Thursday, October 04, 2012

Free Gaza’s Nazi Fetish

See updates below
A few days ago, I posted about how Free Gaza endorsed the antisemitic conspiracy theories of a neo Nazi.
Now this has come to my attention (hat tip: Adam Holland).
Im Wald von Katyn was a Nazi propaganda film.
Reichs Propaganda Ministerium Production Supervisor: Dr. Fritz Hippler 19 min. B&W Original German version. Propaganda film claims to give visual evidence of the mass graves of 12,000 Polish officers who were execute by the Soviets and buried in the Katyn Forest on the banks of the Dneiper.
Also see here.
As seems to have been the case with regards to the antisemitic conspiracy theory video, Free Gaza’s co-founder Greta Berlin seems to be behind this latest example of Nazi adoration.

Berlin by name, Berlin in the heart I guess.
Update: Im Wald von Katyn is not just a Nazi propaganda film. Via Avi Mayer:
According to various texts about World War II-era propaganda, Im Wald von Katyn (“In the Forest of Katyn”) was a propaganda film produced by Nazi Germany in 1943 in order to publicize a massacre carried out by the Red Army against Polish nationals in 1940.
Here is account in Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present:
The Nazis, however, had no such reservations and used atrocity propaganda whenever it was deemed appropriate.  It was used extensively in Nazi anti-Bolshevik campaigns.  Perhaps the most famous propaganda coup was the revelation of the Katyn massacre in 1943.  Its repercussions led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile.  On 13 April German radio announced the discovery of a mass grave in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, where Polish officers had been methodically killed.  Both the press and the newsreels carried lurid accounts of the manner in which the Poles were slain, charging that Jewish officers of the Red Army were responsible for the murders.  A documentary film entitled Im Wald von Katyn (In the Forest of Katyn) was also compiled and shown in all the major movie theaters in Germany and occupied Europe.
Here’s another account:
In 1943 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had made Katyn the focus of an anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic multimedia campaign.  The propaganda booklet Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn was illustrated with photographs taken at the site of the massacre.  Germany’s leading movie studio, Universum Film AG (Ufa), released an atrocity film, Im Wald von Katyn, that was shown in all major German cinemas.
Here is a reference to the Nazi propaganda ministry, which apparently supervised the production, andhere’s a reference to the film’s having been released by Goebbels.
In other words, Im Wald vom Katyn was an official Nazi propaganda film created as part of a campaign orchestrated by Goebbels to incite anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany and occupied Europe.  The studio that created it, Ufa, was known for its “odious examples of anti-Semitic propaganda“.
Meanwhile, Greta Berlin has removed both the offending Tweet and Facebook post, while offering up some laughable excuses for removing the previous ones. Including:
So it was meant just as a post from her personal account. No problem with that, then (!)
Because the title ‘Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews’ is just so ambiguous.
Greta Berlin’s latest book due out soon: “The Darndest Thing Happened to Me On The Way To The Airplane”
Update: Oh, the irony.

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