May is offcially Jewish Heritage month, and as is standard on these sort of occasions, the White House has issued a proclamation.
This month's proclamation lauded and honored none other than artist Gertrude Stein, with the official release including the following statement, “Their history of unbroken perseverance and their belief in tomorrow’s promise offers a lesson not only to Jewish Americans, but to all Americans. From Aaron Copland to Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein to Justice Louis Brandeis.”
Allan Dershowitz, noted author, defense attorney and Harvard Law professor jumped quickly on this:
“Gertrude Stein was herself a major collaborator with the Vichy regime and a supporter of its pro-Nazi leadership.”
“Stein’s closest friend, and a man who greatly influenced her turn toward fascism was Bernard Fay, who the Vichy government put in charge of hunting down Masons, Jews and other perceived enemies of the State. Fay was more than a mere collaborator as suggested by the Met exhibit. He was a full blown Nazi operative, responsible for the deaths of many people. After the war, when the horrendous results were known to all, Gertrude wrote in support of Fay when he was placed on trial for his Nazi war crimes.”
Dershowitz has it exactly right. Like another good friend of the Obama Administration, George Soros, she was a Jew totally estranged from her ethnicity who was an unapologetic collaborator with the Nazis.
When the Germans defeated France in 1940, Frances' new leader Marshall Petain and his fascist deputy Pierre Laval were quick to make a deal with Hitler, with the northern part of France under active Nazi occupation and the southern two thirds and France's colonial empire ruled by the French under the puppet Vichy regime.
Vichy France quickly became one of the major manufacturing centers for Nazi war materials, and the French quickly instituted the Nazis policies towards the Jews. France was filled with Jewish refugees from the rest of Europe at that time, and the French government eagerly rounded them up for the Nazis and turned them over to them. Later, this was extended to many Jews whom had French citizenship.
Gertrude Stein, who was an atheist but an ethnic Jew lived in Paris during the war with her 'companion' Alice B. Toklas. As a non-French citizen of Jewish background, she normally would have been among the first deported to places like Auschwitz and Treblinka, as the majority of Jews in France were. However, she and Toklas not only survived the war but were not molested in any way...because Stein not only had useful friends like Fay, but because she had been an outspoken and unabashed admirer of Hitler since the 1930s, even proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize in spite of what she saw going on right in front of her eyes.
She also had an ongoing relationship with Marshall Petain, even to the point of volunteering to write an introduction to his speeches during the Vichy Regime when thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent to the camps.
As an exemplar of 'Jewish heritage', she's a curius choice since aside from being a Nazi sympathizer she was totally divorced from that heritage by choice during her entire life.
Thw White House eventually went into gear, with Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman claiming that the inclusion of Gertrude Stein in the proclamation was 'a mistake'. Apparently all the other prominent Jews listed were also a 'mistake' since the new White House proclamation that was issued was changed to read "Their history of unbroken perseverance and their belief in tomorrow’s promise offers a lesson not only to Jewish Americans, but to all Americans. Generations of Jewish Americans have brought to bear some of our country’s greatest achievements and forever enriched our national life."
However, the last time I looked, the original mentioning Getrude Stein was still up at the White House site, whitehouse.gov.
Just another piece of an increasingly clear picture that's been evident ever since Barack Obama's relationship with people like Edward Said, Jeremiah Wright, Khalid al-Mansour, Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan, Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi was revealed back when he was candidate Obama..to those who were willing to open their eyes and look at it.
( a hat tip to My Number One Fan)
1 comment:
How unsurprising is this? Picks out the world's worst Jew to represent Jewish heritage month. He never does anything without it having some meaning in my opinion.
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