Monday, May 04, 2009

A Protest against Insensitive Tee Shirts and Bumper Stickers

http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/05/protest-against-insensitive-tee-shirts.html
(see URL for illustrations)


Monday, May 4, 2009
A Protest against Insensitive Tee Shirts and Bumper Stickers


The most curious document has just been discovered by archeologists
working in the rubble left behind in a suburb of Munich in Germany. The
document is a statement dated August 23, 1944. It was evidently issued by
the Reichsamt gegen Rassismus und Benachteiligung, which means the Reich's
Bureau against Racism and Discrimination.

I have turned the original German document, which reached me through some
bizarre channels about which I cannot give details, over to a colleague
for translation into English. I bring it to your attention because it is
curiously similar to some items currently on the internet regarding the
wearing of tee-shirts containing slogans of poor taste in Israel today!

Here is the translation:

The Reich's Bureau against Racism and Discrimination

August 23, 1944
German Comrades and Citizens:

On behalf of the Reich's Bureau against Racism and Discrimination, I have
been asked to formulate this letter of protest concerning insensitivity
and racism in the Third Reich. The request came several weeks ago but I
was only able to compose the statement on behalf of the Bureau now that I
am on leave from my military post as a guard at the camp in Birkenau.

We German citizens of conscience have decided to speak out against an
intolerable expression of racism! We refer of course to the wearing of
some tee-shirts with barbarous slogans and photographs by Allied troops
currently involved in the aggression against the Third Reich. In recent
days, we have seen photographs and numerous eyewitnesses have come forward
to describe American and British troops in France, Belgium and Holland who
were seen in local pubs and cafes during their free hours wearing
tee-shirts that carried insensitive epithets about Germans and Germany.
One showed a Wiener Schnitzel lying on a guillotine with its tip being
sliced off. Another showed Allied soldiers urinating into Bavarian beer
mugs. Others contained the derogatory terms 'Kraut' and 'Gerry' and even
'Hun.' Anti-German graffiti is showing up more and more frequently on the
walls of Dutch and Belgian public buildings.

There were bumper stickers to be seen on the backs of some American and
British tanks and other vehicles that cheered the dropping of incendiary
bombs on German citizens. And posters being placed in the towns of French
villages under the military occupation of the Allied imperialist forces
showed German cities in flames with accompanying slogans celebrating the
fires. This is even without beginning to describe the insensitive
anti-German rhetoric and behavior of the Soviet Red Army soldiers.

I think we can all agree that this sort of thing is intolerable. We call
upon the League of Nations to convene a special assembly to denounce the
racism and intolerance being displayed by Allied soldiers. We also ask
that the Pope speak up.


There is no doubt that this entire war was caused by the racial
intolerance and bigotry of American, British and Russian soldiers, not to
mention the thuggish French and Yugoslav partisans. These people simply
refuse to accept Germans as fellow human beings, entitled to respect and
dignity. Our Bureau is striving to stamp out racism in the New Middle
Europe by demanding that all such graffiti, posters, and tee-shirts be
banned at once. Only when these expressions of anti-German intolerance and
racism are removed will there be any hope for tranquility!

On behalf of the Reichsamt gegen Rassismus und Benachteiligung

Hans Schikelgruber, Hauptamtsleiter






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