From Auschwitz to Gaza: the unlearned lessons

by Adriana Mendez

I recently visited Auschwitz - Birkeneu, the Nazi extermination camp were an estimated of 2.5 million people were killed in gas chambers. I have to admit that you can't really assimilate the atrocities that went on there until you see the place.

The sacks of hair, hundreds of shoes and personal belongings of some of the victims are still displayed. People walks around shocked, traumatised by the experience while the guide describes with detail the inhuman treatment to which innocent prisoners were subjected, most of them jews.

"How was this possible? Why didn´t anyone stop it? Didn´t anyone know that innocent people were being killed?", a teenage boy from Israel kept asking the guide.

I was surprised, those were exactly the same questions I was asking myself in January when the massacre in Gaza killed 1440 palestinians, most of the innocent.

But back at Auschwitz nobody seemed to be thinking of the present. It is too easy to consign the terror and cruelty of that time to the past and to other people, while at the same time dehumanizing this world.

The gas chambers may have gone but the slaughter continues

Have we learned the lessons since Auschwitz? Of course not. How else can you explain what has happened in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Chile, El Salvador, Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Algeria, Afghanistan and of course Palestine.

All of these countries have witnessed destruction and death on a monstrous and sickening scale since the liberation of Auschwitz more than 60 years ago.

The problem with the holocaust is that it is so evidently terrible and massive that it is almost imposible for us to imagine something on such a scale ever happening again.

It is truth, the gas chambers may have gone but the slaughter and genocide surely continues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The massacre of a civilian population

I am not the first nor the last person to compare the horrible crimes that Israel is comitting in Gaza with the Holocaust. Some have even defined the massacre as the Gaza Holocaust.

Though some might feel offended, the truth is that in both cases we are in front of the slaughtering of innocent people because of a religious, ethnic, and territorial reason. To put it in another way, in both cases we are in the presence of extermination.

It is truth that the death toll in extermination camps was way higher (it is estimated that between 5 and 6 million jews were killed by the Nazi regime). And is is also truth that Israel can argue it was constantly “provoked” by Hamas firing home made rockets rockets.

But what we haven't realized is that one life lost because of prejudice should be as shocking as 6 million lives lost. The Holocaust started with the murder of one person and that is worth remembering.

The dehumanization of Palestinians raised to the point where Israel was suddenly allowed to bomb their homes, schools and hospitals as well as to target familias and children and claim it is was conducting a "war on terror".

As if this was not enough, Israel has tightened the blockade of Gaza, cutting off essential medicines and basic good like fuel, reducing critical food supplies starving innocent children.

Now is there such a big difference between the Nazi murders and what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip , targetting babies as young as six-months?

True, Israel did not introduced gas chambers in the Gaza strip (yet), but there were enough F-16s raining down bombs on sleeping children and women.

No sense of proportion

Referring to the recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza as a war is a huge mistake. Wars occur between armies and states. Indeed, when Israel murders a hundred Palestinian, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli killed, there is a name for that, it is massacre.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that at least 431 Palestinian children (and no Israeli children) were killed during Israel’s Dec 27, 2008 - Jan 18, 2009 assault on the Gaza strip.

This number is probably an underestimate since it does not include any killings of Palestinian children in the West Bank, which may have taken place since the beginning of 2009.

Thet are also using banned and experimental munitions. Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of illegally firing white phosphorous, which causes horrific burns if it comes in contact with the skin, over crowded refugee camps in Gaza.

Another controversial weapon, Dense Inert Metal Explosive, is also suspected to be used.

What heppened in Gaza was in fact a brutal rampage of murder by a powerful army against a blockaded, and starved people (and I am not talking about Hamas) who have comitted no crime but that of being born Palestine and just want to survive.

Very much like Jews did under the Nazi occupation of Europe.