 26 Jan 2005 @ 19:26, by Bruce Kodish
"This article is posted by participants of the January 27, 2005, BlogBurst (see list at end of article), to remember the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, sixty years ago, on January 27, 1945.
On January 20th, we marked the anniversary of the 1942 Wannsee Conference. In the course of that Conference, the Nazi German hierarchy formalized the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Understanding the horrors of Auschwitz requires that one be aware of the premeditated mass-murder that was presented at Wannsee.
There were other Nazi German death camps; Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There were other ways in which Jews--about 6 million in total-- (and other 'undesirables' like the Poles, three million of them) were murdered. But the name "Auschwitz"--which actually constituted a complex of 3 neighboring camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II or Birkenau and Auschwitz III--has come to symbolize for many the evil of the Nazi German bureaucracy of death and its "final solution" to the 'Jewish Problem'--the extermination of the Jewish people.
Highlighting these events now has become particularly important, even as the press reports that 45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz' (Jerusalem Post, December 2, 2004)
January 27, 2005 marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps by the Soviet Red Army.
The retreating Germans had evacuated a massive number of the prisoners to camps in Germany. The picture you see (of children experimented on by the Germans) is a fair representation of the state of the remnant of prisoners that the Soviet army found.
The Soviets initially estimated the Auschwitz death toll, from 1940 to 1945, as 4 million. Later figures provided by Dr. Franciszek Piper of the Polish Museum of Auschwitz give a figure of approximately 1.1 million individuals exterminated there including: 960,000 Jews, 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet Prisoners of war. (See Iwo Pogonowski's book Jews In Poland)
As a Jew,I remember that Jews were picked out as special targets by Nazi racism. I also remember and mourn all of the other victims of the Nazis and their helpers.
As a Jew and a Zionist, I will fight against the demonization of the Jewish people, their culture and religion. I will fight for the survival of the Jewish people and their refuge state --Israel.
As a Jew, I will do what I can for all victims (whatever their race, ethnic group, or creed) of tyrannical regimes, and genocidal programs even as I will decry the desecration of the memory of Auschwitz by false accusations of genocide made by Israel's foes.
As a Jew I will continue to say with Remedy of the Wu Tang Clan (you read that right) Never Again!
Link here to Blogburst Participating Sites
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