I hate to be argumentative, but I think the unequivocal assertion that Pound
"knew" is demonstrably false.

How could he - or anyone else - have known with absolute certainty about the
extermination camps without having either (a) seen them; (b) seen official
documents referring to them; (c) received information from reliable
officials who had seen them, worked in them or known those who had;  (d)
talked to people who had been in them.

Did Pound ever get his information in any of these ways?

Without at least one of these four kinds of knowledge, neither Pound nor
anyone else could have certain knowledge about the death-camps. The best
anyone could have was rumours which many - Jews and Allied leaders
included - chose to disbelieve. Given the unreliability and ubiquity of
rumour in time of war, it is unreasonable to assert that he or anyone else
"knew" or even could "know".

The assertion that Pound "knew" can only mean that Pound should have
believed the leaflets, the rumours and the anti-fascist partisans, that is,
taken their word at face value.  However, given his own and Europe's
situation, there is no reasonable ground on which to assert that he should
have believed them. They were, after all, his enemies in time of war.

This is even more true in light of the utterly extra-ordinary nature of what
the partisans and the leaflets claimed.  We today are more or less 'used to'
the notion of a death-camp, a death-factory, but people back then weren't.

It needs no fabulous imagination to see why many thought this was simply
propaganda - especially since the Allies were known to have passed off
similar fantastic tales about German atrocities in WW 1.

Furthermore, the implied accusation in "And he did nothing" is invalid.

First of all, rationally speaking, what could Pound have done?

Second, is it not a little morally high-handed for those who sit comfortably
in a free and safe nation to condemn others for not risking their lives and
the lives of their families?

Third, doing 'nothing' is not always doing 'nothing'. In a dictatorship,
doing nothing to support government policy is one method of passive
resistence or rebellion.

For example, Crystal Night (Nov. 8, 1938): Goebbels and Himmler planned for
the SA to start the rioting and then expected the vast majority of Germans
to join in a spontaneous anti-Semtic outbreak. However, to their dismay, the
vast majority of Germans did nothing; they walked by.

Given the fact that the SA would have pulped or killed anyone trying to
defend a Jew, and given the fact of Sippenhaft, i.e. arrest for family
members for anti-Nazi 'crimes, walking by was a passive way of saying, 'I
want nothing to do with this. I don't agree'. That's exactly how Goebbels
and Himmler saw it, hence their documentable dismay.

Only in 20/20 hindsight has this general gesture of non-compliance with Nazi
anti-Semitism been presented as a sign of callousness or hatred - usually by
people who weren't there and don't have to walk their talk. I used to call
this the "Hollycaust" for my students, i.e. the Hollywood version of
the Holocaust.

Since Pound did not approve of pogroms against the small Jews, perhaps his
'doing nothing' was of the latter, passive resistent sort.

For reasons of close personal genealogy, I do not like Pound's
anti-Semitism. However, we must remember that all anti-Semitisms are not
qualitatively the same and do not have the same goals. I know of nothing in
Pound's writing that allows me to imagine him standing at Auschwitz and
expressing approval to Himmler or Eichmann.

Best wishes,

Ian Kluge






----- Original Message -----
From: "Billy Marshall Stoneking" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 12:15 AM
Subject: Re: pound in purgatory


> Ian's language game may be an example of a point of view well argued, but
Pound was not an ordinary citizen, nor did he have shortened antennae. He
knew. And he did nothing. Said nothing. Except to continue his attack on
"kikes", "yids", etc. in one of the more hateful incidences of ugly
intolerance ever seen from one who sought Elysium. This argument about Pound
and politics will never be put to rest, I can see that, but it feels more
and more like it isn't something that has anything to do with Pound anymore,
except that he is wheeled out periodically in a feint that would allow
others - our comtemps - to go on grinding their own precious axes. I s'pose
I cannot escape the charge of indulging my own axes in this missive, but
common sense and great poetry begin and end by calling a table a table and a
chair a chair. No more, no less.
>
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