PEDRO VARELA ON ANNA FRANK
INTRODUCTION:
On October 16, 1998 -- the same date as the hangings at Nuremberg -- Pedro Varela, a book seller, went on trial
in Barcelona, Spain, for doubting the authenticity of the diary of Ann Frank
(penalty demanded: 24 years imprisonment; sentence passed: 5 years). There is
no censorship in Spain, and no list of prohibited books. On the very same day,
a convicted rapist and incurable psychopath who had been sentenced to 495 years
imprisonment [!] was released after only 14 years, on the grounds that he had
played football and helped in the prison kitchen [!]. The rapist had
consistently refused to express any remorse or participate in any sort of
psychiatric treatment. He was known to be incurable. It was admitted by his
psychiatrists that the only hope was that his sexual impulses would diminish
with age (at the time of his release he was in his late 30s). His terrified
victims were simply told by the police simply to change their residence for a
few days. At his trial, Varela was told that his "right" to
"freedom of expression" "stopped" where the "rights of
others began" (i.e., the "right" of Jews and homosexuals to be
"offended" by his opinions). And, obviously, the "rights"
of the rape victims stopped where the rapist's "right" to be released
from prison began. [see footnote*] To the Jews, abstract principles and laws are like toilet
paper: they are invented for a dirty job, used once, and thrown away. The
following is an excerpt from the text for which, in large part, Varela was indicted
and convicted:]
"…It is important to note that the possible sufferings of a 14 year-old Jewish girl, in wartime, are rendered no more significant than the sufferings -- just as terrible or even more so -- of any other Jewish children, by the mere "fact" that she may have written a "diary". Nor are they rendered any more significant than the sufferings of infinitely more numerous German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian children -- not to mention children of other nationalities as well -- who suffered horribly for a wide variety of other reasons during that same war: blown to pieces or burnt alive by the millions, mutilated or disabled for life by the mass bombings of open German cities conducted by the Allies; abandoned in the midst of chaos as the result of the death or disappearance of their parents; raped or depraved by the barbarism of large proportions of the enemy troops. During the true German "Holocaust" of Würzburg alone, a city turned to ashes during the night of 16 March 1945, during the last few days of the war, more than 5,000 persons were burned alive. The victims included MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED YOUNG GIRLS OR WOMEN NAMED ANNA [Source: Die Bauernschaft, June 1995].
"But who cares about this kind of total horror suffered by non-Jews? Who weeps for the German children at Dresden, who ran screaming, enveloped in the inextinguishable fire of liquid phosphorous, together with 250,000 other civilians, mainly women and children? Who weeps for the German children repeatedly raped by beasts inflamed by the Soviet Jew Ilhya Ehreburg? Who writes lacrymogenous novels for the no less real -- and no less innocent -- Japanese children of Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Who weeps for children the same age as Anna Frank, massacred at Paracuellos del Jarama [site of famous massacre by Communists during the Spanish Civil War], for whom not even one single street has ever even been named, even in their own country? No one. For these victims, there are no "best sellers". For them, there are no "docudramas", no fiftieth-year editions, no movies, plays, no saturation TV broadcasting, no propaganda campaigns in their name, no petitions, no mobilization of the system political parties and their members of parliament. For them, there are no public demonstrations fifty years later; nor does anyone remember them by changing the name of one single street, no matter how short or insignificant. Why? Is it because they have no lobby to turn human suffering into an unprecedented shakedown scheme? Is it because they lack the convenient orchestration of the "mass media" which uses suffering as a political weapon, intended to accomplish the moral paralysis of all those who denounce such hypocrisy? Or should be we be a bit more audacious, and simply say it is because these victims were not JEWISH?"
Originally published in CARTAS, EL MITO DE ANA FRANK, Autumn-Winter 1996.
Translation and introduction by Carlos Porter, emphasis added.
Return to ARTICLES PAGE
Return to CONTENTS PAGE