Since his death some so-called academics and journalists have distastefully endeavoured to build a war criminal case against Willi Huber, the creator of the Mt. Hutt ski-field. They frequently draw a long bow and naively overlook the climate of the times.
In their strained efforts to make Huber a villain, confined to often ludicrous innuendo, typical was this paragraph from a recent week-end Stuff article.
“In a supporting letter to immigration authorities, Huber wrote, “I have never been a member of any illegal organisation.” This was not true. The Waffen-SS was deemed a criminal organisation during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946”.
FACT: Huber’s declaration was true. When he was a member of the Waffen-SS it was anything but a criminal organisation. But it no longer existed when the Nuremberg trials occurred. And if one wants to be pedantic then it should also be noted that the Nuremberg trials were victors’ rituals which had no legal basis, retrospectively creating hitherto non-existent crimes which it then charged the defendants with.
It’s time beat-up journalists and lightweight academics with a life timidly confined to the school-room, ended this all-too-common cowardly practise of laying into people after they’ve died, for not being demi-Gods.
I didn’t know Huber but he joins a long line of prominent achievers who have copped this treatment, most recently, poet J.K. Baxter (who I did know prior to his taking up Messiahing), and have the guts to write this stuff when they’re alive.
5 Comments
I am pleased to see you address this situation. The posthumous witch hunt directed at that man has been disgraceful in the context of his life as a New Zealander. I do not understand the relevance of these contemporary examinations of Huber’s past – are journalists now implying he was the seed of some apparent evil in New Zealand?
Dead right Bob.
And not only have the woke, gutless Mt Hutt skifield and NZSki.com rolled over and expunged Willi’s name from the previously named Huber’s restaurant (and their history…)
But they have now given it some totally irrelevant, unfathomable maori name…
That is depressing news. The man who froze his pants off building the ski-field gets erased from history because he was born on the other side during WWII. He was 17 when he joined up. He served as a tank driver on the Eastern front which would have been horrendous. If he had been born in NZ or Britain he no doubt would now be seen as a hero.
And indeed, those trials, were effectively show trials that Stalinist Russia specialised in. It’s since come to light that a number of defendants and witnesses were brutally tortured or had their families threatened before making confessions.
The journalists who are judging Huber for joining up to fight at 17 are engaging in a cartoonish version of history.
Unfortunately this trend is growing into a juggernaut. Hardly a day goes by without some figure being erased from memory, or an event cancelled as a result of a handful of people on Twitter/Facebook creating a fuss and then everyone rolls over to appease this tiny minority. It’s pathetic.
Take the cancellation of the University of Canterbury production of Chaplin: The Musical because some members raised concerns about his “predatory and inappropriate conduct”. Here is one of the greatest figures in entertainment history confined to the sidelines because some pious snowflakes objected.
I would love it if people stood up to these zealots and told them to go and F… themselves – the shows staying/the events not being cancelled.
As you say..they cancelled themselves and picked escapist fun instead. Some wag pointed out royalties will go to Harvey Weinstein from the Adams Family musical but they dismissed that. It’s quite astonishing how puritanical these young folk can be…no nuance, no reflection, no regard for the human condition on the vast historical ‘stage’…that they are supposedly studying if Arts is what they’re there for. Student days must be fraught, suffocating and barely alive in times like these.