Remarkable thing. A politician speaks the truth. Not an American pol, unfortunately. This one’s from Poland. And the media reporting the story call him both a “gun lobbyist” (i.e. eeeeeevil villain) and “far-right” (journalist’s code word for “not to be taken seriously”).
In Europe, far-right is usually also a code word for xenophobic and probably Jew-hating. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who is running for president of Poland but from a tiny minority party, told a TV interviewer that if every Jew had had a gun before World War II the Holocaust would never have happened. (H/T CB for the heads-up)
Well, we know that already, don’t we? But it’s apparently so startling to the Times of Israel that they have to go out of their way to try to prejudice readers against him and his positions twice in one tiny article.
Korwin-Mikke, despite his minority political status, is a fascinating and influential man. And not “far-right” in any sense. He came from the liberationist underground left, worked with Lech Wałęsa and his famous Solidarność movent (which helped bring down communism), and published translations of the work of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayak.
He courts controversy, uses blunt, colorful language, sometimes says the most un-PC things, and at one time wrote the most popular blog in Poland.
The poor, confused Wikipedia article linked above calls him both a “conservative liberal” and a “libertarian conservative.” He has also been accused of being both an anti-Semite and a “hidden Jew” and a Zionist. (I don’t know his religious history, but he was born in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and his mother died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.)
An intriguing man, definitely.
He spoke those words, “If every Jew had a gun before the war, there would be no Holocaust,” on the eve of Yom HaShoah, the annual commemoration of Hitler’s genocide. He added that “every young guy has to have a gun.”
And that’s where my headline statement comes in. That’s only a partial truth there, Janusz. Sure every young guy — who has enough responsibility and integrity to use one well — should own a gun and be prepared to use it at need. So should every older, wiser, guy. But don’t forget that when it comes to self-defense and defense of family, home, community, and faith, some of the most determined fighters are most definitely non-guys.
Of the 30,000 Jews who escaped the ghettos and camps and joined the guerrilla battle against the Nazis, a good share were women. And though many cooked, tended wounds, and acted as couriers and spies (something that took great courage), quite a few took up arms. One was even the commander of the partisan group in the woods outside Luckow, Poland.
In modern-day America, it’s wonderful to see that both young guys and young women are increasingly interested in firearms and learning to use them. Many of these young people are (so far) only into the sporting aspects of guns — target shooting, competition, and hunting. But should the day ever come for armed defense against enemies of freedom, foreign or domestic, that’ll be millions more who know what to do and have the tools to do it.
So celebrate the brave men who’ve been freedom’s staunchest defenders over the years, but cheers to the women who’ve joined them — and who will join them in times of future need.
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If you want to know more:
Jewish Women in the Partisans
Women in the Italian Resistance
What Can We Learn from Women Partisans? (Click on the links to individual stories.)
