Brit-Am Historical Reports (8 April 2016, 29 Adar-B, 5776)
Contents:
1. ROMAN CLIENT STATE IN DENMARK
Denmark and The Roman Empire
2. The Advanced Mathematics of the Babylonians
3. 'Megillat Hitler,' FDR and the Jews
4. Japanese troops 'ate flesh of enemies and civilians'
From TERRY MCCARTHY in Tokyo
5. UNBROKEN: JAPAN STILL IN DEEP DENIAL OVER CANNIBALISM AGAINST US SOLDIERSÂ by Daniel Greenfield
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1. ROMAN CLIENT STATE IN DENMARK
Denmark and The Roman Empire
http://researchomnia.blogspot.co.il/2015/08/roman-client-state-in-denmark.html
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2. The Advanced Mathematics of the Babylonians
http://daily.jstor.org/advanced-mathematics-of-ancient-babylon/?utm_source
=internalhouse&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jstordaily
_03312016&cid=eml_j_jstordaily_dailylist_03312016
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3. 'Megillat Hitler,' FDR and the Jews
http://unitedwithisrael.org/megillat-hitler-fdr-and-the-jews/
Extracts:
FDR pledged 'the abrogation of all laws and decrees inspired by Nazi governments or Nazi ideologists.' But his public rhetoric apparently didn't express his private feelings.
Among the more remarkable documents of the Holocaust is a scroll, created in North Africa in 1943, called 'Megillat Hitler.' Written in the style of Megillat Esther and the Purim story, it celebrates the Allies' liberation of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, which saved the local Jewish communities from the Nazis. What the scroll's author did not realize, however, was that at the very moment he was setting quill to parchment, those same American authorities were actually trying to keep in place the anti-Jewish legislation imposed in North Africa by the Nazis.
On November 8, 1942, American and British forces invaded Nazi-occupied Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It took the Allies just eight days to defeat the Germans and their Vichy French partners in the region.
For the 330,000 Jews of North Africa, the Allied conquest was heaven-sent. The Vichy regime that had ruled since the summer of 1940 had stripped the region's Jews of their civil rights, severely restricted their entrance to schools and some professions, confiscated Jewish property, and tolerated sporadic pogroms against Jews by local Muslims. In addition, thousands of Jewish men were hauled away to forced-labor camps. President Franklin Roosevelt, in his victory announcement, pledged 'the abrogation of all laws and decrees inspired by Nazi governments or Nazi ideologists.'
But there turned out to be a discrepancy between FDR's public rhetoric and his private feelings.
On January 17, 1943, Roosevelt met in Casablanca with Major-General Charles Nogues, a leader of the new 'non-Vichy' regime. When the conversation turned to the question of rights for North African Jewry, Roosevelt did not mince words: 'The number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population.' The President stated that his plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore toward the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc., in Germany, were Jews.' (It is not clear how FDR came up with that wildly exaggerated statistic.)
In 1943, 400 rabbis marched to Washington to beg FDR to help rescue the Jews of Europe, but the president declined to meet with them. (wymaninstitute.org)
The Jews of North Africa had much to celebrate. But after the festivities died down, questions began to arise. The Allies permitted nearly all the original senior officials of the Vichy regime in North Africa to remain in the new government. The Vichy 'Office of Jewish Affairs' continued to operate, as did the forced labor camps in which thousands of Jewish men were being held.
American Jewish leaders were loathe to publicly take issue with the Roosevelt administration, but by the spring of 1943, they began speaking out. The American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress charged that 'the anti-Jewish legacy of the Nazis remains intact in North Africa' and urged FDR to eliminate the Vichy laws. 'The spirit of the Swastika hovers over the Stars and Stripes,' Benzion Netanyahu, director of the U.S. wing of the Revisionist Zionists (and father of Israel's current prime minister) charged. A group of Jewish GIs in Algiers protested directly to U.S. ambassador Murphy. Editorials in a number of American newspapers echoed this criticism.
At first, Roosevelt administration officials dug in their heels. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles insisted that technically, the region was no longer under Allied military occupation and the U.S. could not dictate how the local government ran things.
Megillat Hitler tells the story of the miraculous salvation of Morrocan Jews during the Holocaust.'
'The under secretary of state was perhaps right from a strictly formal viewpoint,' Prof. Michael Abitbol noted in his study of North African Jewry during the Holocaust. 'But he was strangely underestimating the immense influence wielded by the United States over North African internal politics.'
Eventually, under the accumulated weight of public protests, the Roosevelt administration made it clear to the local authorities that the anti-Jewish measures needed to be repealed.
The implementation process, however, was painfully slow. In April 1943, the forced labor camps in North Africa were officially shut down, although some of them continued operating well into the summer. The Jewish quotas in schools and professions were gradually phased out. In May, the racial laws in Tunisia were abolished. Two hundred Italian Jews who had been taken by the Allies to a Tunisian forced labor camp, because they were citizens of an Axis country, were released after several months.
And on October 20, 1943, nearly a year after the Allied liberation, full rights for North Africa's Jews were at last reinstated. '....
(Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. This piece was written for Purim 2011.)
Sylvain Assouline  [Readers Commnet]:
Where was the Sultan of Morocco who, in the screwed minds of many Moroccan Jews had opposed Vichy and saved nth Jewish lives. These Moroccan Jewish jerks should be educated literally and politically before opening their stinking mouths. Those who saved the latters, were and are Jewish volunteers who came to Morocco to send Moroccan Jews to a much, very much better lives in Israel or elsewhere thus making them modern citizens in all the phases of modernity far away from ghettos where they lived like rats.
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4. Japanese troops 'ate flesh of enemies and civilians'
From TERRY MCCARTHY in Tokyo
Wednesday 12 August 1992
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/japanese-troops-ate-flesh-of-enemies-and-civilians-1539816.html
Extracts:
JAPANESE troops practised cannibalism on enemy soldiers and civilians in the last war, sometimes cutting flesh from living captives, according to documents discovered by a Japanese academic in Australia. In most cases the motive was apparently not shortage of food, but 'to consolidate the group feeling of the troops', said Toshiyuki Tanaka yesterday in a telephone interview from Melbourne.
Mr Tanaka, a 43-year-old scholar from Fukui in western Japan, is working at the Political Science Department in Melbourne University. The documents he found concerning cannibalism include captured Japanese army memos as well as sworn statements by Australian soldiers for war crimes investigations. Mr Tanaka says he has amassed at least 100 documented cases of cannibalism of Australian and Indian soldiers as well as Asian forced labourers in New Guinea. He has also found some evidence of cannibalism in the Philippines.
'In some cases the (Japanese) soldiers were suffering from starvation, but in many other cases they were not starving at all,' said Mr Tanaka. 'Many reports said the Japanese soldiers were fit and strong, and had potatoes, rice and dried fish.' Some Japanese press reports yesterday suggested the cannibalism was carried out simply because of shortage of food.
The researcher also denied it was a result of a breakdown in morale: 'The reports said morale was good. Often it was done in a group under instruction of a commander. I think it was to get a feeling for victory, and to give the soldiers nerves of steel.' He said it helped the soldiers to bond 'because the whole troop broke the taboo (of cannibalism) together'.
One statement by an Australian lieutenant describes how he found the remains of a number of bodies, including one 'consisting only of a head which had been scalped and a spinal column'. 'In all cases, the condition of the remains were such that there can be no doubt that the bodies had been dismembered and portions of the flesh cooked,' concluded the statement. Another statement from an Australian corporal tells how he found the mutilated bodies of colleagues whom he had earlier helped to bury in Japanese- occupied territory.
A Pakistani, who was captured when Japan overran Singapore and taken to New Guinea, testified that in his area Japanese soldiers killed and ate one prisoner a day for 'about 100' days. The corporal said he saw flesh being cut from prisoners who were still alive.
Mr Tanaka found the documents by chance while doing research in Australian government archives on chemical warfare. 'I just came across them by accident - they were labelled 'War crimes documents - closed materials'.'
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5. UNBROKEN: JAPAN STILL IN DEEP DENIAL OVER CANNIBALISM AGAINST US SOLDIERSÂ by Daniel Greenfield
"The corporal said he saw flesh being cut from prisoners who were still alive."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/247337/unbroken-japan-still-deep-denial-over-cannibalism-daniel-greenfield
Extract:
It really happened a whole lot. There was a reason that Americans during WW2 viewed their enemies as savages. They weren't racists. They were dealing with the reality of fighting enemies with absolutely no moral code, only an honor-shame code.
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