Posted Thursday, January 13, 2005

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I rather fear that they have achieved the unique feat of turning the young man who is third in line for the British Throne into a committed anti-Semite, from this day on.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

CNN

 

Duchess: Prince 'deserves a break'

CNN) -- Britain's Prince Harry "deserves a break" after his apology for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, his aunt, the Duchess of York, has told CNN.

Harry, third in line for the British throne, was pictured on the front page of Thursday editions of Britain's The Sun newspaper wearing a swastika on his sleeve at the party. The 20-year-old was also holding a drink and smoking a cigarette.

"The thing is that sometimes we all do things where the ramifications of our actions are perhaps afterthoughts," the duchess -- Sarah Ferguson -- said on "American Morning." "It's all very well to come down hard on him, but he's been through a lot, and I fully support him 100 percent. "I hope the world accepts his apology," she said. "He deserves a break, really."

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David Irving comments:

I HEAR that a spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Mark Weitzman?) spoke of "David Irving and his band of Nazi sympathisers" in connection with the Prince Harry fancy dress outfit on BBC News, today, Jan 13, at about eight thirty-five.
   Yes, the international Jewish community in England is outraged that the prince has been photographed secretly, at a private fancy-dress party, wearing an Afrika Korps tunic and a Nazi swastika armband (a home-made one, as any connoisseur could tell).
   Now, I've never done that myself, but that outfit could well turn into something of a fashion, like hip-hop or the New Look.
   To the dismay of many, ahem, citizens however the Channel 4 Jon Snow television news program has conducted an instant poll (after a "balanced discussion" consisting of himself; an unknown Jewish stand-up comedian; a man called "Smith"; the Old Paedophile Himself; and the woman heading the Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism, all four of whom are Jewish. Snow announces the poll result at the end -- unlike his guests most of the ordinary British find nothing offensive about the episode.
   

THIS does not mean there will not be repercussions, but they will not be what those, ah, citizens wanted.
   Earlier today I expressed on this website the hope that nobody will remember that Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) has or had four sisters all of whom were in Nazi Germany during WWII, married either to SS-Obergruppenführers, Nazi gauleiters, Prince Heinrich von Braunschweig (tactfully listed in British genealogies as the rather less teutonic Henry Duke of Brunswick) or Hermann Göring's chief of Intelligence (the Forschungsamt), the Prince Christoph von Hesse; and that as for the father of Princess Michael of Kent, he was of course Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, an Austrian SS Obergruppenführer.
  Yes, there is lots that still has to come out. King George VI loathed Winston Churchill (see the papers of Harry Hopkins and the diary of Mackenzie-King); his Queen Elizabeth plotted secretly with certain British admirals to overthrow Winston in the summer of 1940 and accept Hitler's peace offer. This is what the secret records will eventually reveal.
   This is the Real History -- the politically disastrous shadow, the past across which Buckingham Palace cannot leap back in time.
   I personally do not mind. I wish we had accepted that offer in 1940. The British Empire would still stand, and where the United States does now, but considerably more astute and civilised, in my view (and of course the Holocaust, whatever it was, would not have happened: because the war would have stopped forthwith. But nobody has ever claimed that das internationale Judentum is blessed with above-average intelligence).
   No, I am not as sensitive as they are about what people say about them.
  

SENSITIVE. That is the word that these delicate gentlemen keep using, -- the Old Paedophile Himself used it several times today on various television interviews -- as they lament the rise in anti-Semitism around the world.
   I expect the family of Rachel Corrie, that brave American peace activist fatally flattened by an Israeli Army bulldozer into the Gaza Strip, is quite "anti-Semitic" by now; the inhabitants of Jenin are probably quite that way inclined too, having had their homes, grandparents, and crippled kinsfolk ironed into the ground by the blades of other insensitive Israeli bulldozer drivers.
   I personally try to keep a level head, despite having had my own life bulldozed by these same folk ever since I published my book The Destruction of Dresden in 1963.
   It will be interesting to see if Prince Harry manages to maintain the same equilibrium after having slime and public obloquy heaped upon him by the Jewish community of England, most of them first or second-generation foreign immigrants like Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, and a sprinkling of well-remunerated "Holocaust survivors" (i.e., people to whom not very much happened, unlike their less fortunate contemporaries in Treblinka, Dresden, Coventry, and Hiroshima).
   I rather fear that they have achieved the unique feat of turning the young man who is third in line for the British Throne into a committed anti-Semite, from this day on.


Postscript:

At 2:30 pm The Daily Telegraph (London) phones, saying they are rounding up quotations from celebrities on the Prince Harry wearing Nazi uniform episode. What is my view? I say, "A harmless prank" and "very much in character." I refuse to say it was "In poor taste," -- a phrase the journalist four times throws at me to confirm.

The Sun released its front page Wednesday night to media outlets, and the Clarence House press office released Harry's apology shortly afterwards. In it, the prince said he was "very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone. "It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize," the statement said.

Ferguson, who is divorced from Prince Andrew -- brother of Harry's father, Prince Charles -- said her nephew is "a great, great boy" and "first rate." "His mum (the late Princess Diana) would be so proud of him," she said. "I know what it's like to have bad press. I had it for quite a long time. ... The thing is: He's apologized."

Not everyone was as forgiving. Former Buckingham Palace press officer Dickie Arbiter told CNN Harry's choice of costume would be "very much an embarrassment to his father." "He should have realized that wearing Nazi uniform as member of royal family is just not a starter," said Arbiter, who also said a written apology was "not enough" and Harry should "come up front." "He needs a good dose of army discipline given by people he doesn't know ... and perhaps then grow up."

Rabbi Marvin Hier (above) of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said it was "inexcusable for a member of the royal family to do that" and called Harry's action "a disgrace to England." "I think he should join the British delegation that is going to 60th anniversary of the liberation of (the concentration camp) Auschwitz," he told CNN. "He should be part of delegation and stand in silence. And that would transmit to world that he gets it."

Robert Rozett, director of the library at Jerusalem's Holocaust Museum, appeared more disappointed than angry about the royal flap and said he was happy Harry had quickly apologized. "Of course, the Holocaust is representative of man's greatest evil and collapse of morality in human civilization," Rozett told CNN, "so when Prince Harry wears it ... it indicates the lessons of the Holocaust have not entered into his understanding or consciousness.

"We would hope that figures like Prince Harry would be more sensitive and not trivialize it. ... We would suggest that Harry and others would do well to learn more about the subject, be more careful about how they use the subject in public." Some on the streets of London, though, agreed with Harry's aunt. "I like the lad, and I think people tend to batten down on to him. It's not fair really," one woman said. "I think if I was Jewish, I might feel a bit upset about the fact, but all the same, people need to take in the context it's in, and he obviously didn't mean anything by it."

The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners and Gypsies. Millions more were imprisoned or forced to work as slaves. Harry's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, is commemorating the 60th anniversary that day by inviting Nazi death camp survivors and British veterans who freed them to a reception at St. James's Palace [Website comment: sounds like a real fun event; our invitation must still be in the mail].

She also will attend a Holocaust Memorial Day national commemoration at London's Westminster Hall with her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh [see panel at right]. The Sun said Harry wore the desert uniform of Gen. Erwin Rommel's German Afrika Korps to a party in Wiltshire, west of London, on Saturday. The photo shows him wearing a swastika armband and a badge of the German Wehrmacht, or defense force, on his collar.

It's not the first time Harry has been in the public eye with a not-so-royal sheen. Three years ago, his father Charles sent the 17-year-old Eton student to a rehabilitation clinic to warn him of the dangers of drugs after discovering he had smoked marijuana and allegedly drank alcohol. Harry is in line to the British throne after his father and his older brother, Prince William.

  


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