Jonathon Gill writes:
>
>but evidence of the possibility of the
> systematic destruction of the European Jews was there for him to
> disbelieve or ignore--it's right there in his own rhetoric!
>

From a strict historical point of view, there is no point prior to the fall
of 1941 where *anyone* could have produced evidence pointing to the
systematic [physical] destruction of the Jewish population in Europe.

As Christopher Browning among others has documented, Hitler himself did not
make that decision until the fall of 1941. (See Browning, "The Fateful
Months") and did not announce it in the *secret* Wannsee Conference on
January 20, 1942. It is unlikely that Pound knew of it.

The severe, often brutal, restrictions on Jewish life in the Reich show
callousness, hatred and utterly immoral disregard, but that is still not the
same as actively and systematically engaging in the slaughter of an entire
population down to infants.

The Nuremburg Laws (1935) and even the Wannsee Protocols (1942) show a
certain ambivalence insofar as they make a surprising number of exceptions
in regards, for example, to Jews married to Germans (my father was German)
to first and second degree Mischlinge and the variety of circumstances in
which these might or might not be arrested and deported.

Why do people find it so difficult to understand that at the time, and
despite horrible circumstances, the Holocaust was unimaginable to virtually
everyone.

I have known dozens of survivors both in Europe and in Canada, and I have
never heard even one claim that such a thing could have been foreseen, at
least in civilized Europe. When I brought up the matter of the Armenians and
Turks, repsonses tended to be along the line of "Well, yes, one could
believe such things about Turks, easterners out there ... Muslims ...
barbarians ... but not Germans."

We simply can't read our knowledge back into writings from that time; we can
only legitimize doing so with clear and unequivocal evidence.

So far, I have seen no evidence presented here that would last more than a
minute or two in a court. It's all so vague, and has to be filled up with
retro-active knowledge to mean anything.

If someone has some real, hard evidence, let him or her please present it.

Otherwise, we must either settle on a verdict of "not guilty" for lack of
substantial evidence, or, at most, the Scottish verdict of " Not proven".

None of this makes Pound's anti-Semitism palatable.

Best wishes,

Ian Kluge