 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  
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."  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. 
. . . on this
website-
Our
dossier on the origins of anti-Semitism
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