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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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The legacy of Anne Frank used to promote war
 Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:06 pm
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/26/60minutes/main602415.shtml
If Anne Frank Only Knew ...
Feb. 26, 2004
Lost In Translation
Anne Frank left behind a world-famous diary in which she wrote of love and peace. (Photo: CBS) "Anne Frank's diary is a big plea...for freedom and for peace, but I think in North Korea, the diary is being used to promote war."Miriam Bartelsman
Students are asked to read the book in honor of and at the request of North Korea dictator Kim Jong-Il.
The students are also being taught that war with America is inevitable.
If you want to hear "hate" coming out of the mouths of school kids, go to the schools of North Korea, as a Dutch television crew did, and you'll hear hate from that country's teenagers directed at the United States.
Western television reporters rarely get into North Korea, but remarkably they let a Dutch television crew in to see how they're using Holland's most famous book, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
That diary, of her life in hiding during World War II, is now being studied in North Korea's schools. But Anne Frank's plea for peace and freedom got lost in translation.
North Korea is using her diary, not to teach how Anne suffered at the hands of the German Nazis, but to warn the students how they could suffer at the hands of those they call "American Nazis." Correspondent Mike Wallace reports.
”After reading this book, I had a hatred for the American imperialists,” says one student.
“That warmonger Bush is just as bad as Hitler. Because of him we will always live in fear of war,” says another student.
But Anne Frank did not preach hate. Her diary is an enchanting, if horrific, day-by-day account of the time this Dutch teenager and her Jewish family spent hiding from the Germans who had invaded and occupied Holland.
Anne, her parents and sister hid in a small apartment in an attic in Amsterdam for more than two years. A bookcase concealed their secret stairway, but the Nazis eventually discovered them, and Anne died in a concentration camp when she was only 15.
Now, Anne Frank's house is a shrine to the courage she displayed, and the fear she lived with, under Hitler. Her diary has been translated into more than a 100 languages. Most recently, it was published in North Korea, where it's now part of the curriculum in their junior high schools.
Anne's plea for peace is a curious message for these students, because North Korea is constantly preparing for war. Dictator Kim Jong Il spends the country's meager resources maintaining a powerful military. And it turns out that North Korea is using Anne's diary to tell students they must sacrifice for the military -- because war with America is inevitable.
“The Americans enjoy war. It excites them. It's part of their nature,” says one student.
Here, they teach that today's Nazis are the Americans – and that today's Hitler is George W. Bush. And, to hammer that home, whenever North Korean students refer to President Bush, or to other Americans, they're taught to call them “Nazis,” or “warmongers."
“As long as the warmonger Bush and the Nazi Americans live, who are worse than Hitler's fascists, world peace will be impossible to achieve,” says another student.
But of course, that bellicose message runs counter to what Anne wrote in her diary: “You will understand that here in the attic, the desperate question is often asked: Why, oh why, go to war? Why can't people live in peace and why must we destroy everything?”
Why do the North Korean student think there are still wars in the world? “Because the cruel Americans want war,” replies one student.
All this came as a shock to Miriam Bartelsman, the reporter from Dutch television who received rare permission to come to the capital city of Pyongyang to see how North Korea is using Anne's diary.
For her report, she was allowed to talk with students about what they're learning from the book. After returning to Amsterdam, she told us that North Korea is simply turning Anne's message on its head.
“Anne Frank's diary is a big plea or a big cry for freedom, and for peace. But I think in North Korea, the diary is being used to promote war,” says Bartelsman.
These students sympathize with Anne, but according to Bartelsman, they do not respect her.
“She didn't win. She was not a hero, and North Korea, they are learning, the children, we all want to be a hero, and we don't want to be killed,” says Bartelsman.
‘We know that Nazi America is certain to start a war with us, but we will win that war,” says one student.
“Our students will fight with a pen in one hand and a weapon in the other until the last American is dead,” adds another student.
These youngsters parrot the words of North Korea's deputy minister of education, who uses Anne's diary to teach students that North Korea's top priority is to build a stronger military to defeat the Americans.
And to make sure the students give that same answer, Dutch television caught one teacher whispering to her students, telling them just what to say to the Dutch reporter.
Teacher:: Say that we don't want war, but that that is impossible as long as our enemy lives. So for us war is inevitable. We are not going to beg for peace. Instead, we must crush our enemy without mercy.
Student: You should not beg for peace. As long as the imperialists live, there will be no end to war.
“The most shocking thing is their comparison for President Bush with Hitler. that is absolutely disgusting,” says Anne’s cousin, Buddy Elias, who was her playmate and her last living direct relative.
Elias was the one who approved giving North Korea the rights to publish her diary, for a symbolic payment of less than $2,000.
“We were not told that it would be misused in schools. That, we had no idea,” says Elias, who considers today’s Hitler to be Kim Jong-Il, North Korea’s supreme leader. Kim insists that whenever anyone mentions his name, they must first call him respected or beloved.
And, in North Korea, teachers don't decide what their students will read. Those instructions come down from the top.
Why do the students think they were asked to read this diary? “According to our respected leader Kim Jung Il, the “Diary of Anne Frank” is one of the great classics of the world,” says one student. “That is why we read the diary -- out of great respect for our leader Kim Jung Il.”
“Our respected Gen. Kim Jung Il, with his warm and caring love for us students, gives us different foreign literature every year in hope that we can expand our intellectual development,” adds another student. “The ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ is part of that.”
In North Korea, all art, all music, all pageants are created to praise Kim Jong Il or his father, Kim Il-Sung, North Korea's first leader.
But while these children of the elite sing of their leader in Pyongyang, youngsters in the countryside are starving, reveal pictures that were smuggled out of North Korea by a German doctor. According to the World Food Program, almost half of North Korea's children, under the
age of 7, suffer from chronic malnutrition. But not the children of the establishment in Pyongyang.
“I’m certain that thanks to our beloved Gen. Kim Jung Il, we will never experience hunger like Anne did,” says one boy.
Another student read from the diary: “Why is there hunger when food rots away elsewhere? Why are people so crazy?”
When Bartelsman asked students if they could answer Anne's question, again their teacher told them just what to say: “Why isn't food distributed everywhere? Because the imperialist bourgeoisie take it -- that's why there is nothing left for the proletariat. Just say that.”
The student’s response: “Food is taken by the imperialist bourgeoisie, which is why there is nothing left for the proletariat.”
Apparently, these students don't know that in
their socialist paradise, up to a million people are now held in slave labor camps. But thanks to Anne Frank, they do know a lot about Nazi concentration camps.
Do they think that concentration camps like that still exist?
“Yes, I think such camps still exist. As long as there are American Nazis, there will be secret places where innocent people are murdered,” says one student. “Places like that exist in America. The prisons in America are comparable to concentration camps.”
And apparently, these students have learned what they were supposed to learn from Anne Frank's diary: When war with America comes, don't be a loser like her.
Could they live in hiding the way that Anne and her family did? “No,” says one student. “I would go and fight, instead of living like a beggar as Anne did.”
“For world peace, America will have to be destroyed,” adds another student. “Only then, will Anne's wonderful dream of peace come true.”
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shatoga
Joined: 23 Nov 2002
Posts: 1291
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Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:41 am
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North Korea is confused because the leader of a "ddemocracy' uses bogus justification to invade smaller weaker nations,
to distract his own citizens from loss of freedom at home,
and seeks world domination through force of arms,
as coal scuttle helmeted soldaten invade and occupy soveriegn nations for the greater glory; of the reich...
a rightwing dictator who has th;e support of church, military and corporate leaders leads his nation into an attemp[t at world domination...
Why does North korea confuse the present with the past?
After all...
the names have been changed, although all else is nearly identical.
Hail Bush
Hail bush
Hail Bush
Zieg?
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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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Tue Mar 09, 2004 4:18 am
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040305/ts_nm/korea_north_kerry_dc_1
North Korea Seen Unwise to Wait for End of Bush
Fri Mar 5, 1:37 AM ET
By Paul Eckert
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea (news - web sites) is staunchly in the "anybody but George W. Bush" camp in the U.S. election, but South Korean critics of the president say Pyongyang would be unwise to stall nuclear talks and hope for "regime change" in Washington.
North Korea's stance at nuclear talks with the United States in Beijing last week -- where it refused to discuss a secret uranium enrichment program at the heart of a nuclear arms dispute -- has prompted speculation Pyongyang will wait out the November 2 vote for a better deal if Bush loses.
South Korea (news - web sites)'s Chosun Ilbo newspaper captured this view in a cartoon that showed a jubilant North Korean leader Kim Jong-il calling expected Democratic Party nominee John Kerry (news - web sites)'s campaign headquarters and asking: "Is there anything I can do to help?"
North Korea's state controlled media have not commented at length on Kerry, but they have cited approvingly the U.S. senator's criticism of Bush's rejection of bilateral nuclear deal-making with Pyongyang.
Bush was never in favor in North Korea -- which came close to hosting what would have been an epoch-making visit in 2000 by his predecessor Bill Clinton (news - web sites) -- because the Republican leader put that rapprochement process under review when he took office.
But Bush cemented North Korean enmity in early 2002 when he grouped the country in an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq (news - web sites) and condemned Kim Jong-il personally for oppressing and starving his people.
Among the epithets North Korea has hurled at Bush was a statement by the foreign ministry last year calling him a "shameless charlatan" and "the incarnation of misanthropy."
DEAL WITH REPUBLICANS?
And Pyongyang shocked the Netherlands recently when a Dutch television crew toured the country and found that schools were using the "Diary of Anne Frank" to teach students that Bush is a modern-day Hitler and the United States, a Nazi dictatorship.
In South Korea, where Bush fans are also thin on the ground, newspapers are saying North Korea would be making a mistake if it further stalled nuclear negotiations in hopes of a better deal under the Democrats.
The Korea Herald newspaper said in an editorial Friday it agreed with Kerry's criticism of Bush's stance on North Korea.
"Nonetheless, it would still be senseless for the North Koreans to have any illusion that, setting aside the election result, the power transfer in Washington will lead to any drastic changes in the U.S. policy toward its nuclear armament," it said.
The Hankyoreh daily, the South Korean newspaper that is most friendly toward Pyongyang, said U.S. conservative antipathy to Clinton's 1990s dealings with North Korea showed "it will have the least troubles later if it settles the matter with a Republican administration."
North Korea analyst Paik Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute in Seoul said Pyongyang could not afford to let the rest of 2004 run out without progress on the 17-month-old nuclear crisis.
"North Korea has serious issues such as security and a sluggish domestic economy," he said. "Actually North Korea is the one fighting against the clock."
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