Grass stains

In 1999, when German novelist Guenter Grass won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his fictional explorations of his nation’s horrid 20th century past, he said in accepting the award that “Auschwitz marks a rift, an unbridgeable gap in the history of civilization.”

Now, Grass, at the age of 84, offers his thoughts on the potentially life-and-death conflict between Israel and Iran in a poem titled “What Must Be Said.”

It’s a nasty piece of work, a hateful polemic masquerading as a work of art by a man who has the trappings of moral authority.

Cut away the highfalutin verbiage and you find a streetcorner loon raving that Israel claims the “right” to a “first strike” against Iran “that could annihilate the Iranian people.” This is an accusation that a nation risen from the human ashes of the Holocaust now claims justification for the murders of more than 70 million people.

No wonder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has barred Grass from visiting Israel, a country under threat that Iran, which has pledged to wipe Israel off the map, will soon be able to produce a nuclear weapon.

And it is understandable that many noted that Grass served in the Waffen SS during World War II, a fact he revealed only in 2006.

At the time, his novels could be read as a form of atonement. Forgiveness now is unthinkable.