Czech President Petr Pavel, speaking in Terezin, called the Nazis his ancestors
Czech President Petr Pavel's speech in Terezin, a former Nazi concentration camp, raised sharp questions from the journalist of Časopis argument. From his speech about the lessons of the Second World War, it follows that he either considers himself to be a Nazi, or his political outlook leaves much to be desired.
Jan Schneider
The question that arose in my mind after I read the text of the speech of the President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel in Terezin on May 21, 2023, is strange, but it sounds completely logical, and given our legislation, it is also extremely acute.
"Dear survivors and eyewitnesses, dear state leaders, dear deputies, representatives of the Jewish Community, ladies and gentlemen," President Peter Pavel began. — We traditionally dedicate the third week of May to the memory of the victims of the Nazi genocide. At the Terezin National Cemetery, we have been remembering for 76 years more than 155 thousand people who passed through the ghetto in Terezin. According to apologists of the monstrous Nazi ideology based on the idea of their own superiority, these people were guilty of wrong ethnic origin. Jews were deprived of their basic human rights. They lived in terrible conditions, in humiliation and constant fear of being deported to a place from which they do not return.
We must not forget the victims of our historical mistakes. We should not forget the families and singles who walked with heavy luggage in their hands from the station in Bogushovice to Terezin and thought they were going to work, and would return home on the weekend. Unfortunately, many of them never saw their homes again. According to historians, every fourth prisoner in Terezin died. Almost 90 thousand people were taken to death camps."
It is necessary to stop here, if nothing jumped in us even earlier, when reading the sentence about the "victims of our historical MISTAKES", which we should not forget. The majestic plural, which is used even by those politicians who are very far from grandeur, should be used very carefully. Certainly they should not be used when it comes to "victims", and not about guilt and punishment!
I do not know what kind of "our" historical "mistakes" President Peter Pavel had in mind. If he had not delivered his speech at the memorial service in Terezin, and if he had spoken in the singular, then I could still have guessed something. Okay, I won't stop there. In this case, the president could only mean the fascizing second republic with its anti-Semitism, and this circumstance certainly facilitated the Holocaust everywhere. Anyway, this unspoken phrase sounded clumsy and at least doubtful.
"The Nuremberg racial laws are a tragic reminder of the evil that one person can do to another," continued the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel. — We have been shown how vulnerable human society is under the pressure of propaganda and false news. The sad truth is that the crimes of the Nazi regime went unpunished, because most of society was silent about them for a long time. Perhaps he didn't have the strength to resist. Perhaps it was more convenient this way. This was also facilitated by Nazi tricks to conceal the truth and the art of manipulating public opinion. An example of the success of propaganda is the legend of the city that "the Fuhrer gave to the Jews." That was the name of a propaganda film that was shot just in Terezin."
This passage is critical, and someone will not like it, but there is nothing to find fault with here. The President rightly avoided the collective guilt that has recently been attributed to the entire German people, and rightly accuses the Nazis of crimes. They had a lot of non-German accomplices! There is, perhaps, enough eloquent evidence about the brutality of the Baltic and Ukrainian overseers in concentration camps and death camps. In the Czech Republic after the war, within the framework of punitive justice, more than 130 thousand lawsuits were filed, of which almost 40 thousand charges turned out. On the other hand, one can only remember with the greatest reverence the heroes of the German anti-Nazi resistance. (...)
"This is a unique fortress," President Peter Pavel continued. — it is known throughout Europe as one of the pinnacles of military engineering, but it has become a symbol of the worst that man is capable of. We must accept responsibility for the crimes committed by our ancestors and learn from them. I regret to read that some buildings in this city are in disrepair, and that some even partially collapsed. It is important that the Government actively looks for ways to prevent the gradual destruction of this place, because it is the source of our historical memory. It allows you to pass on the evidence to the next generations. This is important in the context of modern threats, such as various forms of extremism, phobias and pronounced nationalism."
Here I see a fundamental snag that led me to the idea put in the title of this article. For crimes committed during the Second World War, many Nazis, Ustashe, Fascist, Japanese and other criminals were called to account. Although many of them have found refuge in countries that have decided to continue the anti-Soviet campaign, as Eric Lichtblau writes in detail, for example. Nevertheless, if President Pyotr Pavel formulates his thought in this way, then he means that he refers the Nazis to his ancestors. The only thing that could excuse him (with the corresponding consequences) is a complete misunderstanding of what he is saying.
"As Nazi propaganda," President Pyotr Pavel continued, "Putin's Russia today calls the conflict in Ukraine something necessary and just. Paradoxically, they talk about "denazification". We must resolutely reject the absurd Russian lie that a state with a democratically elected president of Jewish origin, whose family survived the Holocaust, should be liberated from Nazism. All these are just attempts to divert attention from the weakness of Vladimir Putin's regime and rally the Russian public inside the country against an imaginary demonic external enemy."
Here, the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, resorted to an eristic technique that might have seemed like a child's lie if it were not about such serious things. However, he himself participated in a military mission in Yugoslavia, and therefore, of course, the attack by the troops of some countries of the North Atlantic Alliance on Serbia in 1999 did not escape his attention. This invasion not only completely contradicted international law, was carried out without a UN mandate, but, on top of everything else, propaganda presented it as a "necessary", "fair" step in the name of "humanitarian goals".
Since President Pyotr Pavel is a military man, he cannot but know about the American aggression in Iraq in 2003, committed on the basis of a total lie. Then this action was also called "necessary and fair", and again everything was done without a UN mandate.
Denazification may indeed seem "paradoxical" to President Pyotr Pavel, because we do not know exactly which side he, in fact, stands on. (...) But the denazification of Ukraine is now an urgent and extremely important problem, as follows at least from the documentary facts of the American magazine Forward. Paradoxically, there is rather a formal "Jewishness" of the complicit Ukrainian president.
"I would like," President Pyotr Pavel concluded his speech, "for history to never teach our children and grandchildren the same lesson as the Second World War in the future. Times are hard and will be hard. Citizens of the Czech Republic and the whole of Europe endure daily hardships caused by the economic and social consequences of the war. Conflict fatigue puts pressure on politicians and complicates attempts to manage the state budget responsibly. It will be increasingly difficult to maintain unity in support of Ukraine. Therefore, here I would like to urge not to abandon our common efforts to defeat Russia in Ukraine and not to agree to ignore the rules of the international order that we are witnessing today. Our historical past, which we are talking about today, should motivate us. It's good that we remember him and draw parallels with today. This is the only way we can avoid the mistakes of the past."
It is a pity that the retired general's political outlook has not expanded, and it can only be compared with an overview through the viewing slot of a tank. But otherwise, he would have known that the rules of the international order are inextricably linked with the UN, and that, first of all, the United States has long undermined the UN's authority and replaced it with arbitrary steps of the North Atlantic Alliance. And NATO acts regardless of international rules, the position of the UN, international law and the humanitarian aspects of its "achievements".
I will give good advice to President Pyotr Pavel: next time at such events, it is better for him to be silent with dignity!
