The life of a Swiss banker and fascist anti-Imperialist.

François Genoud was born in 1915 in Lausanne, in the french-speaking part of Switzerland. In his teens he became an admirer of Adolf Hitler, met the future “Führer” in person in 1932, and remained a staunch National-Socialist until his death in 1996.
In 1936 this was amended with another life long committment: to Arab nationalism, when he and a friend traveled to the middle east and met many leaders of the Palestinian national movement then exiled in Iraq, and in Jerusalem most importantly the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, himself not only the historic leader of Palestinian nationalism, but also a close ally of Nazi-Germany.

Genoud, back in Switzerland, opened a milkbar named Oasis in his hometown, which apparently became a meeting point for Axis agents (in some literature the Oasis is referred to as a “nightclub”).
He was already a member of the National Front, the most prominent of the fascist movements in Switzerland, which was oriented towards German National-Socialism (other fascist groups in Switzerland, especially in the French speaking west, tended to be more oriented towards Mussolini’s Italian fascism). In the years from 1933-38 the swiss fascists seemed to be growing in popularity, although they remained marginal compared to the success of the fascist movements in most other European countries at the time. Popular support for the NF collapsed more or less with the “Anschluss” of Austria in 1938.
Many Frontists - such as Genoud - became direct supporters of the German “Reich” then and moved to Germany to offer their services for the National-Socialist cause.
In 1941 he met again with al-Husseini who was setting up headquarters in Berlin to coordinate the formation of the muslim SS-brigade in Bosnia, as well as the anti-British and anti-Zionist activities of Arab insurgents in Palestine, consistently lobbying Berlin not to allow Jews to escape to Palestine, but to murder them instead.
Not that the Germans weren’t doing that already, but there is at least one case where Himmler was prepared - as a propaganda coup - to exchange 5’000 Jewish children for 20’000 German POW’s. Al-Husseinis incessant lobbying made sure that this “deal” fell through and the children were sent to the gas chambers instead.
Genoud and al-Husseini remained friends until the latters death in 1974.

Another life-long friendship was starting in the same year: with Paul Dickopf.
Dickopf was a SS-officer and became Genoud’s contact at the Stuttgart office of the Abwehr (Intelligence Agency). After the war, Dickopf claimed he had deserted in 1942 and had gone into hiding in Switzerland - at Genoud’s place. In reality he only “disappeared” in 1944 and indeed stayed with Genoud in Lausanne. That Genoud was a fanatical Nazi is only one of the facts that make Dickopf’s story lack credibility. It’s true that he started working for both the Swiss and the Americans (via Allen Dulles’ OSS office in Bern), but it’s almost certain that simultaneously he still worked for Germany - a triple agent, something he managed to obscure after the war, when he was making a steep and rapid career in the Federal police of West Germany, becoming the chief of the BKA (the German equivalent of the FBI) in 1965, and in addition to that head of Interpol in 1968.
It is said that he was partly elected to this post thanks to his friend François Genoud’s good connections to the Arab countries.
In 1971 he was deposed under allegations of incompetence, but he had certainly proved to be able to place a staggering number of former Nazi agents in the BKA.
Besides this it is noticeable that under Dickopf’s leadership Interpol essentially refused to deal with the emerging modern terrorism (hijackings of planes, Munich), claiming these were “political” and not criminal deeds.

But back in time:
The Mufti of Jerusalem escaped from Berlin in the last days of the “Reich” and tried to make his way into Switzerland. The Swiss arrested him and deported him to France where he was put under house arrest. Yugoslavia was seeking extradition for his involvement in war crimes comitted by the Bosnian SS brigade he had helped set up. Al-Husseini however managed to escape to Egypt.
He wasn’t the only war criminal who was seeking refuge there, the country became - not dissimilar to Peron’s Argentina - a safe haven for active Nazis, allowing them to continue their struggle.

Genoud in the meantime had kept himself busy moving Nazi money into safe Swiss accounts and also helping Nazis escape to the Middle East or South America.
Soon after he made his first steps in a new direction: Publishing.
His first coup was when he got his hands on the Martin Bormann archives which contain the transcripts of Hitler’s “table talks”. Later he secured literary rights to them, making a deal with Hitler’s sister, and the literary estate of Goebbels, which thanks to the diaries would make Genoud a fortune in the coming decades.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the statehood of Israel in Tel Aviv. The next day the troops of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq attacked Israel. Abd ar-Rahman Assam, secretary general of the Arab League declared:”This war will be a war to extermination and lead to a terrible massacre.” This makes it clear that the Israeli defense was not only for the statehood of Israel but for the very lives of the Jews living in Palestine.
The Mufti did whatever he could to contribute to the success of this massacre, by lobbying in Egypt, setting up a “Holy War Army” and later an “All-Palestine Government” in Gaza (then a part of Egypt).

In 1952 the “Free Officers” under Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muhammad Naguib took power in Egypt by way of a coup. Early on a number of Nazi exiles were among the advisors for the Free Officers. Active Nazi involvement in the 50’s is estimated several hundred strong.
After the king was deposed, Egypt also became a safe place for the Algerian anti-colonial struggle, in which François Genoud took part in a particular way, mainly through the foundation of the “Arab Commercial Bank” in 1958 which started playing a considerable role in trade with Middle Eastern countries and served as the conduit for arms acquisitions by the Algerian FLN.
Hjalmar Schacht, once Hitler’s finance minister and now a banker and financial advisor for governments and businesses from Syria to Indonesia, was consulted in the process of setting up the bank and declared in one meeting: “Germany can conquer the world without waging war”.

In 1960 a setback happened for Genoud: First Paula Hitler died without signing the contract that would have given him the rights for all of Hitlers works. A year later Adolf Eichmann was found in Argenitina and taken to Israel by a Mossad commando. Genoud was financing the defense.
In the same year there was the conference of Evian which brought an end to the war and lead to independence of Algeria and the freeing of the jailed leaders of the FLN.
After independence François Genoud was at the heart of power of the new state.

Soon there were cracks in the unity of the FLN leadership, at first with Ahmed Ben Bella, Boumedienne, Khider on the one, and Belkassim Krim and Mohammed Boudiaf on the other side. But it only took months until cracks between Ben Bella and Khider started appearing.
Mohammed Khider - one of the historic leaders and its Secretary General - was concentrating the warchest of the FLN in the Arab Commercial Bank. A total of nearly 42m Swiss Francs was deposited in numbered accounts.
As Genoud was covering for Khider he soon lost his privileges in Algeria and even spent a few months in prison there. Khider himself was assassinated by Algerian agents in Madrid in 1967.

After independence, Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Fatah (and a remote relative of al-Husseini), asked the new Algerian leadership to open an office for his movement. Under the auspices of Abu Jihad (Chalil al-Wazir) it iwas through this “embassy” that contacts to the Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam, North Korea and other countries were established and leaders like Che Guevara were received as guests.
Arafat was developing a “Chinese option” of guerilla warfare against Israel, a development that was seen with critical eyes by the Egyptians who saw their influence on Palestinian Nationalism vane, but who also understood that the guerilla option was not a promising one in a country like Israel where there were no remote areas for retreat as they existed in countries like Algeria or Vietnam.

Not surprisingly, François Genoud soon made contact with members of the new generation of exponents of Palestinian nationalism. The closest relation he struck was with the supposedly “left wing” PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), becoming a good friend of Waddi Haddad, one of its historic leaders.
Palestinian nationalism started having a great attraction towards young Europeans who projected their respective ideas of the “people’s war” onto it. Among the first who were trained by the PFLP in their guerilla camps in Jordan were Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the founders of the Red Army Faction.
The first European casualty was the neo-Nazi Roger Coudray who died as a member of Fatah.
Neither the PFLP nor Fatah had problems associating with old and new Nazis, or members of the “New Left” at the same time. Fatah sent two observers to a congress of an ultra-racist organisation called the New European Order, headed by the notorious Swiss Nazi and holocaust denier Gaston-Armand Amaudruz. This of course was in the same year - 1969 - that the German SDS (left wing student organisation) sent a delegation to the PLO congress to Algier to express their comittment to the “Endsieg” of the Palestinians against Israel. One of the German delegates was Josef (“Joschka”) Fischer, who would later become German Foreign minister (and as one could argue, kept up his support for armed nationalist rackets by intervening on the side of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” in Yugoslavia in the late 90’s).

1968 was the year that the PFLP started its campaigns of plane hijackings, which reached a peak in 1970.
This was the year when Genoud met a new young recruit to the Palestinian cause, the Venezuelan Illich Ramirez Sanchez, who would later be known as Carlos and rise to notoriety for the kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers.

His involvement with Palestinian terror groups didn’t keep Genoud from pursueing his career as a publisher of the Goebbels diaries and other Nazi literature. Often there were problems that were fought out in courts, but he usually came out on top and made a fortune with it.

The courts were also a platform for Genouds struggle to help all kinds of Nazis and Anti-Semites. After already orchestrating the legal defense of Adolf Eichmann, he did the same for the Palestinian commando that attacked an Israeli air plane on Zürich airport, for Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon”, and for Carlos, often in collaboration with Jacques Vergès, a prominent figure in France oscillating between anti-imperialism and anti-Semitism.

In the meantime the attempts of the Algerian government to regain the “treasure of the FLN” cost more lives, and was also battled out in courts. Years later there was finally a settlement, whereby the BCA became a part of the Algerian banking system. However a measly 2,5m Swiss Francs were left of the “treasure” by then.

Genoud’s life remained action packed and his comittment to the Nazi cause never faltered.
He was believed by Swiss authorities to have been the founder of Lugano-based al Taqwa Bank, which was shut down in 2002 for reputed status as a funding conduit for al Qaeda and Hamas.

On May 30th, 1996 Genoud committed suicide, with the help of the Swiss pro-euthanasia group Exit, a short time after Jewish leaders and Swiss banking officials announced an unprecedented agreement to set up a commission to examine secret bank and government files to search for funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims.
To what degree this inquiry would have touched on his activities and transactions will remain unknown. A master of secrecy he managed to stay in the shadows.

Main source:
Karl Laske: Ein Leben zwischen Hitler und Carlos: François Genoud, Limmat Verlag, Zürich 1996
German translation of: Le banquier noir. François Genoud, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1996

Datacide Author: Christoph Fringeli

Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism

Terminal 119

[January 2009]



A week ago we wrote a text with the title “Is Anti-Semitism going to achieve what truncheons did not?”, noting that an evident anti-Semitism had started being manifested in various places within the country, hidden behind the anti-Zionist veil of opposition to the bombardments in Gaza. Our main concern in that text was to prevent any kind anti-Semitic outburst in Greece, something that would wash out any right attempts with a direction towards ‘inside’ (the creation of the ‘domestic enemy’), caused by December’s riot 2008 against the Greek state’s structures. While writing that text we could not imagine that we would soon face such a direct realization of the text’s title, something that happened three days ago in front of Larisa’s synagogue, during a rally. While a large group of riot police was standing at one side of the synagogue holding their truncheons, at the other side there was a battle taking place between some people who wanted to remove the Star of David from the synagogue’s entrance and those who wanted to protect it. Indeed, at this specific moment there was no external suppression. The problem was within the rally.

But let’s see things from the beginning: on the 17th of January 2009, a rally of 2,000 people took place in Larisa, expressing their solidarity with those that had been detained during December’s riot and their opposition to the anti-terrorist law, with which 19 people are being persecuted for their participation in the events in Larisa. This rally was partially the first implementation of the slogan that has been widely heard in many cities: “Let’s take back our prisoners!”

The amok
The moment, however, that the rally reached the square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Occupation, on which the monument of the Holocaust of the Greek Jews of Larisa is located and around which the synagogue, the Jewish school and the offices of the Israelite Community of Larisa are, near Palestine street, some revolutionaries from the anarchist part of the demonstration went into an Anti-Semitic frenzy.

It is worth noting that since the beginning of the demonstration some Palestinian flags had appeared in the anarchist bloc, waving next to the black and red ones, indicating some comrades’ selective tolerance towards the flags of only some nations and states.

Although the Palestinians that tried to hang the Palestinian flags on the monument of the Holocaust showed considerable understanding and were persuaded within a minute not to do something like that, some Greek anarchists were straight tried to hang their flags on the monument using screams and bullying. This is the renowned “solidarity with the Palestinian people” and the celebrated “solidarity with the intifada” we have been hearing about for so long! Greek anti-Semites and paranoids try to sharpen the situation and bring about fanaticism in order to provide their—supposed—help to the struggle of Palestinians, the best mean for which proved to be the desecration of the monument of the Holocaust!

Exactly the same moment, the two cameras placed outside the Community’s offices for the Synagogues security were broken and a lot of people gathered and started swearing at the cops that were at the alley where the entrance of the synagogue is. Although these moves had as a target the representatives of ‘order’ and the gear of surveillance, none was prevented from making comments such as “there are guarding the Jews”…and the slogan “dogs, guard your masters” that was suddenly shouted acquired a new flavor…since the cops at that moment were standing in front of the synagogue, a newsstand and a kebab place. We do not believe that the slogan implied that the cops’ masters are the owners of the newsstand or the kebab shop.

The last and worst incident happens in front of the old entrance of the synagogue, where, while the rally was moving, a group of anarchist revolutionaries helped by two Palestinians (you know, those used as excuse for any type of anti-Semitic action…) decide to rip away the Star of David from the entrance. From somewhere at the back someone was shouting “destroy it”, “burn it” and other similar…revolutionary calls.

The reaction
Before any destructive actions took place, comrades from various collectives, as well as immigrants that were participating in the rally, spontaneously stood in front of the synagogue’s entrance in order to protect it, while other comrades started quarreling with the anti-Semites, pushing and yelling to each other. The fact that some comrades were shouting to the aggressors that they are “nationalists” and “Fascists” caused a feeling of perplexity which could not be thought over by the wrathful revolutionaries. They, therefore, turned this perplexity into questions like: “who are those guarding the door? Are they Jews?”. While some of them had already raised their flags to destroy the Star of David sensing that something weird was happening—namely, that some of the people participating in the protest started protecting the star—and admitting their immature level of thought, started asking us holding their shafts questions like “explain to me, I don’t know, I want to know the reason why I should not rip it away…”, etc. These ‘beautiful moments’ ended soon, since the star was not ripped away and the rally moved towards its end.


This unity describing the broad ‘antizionist’ trend in Greece shows clearly who benefits from this. It is something that not only has to raise discussions and thoughts, but also needs to be condemned and treated without any prevarications. A collective memory that ‘forgets’ what fascism was and spots ‘fascisms’ everywhere has as a result the relativization of the old crimes. Today’s supposedly revolutionary memory that overlooks the character of the war it enters, leads to the destruction of the total historical memory and, indirectly, to reactionary and racist paths. When the targets and the slogans of some people, whoever they are, get identical with those of neo-Nazis, something peculiar is going on.

Whoever pretends not to understand the differences between the state of Israel and the monuments dedicated to greek Jews in memory of their annihilation by the Nazis of Hitler is dangerous. 86% of the greek Jewry, around 60,000 people, were exterminated by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945. These monuments are devoted to these victims, the victims of German fascism and anti-Semitism. Whoever does not accept this denies a priori the extermination itself or desecrates the memory of the genocide, by implying that the victims are responsible for things that are totally irrelevant. They continue in this way connecting the choices of the state of Israel with the greek-jewish communities (as the Communist Party also did in 2006 during the war between Hezbollah and Israel) and do the very job of fascists! With the veil of antizionism (that attacks whoever is considered a “Zionist”) and the blessings of a part of the greek Left and some radicals, it seems there is something emerging now that will end up out of control. It is our responsibility to realize it and stop it.

Whoever begins his supposed anti-religious campaigns (against someone else’s religion and not his own) today, that the limits between antizionism and anti-Semitism become socially more and more indistinguishable, proves proves to be, if not an anti-Semite, at least a useful idiot of anti-Semitism. Whoever gets involved in such things simply provides an additional argument of left origin to fascists themselves. What do we mean by that? That neonazis, not being justified to use their old kind, hitlerist, biological anti-Semitism anymore, they nowadays promote their anti-Semitism through the three central and very successful—in terms of camouflaging hatred—arguments of the Left: the anti-capitalist one (“I love Jews but I hate their companies and banks”), the anti-zionist one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish state”) and the anti-religious one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish religion”). Through these three arguments, anyone can say and act as he likes by replacing the word “jew” with the word “zionist”. In this way, from Mihaloliakos to Papariga and from Plevris to Alavanos, everyone speaks the same solid language without any obstacles.i

Finally, we have to say that we condemn this desecration in the city of Larissa, as well as the one in the jewish cemetery in Ioannina, as despicable anti-Semitic actions. We call everyone who still remains anti-fascist to resist against this kind of actions and stand by all those threatened by anti-Semitic attacks. We call all groups and organizations to take a strong stance about the latest wave of anti-Semitism in Greece that during these days has been directed against jewish buildings and monuments, and to isolate all those expressing anti-Semitic hatred and ideas.

Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism!
Against any kind of anti-Semitism!
Solidarity with the Jewish Communities!


Terminal 119
For social and individual autonomy
21/01/09


Ps. many comrades the last few days and after our previous text (which we wrote together with Café Morgenland) asked us to take a stance against Israel because of the war break in Gaza during January between Hamas and Israel. We have to respond publicly to this request, by saying that the conflict in Gaza has nothing to do with greek anti-Semitism. What we were discussing in our previous text is greek anti-Semitism and not “Gaza”. These are two different issues. Secondly, the conflict in Gaza is not for us the only conflict taking place today in the whole world—and it is certainly not the most tragic one—so we cannot understand why we have to take a selective stance about this conflict only, while no other greek anarchist group, leftist group or Media doesn’t even say a word about, for example, the genocide in Sudan, the dead Arabs of Iraq or the dozens of conflicts that the local media constantly refuse to televise. We should also squarely state that we refuse to criticize Israel in any way. And that’s because Israel receives a mainly anti-Semitic criticism from its very first appearance as a state (see our analysis about anti-Semitism—in Greek—in our first and second issue and in many of our texts). Finally, we have to say that, being loyal followers of the old political slogan “Our enemy is here!” (Karl Liebkneht), we choose without hesitations and second thoughts to primarily criticize greek society and the greek state, the destruction of which we desire. The task of criticizing the Israeli state has been already undertaken by our comrades inside Israel and we are happy to send them, once more, all our revolutionary greetings! Of course our comrades in Israel always try to persuade us that the Israeli state is the worst of all states, but we always respond that they are mistaken, probably because they have not visited Greece yet…

Will anti-Semitism succeed where the repression didn’t?

Cafe Morgenland & Terminal 119

[January / 2009]

Will anti-Semitism succeed where the repression didn’t?

«For every known or unknown person whom we want or are forced to form an opinion of, we constantly and consistently make the same, stereotypical and set question: How would he or she react, how would this or the other collective or social group react if Auschwitz or something proportional would be repeated? The answer to this question is the dominant, the absolute and the decisive criterion by which we count and esteem the individuals and the groups, their actions and their behavior».

In 31.12.2008, a “revolutionary” attack took place against the Jewish synagogue in Volos (the older one was blown up by the Germans in 1943). The attack consisted of writing some threatening slogansⁱ on the synagogue walls (elsewhere, they call it desecration or sacrilege). This act of disgraceful anti-Semitism, consists of another attempt at changing the direction in the radical scene (the first occurred at Athens Indymedia which, “for the Greek lords’ favour”, rapidly left behind the theme of the December riots in Greece so as to promote the Middle East issue with its all necessary reflexives and accesoires).

Because, of course, it is very convenient, after seeing in Greece an outburst, a rebellion, that at last, looking “inside,” found the enemy in the Greek state, and all the shit of Greek society, clearly attacked the local putrescence and conservatism… where even social de-alienation (“p l i a t s i k o” as it was called in a pejorative term) started to blossom in mid-Winter… now, to have those that that will start to burn American flags, those that will speak against the Jews about the international financial crisis and the war, those that will target synagogues, those that will care to “drake” the rebellion’s violence to targets (read here the embassies of Israel and USA) more compatible with local nationalism and the old, pure patriotic feelings that we have got used to blessing in every revolutionary-patriotic anniversary. Thus, it is very convenient when the structures that this rebellion left behind, go on to insinuate themselves using all possible connections among the immigrants and the workers that receive murder attacks with acid, like the immigrant syndicalist Konstantina Kouneva, and when, in solidarity to Kouneva, demonstrators attack and injure cops in response, in Piraeus and elsewhere. It is very convenient when someone wants to mislead us from the solidarity to the dozens of arrested immigrant rebels that this repression left behind, it is very convenient when over 50 Albanian and Arab immigrants have been put in jail for 18 months in Athens alone, and will be deported. It is very convenient when the Riot Police are tired to death by the thousands of rioters and when the para-militaries and indignant Greek citizens and fascists take their guns out and shoot people. It is precisely this moment, now, that it seems that anti-Semitism, always in the form of anti-Zionism, manages to repress whatever the cops “magic weapons”ⁱⁱ didn’t succeed in repressing…

At this definitive point, it is a fact that such actions can have only one goal and one result, namely to gather people once again around the Greek national pole, either for anti-imperialist or for humanist reasons, where, of course, one can make distinctions between these two. Thus, they try in this manner to bury one of the slogans shouted during the December riot: “Righteous are the rebels, national unity with blood is stained!”

Until now, the communist party of Greece was the “usual suspect” for such actions (desecration of the Holocaust memorial, mob gatherings by “communists” and other good citizens outside the offices of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, screaming anti-Semitic chants against the Greek Jews in 2006, etc.), not to mention the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn and all the remaining democratic powers, each one of them, of course, for their very own political reasons. Now, another group took over, with the signature of “AK” (in Volos). What is strange about this last action is that there is no “AK Volos” group, as far as we knowⁱⁱⁱ, while it is definitive of this period that we live in, that we can’t distinguish which actions were carried out by neo-nazis and which ones by others. The only thing for certain is that not a few people from the “scene” cheered the action in Indymedia (and in “Stohos”, a greek nationalist newspaper). We say this without, of course, trying to lessen the value of many people’s opposition to the above “revolutionary” action.

The threat of their “intervention” yesterday is expressed with a rhetorical question in one of their slogans on a wall of the synagogue:

The state of Israel murders! Whose position do you support? (signature Α.Κ.).

Those who criticize Israel for corporate responsibility, without hesitation lash out with exactly the same accusation against the Greek Jews of Volos.

With their question, they don’t just express their curiosity, so as to learn their fellow citizens’ opinion, as they also never cared about their fellow citizens’ opinion about other issues, they have never cared about their blood-stained history^iv, the one that smells of Zyklon B and crematories, about their feelings, about their dreams and hopes. They demand that the Greek Jews of Volos take a position about the facts in Middle East and, thus, a position condemning Israel, as any other position will make them “guilty by definition”. Only so can they be certain that the stigmatised will not escape them.

Of course, they themselves give the answer that they ask of the OTHERS, those that are DIFFERENT, with their second slogan, as they already know, before they make their “visit” to the synagogue. Since the day they were born, they already knew everything about this chthonic race which is responsible and guilty for the politics of Israel (even in the greek “Antifa” magazine, the Jews are not even Greeks, but citizens, and thus agents, of a foreign country, Israel). So as not to leave any doubts, they respond to themselves with their second slogan:

In genocide there is no “neutrality” and “equal distance”! (signature Α.Κ. - antiauthoritarian movement) a greek group

The threat to physical integrity, to property, synagogues, cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and, in general, everything that is or is supposed to be Jewish, manifest themselves as the tacit consequences of these slogans, consequences that the stigmatised will have caused the perpetrators to perpetrate, consequences that the stigmatised will have to bear.

Die Bedrohung der körperliche Unversehrtheit, des Eigentums, der Synagogen, der Friedhöfe, der Holocaust-Mahnmale, und generell allen was jüdisch ist oder als solcher definiert wird, sind die implizierten Konsequenzen solche Parolen, Konsequenzen, die die Stigmatisierte durch die „Angreifer“ zu tragen haben.

So, what will be the next step, their next “revolutionary” act, if (the Jews) do not abide and keep “a neutral position” or maintain an “equal distance”? What will their next dynamic action be, if they that survived Auschwitz, and their descendants, take a pro-Israeli stand? (Indeed, we don’t even want to imagine it). Others have already spread the rumor that they attacked the Larissa synagogue – a lie, as far as we know – and try, in this way, to create a wave of attacks against Jewish targets all over the country, by sweeping up more people from the mob, under the mask of their anti-Zionism and/ or opposition against… religions in general.

We will say it again here, without any hesitation. After Auschwitz, every anti-Semitic act and every anti-Semitic threat, is synonymous with annihilation. Don’t forget that, at the anteroom of the Holocaust, in parallel with the free smearing of the inferiority and noxiousness of the chthonic Jews (which a writer from Babylonia newspaper called “freedom of speech”), were also the attacks against Jewish synagogues (in “Kristallnacht”, for example), houses, shops etc. Back then, they were writing on the synagogue walls «Juda verrecke!» («death to the Jews») or «kauft nicht bei Juden!» («don’t buy from the Jews») etc. That, 70 years ago, they were not writing the same things on the walls as today, is simply because of the fact that there was no Middle East issue back then. Nothing else matters.

We condemn every action and expression of threat against the Greek Jews and we promise to do everything to stop these actions by any means, so as to allow every person and every Israelite community to freely decide, whether they want to be for or against Israel, whether they want to keep a neutral stand or no stand at all etc, without anyone daring to force them sign certificates of loyalty.

We demand from the anti-authoritarian scene, we demand from every person and group, that they themselves condemn and isolate such actions and groups as a phenomena of an anti-Semitic cesspit, of racist behavior and patriotic sublimity.

We demand from those intellectuals that write these abstract, spectacular articles against anti-Semitism and racism to condemn the particular.

Silence stands for Guilt by accessory!

Hands off the Greek Jews!

Café Morgenland – antifascist immigrant group from Germany

Terminal 119 – for social and individual autonomy

03/01/09

i Five days after the attack, the Greek Helsinki Monitor published the following announcement “Greek Jew’s fears following new outburst of anti-Semitism” (in English): Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) has been receiving messages from Greek Jews following the desecration of the Volos Synagogue on New Year’s Eve (http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/index.php?sec=194&cid=3392). With the sender’s permission and on condition of confidentiality, one such message is reprinted here. It eloquently describes how many Greek Jews live in the provinces and the consequences of anti-Semitic acts and –especially– media coverage. “The Jews in our community are experiencing a climate of intimidation following the graffiti on the Volos Synagogue. Since that act was taken as an attack, it resulted in the cancellation of Sabbath services and all other events and gatherings scheduled over the next several days. Some even considered removing their names from their apartment house bells! These concerns are intensified by various bombastic programs on local and national TV channels where everything becomes grist for the mill (Jews, Masons, Zionism, arrival of the Antichrist and the end of the world with globalization and so forth)!”. Café Morgenland group immediately republished the news in Greek http://www.cafemorgenland.net/archiv/2009/2009.01.06_Wohnungsklingen_gr.htm and German (http://www.cafemorgenland.net/archiv/2009/2009.01.06_Wohnungsklingen.htm.

ii A reference to the riot’s classic slogan “The cop’s gun is magic/ he shoots in the air and hits in the flesh”. The slogan mocks the usual excuse of the Greek cops when they kill someone, usually immigrant, with their guns: “the gun drakes”.

iii Ten days after the incident, “AK” organization (Anti-authoritarian movement) and particularly its groups in Ioannina, Thessaloniki and Athens published an announcement that condemned the action by saying that it was a “dangerous stupidity” and that everyone that acts similarly can only be compared with the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn. Also, demanded the perpetrators to expose themselves so as to take the responsibility of their actions. http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=966719 (in Greek)

iv The hunting had already begun from October 1943. On the 25th of March in 1944, the Jews were arrested and sent to the Concentration Camps, where they were exterminated. Totally, 227 Jews from Volos lost their lives (“Hronika” magazine, KIS). Thanks to the attempts that the rabbi Pessah, the archbishop Ioakeim and some parts of EAM, the 74% of the Jews of Volos, were saved. Today, the “Jewish danger” in Volos includes only 120 survivors of Holocaust and their descendants.