The magnificent thirteen led by a missionary


Andrzej Koraszewski 2020-11-20

Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff (in the blue shirt) and mysterious European diplomats. Behind them a group of protesters with a banner stating: “European Union: your money killed Rina Shnerb R.I.P.”

Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff (in the blue shirt) and mysterious European diplomats. Behind them a group of protesters with a banner stating: “European Union: your money killed Rina Shnerb R.I.P.”



Nobody is responsible for the sins of their forefathers, but it’s worth saying to those who are cultivating these sins that we notice them. The issue of family ties is not always clear either, so I may be exposing myself to the accusation of imputing too close a kinship. The American-Israeli writer, Tuvia Tenenbom, noted that many Germans, in their desire to atone for the sins of their ancestors against the Jews, devote their lives to compassion for Palestinians, who are victims of Jews, who allegedly do to them exactly what Nazi did to Jews. He noticed this phenomenon first in Germany where he pretended to be German, and then when he toured Israel and the Palestinian territories as a German journalist and talked with, among others, German activists. He managed this feat because, in spite of living for many years now in the US, he was born in a family of German Jews in Israel; in German he speaks like a German, in Hebrew he speaks like an Israeli because he was born and raised in Israel (he also speaks Arabic, so sometimes he lied that his father was a Jordanian), and he looks like a Munich regular at the local beer halls.

An interesting example of this type of atonement for the sins of the ancestors may be the case of Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff. He is a German diplomat heading the European Mission in Palestine. Burgsdorff is not only the head of the Mission but he definitely has his own mission. This missionary is not known for his critique of the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas. It’s difficult to find in his activities any trace of criticizing Hamas for the constant shelling of Israeli towns and villages, for the constant torching of Israeli fields and forests, for planting stocks of weapons in civilian buildings, for sending children to attempt terrorist attacks, nor for child abuse by forcing military training on children. It’s difficult to find among the actions of this missionary any critique of the rulers of the Palestinian Authority for harassing their political opponents and for tortures in the Palestinian prisons, for corruption and embezzlement of financial aid from the European Union, for incitement to terror, or for curricula teaching hatred.   


Recently Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff became famous for his clear and decisive statement that the European Union will continue paying awards with the EU’s money to Palestinian terrorists for killing or attempting to kill Israeli civilians.   


When the EU authorities, after protests for years, initiated a modest attempt to stop financing Palestinian terror, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff quickly explained:

"While the entities and groups included in the EU restrictive lists cannot benefit from EU-funded activities, it is understood that a natural person affiliated to, sympathizing with, or supporting any of the groups mentioned in the EU restrictive lists is not excluded from benefiting from EU-funded activities, unless his/her exact name and surname… corresponds to any of the natural persons on the EU restrictive lists".

This story described by, among others, Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian journalist living in Israel, who often criticizes the attitude of the Palestinian rulers to Palestinian society, also shows the very peculiar character of the Palestinian fight for peace.

 

16 November Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff again got media attention by appearing, apparently as a head of 13 other diplomats in a southeastern neighborhood of Jerusalem, Givat HaMatos, to protest against the building of 1257 flats.

 

The UN also protested through the mouth of Nikolay Mladenov, the European Union in the person of Commissar Josep Borrell himself, and diverse Jewish organizations. On the spot, however, was Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff and “other diplomats”. These other diplomats are very mysterious. There is no way to identify their names, ranks, or the countries they represent. All reports give only the name of the German aristocrat with his long tradition of fighting on every occasion not only against the building of flats but also against Israel.      


The BBC reported about the case:

“The United Nations and European Union have criticised an Israeli plan to build 1,250 homes for Jewish settlers on the edge of occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel has invited bids for the construction in the Givat Hamatos area.

A UN envoy warned it would damage prospects for a future contiguous Palestinian state.”

“On the edge”, or inside the Green Line, i.e. on the territories the Arab Legion managed to conquer and to cleanse of Jews in 1948.



Standing there in Givat HaMatos, as a leader of mysterious, pandemically masked alleged diplomats, von Burgsdorff said that the planned settlement expansion “gives some observers the impression” that Israel is trying to create “facts on the ground” before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January.

“It’s very important to demonstrate unity in the international community that any such project, any such construction, which is illegal under international law, cannot go forward.”

Both he and other representatives of the European Union argue that this residential area may hinder communication between Bethlehem and East Jerusalem, which they insist must be the capital of the State of Palestine.


Personally, I do not suspect that this German aristocrat was ever interested in the history of the conquest and Arabization of East Jerusalem. If I were to give him advice about where to start, I would recommend the book by an American journalist of Armenian origin who (pretending to be an American Nazi) accompanied as a photographer Egyptian volunteers from the Muslim Brotherhood. John Roy Carlson (real name: Avedis Boghos Derounian) described the battle for Jerusalem in his book, Cairo to Damascus, which was first published in the United States in 1951. Carlson wrote: 

Victors and vultures hovered around the periphery of the Jewish Old City, now being battered mercilessly by the Arab Legion. Abdullah El Tal promised a merciful surrender, but he was savage in bringing it about. There was no way to “peace” except through war because the Jews refused to surrender. The Legion guns were firing point-blank at targets from fifty to two hundred yards away. I got as close as I dared. As each building was battered, and the defenders pushed back, sappers would advance and blow the works. House by house the Jews were being pushed into the heart of their ghetto. This has been going on day and night and was now in its tenth day.

 

There certainly were enough Arabs – hundreds of Arab Legion soldiers milling around in British khaki and khaffiyas. They were uniformly young and looked like a genuine fighting army. They were all heavily armed, and ammunition was being brought up constantly in boxes with English markings. There was shortage neither of men nor armaments.


I got permission from a junior officer to visit the defenses on Zion Gate. One of the massive portals hung crazily from one set of hinges, the other was blown off. The passageway about twenty feet wide and thirty feet high, was now packed tight with barbed wire, rails, and rocks. Above it the walls were manned heavily by Legion troops. Here, also, I found a concentration of several British deserters, fighting with Arabs. Immediately besides the Gate three heavy British armored cars lay in waiting for the Palmach. The Jews would certainly get a scorching reception if they tried another break through.  

[...]

Sitting in a classroom chair behind a desk was the commander of the Zion Gate Front, Captain Mahmoud Bey Mousa. [...] Through an interpreter I reported my name and profession, and asked his permission to stay for the surrender.  


“I think the negotiations will begin tomorrow morning”, Mahmoud Bey said.


He was sitting literally on the proverbial keg of gunpowder, for stacked behind and all around him, under his bed near by, and all the way to the further end of the basement, which was being used as an emergency hospital, were cases upon cases of ammunition with the usual markings of His Majesty’s Army. I squeezed my bag between cases of ammunition under his bed and then went to the top floor of the school to take photographs of the Jewish quarter. They were to prove of historic value, for less than forty-eight hours later the ghetto was reduced to ruin and ruble.  

Maybe I’m unfair to the German aristocrat for suspecting that he was never interested in the history of the conquest and de-Judaization of East Jerusalem nor other territories on which he is carrying out his mission. I do not rule out, however, that he knows the memoir, written in a prison on Montelupiuch Street in Kraków by Kurt Ludwig Ehrenreich von Burgsdorff. He was a German aristocrat, born in1886, with a PhD in law, a Knight of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes). From December 1, 1943, to January 17, 1945, he was a governor of the Kraków district in the General Government (Gouverneur des Distrikts Krakau im Generalgouvernement). At the same time he was the head of the party organization of the NSDAP in the Kraków district.

 

In his memoirs, clearly written with the thought that it would be read by Polish judges, Kurt Ludwig Ehrenreich von Burgsdorff wrote:

“I firmly deny specifically: taking part in maltreatment or premeditated killing of civil and military persons and of prisoners of war, as well as arrests detrimental for persons persecuted for the political, national, religious or racist reason. On the other hand I admit that from November 1943 to the middle of January 1945 I was serving as temporary governor for Kraków district and as NSDAP leader in Kraków. I carried out my duties according to my knowledge and conviction, in the spirit of agreement between the two nations, as I did previously on boards and individually. Therefore, I do not feel guilty and the appraisal of my actions I leave to the Polish high court. I deeply believe that I will find fair judges”.

He gives a fascinating motivation for his joining the Nazi movement as early as 1933: 

“I joined the Party on May 1, 1933, in spite of my serious reservations concerning principles and religious issues, in the first place because I was impressed by the social program of NSDAP, but mainly because I didn’t want to lose my post as a governor (Regierungsprasident) encouraged by [Kurt Walter] Dönicke – my district chairman in Leipzig. (…) I was emotionally attached to this post because it was held by both my father and my grandfather, and his mother was from Leipzig”.

It seems that Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff is also attached to his post and he probably has the same hope that he will get a fair appraisal. For now he is judged by other European diplomats and by the European media, and they all are full of admiration. So many ancestors of today’s European diplomats and journalist were shouting in the past:

Żydzi do Palestyny

Juden nach Palästina

Joden naar Palestina

Juifs à la Palestine

Judíos a Palestina

®idia do Palestíny

Ebrei in Palestina

Judar till Palestina

Zsidók Palesztinába

 

Today they prattle joyfully “Never again” and at the same time they support not so much the “Palestinian cause” (because the few Palestinians who can talk without fear are saying that they want peace with Israel), as the cause of those who openly seek to create a Palestine “from the River to the Sea”.       


Jews in Europe were being murdered for two thousand years. The Shoah, perpetrated by Nazis, cleansed the continent of its Jewish inhabitants. During the war, out of almost ten million, 63 percent of the Jewish population perished. After the war, everybody who could was seeking a rescue in Palestine or in the US. In subsequent decades the Jewish minority dwindled further, and today on the European continent there exist some 1.3 million people of Jewish origin.  Arab countries were even more efficient.


Update:


After persistent efforts we managed to find the information about these mysterious "diplomats” who accompanied the German aristocrat. As a credible source tells us, they were the representatives of missions to the Palestinian territories from: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. Austria, Denmark and Finland and the Netherlands sent their Head of Mission, the rest of the countries sent their deputy mission heads.


Representation of the Republic of Poland to the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah, (this is the official name of the Polish mission) is headed by Przemysław Czyż. Their official website does not encourage any contacts, but for consular matters it directs you to the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv; any diplomatic activity is not visible.    


Translation: Małgorzata Koraszewska and Sarah Lawson