Showing posts with label Daniel A. McGowan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel A. McGowan. Show all posts

Monday, July 09, 2018

Holocaust deniers try to disrupt conference on Mennonites and the Holocaust

In March 17 and 18, I went to a conference on Mennonites and the Holocaust that was held at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas. It was very interesting, and I've been meaning to write up my impressions, but haven't gotten to it it.

The conference was disrupted a couple of times by a Mennonite denier of the Holocaust named Bruce Leichty, who was finally kicked off campus by the local police. He attempted to speak a couple of times during the question and answer period after the academic presentations, but was told to leave by the conference organizers.

Update: Lisa Schirch, in a contribution to the blog Anabaptist Historians, describes one of the incidents when Leichty attempted to disrupt the conference:
A Mennonite holocaust denier, Bruce Leichty, attended parts of the conference. Leichty is a California-based lawyer known for representing the Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel and his Mennonite wife Ingrid Rimland Zundel. Leichty has passed out anti-semitic literature at the past several MCUSA gatherings. At the introduction of the conference, the organizers told the audience there was someone attending the conference who they were watching. But many were not in the room or did not understand what was being said. When Leichty began to ask an offensive question during the conference, the organizers removed him by calling campus security, but did not inform the audience of who the man was or why he was being removed. The lack of communication confused many in the audience.
Two of his compatriots in Holocaust denial, who are affiliated with the antisemitic group Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR), also went to North Newton - Daniel A. McGowan, emeritus professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and Henry Herskovitz, who leads a weekly vigil outside a synagogue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I saw and heard Leichty, but didn't see McGowan or Herskovitz, but apparently Herskowitz was hanging around the auditorium where the conference was held and he was also told to leave campus by the police. Herskovitz wrote up his reaction on his blog, hosted on the DYR website, where he wrote that Leichty was arrested and held by the local police for a number of hours. His arrest is recounted in an article posted on a Holocaust denial website, which I will not link to.

Herskovitz says that he and McGowan intended to give a kind of counter-talk outside the conference at a at a local meeting hall, called "Two Revisionist Jews Consider the Holocaust," and Leichty tried to hand out flyers about this meeting to the people at the conference. In all the reading I've done by and about McGowan, I've never seen the claim that he himself is Jewish, so I'm not sure where the title comes from. [I just looked again at Herskovitz's post, and he provides a link to a farcical document where he and Paul Eisen declare McGowan to be a Jew; Eisen is a co-founder of DYR].

The conference itself was very moving to me as an outsider, because so many of the Mennonite speakers and attendees were obviously troubled by the fraught history of Mennonites during the Holocaust. Mennonites were not persecuted by the Nazi regime, and in some places (Germany, Poland, and Ukraine) some collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of being part of one of the Einsatzgruppen (in Ukraine) - the Nazi killing squads that targeted Jews. Some Mennonites did try to protect and hide Jews, but most did not (as most European Christians did not). One of the talks was about Mennonites in the Netherlands who did work to rescue Jews.

Given the pained sincerity of most of the participants in the conference, it was really a violation to have Leichty appear and attempt to disrupt these difficult conversations with his crude and obtuse attacks upon historical truth. It is a pity that he and the other two deniers decided to push their agenda at such an important conference.

Update: Leichty apparently has a long history of pushing his antisemitic and Holocaust denial views among Mennonites. Vic Rosenthal, writing in Fresno Zionist in 2007, describes a talk organized by Leichty in a local Mennonite church. The speaker was Ingrid Rimland Zündel, wife of Ernst Zündel, who was imprisoned in Germany for Holocaust denial. The pastor of the church himself did not want Rimland Zündel to speak, and passed out flyers to try to dissuade people from going in and listening to her.

Leichty is a problematic figure who has defended a number of Holocaust deniers, including Ernst Zundel, who is imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust. Leichty also represented 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani in lawsuits against various entities she held accountable for her husband’s death. In motion papers, Leichty apparently used research from Bollyn to make spurious accusations against a Jewish judge on the case. In May 2012, the United States Court of Appeals sanctioned Leichty and Mariani for making frivolous arguments before the court and also highlighted the anti-Semitism reflected in the papers filed by Leichty.
Leichty is also a believer in other conspiracy theories, including those about the 9/11 attacks. He belongs to a group called "Lawyers for 9/11 Truth."

Leichty's antisemitism also showed up in a lawsuit he brought on behalf of a widow of a man who died in the 9/11 attacks: 9-11 Widow and Lawyer Sanctioned for Raw and Ugly Antisemitism. For a more objective report, see the New York Times article: Court Penalizes a Lawyer Over Slurs in a 9/11 Filing

Monday, June 05, 2017

More on Deir Yassin Remembered in Ann Arbor

The Michigan Daily, a student newspaper, also reported on the SPLC designation for DYR.
Deir Yassin Remembered, a local group famous for its weekly protests outside Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, has been placed on a list of hate groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center under the subcategory of Holocaust denial. According to the Washtenaw Jewish News, Deir Yassin Remembered is "the only sustained action targeting a Jewish house of worship anywhere in the United States.” 
Mark Potok, editor-in-chief of the SPLC's quarterly journal, explained the addition in a recent interview on Michigan Radio, stating the group defended Nazism. "We list them because over the years they have come to more and more explicitly embrace real-life Holocaust denial," he said. "The kind of Holocaust denial that these people practice is essentially a defense of Germany and National Socialism.”....
Henry Herskovitz, a member of the board of directors for Deir Yassin Remembered and later, a self-described “former Jew,” stirred controversy in 2014 when he campaigned for the release of Ernst Zundel from prison, who was sentenced by a German court to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred through literature he published....
A member of the Beth Israel congregation, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of harassment by Deir Yassin Remembered, said the group's apparent concern with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israeli apartheid were superficial. 
“That is the nominal organization to which they are affiliated, but that is ancillary to their primary motivation,” the member said. “Their primary motivation is a deep anti-Semitism, in the same way as the Ku Klux Klan claims to be defending white rights.”
This is part of the article from the Washtenaw Jewish News (also published in the Michigan Review):
So far as is known, the picket of Beth Israel by Deir Yassin Remembered is the only sustained action targeting a Jewish house of worship anywhere in the United States. The picket has been condemned by members of the Palestinian-American community, by a great number of local clergymen of all faiths, by the mayor of Ann Arbor, the city council, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and The Ann Arbor News. On learning of Deir Yassin’s anti-Semitic views, The Ann Arbor Observer and several billboard companies have refused to accept ads from the group. 

Deir Yassin Remembered in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Victor Lieberman, the Raul Wallenberg Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan, has just published an article about the activities of DYR in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One of the leaders of DYR, Henry Herskovitz, lives in Ann Arbor, and has picketed a synagogue there for the last thirteen years, together with a small group of other like-minded haters of Israel and of Jews.

Professor Lieberman reports:
In person outside the synagogue and on their website, DYR activists promote an array of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: Jews built gas ovens in the death camps after World War Two to frame the Germans. Jews created and now control ISIS. Jews destroyed the Twin Trade Towers in New York City on 9/11. 
Jews have organized all the chief terrorist attacks in Europe and America. According to a report in the Washtenaw Jewish News, while standing outside Beth Israel in 2012 a leader of the weekly picket summarized his views in these exact words: "I hate Jews. Whatever happened to them in World War II, they brought on themselves. They deserved everything they got."
He reports about another DYR leader, Paul Eisen, whom I have written about before, "DYR Director Paul Eisen appeared on the radio show of David Duke, the Louisiana anti-Semite, white supremacist, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan."

And he also documents DYR's support of Ernst Zundel, a well-known Holocaust denier, who has been jailed in Germany (his native land) for "inciting racial hatred."
DYR leaders campaigned for the release from prison and the rehabilitation of Ernst Zundel, an ani-Semite jailed in his native Germany for "inciting racial hatred." 
During his trial, Zundel's lawyer signed court motions with the words "Heil Hitler." Zundel co-authored a book "The Hitler We Loved and Why," published by White Power Publications, which explained "It was never Hitler's Germany. It shall always be Germany's Hitler....Today, [Hitler's] spirit soars beyond the shores of the White Man's home in Europe. Wherever we are, he is with us. WE LOVE YOU, ADOLF HITLER." 
To express their admiration for Zundel, Henry Herskovitz, who is a member of the Board of Advisors and Directors of DYR, together with Daniel McGowan, Executive Director of DYR, visited Zundel in Mannheim Prison in Germany. In 2014, Herskovitz also posted a picture of himself greeting Holocaust survivors at a memorial ceremony organized for their murdered families with a sign reading "Free Ernst Zundel."