Remembering the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz

January 20th, was the anniversary of the 1942 Wannsee Conference. In the course of that Conference, the Nazi hierarchy formalized the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Understanding the horrors of Auschwitz, and the Holocaust requires that one be aware of the premeditated mass-murder that was adopted at Wannsee. Hence a BlogBurst by bloggers around the world, simultaneously commemorating this great evil. A list of those participating may be found here.

Today, January 27, 2005, is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. As the generation of Holocaust survivors who suffered most directly, and bear witness most directly, gradually dies off, we must assure that this mark of Cain is never rubbed off those who butchered defenceless innocents, and the wider world that simply stood by and did nothing. It is essential that history record forever the horror that was perpetrated. We must never forget, nor may we permit others to forget, lest it happen once again.

The Holocaust, symbolized by Auschwitz, the worst of the death camps, occurred in the wake of a consistent, systematic, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda campaign. As a result, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how?

As Germany expanded its domination and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, Poland, parts of the USSR, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Italy and others countries, the way was open for Hitler to realize his well-publicized plan of destroying the Jewish people.

After experimentation, the use of Zyklon B on unsuspecting victims was adopted by the Nazis as the means of choice. Auschwitz was selected as the main factory of death (more accurately, one should refer to the “Auschwitz-Birkenau complex”). The green light for mass extermination was given at the Wannsee Conference, and the mass gassings took place in Auschwitz between 1942 and the end of 1944, when the Nazis retreated before the advancing Red Army. Jews were transported to Auschwitz from all over Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated Europe, and most were slaughtered in Auschwitz upon arrival. Sometimes as many as 12,000 were brutally murdered in one day. Some victims were selected for slave labour, others for “medical” experimentation. All were subject to unimagineable brutal treatment whose ultimate aim was their death.

In all, between three and four million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles and Red Army POWs, were slaughtered in Auschwitz alone (though some authors put the number at 1.3 million). Other death camps were located at Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec (Belzek), Majdanek and Treblinka.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, after most of the remaining prisoners were forced into a Death March westwards. The Red Army found only about 7,600 survivors on entering Auschwitz, but even of that number not all could be saved.

For a long time, the Allies were well aware of the mass murder, but deliberately refused to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Ironically, during the Polish uprising, the Allies had no hesitation in flying aid to Warsaw, sometimes flying right over Auschwitz.

There are troubling parallels between the systematic vilification of Jews before the Holocaust and the current vilification of the Jewish people and Israel. Suffice it to note the annual flood of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN; or the public opinion polls taken in Europe, which single out Israel as a danger to world peace; or the divestment campaigns being waged in the US against Israel; or the attempts to delegitimize Israel’s very existence. The complicity of the Allies in WW II is mirrored by the support the PLO has been receiving from Europe, China and Russia to this very day.

If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the hatred we are witnessing. For today no one can claim they do not know where it will inevitably lead.

"Remember what Amalek did to you ... and he struck those of
you who were hindmost, all the weaklings at your rear, when you were faint and
exhausted, and he did not fear God. It shall be that when Hashem, your
God gives you rest from all your enemies all around, in the land that Hashem, your God gives you ... you shall not forget!"

Deuteronomy 25:17-19

"For the sake of my brothers and companions I will now say peace be
within thee. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.
The Lord will give strength unto His people, the Lord will bless His people
with peace."

Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 64a

Sixty Years On

Yesterday the United Nations General Assembly met in special session to commemorate sixty years since the freeing of the death camps and the end to the Holocaust.

The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his usual smarmy, quasi-sincere fashion, was moved to say that, in large measure because of the Holocaust, the United Nations was founded. True. But then why is this the first time in the past sixty years that a commemoration takes place?

But let us look at the commemoration itself. The UN is composed of 191 member states. Most of them did not even bother to show up for the session. Only 35 of the 191 members nations chose to speak, with Jordan the only Arab country to avail itself of the opportunity. Well, if the UN was founded in large measure because of the Holocaust, then yesterday's performance is the best possible evidence that it is time for the UN to graciously disappear.

Had this been a special session to discuss imagined Palestinian rights, the debate would have continued for days. Speakers would have vied to outdo each other in the vilification of Israel and the Jews. The media would have devoted endless time, staff and resources to publicize each inane comment as if the future of the world depended on it.

This special session, on the other hand, was concluded in a matter of hours. The commemoration of the seminal event in the creation of the UN was marked almost apologetically, and only after the passage of sixty long, lamentable years, during which anti-semitism continues to rear its ugly head.

This coming Thursday, January 27, marks the 60th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz. The poor emaciated souls that were set free that day were but a minute percentage of the approximately 1.5 million Jews who met their untimely deaths at the hands of Nazi butchers in that camp alone. To see pictures of those freed that day is chilling in the extreme. But can we even imagine the 1.5 million corpses burned in the crematoria after the most painful and horrendous deaths. And why? Simply because they were Jews.

In total, in excess of 6 million Jews perished in this beastly manner. Finally, sixty years on, the General Assembly of the UN has acknowledged this fact. Even Kofi Annan was moved to say, "never again!". However, nowhere have I read that Mahmoud Abbas has finally disavowed his Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis.

On Thursday more than 150 bloggers around the world will be commemorating what happened 60 years ago by means of a blogburst. This, in large measure, is thanks to Joseph Alexander Norland at http://www.israpundit.com. Hopefully, many more will join. Should you wish to do so go to http://blogburstinfo.blogspot.com/.

Sans Force, Sans Truth, Sans Any Meaning

Well, the cat is now out of the bag, if it was ever in the bag. Mahmoud Abbas has now admitted that the well publicized order to his security forces to stop terrorist attacks is to be achieved without the use of force. How, pray tell, does that work?

Certainly you do not get vicious killers to stop killing by offering them candy. Not even tickets to the local football matches would do the trick. Perhaps he intends to offer them an all-expense-paid trip to Rafah to help in tunnel digging. They could sort of make a family outing of it, and on the trip they could instruct their younger siblings on how to strap on a dynamite vest.

Whatever fanciful methodology he ultimately gives us, the fact is there will be no force. Without force they cannot control the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa murderers. And if they do not stop them then we are worse off than we were when terrorist numero uno was still alive. In the case of Arafat we knew that truth would never emanate from his lips for fear of knocking out his remaining teeth. With Abbas, unfortunately, there are many who believe what he says.

There is the old joke about the two people who opened a restaurant. A customer paid the check with a $100 bill. He did not notice that there were actually two bills stuck together. The partner at the cash register now had a moral dilemma. Should he or should he not tell his partner?

Is that the sort of partner with whom Israel is expected to deal?

If there is no truth; if there are no sensible, rational attempts to truly deal with the lawlessness and wanton killing that the terrorists practice daily, then it is all a waste of time. Essentially the exercise is without meaning.

Study the Abbas record. Look carefully at what he has said, and continues to say, to his own people in Arabic. Read what he has written. It will very quickly become patent that he is like the partner with the moral dilemma. Except that I am not convinced that considerations of morality would ever even enter his mind.

IT'S ALL IN THE GENES

This morning I came across a talk which Melanie Phillips delivered at the end of last year. The reference to it is at her website, which links to the PDF version of the 17 page address.

What caught my attention was its relevance in light of the headlines today about Prince Harry and his donning of the swastika as part of a German Afrika Corps uniform.

Admittedly, I have always been a traditionalist when it came to the Monarchy. But, given the antics of the present Royal Family, I am not at all certain that they continue to serve a useful purpose. Charles is less than an inspiring example of a monarch-in-waiting. His siblings are no better. After Queen Elizabeth there is no steadfastness, no resolve. There is no appreciation of the duties and obligations that come with membership in the Royal Family.

They seem to think that they are Rock stars or sports figures, and should behave accordingly. Well, does anyone really want Ossie Osbourne as head of state?

My late father met King George VI in Scotland, and later in England, while serving with the Canadian forces in WWII. He often spoke of these meetings, and it was clear to me that he had been impressed by the King and his Queen. When the Queen Mother Elizabeth visited Canada, my youngest son waited so he could see her drive by. That same son met the Duke of Edinburgh in Toronto some years ago. He was highly unimpressed.

But back to Prince Harry. My late mother had a favourite Yiddish expression: "dos eppale falt nit veit fun boim", the apple does not fall far from the tree. Or as today's parlance would have it, it's all in the genes.

The Royal Family itself is of good German stock. Harry's great-great-uncle, the former King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, was a Nazi sympathizer, and less than a sterling example of Royalty. Harry's late mother, Princess Diana, was not a paragon of stability. And while it is unfortunate that she died at such an early age, I doubt that, had she lived, she would have had an improving influence on Harry.

But, leaving all of that aside, the real culprit is the British media, which, to a very large extent is the cause of the anti-semitism that leads to the sort of behaviour that finds nothing objectionable in wearing a swastika as part of a party costume.

Of late I have been finding fault with the French for their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish attitudes. But a recent poll in the Telegraph shows that the British are no better. Indeed, they may be worse.

The BBC, the Guardian, and a large segment of the media feed Britons a daily diet of propaganda, half-truths, untruths and vicious incitement against all things Israeli. A BBC reporter cries as a mass murderer and supreme terrorist is flown off to die in a French hospital.

It is all of a piece. If you tell the big lie often enough, people come to believe it.

Prince Harry probably saw nothing wrong in what he did. More is the pity.

But now he has apologized. Should that end the matter? Absolutely not. Let him forego his ski holiday this winter and, instead of going to Gstaad, let him go to Auschwitz. Let him research the Holocaust and then deliver an address on the fruits of his studies.

Sorry does not cut it. If you aspire to be Royalty, the least you can do is act like Royalty. The kind of Royalty that my father and son admired, not the kind my son found less than admirable.

The Lioness Speaks

Danny Williams, the Premier of the Province of Newfoundland, in a stunt, the purpose of which escapes me, decided to "punish" Paul Martin and his government. How? By lowering the Canadian flag throughout his Province.

Silly, without a doubt. But it got to the Lioness, who is really a Honey Bee. So she asked me to post a poem that she wrote some time ago. I think it says it all.

"I Never Got To Newfoundland
(On Flying Over Newfoundland)

Newfoundland joined the Dominion
when I was a child, a union
secured by a small majority vote -
a grudging consent by the Islanders.
I welcomed that cold and windswept Isle,
thinking, "how brave an outpost on our eastern shore
standing on guard, O Canada, for thee".
I have loved Newfoundland ever since, from a distance.

I thought about St. John's, city of valour,
survivor of old fires, veteran of old wars.
I thought about the lonely fishing villages
that dot the coastal coves and bays.
Their music drifted westward; their dances
clung to the fleeing feet of the young;
and with it all came their charming folkways.
I've thought about Newfoundland, from a distance.

The Beothuk are gone, a precious first, now extinct,
leaving their traces sealed in the rockbed.
Settlers' children's children to Ontari-ari-o have fled.
Trees cut down, seals gone, whales gone, fish dead,
British might, French rights, Spanish trawlers, Federal bawlers.
Brave Newfoundlanders, who have for so long
wrested their legitimate harvest from land and sea!
I salute what was and what will be, from a distance.

I never got to Newfoundland
although I often planned to go.
Schedules, maps, and tourist things
littered the kitchen table
and then disappeared, replaced
by transatlantic tickets to another place.
"We are now flying over Gander, Newfoundland."
Words that pluck the unconscious strands of my regret."

Mahmoud Abbas: The Leopard Who Does Not Change His Spots

What is it about politicians and so-called statesmen that causes them to lose their eyesight and intellectual acuity? It must be an as-yet undefined form of Altzheimers.

Shimon Peres, in a case of the blind leading the soon-to-be blind, convinced Yitzchak Rabin to set off on the course of folly known as Oslo. I argued at the time that such lunacy would inevitably lead to more and more bloodshed. Twelve years later the death toll keeps mounting.

I am not a prophet. But anyone with half a measure of brains, and that is all I have, could see that you cannot make peace with the world's greatest and most murderous terrorist.

Nonetheless, it took almost ten years for those who style themselves "World Leaders" to recognize the obvious. Even then, some, such as Jacques Chirac, would not admit it right to the very end. When Arafat finally had the good grace to die in a French hospital, Chirac gave him a sendoff worthy of a great head of state. Even the formal funeral in Egypt was more muted.

And now the cycle of horror is starting all over. "Politician's Altzheimers" is setting in again, and the "World Leaders" are embracing the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas. Moderate? There goes the eyesight and the acuity once more.

This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who financed and helped in the planning of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes. The same Abbas who since the mid-60s was the loyal sidekick of Arafat. He was clearly privy to all the horrors and killings, the hijackings, the extortion and the corruption that have been the hallmarks of Fatah and the PLO.

Where is the evidence of moderation? Surely not in his actions, either before or after the demise of Arafat; nor in his writings where he is clearly seen as a Holocaust denier and venomous hater of Jews.

No, he has not changed. As recently as two days ago he referred to Israel as the "Zionist enemy". His demands in all the speeches he has delivered in the election campaign do not vary one iota from those of his late but unlamented predecessor and mentor.

Will he fight terror? No. He will not take up arms against the terrorists, he insists. Well what does he propose to do, wave some magic wand that will cause them to disappear? I do not think so. The only disappearing he is interested in is that of Israel. It is still the same old message, but delivered in a tailored suit rather than a mock uniform.

We are urged to overlook all these things because Abbas is fighting an election and so he must appeal to the electorate in this way. Sure, tell them what they want to hear so you get elected, then you do what must be done. Isn't that what is called lieing?

What would "World Leaders" say if Prime Minister Alawi of Iraq were to campaign on the basis of Jihad against the US and the EU? How about a photo op where Alawi embraces al Zarqawi and pledges not to take up arms against him and his minions? Would the "international community" -another great phrase- pass it off as a lie necessary to get elected? Not on your life; and life is precisely what is at stake.

By permitting Abbas to get away with his incitement it further cements the poisonous hatred that is the daily diet of the Palestinians. The injection of this venom kills any hope for peace.

No, the leopard has not changed his spots. But he is being released into the forest to wreak his havoc.