Six on Auschwitz - liberated by the Soviet Army 75 years ago today: Memorial march for 76th anniversary of “death trains” departed Thessaloniki; Three New Resources For Learning About Auschwitz; Gideon Levy: On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us
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And please don't forget to check out the pertinent images attached to every post
Thanks John and Gary
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In his essay, Elkana stated that democracy is put at risk when the memory of the victims participates actively in the democratic process. Thirty-one years later, the Holocaust is flourishing in the democratic process, whose cracks are becoming wider since the right wing appropriated it for its needs and propaganda. First they made the national flag and anthem right-wing, and now the Holocaust as well.
In our childhood, we didn’t want to hear about the Holocaust because they taught us to be embarrassed by it; now its distorted lessons are alienating anyone who doesn’t want live in a militaristic state of hatred. Remembering the Holocaust is now for nationalists only. There’s no universal conclusion or moral lesson. It didn’t have to be this way.
I have yet to hear a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border, saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.
"That day, SS Guards surrounded the Zigeunerlager, or “Gypsy Camp,” at Auschwitz II–Birkenau with machine guns, ready to liquidate the camp and murder nearly 7,000 people.
The Roma and Sinti prisoners, however, despite being engulfed by the daily reality of death in the camp, chose life. When the SS commando unit called for Roma and Sinti to leave the residential blocks, they were met with prisoners who refused to come out, barricading the doors and fashioning work tools, handcuffs, knives, and rocks into weapons.
Romani Holocaust survivor Hugo Hollenreiner recalled his father shouting, “We’re not coming out! You come in here! We’re waiting here! If you want something, you have to come inside!” The SS unit called an end to the stand-off and retreated, and the “Gypsy Camp” at Birkenau maintained their survival until August 2nd.
After many of the Roma and Sinti prisoners fit for labour were moved to Auschwitz or other concentration camps, the nearly 3,000 remaining—comprised of mostly the sick, elderly, and children—were slaughtered in the gas chambers. The Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust have been estimated from 220,000-500,000 (with some scholars estimating upwards of 1.5 million). In some countries, like the Czech Republic, 90 per cent of the Romani population perished under the Nazi regime."
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"What Elie Wiesel Saw
Future Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, then age 16, was a slave laborer in that section of the huge Auschwitz complex. He was an eyewitness to the August 20 bombing raid. Many years later, in his best-selling book ‘Night’, Wiesel wrote: “If a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!”
There were additional Allied bombing raids on the Auschwitz oil factories throughout the autumn. American and British planes also flew over Auschwitz in August and September, when they air-dropped supplies to the Polish Home Army forces that were fighting the Germans in Warsaw. They flew that route twenty-two times, yet not once were they given the order to drop a few bombs on the death camp or its transportation routes.
Adding insult to inaccuracy, Jack Schwartz claimed (in The Daily Beast) that “in Palestine, the Jewish Agency [the Jewish community’s self-governing body] overwhelmingly opposed the bombing [of Auschwitz] on the grounds that it would likely take Jewish lives,” and “American Jewish leaders were equally divided over the issue, which led to recriminations during and after the war.”
Wrong, and wrong again. The minutes of Jewish Agency leadership meetings show they opposed bombing for a period of barely two weeks, and even then only because they mistakenly thought Auschwitz was a labor camp. Then they received the Vrba-Wetzler “Auschwitz Protocols,” revealing the true nature of the camp. At that point, Jewish Agency representatives in Washington, London, Cairo, Geneva, Budapest and Jerusalem repeatedly lobbied U.S., British and Soviet officials to bomb Auschwitz and the routes leading to it.
As for American Jewish leaders, a grand total of one of them urged the Allies to use ground troops against Auschwitz instead of air raids. By contrast, pleas in support of bombing were made in Washington by multiple representatives of the World Jewish Congress, Agudath Israel, the Labor Zionists of America, and the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe (the Bergson Group). Calls for bombing also appeared in the columns of a number of American Jewish newspapers and magazines at the time."
