Jonah Goldberg: Holocaust revisionist

Incompetent would-be historian Jonah Goldberg in the dunce’s corner the other day discussing Danish cartoons with the other juveniles, gets off on a tangent about Denmark’s rescue of its resident Jewry during the Second World War:

But, since the issue of Denmark and the Jews comes up in my email a lot too, it’s probably worth noting that a lot of mythology has accreted around the story of Danish “resistance” to the Holocaust. First of all, the King of Denmark never wore the Star of David, declaring “we’re all Jews.”

Second, and more important, the Danes were brave in defying the Nazi assaults on their sovereignty and the seizure of the Jews was seen as an affront to Danish sovereignty. I don’t mean to say that the Danes would have been fine with the confiscation of Danish Jewry if such an affront could be avoided. The stories of individual Danes doing everything they could save the Jews are morally powerful and important to remember. And the Danish government’s defense and rescue of its Jews was itself a moral highwater mark for much of northern Europe. But it’s important to keep in mind that the issue was always Denmark’s Jews.

And, of course, the Doughy Pantload is wrong, as only the Doughy Pantload can be. First, it is true that the King of Denmark did not wear a star of David — rather the Nazis were told that the King would be the first to wear it, and that the government would resign en masse if anti-Jewish measures were instituted. The King didn’t wear a star — because no one wore a star.

Second, for Pantload’s contention that Denmark’s rescue efforts was about Danish sovereignty and Denmark’s Jews, Hannah Arendt noted in Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Danish’s government’s response to German anti-Jewish measures was:

so decisive in this whole matter that the Germans did not even succeed introducing the vitally important distinction between native Danes of Jewish origin. . . and the fourteen hundred German Jewish refugees who had found asylum in the country prior to the war and who now had been declared stateless by the German government. This must have surprised the Germans no end, since it appeared “illogical” for a government to protect people to whom it had categorically denied naturalization.

It was not a matter of national pride which led Denmark to insist that it retain its stateless Jews, Arendt concludes, but rather “the fact that the Danish government had decided to protect them.”

Indeed, it was the very refusal of the Danes to accept the Germans distinction between native and foreign Jews which distinguished Denmark from other countries which, like France, opposed German anti-semitic measures against their own Jewish populations, largely keeping them from harm, while permitting refugee Jews to be “resettled” by the Germans. Some 1400 of the 8000 or so Jews in Denmark were non-Danish, a substantial percentage, and it was the very fact that the Danes’ action was taken without regard to nationality which distinguishes their conduct and makes it such a powerful moral tale.

So, typically, Goldberg’s remark that it was about Denmark’s Jews gets it exactly wrong. BTW, has the Times fired him yet?