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From: yhl@ihuxk.UUCP (Y. Levendel)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Humanism, Christianity and Nazism
Message-ID: <621@ihuxk.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 09:31:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxk.621
Posted: Thu May  3 09:31:33 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 4-May-84 03:30:55 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 29

I am replying to Toby Robison's recent article.

He tried to correlate the level of antisemitism in a country with the
social structure of that country. He also mentions Italy to be at the
head of the antisemitism list. Factually this is not true.

Antisemitism in a country seems to correlate strongly with the percentage
of Jewish victims in that country during WWII. Germany, Poland (the same
Poland which leads now the fight for liberation) and Hungary are at
the top of the list with more than 90% victims. France is in a respectable
position with 33%. Italy, Holland and Danmark are at the bottom of the
list.

In the documentary movie "The Sorrow and the Pity", the German commander
of the French town Clermont-Ferrand declared that he could not have been
so "effective" without the help of the local population. Danmark is well
known for the attitude of its people led by the king, who refused to
let the Jews be the only ones to wear the distinctive yellow star and
the rest of the population wore it too. Italy is famous for having protected
many of the Italian Jews. The fascist Spain which was never occupied by
Germany became a have for fleeing Jews, when other "enlightened" countries
were turning them back to were they came from.

Correlation with ideology does not work either, except in extreme cases,
such as the KKK in the US. But, who can swear that the only antisemites
are members of the KKK? Voltaire, the father of French rationalism ,
was a fierce antisemite.