Wednesday 11 October 2017

Canada's Holocaust Museum

A recent BBC story was titled Canada forgets to mention Jewish people at Holocaust memorial and continued:
A plaque has been removed from Canada's Holocaust memorial because it neglected to mention Jewish people. PM Justin Trudeau opened the National Holocaust Monument last week in the capital Ottawa. The plaque commemorated the "millions of men, women and children murdered" but did not specifically mention Jewish people or anti-Semitism. About six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the largest group to be persecuted by the Nazis.
The problem of course will be rectified but note how the above article reaffirms the figure of six million, although it is prefaced by the word "about". The same BBC article contained a link to a graphic novel version of Anne Frank's diary. Here is an excerpt:
Anne Frank was 15 when she died. She was an aspiring author, and one of more than a million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust. Today her diary - which she nicknamed Kitty - is one of the most-read books in the world. Her teenage prose has spawned Hollywood screenplays, Broadway shows and countless other (re)productions. Now it has been adapted into comic-strip format, in a book produced by the creators of the Oscar-nominated animation Waltz with Bashir, and there is a film coming soon too.
Note how the figure of Jewish children killed is put at "more than one million". This clearly apocryphal story is certainly getting milked for all it's worth. It's a great story, one that puts a face to the faceless masses that perished in WW2, and the fact that it's fiction doesn't matter anymore. Some of the artwork in this graphic novel is reminiscent of the posters from WW1 depicting the threat from the "Hun". For example:


To doubt the declared provenance of the diary is almost as bad as doubting the extent and details of The Holocaust. Anne Frank has become a saint and to question the diary is to question her sainthood. Thus the Holocaust juggernaut, with Anne Frank prominently on board, just keeps rolling on:
The Graphic Diary of Anne Frank is published in the Netherlands and Germany. An English edition will reach audiences in the UK and US early 2018. An animated film is scheduled for release in 2019.
There is seemingly no realistic way of stopping it or even slowing it. If anything, it's gaining momentum.

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