Prelude
The history of evil must never be forgotten.
A reminder to the Jews: never forget what was visited upon you during WW2. Every Jewish generation – present and future – must fully understand what was done to the Jewish people during the 20th century. More so, remember that the 20th Century events against the Jews of Europe were not as unique as some might think. Those acts of unimaginable violence against the Jews were also a reminder of the long history of other violent acts against the Jews throughout the history of the Jewish people. The 20th century Holocaust episode only differed in its degree of violence and cruelty, not its kind.
Sadly, today, less than a century later, there are those who still dream of bringing about the total annihilation of the Jewish people. Evil never sleeps, it just pauses to rest; it goes under a thin veneer of a civilized society to get its act together before rising again.
Never forget though that the fact the Jewish people have lived through and survived all the evil that rose to destroy them has only made the nation of Israel stronger and more determined.
Humanity must never close an eye or forget that the German Nazis and their minions were almost mechanically calculated, not a smidgen of humanity or compassion was running through their blood veins or heartbeat.
Auschwitz, Where The Nazis [almost] Perfected Extermination of the Jews
The diabolical German efficiency reached its peak at Auschwitz. There, enormous resources were directed to conceal the camp’s purpose. The transport [of Jews] cattle trains would arrive at the camp’s three platforms, and immediately, after a short selection, of who could live a little longer and who will not, the “selected” Jews would be directed to the gas chambers, while an orchestra, made of Jewish musicians, playing at their entrance to drown out the screams heard from inside the building. Cover with music the fact that the Jews who were pushed down the stairs into the building soon emerged as smoke through the chimney at the end of it.
In the first stage, the Jews were taken to a cloakroom where they were ordered to remove all their clothing in order to take a “disinfecting shower” and when they had finished this process, the door to the gas chamber, at the end of the hall, opened up. When they entered it, the doors were locked behind them and an opening in the room’s roof was used to throw a can of lethal Zyklon B gas into it.
After only 20 minutes, all the Jews from the last transport who were “selected” to go through the “disinfecting shower” process died from the agony of asphyxiation from the poisonous gas.
Then the door at the end of the gas chamber opened up directly into the crematorium, as depicted in the drawing below. The camp’s special prisoners’ unit – the Sonderkommando – transferred the tortured bodies to the cremation process.
It was those Sonderkommando fat Jews who made the next transported group possible.
This unit had previously evacuated the contents of the “cloakroom” to the “Kanada” area, where the items were sorted and then sent to Germany. In fact, the mountains of items collected from undressed Jews are on display today in the Auschwitz camp museum are only those that were not yet transported out of the camp. And in order to maintain the secret of what was taking place in the room, the members of the Sonderkommando were eliminated and replaced every few months.
The “Final Solution”
One of the hidden secrets of the Holocaust was the nature of the “Final Solution,” the cornerstone of the Auschwitz extermination camp’s operations. The secrecy was so great that Jews were forbidden to walk passing by the crematorium, only by running.
Apart from the Sonderkommando who were murdered every few months, Kanada Kommando* were also often replaced due to their knowledge of the extent of the murder process. No documentation or prisoner’s testimony was ever leaked from it, except for four.
The only Sonderkommando photos of the extermination process at Auschwitz were taken with great courage by Jews from the Sonderkommando in August 1944. The photos show an area in the forest where the Jews were ordered to undress before being put into a “shower” that was a lethal gas chamber. And two more photos of a cremation pit where bodies of those murdered by gas were burned outside the crematorium.
*Prisoners known as the Aufräumungskommando (“clearing-up commando”) or Kanada Kommando were viewed to have had one of the “best” jobs in Auschwitz, because prisoners could “organize”, in camp slang, and procure goods for themselves and other inmates.
And to ensure that no Jew would escape, even those who died during the forced labor work, their bodies were returned to the pens every day as depicted in the illustration below.
The Red Cross and the Allies Collaboration Effort
And thus, the [anti-Semitic] Red Cross could falsely testify that there was no extermination in the camp, and justify the protective approach the Allies gave to the extermination enterprise.
Red Cross Campaign
An official letter from the Red Cross, November 1944, indicates that an inspection conducted by its representatives in the Auschwitz camp found that there were no extermination facilities in the camp; that no Jews were being exterminated, and that the camp was not intended for Jews only.
Did the organization that was established to prevent war crimes miss its goal? Or, did it consider the extermination of Jews not a crime?
Kastner’s Case
And so the deception of Israel Rudolf (Rezső) Kastner (Kasztner*) was made possible, which helped to exterminate about a million Hungarian Jews in less than two months and without resistance.
*Rezső Kasztner, also known as Rudolf Israel Kastner was a Hungarian-Israeli journalist and lawyer who became known for having helped a group of Jews escape from occupied Europe during the Holocaust on the Kastner train. After WWII he was accused of having failed to inform the majority of Hungarian Jews about the reality of what awaited them in Auschwitz. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having “sold his soul to the [Nazi] devil,” a charge that was however overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel in 1958.
Yad Vashem
And why does “Yad Vashem,” pinned as a leftist obfuscating institution, established to commemorate the Holocaust, join in a lie that dwarfs the scope of the extermination in the Polish hell by claiming that only a little more than a million Jews were murdered in the country?
This while the secret keepers themselves, Rudolf Höss, the German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, SS officer Otto Moll, an SS non-commissioned officer who committed numerous atrocities at the Auschwitz, and Friedrich Enters*, testified, orally and in writing, that over three million Jews were murdered in Poland with Auschwitz in the lead? We are speechless!
*Friedrich Entress was a German doctor in various concentration and extermination camps during WWII. He conducted human medical experimentation at Auschwitz and introduced the procedure there of injecting lethal doses of phenol directly into the hearts of prisoners.
(The cartoons above by Jan Komski, Poland)
Ending the War on Evil
One of the conclusions from the Holocaust is that those who do not fight evil are helping it. And those who support stopping the war on evil are joining it. Like the British Nazi MP Sir Oswald Mosley* propaganda campaign to stop the war against Germany with the slogan: “Stop the war, elections now.”
*Sir Oswald Mosley, was a British aristocrat and politician who rose to fame during the 1920s and 1930s when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism=Nazism.
This relates to Israel’s current war with the terror group Hamas whereby people on the left in Israel are calling to end the war and would like to go for election to try to topple the current right wing coalition government.
The Jewish opposition to his marches (as in the Battle of Cable Street*) led Mosley to establish the “Black Shirts” thug associations, and his actions were joined by the Anglo-German Brotherhood, an elite group that included businessmen, aristocrats, and politicians, all of whom opposed the continuation of the war in Germany.
*The Battle of Cable Street was a series of clashes that took place at several locations in the East End of London, Britain, most notably Cable Street, on Sunday 4 October 1936.
Mosley’s actions remind us of the commotion in Israel’s streets and city squares. He continued his campaign until, still as the war continued, his movement was outlawed.
The Cartoon’s Hebrew caption: Oswald, why are you abandoning the ship, it is not capsizing? Oswald: Not now, but it will capsize when I am going to finish with it.
Meanwhile, in America, the legendary pilot Charles Lindenberg also led a campaign against the war with the Germans. His call was joined by anti-Semites, including car manufacturer Henry Ford and the US ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy, whose son was later President John Kennedy. They worked to preserve America’s neutrality, which US President Roosevelt had declared.
Evil Never Sleeps, It Just Pauses to Rest
This is another reminder that Jews must never forget what was visited upon them in WW2. Humanity must never doubt the real meaning of the term genocide.
Every present and future Jewish generation needs to fully understand that the violent acts against the Jewish people in the 1930s-1940s should be a reminder of a long history of other violent acts against the Jewish people throughout their 3500 years of history.
The 20th century episode – the Holocaust – however differed only in its degree of violence and not its kind.
What is most perturbing is that less than a century after the Holocaust there are those who still dream of bringing about the Jewish people’s total annihilation.
Yes, the Holocaust has been embedded in humanity’s history of evil. However the short lived genocide that took place on October 7, 2023, in Southern Israel had a consequential idea to murder all the Jews in Israel and destroy the Jewish state.
So many people know the name Gaza and the Gazans’ suffering but deliberately omit the reason why these Gazans – terror group Hamas and their minions in Gaza – brought this war upon themselves.
Evil never sleeps; it pauses and then it rises again.
The Jewish people survived the evil that came upon them throughout history to become more determined to live. This saying says it all: “Am Yisrael Chai” – the nation of Israel is alive.
Have we, the people, learned the lesson that those who do not eliminate evil will be eliminated by evil?
