Talk:Joel Brand

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Contents

[edit] Fontsizes with CSS

I would like to ask if it would be ok to do the following changes:

  1. In the Notes section, exchanging <div style="font-size:95%;"><references/></div> with <references/>. 95% is nearly 100% so I see not much gained by reducing it to 95%. Hardcoding fontsizes in article text should be avoided if possible.
  2. In the References and Further Reading sections replace <div style="font-size:90%;"> with <div class="references-small">. The CSS class "references-small" is defined in MediaWiki:Common.css to be 90%. So this wouldn't change the rendering of these parts of the article.

Using CSS for fontsizes is better than hardcoding them in articles. --Ligulem 21:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Already responded to elsewhere. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Where? --Ligulem 22:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
We've already had this exchange on our talk pages. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 22:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
No. You haven't answered my questions above. Please reread my talk and your talk page. --Ligulem 22:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I answered. 90 per cent was making it hard to read so it was increased to 95. There's no policy that says we have to do it in a certain way, so that's the way we've done it here. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Would you please carefully reread my proposal above? I'm proposing 100% for the Notes section (by removing the 95% there) and 90% for the References and Further Reading sections by using <div class="references-small">. --Ligulem 22:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I did read what you wrote. The footnotes should be smaller than the body of the text, but because they're so long and contain proper notes, not just citations, they were becoming hard to read at 90, so I increased them slightly to 95. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok. You want 95% for The Notes sections. I have proposed 100% for that. But I accept your choice, as long as it is on that article here only. My next question is (as asked above): do you accept the 90% on the References and Further Reading sections by doing it with CSS instead of specifiying it as it is? --Ligulem 22:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there some policy that these footnotes are violating? Have you contributed anything to this lengthy and informative article besides a dispute about font sizes in references? Is there any reason why lengthy footnotes should be so small as to be unreadable? Please move on to another article. Jayjg (talk) 22:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

What's your problem? Could you please reply to my proposal and point out where there is a dispute? --Ligulem 22:31, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The footnotes contain lengthy comments which are too hard to read at 90%. There is no policy against footnotes being 95%, as they should be in this case. If you have no meaningful content to contribute to this article, please help out somewhere else. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 22:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Please be civil. I'm concerned about the style of articles. Also this one here. Could you please assume good faith and try to read what I am trying to achieve? I'm proposing to use CSS instead of hard coded percentages. My problem is, do you oppose the use of CSS on this article here only or on all articles on wikipedia? I'm concerned about hard coding percentages in articles. Could you please try to think for a second about that? Please, we do not need to invoke policies here. There is no dispute here. So please don't make one out of it. --Ligulem 22:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion by SlimVirgin at 02:48, May 11, 2006 (UTC)

Why did you revert [1] this of my edits [2]? I do not agree with this revert. Question: Do you oppose the use of CSS only on this article here or on wikipedia as a whole? Note: as I wrote in the edit summary: the font size is not changed by this of my edits, but with CSS I get the possibility to override the site wide setting with my own, something that cannot be done if you hard code the font size into the article. I can benefit from the ability to override the font size for me because I have problems reading such small font. Again: What is the problem for you specifying the 90% by using CSS? --Ligulem 07:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:MOS#Formatting issues, which states (emphasis added):

"Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size, that is, font-size: 80%; not an absolute size, for example, font-size: 4pt."

Could you please explain why this is a special case here? We have a class for the small references in MediaWiki:Common.css. Why do you insist on using hard coded 90% font size if there is a CSS class which does exactly the same? --Ligulem 08:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not going to make a large dispute over this, but it seems that the consensus is that 90% is a good general size for article references if there are a lot. Wikipedia policy also suggests using official CSS classes over manual style attributes, although it's not a policy to adhere to the consensus in all cases. —Michiel Sikma, 06:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
My argument "hardcoded 90% is the same as CSS references-small" is now moot as SlimVirgin in the mean time changed the remaining 90% settings to 95% with this edit [3]. So we now have all "smaller" references fonts in this article here at 95%, which is a new phenomenon I have not seen in other articles (editors that favor smaller references choosed in the range 70..92% with a majority at 90%). As 95% is not that illegible as 90% is (for me), I can accept that, so there is no need for me personnally to override the (for me illegible 90%) with my private CSS setting. As for those that believe I am on a stupid crusade on this article here, I would like to say, that it is the good articles from good writers that are copied by other editors in style. As long as this is at 95% it's not that bad. But when it's 90% or smaller my hurting limit for small font illegibility is crossed and I want to have it with CSS so that I can override it. I'll promise to leave all hardcoded 95% untouched in all articles for now. I would also hope that people like me who do smaller tweaks to a lot of articles are treated with a little bit more respect (AGF etc.). Not everone is a great writer. But this does not mean, people who do things like I do are not useful to wikipedia. There is no need to significantly contribute to an article in order to be allowed to edit an article. --Ligulem 09:40, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ready for translation to other languages? (e.g. Hebrew)

I discovered your article listed among the Jewish History WikiProject's list of new articles. Congratulations and thanks for writing so comprehesively on this important and sensitive topic!

Seeing no interwiki link to other languages (later found in Yiddish; interwiki link added), I searched for Joel Brand in the Hebrew Wikipedia. To my dismay, I found not even an article stub, and in pertinent related articles his name appears as a "redlink". As soon as I can take the time to learn how, I'll create the stub (including the :en: interwiki link) and also highlight the article for en>he translation. Deborahjay 12:36, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust - where to add?

In Yad Vashem's Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (1990) there's a 3 column article on Joel Brand in the Hebrew edition; tomorrow at the library, I'll check the parallel English edition. Should this be added under the section: Further reading rather than References, as apparently no editor used it in writing the Wikipedia article? Thanks, Deborahjay 05:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Deborah, I'm sorry, I didn't see your comments before today. Yes, if it wasn't used as a source, it goes under Further reading. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 05:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trial papers at LoC

Is this helpful? The LoC scanned images of the trial papers. Jkelly 21:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Extremely helpful, and very, very interesting. Thank you! :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 22:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify status

The top of the talk page says this article is featured, but the star is not displayed on the article page. Is it featured or not? Sandy 23:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, yes it's featured, but I don't know anything about the star. Perhaps it's not been added yet; it only made featured article status a couple of days ago. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Right, I noticed that. Maybe you should drop a line to Raul, and see if he forgot to add your star? Or put a question on the FAC talk page? Sandy 23:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I've just found out how to add it, but I think I should wait because perhaps Raul is the one to do it. I may drop him a line soon. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 23:44, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I noticed the others from that batch already have their stars, which is why I asked: I was surprised you didn't have one. Sandy 23:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
You can do it. I did it on the last FAC I'd been involved in. Sam 00:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I added it. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 16:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brand, Moyne, and the "one million Jews"

The following appears on page 169 of Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Australian National University Press, 1978):

Much has been made in popular literature of the remark Moyne is supposed to have made to Brand, regarding the Jews to be saved: "What shall I do with one million Jews? Where shall I put them?" Brand mentioned this in his testimony at the "Kastner trial" (T124,p.66). In his book [Bishlichut Nidonim Lamavet, ed. Alex Weissberg (Tel-Aviv 1957), 155-156; English edition Weissberg, Advocate for the dead : the story of Joel Brand] he tells the story in the text, but then adds a footnote that he found out that the person he alleges made the remark to him was not Lord Moyne at all. This denial did not prevent Brand from spreading the story later as well. Moreover, the remark itself must be seen in context. The exit of one million Jews from Europe at the time of the Normandy invasion must have seemed to the British utter utopia. At worst, it looked like a desperate ploy of the Nazis to clog up all Allied transport and other resources in the name of a false humanitarianism in order to prevent the allies from pursuing the war.

I have not checked if this footnote appears in the English edition of Brand's book; it is odd that it is regularly cited as a source for the Moyne remark if in fact it denies it. The British reaction is expanded on in Tuvia Friling, Nazi-Jewish Negotiations in Istanbul in Mid-1944, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, V13 N3, Winter 1999, pp. 405-436; I'll add something to the article. Another source on the "million Jews" remark is a book by Ben-Yehuda: "Wasserstein (1982) argues that the 'account' supposedly given by Moyne to Brand was a propaganda fabrication by Lehi, and that Moyne and Brand probably never met." (I'll report on this with refs when Wasserstein's paper arrives.) --Zerotalk 15:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The sources are Ben Hecht and Brand's testimony during Eichmann's trial. Hecht writes that Brand was asked by a Jewish Agency official to say in his book that it was someone other than Moyne who had said this, but Brand repeated that it was Moyne during the trial. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Right, but that just emphasises how thin the story is. Brand was a member of Lehi when they killed Moyne, so he shared Lehi's obvious motive to paint Moyne as black as possible. Then there is Ehud Avriel who (according to Ben Hecht) claimed it wasn't Moyne who said it. That seems to be the entire body of evidence. It's not much. Btw, any idea what this book is about? --Zerotalk 11:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Odd. If you type the publisher, Americans for a Secure Israel of Illinois, into the Google search field, it resolves to this. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
this statement is repeated in numberous other sources. See L. Poliakov , G. Reitlinger.... Amoruso 17:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
What counts in history is investigation, not repetition. --Zerotalk 11:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
what counts is verifiability, not the truth you think . Also you're wrong. Brand was asked not to repeat Moyne's name for political reason, not because it wasn't what happened. There's no doubt that it is Moyne who said. Nor is there any doubt that Brand obviously found the Lehi way after being betrayed by both the british and the haganah in the quest to save hungarian jews. Amoruso 18:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
We're not here to do history, Zero, but to repeat what historians have said. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NYT

Zero, I've moved your edit here temporarily. Could you say exactly what the NYT says? The mixture of quotes and paraphrasing and ellipses makes it hard to see what Brand is saying, what the NYT is saying, and what you are saying. Also, what did the NYT say about when he died? You imply they give a date but that you haven't seen it, even though you've read the article. Finally, do you have a full citation (byline, headline)? Many thanks, SlimVirgin (talk) 20:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Two months before his death he testified at the trial in Germany of Eichmann's deputies Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche. He told the court that "though the deal was suggested by Eichmann" it must have originated in the mind of Himmler as one of his desperate attempts at driving a wedge between the Allies. "I made a terrible mistake in passing this on to the British. ... It is now clear to me that Himmler sought to sow suspicion among the Allies as a preparation for his much desired Nazi-Western coalition against Moscow.

Zero also put this off-quoted quote in the discussion of moyne's page. He's known for using quotes off context with no research behind them. Amoruso 07:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You have never looked at the source so you don't have a clue whether I reported it correctly. And for a Kahanist who uses Neo-Nazi documents as sources, your accusation is rather funny. --Zerotalk 11:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
and you try to use the word "libel" in your defense ROTFL. Look at your sewer langauge. Of course I have a clue, you're a known fraud. Amoruso 13:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Slim, I sent you the article by email. --Zerotalk 10:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation 52

Citation 52 is missing. LuciferMorgan 19:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks LM, it's fixed now. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)