This family took their grampa to Parliament. Now he's facing extradition to Poland.
This family took their grampa to Parliament. Now he's facing extradition to Poland.
Adam's Notes for September 28, 2023
Reader, my brain is fried from spending way too much time thinking about the standing ovation Parliament gave to an actual, WW2 Nazi last week.
The thing is, anyone on the left who has been paying even a modicum of attention realized that something like this was coming. Guys like Duncan Kinney, Jeremy Appel, and Dan Boeckner have been warning for years now that Canada needs to reckon with its Nazi past. For their efforts they’ve been ignored, smeared, and even harassed by police.
You see, after the war the Canadian government knowingly admitted more than 2,000 members of a notorious Ukrainian Waffen-SS division into Canada, along with another thousand SS men and collaborators from Baltic states. They were able to live their lives freely and openly, and even able to celebrate their past. This is because Canada has always, wrongly, cared more about anti-communism than anti-fascism.
One of the ways of getting into Canada during the postwar period “was by showing the SS tattoo,” Canadian historian Irving Abella told “60 Minutes” interviewer Mike Wallace. Source: https://www.jta.org/1997/06/05/global/canada-knowingly-admitted-ss-members-after-world-war-ii
Once in Canada, a lot of these Nazi goons were used to break strikes and the government looked away or even aided them as they engage in a sort of civil war against predominantly left-leaning ethnic organizations that had been built up by immigrants who’d come over before the war.
But the Liberals just don’t want to hear it. If they did they’d have to reckon with their complicity in all of this, with the fact that our current deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland knew her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator who ran an anti-semitic newspaper whose press had been confiscated from a Jewish publisher who was later murdered at the Belzec concentration camp. She knew, but she continued to praise him.
It is not Russian disinformation to point any of this out. It is history, and it matters. Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine on a pretense of de-nazification was a colossal blunder that has only emboldened the far right everywhere: in Ukraine, in Russia, in NATO, and throughout eastern europe. The Liberals’ decision to ignore the left’s warnings has likewise emboldened the right, even though Poilievre clapped for that Nazi alongside everyone else, and even though his party prefers their nazis a little more current.
Yeah, sure, Trudeau apologized, but he’s trying to play it off like a clumsy oversight instead of the end result of decades of this shit. And sure, Anthony Rota resigned, but Chrystia Freeland was the first person to stand up and clap and there’s no way she didn’t know who that guy was. That’s what drives me crazy, I think: they play it so brazenly that you can tell they don’t care.
This time, at least, the world has taken notice.
I started this newsletter with more of a mind to write about my own weird little interests, not the politics of the day, but I couldn’t help myself this time. I’ve got some fun stuff lined up for next time and the usual Pepys Show and whatnot below.
Pepys Show
As I said last time, the late summer and fall of 1660 are a bit of a drought in terms of Pepys content. So I’ll share with you the story of how he moved from his house at Axe Yard to his government appointed house at Seething Lane.
In June 1660 Pepys was promised the office of clerk of the acts with the Navy Board, a well-paying job that came with a lot of influence and a government house in the Navy Office complex of buildings on Seething Lane. We turn again to Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self:
the story of how Pepys moved into his house, like so much that was happening all around, is both entertaining and shameful. The Navy Office houses were in Seething Lane, just west of Tower Hill, in a very large, rambling building divided into five substantial residences and office accommodation, with a courtyard and a communal garden stretching north-west to the edge of Tower Hill. There was an entry gate, shut at night by the resident porter, making it an early gated community. Pepys liked the place so much when he went to take a look on 4 July that he began to worry in case he was not allotted a house as promised, but excluded, or ‘shuffled out’. He was back with two of his new bosses two days later to take possession of the office, and he spent the next day there making an inventory of papers. Some of the officers of the departing regime were naturally still about, and his new clerk, Tom Hayter, was in fact one of the existing clerks. A week after Pepys’s first visit, he was annoyed to see a ‘busy fellow’ arrive, apparently to select the best house for Lord Berkeley, one of the new commissioners. Pepys reacted swiftly. He hurried home to Axe Yard, collected a pair of sheets and invited Hayter to accompany him back to Seething Lane, where he knocked at the door of the house he wanted. It was inhabited by Major Francis Willoughby, a commissioner since 1653 and a friend of Blackborne; Willoughby had visited the Naseby in April, as Pepys had noted in his Diary. Perhaps this made him less abashed at announcing that he wanted to spend the night in Willoughby’s house. Willoughby courteously agreed, Pepys enjoyed a good night’s sleep, and two days later asserted his right to the house. He received permission to start on some alterations and showed Elizabeth over ‘my house’ – a breathless sequence that leaves you impressed by his determination and effectiveness, if not by his sensitivity.
Few could allow themselves sensitive feelings in the great changeover (from the reign of Cromwell to Charles II — Adam). On the same day he observed that Major-General Whalley’s house was now the property of Madam Palmer – Barbara Villiers – already established as the king’s mistress. Houses and jobs were changing hands, and it was better to be moving in than out. And on the 17th, after a day’s delay caused by rain, he moved with his family into Seething Lane, just thirteen days after first seeing the house. He expressed a little disappointment when Major Willoughby sent for his own things nine days later. Not surprisingly, Willoughby chose to return to New England, from where he, like Downing, had come to serve the republic.
The alteration spoken of above was to have a door built on the upper storey out onto the leads, an area of flat roofing covered in lead and used as a terrace. He mentions the leads fifty times in the diaries, and I suspect that’s why he coveted Willoughby’s residence more than any of the others.
Links
Forgotten Artemisia Gentileschi painting found in storeroom. Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian painter who was raped by a mentor. Her father brought the rapist up on charges on Artemisia was tortured with thumbscrews to verify her testimony. Her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes was a bit of artistic revenge.
A museum employee in Munich confessed to replacing several paintings from a depot with forgeries and putting the originals up for auction. Among the stolen paintings was "Das Märchen vom Froschkönig" (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) by Franz von Stuck.
I thought this article on the Jacquerie peasant uprising in France was great. I read Penguin’s abridged version of Jean Froissart’s Chronicles earlier this year and thought it was great, but would’ve loved more on the peasant uprisings. I’ll be sure to track down this book. On that note, I’m also really looking forward to The Emperor and the Elephant: Christians and Muslims in the Age of Charlemagne, by Sam Ottewill-Soulsby. I believe it uses the story of Abul-Abbas, the elephant gifted to Charlemagne by Harun al-Rashid, to look relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world.
Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for September 28, 2023. My name is Adam, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Goodreads.