[url=http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/holocaust_by_bullets/]Ho... by bullets[/url]
Father Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest, has spent the past 7 years searching for the truth about the largely unrecorded genocide in Ukraine during World War II.In this feature documentary, Linden MacIntyre talks to Desbois about the passion that has redefined his life, and why the search for answers about what really happened still matters 65 years later
Good for you for posting this Fidel.
You might be in for some grief about it, though. There are some on the left who feel that to even bring attention to the holomodor is to be pro-fascist and anti socialist. And, unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
I wasnt thinking that at all. And I'm sure we can appeal to moderators to keep this thread on topic, which is Holocaust in Ukraine during WW II.
Apparently they've excavated over 700 mass graves in towns and villages across Ukraine so far. Father Desbois discovered that his father was one of the thousands of French slave labourers for the nazis who were brought to Ukraine to dig graves for the large number of Ukrainian Jews murdered in that country during the war.
Ukraine and Russia were countries where the first mass exterminations took place. The nazis' first solution for extermination was to murder large numbers of Ukrainian and Russian Jews by machine gun and rifle fire with burials in mass graves. And sometimes victims were still alive as they were being buried.
Oh, I got your intent wrong. You can have your thread back. it was wrong of me to bring Stalin's extermination of Ukrainians in the 30s into your discussion of Hitler's extermination of Ukrainians five years later.
I honestly thought any discussion of Ukrainian genocide would include both. It sure has when I've discussed Ukrainian history with my Ukrainian friends over the last 30 years . A closer look at the links reveals the specificity of your topic.
Is it ok for me to despise both acts?
I have no discomfort with the subject. It is you who are discomfited. I find the parameters of discussion absurd.
We've had several threads on that topic. I suggest you open another thread if youre not comfortable with this particular subject material concerning the Holocaust in Ukraine specifically.
Go ahead and report me. This is ridiculous. I posted an honest opinion and you instantly threatened me. Go ahead.
This is annoying.
We're talking about a CBC documentary and Father Patrick Desbois' important work in Eastern Europe of the last seven years, Howard. Now stay on topic or I'll report you to the mods. Open another thread or find one of several on your preferred topic of dicussion, and which may still even be open for comment. Do a google search on rabble - dont be lazy.
[url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/05242009/news/worldnews/holocaust_count_is_t... COUNT IS 'TOO LOW'[/url]
Five years of research into one of mankind's darkest episodes has convinced a French Catholic priest that the death toll in the Holocaust is far higher than the generally accepted figure of 6 million.
Father Patrick Desbois has identified 800 of the estimated 2,000 gravesites of Jews who were rounded up and shot across the Ukraine.
Documenting these graves is certain to boost the current estimate of 1.7 million Jews murdered in the Ukraine, he says. He expects similar work elsewhere in eastern Europe will raise the death toll even further.
"Surely, at the end of it all, the numbers will be larger," Desbois told The Times of London. "But we are still inspecting sites in Belarus, and there is the vastness of Russia ahead of us."
You threatened me, and then edited out the threat so that it looks like I'm daring you out of nowhere, putting your absurd threat after my post rather than before it. Neat trick. Very sly. Since when is disagreement banned on babble?
So, do you have anything to say about the thread topic, Howard?
Are you a Holocaust denier by any chance, Howard?
Are you a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semitic fascist bastard, Howard?
Dont just sit there with your mouth full of cereal - say something and hopefully on topic.
You have just verified what I said up top, Fidel, except I didnt realize that that faction of the left of which I spoke included you. I really didnt. I thought this was a genuine discussion of all the underreported horrors the Ukrainian people suffered in the twentieth century. I was wrong. That might include a critique of Stalin, which you have forbidden. For me to suggest that one horrible disgrace should be discussed in its historical context: ie- the horrible disgrace which preceded it makes me a nazi. Great. Thanks a lot. Enjoy your thread.
So, do you have anything to say about the thread topic, Howard?
Are you a Holocaust denier by any chance, Howard?
Are you a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semitic fascist bastard, Howard?
Dont just sit there with your mouth full of cereal - say something and hopefully on topic.
And I've sent this post to the mods, and quoted it here before you edit it.
You whiney little turd. You deliberately disrupted this thread using the lame excuse that youre a semi-literate fascist bastard and didnt understand the thread title, and now youre complaining to the mods. Youve got more nerve than a canal horse, I must say.
You whiney little turd. You deliberately disrupted this thread using the lame excuse that youre a semi-literate fascist bastard and didnt understand the thread title, and now youre complaining to the mods. Youve got more nerve than a barge captain on Lake Gitchigumi in a November storm, I must say.
Both these posters have basically jumped the shark. However Fidel made his intention pretty clear and Howardbeale seems to be using this thread to support an agenda entirely out of place. While Fidel used language that he ought not have, it's almost understandable given howardbeale's attacks.
If howardbeale is truly interested in discussing the holomodor he is free to star a thread doing so. The documentary I saw last night on Father Desbois was very moving and I hope this subject can be revitalized.
Well said.
And may I add that if Howard took a couple of minutes to think it through, he might understand why this is so:
...unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
Good for you for posting this Fidel.
You might be in for some grief about it, though. There are some on the left who feel that to even bring attention to the holomodor is to be pro-fascist and anti socialist. And, unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
Actually, the documentary isn't about the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s but about the Nazi massacre of Jews during the occupation of the Ukraine during World War II.
Howard, I got your complaints. You left out the part about how you're trolling this thread, and trying to disrupt it with some tired old anti-left holocaust minimizing boilerplate. Please stay out of this thread now.
It's an intersting thread, let's keep it on topic.
Was in my early 20's when I started to find out about the bullet Holocaust, and the other deeper autrocities, over and above what the label of "Holocaust" connotes with only mass muder numbers and gas chamber stories. And since then, there has been no real further exposure, on a mass teaching scale, of just how broadly scoped and massive of an undertaking it was. Which is actually a travesty IMV. This documentary has a very important function to serve, glad you posted it fidel.
Perhaps if more people knew the full Holocaust history, especially that it is relatively recent, and still unfolding, they would see things of such type starting to resurface again today, as opposed to not seeing the implications of what end results would be, if these paths were continued down nowadays. And this is one of the main reasons why I supported the museum in Winnipeg, and indeed would like it to become a travelling exhibition by train too. And on that note, I would also hope that this museum of ours would go back beyond the Holocaust, to the pogroms in Eastern Europe, that can be considered to be the de-sensitizing precursors that allowed people to allow others to do these final and heinious actions.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
That's terrible, and I'm sorry to know that, Unionist. Desbois said last night something in regard to the actual number not concerning him so much as the individuals themselves who were once alive and well people. He said the historical record isnt complete until all of those graves are exhumed and as many names assigned to the remains as possible. A crime committed against anyone is a crime committed against everyone.
For those interested in this time in history, I recommend Babi Yar, by Anatoli Kuznetsov.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
I'm sorry to hear that, Brother Unionist. I don't have words.
Ukraine and Russia were countries where the first mass exterminations took place. The nazis' first solution for extermination was to murder large numbers of Ukrainian and Russian Jews by machine gun and rifle fire with burials in mass graves. And sometimes victims were still alive as they were being buried.
Actually this all really begins in Poland, not the Ukraine, and the victims were Poles and Polish Jews. It was accelerated and systemized after Barbarossa began. Also, areas "liberated" by the Hungarians and Romanians in Bessrabia were the site of pogroms and massacres conducted by Hungarians and Romanians, without the help of the Einsatzgruppen, more or less spontaneously and independent of German command -- picking up on the "theme" of unlicenesed barbarity.
More than likely. But according to [url=http://www.hdot.org/en/denial/chronology]Emory University's timeline[/url], they were still setting up ghettos across Poland, Ukraine, and Baltics in spring and summer of '41.
September 3, 1941
Nine hundred Soviet prisoners of war and Polish prisoners are killed in a test of Zyklon B at Auschwitz ...
June 22, 1941
The German army invades the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, follow the Wehrmacht (regular army) into Russia, and begin mass murders of Jews, Gypsies and Communist leaders. By spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of others. Some 70,000 to 80,000 Jews fled eastward to evade the first wave of German invaders.
The mobile killing squads took few if any prisoners in Russia, just blitzkrieg, machine guns, and flamethrowers - annihilation. It sounds like Desbois and investigators will be unearthing many more mass graves in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
Ho hum.
Execution of Poles by Einsatzcommando in October 1939.
Massacre in batch of Polish POW's, civilians, and also Jews started almost as soon as the "civilian" authorities took over the areas of Poland siezed by the Wehrmacht. It was so brutal that Walter von Braustich the Field Marshal in command of the Wehrmacht directly complained to Hitler about the barbarity of what the SS were doing when they took over the rear area. Braustich was sacked. Later, in fact, partly because of this experience of the wanton destruction unleashed in Poland, the Wehrmacht insisted that areas in the west, such as Holland, Belgium, Luxemborg and France remain under the authority of the Wehrmacht until hostilities had ended.
This insistence, probably saved the people of Western Europe from much suffering. But yeah, go on, distort it all you like, so that we can forget about the agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that brought doom to so many innocent Poles, and tell us all about Russian suffering, after 41.
Thanks! Par for the course.
And here's the link to your source page you neglected to include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles
Par for the course, and your welcome.
Well I should have said "among the first mass exterminations" carried out by firing squads early in the war. The central theme of this thread is not to point out the well established fact that 90% of Polish Jews were exterminated by 1945, but that mass exterminations by mobile killing units also took place in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and that mass grave sites are now being excavated in the former USSR and Russia for the first time and for the sake of updating an historical record. Desbois points out that his research leads him to believe that the generally accepted number of six million is too low.
Yes, also took place. Based on the precedent set at the end of the Polish campaign. I was merely correcting the specifics of the history, and expanding upon the point. My point is that all of this begins in Poland and is the expanded later in Russia and the Ukraine.
Yes. It is an image of an Einsatzcommando units exterminating "ethnic Poles". "Poles" is how I identified them under the photo. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Its not like were not also exterminating Polish Jews in batches. Pogroms started immediatly and were often organized with the participation with antisemitic Poles. Are you disputing the legitimacy of the photograph? What is the point....?
Yes, the mass exterminations by gunfire, hangings, etc occurred in Poland on the order of dozens to hundreds per day and became much worse in Ukraine and Russia in terms of numbers of people shot in a matter of days ie. in the thousands as opposed to "batches."
Babi Yar is considered to be the largest mass extermination of the war by a division of einsatzgruppen and collaborators over a span of less than two weeks.
The Babyn Yar massacre was the largest single mass killing for which the Nazi regime and its collaborators were responsible during its campaign against the Soviet Union[5] and is considered to be "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust".
Yes, also took place.Based on the precedent set at the end of the Polish campaign
I am not going to argue with you about the level of massacres deportations and ethnic cleansing that went on in Poland in comparison to the Soviet Union. Be that as it may I was just pointing out that the policy really begins in Poland.
I think the idea that the Jews were hostages is bogus. But you can think what you like.
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
Well I disagree with your personal opinion concerning mass executions of "batches" of people by gunfire in Poland as a model used by einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. Mass extermination by machine gun fire and even flamethrowers in the Soviet Union was the method used by mobile death squads in the former Soviet Union during the war. Relentless blitzkrieg, starvation and disease was another.
And about NKVD being possible perpetrators? Not so far, says Patrick Desbois. None of the witnesses he's spoken with in Ukraine have pinned blame to the Soviets for any of the 800 plus mass graves. They've all identified the SS and German soldiers, collaborators etc as having perpetrated the mass executions being discovered over the last several years. Desbois says most of the old timers he's interviewed will have lived through the famine years during Soviet rule. And he estimates there are another 1200 mass grave sites in Ukraine to be unearthed.
If memory serves me correcrly is there not a former member of the Einzatsgruppen still living in Waterloo Ontario?
http://news.therecord.com/article/434894
http://wearcomp.org/decon/undress_search_special562000_13395.html
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
Exactly! You don't. I show you an image of Einsatzgruppen executing Slavs as a part of a the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews and enslave and ethnically cleanse the Slavs of Poland, during WWII, and you don't think that it has anything to do with Einsatzgruppen executing Slavs as a part of a the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews and enslave and ethnically cleanse the Slavs of the Ukraine and Belarus during WWII.
That is because your brain has been fused into a block by Soviet propaganda.
It was so brutal that Walter von Braustich the Field Marshal in command of the Wehrmacht directly complained to Hitler about the barbarity of what the SS were doing when they took over the rear area. Braustich was sacked.
Actually, von Brauchitsch was sacked in December 1941, more than two years after the Polish campaign, due to the reversals suffered during the winter battles west of Moscow that year. During the 1939 campaign, Brauchitsch ordered his commanders to cease criticism of the measures being taken against the Polish population, because he felt they were vital for securing living space and the destiny of Germany.
Let's focus on what you have said about the topic of discussion:
For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on
Desbois and Ukrainian eye witnesses to hundreds of these executions by machine gun bullet sprays during WW II in their own towns and villages say youre a filthy liar. What do you have to say about that?
[url=http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/10/father-patrick-desboi... Harrison[/url] said about Holocaust by Bullets:
The fourth contribution is the depth and range of testimony. By the Spring of 2007, Desbois had interviewed 460 witnesses in Ukraine (p.xix). Most had never previously been interviewed. They did not usually seek out Desbois. Many of the older witnesses (some in their nineties) still feared the NKVD, and only opened up after long questioning by the priest. These survivors of Stalinist-induced famine and persecution were clearly not pro-Soviet. On the contrary, they would have had every reason to pin the killings on the NKVD, given the animosity between Ukrainians and Russians. Ukraine is not a philo-Semitic country. Consider also the internal prohibitions that these Ukrainians would have against lying to a Catholic priest. Yet deniers cannot produce Ukrainian witnesses of their own who tell the story that they want to hear.Could witnesses commit errors 60 years after the event? Of course. Would they incorrectly identify a murder committed by Russians as a murder committed by Germans? Not a chance. Yet deniers would have to claim that 460 witnesses all made this mistake
That is because your brain has been fused into a block by Soviet propaganda
I think you should change your handle to Joe Cuebbels considering the amount of Cuebull you broadcast on babble
Sure. Regardless his private criticisms of the conduct of the campaign are a matter of record. None of that is to say that he was a particularly moral person, nor the Wehrmacht dissatisfaction with conduct of the civilian adminstration a moral issue. The most important issue was the fact that the Nazi scorched earth policy hampered the war effort, and affected production in the newly occupied zone. For example the depopulation of the ethnic Polish people of Danzig/Gdansk was so damaging to the operation of the city as a port that the Nazi "Gauletier" halted the ethnic cleansing operation.
Poland, as a result, became an economic basket case and a net liability.
On this basis the Wehrmacht was very reticent to turn over control of the Benalux countries and France, for fear that the Nazi policies would severly undermine the productive capacity of those areas and damage the long term prospect of winning the war.
The reason for their hesitation in the west was more likely due to it remaining as a vital war front, initially with the air campaign over Britain, and afterwards as the primary North Atlantic U-Boat base, training and reconstitution depot for decimated Eastern front formations, buffer against the allied bombing campaign, and then invasion defences. They needed military control of the those states and were loath to entrust it's institutions with the usual party dullards and incompetents that were typically given plum positions of governance as rewards. With Poland, it became part of the rear administrative echelon of the Reich as the front moved eastward. Eventually they did give the West over to an assortment of entities within the Reich's apparatus, including the SS. I'm not sure without some research which one of them if any had precedence of control.
A World War Two survivor offers his eyewitness account of how Jews were exterminated by Nazi mobile units in the Ukraine in World War II. [url=http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/holocaust_by_bullets/wit... K.[/url] said:
We were just children ... They said, Don't move! ... They had helmets on. They were SS... trucks arrived and the Jews were ordered outside... At the head of the line was the rabbi ... [makes sounds like machine gun fire] Another group moved ahead [mimicks more machine gun fire] I saw this with my own eyes[/quote]
The reason for their hesitation in the west was more likely due to it remaining as a vital war front, initially with the air campaign over Britain, and afterwards as the primary North Atlantic U-Boat base, training and reconstitution depot for decimated Eastern front formations, buffer against the allied bombing campaign, and then invasion defences. They needed military control of the those states and were loath to entrust it's institutions with the usual party dullards and incompetents that were typically given plum positions of governance as rewards. With Poland, it became part of the rear administrative echelon of the Reich as the front moved eastward. Eventually they did give the West over to an assortment of entities within the Reich's apparatus, including the SS. I'm not sure without some research which one of them if any had precedence of control.
Certainly. They did. In fact they did it despite the Wehrmacht's objection. That said they set up fairly stable relationships with local businesses and the existing state bureacracies. I don't know if it was so much that they were "dullards", though some were. They were all however rapacious profiteers, more or less to a man. The Nazi attitude to Poland is somewhat reminicent of the US attitude to Iraq today.
In anycase, this drivel about there being a substantive difference between the Nazi rule in Poland and what happened in the Ukraine and Belarus in 1941, is at best prevarication on details and revisionist history. This is an ethnic cleansing project that begins in Poland, and then accelerates and becomes increasingly brutal as the war progresses.
What's incredible would be for a certain toe-head to try to revise Holocaust history concerning a certain country as it's being uncovered and revealed to the world by eye witnesses to the events in question. That would take some doing.
Ok "Fidel". Nothing happened in Poland. No plans were made, no camps errected, no ghettos created, no Poles woken from their sleep and evicted. Danzig was not depopulated of Poles. No one was shot. Nothing happened: "Nothing to see here ladies and gentlemen -- now if you will please move along to the Soviet section of the exhibit..."
No I'm the one who mentioned concentration camps as well as ghettos in Poland.
And just to be clear, slippery, youre the one questioning the validity of the 400 plus eye witnesses to the more than 800 mass exterminations by the SS in Ukraine during WW II. So when did you become a Holocaust revisionist?
I did no such thing.
What I did was I posted a picture of Einsatzcommando executions in Poland, in order to demonstrate the continuity of events and policy leading up the extermination campaign against Slavs and Jews in the Soviet Union, starting in Poland. It is you who is engaged in trying to establish some kind of body count ranking system that differentiates between "Holocaust" in the Soviet Union and a "mere massacre" in Poland, as if these are not part and parcel of the same program.
You are also trying impute the idea that up until that point in time the Germans were engaged in some kind of "hostage taking" of Jews for political purposes as opposed outright ethnic cleansing.
I did no such thing.
[url=http://rabble.ca/comment/1028874/Lets-focus-what-you-have]Yes, you did[/url]
Oh yes, I did in fact question the methodology behind identifying the specific identity of human remains burried 70 years ago. I never suggested that extensive massacres did not take place. I simply questioned the ability of determining the exact number of dead based on this forensice evidence. How is that done? For each body found you multiply by 10?
The fact that there were extensive massacres has never been in question. Finding new graves though does not say much, for example these bodies may be those of persons already accounted for in current estimates of the number killed. It would also be difficult to determine the identity of the persons killed.
Ukraine and Russia were countries where the first mass exterminations took place. The nazis' first solution for extermination was to murder large numbers of Ukrainian and Russian Jews by machine gun and rifle fire with burials in mass graves. And sometimes victims were still alive as they were being buried.
The liquidation of the Polish political and cultural elite began in earnest immediately in the wake of the advancing German armies. One Einsatzgruppe of approximately 400-600 men were assigned to each of the five invading armies, and a sixth was deployed in the Poznan border province that was to be annexed to Germany. These extermination units worked from previously compiled groups of names which included Aristocrats, priests, government officials, business people, teachers, doctors. Among them were many Jews. They were all rounded up into improvised camps behind the lines and the method of execution was usually by shooting. At that point, although there had been no specific directive singling out Jews for execution, there was one gruppe leader, SS General Udo von Woyrsch who took it upon himself to concentrate on killing Jews.
Oh yes, I did in fact question the methodology behind identifying the specific identity of human remains burried 70 years ago. I never suggested that extensive massacres did not take place. I simply questioned the ability of determining the exact number of dead based on this forensice evidence. How is that done? For each body found you multiply by 10?The fact that there were extensive massacres has never been in question. Finding new graves though does not say much, for example these bodies may be those of persons already accounted for in current estimates of the number killed. It would also be difficult to determine the identity of the persons killed.
[url=http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/upload/minisites/ukraine/en/en_expositi... mass Jewish graves and collecting ballistic proof:[/url]
On indications given by witnesses, the site of the grave is located, and its GPS position noted. The German cartridge cases are dated, and all other ballistic proof is gathered before the grave is camouflaged, to prevent tomb raiders profaning the site.The presence of these German cartridge cases around the communal graves is determining evidence that executions were perpetrated by mobile Nazi units. Along with such evidence, the team picks up several personal objects belonging to the victims: glasses, children's games, or jewelry which escaped the killers' avarice
Well I'm glad they didnt recruit you for this forensic investigation, shitforbrains.
The Nazi attitude to Poland is somewhat reminicent of the US attitude to Iraq today.
As bad as it is and continues to be, with the horrific casualties among innocent Iraqis from the first war, to the sanctions regime, and the second war and occupation, nothing tops what was done in Poland, not even the Ukraine, as monstrous as the Nazi crimes were there.
Slumber J, I dealt with that post some time ago and revised my comment accordingly. No one here is suggesting the that the nazis didnt execute Poles and Polish Jews by firing squads.
However, what we do have is a babbler doubting the evidence being uncovered in Ukraine over the last several years. That babbler has suggested that the Soviet NKVD could have been responsible for some of the mass execution sites. And this is contrary to the several hundred eye witness testimonials and physical evidence left behind at these newly discovered grave sites by the nazis' mobile death squads.
Slumber J, I dealt with that post some time ago and revised my comment accordingly. No one here is suggesting the that the nazis didnt execute Poles and Polish Jews by firing squads.
I would hope you're not opposed to additional information on the topic. It was offered as such, as gut wrenching as it is to read. In that light, why not give the Soviet NKVD their due as well for one of their monstrosities.
What's incredible would be for a certain toe-head ...
Now now. If we're going to insult each other, let's at least get our terminology straight.
1. tow headed is literally "flaxen haired". This meaning of tow comes from Middle Low German touw (which means "flax, hemp fiber"). This probably went back to the prehistoric Germanic base *tow-, *taw "make, prepare" (source also of English tool), in the sense "make yarn from wool; spin". he's a real tow head
2. A person with very light (almost white) blond hair, "tow" being flax or hemp fibers. Tow-headed, along with fair(-haired) and flaxen-haired, is a tradional way in the English language to refer to blond hair or lightly-colored hair, having come from its old Germanic roots (which are quite rare).
