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Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton.
Monday, April 15, 2002. NewsMax.com.
In 1941, as a student at a Catholic school run by Spanish Jesuit priests who
were sympathizers of fascism at that time, Castro was looking for his ideology.
Displaying a fascination with power, war and domination since childhood,
Castro discovered fascism and promenaded around campus with a copy of Adolf
Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in his armpit.
According to many fellow students, "the crazy," as he was
nicknamed, mimicked the speeches of Hitler and Mussolini in front of a mirror,
practicing their mannerisms hour after hour. When Castro entered the University
of Havana in 1945, he soon joined a gangster-type group and carried a pistol, so
he could impose his will.
When Batista's 1952 coup interrupted his political ambitions, Castro decided
to fight against him and on July 26, 1953, he attacked the Moncada Barracks, an
isolated outpost of the Cuban army in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. The
attack brought Castro national attention, but at the cost of the lives of about
100, including soldiers being treated in the infirmary, execution-style as they
lay in their beds.
This event became the inaugural cornerstone of Castro's personal technique
for attaining his goals.
But Castro does not get credit for creativity with this assault, since it
mimicked Hitler's Nov. 9, 1924, insane attack on the War Ministry in Munich,
which made him a national figure in Germany. Castro's attack and the highly
publicized trial that followed in the Cuban media were highly successful in his
own eyes since, like Hitler, it made him a national figure on the island.
Castro's self-defense and speech, ending with "history will absolve me,"
were similar to Hitler's Rathaus Putsch speech in 1924! And in 1953, Cuba's
leading magazine, Bohemia, selected Castro among 12 of the world's most
outstanding figures.
Like Hitler and his fascists, soon after grabbing power in 1959, Castro
began eliminating people by summary executions, jail, concentration camps and
exile, destroying them before they could become enemies.
By 1960, he had effectively crushed the Cuban free press, including Bohemia
magazine (whose owner went into exile and committed suicide out of guilt for
helping Castro take over Cuba). Soon, the over 200 private radio stations and
about seven private television networks and all other institutions of the Cuban
civil society fell under his absolute control, and freedom was completely
eliminated.
Many Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jews from the Balkans and Palestine
immigrated to Cuba before World War I. In the 1920s, many Polish Jews settled in
Cuba after being refused entry into the U.S.
Other European Jews fleeing Hitler went to Cuba as a waiting place for
entrance into the U.S. Once refused entry into the U.S., many stayed in Cuba.
They liked the friendliness of the country and its free enterprise system and
opportunities. Many Jews opened businesses, schools, community centers and
synagogues. Many married Cubans and prospered in the 1950s economic boom.
According to the Puebla Institute's 1991 "Castro's War on Religion,"
page 16, the number of Jews in Cuba was about "30,000 at their peak and
[was] reduced to 15,000 by 1959. Most of those fled to the United States after
the revolution."
Jews, acquainted with Hitler and the Nazis, were concerned by Castro's
similarities. They foresaw what was coming and warned others. Castro's unbridled
anti-Semitism, from his Hitler-admiring days, soon led to the expropriation of
all assets of the thriving Cuban Jewish community, driving it into exile.
By 1967, around 2,000 Jews were left - less than 1,000 today, most of them
elderly. Many joined the growing Cuban exile community in Miami, New Jersey and
other places, where they share the same opinion of Castro with other Cubans in
exile. Maybe that's the reason why the U.S. media have neglected them and most
Americans ignore what they went through.
Fascism had become unacceptable thanks to the magnificent work of the
victims of the Holocaust and the Jewish community worldwide. So, after the
fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion due to President Kennedy's betrayal, on April
1961, Castro publicly declared himself a communist. In spite of Castro's
obviously Fascist techniques, this was done for his own convenience because
Marxism (communism) has become the darling of the prevailing left intellectual
elite and the media.
Examples of Castro's fascist techniques include the creation in October 1960
of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, modeled after the Nazi ones
in 1930s Germany. These neighborhood committees, created for spying and
controlling the population in each city block, are still active today. The
creation of the Young Pioneers was modeled after the Hitler Youth to
indoctrinate the children beginning in elementary school. The Young Pioneers are
still active today. That's why Cuban exiles were so offended when Castro sent
the "schoolteacher" with the other kids dressed in the uniform of the
Young Pioneers to indoctrinate Elian Gonzalez on U.S. soil!
In January 1966, at Havana's Tri-Continental Conference attended by
communists, revolutionaries and worldwide terrorist organizations, a resolution
was passed calling for the breaking of all treaties with Israel, total economic
and cultural ostracism of Israel and its expulsion from all international
organizations.
In November 1966, Castro opened more than a dozen guerrilla training camps
under the direction of KGB Col. Vadim Kotchergine where Palestinians were
trained. And in 1967, after the Six-Day War, Cuba's U.N. ambassador, Richardo
Alarcon - portrayed as a "moderate" by the U.S. media - called the war
an "armed aggression against the Arab people ... by a most treacherous ...
surprise attack in the Nazi manner."
In October 1973, Castro broke diplomatic relations with Israel after he
deployed thousands of Cuban soldiers including helicopter pilots and tank crews
to fight alongside the Syrians during the Yom Kippur War. How many Israelis did
Castro's soldiers kill?
To insult Israel and the Jewish people even further, Castro gave the PLO an
expropriated Jewish community center in Havana.
On Nov. 14, 1974, Yasser Arafat was enthusiastically received in Havana and
given Castro's foremost decoration, the Bay of Pigs Medal.
On May 30, 1978, Reuters news service confirmed (11 years later!) that PLO
personnel had been trained in Cuba and on Sept. 13, the Egyptian newspaper Ahar
Sa'ah reported that 500 Palestinians were leaving for training in Cuba. Does
anybody know how many terrorists and suicide bombers Castro trained in his camps
and how many innocent people have been killed as a result?
From the 1970s to today, Jews have been scorned in Castro's controlled
press.
Paradoxically, according to Irving Louis Horowitz's Preface in David J.
Kopilow's "Castro, Israel and The PLO," the Jewish intellectuals and
organizations in the U.S. "were in the forefront of singing the praises of
Castro."
But with Castro's background of anti-Semitism, his decimation of the Cuban
Jewish community, his plotting against the state of Israel and his connections
with the PLO terrorist wing, it was puzzling and insulting to the Jewish
community, including the Cuban Jews in exile, when Israel's Chief Rabbi Yisrael
Lau visited Cuba in 1974. On that occasion Lau said of Castro, "He is a
great friend of the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is extremely hateful to him."
Hello?
Myles Kantor, in his April 2, 2002, article, "Passover in Cuba,"
criticizes Jewish organizations in the U.S. like the B'nai B'rith and American
ORT for looking the other way about the violations of human rights of the Jewish
community in Cuba, and for the years of silence on Castro's crimes. Kantor asks
of these organizations, why don't they "demand the emancipation of their
Cuban brethren?"
"On the contrary," Kantor says, "they pour copious dollars
into the regime through 'humanitarian missions' where they stay at luxurious
hotels from which ordinary Cubans are excluded. They taste rum and cigars at the
Hotel Nacional and feature a photograph of the fatigues-clad pharaoh."
Kantor says that the behavior of these Jewish organizations is a "disgrace."
So, let's think about it before we lend a hand to the wrong guy. Keep in
mind that Castro's Cuba has been designated as "terrorist" by the U.S.
State Department for many years. Cuba shares "honors" with six other
rogue nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria - all virulently
anti-American. Obviously, Castro is in partnership with international terrorism.
And this partnership is bonded mainly by anti-Semitism. So there you have it.
© 2002 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez is producer/director of the documentaries "Covering
Cuba," Covering Cuba 2: The New Generation," and the upcoming Covering
Cuba 3: Elian," and author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book "Covering
and Discovering." | 
