Free Republic

Nazi Germany celebrated Christmas without Christ with the help of swastika tree baubles, 'Germanic' cookies and a host of manufactured traditions, a new exhibition has shown. The way the celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes by Hitler's Nazis is detailed in a new exhibition. Rita Breuer has spent years scouring flea markets for old German Christmas ornaments. She and her daughter Judith developed a fascination with the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.

Swastika Christmas tree ornaments, "Germanic" cookies and made-up traditions: A new exhibition highlights how the Nazis tried to take Christ out of Christmas. But their attempts to hijack a festival that began with the birth of a Jewish child weren't entirely successful.

Neo-Nazis took to the streets in Arizona and Minnesota this weekend, a new boldness that officials say echoes the homegrown terrorism of the 1990s. James Verini talks to the extremists leading the charge. A year after President Obama's election, hate groups are feeling bolder than they have in over a decade, and their usually insular anger is beginning to spill into the public realm. This weekend, the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, held rallies in Arizona and Minnesota. Those demonstrations came on the heels of similar actions in Southern California, where epithet-spewing white supremacists were forced to disband by...

By 1939, more than 10,000 Catholic schools had been closed and the Catholic boys and girls sent to Nazi public schools for indoctrination. Catholics are constantly confronted with the claims that Pope Pius XII was complicit in the Holocaust, that vast numbers of Catholics collaborated with Hitler's diabolical regime, and that Catholic priests, nuns, and bishops were ardent members of the Nazi Party and supporters of its policies. It is true that many Catholics turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, and others remained silent out of fear for their lives and the safety of their families. There were certainly...

In 1934, the Harvard class of 1909 held its 25th reunion—then as now an occasion for members of the American elite to parade in public and celebrate their achievements. But this year the star attraction was a German: Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, the son of a Munich art dealer and publisher who had joined the Nazi movement and enjoyed personal access to Hitler (Hitler liked hearing him play the piano, as had his Harvard classmates, for whom he composed football fight songs). In the early 1930s he served as foreign press chief for the Nazi party. Ernst Hanfstaengl (center, with raised...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

....They say residents and visitors at Solone's home smoke in the backyard at all hours of the day and night. Several people puffing away at once has resulted in smoke settling in their backyard like a low fog, Richard Ganguet said....

CNA STAFF, Oct 25, 2009 / 03:47 pm (CNA).- On Thursday, Catholics will celebrate the feast day of Helen Kafka, better known as Blessed Maria Restituta.  Working as a nurse in the 1940s, she was ordered by the Gestapo to remove crucifixes she had placed in several hospital rooms and was sentenced to death.  Pope John Paul II beatified her on June 21, 1998. Helen Kafka was born in 1894 to a shoemaker and grew up in Vienna, Austria.  At the age of 20, she decided to join the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and took the name Restituta...

Francis Phillips hails a stunning study of Catholic resistance to National Socialism 16 October 2009 John Frain subtitles this book, Catholic Resistance in the Nazi Era and at first glance it might seem a well-trodden path, adding little to what is already known. For instance, negative publicity given to the alleged "silence" of Pope Pius XII during the War has led to a succession of scholarly studies of his attitude and behaviour towards Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. But Frain's terms of reference are wider than this; he examines every level of Catholic opposition to Hitler, particularly in Germany: the...

One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe-Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco-were all non-smokers. Hitler was the most adamant,characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been...

The Holocaust - the systematic annihilation of six million Jews - is a history of enduring horror and sorrow. The charred skeletons, the diabolic experiments, the death camps, the mass graves, the smoke from the chimneys ... In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed by the Nazis. 1.5 million children were murdered. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of handicapped children. Yet there...

Is the fascination with Nazis in Western culture a product of natural interest, or is it an unspoken pact by novelists and filmmakers to obscure the greater atrocities committed by the Soviets -- most notably under Stalin, who ruled in the same era as Hitler? A recent documentary on the Turner Classic Movie cable channel illustrated the point. Said the commentators, when all else fails in selecting a villain, make Nazis the sinister evil force and success is assured. Yet the idea to create Soviet villains never appears to occur to novelists and filmmakers, except in spy thrillers where each...

[Moderator-approved posting at Organizing for America]: UK Jewish MP SIR Gerald Kaufman : Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza "Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the House of Parliament. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland. ..."My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in...

Robert E. Thomas, 83, breezed into the National Archives on Tuesday with a smile on his face, a white hankie peeking out of his suit coat pocket and an old briefcase containing the two rare books he filched in Germany 64 years ago. He was a World War II GI then, fresh from the horrors of combat. He had blundered into one of the notorious salt mines where the Germans stashed their national treasures. And this one contained books. Millions and millions of books from institutions across Germany. Thomas poked around, saw two that looked old and took them. Now,...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of WWII Warsaw Ghetto uprising, died Friday in Warsaw at the age of 90. Paula Sawicka told The Associated Press that Edelman died at her family's home at 2 p.m. EDT (1800GMT) of old age. "He died at home, among friends, among his close people," Sawicka said.

Lots of people are throwing around some terms that they do not understand. Speaker Pelosi recently implied that Tea Party protesters were “Nazis”. Someone should explain to her that the millions who gathered in Washington, DC were protesting the greatly stepped-up intrusion of government into their lives and the huge debt the Democrats are placing on the backs of their children. This is exactly the opposite of Nazism. Given the actions of the goons from SEIU, ACORN and the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, if anyone deserves the title of Nazis, it is the liberal Democrats she represents.

f you don’t know the story, let me sum it up for you: at the end of August, 1943 the country of Denmark was finally fully taken over by Nazi Germany. This meant, among other things, that the Jewish population of Denmark (roughly 8,000) was now in deadly danger: the Danish government had been, up to that point, politely, respectfully, and absolutely inflexibly refusing to allow Nazi Germany to persecute its Jewish citizens. While the story that the King of Denmark himself wore the yellow star is not true, what is true is that no Danish Jew did – and...

He was a soldier in one of the most fanatical divisions in Hitler's war machine. As a member of the SS, Heinrich Steinmeyer expected little mercy as he surrendered to British troops towards the end of the Second World War. But instead, he says he was treated with humanity by both the troops who captured him and the guards at the Scottish prison camp where he was kept until the end of the war. Sixty-five years later, Mr Steinmeyer has pledged to leave his home and life savings of £430,000 to elderly residents in the village of Comrie, Perthshire, as...

Brandishing blueprints of the Auschwitz death camp, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday blasted the United Nations for turning a blind eye to terrorism and urged the world leaders to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Calling out those heads of state who remained in their seats for Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "anti-Semitic rants" earlier this week, Netanyahu also pulled out chilling evidence of the Final Solution. It was a copy of the minutes of the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders fine-tuned their methodical plans for genocide.

Washington, Sep 21 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Yosi Sergant, then Communications Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, and members of a hand-picked, pro Obama arts group were caught on tape discussing how artists receiving NEA grants could produce art that would support the Obama agenda. A partial transcript and audio from the scandalous conference call has been posted on BigHollywood.com. The call begins with Michael Skolnik, introducing himself at the conference call “I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about...

Alongside the internationally better known National-Democratic Party of Germany or “NPD,” the German People’s Union (DVU) is one of the two main German political parties of the so-called “extreme Right.” As discussed in my earlier PJM report here, in German usage this expression is, in effect, just a euphemism for neo-Nazi currents and organizations. Both the NPD and the DVU are officially classified as “right-wing extremist” organizations by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the so-called Office for the Protection of the Constitution or “Verfassungsschutz.” A statement published by the DVU on Wednesday, however, makes clear just how misleading it is to...

In 1939 Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was desperate to escape Germany. She was a member of a prominent Jewish family of publishers and gallery owners, and as the Nazi oppression escalated, it was clear they would have to leave or die. Lilly was told there was only one way for her to obtain an exit visa. The family would have to hand over one of their most prized possessions: a Parisian street scene painted by Camille Pissarro. The work, an atmosphere depiction of a rain-soaked Paris boulevard, had hung on the walls of the family's Berlin and Munich homes since the...

Bill Gates famously called George Gilder "very stimulating even when I disagree with him, and most of the time I agree with him." The issues on which Gilder has staked out stimulating positions over more than 30 years as a writer and public intellectual are wide-ranging. They include the causes of poverty and the creators of wealth; the consequences of modern feminism; and the possibilities opened by the high-tech revolution. His arguments are often surprising, always provocative and generally controversial. His latest book is titled "The Israel Test." Much of what he says is dramatically different from what just about...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Eliminating the Public Option Is Not Enough By John S. HoffTuesday, September 1, 2009 Filed under: Health & Medicine, Government & Politics Even if the public option is excised, the healthcare bill still would impose a heavy blanket of federal regulation on every aspect of healthcare. The Obama administration has signaled that it may be willing to forgo creation of a federal government insurance plan (the so-called “public option”) as part of its healthcare “reform.” This is far less of a concession than it appears.Even if the public option is excised, the healthcare bill under...

For 30 years, Eli M. Rosenbaum has been hunting Nazi war criminals. Even as the last of them die off, he is not giving up. “There is still time to bring some of these people to justice, and we ought not fail to do that,” said Mr. Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations, who arrived at that Justice Department agency as a summer intern in 1979, the year it was created, and became its chief in 1995. ...“It’s a few years more,” Mr. Rosenbaum said of the hunt for the last Nazis. “I don’t think that you will...

See Part I Beck to the Future: Glen Beck Exposes Dangerous Link Between Nazi Eugenics and ObamaCare Reform Experts By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Germany's experience with National Socialism is one of the darker moments of human history. FOX News host Glenn Beck has taken on the challenge of applying the lessons of Nazi Germany (government-controlled health care, combined with the principle of valuing human beings based on "quality of life" and a severe economic crisis) to "question with boldness" the direction American health-care is heading under President Barack Obama and his policy advisors.Beck hosts...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Question with boldness." That is the motto of radio host and FOX News television host Glenn Beck, who says he asks questions no different than ordinary Americans - he just has an army of researchers to help him explore these questions. But what the question explores is the disturbing relationship between eugenics, Nazism, and the imposition of Obama's health care plan upon the United States.Like the old adage "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," Beck has looked back to the past to get a glimpse of the future....

Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), the revolutionary group formed by self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" Van Jones, held a vigil in Oakland, California, "mourning the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world" on the night after Sept. 11, 2001.... Van Jones is now President Obama's green jobs czar. He does not appear to have distanced himself from his past communist activities and is now part of the Obama administration's push to turn Sept. 11 into a National Day of Service focused on the promotion of the radical environmentalist agenda. Jones also founded the Ella Baker Center...

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus. Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what...

Sermon Delivered by Bishop Clemens August Count of GalenAugust 3, 1941[The following is from the book, Cardinal von Galen, by Rev. Heinrich Portmann, translated by R.L. Sedgwick, 1957, pp. 239-246.] The Third Sermon, preached in the Church of St. Lambert's on August 3rd, 1941, in which the Bishop attacks the Nazi practice of euthanasia and condemns the ‘mercy killings’ taking place in his own diocese.My Beloved Brethren,In today's Gospel we read of an unusual event: Our Saviour weeps. Yes, the Son of God sheds tears. Whoever weeps must be either in physical or mental anguish. At that time Jesus...

Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled “Administrative Simplification,” the bill sets new “standards” for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers. According to section 163, the standards will “enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ” In addition, they will “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related...

Anchorage, Alaska, Mayor Dan Sullivan vetoed a pro-gay measure Monday that likely would have threatened religious liberties. The ordinance had been approved by the Anchorage Assembly, 7-4. It was designed to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, education and other areas. Pro-family groups said it would have forced Christian ministries, churches and others in the faith community to hire people who don't share their religious beliefs. Jim Minnery, president of the Alaska Family Council, said communities across the country have been negatively affected after sexual orientation measures were implemented. "In each of those communities, there's been documented cases of Christian adoption...

 The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has come in for some richly deserved criticism in recent months, publishing articles that have ranged from the inane (tributes to Michael Jackson and Easy Rider) to the damaging (a claim that Barack Obama is not pro-abortion). Still let's give credit where credit is due, and the latest attention-grabbing headline from L'Osservatore deserves applause.For many years now, critics of the Vatican have claimed that Pope Pius XII was silent in the face of the Holocaust. The criticism is unjustified; it ignores the ample evidence that the wartime Pontiff made great efforts, and took substantial personal...

National Socialism is banned from the Right’s case against socialism, but is somehow acceptable when leftists use it as a smear or when the Left’s nuanced geniuses, after their very thoughtful consideration, decide its invocation is suitable for mature audiences? I don’t think so.

"...The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "out­rageous" and "disgraceful". About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt. Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money."

When ill-informed critics call President Obama a "socialist," you have to chalk it up to ignorance -- and you know there's a good chance those critics don't understand the true meaning of ignorance, either. The blanket cries of socialism were alarming enough -- but now it's become politically fashionable to invoke comparisons to the Nazi party. This week, a swastika was painted on the sign outside of Democratic Congressman David Scott's office in Smyrna, Ga. Scott, who is black, says he has received mail from angry citizens using the N-word and calling Obama a Marxist. Rush Limbaugh says of the...

The White House on Monday started a new Web site to fight questionable but potentially damaging charges that President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health care system would inevitably lead to “socialized medicine,” “rationed care” and even forced euthanasia for the elderly. But in introducing the Web site, White House officials were tacitly acknowledging a difficult reality: they are suddenly at risk of losing control of the public debate over a signature issue for Mr. Obama and are now playing defense in a way they have not since last year’s campaign. snip.... And Democratic Party officials enlisted in the...

It is amazing that people are writting to this site and saying there is no need for a snitch to write in, they are not afraid in the least to identify themselved as non-believers in the way he has handled healthcare or the bailout programs.

Nancy Pelosi has a very florid imagination. In her mind's eye she is seeing people "carrying swastikas" at Town Hall meetings to protest Obama's Central Plan for American medicine. Which makes me wonder why all the swastika-carrying nutsies -- or Nazis? or just nasties? --  in Ms. Pelosi's imagination are not in favor of Obama's plan to control US medicine. It's a control freak's dream, after all, and the Nazis were totalitarian control freaks. Can we get serious? One of the painful things today is the massive failure of history teaching in the schools and colleges, so that kids confuse...

Last night on Fox News, Sean Hannity asked former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to comment on the Democrats’ campaign to demonize protesters who oppose President Obama’s health care reforms. Hannity ran the now-familiar video clip of present day Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming that some protesters were “carrying swastikas”. (So far no evidence has emerged to substantiate Pelosi’s charge; presumably if photographic evidence existed, it would have been featured on the front page of the New York Times.)

Watch Video: http://butasforme.com/2009/08/07/suspects-arrested-after-racial-assault-on-black-conservative-at-st-louis-town-hall/St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Kenneth Gladney, 38, a conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was awaiting treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack

Rachel Maddow spent 40 minutes of her show trying to discredit people who don’t like the Obama trillion-dollar socialized medicine plan. Not a single word of analysis, only ad hominem attacks on citizen dissenters as mobsters and proto-nazis. But this is what leftists always do — target the messenger, discredit the opponent. As Lenin said: for progressives the object of a political debate is not to refute your opponent but to wipe him from the face of the earth. I never met a leftist who didn’t follow this prescription.

Rush add this to your list of Democrats calling Republicans Nazis. This was right after they got thrown out on their ashes the year before. "1995: In what was dubbed "the brawl in the hall," Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., compared Republicans to the Nazis he fought in World War II then engaged in a hallway shouting match with Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., who said Gibbons pulled his tie."

Your right to eat healthy food and use supplements of your choice is rapidly vanishing, but every effort has been made to keep you in the dark about the coming nutricide. Codex Alimentarius is scheduled for full global implementation on December 31, 2009, and not a word has been spoken in main stream media about this threat to humanity. Yet, according to the projections based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a minimum of 3 billion people will die from the Codex mandated vitamin and mineral guideline alone. Former Nazi is...

Nazis and U.S. Politics Thomas Colton Ruthford, Letter to the Editor, 6/7/95, Arlington, Washington Times During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits. First of all, “Nazi” was gutter slang for the verb “to nationalize”. The Bider-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was “The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany”....

Message from the President: "This is the moment our movement was built for." By Christopher Hass - Aug 5th, 2009 at 3:15 pm EDT Also listed in: Organizing for Health Care Blog Comments | Mail to a Friend | Report Objectionable Content Today, President Obama sent out a message to supporters asking them to get involved in the fight for health insurance reform this month: This is the moment our movement was built for. For one month, the fight for health insurance reform leaves the backrooms of Washington, D.C., and returns to communities across America. Throughout August, members of Congress...

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare. Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power. Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel...

Al Gore invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill today by encouraging political leaders to follow the example of Britain’s wartime leader and unite their nations to fight climate change. The former US vice-president accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming. He said lack of awareness among voters allowed governments to avoid taking difficult decisions. Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.” He added: “We have everything we need...

BERLIN (JTA) -- A Dresden politician was fined for playing loud klezmer music outside City Hall to disturb a neo-Nazi march. Stephan Kuhn of the Green Party was ordered Wednesday to pay a $210 fine, which will benefit an organization that helps victims of right-wing violence. Neo-Nazis held a commemorative march on Feb.13, 2008, on the anniversary of the World War II firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces, which right-wing extremists have taken to calling the "bombing Holocaust." In protest, Kuhn blasted the music at the neo-Nazis from the windows of the Green Party parliamentary fraction offices. According to the...