beautifully argued Ian, thanks.  I don't think the victor propaganda any
longer elicits conviction, but only opportunism and the better part of
valor.
...and seems like we've got ourselves very far out on a very dishonest limb.





----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Kluge <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: pound in purgatory


> Usually I just enjoy listening in since I'm only a Pound amateur
>
> However, I must take issue with some of what Jonathan Gill says here about
> concentration camps, Germany and so on. Perhaps the problem is only one of
> wording, but if it is not, we have a serious lapse of understanding.
>
> First: Nazi concentration camps were not death-camps. The first
> concentration camp was set up in 1933, the first death-camp, almost a
decade
> later. Concentration camps (KZ's) were extremely harsh, brutal and so on,
> but large numbers of people could and did survive long periods of
> incarceration. Sentences to KZ's ranged between three months to
indefinite.
> For example, a Reich law punished public display of sympathy for a Jew
with
> up to six months in a KZ.
>
> Second: the first victims in the KZ's  were not Jews but communists,
> socialists, conservatives, labour leaders, some religious leaders and
anyone
> else deemed to be politically anti-Nazi.
>
> Third: the first large-scale round-up of Jews did not ocurr until Crystal
> Night in Nov. 1938 with an estimated 30,000 Jews being taken into custody
> and most sent
> to various concentration camps.
>
> Fourth: availability of news in the U.S. and Britain should not be
confused
> with such avialability in the Reich or its allies. Furthermore, passing on
> such news, or
> unpatriotic 'rumours' as the Reich called them, was punishable by KZ
> because sich actions were regarded as akin to sabotage and/or treason. The
> same may be said about being in possession of or passing on Allied
> pamphlets. Most people didn't pick them up, or simply glanced at them as
> they walked by.
>
> Why one would expect Pound or anyone else to believe such pamphlets - or
> trust the word of Italian anti-fascist partisans - puzzles me. Who
believes
> the enemy in time of war?
>
> Could the Holocaust have been a surprise to Pound? Certainly, as it was to
> many other Europeans, Germans included: they may have heard such rumours
or
> even read the pamphlets, but to discover such criminal madness was
actually
> real could - and did in fact - genuinely surprise many. It's all so
obvious
> only in hindsight.
>
> As the son one of the 300,000 odd German-Jewish marriages in Germany from
> that era, I have a certain vested interest in accuracy and fairness to all
> sides in this issue. Things were not as simple, clear or straight-forward
as
> many seem to think.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Ian Kluge
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jonathan P. Gill" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 9:41 AM
> Subject: pound in purgatory
>
>
> > Dear Poundians:
> >
> > I've just finished Leon Surette's latest work, Pound in Purgatory, and
> > I hope that it isn't too presumptuous of me to think that a few comments
> > might get some discussion going.
> >
> > As I might have predicted, this work is now essential reading for anyone
> > interested in the intellectual context in which Pound developed--it
would
> > take an expert on Pound's mysticism to confront Pound's economics! The
> > book is amazingly erudite and yet quite readable, especially when it
comes
> > to economic theory--clearly it will be the final word on Pound's
> > relationship to European economic traditions.
> >
> > I do, however, think that the book shortchanges the extent to which
Pound
> > was influenced by American ideas about money.  This may be because Leon
> > focuses on the post-World War I period.  But Pound was, contrary to what
> > Leon says, quite engaged with economics via Populism and his father's
work
> > much, much earlier.
> >
> > The same is true, I think, as regards Pound's anti-semitism, which Leon
> > sees as a phenomenon of the 1930s and after.  If we think about Pound's
> > anti-semitism not as an intellectual phenomenon, as Leon does, but
rather
> > as a form of passionate or even religious folly that reflects an
> > engagement with both real Jews and an imaginary "Jew," then we must be
> > interested in the 1890s.
> >
> > And one last thing: the notion that the Nazi genocide of the Jews came
as
> > a surprise to Pound in 1945, which Leon promotes, simply doesn't hold
up.
> > Detailed, accurate, and reliable reports of concentration camps were
> > available in mainstream American newspapers and radio reports throughout
> > the 1930s, and news of genocide came as early as 1941 in Yiddish
> > newspapers in America and then later that year in the New York Times.
> > The BBC reported in June of 1942 that 700,000 Jews had been murdered by
> > the Nazis, and news of systematic extermination was available in all of
> > the major American newspapers and wire services, as well as on the floor
> > of Congress.  In 1944, American, British, and Swiss newspapers offered
> > details of gas chambers at Auschwitz.  The news was also spread via
> > leaflets dropped in Italy by Allied planes.  Even if Pound discounted
all
> > of this as Allied propaganda, we ought to remember that spreading this
> > news was one of the major activities of Italy's anti-fascist
underground,
> > a movement that Pound was in touch with for much of the war.
> >
> > Apologies for the length of these remarks, but Leon's book, for which I
> > waited far too long to read, deserves detailed attention by the best
minds
> > we've got on this list--and some thorough discussion here.
> >
> > Jonathan Gill
> > Columbia University
> >