israel’s well-documented and incontestable abuse of Palestinians” - a Norwegian version of what David Hirsh calls “The Livingstone Formulation.”

Willoch did not respond to the specific examples raised by Gerstenfeld which, interestingly, included a number of newspaper cartoons designed to raise the same dismissive, morally superior sniggering as Jespersen’s mangled joke. One cartoon showed an ultra-Orthodox Jew engraving “thou shall murder” into an alternative Decalogue. Another cartoon showed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dressed up as a guard at a death camp, smiling and holding a rifle.

All of this is illustrative of a wider point. These days, racist jokes about blacks and other minorities are largely - and correctly - regarded as an embarrassment, the preserve of failed comedians performing to inebriated audiences in seedy clubs. But transfer these same themes to Jews and all of a sudden, they acquire a delicious sense of toying with the forbidden. What is reactionary becomes radical, what is stupid and insulting becomes pathbreaking. Thus does the gutter enter the lofty heights of the salon.

The highlighting was added by me. I took the header, the pictures and the following explanation from the German blog Lizas Welt with Liza's permission.

The cartoon about the "New Decalogue" appeared in the leftist newspaper Dagsavisen on January 7, 2004. The caption says: "The Seven Synonyms for Death". The scroll lists things like: "To murder", "to kill", to "finish", "to expire", or "to execute". The other picture showing Olmert as a death camp guard appeared on July 10, 2006 in the newspaper Dagbladet.

So one Jew found that offensive. I don't know how things are in Norway, but in Germany, under similar circumstances, one can safely hold one's breath while waiting for the first "It isn't allowed to criticise the Jews anymore."

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

The Neverending German Autumn

The day before yesterday it made moderate headlines that one Jürgen Vietor is handing back his "Federal Cross of Merit", the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

Who is Jürgen Vietor and for what did he receive the Bundesverdienstkreuz?

Let me go farther back first, to October 13, 1977. That day, flight LH 181, the Lufthansa Boeing 737-200 "Landshut" with 91 people on board, several children and five crew members among them, was hijacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists on a trip from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt/Main, an event that marked a new level of terrorist brutality and government response.

The hijacking was the means to the end of freeing eleven Baader-Meinhof/Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) terrorists from prison. Crew and passengers had to fly several sectors to various airports in the Mediterranean and the Middle East under threat of death by guns or explosives. Because Yemeni authorities had blocked Aden airport, captain and first officer, facing the fact of being almost out of fuel, managed to land, in a maneuvre of unique aeronautical mastership, the 30 meter long jet safely on a sand strip nearby. At Aden it was, that Captain Jürgen Schumann was forced to kneel down in the aisle, in front of his passengers and the crew, and executed. After the cold-blooded murder of his captain, the first officer had to fly the 737, which had just undergone a gruelling emergency landing, solo to land safely at Mogadishu, Somalia, an airport, that had before, literally and metaphorically, not been on his, a Boeing 737 pilot's, map. Both men had a military background, Captain Schumann was a former Starfighter pilot, his first officer a former navy pilot. At Mogadishu airport, passengers and crew were forced to undergo an ordeal of almost twenty more hours before an elite unit of German federal police, the GSG 9, finally and successfully raided the plane, killing three of the four terrorists and only hurting one of the hostages. The heads of the Baader-Meinhof gang at Stammheim prison commited suicide only hours later, Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the German employers' association who had been held hostage by the RAF for the same purpose, was found the next day. He, too, had been mudered -- executed.

Lately, more than thirty years after the hijacking of the "Landshut", it transpired that Christian Klar, a leading member of the "second generation" RAF, will be set free early next year after spending 26 years in prison. Klar, 56, has shown no remorse whatsoever for the nine murders and 11 attempted murders for which he was convicted. In 1985, he was sentenced to five terms of life imprisonment and has served the minimum 26 years required by German law. Judges at Stuttgart court declared that he no longer "posed a threat to society", an argument that was used to legally underpin the release of other former Baader-Meinhof gang members before.

Relatives of the victims said they were shocked and dismayed by the court's decision. Joachim Hermann, the Bavarian state's justice minister, pointed out that Klar had refused to identify those who carried out the gang's murders. Hermann described the judges' decision as an "incomprehensible abuse of justice ... Christian Klar deserves no sympathy so long as he continues to show none for his victims and their families." Not many share his views.

Among those who made their opposition to the court decision publicly known, was the then first officer of the "Landshut", Jürgen Vietor, who had been awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz for his bravery during the hijacking. "Setting Klar free is an insult to all of the RAF's victims," he wrote in a letter to German head of state, President Horst Köhler.

The Landshut in Rome. Italy refused to comply with German wishes and let the aircraft take off.

The odyssey of the Landshut

On October 12, 2007, the Frankfurter Rundschau published a remarkable interview performed by Mark Obert with Jürgen Vietor, which I luckily happened to save, as it is now offline. I translate a few excerpts here.

[...]

Are you frequently asked whether you never made the attempt to overpower Mahmud [the leader of the terrorists]

Sometimes.

Do you consider it a reproach?

No, I always tell precisely what happend aboard. One has to understand: We couldn't risk to antagonize Mahmud. There were 86 passengers we had to bring home safely. Our four hijackers defined themselves as freedom fighters, they weren't suicide assassinators like those on September 11. Our hijackers had two goals: The freeing of eleven prisoned terrorists, including those in Stammheim [i.e. the Baader-Meinhof gang members]. And they wanted to survive -- like we did. Based on this common ground we had to cooperate.

And to cope with the fear of the hijackers?

That too. Mahmud's fear played a decisive role at one point. Before we touched down at Aden ... something happened , which explains Mahmuds later atrocious behaviour. He wasn't able to fasten his seatbelt. He sat there like paralyzed because he was obviously scared to death. Therefore Jürgen [Captain Schumann] and I had to fasten his seatbelt. [Vietor explains earlier in the interview that they had to do that because a dead Mahmud bulleting through the cockpit in case of an emergency would have endangered the entire aircraft.] After touchdown, Yemeni military came to the aircraft straight away and talked to Mahmud, who was still upset. Mahmud then told us: "They are adamant to force us to depart. They have issued an ultimatum." Imagine the humiliation for Mahmud: First the thing about the seatbelt and now the rejection by those he had considered his friends. South Yemen was at that time a training center for the PLO. [Notabene that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists received training at PLO camps, thus reviving a long-standing tradition of cooperation between Arabs and Germans.]

Did you consider Mahmud's defeat as dangerous for yourself right from the start?

Mahmud had suffered a loss of face. I understood that he was bound to compensate it sooner or later...

[...]

At that point you have been for two days in the hands of the hijackers already. Did you have a clear picture of Mahmud and the others?

Something like a profile? No. But that they, too, were highly under stress was obvious from the first moment: all the darting around, the shouting and the gun-waving. The first thing Mahmud did was to sport Jürgen Schumann's captain's cap. That's what he wanted to be, Captain Mahmud. After that, one had to assume that he was a psychopath.

Did you anticipate that Mahmud would kill Schumann?

I had to, because Mahmud had in the meantime informed the passengers as well that he was going to hold a revolution tribunal... In Dubai he had selected passengers for execution. Stupefying. Luckily, he didn't go through with it. But then he became more mistrustful and irritated by the minute because he didn't know what Schumann [who had left the aircraft under the pretense of inspecting the undercarriage which might have suffered through the landing on the sand strip, but, so it became known later, had gone to the airport building to plead for the people in the "Landshut"] was up to. That was an additional loss of authority on top of the other humiliation. I had a very bad feeling, but what could I do?

Does the question haunt you?

It is a non-starter, really. I don't know for sure what Jürgen Schumann would have done in my place, but I think he'd done the same. It was the sensible thing to do.

Feelings of guilt can exist in spite of rational decisions.

His death makes me sad.

The hijackers had thrown his dead body out of the aircraft the next day at Mogadishu.

That wasn't quite so. In fact, they've let him down the rear emergency chute.

Is this difference important for you?

It is a little bit less undignified.

Did you know Schumann well?

He was a young pilot, I was young. [Schumann was 37, Vietor 35.] We had first met before takeoff at Mallorca. And during the hijacking there was no opportunity to talk about private matters.

Do you sometimes think of what Jürgen Schumann might have thought on his way back to the plane?

I thought of it a lot, but without result. Now, after the statement of that General [Sheikh Ahmed Mansur, head of the unit that had surrounded the "Landshut" at Aden airport] I see that he must have known what was waiting for him. And so it happened. Exactly between Economy and First Class before everybody's eyes he had to kneel and Mahmud asked him: "Are you guilty or not guilty?" And Schumann said: "I tried to…" Then Mahmud again: "Are you guilty or not guilty". And again Schumann tried to explain what happened, but Mahmud didn't want to know it at all. He murdered the captain to appear as the resolute leader.

Herr Vietor, is it permissable to think that your chance of survival increased because of Schumann's death because now you'd become indispensable for Mahmud?

One can think that. One can ask as well the basic question why Mahmud murdered the captain and not the first officer.

He almost murdered you as well.

Before Schumann died, I was going to be shot dead twice. First, because I wore a Junghans watch with a "J" on the face and a company logo that looks a bit like the Star of David. Therefore Mahmud thought I was a Jew. The second time, because I was caught calling the Baader-Meinhof group, whom Mahmud intended to free, terrorists instead of freedom fighters. Then there were all the denied clearences to land, the emergency landing in Aden. Five days long it was about nothing but to survive the next hour, not to make any mistake, to keep an eye on the technology... Captain Schumann had just been shot dead when the ancillary unit went out. If one doesn't pinch off the battery pronto, one needs a new one. I didn't want to risk that. Therefore I went to the cockpit as fast as possible and had to step over Schumann's dead body, very carefully, over his legs, his arms, and over his head. Gosh, I couldn't even mourn -- the more as it was me who had to fly the aircraft now. Because I had no idea of the condition of the plane, I had at least to try and to delay the takeoff until daylight to have a better chance for an emergency landing in case of technical problems. I thought feverish how to play for time. First I asked ... for manual refuelling... then for weather charts, which won me ten more minutes. In the end, I had to take off in the middle of the night. Believe me, to fly with an aircraft that had just gone through such an emergency landing was risky enough and then Mahmud topped it all by telling me that we were flying to Mogadishu. Mogadishu? I had no idea, where that was, I didn't even know where Somalia was. As a first officer on a 737, the farest I had ever gotten was Cairo. Lucky for us, on our maps, which only showed the 737-routes, the southernmost spot was just Mogadischu, two millimeter away from the bottom margin.

How was Mahmud after his act of violence?

Very focused. I needed a first officer. And finally he was where he wanted to be all the time, in the pilot's seat, with Jürgen Schumann's cap on his head.

How did you react to him?

We all behaved just right without thinking much about a strategy. We were cooperative without sucking up to the hijackers just as every instructional film recommends.

[...]

Did it help that you had to concentrate on the technology?

Very. Being ruthlessly exposed to those people was the most difficult thing I had to suffer because I like to be in control. But at least I had something to do whereas the passengers were confined to their seats, belts fastened, without information. They weren't even allowed to speak. And because the sunshades had to be down all the time they didn't even know where we were. Sometimes they were allowed to use the lavatory, that was all. That was much worse than what I experienced -- I believe.

[...]

What do you think [of the fact that the 20th- and 25th anniversaries of the "Landshut" hijacking went almost unnoticed, different from the 30th]?

Maybe the media are so eager because most of the witnesses will be dead in a couple of years. To think of how old the then chancellor [Helmut Schmidt] is now. Not to forget the discussion about the petitions for clemency of Mohnhaupt und Klar [Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar were among the masterminds of the "second generation" of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the crimes commited during the "German Autumn". The were detained, trialled and sentenced in the Eighties, Mohnhaupt to five terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. After the minimum term of 24 years, she was set free in March 2007 on parole. Klar was sentenced to six terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. 1992 he got an additional life sentence in a different trial.] ... This discussion has irritated me very much.

Why?

... When the consequences of terrorism are discussed, it's mostly about the consequences for the state. And now the state is supposed to show mercy because state and society have overcome terrorism. That may be, but have the bereaved overcome it? If somebody is able to show mercy it's the bereaved. I think that Klar and Mohnhaupt deserve more than just those 26 years. They ought to leave prison only in a coffin.

The discussion about pardon [for the Baader-Meinhof terrorists] has offended you.

Very much so. In spite of the fact that my suffering was limited. But I don't even want to begin to imagine how Jürgen Schumann's widow feels, or the widows of Schleyer und Buback [Siegfried Buback, German chief federal prosecutor from 1974-1977, his driver and a security officer, can be considered the first victims of the "German Autumn". They were murdered in a drive-by shooting on April 7, 1977.], or the children of the security officers. I don't intend to mention all the names here, there are so many who were murdered in cold blood. Okay, there may be good reasons to ask for mercy, but then the perpetrator ought to be deserving of it. Does Mohnhaupt? I don't know. But Klar, who is still adamant that the fight insn't over yet? How can he ask a state for mercy he is fighting? That is cowardice. Alright, the president has denied Klar that [in 2007, Christian Klar's mercy petition was rejected], but I fear that Klar will be released sooner or later.

What does a life sentence for Klar mean to you?

Satisfaction? It would go together with my sence of justice. That in any case. I will tell you something: Three of our four hijackers were killed by the GSG 9, and the only survivor, Andrawes, is suffering for life. I am glad for that.

She was shot during the raid and can't walk properly anymore…

… and is in pain. Yes.

Do you wish she were suffering from a bad conscience as well?

How can one determine anything like that? It's not measurable anyway.

[Notabene that Jürgen Vietor's witness account at Souhaila Andrawe's court trial exonerated her in many details because he chose to tell the facts instead of taking revenge.]

[...]

Did you ever have nightmares?

No.

[...]

Never been scared again?

Never.

Did you assess passengers henceforth? Who looks suspicious? Who is acting oddly?

No.

But you surely forewent the "Landshut", didn't you?

I'll tell you something now that is hardly believable. When a colleague asked me years later whether I've ever flown the "Landshut" again, I said that I didn't know.

What? Tourists have nicked pukebags from the "Landshut" and you didn't care whether you had to enter that plane or not?

Wait, it gets even more remarkable: I looked up my old flight schedules. My first scheduled flight after the hijacking was with the "Landshut". Of 80 possible 737-jets the "Landshut". I have proof of that.

[...]

The last hours on October 17 and 18.

Yes, things were coming to a head now. Day five, Mahmud was at the end of his tether. He submitted his last ultimatum. At 15:00 at the latest, the Baader-Meinhof group and the other terrorists were to arrive at Mogadishu or he'd blow us all up. Our last information was that the federal government wasn't going to give in. So they tied our hands behind our backs with the women's nylons, shoved us into seats and fastened the seatbelts. Even the children's seatbelts were fastened. Then they uncorked the duty-free spirit... and emptied the bottles on top of us. "So that you will burn better." Ah well... In the end, they applied plastic explosives everywhere. I had been in the military and saw at once that it looked like the real thing. And the detonators were definitely genuine: brass sheathing. When I looked at the clock it was ten to three.

May I ask a fallacious question?

Whether we didn't fight even then, right?

Is that the question you are asking yourself?

It has been asked before many times. I have always admitted that we let ourselves drive like lambs to the slaughter. But who has never felt a gun at his neck ought to judge very carefully.

What I really wanted to ask is whether it is true that in the face of death one seed a fast-motion playback of one's life.

That is a myth. I saw nothing at all anymore, only the hands of the clock. Now you have ten minutes more to live, now nine, when suddenly, five minutes before time, excited radio voices could be heard from the cockpit. Mahmud came running and asked me how long it would take a Boeing 707 from Frankfurt to Mogadishu. I started to do the numbers. Adrenaline works miracles. Imagine, I hadn't slept even a minute for several days. So I figured out: we are close to the equator, Frankfurt lies 50 degrees north of us, roughly 3000 miles, a bit of slope distance as well: roughly seven or eight hours. That was good because it was exactly the time they had told Mahmud via the radio. Then he cried joyfully: "They'll exchange! They'll exchange!" What a relief.

[...]

Then, when it was dark, the plane was raided. Your second birth.

One can put it like that.

The mission of the antiterror unit GSG 9 was triumphal.

Yes, brilliant.

Was it worth the risk? Just to not having to release eleven imprisoned terrorists?

I never gave it a thought.

You never gave it a thought? The state could have given in and set you free without such a risk.

That is a touchy point. Let me put it like that: Should somebody ask me whether I thought while we were in that situation that the state ought not to budge and I'd reply with yes, I'd lie. We have beseeched the chancellor to exchange, we begged over the radio. Life is important. Who wants to victimize himself. But had I been in front of a TV set I, too, would have said that the state must not budge.

[...]

So you understand [Chancellor Helmut Schmidt]?

His moral dilemma, yes. Guilt and liability are hard to escape. At that time I have simply begged for my life, as Mr. Schleyer did.

The chancellor considered himself to be in a sort of war against terrorism and put himself, together with his crisis squad, almost all of them former Wehrmacht members, in a sort of combat situation.

But it was a war the terrorists waged against the state. That a politician taps into his experience as a soldier I can, as a soldier, understand.

What do you think if hostages are taken in Iraq or Afghanistan. To pay or not to pay?

What is the state supposed to do? To budge? How big is the danger to produce copycat crimes and thus even more victims in the long run? Exactly that is the question to which nobody has an answer. I am not presumptious enough to consider my opinion important just because of my experience as a victim.

[...]

I could have died through an officer's bullet. Did this thought occur to you?

The government had even taken into account that some of us hostages would die ... It is bordering on a miracle that no hostage and no GSG 9-officer died.

It must have been an incredible ruckus.

The banging away seemed endless and if the GSG 9-boys hadn't hollered all the time we hadn't even known that there were Germans attacking. "Where are you pigs?" "Here, you pigs!"

They hollered that?

Believe it or not. And it felt good to hear it.

[...]

Did you ever talk about that to the GSG-9-commander, Ulrich Wegener, the hero of Mogadishu?

I met him recently for the first time since 30 years. It was very helpful because he was able to explain some details previously unknown to me. For example that at the latters they got at Mogadishu rungs were missing.

Not a personal word?

Only technical stuff. Nothing deep.

What do you consider deep?

Something like questions of innocence and guilt, like those we just discussed. That is deep. In the sense of profound.

You close yourself off, in a psychological sense?

I don't have any secrets.

[...]

And still, many think you are a hero.

I don't. Heroes look out for danger. I was exposed to it. And even that by mere chance. On October 13, the day we took off from Mallorca, I was on standby when the first officer fell sick and I stood in for him.

Good God, how does one ever say "thank you" for anything like that?

He never said "thank you". I am still waiting for my bottle of bubbly. But seriously, I don't even know the colleague's name. I have never tried to find it out.

Are you sometimes amazed at yourself?

A little bit. And at this point I remember a peculiar thing. When I was with Mahmud in the cockpit, I heard scratching noises and suddenly turned around and saw an empty seat in front of the emergency exit. I thought I go and sit down there. Later I learned that the GSG 9 was watching us with night sights and hoped that I would move away from Mahmud. I don't believe in telepathy but that is truly amazing, isn't it?

Do you believe in luck? In fate? Or is everything mere chance.

We were damned lucky.

There had been children on board.

Yes, it could all have been much more sad than it was anyway.

Have you ever met Jürgen Schumann's widow?

No, never. There isn't anything about her in the media. She must be very bitter.

Mr. Vietor, you are retired. What are you doing now?

My partner and I do a lot of travelling with the camper.

You are divorced?

Yes, and believe me, that really hurt me. I was vitually depressive. It had nothing to do with the hijacking.

Sure.

Sure. I am fine now. I just regret that I can not live in Canada.

Nice and far away.

In Vancouver, wonderful city. But the Canadians don't want a pensioner.

So far Jürgen Vietor's account. What happened to the other participants in the drama?

Jürgen Vietor and flight attendant Gabriele Dillmann 1977

Jürgen Vietor and Gabriele von Lutzau 2007

The "Landshut" served the Deutsche Lufthansa until 1985 and then went on an odyssey serving many owners around the globe. Until January 2008 she flew for TAF Linhas Aereas under the registration number PT-MTB in Brasil. Since January 2008, after 38 years and about 30.000 trips, she is now placed as a monument of herself in a remote spot of Fortaleza airport. The name "Landshut" is still in use by the Lufthansa. Currently, an Airbus A330 is thus named.

The Bavarian town of Landshut named a street after Jürgen Schumann and the Lufthansa the building of their flight training school in Bremen. Different from his colleague Vietor, Schumann can not hand back the Bundesverdienstkreuz that had been awarded to him posthumously.

Monika Schumann is still, so it can be safely assumed, serving her life sentence. Waltrude Schleyer's ended when she died on March 21, 2008 at the age of 92, 31 years after the RAF had murdered her husband.

From October 1964 until June 1965, Leutnant Jürgen Schumann received training at Luke AFB under Colonel James Jabarra. Memorial page here (in German).

Christian Klar, apart from Birgit Hogefeld the last RAF member still in prison, will be released by "the heirs of Freisler, Inc." early in 2009. He already enjoys unsupervised furloughs and a job is waiting for him.

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the man whose strength, authority and brains saw Germany safely through the most difficult time since WWII, was, at the age of 89, recently publicly reproved because his smoking habit was setting a bad example for society, to show that we have got our priorities right.

The Federal Republic of Germany, who was adamant in 1977 never to talk to terrorists again, pledged at a donor conference on December 19, 2007 twenty million Euro for the Palestinians, payable until 2010.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.