Ilya Ehrenburg

[[File:Ilja Grigorjewitsch Ehrenburg 1943.jpg|right|thumb|165px|Ilya Ehrenburg in 1943.]]
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{{Cquote|Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.|||''Kill'', a 1942 propaganda piece that is a favorite for Neo-Nazis to take out of context}}

'''Ilya Ehrenburg''' {{lived|1891|1967}} was a [[Russia]]n [[Author|writer]] who spent much of his productive career in Western Europe (1908-1917 and 1921-1940) including a period living in Weimar [[Germany]] (1921-1924). His 1931 novel ''Factory of Dreams'' (Фабрика снов) deals with [[Hollywood]]. During [[World War II]], after the [[Axis]] invasion of the [[Soviet Union]] ({{wpl | Operation Barbarossa}}, 1941), he wrote articles to inspire the {{wpl | Red Army}} to fight the [[Nazi Germany|Germans]]. As a [[Judaism|Jew]] and a [[Soviet]] war-time propagandist, he became a favored target for (neo-)fascists to quote-mine and to demonize.

==Hitting back too hard?==

Because most of these works were written early in the war when the Germans were deep inside the [[Soviet Union|USSR]], murdering, raping, and plundering, they are unsurprisingly full of hatred against the Germans and read like the fire-and-brimstone passages from the [[Bible]].  In the aforementioned passage from ''Kill'', written in 1942 during the battle for Stalingrad, Ehrenburg instructs Red Army soldiers to kill German ''soldiers'' and tells them that they have ''wasted the day'' if they allow one to go by where they do not kill a German.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ehrenburg#World_War_II Translation of ''Kill'' available on Wikipedia</ref> Anyone who has played ''Call of Duty: Finest Hour'' has heard it before in the opening scene.  As this passage does not specify killing soldiers — because it doesn't need to — it is exploited by various Nazi groups.

==Exploitation and fabrication by Nazis==
During the end of World War II in 1945, Josef Goebbels created a completely fabricated incitement of rape against German women and attributed it to Ehrenburg in order to motivate Germans to fight harder.  This line has been attributed to him by Western historians and constantly replayed by [[Neo-Nazism|Nazis]].<ref>Beevor, Antony.  ''The Fall of Berlin 1945.''  http://books.google.com/books?id=JSi86mzy64EC&lpg=PP1&ots=aUJViyq98O&dq=the%20fall%20of%20berlin%201945&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=attributed%20to%20him&f=false</ref>  Nazis also tend to blatantly ignore the historical context of Ehrenburg's legitimate writings and try to make it seem as though his encouragement to fight the German army in 1942 was intended to incite the Red Army to kill German civilians in 1945.  He even said himself that he did not expect Red Army soldiers to kill German civilians, and certainly not to rape women, as he expected their anger to be directed at the enemy soldiers.<ref>Beevor, Antony.  ''The Fall of Berlin 1945.''  http://books.google.com/books?id=JSi86mzy64EC&lpg=PP1&ots=aUJViyq98O&dq=the%20fall%20of%20berlin%201945&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=attributed%20to%20him&f=false</ref>

[[Metapedia]] claims that Ilya Ehrenburg was a ''genocide agitator'' against Germans.  There happen to be no legitimate historians who claim that the Germans were "victims" of "genocide" during World War II.  They are also an example of completely taking ''Kill'' out of context.<ref>[[Metapedia]] article ''Ilja Ehrenburg''; not linking it.</ref>

David Duke also posted a video on YouTube trying to [[Demonization|demonize]] the Red Army by separating quotes from ''Kill'' from their historical context and reciting the old fabrication that Ehrenburg encouraged Red Army soldiers to ''take German women as their lawful booty''.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NBxv6-vUnE&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dred%2Barmy%2Bdavid%2Bduke%26oq%3Dred%2Barmy%2Bdavid%2Bduke%26gs_l%3Dyoutube.3..33i21.8868.12309.0.12514.12.12.0.0.0.0.563.1962.4j5j0j1j0j1.11.0...0.0...1ac.wT4O4aEYbmg&has_verified=1 Video on YouTube by David Duke that recites the typical Nazi nonsense about Ilya Ehrenburg]</ref>

==See also==
*[[Two wrongs don't make a right]]: Even if Ehrenburg declared all German women the rightful property of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]], that doesn't make [[Holocaust|what the Nazis did]] okay, no matter what people like David Duke, [[Eustace Mullins]] and [[David Irving]], tell their slack-jawed cronies.

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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Categories: Authors, Historians, Jews, Journalists, Left-wing activists, Propagandists, Ruskies