Next stop: the other end of those tracks, in Poland.
On a raw, dark, rain-swept day, we spent four hours walking the grounds of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
We saw it all. At Auschwitz I, we walked through the infamous gate (“Work Brings Freedom”). We toured the surviving crematorium. We saw the ghastly displays of human hair, personal effects, suitcases, even shoe polish, all confiscated from the prisoners who’d packed in haste under the ruse of “resettlement.” Also there: empty canisters that held pellets of Zyklon B, the agent used to exterminate human life in the crematoriums.
At Auschwitz II-Birkenau, we stood on the platform where Jews were divided between those who were to be immediately gassed and those who would live for, at least, a while. We also surveyed the ruins of crematorium II, the most prolific of the death machines, largely destroyed by the Nazis in an effort to hide their crimes against humanity.
The critical question: If the evidence of the Holocaust was right before my eyes, should all argument to the contrary be outlawed? Close to 20 nations say yes, and ban Holocaust denial. Austria only recently released the historian David Irving, imprisoned for this very crime. Our guide was one of many who believe those laws justified. She thinks they’re a safeguard for properly educating future generations about what occurred.
I agree, we must ensure the understanding of future generations. But I don’t see these laws as a way to do it. Banning Holocaust debate would be like America disallowing argument on the wacky 9/11 Internet conspiracy theories.
There are many credible-looking websites that have become clearinghouses for rumor and innuendo about the attack on the Pentagon. A missile, some argue, not an airplane. (What then happened to American Airlines Flight 77 and its passengers?)
The most effective way of dealing with such propaganda is to discredit it point by point, not to make it unlawful, which runs the risk of fueling skepticism. Popular Mechanics did so exquisitely in magazine and then book form.
It should be the same with Holocaust revisionists. The way to combat their mindset is with total openness and a climate of candor about all aspects of World War II. That includes providing full access, even to those locations that run the risk of cultivating morbid curiosity.
In Berlin, we stayed in the Hotel Adlon at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate. The concierge provided me with a walking-tour map of the neighborhood. Included were both the Reichstag, home of the German parliament, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Missing, however, was any reference to what’s beneath a nondescript parking lot just 100 yards behind the hotel: Hitler’s bunker.
Not until the World Cup came to Germany last year was there any sign to note the significance of the spot where Hitler killed himself as Russian troops stormed the Reichstag. That too is the wrong response to a hideous chapter of German history. Not only should the location of the bunker be noted, it should be unearthed and opened to the public.
Those were my views upon arriving back home. But my reflection wasn’t over.
I then had the chance to question one of the world’s foremost historians, Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill and author of Auschwitz and the Allies and The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. I asked him if he thinks Holocaust denial should be against the law.
“This is a very difficult question,” he said. He attended almost every day of the trial that convicted David Irving.
And I heard from the mouth of the Holocaust denier the most terrifying racism and anti-Semitism. I thought to myself, if this person is allowed to spread his word to ignorant audiences or audiences who want to be prejudiced, that’s a bad thing.
So when the Austrian government imprisoned him for his denial, I thought, “Well, he knew the law, he broke the law, and the Austrians have a right to feel that this is something inflammatory and wrong.”
I think every country has the right to its own laws. . . . As you say, free speech is tremendously important in our society, and debate and argument, and I’m all for that. I’m all for every Holocaust denier being able to speak in a forum where there’s someone who is going to challenge him or her. At the same time, countries like Poland know that Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, racism take on a life of their own.
I told Gilbert that I believe we give credibility to the minute number of deniers by not allowing that kind of dialogue. I worry that there will be a level of skepticism in future generations who’ll ask why we’re able to debate anything but that.
“I think the key word is ‘dialogue,’” Gilbert said.
I’m totally in favor of every Holocaust denier being able to speak, provided he or she allows there to be a dialogue. I’m willing to travel the world or get up at the crack of dawn in order to be present at such a debate. And many other historians, Jews and non-Jews, will do the same. So that’s fine.
And the other thing I feel . . . is that Holocaust denial is really quite a minor thing. I mean it has its fling on the Internet; it has its few adherents who travel everywhere, as they did to Ahmadinejad’s anti-Holocaust conference—they made a pathetic showing actually there.
I think that what is important is the amount of material about the Holocaust, much of that you’d have seen in the Auschwitz bookshop, published by Auschwitz itself: records, diaries, the enormous number of superb memoirs. . . . These things are available, they’re taught in school. American schools have a very good record mandating Holocaust teaching.
I told Gilbert about my Berlin experience and suggested that the Fuehrerbunker be opened to the public. He agreed.
When I traveled around Europe with my students about 10 years ago, and I wrote a book about that called Holocaust Journey, . . . I was myself astonished, and I mentioned in the book, that there wasn’t a plaque there. I’m glad to hear there is, albeit only a small one. . . .
There should be complete transparency and the bunker should be open for the world to see. . . .
So let the bunker be open, let it become a place of pilgrimage, if you like, and a place of learning, as so many Holocaust sites are today.
Finally, I shared all this with a close friend who lost family in the Holocaust. We discussed whether free speech should exist on the issue of Holocaust denial.
He was unsure. But he acknowledged that laws banning Holocaust denial are probably an insufficient blanket to put out that fire.
AFTERWORD
Early in 2015, controversy arose over whether the third-ranking Republican, House majority whip Steve Scalise (R., La.), had once attended a 2002 convention for a white supremacist group—EURO (European-American Unity and Rights Organization)—that had been founded by David Duke. (It is Scalise who was later shot at a June 14, 2017, congressional baseball practice.) For a program on January 2, 2015, Duke was invited to be a guest of mine on CNN. My producer told me that Duke would do the show but wanted to be wined and dined, which is how I ended up eating lunch at the bar of the Landmarc Restaurant in the Time Warner Center with the former Imperial Wizard. What I remember is that he was no different in private than he was in public. Everything he said at lunch came wrapped in his worldview. It was impossible to engage him in a conversation with no political overtones. I didn’t know it until compiling this book, but he recounted the meal on his blog:
I actually liked the host personally; found him intelligent and iconoclastic and immediately understood the depth of his innate rejection for political correctness. I am anxious to read his book on PC. He was kind enough to invite me to a long two-hour lunch after the show. He truly wanted to understand why and what I believe. He asked me so many questions, I could barely chew the food. If he had a seven-hour dinner with Fidel Castro, I guess he saw no harm in spending two hours with me.
In the CNN interview, Duke said he didn’t recall whether Scalise attended the meeting in question (“Frankly I’m not sure; I was in Russia at the time doing research for my dissertation and have since gotten a Ph.D.”). And we had a
spirited exchange on camera after I tried to get him to acknowledge the occurrence of the Holocaust. (“I believe in the ‘quote’ Holocaust,” he finally said, his words diminished by his adding the air quotes.)
After the program, my weekly postshow drill was then to get on the subway beneath the Time Warner Center and ride to Penn Station, where I’d catch an Amtrak train back to Philly. On this particular day, I rode the subway solo, got to Penn Station, ate a slice of pizza at a favorite spot downstairs (Rosa’s), and then found a seat on my train to Philly. No sooner had I settled in than I saw David Duke walking down the aisle of my train, whereupon he spied me and jumped into the seat as though we were long lost friends. He was as talkative as ever on the train ride, and I was desperately trying to turn the subject away from politics for fear that his comments would be overheard. It’s one thing to have a provocative conversation with him in a CNN studio where that’s expected but quite another on a train surrounded by other passengers. I remember I asked him what other interests he had and whether he liked music. He told me he liked classical music and rattled off a list of German and Austrian composers he thought I should follow. Again I tried to divert the conversation from his worldview and asked whether he liked classic rock. I volunteered the name of a few classic rock bands on my playlist, and with his southern roots in mind, I said I was a fan of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Another wrong turn. Duke told me a story about having once received a flattering letter from its leader, which I took to mean Ronnie Van Zant, who died in the famous plane crash on October 20, 1977. I have no idea whether his claim is true. Only when the doors opened in Philadelphia was I a free bird.
2007–2011
GUILTY AS CHARGED:
I DON’T SUPPORT IMUS’S FIRING
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 15, 2007
LET’S GET THE ESSENTIALS out of the way.
Don Imus said something indefensible. He needed to be punished.
The public flogging he has suffered, plus the two-week suspension his bosses initially announced, should have been sufficient. I do not believe that MSNBC (where I often appear) or CBS Radio (my employer) should have fired him. And I cannot fathom how Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson became the arbiters of appropriateness, given Tawana Brawley and “Hymietown,” respectively.
Only Imus knows for sure what was on his self-admittedly drug-damaged mind when he said those things. His apology sounded sincere. I myself do not believe he said something racist per se. It was a reach for a cheap laugh, not something said to be injurious to the Rutgers women.
Ah, but the floodgates are now open. The cyber-lynching by faceless, nameless bloggers of talk-show hosts like me has begun.
Individuals who hide behind the anonymity afforded by the Internet are seeking to squelch the First Amendment right of people whose identities are readily known and who, unlike their cowardly critics, put their names and credibility on the line each and every day on matters of public concern. Left unconfronted, it is a dangerous practice in the making.
The very day Imus was fired at CBS, I was alerted to a posting on Media Matters for America, a sophisticated website instrumental in stoking the flames for Imus’s departure. The posting, titled “It’s not just Imus,” identified me as one of seven talk-show hosts in America who bear observation:
As Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.
I have done talk radio for about 15 years, have written two books, authored hundreds of columns, and have appeared on every major television program in which politics gets discussed, from The Colbert Report to Hardball with Chris Matthews. This week alone I was responsible for 17.5 hours of content on my own radio show, wrote two newspaper columns, guest-hosted Bill O’Reilly’s radio show nationwide, and found time to make television appearances on the Today show, the Glenn Beck Program, and Scarborough Country.
Needless to say, I was anxious to see which of my words, among the millions I have offered over all these years, have been documented by these blogger-watchdogs as “bigotry” and “hate.” What exactly puts me in a category with the likes of Michael Savage?
Well, let’s evaluate the quality of the evidence. For me, they identified three examples:
EXHIBIT A. “Substituting for host Bill O’Reilly on the April 4, 2006, broadcast of Westwood One’s The Radio Factor, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Smerconish repeatedly discussed ‘the sissification of America,’ claiming that political correctness has made the United States ‘a nation of sissies.’ Smerconish also claimed, several times, that this ‘sissification’ and ‘limp-wristedness’ is ‘compromising our ability to win the war on terror.’”
Guilty as charged. America is getting muzzled. Those among us who assert their own brand of political correctness while sacrificing the rugged individualism that has been the hallmark of our nation are seeking to mute the words and actions of others, make them conform to a standard of correctness that is not just silly but also toxic. In the past, this sanitization of that which we say and do would have been debate-worthy, but in truth, only a minor irritant to our quality of life. But I believe that in the post-9/11 world, these trends represent a cancer that has metastasized into the war on terror, where it threatens our very survival. We debate the comfort level at Gitmo while Nick Berg gets decapitated. We’ve become sissies in that regard.
EXHIBIT B. “On the Nov. 23, 2005, broadcast of The Radio Factor, while guest-hosting, Smerconish took issue with a decision by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to provide a designated prayer area at Giants Stadium. The decision was in response to a Sept. 19 incident involving the FBI’s detention and questioning of five Muslim men who were observed praying near the stadium’s main air duct during a New York Giants football game. Smerconish stated: ‘I just think that’s [the men’s public praying] wrong. I just think they’re playing a game of, you know, mind blank with the audience. And that they should know better four years removed from Sept. 11.’”
Guilty. When five Muslim men in attendance at the Meadowlands in September 2005 for a Giants-Saints game that was also a Hurricane Katrina fund-raiser, with George H. W. Bush in attendance, saw fit to pray in an area near food preparation and air-duct work, I think it was a case of mind blank. That’s a form of terrorism in itself.
EXHIBIT C. “On the Nov. 23, 2005, edition of The Radio Factor, Smerconish interviewed Soo Kim Abboud, author of Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers—and How You Can Too. . . . Smerconish asserted that ‘if everyone follows Dr. Abboud’s prescription . . . you’re going to have women who will leave the home and now get a great-paying job, because you will have gotten them well-educated.’ He continued, ‘But then they’re not going to be around to instill these lessons in their kids. In other words, it occurs to me that perhaps you’ve provided a prescription to bring this great success to an end.’”
My favorite—and truly an assertion that shows how asinine this situation has quickly become. Guilty!
Two Philadelphia-area Asian sisters wrote a great book explaining the success of their upbringing. The bottom line was their parents’ hands-on approach. I not only hosted them on the air but also honored them at a book club meeting with several hundred attendees. It occurred to me that if their advice were followed, it would create more “high achievers” with better educational opportunities and job offers, which would, ironically, take them out of the home where they could instill those same values to their own children. But now, that insight is sexist.
How long before they start burning my tapes?
AFTERWORD
Here’s a head-scratcher. Immediately after I wrote this column critical of Don Imus but arguing that he should not have been fired, MSNBC invited me to sit in his chair and anchor
his old program. How could they not have known I’d taken this position? Or did they not care? Or did they figure it out after inviting me? I still don’t know. I ended up spending a week guest-hosting the old Imus show. As I wrote in my book Morning Drive: “Instead of getting up at 3:15 A.M. to do morning drive in Philly, I got up at 2 A.M. to do morning drive in Philly, simulcast to everyone else from the MSNBC studio in Secaucus, New Jersey.” The week went well, but MSNBC gave Imus’s spot to Joe Scarborough (for whom I had often guest-hosted at 10 P.M.). He was my last guest while I was temporarily in that slot. My producer, TC, helped engineer quite a national television debut of my radio show. My other guests that week included Rudy Giuliani, Camille Paglia, Richard Clarke, Pat Buchanan, John McCain, D. L. Hughley, Larry Kane, and Jon Anderson from YES. Anderson closed the Monday show by singing “Roundabout,” after which it was announced on set that Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, was on the telephone. I momentarily thought he was calling to congratulate me on a high-quality program. Actually he was calling for Jon because he too is an uber YES fan.
For my Sunday Inquirer column that immediately followed my week filling Imus’s old spot, I published a diary of what my crazy week had entailed. The column ends: “Camera lights go dark and mic cut. Five days over, no glitches, no gaffes. Time to slide off the national stage and head back to the place where I’ve been content for all my 45 years.”
Not long thereafter, I began guest-hosting Hardball for Chris Matthews on MSNBC, a role I then consistently played for five years. Finally, in 2014, CNN gave me my own television program.
THE WAR COMES HOME
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, May 10, 2007
THINGS LIKE THIS don’t happen here. That’s what I was thinking while standing at a parking lot at State and Hamilton in Doylestown last week.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Page 15