Why we should all visit Auschwitz and learn about the Holocaust

Sarah Jones

Last week I had the honour of visiting Auschwitz with a plane-load of school children from across London, including my constituency in Croydon. At the end of our harrowing but life-affirming trip, one of the pupils said to me that a visit to Auschwitz should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. He has a point.

We should all know more about the most evidenced genocide in history. Of the 13 million Jews in Europe, six million were murdered in the Second World War. Millions of others as well were dehumanised and murdered in the concentration camps – from gypsies to homosexuals, from intellectuals to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Jews were rounded up across Europe and transported to the camps at Auschwitz. Often completely unaware of their fate, they carried possessions with them in labelled suitcases. One of the most poignant sights from our visit was the number of house keys that people had brought with them – clearly with a hope that they could one day return to their homes.

On arrival, after days crammed on a train with no food or drink, the Jews were lined up and separated. Women and children were sent one way – mostly straight to the gas chambers. They were stripped naked and their hair was shaved off, to be sold to German companies making equipment for the war effort.

Men who were judged by the doctors to be strong enough to work were sent to become prisoners and put to hard labour. Most died within days or weeks from the cold, hunger or disease. The bitter cold that I felt in Auschwitz Birkenau this week easily penetrated my thick winter clothes. Prisoners had nothing but thin, striped uniforms, marked with a symbol to identify their type of ‘undesirable’. They slept in cold barns; many simply froze to death.

The most extraordinary part of this mass murder was its efficiency and the thousands of people complicit in its operation. Those who booked the trains that brought the victims to their death. The drivers of the trains. The people who made the uniforms and tattooed numbers on the prisoners. The guards who shot the prisoners as they became too weak to work, and those who dropped gas pellets into the death chambers.

The first commandant at Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, lived in a house at the camp with his wife and children. The family talked afterwards about this being a golden period of happiness. This loving father spent his days competing with other camps for the prize of the highest number of deaths. Then he went home to kiss his children.

How could all these people who loved their families and were previously decent, law-abiding citizens, become complicit in mass murder? The answer is what lies at the heart of our fight against antisemitism and racism of all kinds today. As Primo Levi said: “It happened, therefore it can happen again. This is what we have to say.”

Genocides never take place overnight. First there must be a normalisation of abuse, a dehumanisation of groups of people, a culture of blame against those deemed too successful, too criminal, or just too other. This normalisation is still alive and kicking across the globe today. And with it comes a rise in antisemitism. Tired tropes have become normalised as we turn a blind eye to the borderline racists and enable the hardcore to emerge more confident.

If you look at the data on online abuse, the spikes in antisemitism are extraordinary. Every time a prominent Jew like Luciana Berger speaks, every time Tottenham play football, every time Israel is in the news.  The far right and the hard left unite in their hatred. As a result, many people who are neither right nor left absorb these messages and come to believe the lies – that the Holocaust didn’t happen, that Jews secretly run the world, or that blame for the actions of the Israeli government somehow lies with all Jews.

Wrapped around the horrors of Auschwitz are the stories of defiance and humanity from those prisoners who never gave up hope. Secretly writing letters documenting the horror to make sure the world knew what they suffered. Washing their faces in cold water every day to retain one small act of dignity and defy their captors attempts to make them nothing but animals. Protecting their fellow men in a climate where fighting over shoes or food was inevitable, as it could mean prolonging your life for a day or two.

It’s those small acts of humanity in the middle of hell that give us hope for the future. Because just as hate feeds off racism, hope grows from acts of defiance. What harm an antisemitic tweet? What harm an abusive email? Well, we know from the Holocaust where enabling leads. Our social norms shift, and the moral frame of a nation tilts, and the world becomes a more dangerous place. As Obama said when he walked the camps of Auschwitz: “When any Jew anywhere is targeted just for being Jewish, we all have to respond, ‘we are all Jews’.”

By Sarah Jones
Sarah Jones is MP for Croydon Central.

Tags: Antisemitism / Sarah Jones

Israel Exposes Iranian Precision-Guided Missile Factory in Syria

Israel charged that Iran has built another factory to produce precision-guided missiles for its terror proxy, Hezbollah, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the secret facility was being built outside of the town of Safita, in northwestern Syria.

According to the report, Israel intends to publicize Iran’s attempts to establish missile factories in Syria in an attempt to prevent its enemies from acquiring more accurate missiles to threaten the Jewish State.

In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “in Lebanon, Iran is directing Hezbollah to build secret sites to convert inaccurate projectiles into precision-guided missiles, missiles that can target deep inside Israel within an accuracy of ten meters.” He also noted that Hezbollah was “using the innocent people of Beirut as human shields,” as the missile conversion facility was located right next to Beirut’s international airport.

In December, Netanyahu claimed that the publicity garnered by his revelation at the UN prompted Iran to shut down those facilities.

In late December, airstrikes attributed to Israel destroyed a warehouse in Lebanon that housed vehicles that were to be used to move systems for improving the guidance systems on missiles to Syria.

In addition to Israel’s revelations, Iran is boasting a new “underground city,” which reportedly has produced a new ballistic missile, The Times of Israel reported.

Iran announced the new facility in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

According to aerospace commander Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, the new surface-to-surface missile is called the Dezful and is based on an older model called Zolfaghar. The earlier missile has a range of 700 kilometers (435 miles).

Iran boasted of having an underground missile manufacturing facility in 2015. In 2017, it said it had built its third such facility.

[Photo: i24NEWS / YouTube ]

No, Israel Was Not Created by the United Nations

Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (right) visits the “Machal 101” air squadron. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Arab News has a typical anti-Israel screed by Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding.

He writes, “Israel was a child of the UN, born out of a General Assembly resolution. Yet, as many children often are, it has remained distinctly ungrateful. ”

But the United Nations resolution that partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state is not what created Israel.

UN General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight unless all parties agree to them, in which case it is their agreement that gives the resolution legal status. When the Arab states rejected the resolution, the resolution lost any legal force that it may have potentially had.

The UN didn’t create modern Israel. Zionist Jews did, by building the institutions of a state while resisting the attempts of the Arab world to eradicate them.

Even Zionists argue that Israel was created by the UN.

But Israel wasn’t created by a piece of paper. It was created by the sweat and blood of Jews who dreamed and prayed for returning to Zion for thousands of years. They built the state, they declared the state, they defended the state — and the world accepted the state despite the opposition of the Arab world.

Elder of Ziyon has been blogging about Israel and the Arab world for a really long time now. He also controls the world, but deep down, you already knew that.

Resurgence of Nazism in the streets of France

Resurgence of Nazism in the streets of France:

Jews are all criminals … let’s kick them out !!

Jew Hate

You would think that history taught a lesson. But somehow, it has not. The Jew hate that is happening in today’s world is frightening. If you watch this video and hear what is going on in France, it will give you the chills. It seems like it would be Germany in 1939. But it is not. The video is from 2019. Recently. Now. Today, this is still happening.

Just over 70 years after the end of the Holocaust, and people are still shouting things like “Jews are all criminals!” History apparently means nothing. Too many have not learned the destruction that hate causes. It is too recent since the Holocaust has happened for antisemitism like this to already be the norm. What will the future bring if this antisemitism is still occurring today

The Guardian's vicious attack on Israel

A staff-editorial reflects the official view of a newspaper, which is why The Guardian’s is so horrifying. What follows is a vicious attack on Israel’s credibility. Here are some of the “highlights.”

‘Shelling and gassing’ harmless protesters

The Guardian attacks the IDF for its actions to prevent Palestinians breaching the Gaza border fence:

Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat.

There is something almost ironic about presenting the protesters as harmless only one day after an IDF soldier was injured in an exchange of fire after a Hamas sniper opened fire during a border riot? “Posed no danger to anyone?”

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Israel Defense Forces

✔@IDF

Pictured: An IDF officer’s helmet after a terrorist in #Gaza shot at him during a riot on Israel’s border fence.

Also pictured: Proof that Hamas sends ARMED terrorists to attack Israelis, while surrounded by civilians and under the guise of “protests.”

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There have been plenty of documented cases where Palestinians have attempted to or actually breached the border fence, which is only meters from Israeli towns and villages. All of this under the cover of what The Guardian claims are harmless protesters.

The Guardian then puts out a deliberate lie accusing Israel of ‘shelling’ protesters. Israel has never shelled protesters at the Gaza border fence and to claim otherwise is an outright falsehood.

As for the charge of ‘gassing’ protesters, Israel uses non-lethal tear gas as a means to disperse riots. That The Guardian simply refers to gas rather than tear gas is most likely to lead its readers to picture Nazi death camps and says a great deal about the media outlet’s attitude towards the Jewish state.

It’s worth remembering that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism (that HonestReporting endorses) includes “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Israel as lying propagandists

The Guardian continues:

In its defence, Israel’s diplomats cast Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, as terrorists who are organising demonstrations in “a war zone”. It would appear, sadly, that Israel wishes to conduct a war over the airwaves, as well as one on the ground, against the Palestinians. This blatant disregard for Gazan lives and the lack of accountability is underpinned by a politics of resentment and dissembling that has profound repercussions for Israel. If one can kill with impunity, then can one lie without consequence?

The editorial is essentially accusing Israel of conducting a propaganda campaign of lies against the Palestinians. This is laughable given that Israel itself has been on the receiving end of a well-organized and vicious campaign of delegitimization and propaganda for many years, in part fueled by media outlets like The Guardian. The only “war over the airwaves” is that being waged by the Palestinians and their supporters.

Why does Israel not have the right to defend itself in the media against these slurs?

Attacking Israel’s democratic character

The Guardian then goes on to address Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal issues in the context of the upcoming elections. It has every right to do so given that Israelis are also addressing the very same things.

Like the US president, the message from Mr Netanyahu is that democratic norms, those unwritten rules of toleration and restraint, are for the weak, not for the strong. Yet without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances are less mainstays of democracy than a mirage.

But that is entirely the point. Israel does have robust norms that have already seen a former prime minister and president sentenced to jail time for criminal acts. That a sitting prime minister finds himself in his current predicament is testament to Israel’s democratic character and the rule of law.

Not content with attacking Netanyahu, The Guardian goes after former IDF chief of staff and leader of a new political party, Benny Gantz:

Mr Netanyahu’s nearest rival brags that he sent parts of Gaza “back to the stone age” when in the military.

Relying on a hyperlinked news source from the United Arab Emirates is questionable but at least the article, unlike The Guardian, mentioned that Gantz also expressed his desire to pursue peace and to prevent the very military actions that he referenced in his campaign videos.

Delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist

The Guardian also references historian Benny Morris:

who made his name by lifting the veil on the ethnic cleansings on which Israel was founded.

Perhaps this is really the crux of The Guardian’s view of Israel. For if the state was founded on ‘ethnic cleansing’ then it can only be an illegitimate state.

The Guardian’s editorial is replete with lies, distortions and delegitimization of Israel. The media outlet is entitled to express its distaste towards Israel and does so on a regular basis. But this time, by including blatant falsehoods, it’s crossed the line.

Opinion

Why I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too

Nick Cohen

We will learn the essential lesson that antisemitism is not about Jews, but power

It took me 40 years to become a Jew. When I was a child, I wasn’t a Jew and not only because I never went to a synagogue. My father’s family had abandoned their religion so he wasn’t Jewish. More to the point, my mother and my grandmother weren’t Jewish either, so according to orthodox Judaism’s principles of matrilineal descent, it was impossible for me to be a Jew.

All I had was the “Cohen” name. I once asked my parents why they had not changed it. After saying, quite rightly, that you should never seek to appease racists, they confessed to thinking that antisemitism was over by the 1960s. After Hitler, humanity would surely see where the world’s most insane hatred led and resolve to put it to one side.

Bertolt Brecht said: “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

My parents did not believe Brecht, at least not in the 1960s. Nor did I for a while. I was and remain an atheist who knows that communalist and identity politics crush individuality. I had no wish to join a tribe, let alone a religious one.

Still there was no escaping the “Cohen”. When I first responded to the antisemitism that has spread so far from the extreme left into the mainstream that it now threatens to poison the Labour party, I am ashamed to say I considered two disgraceful replies.

I might, I thought, not stop at opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and pledging support to leftwing Israelis and Palestinians who wanted a just and peaceful settlement for both peoples, but go on to behave like a grotesque from a Howard Jacobson satire. I would reassure fanatics that their “anti-Zionism” (that is, their call for the total destruction of the world’s only Jewish state) was not remotely racist.

Fortunately for my self-respect, I never sank that low. Whenever I hear Jews announce their hatred of Israel’s very existence, I suspect that underneath their loud bombast lies a quiet plea to the Islamists and neo-Nazis who might harm them: “I’m not like the others. Don’t pick on me.”

Unfortunately, I assured anyone who asked (and some who did not) that, despite appearances to the contrary, I wasn’t Jewish. And that was as dishonourable. I sounded like a black man trying to pass as white or a German arguing with the Gestapo that there was a mistake in the paperwork.

I stopped and accepted that racism changes your perception of the world and yourself. You become what your enemies say you are. And unless I wanted to shame myself, I had to become a Jew. A rather odd Jew, no doubt: a militant atheist who had to phone a friend to ask what on earth “mazel tov” meant. But a Jew nonetheless.

As one of the finest liberal ambitions is to find the sympathy to imagine the lives of others, you should become a Jew too. Declare that you have converted to Judaism or rediscovered your Jewish “heritage” and see the reaction. It’s not just that, if you are middle class and fortunate, you might experience racism for the first time, which in itself would be a “learning experience” worth having. You might also learn the essential lesson that antisemitism is not about Jews. Like rape, it’s about power.

Whether the antisemitic conspiracy theory is deployed by German Nazis or Arab dictators, French anti-Dreyfusards or Saudi clerics, the argument is always the same. Democracy, an independent judiciary, equal human rights, freedom of speech and publication – all these “supposed” freedoms – are nothing but swindles that hide the machinations of the secret Jewish rulers of the world.

Describe the fantasy the Tsarist and Nazi empires developed that bluntly and it is impossible to understand how the Labour party is in danger of becoming as tainted as Ukip by the racists it attracts.

But consider how many leftwing activists, institutions or academics would agree with a politer version.

Western governments are the main source of the ills of the world. The “Israel lobby” controls western foreign policy. Israel itself is the “root cause” of all the terrors of the Middle East, from the Iraq war to Islamic State. Polite racism turns the Jews, once again, into demons with the supernatural power to manipulate and destroy nations. Or as the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallström, who sees herself as a feminist rather than a racial conspiracist, explained recently, Islamist attacks in Paris were the fault of Israeli occupiers in the West Bank.

Or consider the otherwise bizarre indulgence of ultra-right religious extremists by people who otherwise describe themselves as liberals and leftists. The belief that Jews fuel radical Islam allows them to overlook superstition and the tyrannical denial of equal rights. They’re against Israel and that’s all that matters.

I could describe at vitriolic length how disgusted leftwing Jewish friends are that Labour members chose Jeremy Corbyn, despite his support for an Anglican cleric who linked to extremist sites that blamed Jews for 9/11, and his defence of an Islamist who recycled the libel that Jews dined on the blood of Christian children from the bottom of a medieval dung heap.

But even if a chastened Labour expels this or that antisemite or disciplines the Jew-baiters at the Oxford University Labour club, I do not see how its leaders can challenge the conspiratorial world-view they shared for decades. They would be renouncing everything they once believed in.

As someone who warned in the 00s about the growing darkness on the left, I am pessimistic about the chances of change. If you keep shouting “fire” and the fire brigade never comes, you tend to assume the house will burn to the ground. But perhaps familiarity breeds contempt and I am not the best judge.

If Labour MPs and members want the party to break with a past that has led to leftists allying with religious reactionaries who deny universal human rights and hate every value the centre-left professes to hold, they will have to learn to treat all racisms equally.

They will need to make a brief acquaintance with European history and understand that the left has no guaranteed immunity from fascistic ideology. They will have to see antisemitism for what it is and understand why it always leads to despotism and despair. Like me, in short, and if only briefly, they will have to become Jews themselves.

Jerusalem 1948 - The Jewish Naqba

Everyone talks about the Nakba, but no one ever stops to think about what the Jews of Jerusalem went through when 5 Arab states and the local Arabs attacked the fledgling Jewish state to destroy it. Jerusalem was divided. Jews were kicked out of their homes with nothing more than what they could carry on their backs.

The Jews of Jerusalem became refugees.

I received an email today from Hadar-Israel with reprints of old Life Magazine photographs taken by John Phillips in May and June 1948. I share them with you. (Life Magazine's Pictures of Jerusalem 1948 - all photos by John Phillips © Time Inc., Courtesy of LIFE.com)
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Jerusalem Girl Fleeing from the Arab onslaught.

Jerusalem Jews evacuating their homes in 1948 - not to be able to return until 1967.



Not everyone could escape the Arabs in time and were forced to surrender.


The Red Cross helping Jewish refugees forced to flee from the Arab occupation of Jerusalem.



A Jewish refugee from the Old City after the Arabs occupied it.


Jews fleeing their home through Zion Gate.


Photo of Jews waiting to be evacuated from their homes in the Old City.



What the Arabs did to the Jewish homes and neighborhood after the Jews were evacuated.

Jameel Updates: I found that these are part of a huge collection, all originally posted on the Ben-Atlas Blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3


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