ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST UNDERSTANDING & PREVENTION
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ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST UNDERSTANDING & PREVENTION | ||
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UNDERSTANDING The Killings Why Jews? Organizers Collaborators War against Jews Anti-Semitism Victims of Antisem The Worst Camp
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SUBLIME REVISIONISM
Cross in a Camps.Last year I visited the camp Gross Rosen museum, located in Poland, near Legnica. I was very moved with the exhibited testimony of the inmates describing their ordeal and torment. Camp Gross Rosen was a main camp, administrating scores of satellite camps. It was a labor camp in which thousands of Jews perished during the death marches. On exiting the barrack I was startled with the sight of a 30-ft. cross, towering over the camp. "The dedication ceremonies will take place on Sunday," explained our guide. Seeing the cross, many questions came to my mind. Does this cross symbolize the sufferings of the majority of the victims, the Jews? Does the cross symbolize the ordeal of the Christian victims, or the cruelty and bestiality of the Christian perpetrators? It seems to me that erection of the crosses at such inferno places, is a subtle manipulations of symbols, a form of sublime revisionism.
Holocaust Saints.We do have our own Jewish Holocaust Saint, a converted Jewish Nun that perished in Auschwitz, was recently canonized. Usually, canonization is connected with miracles. For a Jew to survive in Auschwitz was a miracle, to perish was the norm. So where is the miracle? It seems that is an attempt to create a mythology of Catholic persecution and martyrdom. This goes in tandem with the official silence and lack of condemnation of all the priest that played an active role in the Holocaust. For example:Father Josip Tiso.A Roman Catholic priest that was the head of the Slovakia puppet government, paid the Germans an equivalent of 50 dollars, for transferring the Slovakia Jews to Auschwitz. Even the intervention of the Pope Pious XII, would not stop the killing. Was the infamous Tiso punished for his deeds? Was he excommunicated for insubordination to the Pope? The answer is no.
Father Maximilian Kolbe.Father Kolbe was a heroic priest that died a horrible death in Auschwitz, He volunteered to take the place of another inmate, condemned to die by starvation. Father Kolbe died a heroic death but he did not lead a saintly life. As an editor in chief of an anti-Semitic newspaper he spread lies and hatred, he spread anti-Semitism.
Auschwitz and Birkenau.The Auschwitz Death Camp complex, is divided into two parts: Auschwitz, the model labor camp, showed often to the red Cross delegations. Birkenau Death Camp, where millions of victims, mostly Jews were gassed. On a recent visit to the camp, I realized that Birkenau Death Camp was left to rotten away: all the wooden barracks were demolished and used for building material by the local population. It is a desolate place that looks already now, like an ancient archeological site. In contrast Auschwitz labor camp is well maintained and serves as a focal point of the Destruction Museum. A former inmate who spent three years in Birkenau, and is one of the few people who worked at the construction of the gas chambers and at their removal. Here what he relates: "I went back to Birkenau this past September (1991), my first visit since I left the camp in January 1945, and I was overwhelmed by the desolateness of the place. . . . Only the brick barracks of the original camp remain while the hundreds of wood barracks were allowed to disintegrate or taken apart for firewood. ..." "....It was during the late morning, on a Saturday, and the two of us were the only ones there. In that huge complex of former camps there wasn't another human being. There was an eeriness in the absolute silence that pervaded this greatest killing field of all time....." "We stopped at the Auschwitz camp... The parking lot was full; there were bus loads with visitors, and the cafeteria was busy. The place projected an aura of a busy shrine, while Birkenau has been allowed to go to seed and its physical plant is so disintegrated that it is beyond repair, and certainly beyond recognition. " "There is no comparison between the two camps in the way are kept and maintained as Polish national museum."
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