Comments on: False Witness

By: a530514

a530514 — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:58:12 +0000

I’ve said that least 530514 times. The problem this like that is they are just too compilcated for the average bird, if you know what I mean

By: Dietz Ziechmann

Dietz Ziechmann — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:56:29 +0000

I appreciate the efforts of Jeff Cohen and others to uphold the standards of historical truth and suspect that Ian Thal is correct in his general conclusions. But I think we should focus upon creating a holistic convergence across ethnic lines, rather than focus upon divisions and old grievances. What appalls me in that the bounds of ethnic divisions grew so wide in the 20th and early 21st centuries, with such horrendous consequences! We need more Stephen Sondheims in the world with their artistic genius and an ability to unite, rather than divide. B’shalom, l’shalom.

By: Dianne Jarreau

Dianne Jarreau — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:24:59 +0000

I had more to say on this; but not without your permission. I have put it aside because I really cannot recall exactly how I learned why the soap was so talked about.

By: Dianne Jarreau

Dianne Jarreau — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:13:07 +0000

John Berger, British, Marxist/humanist art critic, artist and novelist,was someone whose work that I read for the first time in a little village in Western Wisconsin in about 1981. I’ve known thousands of artists, some famous to art history and others mere students, for no other reason than I spent at least five years, perhaps more as an artists’ model when I was young. Possibly a fortuitous occurence because my father had been a professor of anatomy at the medical school from which he had himself graduated; whereas, I had been a student of dance.

Yet, never had I read such an astute explanation of how great art is determined by those who can afford to be the patrons. They condition our artistic taste or sensibility, our judgment, our very perception; this determines what is kept for posterity, what is valued, and what is thrown away.

Might I suggest that we ought to carefully examine History in this way as well.

Berger may have been having a particularly Zen moment when he hit on this clarity of vision; an enlightenment?

If we were to consider that the greatest thieves of art(collecting from private households like that of the Cassirer family in Paris who had also built those apartment blocks of houses with the inner neighborhood courtyard in Berlin), could also be thought of as Patrons, were Nazis patronizing the rest of us as lesser humans, perhaps we should analyze history quite carefully to examine the detritus that we have chosen to throw away.

One day in search of second hand books in New Jersey, I looked aghast to recognize a painting stripped of a frame and no attention paid to the condition of the canvas itself. I recognized it because I had once worked for Moses and Raphael Soyer, at their studio in the Carnegie Tower (across the street from Manhattan’s Carnegie Deli).

We have done something similar with recent History, at least in my lifetime; by keeping the convoluted framework of the Third Reich and throwing away the created which is the value.

By: mordkhi

mordkhi — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:15:50 +0000

all are lies

By: Denise Zelikson

Denise Zelikson — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:56:44 +0000

As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor I find this play offensive. My father was 12 years old when he became a victim of the Holocaust. He survived the Dvinsk ghetto and 6 camps. One of his jobs in the concentration camp was to cut off the breast of women, and the legs and arms of children to make soap. Just cause some deniers want to close their eyes to this and pretend it didnt happen doesn’t mean it wasnt real. Talk to survivors!! My father is still alive and gives testimony to the nazi atrocities and horrors so that people will bear witness and it shall never happen again. B”H

By: Ian Thal

Ian Thal — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:19:28 +0000

Based on what I have read (and I will note, I have read secondary sources and done no original research myself) there appear to have been some small scale experiments at making soap from human fat, but it was never done on an industrialized scale– which is what the “soap myth” claims.

There were many small acts of barbarism and sadism inituated by individuals simply because the larger program of genocide made it easy to act upon these whim, though they were not part of the “Final Solution” as envisioned by the planners and organizers. It’s the difference between “what the Nazis did” and “what some Nazis did.”

By: carol morton jeory

carol morton jeory — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:14:49 +0000

Listen, you can go to a little museum called “Chamber of the Shoah” here in Jerusalem near Zion Gate and the Tomb of King David, the soap is there, they are cube-shaped and greyish. The museum is a bit primitive in comparison with the modern ones but it has things I didn’t see in Wash, dc.

By: ion

ion — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:20:57 +0000

@ danjan

you idiot, even the ADL has stooped spreading those lies about soap made of human fat.

By: damjan pekovic

damjan pekovic — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:46:15 +0000

Holocaust deniers are using each opportunity to undermune horrors of Holocaust in order to reach their final goal.
There are testimonies, and I sow personaly in 1989 on exibition in Belgrade soap tht was made of murdered prisoners in death camps.

By: William Smart

William Smart — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:04:10 +0000

Holocaust deniers (at least in the US) have about the influence of the Flat Earth Society. So, while one can appreciate the dynamic tensions that may make this an interesting play, I think it would have been better to let this story die.

It’s rather like the Palestinians accusing Israel of organ-harvesting in the 90′s. Some witnesses are convinced it happened, but there’s no evidence. Both stories just get in the way of real understanding.