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Shock: Zelensky, Trudeau Give Soldier Who Reportedly Fought for Nazi Germany a Standing Ovation

By Breitbart. The Canadian parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been reported to have given a standing ovation to a reported former member of a Nazi military division.

Following addresses to the parliament in Ottowa on Friday from both Trudeau and Zelensky, the Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota prompted a standing ovation as he honoured a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98.”

“His name is Yaroslav Hunka… he is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” Rota continued before a second round of applause.

In the caption of a picture published by the Associated Press showing Zelensky and Trudeau standing and applauding Hunka, the news wire service identified Hunka as a former member of the “First Ukrainian Division in World War II”. The division is also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a division comprised mostly of Ukrainian volunteers after being established by Nazi Germany in 1943.

Despite the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946 concluding that the Waffen-SS was guilty of “many massacres and atrocities in occupied territories,” the government of Canada in 1950 decided to allow Ukrainians who served in the Waffen-SS to be admitted into the country from the UK. “These Ukrainians should be subject to special security screening, but should not be rejected on the grounds of their service in the German army,” the Canadian cabinet said at the time. (Read more from “Shock: Zelensky, Trudeau Give Soldier Who Reportedly Fought for Nazi Germany a Standing Ovation” HERE)

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Jewish Group Slams Canadian Parliament for Honoring Nazi During Zelensky Visit

By Breitbart. Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Canadian Jewish human rights organization, slammed the Canadian parliament Sunday for giving a standing ovation to a Ukrainian Nazi during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit Friday. . .

Rota’s historical illiteracy, however, tripped him up: some nationalist movements in Eastern Europe who fought against the Soviets later aligned with the invading Nazi forces, including in Ukraine. . .

The Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Canadian group supporting the Los Angeles-based, Nazi-hunting organization, noted in a statement:

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) is deeply disturbed over the Canadian Parliament’s recognition of a Ukrainian veteran who served in a Nazi military unit during the Second World War implicated in the mass murder of Jews and others. FSWC is further outraged that parliamentarians in the House of Commons gave a standing ovation to the former soldier on Friday.

Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old immigrant from Ukraine, was introduced by Anthony Rota, Speaker of the House of Commons, as “a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” and “a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero,” ignoring the horrific fact that Hunka served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Nazi military unit whose crimes against humanity during the Holocaust are well-documented.

(Read more from “Jewish Group Slams Canadian Parliament for Honoring Nazi During Zelensky Visit” HERE)

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Leftists Are Suddenly VERY ANGRY That Donald Trump Deported a Nazi

Tuesday morning, the Trump Administration announced that it had struck a deal with Germany to return the last remaining Nazi on American soil after more than a decade of negotiations, and that the (much hated) Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency had descended on the Queens home of 95-year-old Jakiw Palij.

You’d think that there’s nothing more unifying than deporting a Nazi prison camp guard, but you would be wrong. Somehow, leftists, including a writer at GQ and a content creator for the left-leaning site, Upworthy, were pretty miffed that Trump — and ICE — got the win.

“New media artist” Thom Dunn was adamant that nabbing the Nazi was actually part of a nefarious plot on the part of the Trump Administration to disguise its own Nazi connections.

“These ICE agents don’t realize that someone else will come for them when they turn 95,” Dunn opined in a now-deleted tweet. . .

When more rational Twitter users pointed out that it is indeed a good thing that America is no longer home to a Nazi war criminal — even if he happens to be an elderly man, well beyond being a threat to his neighbors — Dunn doubled down, suggesting again that Trump’s actions were part of a cover-up. (Read more from “Leftists Are Suddenly Very Angry That Donald Trump Deported a Nazi” HERE)

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He Survived Nazi Concentration Camps – His Message on Border Security Will Silence the Media

By The Daily Caller. David Tuck was enslaved by the Nazis and survived multiple concentration camps. In the wake of pundits and politicians comparing immigration detainment facilities in modern day America to Nazi concentration camps, Tuck felt compelled to speak out.

“Wake up,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller. “Look it up. This is not the Holocaust.”

Tuck was born in Poland in 1929. When he was 10 years old, the Nazis invaded his country. They marched through his neighborhood, identifying Jews. David had a golden Star of David sewn to his clothes and was moved to a ghetto. . .

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal likened America’s zero tolerance immigration policy to the “cattle cars of Nazi Germany.” Pundits and politicians have echoed the sentiment. . .

“I don’t believe it when I heard it,” Tuck said when he heard Blumenthal’s statement, “They know nothing of the Holocaust.”

“They are politicians, looking to get paid,” he said, repeating that those who make the comparison “know nothing.” When asked to compare the American border detainment facilities to actual concentration camps, Tuck said, “This is a country club.” (Read more from “He Survived Nazi Concentration Camps – His Message on Border Security Will Silence the Media” HERE)

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Jeff Sessions Says Child Migrant Holding Cages Not Like Nazi Germany ‘Because They Were Keeping Jews From Leaving’

By The Independent. Accusations that child detention facilities on the US-Mexican border are similar to Nazi concentration camps were always likely to be rebuked by the White House – but perhaps no one quite expected Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ line of reasoning.

“This is a real exaggeration,” he told Fox News. “Because in Nazi Germany they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.”

Even the avowedly conservative presenter Laura Ingraham seemed momentarily taken aback with the response, quickly moving the subject on. . .

Earlier, Democrat senator Dianne Feinstein had been among several politicians and commentators to say the actions were comparable with Hitler’s Germany.

But Attorney General Sessions said: “We’re doing the right thing. We’re taking care of these children,” adding “they are not being abused”. (Read more from “Jeff Sessions Says Child Migrant Holding Cages Not Like Nazi Germany ‘Because They Were Keeping Jews From Leaving'” HERE)

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Poland Confirms Minnesota Man as Nazi Commander

Poland will seek the arrest and extradition of a Minnesota man exposed by The Associated Press as a former commander in an SS-led unit that burned Polish villages and killed civilians in World War II, prosecutors said Monday.

Prosecutor Robert Janicki said evidence gathered over years of investigation into U.S. citizen Michael K. confirmed “100 percent” that he was a commander of a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion.

He did not release the last name in line with privacy laws but the AP has identified the man as 98-year-old Michael Karkoc, from Minneapolis. (Read more from “Poland Confirms Minnesota Man as Nazi Commander” HERE)

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You’ve Heard People Compare Trump to Hitler. So We Asked a Woman Who Was Born in Nazi Germany…

A popular talking point on the left is that Donald Trump has things in common with Hitler.

But is this the case? Independent Journal Review decided to speak to a woman born in Nazi Germany about the comparison . . .

[Inga] Andrews said:

“What is going on in this country is giving me chills. Trump is not like Hitler. Just because a leader wants order doesn’t mean they’re like a dictator.

What reminds me more of Hitler than anything else isn’t Trump, it’s the destruction of freedom of speech on the college campuses — the agendas fueled by the professors.”

(Read more from “You’ve Heard People Compare Trump to Hitler. So We Asked a Woman Who Was Born in Nazi Germany…” HERE)

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Is My Southern Plumber a Nazi?

Most of the time, when I report here on secular elitists, the only right tone is outrage. That’s fitting when those who are strong and spoiled kick down at the dogged and decent. But when godless self-righteous hysterics throw a futile hissy fit, then the only Christian thing to do is to sit back and throw peanuts. We all did that in the days after the election, as snowflakes who’ve burrowed into debt like hungry mole rats for B.A.s in cultural studies had a catastrophic meltdown, and were herded into playrooms with coloring books and crayons for group hug sessions and sing-ins.

Now someone has topped that. No crying jag at Oberlin that ends with herb tea and Playdoh can top this blog post from Ned Resnikoff, an allegedly grown up writer at Think Progress and al Jazeera (!), who went online to explain to America his phobia of his plumber:

This afternoon, I had a plumber over to my apartment to fix a clogged drain. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week’s news. And while I had him in the apartment, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish, and how that knowledge might change the interaction we were having inside my own home. I have no real reason to believe he was a Trump supporter or an anti-Semite but in my uncertainty I couldn’t shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left.

I’m very privileged insofar as this sense of danger is unfamiliar to me. And I know I felt it much less acutely than a lot of other people right now. I’m still a straight, white guy who can phenotypically pass for gentile. Plus my first name is pretty WASP-y.

But today was a reminder that ambiguous social interactions now feel unsafe and unpredictable in a way that never did before. And even if Trump is gone in four years, I don’t expect to ever reclaim that feeling of security. That’s just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him.

The Cashmere Hair-Shirts of Park Slope, Brooklyn

Really, how can a writer do justice to Resnikoff’s reflections? It’s almost like drowning a perfectly grilled piece of prime rib with heavy Bernaise sauce. But let me at least add a dash of salt and pepper.

It is rare, Ned, to see such twisted, self-torturing scruples outside James Joyce’s portraits of teenage sexual guilt in 1890s Ireland. But it’s not God you fear offending. If I might follow your example and deduce your world view from surface social cues, you’re not worried about Him. You surely don’t fear hell. And yet you police your inmost thoughts like an East German union meeting. Who exactly do you think is listening — Meryl Streep?

Perhaps you sound tortured with guilt because you started off your reflections by reacting with thinly veiled hatred (disguised as fear) for a stranger because of the way he talked, the color of his skin, and what he does for a living. When other people do that, you call that behavior “bigoted.” But here you are indulging it — not just in a private moment, which is natural enough, if far from optimal.

No, you’re sharing it with the world, and you clearly expect to be congratulated for it — in exactly the same way some alt-right hater would post his dyspeptic comments about black teenagers he’d run into down at Walmart, then spend the day reading the comments in his Spider Man pajamas.

And then, Ned, you make it even worse, when you switch gears from simple snobbery and tribalism into a frenzied dance of virtue-signaling, worthy of a worker bee whose wiring tells it how to point the way to the honey. You do not stop to consider whether you might be a bigot for assuming that the man who fixed the sink which you have no idea how to unplug hates you because you are Jewish — since he might have voted for a doggedly pro-Israel candidate with a Jewish daughter and grandchild.

No, instead, you clutch at your pearls and pretend to flagellate yourself because — while the sense of danger you indulged through the plumber’s visit was perfectly valid, of course — there are other groups of people less privileged than yourself, whom you imagine walk through the world in a permanent state of panic. You assume that all blacks, Latinos, Jews, and gays — millions of whom, by the way, did vote for Donald Trump — feel persecuted and terrified. No, Ned, that’s just you and your tiny circle of insufferable, overpaid friends.

What to Expect from Southerners

Now I will admit it: As a native New Yorker, when I hear a southern accent, I have my own set of expectations. I expect that the people I’m dealing with might well be grounded in some sane and functioning culture. I imagine that they’re more likely to believe that there is a God. I figure the odds are higher that they stay in touch with their grandparents, and have a deference for veterans. Whatever their social class or color, I expect that they will display a higher level of civility, and I make sure to offer that back. I try to restrain my New York City impatience with needless chit-chat and seemingly pointless delays, with time spent on pleasantries that humanize transactions. It isn’t always easy.

But I try, Ned, because I realize that not everyone on this earth is exactly the same as I am. And I’m okay with that. You clearly aren’t. You live in an organic vegan soap bubble where everyone, of every color and sexual deviation has exactly the same ideas, and is equally smug about them. You have pro-gay, pro-choice, pro-Muslim (don’t try to do the math here, people) friends of every ethnic background. Whatever their ancestors thought, whatever their skin color or accents, their souls have all been bleached as white as bones. (For more from the author of “Is My Southern Plumber a Nazi?” please click HERE)

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What Would Jesus Do to Nazi War Criminals?

Are you looking for a book that will change your life?

No, neither am I. I’m tempted like everyone else to find instead erudite and witty titles that confirm what I already think. But since (as I’ve learned) it turns out that such a reading plan was the exact one that Hitler followed, I’ve had to reconsider it.

Now, I’m not suggesting you start the New Year by running out and buying some radical feminist manifesto — except the really crackpot ones that are good for a laugh, and are fun to read aloud to friends over pints and pretzels. See nun-turned-witch Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, and Valeria Solanas’ Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) Manifesto. Those are a lot of fun.

Read Something that Makes You Uncomfortable

No, instead I’d like to suggest you find a book that takes a sane and wholesome, even spiritual view of a deeply uncomfortable subject. So you will look with the eyes of reason and faith, but at something you’d rather not think about. Consider the topics that make you just want to turn away and switch on the television, or spend an hour “evangelizing” on Twitter.

It might be global poverty, aggressive Islam, abortion, the collapse into doctrinal mish-mash of a church you’ve always loved, or some other ugly subject. Consider whether your aversion might be a sign that you really do need to give this topic (whatever it is) some hours of your attention. Perhaps there is something you really are called to do, in your own small way, to make things better. Maybe it’s just important that you be better informed on it as a voter, parent, or general purpose Christian.

Recently I hunkered down to tackle a deeply disquieting subject: The nexus point of cheap grace, repentance and genocide. They all come together in Tim Townsend’s fascinating, carefully researched book Mission at Nuremburg. It tells the story of Henry Gerecke, a good-hearted Lutheran pastor who became an army chaplain during the Second World War, and got assigned to pastor some of the worst human beings on earth: the Nazi defendants at the Nuremburg war crimes trials. It wasn’t Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth whom the American military authorities chose to interview and counsel these architects of aggressive war, eugenics programs and large scale genocide. It was an ordinary, middlingly-educated Lutheran minister from St. Louis. Most of his previous experience was with small-town Midwestern German-American farmers, and urban missions to the homeless — with some time spent in U.S. prisons ministering to run-of-the-mill criminals.

Alongside equally ordinary Catholic chaplain Rev. Sixtus O’Connor — a humble Franciscan philosophy teacher from upstate New York — Gerecke was the man whom Providence placed in the cells that held Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler, Julius Streicher, and the top Nazi generals who survived the collapse of the Reich. Their task? From the perspective of the U.S. military which dispatched them, it was to comply with the terms of the Geneva Convention by providing prisoners with access to religious counseling and services. But Gerecke knew that much more was asked of him than that. It was his job to confront men who had risen to the top of the world — gained wealth and fame and the power of life and death over millions — by discarding the Christian vision of human dignity, in favor of a pagan fetish of a single race and nation.

Treading the Tightrope Between Judgmentalism and Cheap Grace

He had to hold them accountable for their crimes, the fruits of which he’d witnessed on visits to the bloodstained cells of Dachau, where countless clergy and political prisoners had been brutalized, starved and shot. He had to be on guard against a cheap, last minute “repentance” on the part of these conquered Nazis, embraced for the sake of leniency in sentencing — or even worse, as a cynical means of evading their guilt before the fearsome judgment seat of Christ (which is, when you think about it, also a ploy for leniency in sentencing).

But Gerecke also knew that he had to minister to these men with all sincerity, to offer them if possible the chance to reclaim the Christian faith of their youth, and accept the Grace of forgiveness that Christ offers to all — even the worst of men, if they will accept it.

Townsend depicts with power and spiritual sensitivity Gerecke’s attempts to discern how sincere each war criminal is in his belated approach to the Gospel, pursed under the shadow of the gallows that would claim all but a few of them. The story also highlights how spiritually beneficial capital punishment can be — in that it forces such criminals to confront the inevitability of judgment, and starkly underlines the sanctity of innocent life, by imposing the ultimate earthly penalty for profaning it. How much less likely such habitually arrogant, ideologically self-poisoned men would be to repent if instead of facing the hangman they were sitting comfortably in prison, reading fan letters from neo-Nazis around the world.

Holy Communion for Hermann Goering?

The most powerful scene in the book is Gerecke’s last interview with Hermann Goering — the most comprehensibly human among the leading Nazi criminals. Here was a man motivated not by an almost psychotic hatred of Jews — as Streicher, for instance, was.

Instead, he had lived in the grips of deadly sins such as gluttony, vainglory, and greed, stuffing his belly with the finest foods till the end of the war and hoarding stolen works of art. He didn’t detest Christianity as a Jewish plot to undermine Aryan vigor, as Baldur von Schirach had. Instead, Goering treated the Gospel with a modern, world-weary shrug, as a fable designed to console women and children.

It’s with that blasé, self-serving attitude that Hermann Goering asks Gerecke to administer him Communion. As a registered member of the Lutheran church, he claims that he is entitled to it. And he thinks it couldn’t do him any harm. It might even do him some good in case — you know, all that redemption business turns out to be true after all.

Gerecke agonizes over this, but finally sees that he must deny him. Communion given to the unrepentant is not an opportunity of grace, he remembers, but a sin of sacrilege. Rather than heap yet another sin on Goering’s impressive record, he gently shakes his head but firmly refuses. He is appalled, but not quite surprised, when Goering’s pride drives him to suicide to avoid the shame of the gallows.

At a time when my own Catholic church is agonizing over the question of Communion for those living in sexually active, non-sacramental relationships, I wish that a clear ray of Lutheran light from Nuremburg could shine on certain quarters in Rome. (For more from the author of “What Would Jesus Do to Nazi War Criminals?” please click HERE)

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Can We Please Stop With This Nazi, Hitler, Name-Calling Stuff?

Adolph Hitler and the Nazis committed some of the most horrific acts known to the human race, systematically murdering millions of Jews — including one and a half million Jewish children and babies — along with other ethnic and social minorities, not to mention sparking a war that killed many millions of others. In light of the depths of their evil, we had better be very careful before we label others Nazis or call our opponents Hitler.

Most recently, Howard Dean labelled Steve Bannon, President-elect Trump’s Chief of Staff, a Nazi, explaining, “It’s a big word and I don’t usually use it unless somebody’s really anti-Semitic, really misogynistic, really anti-Black.”

Earlier in the month, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, tacitly compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler, saying, “Mrs. Clinton backed the crime bill and then called our young people super predators. Of course she apologized, but just a minute. See, Hitler could’ve said to the Jews after Auschwitz, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Would that be enough to satisfy you?”

Back in June, a headline on the Daily Kos claimed that “Jeff Sessions endorses Nazi style fascism.” (Sessions is now Trump’s nominee for the position of Attorney General.)

But this is nothing new.

In June, 2004, John Leo reported that comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler was “no longer confined to loonies,” pointing to the comments of Judge Guido Calabresi, “former dean of the Yale Law School and a moderate liberal,” who “said Bush’s rise to power was strikingly similar to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.” Leo also noted that “Senator Robert Byrd, for example, says George Bush reminds him of Hermann Goering, thus forfeiting much of his heralded reputation for political seriousness.”

With the election of Donald Trump, a whole new wave of rhetoric has been unleashed. Typical are the comments of Frank Navarro, a Holocaust scholar who is now a high-school teacher, who stated that “there are remarkable parallels between Hitler and Donald Trump.”

On a more grassroots level, those of us in the pro-family movement are used to being called Nazis and Hitler on an almost daily basis, a proven (and effective) strategy of gay activists for more than 25 years. As someone with the screen name of Astral Haze posted on one of my web pages back in March, “all homophobic people are hitler.” (Of course, if you do not affirm any of the goals of gay activism, you are homophobic, and therefore you are Hitler.)

This horrific name-calling needs to stop, not only because it defames the living but also because it mocks the dead — specifically, the victims of Hitler and his henchmen.

Of course these days, it seems that the left is branding almost all of its political and ideological opponents as racist or sexist or misogynist or Nazi or the like (Farrakhan’s attack on Hillary Clinton is in a class of its own), and the more that White Supremacist groups celebrate Trump’s victory (despite Trump’s constant disavowal of their support), the more the radical left will say, “You see! We told you Trump was a Nazi.”

We are also reminded that Trump was elected on November 8th, one day before the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass (November 8th, 1938), the date that many historians give for the beginning of the Holocaust. As Jennifer Mendelsohn tweeted, “Waking up on the anniversary of Kristallnacht to the news that America elected a demagogue. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Neither can you make up the extreme, destructive, and ugly nature of this rhetoric.

So, to set the record straight, the day that Steve Bannon or Hillary Clinton begin putting Jews (or women or blacks) on cattle cars, sending them to the gas chambers to be exterminated, is the day you can call him a Nazi and call her Hitler. (As much as I deplore the abortion policies of Hillary Clinton, I will not call her Hitler.)

And the day that Jeff Sessions begins rounding up minorities, forcing them into crowded ghettos, putting them on starvation diets and depriving them of virtually all human rights, is the day you can accuse him of endorsing Nazi style fascism.

And the day that Donald Trump rounds up hundreds of thousands of Mexicans or Muslims or blacks or Jews, forces them to dig ditches, strip naked, and then take a bullet to the back of the head, or the day he throws the babies of these minorities into burning pits (why waste a bullet on a baby?), or the day he authorizes medical experiments to be performed on minority twins (without anesthesia), or the day he uses the carcasses of his victims to make soap and lampshades is the day you can compare him to Hitler.

Until then (and I trust God that such days will never come in our country), we do well to watch our words.

All this Nazi-Hitler rhetoric is beyond insulting. It is downright dangerous and terribly incendiary. (For more from the author of “Can We Please Stop With This Nazi, Hitler, Name-Calling Stuff?” please click HERE)

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Associated Press, Prostitute to Power: Newly Revealed Collaboration With Nazis, North Korea Points to Compromised News Today

The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed. . .

The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), promising not to publish any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home”.

This law required AP to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi party’s propaganda division. One of the four photographers employed by the Associated Press in the 1930s, Franz Roth, was a member of the SS paramilitary unit’s propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by Hitler. AP has removed Roth’s pictures from its website since Scharnberg published her findings, though thumbnails remain viewable due to “software issues”.

…The new findings may only have been of interest to company historians, were it not for the fact that AP’s relationship with totalitarian regimes has once again come under scrutiny. Since January 2012, when AP became the first western news agency to open a bureau in North Korea, questions have repeatedly been raised about the neutrality of its Pyongyang bureau’s output.

In 2014, Washington-based website NK News alleged that top executives at AP had in 2011 “agreed to distribute state-produced North Korean propaganda through the AP name” in order to gain access to the highly profitable market of distributing picture material out of the totalitarian state. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea comes second from bottom in the current World Press Freedom Index. . . A leaked draft agreement showed that AP was apparently willing to let the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) handpick one text and one photo journalist from its agitation and propaganda unit to work in its bureau. (Read more from “Associated Press, Prostitute to Power: Newly Revealed Collaboration With Nazis, North Korea Points to Compromised News Today” HERE)

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The Funeral Mass That Sparked Hope in Nazi Prison Camps Coming to Alaska

“Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin,” a multi-media concert which honors the performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece by Jewish concentration camp prisoners, is coming to Anchorage in April.

And in conjunction with it, the city will observe “Defy Fear Week” with a proclamation from the mayor and activities planned throughout Anchorage.

Defiant Requiem tells the story of the performance of Verdi’s funeral Mass by 150 prisoners at Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt, a camp in Czechoslovakia where Jewish artists and intellectuals were imprisoned.

Dr. Grant Cochran, conductor of the Anchorage Concert Chorus, said the compelling story is what led his group to endeavor to bring the performance to Anchorage’s Performing Arts Center.

“As a conductor, I was amazed at these prisoners in a concentration camp committed to learning this music despite hardships, starvation, beatings and constant fear.”

Only one copy of the complex music had been smuggled into the camp by Jewish conductor Rafael Schachter, Cochran explained. Under those circumstances, “the musician in me is amazed by how they were able to learn it.”

“Defiant Requiem” is a project of the Defiant Requiem Foundation and its creator and conductor, Murry Sidlin. The performance is being done in collaboration with Anchorage Concert Chorus and University of Alaska Anchorage’s Department of Music.

Eventually, the camp’s prisoners performed the Requiem 16 times, including before an assembled group of Nazi officials and a Red Cross delegation.

Schachter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”

“Defiant Requiem” features the Verdi masterpiece interspersed with live narration and video testimony from Terezin survivors, as well as “show” footage the Nazis shot in the camp. There will be no intermission during the two-hour performance.

Sidlin launched “Defiant Requiem” in 2002. Since then, it has been performed more than 30 times around the world, including three times at Terezin. Sidlin will conduct Anchorage’s performance.

Despite its brutal setting, the Requiem at Terezin is actually a story of hope, Sidlin said.

“In a concentration camp full of persecuted Jews, why would Schachter, the conductor, reach out to teach a work steeped in Catholic liturgy?” he asked.

“As the singers sang the words of the Mass, ‘nothing shall remain unavenged,’ it reinforced their faith that God was in charge and will take care of them,” he said. Over the years, Sidlin said many survivors of Terezin told him that the Requiem had filled them with hope and strength.

“When they heard the words, ‘Deliver me, O Lord,’ they saw that as ‘Liberate me.’”

“Keep in mind,” Sidlin said, “the conductor had to teach this music by rote. There was little nutrition, 10-hour workdays in 8-day shifts, and yet in the evening the prisoners came to rehearse. These were extraordinarily dedicated people who found in this music and this conductor inspiration.”

Cochran added, “The choral tradition is largely a sacred tradition. Requiems are one of the great pieces of art to which composers gravitate.”

Schachter’s Requiem performances were held between October 1943 and June 1944. After the first performance, more than half of his singers were shipped to Auschwitz. So he recruited more singers. After his last performance, for the Red Cross delegation, Schachter himself was sent to Auschwitz where he died.

The performance for the Red Cross delegation was part of a propaganda event staged by the Nazis. The camp was a transit point for people being sent elsewhere to their deaths, but for the Red Cross visit, the prison was made to look like a small town, with shops and happy children.

Prior to the event, many prisoners were shipped to Auschwitz to reduce overcrowding at Terezin. The real conditions of the camp are illustrated by the figures: in 1942, 15,891 prisoners, or one-half of the residents, died of sickness and malnutrition.

Sidlin discovered the Terezin performances by chance while reading a book about music in the Holocaust, and was able to locate Schachter’s bunker mate at Terezin, Edgar Krasa, who supplied background and history on the performances.

Krasa had survived Auschwitz, and was living in Massachusetts when Sidlin met him. The survivor had performed in all 16 Requiems at the camp, and his sons performed at “Defiant Requiem” when it was brought to Boston.

Sidlin said Krasa is still alive, now in his 90s.

Since Terezin was essentially the prison for Czech intellectuals, they created a lively cultural environment at the camp despite the horrendous conditions.

In addition to the Verdi concert, “artists and musicians presented 1,000 concerts and 2,400 lectures during their years of imprisonment,” Sidlin said.

“It was a hotbed of the arts and humanities,” he added. People saw it as an opportunity to take the high ground against their Nazi persecutors. Their art became an act of defiance and a way of demonstrating the brutality of the Nazi regime.

April Wilson is a board member and singer with the Anchorage Concert Chorus. She also chairs the “Defiant Requiem” Committee. She said the event seemed so important they wanted all of Anchorage to share in it.

The Defiant Requiem Foundation provided a $25,000 grant and other assistance for the two performances at the Performing Arts Center.

The Concert Chorus agreed to involve various departments at UAA in the themes and history of “Defiant Requiem.”

“Once we got into it, though, we were so moved by the timeliness and importance of the themes that we decided to expand our activities to the entire Anchorage community,” Wilson said. As a result, the week is full of activity. Besides the long list of scheduled events, there will be poetry readings, music, discussions and exhibits throughout the week at UAA, the Anchorage Museum of Art, Loussac Library and bookstores in the city.

In addition to promoting Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin,” the Defiant Requiem Foundation has three other core components: a film documentary, “Defiant Requiem,” which will be shown at the Beartooth; a Rafael Schachter Institute for Arts and Humanities at Terezin and educational lesson plans for students and teachers hosted at DefiantRequien.org. (For more from the author of “The Funeral Mass That Sparked Hope in Nazi Prison Camps Coming to Alaska” please click HERE)

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