The Telegraph reports that Exeter University in England is doing some damage control after sending out a “career services” email that featured a quote from a famous Nazi general, Erwin Rommel. The quote is innocuous enough, "One cannot permit unique opportunities to slip by for the sake of trifles."
A spokesman from the Exeter University said: "This was a genuine error and in no way intentional, however we apologise unreservedly for any offence it may have caused, and have put additional processes in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
The spokesman said the University of Exeter staff member who selected the quote did not know who Rommel was, and the information was taken from a free-to-use website.
This is a case where I want to believe the spokesman from Exeter. However, as the BBC reports, the coincidence here feels less happenstance for the Jewish students on campus who have seen an uptick in anti-Semitic sentiment across the campus.
The National Union of Students said Jewish students are feeling "increasingly unsafe" at university, and often avoid applying to certain campuses due to "fears of anti-Semitism".
"Exeter must take appropriate action to rectify the damage caused and provide sufficient reassurances that something like this will never happen again," it added in a statement.
Let us take this generic quote’s “inspiration” and use this as a “unique” opportunity to learn some stuff about Nazi general Erwin Rommel:
- Nicknamed the “Desert Fox,” Rommel rose the ranks of the Nazi war machine to become a very famous field marshal for Adolf Hitler.*
- Maybe was, maybe wasn’t a virulent anti-Semite but loved that power so he just let things go, go, go!
Even more problematic was his relationship to a proposed Einsatzgruppen Egypt. This unit was to be tasked with murdering the sizeable Jewish population of North Africa and the British mandate of Palestine and to be attached directly to Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Its commander, Walther Rauff, had helped design the gas van. Rauff met with Rommel’s staff in 1942 to prepare for the arrival of the units. No evidence exists to record Rommel’s position on the proposed measure, but he was certainly aware that planning was taking place. While the larger Einsatzgruppen were never deployed, smaller detachments did murder Jews in North Africa.
- He was “implicated” in a plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944—because he began to realize the war was on a suicidal trajectory for the Third Reich—and was given the choice to eat cyanide or be publicly disgraced. He chose the former and was given a hero’s funeral.
If the person “generating” the quote for the email truly did not know who Rommel was, and was also too lazy to do the most cursory of internet searches, that’s bad. If this person did know, well that’s a whole other thing. In the end, taking a quote like the one attribute to Rommel is a piss-poor excuse as it is relatively generic in its sentiment. If you want you can just type in “quotes about opportunity” and get a slew of similar sentiments by people, who with all of their personal failures are still not technically famed Nazi generals. Like:
"How Much I Missed, Simply Because I Was Afraid Of Missing It." – Paulo Coelho
“There Are No Mistakes, Only Opportunities." – Tina Fey
If you are at an English university you might even stay in the World War II time period with this one—on the side of the Allied forces!
"A Pessimist Sees The Difficulty In Every Opportunity; An Optimist Sees The Opportunity In Every Difficulty." – Winston Churchill
That’s just from one site! I honestly spent about 30 seconds researching that. And as far as I know, the most controversial thing Paulo Coelho has mostly done was attack James Joyce’s Ulysses.
* A man so terrible he ruined the name Adolf and Hitler and the tiny mustache for everybody.