ROTHENBURGER: A visit to Auschwitz and a question – could it happen again?
(Image: Mel Rothenburger)
SATURDAYS ARE BUSY at Auschwitz.
Eighty years ago, people came by freight train. Most never left. Now they come by car or bus for a few hours, reservation tickets in hand.
Visitors are divided into groups and assigned guides who tour them through the notorious concentration camp run by the Nazis during World War II. They walk under the ARBEIT MACHT FREI (Work Sets You Free) metal letters that still hang over the gate to the main camp.
The groups are supposed to give each other space but the guides hurry them along, often bumping into and even passing the group in front, saturating the tight spaces inside some of the buildings.
Ludwig Vesely. (Image: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum)
Visitors, like us, who were there one week ago, walk the narrow streets beside the tall reinforced concrete fence posts strung with barbed wire, pause at the shooting wall and the roll call square, view the rudimentary latrines and crowded bunks and straw beds used by prisoners in the barracks, descend the narrow steps to the starvation cells, see piles of prosthetics, clothing, eyeglasses, combs and suitcases taken from prisoners for shipment back to Germany, and bales of human hair — two tons worth — to be made into socks and mattress stuffing.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
Crematorium 1. (Image: Mel Rothenburger)
Barracks at Birkenau. (Image: Mel Rothenburger)
ArmchairMayor.ca 
History does repeat itself, it seems, everyday. It may not be the ovens at Auschwitz, but innocent lives are lost in many ways in the grim horrors of war.
On Remembrance Day, I think especially of all the children whose lives were cut short. Be it in a concentration camp, a village in the Ukraine, Gaza, or a residential school. They should not be forgotten.
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Your quote, Mel: “Philosopher George Santayana is credited with the famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.””
Unfortunately for the people of Gaza history is repeating itself. Palestinians have been confined in locked borders for years (yes, much worse than Dale Bass’s imagination of mental health care being a concentration camp). Food, water, electricity cut off at whim by the Israeli government.
Gaza is about the geographical size of Kamloops. How would you like to be locked into Kamloops and not be able to take a wounded bear to the Cariboo, or go to Ashcroft for a day out? Heck, I like to get out of Kamloops for a camping trip to Clearwater.
Seriously, now we are watching through the western media’s filtered eyes (dominated by the U.S. which funds Israel), a bombardment by Israel forces, killing innocent civilians. Sure, the Hamas attack was despicable, but much less casualties than the killings by the Israel government, not just this year but much more over decades.
I realize that many Israelis don’t support Net and Yahoo, but the Israel government is repeating the past as you have referred to, albeit on a smaller scale, by daily allowing their rogue citizens to encroach on the occupied territories and shooting and intimidating the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank. Has anyone gone on a tourist trip to see the rubble they live in? Israel would probably love to eliminate Gaza so that they have beachfront property on the Med.
The people of the region (for example, Jordan), know much more than Auschwitz tourists how history is repeating itself. Now it’s time to reflect on the Holocaust and not let history repeat itself by the Israeli government’s continual incursion on Palestinian territory.
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Will the carnage of innocents repeat itself? Of course it will as long as there are privileged classes.
But on a more mundane note Israel does not have any rights to indiscriminately bomb civilians. Furthermore Israel doesn’t have any rights to treat anyone worse than animals. The ongoing mistreatment of Palestinians has to stop.
The Bible is just a story, really.
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To answer your question, yes, it could happen again. It is already happening in some parts of the world re China and its treatment of Uyghers, to cite just one example. The Hamas terrorism needs to be called out for what it is, and Israel has every right to defend itself and to prosecute Hamas to the full extent. The fact that these “freedom fighters” don’t wear uniforms, and hide in hospitals, mosques, and behind women and children is not Israel’s problem. As to anti-Jewish demonstrations and other sentiment being expressed here in Canada, the leaders and participants in these events ought to be ashamed, and should be in jail and/or deported, depending on their citizenship status. This Imam in Montreal, Adil Charkaoui, should have his citizenship cancelled and be deported back to Morocco, his country of origin, immediately. Look up what he said in a recent speech. Actively inciting for the killing of Jews. Disgusting. University professors and staff participating in pro-Hamas or anti-Israel demonstrations or rallies likewise should be dismissed and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Student participants should be ejected from school. This is way over the line of free speech. This idiocy and hatred needs to be nipped in the bud. Standing by and doing nothing in the name of free speech and political correctness is not good enough. This is inciting hatred, and there are penalties for that in Canada, but apparently it depends on whom you are inciting hatred against.
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Nobody should be exterminating anyone in our present day. Yet they are. Picture a country, any country. Now, have outsiders come and divide off a piece of that country and give it to others, who just happen to hate the original people on religious grounds. Then have the others slowly but with force take more and more of the original country. When the original country folk fight back, call it anti-Semitism.
According to the UN, since 2008 the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 20,000 Palestinians and around 1,000 Israelis. Who’s eradicating who?
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Your comment astounds me. Nothing can justify a return to Auschwitz, as others have been calling for.
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I am certainly not advocating for any death in any way whatsoever. I just wanted to make clear that the killing is not all on one side. In fact, Israeli settler incursions into Palestine with attendant deaths have been going on since Churchill had the bright idea to carve out a piece of another country and give it to the surviving Jews. I wish he had carved out a piece of Canada instead. Obviously I worded my comment badly, if you interpreted it as my wanting a return to Auschwitz. Quite the opposite, in fact. ________________________________
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Note that I said, “as others have been calling for.” But every time somebody replies to a comment about the Holocaust and the current disgusting round of antisemitism by saying, “Yes but” it comes off as a defence for Oct. 7.
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Would Hamas, the PLO etc have been fighting Israel if it was a Christian or Buddhist nation but doing the same things to Palestinians that Israel is doing? (Cordoning off the Palestine, refusing the inhabitants water and medical aid, shooting people who get too near the border, sponsoring incursions into Palestinian territory and razing farms and olive orchards.) If the answer to this is yes (which it is), then the reactions of Palestinians and those who call for humanitarianism on their behalf cannot be called anti-Semitic.
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