ON BRASS AND BANDWAGONS

When arguments are presented as caricatured images, should they be treated with a sober embrace? Should they be seriously entertained? Should “tall tales” and “fraud in fiction” be honored by serious minds? If the “king has no clothes,” should he be so advised? Should his subjects pretend that he has on a respectable, royal robe?

A positive response by academic and working stiff types may well be expected in a few instances. In such cases naysayers are the “fools-rushing-in” where wiser heads stand immobile and mute.

Exaggeration is employed by all of us at certain times. However, there are people who have such remarkable ability to grotesquely enlarge that, rather than be chided, they are listened to with rapt attention rarely encountered outside a religious ceremony. I would like to focus on them.

An assertion was made during and after World War II that Nazis were making soap, fertilizer and the like from the bodies of murdered, or otherwise deceased, Jews. This claim was presented as anecdotal evidence from sources in and about Nazi-controlled territory, or freshly escaped therefrom, by well-funded Jewish organizations. Associate Professor Arthur R. Butz cited such instances in his THE HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, which is a best-seller of which most people have never heard. Others have also cited such allegations, and the whole fraudulent claim has now been admitted by most authorities.

Nevertheless, I possess an article appearing in a tabloid describing a gathering of Jews, including a presiding rabbi(s), in or about Atlanta, Georgia who were “burying” a bar of soap said to be the last remnant of a Jewish victim of the Nazis. This “burial” occurred, as best I can remember, in the mid-1990s. That’s long after the whole business had been dismissed as a myth by all respectable authorities.

Merchants of fraud can get away with such matters because of the abysmal ignorance of the general population on the true history of World War II – and almost any other significant historical event. Of course, the media helps spread darkness.

Frankly, Jewish storytellers have told some “whoppers.”

In regard to the “Diaspora Revolt” that occurred around the death of Trajan and the assumption of power by Hadrian, the Talmud recorded that the number of Jews killed at Alexandria, Egypt was “sixty myriads on sixty myriads, twice as many as went forth from Egypt.” Assuming that addition would be called for, that indicated a figure of about 1.2 million. Although Alexandria had a large and prominent Jewish population so that they had their own quarter, the entire city was not likely to be larger than Rome itself, which it would have to be to suffer such a loss of Jews.

However, Jewish imagination can really soar, when the “spirit” seizes them.

During the Palestinian Revolt of 132-135, a man of extraordinary abilities arose. He was Bar-Kokhba. He was said to be so tough that he could catch catapulted stones with his knees and cast them back at the unexpectant Romans. He also claimed to be – or was proclaimed to be – the messiah.

Bar-Kokhba commanded a fortress at Bethar. The Romans laid siege and eventually overran it. According to the Talmudic account, the total Jewish losses killed by the Romans was 4 billion “or as some say” 40 million. The Midrash Rabbah reported that Jewish martyrs numbered 800 million.

Now, some readers might assume a “typo” with those figures. Not!

Further, to emphasize the immense loss, it was recorded that the Jewish blood reached the nostrils of the Roman horses and, like a flash flood, carried all before it, including boulders, either one mile or four miles to the sea. The Jewish blood stained the sea for a distance from the shore of four miles.

The diabolical Romans were a match for the Nazis. Bodies of slain Jews were used to build a fence around Hadrian’s grape fields. Since it was estimated that Hadrian’s vineyard was 18 miles square, the number of slain Jews must have been immense – right? Furthermore, the Jewish blood which the Romans were able to save from the remnant of the tidal wave was used to make fertilizer for the grapes. Although we assume they were a red grape variety, a miracle cannot be discounted; white grapes may have turned under the power of Jewish blood. Be that as it may, the Talmud apparently alleged that the fertilizer was made for seven years from this remnant of Jewish blood. That might be another miracle. Too, it does indicate a practical – even efficient – Roman aptitude. “Waste not, want not.”

This material was gleaned from Arthur R. Butz’s book (pp245-46-47), cited above. In it his indicated his source.

One last thought on the numbers claimed in the Talmud. I believe that it was an attempt to indicate that Jews were once as plentiful as the stars in the sky or grains of sand on the beach. Hence, I believe it was a way to be at one with the Abrahamic Covenant, which otherwise Jews have never met even remotely. Hence, there seems to be a belief that “all is possible with chutzpah.”