You can take Gunter Grass out of the SS, but you can’t take the SS out of Gunter
The German writer Günter Grass published a poem in three major newspapers on Wednesday, including The New York Times, in which he accuses Israel of jeopardizing world security.
In his writing, the 84-year-old poet and novelist aligns himself with the Islamic Republic of Iran and calls for the administration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop its delivery of Dolphin submarines to the Jewish state.
In response to Grass, Israel’s Embassy in Berlin, Jewish leaders, NGOs and German politicians fiercely criticized the writer, including accusations that he harbors an anti-Semitic attitude and lacks Mideast political knowledge.
Grass, who revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Nazi Waffen-SS, a group designed to exclusively eliminate European Jewry during WWII, wrote in his poem titled “What must be said,” that “Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: The atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?”
Unfortunately, I can imagine what it would be like to be a Jewish artist nowadays.
