The Vital Imperative of Remembrance

"It is where it all began for the Jewish community, and it has such historical significance."

"It's going to be eco-friendly. It's going to have a memorial garden. It's going to be a beautiful space. It's going to be a hub of research and education. It's going to have a beautiful auditorium with 150 places." "It's going to have a gallery that can host temporary exhibits."

Richard Schnurback, president, Montreal Holocaust Museum 

"It will transform the landscape of the area. It will help to revitalize downtown and so we feel we're really contributing to our city in a significant way as we all hope eventually to come out of this pandemic."

"We expect it to be an internationally renowned, world-class institution and an architectural statement."

"It will be a gathering place for other communities who have been targeted by genocide, for the local population, for students, for tourists. We are going to be a warm, welcoming, accessible space that draws people in and that transforms them and encourages them to stand up today, to act, to remember."

Dorothy Zalcman Howard, co-president, Montreal Holocaust Museum renewal project

"We've outgrown our physical facilities and we have to regularly refuse school groups."

"This museum will really be Canada's Holocaust Museum. It will tell the story of the Holocaust and also talk about the Montreal survivors, people who came to Canada, to Quebec, and helped to build our city."

Julia Reitman, campaign cabinet president, Montreal Holocaust Museum

Eva Kuper, standing in front of the Montreal Holocaust Museum, tells how her life was saved just as she and her mother were being loaded onto cattle cars for transport away from the Warsaw Ghetto

 

"[The] relocation to downtown Montreal should allow increased accessibility and that is all the more necessary, as we have seen in recent days."

"Unfortunately, many people are not sufficiently aware of the Holocaust and of the consequences and the lingering after-affects of that tragedy."

"Let's hope that having a museum that allows us to better understand this reality will lead people who have trivialized the use of the yellow star and trivialized certain Nazi symbols in the past few months to reflect." 

Benoit Charette, Quebec minister of Culture

A collection of yellow stars, worn by Jews during the Holocaust, is one of the many exhibits by the Montreal Holocaust Museum. (Simon Nakonechny/CBC)

 

A museum, another museum dedicated to the premise that to forget is to airbrush history out of existence. Can there be too many museums and edifices whose sole purpose is to remind humanity of its obligations to ensure that the organized mass elimination of a people -- whose humanity had been denigrated amidst accusations of sinister conspiracies to rule the world, to establish themselves as an ethnic-religious-ideological world power, subjugating all other peoples to their command -- is never repeated?

A criminal, deliberately purposeful campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany to dehumanize Europe's Jews, to justify the Third Reich's carefully staged enterprise of delegitimization of what they labelled sub-humans belonging to a specific ethnic-religious group in preparation to launch a program of mass slaughter, one that would not raise objections among populations inured to compassion for the men, women and children slated for death, because they were exposed to a lethal hatred and believed that Jewish dominion over the globe must be stopped at all costs.

 

A German in a military uniform shoots at a Jewish woman after a mass execution in Mizocz, Ukraine. In October of 1942, the 1,700 people in the Mizocz ghetto fought with Ukrainian auxiliaries and German policemen who had intended to liquidate the population. About half the residents were able to flee or hide during the confusion before the uprising was finally put down. The captured survivors were taken to a ravine and shot. Photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial.

 

The cost was six million lives. The European Jew-cleansing pogrom cost Jewish children their future, Jewish women and men their hopes, as they were gathered up, murdered en masse, buried in mass graves, used as slave labour, died of starvation and disease. And then the Final Solution seeking more efficient, quicker methods thought of Zyclone B to gas assembled Jews whose humanity had been stripped away, just as their worldly possessions, their hair, their gold rings and gold teeth were gathered to help the World War II effort of the Axis forces.

 

Jewish deportees in the Drancy transit camp near Paris, France, in 1942, on their last stop before the German concentration camps. Some 13,152 Jews (including 4,115 children) were rounded up by French police forces, taken from their homes to the "Vel d'Hiv", or winter cycling stadium in southwestern Paris, in July of 1942. They were later taken to a rail terminal at Drancy, northeast of the French capital, and then deported to the east. Only a handful ever returned.

 

This was their destiny; a giant sacrifice for their noble cause; ridding the world of Jews for the greater purpose of elevating Aryan qualities of physique, emphasizing the health virtues of abstaining from alcohol, smoking, poor nutrition, and global command of lesser nations. The golden mean of 'doing unto others as you would have them do unto you', underpinning Jewish traditions only emphasized their suffering as they cried out to the heavens for having abandoned them. Remembering the atrocities, the humiliations, the suffering is integral to modern Jewish life. 

The promise made Never to Forget was forged in blood and bone in memory of those whose lives were taken. So, no, such places of memorial and teaching must carry the torch of remembrance. There are far too many in today's world who doubt the very existence of a machinery vast enough and dedicated enough to have murdered six million Jews. And many among them feel the effort was halted before it could properly complete its goal. The spectre of once-hushed Jew-hatred has resurfaced with a vengeance.

 

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob.

 

The Montreal Holocaust Museum's current location in a building shared with other Jewish community organizations has outlived its ability to convey the full measure of what fascist Germany accomplished. A mere 400 of its 14,000 artifacts are displayed, reflecting a lack of room to amply and effectively expose visitors to a fuller understanding of the Holocaust. With a purpose-built edifice for which funding is being raised, for construction to commence in 2023 in the expectation of the museum opening two years later, a generous endowment by the province's Culture Ministry of $20 million, another $15 million from the Azrieli Foundation, as well as public, corporate and private sources see the project on goal for $80 million.

The museum is to move from Cote Ste-Catherine Road to what once was the beating heart of the Montreal Jewish community, St.-Laurent Blvd., The Main. Where a parking lot now sits, a building to house the Holocaust Museum is to rise, with 71 percent of its funding already raised. Destination Montreal represented the third most important city per capita after Israel and New York, for Holocaust survivors leaving the charnel house of Europe for a new beginning. Of the roughly 40,000 survivors immigrating to Canada after the Second World War, 9,000 arrived in Montreal.

Among the museum's collection, there are 858 recorded survivor testimonies. Research indicates that people who learn about the Holocaust are likelier to be aware of and to care about other communities, to oppose persecution and to tend to develop anti-racist values. "For so many victims, there are no places that mark their existence. In a way, we are their voices. We are the repository for those people who were killed. We tell some of their stories and we encourage future generations to care about what happened and to translate those stories so they find expression in their own times", explained Dorothy Salcman Howard.

An urn containing ashes from the Auschwitz concentration camps sits surrounded by the names of other Nazi extermination camps at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. (Simon Nakonechny/CBC)

All Roads Lead to Jewish Infamy

"The last hour or so of the standoff, he wasn’t getting what he wanted. It didn’t look good. It didn’t sound good. We were terrified."

"When I saw an opportunity where he wasn’t in a good position, I made sure that the two gentlemen who were with me that they were ready to go. The exit wasn’t too far away. I told them to go, I threw a chair at the gunman and I headed for the door. And all three of us were able to get out without even a shot being fired."

"When your life is threatened, and you need to do whatever you can to get to safety [training by the FBI, the Colleyville Police Department, the Anti-Defamation League and the Secure Community Network informed his self-preservation actions]."

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, Congregation Beth Israel, Colleyville, Texas

 

"He wanted this woman [convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui] released and he wanted to talk to her and he thought -- well, he said point-blank he chose this synagogue because 'Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks. I want to talk to the chief rabbi of the United States'."

"He lectured us. As long as he was talking and somewhat calm, we bought the FBI time to position."

Jeffrey Cohen, vice president, board of trustees, Congregation Beth Israel, Saturday hostage

A police SUV sits outside the synagogue Sunday

A Pakistani-UK national had flown to the United States from Britain. When investigators did a routine check on arrival, nothing untoward was found to identify him as a potential threat. He was there for a purpose only he was aware of...unless he had informed two UK teens now under arrest, rumoured to be his sons. During the ten-hour hostage-taking that ensued on Saturday at the Texas synagogue where he held the synagogue rabbi and three synagogue members hostage, he was known to be speaking by cellphone on a number of occasions to persons unknown. It was later revealed that the arrested teens were in contact with the man during the hostage-taking.

In the week or weeks after his arrival to the United States, the man identified as 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram, spent his nights in homeless shelters. On Saturday when he finally approached the synagogue, ostensibly after having managed to secure for himself weapon sold on the street, he appeared at the synagogue doors as someone needing a place to rest. Rabbi Cytron-Walker described in an interview how he had welcomed the stranger, gave him a warming cup of tea, and proceeded to the evening service.

It was only when he concluded the Sabbath service that he became aware of something suspicious; a sound. When he turned around he saw the stranger withdrawing a gun from the folds of his clothing, likely an outer coat.  Which, obviously, was when he realized with clarity that this was not a good situation that he and three members of the synagogue community found themselves in. Their house of worship had quietly and firmly become their prison and the warden was a terrorist. Carefully, unobtrusively, the rabbi dialled 911 on his cellphone and placed it live on a counter.

Police respond to a  hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue on January 16 in Colleyville, Texas.  Brandon Wade/AP

 

The man was certainly a Jew-hater, spewing the usual anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish control of the world. Jews had no involvement in the arrest and trial and incarceration of a Pakistani neuroscientists who had attended prestigious American universities to obtain her scientific bona fides through a doctorate, but the intruder's mind was fixated in a pathology of belief in Jewish world control and could effect the release of Aafia Siddiqui, serving an 86-year sentence on a conviction of attempted murder of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents attempting to arrest her for planning terrorist attacks with al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Mr. Akram's strident conviction of malicious Jewish world control left no room for reasonable denials on the part of his hostages. And Mr. Akram had prepared himself to become a martyr for Islamist precepts, having expressed his belief that he would not emerge alive from this encounter. He wanted the Pakistani conspiracist freed from her life imprisonment and his intention was to inform law authorities in the U.S. that he was prepared to release his hostages in exchange for Siddiqui's release from prison.

It's quite strange that almost all of the Islamist jihadists who indulge in terrorism representing dutiful faithful in Islam are lovingly remembered by their families as good souls with the misfortune of having been mentally ill, not legally responsible for their acts of violence intended or achieved. And so it is with this man too, his Brother Gulbar posting a description of his now-dead brother as suffering from mental illness and the family fully in co-operating compliance with authorities.

"There was nothing we could have said to him or done that would have convinced him to surrender", brother Gulbar wrote on the Blackburn Muslim Community's Facebook page. "We would like to say that we as a family do not condone any of his actions and would like to sincerely apologize wholeheartedly to all the victims involved in the unfortunate incident." The Blackburn Muslim Community also stated their position: "totally condemn any threats or attacks on innocent people. We stand in solidarity with people of all faiths as we believe they are all free to practice their religious beliefs freely without the fear of being attacked."

The Muslim Council of Britain, UK’s largest Muslim umbrella body condemned the hostage-taking as "completely unacceptable", that Akram’s "actions fall way short of what is expected of a Muslim. His family and local community in Blackburn have also condemned the perpetrator’s action and are shocked and saddened to learn of this incident."

"[Authorities] just don't have enough facts [to speculate why a man targeted a Colleyville, Texas synagogue, taking four hostages Saturday; the standoff] an act of terror."

"I don't-- we don't have I don't think there is sufficient information to know about why he targeted that synagogue, why he insisted on the release of someone who's been in prison for over 10 years, why he was engaged, why he was using an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments."

U.S. President Joe Biden

Claiming to be the brother of the Pakistani neuroscientist in prison, he obviously meant that colloquially, and not literally; related by heritage, religion and religious extremist ideology. She collaborated with al-Qaeda and Islamic State as a trusted senior operative, and he obviously idolized her status within the jihadist community. CAIR went public with its support of Aafia Siddiqui, demanding her release, as did the government of Pakistan itself. Offers to release Western prisoners of jihad in exchange for her release tell the story of a prized jihadist taken out of commission.

In this July 17, 2008, photo, Aafia Siddiqui is seen in the custody of Counter Terrorism Department of Ghazni province in Ghazni City, Afghanistan. AP

"We North American Muslims need to have the morally required tough conversations about those ‘polite Zionists are our enemies,’ ‘The Benjamins!!!’ voices and realities within our communities."

"[Referencing antisemitic statements made in December by Council on American–Islamic Relations official Zahra Billoo and by US Rep. Ilhan Omar in 2019]."

"We MUST! Without ands and buts, without any further denial, dismissal and or trivializing of the issues … we need to honestly discuss the increasing antisemitism within various Muslim communities."

Abdullah T. Antepli, Associate Professor of the Practice of Interfaith Relations, Duke University

 

Wokeness, Racism and Anti-Semitism : Toronto District School Board

TDSB Trustee Alexandra Lulka. Photo by TDSB

"[The materials were] virulently anti-Israel and even anti-Semetic [and justified] suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism [against Jews]."

"I was outraged to discover that some of this material justifies suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism."

"This is reprehensible. These materials were provided by an employee from the TDSB equity department, the very department that should be countering anti-Semitism and violence, not fanning the flames."

"I made the statement after hearing concerns from constituents who felt traumatized by the incident. Given the concern over this incident, it is reasonable that a public statement be issued by an elected representative."

"I believe that to be within the scope of my responsibilities as a Trustee."

Toronto School Board Trustee Alexandra Lulka

"[Links included in the material] support the use of violence and terrorism against Israeli Jews; specifically, including a link to the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [a group that is currently on Canada's Listed Terrorist Entities], documentary and resources about Leila Khaled who was involved in plane hijackings, and an interview with Ghassan Kanafani, who was involved in violent actions against civilians."

Toronto District School Board Human Rights Office

A Toronto District School Board logo is seen on a sign in front of a high school in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

The issue of which the TDSB Trustee speaks is that of two teaching manuals focusing on the Middle East, produced with the ostensible purpose of aiding teachers in discussions relating to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in a classroom setting. The manuals had been circulated through an opt-in mailout. When the trustee was contacted by some parents in the school system to express their consternation over the material included in the manuals, she spoke of her condemnation of the material.

The school board's human rights office was brought into the controversy that followed, to investigate the matter and they concluded that links within the material were indeed as Trustee Lulka described them; anti-Semetic and excitation to 'justifiable' violence in support of the Palestinian 'cause' against a purportedly oppressive Israel squatting on Palestinian land.

The material included a statement that Palestinians "have been legitimately resisting racism, colonization and genocide since the 1920s to the present day by any means necessary: general strikes, demonstrations, armed struggle, and martyrdom operations called 'suicide bombing' by Zionists". Slanderous incitements to anti-Semitism and violence, in other words; raw, repellent and slanderous, canted toward isolating and defaming Jews.

The Jewish students and their families who would be exposed to this alternate version of history and irreconcilable hostility, rage, victimhood storytelling, vicious contortions of reality to suit a Palestinian narrative of justification for never-ending attacks on Jews and Israelis had good reason to complain that the Toronto and District School Board was hosting anti-Semetic diatribes reflecting an agenda of deliberate delegitimization of a democratic, legal state, and placing Jews in Canada in danger.

Prior to this incident, a scheduled invitation to Nadia Murad -- a Yazidi woman who escaped sex slavery under the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and told her horrendous story across the world of the atrocities committed by the Islamist-deranged ISIL against her people in mass murder, rape, recruiting of children for military training and assaults and sex-enslavement of women and girls -- had been cancelled.. The board saw fit to cancel that speaking engagement by the Nobel Laureate in the fear that her story would arouse sentiments of Islamophobia.

For bringing the situation to the attention of the public, Trustee Lulka was placed under a probe by the board; her behaviour brought to a vote on whether to condemn and censure her. An equity adviser, Javier Davila, had prepared the manuals in question. Davila included links to information about anti-Semitism and critical dialogue on Israel and Zionism, along with Canada's role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Resources were included directing readers to Palestinian writers and academics.

The school board has not seen fit to explain why it is in a Canadian school curriculum meant to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, science it would be seen as critical to a child's development and reasoning skills to be exposed to an ongoing violent dispute taking place in a far-off region, featuring Palestinians and Israeli Jews. According to the board investigation by Integrity Commissioner Suzanne Craig, the manuals had not been approved by anyone at the school board.

Davila, the author of the manuals in question, now claims himself to be a victim of "harassing and hateful messages" following the publication of Trustee Lulka's statement in describing the manuals. A campaign was underway, he complained, to have his Ontario College of Teachers licence revoked. He was temporarily suspended following the distribution of the manuals, but soon after reinstated.

When, subsequently the school board's Human Rights Office looked into the manual's materials, they found links that "could be reasonably considered to contain anti-Semitic materials and seen to be contributing to anti-Semitism". The recommended resources in the manual dismissed the historical connection between Jews and the land of Israel; they lump all Israelis together, claiming "martyrdom operations" represent a legitimate means of resistance.

Even so, the investigation found that the statement made on Twitter by the trustee violated the TDSB's Board Member Code of Conduct, falling into the definition of discrimination. That's right: a complaint about blatant discrimination represented discrimination in and of itself. The finding was that the original statement by Trustee Lulka perpetuated negative stereotypes about Palestinians and Muslims "when it stated that the materials which included Palestinian voices and perspectives 'justify suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism', equating a Palestinian perspective as one that would 'justify suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism'."

This, despite that the manuals included materials themselves that did just that; justified martyrdom assaults as noble acts of 'resistance' against the 'illegal occupation' of Palestinian land, upon which Israel sits. The conclusion of the investigation stated that Ms.Lulka be censured as "a strong condemnation of an action or statement of a Trustee who has been found to have breached the Code".

 

Toronto District School Board (TDSB) sign on the headquarters building in Toronto. JHVE Photo/Shutterstock

"This outrageous process is just the latest manifestation of the institutional anti-Semitism afflicting the TDSB, Not only is the investigation and its findings unjust, but it’s ridiculous that the person who calls out a transgression is being punished, but the person responsible for the transgression was not."

:It is critical for TDSB to continue to address discrimination in all its forms, but that must include anti-Semitism, which sadly has not received the same attention as other forms of hate."

"We call for the development of a comprehensive action plan on anti-Semitism that will value the voices of Jewish staff, students and families in the TDSB community—action that is long overdue."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

 

 

Germany's Holocaust Redemption?

"If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won't be the Europe we wished for."

"I don't want to get into a competition in Europe of who can treat these people the worst."

"Refugees have a responsibility to adapt to German ways. Multiculturalism is a sham."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 2015

"To shelter one refugee is a humanitarian act, but to allow one million strangers in is to endanger German civilization."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

 

"The sense is that there has been comparatively little Islamic extremism or extremist crime resulting from this immigration, and that on the whole, the largest number of these immigrants have been successfully integrated into the German work force and into German society overall."

"Germans were more than happy -- in fact, thrilled -- to see themselves in the role of humanitarian saviors."

Constanze Stelzenmuller, expert, Germany and trans-Atlantic relations, Brookings Institution, Washington

"With the passage of time, [Merkel] turned out to have chosen the absolutely right course for not only Germany but for the world."

"I just thought, wow, who is she, and how is she getting away with this [committing Germany in 2015 to absorbing one million Middle Eastern migrants who arrived illegally, flooding Europe with their demand for asylum]."

"When their trains pulled into the gleaming Munich station, exhausted men, women and children were greeted by a sea of signs that read, 'Welcome to Germany', held aloft by cheering citizens lining the platforms." 

"[Merkel] was determined to avoid the dense concent4ration of immigrants that ring cities like France and Great Britain."

"We now have a case study, an example, of how it can work, and I'm hoping the world will make use of Merkel's example. [When, in 2015 the chancellor said]: 'We can do this'. If only the rest of us could too."

Kati Marton, former ABC News bureau chief in Germany

A rose lies at the Gleis 17 (Platform 17) memorial, a platform at Berlin-Grunewald train station from which Jewish citizens were deported by train to the Nazi concentration camps between 1941 and 1945, in Berlin, Germany, Jan. 27, 2021.

 

They came, unbidden, refugees from their own countries; Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea... Fleeing war and sectarian persecution, poverty and fear of the future. They entered Turkey and made their way overland, at sea, paying human smugglers to facilitate their arrival in Greece, Italy, to penetrate and invade Europe. But it was not the less wealthy countries of Europe they sought haven and opportunity in, it was Austria and it was more popularly, wealthy Germany where opportunities beckoned for their future. A very large portion of the haven seekers were single, young men.

 

Angela Merkel, daughter of an East German Lutheran pastor, saw an opportunity to expunge a horrible historical record for her beloved Germany, deciding to open her country's borders to the immense influx of humanity, to absorb men, women and children of another culture, history, values and religion. Their stay was contingent on their success in adapting to German society and its values, and above all, learning to speak the language; the latter to accommodate the former.

The German public holds their chancellor, soon to step down from the lofty perch she has occupied for fifteen years, endearing herself to her public by her stoicism, intelligence, wisdom, communication skills and practicality. She is their celebrated grandmotherly leader who has brought new respect to Germany within Europe and as virtual leader of the EU. 

And while most of the German public appeared at first glad to welcome refugees-in-need, their numbers and foreignness with the destabilization of German culture began to grate on some -- leading to the rise of an opposition party billed as nationalist right-wingers the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) which won seats in the 2017 elections from Mrs. (Frau) Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

Onlookers abroad and in Europe looking in on Mrs. Merkel's courageous stand over the refugees -- when other countries in Europe, particularly in the east, refused them entry --speculated that her support in the public arose from a national wish to cleanse the country of the indelible stain of genocide. In the years following World War II and the Holocaust atrocity, Germany has cast itself as owning its responsibility, pledging amends, seeking redemption. 

 

Anti-Semitic attacks and hate crime have been increasing in recent years, including the deadly attack outside a Synagogue in Halle in 2019

 The initial euphoria of 'doing good for humanity' was tainted when on New Year's Eve in Cologne, 2015, a mob of Middle Eastern and North African men sexually assaulted dozens of women. From that point forward there were random events of violence emanating from a small number of the refugee group which the police handled, but which gave cause to rising suspicion of the foreign element that had entered Germany with a generalized attitude of cultural misogyny and violence.

But then the aging population with its low birth rate also had a bonus with the entry of young working age refugees contingent with the larger effect of boosting the country's economic outlook, an infusion of badly-needed bodies for the German workforce. The economy "was looking for labour before the pandemic and so there was a real demand and presumably a willingness from the labour market and companies to help people. And of course, we have a long experience, a decades-long practice, of on-the-job training that is seen as a model by other European countries and in fact by America", added Professor Stelzenmuller.

 

A Jewish man stands between police officers at a Jewish cemetery and synagogue in Halle, Germany, October 9, 2019. (Jens Meyer/AP)

Before the 2015 arrival of the Syrians, Iraqis, Eritreans, Afghans, there was already present a sizeable German citizenry of Turkish origin who had originally come into Germany as a plentiful, cheap labour force in a then-growing post-war economy. They numbered in total -- among them Muslims from other origins -- some five million Muslim Germans. With the arrival of the additional million Muslim refugees, Germany now hosts the equivalent number of Muslims to the total number of Jewish lives Nazi Germany eradicated in the Holocaust.

The Jewish population of Germany currently stands at about 118,000, a fraction of the Muslim population in the country. The Jewish community has seen a rapid rise in anti-Semitism in Germany, from a number of sources. German politics avoids, along with their news media, implicating the Muslim population in Germany with instances of anti-Semitism. It prefers to put the finger of blame on 'far-right' populist groups. Yet Muslim protests in support of the 'Palestinian cause' mounting public displays of anti-Israel hatred extending to anti-Semitism is a noted source of great discomfort to German Jews.

Frau Merkel is no innocent in the woods. She knows human nature. She took steps to ensure that the Islamic presence in Germany did not result in the ghettos called banlieues that circle Paris with its hostile Muslim-French residents where French police and authorities dare not enter. With the experience in 'absorbing' Muslims into their population base that Britain and France ended up with, she determined that the immigrants be required to settle throughout the country in avoidance of ghettoization.

Germany bears ample interference by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has financed the building of huge mosques in Germany, who feels that Turks living in Germany are loyal only to Turkey, that Turks who are citizens of Germany should be allowed to vote in Turkey's elections, and that Turkey should be welcome to electioneer in Germany and nor is he disinterested in fomenting unrest and dissatisfaction among Turkish-German citizens, to his advantage.

Cologne Central Mosque. Photograph: Iain Masterton / Alamy/Alamy

The Old Synagogue in Aachen, Germany, after Kristallnacht (public domain)

"SS men armed with batons and whips attacked us. Amid wild shouts and curses, they beat us mercilessly, on the back, on the legs, on the head and face."

:We no longer believed that anyone could exist here who would want to provide us with a little joy. For a few moments we heard, in the hell of the concentration camp, the VOICE OF HUMANITY!”

Karl Rosenthal, survivor, rabbi in Berlin’s Reform community

 

"In the street alone where my wife’s friend’s husband was killed, three other men had been beaten to death. Everywhere, we heard of people who had committed suicide in despair."

"If I tried to describe the consequences of that night for my immediate circle of acquaintances, I would have to write a whole book about them."

Jewish attorney Rudolf Bing, Krystallnacht survivor 

Jews deported from Baden Baden after Kristallnacht in Germany, 1938 (public domain)

"Our non-Jewish neighbors] were all ashamed and deeply depressed, and one got the impression that they had a guilty conscience and feared the power of a higher justice, as certain individuals quite openly said. These people saved, as much as that was possible, the honor of the German people."

"By the end of 1938, there were few Jews left in Vienna who had not themselves been in a concentration camp or who had one or more relatives or friends who had been in one. [Rodeck called Kristallnacht the “illegal” pogrom and its aftermath the “legal” pogrom].

Vienna-born Jew Fritz Rodeck

November 9th and 10th, mark the grim 83rd anniversary of the orchestrated violent assault on Germany's Jewish community, a state-sanctioned and -inspired pogrom meant to spell out for Jews, if they hadn't entirely yet understood what the Third Reich thought of Jews in their midst, including Jewish veterans who fought with distinction on Germany's behalf during World War One, and including German Jews who distinguished themselves and Germany in the arts and sciences; German Jews proud of their ancestry and their nationality.

The propaganda campaign to dehumanize Europe's Jews, beginning with those in Germany, fed on latent anti-Semitism within the general population, portraying Jews stereotypically as money-grubbers, hangers-on, the dregs of society, their presence an assault on human dignity, their conspiratorial designs targeting racial conquest in superiority of culture, religion and a covert universal plot to control the news, banking, politics. A force to be denied, denigrated, put in their place. And their place was not within civilized society.

Jewish children, compulsory yellow badge

They were to be designated enemies of humanity who elevated themselves as paragons of virtue when they were in actuality carriers of filth and disease. All these claims, bolstered with Jewish caricatures of sinister-looking bearded rabbis rubbing their hands in glee at plans to destabilize society and gain control of all that makes a society prosperous and cultured were to be countered by denying Jews access to education, business, the professionals. Making outcasts of them, distinguishing themselves by the wearing of a yellow star, screaming "Jude!", beware.

They were berated and beaten on the streets; the elderly and the young and those between, passersby taking no notice. Humiliation haunted them. They lived in disbelief that their country would turn against them, many of whom thought of themselves as German primarily, Jewish secondarily. Established in Germany for a thousand years. And it was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, that delivered the message and the social/political strictures to follow.

German mobs drunk on anti-Semitism, backed by Nazi stormtroopers and police marched through the streets where Jews lived, where their shops were located, to shout threats, to sing national and racist songs, to ransack Jewish institutions, burn down synagogues, smash shop windows, maraudng, terrorizing, screaming taunts and insults at Jewish families cowering in their tenements, hiding their children, hoping the nightmare would pass. 

Jewish men were rounded up not to be seen again, taken to slave labour camps, dying of privation, overwork, starvation, disease, slaughter. Over 30,000 Jews were imprisoned during Kristallnacht,, hundreds killed during the storming of the streets. Heralding the much larger architecture of the finely tuned plan to extinguish the lives of men, women and children of Jewish heritage throughout Europe in the establishment of death camps in occupied Europe, the Holocaust years began to unfold.

Prisoners at the German concentration camp Buchenwald, where thousands of Jews were incarcerated after Kristallnacht in 1938 (public domain)

 

There was no reaction, after all, by the world community to Kristallnacht and all it so obviously portended, a year before war was declared. The Jews were left to cope, to make their plans or abandon them, to decide to remain in the hopes that this would be just a passing nightmare and the world would return to the sanity they were accustomed to, with underlying vestiges of anti-Semitism they had always coped with, and not a permanent stain on humanity targeting Jews for 'special treatment'.

Ultimately it was not a passing sentiment that would fade and bring relief to Europe's Jews, It was a fatal determination to murder them, every last one, and the plan succeeded to an astonishing degree, even when the world received first-hand smuggled information of what was unfolding and there was no great rescue, no universal condemnation, not from non-Jews globally, not from the great institutions of the world's religious powers, not from governments. Nowhere was there a constructive effort to rescue Europe's Jews.

Instead, desperate Jewish refugees seeking haven, sailing from Germany in the St.Louis were turned away at every port they visited in the free world. Ships sailing to Palestine under the British Mandate were turned away, ordered to return from whence they came. But that was then. Now, it is known that the cost in human life in the Jewish component of humanity was a dear six million lives. And now? Now that the world has had time to digest the meaning of genocide?

A resurgence in blatant anti-Semitism where once it was an undercurrent. Where once it was obligatory in polite society to submerge that Jew-hatred, the current culture accepts that free speech ennobles all statements and opinions and values, enabling the rabid Jew-haters to state openly and directly that the Holocaust was a manipulated event that never occurred, that Jews are still engaged in sinister plots to destabilize the world order in their inexorable march to destiny and control of the world.

How we have progressed as a human society... Is it mere sanctimony that the nations of the world that once denied haven to Jews facing obliteration now mount memorials to the Holocaust?

After the Kristallnacht pogrom in Linz, Austria, Jewish women are made to wear signs saying, 'I am not part of the national community,' while being humiliated on stage in public (public domain)

The Shameful Conduct of the Canadian Military

"Do we have a clear expression of CAF policy toward this group [the Azov Battalion]?" 

"This may or may not prompt questions, but we need to be ready and not come across as being taken by surprise.”

Chris Henderson, then assistant deputy minister for public affair

 

"In Ukraine, the Azov Battalion has recruited foreign fighters motivated by white supremacy and neo-Nazi beliefs, including many from the West, to join its ranks and receive training, indoctrination and instruction in irregular warfare."

Soufan Report

 

“Given the fact that the [Latvian SS] fought for a victory of the Third Reich, the most genocidal regime in history, and that among those serving in it were active participants in the mass murder of Latvian Jewry, as well as of German and Austrian Jews deported by the Nazis to Riga, such comments are incomprehensible, let alone deeply offensive, coming from a senior minister of a country with full membership in the European Union and NATO."

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

A news broadcast by German ZDF station showed soldiers of the Ukraine Azov Battalion with nazi symbols on their helmets. Photo by Files /ZDF station

 Once again the Canadian Armed Forces' top brass has been revealed to be strangely oblivious to the fallout of matters they engage in without due thought to appropriate behaviour and their consequences. The Canadian public has been treated to a full-throated cry of desperation from female CAF members who have suffered sexual harassment and violence and when they bring the situation to the attention of military authorities, the issue is set aside, the victims of sexual violence left to steam in frustration, their abusers free to continue their upward trajectory toward leadership.

More latterly, the public has been reminded once again of the unsavoury contacts the Canadian Armed Forces leadership, along with government diplomats engage in through casual and personal contact with self-declared admirers of fascism and neo-Nazis abroad. Canada has a 'special' relationship with Ukraine through Canada's membership in NATO which has pledged to protect Ukraine from the intentions of the Kremlin to re-forge a union with Ukraine which the current government of Ukraine has no interest in and which Moscow has pursued with a vengeance.

Another factor in Canada's commitment to military partnership with Ukraine is the lobbying presence of large number of Ukrainian-Canadians urging a more firm alliance between Canada and Ukraine. An incidental but telling issue took place a few years ago when the Russian Embassy in Canada brought to the light of day, Canada's then-minister of Foreign Affairs and currently deputy Prime Minister and heir apparent to head the Liberal government's Ukrainian heritage. Chrystia Freeland's grandfather, it was revealed, was an ardent Nazi collaborator as the editor of a Ukrainian newspaper during WWII.

In his newspaper, Nazi propaganda found its place, along with vicious anti-Semitic sentiments; in no small measure doing his part in aiding and abetting fascist Germany in its dehumanization of European Jewry on their way to total genocide. So the Ukrainian community in Canada, has great influence in the country. However, since Canada is a country comprised of immigrant populations, a great congregation of people from all over the world, so too do Chinese-Canadians, Indian-Canadians, Italian-Canadians and other ethnic/cultural groups have influence, as they should, as Canadians.

In the latest revelations it would appear that Canadian officials and members of the military met with and were briefed by leaders from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion; neither the officers nor the diplomats involved voiced any objection to the meeting although they were briefed befirehand that they would be meeting with overt Nazi sympathizers. Photographs were taken of the meeting, which were used for propaganda purposes by the Azov Battalion online, stating that the Canadian delegation had expressed "hopes for further fruitful cooperation".

 

The Canadian Forces have decided, as a result of public embarrassment when an Ottawa newspaper revealing the unsavoury aspects of CAF interactions with foreign military forces, to mount a review of the issue. A review undertaken in response to the latest revelations of Canadian diplomats and military personnel meeting with Azov Battalion members while in Ukraine; a decision that arrived just as a Jewish group in Ukraine circulated a new video of Ukrainian paratroopers singing a song to honour Stepan Bandera who was an infamous anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator whose group was linked to the mass murder of over 100,000 Jews and Poles during the Second World War.

 

These new revelations fold neatly into the near past when senior Canadian Forces leaders took a pass on condemning glorification of Nazi collaborators in Latvia and Ukraine, where Canadian troops are conducting training sessions. The Latvian Minister of Defence Artis Pabriks publicly praised members of the Latvian SS who fought for the Nazis, proudly stating them to be "the pride of the Latvian people and of the state" and that his country would not "allow anyone to discredit their memory".

As a friend of Pabriks, then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan refused to comment, much less to condemn glorification of the SS unit. Canadian generals saw no reason to break their silence, at the 2019 event and declaration. The Latvian SS included personnel who took part in the wholesale murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Members of the unit were among the last defenders of the Nazi regime in Berlin.

Members of the Azov Battalion attend a protest against local elections in separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine in Kyiv on May 20, 2016.   Reuters

 

Just coincidentally, as though underscoring the lax attitude and moral and ethical failings of the military hierarchy in Canada and government leaders disinterestedly overseeing their conduct in such matters, Canada’s training mission to Iraq was brought under scrutiny when it was revealed that Canadian soldiers complained in 2018 to their commanders that among the Iraqi troops they were training were war criminals who enjoyed sharing videos of their atrocities, including executing prisoners and raping a woman to death.

Grim Memorial to a Living Sentiment

"An offense against the Memorial Site – is above all, an outrageous attack on the symbol of one of the greatest tragedies in human history and an extremely painful blow to the memory of all the victims of the German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp."

Auschwitz death camp memorial site statement

"[Security at the 420-acre site, which is] constantly being expanded [has become difficult as of late. The security is financed through the museum’s budget, which has been impacted by the reduced number of paying visitors during the pandemic]."

"[The graffiti is to remain on the barracks until police] have compiled all the necessary documentation."

"We hope that the person or people who committed this outrageous act will be found and punished."

Auschwitz Museum statement

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, in Oswiecim, Poland. Photo credit: Oscar Gonzalez/WENN.com

During the Holocaust years of organized national institutional genocide against Europe's Jews, no one ostensibly was aware of the lethal menace facing Jewish lives. Despite the very public campaign of de-humanization of Jews, their disenfranchisement, their public humiliations, public beatings and killings, the mass round-ups, incarcerations and public proclamations, the truck and freight-train transports to slave labour camps and death camps, no one knew what was happening. 

Those relative few that did take notice, under threat of lethal punishment themselves, tried to shield a few Jews as their commitment to human dignity and the right of existence. So long after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviets freeing the paltry few political prisoners, military prisoners of war, conscientious objectors, Roma, homosexuals and Jews -- mostly Jews -- left alive in skeletal condition, there is no one on this Earth who could not know what happened in the barracks and the crematoria. 

Yet there remain and there always will be those who continue to thoroughly approve of the Final Solution to rid the world of the presence of Jews. Among them those who stigmatize world Jewry further by claiming the Holocaust was a pretext, that Jews themselves were involved in its management, that it is used as a crutch to manipulate world opinion. But those who vandalized the Auschwitz barracks knew the Holocaust was real and they would repeat it, if they could.

The world is no friendlier to Jews today than it was in 1939-45; a renaissance of Jew-hatred has once again blossomed into full view, and now that the world Jewish community has a country and a military of its own for legitimacy and protection the diaspora breathes more freely, but it too is a symbol of universal hatred toward Jews: still Jews albeit Israelis. The extermination site's barracks wee spray-painted in a sign of despicable lethality. The message that the unspeakable can be repeated.

Anti-Semitism -- responded 81 percent of young Jewish Europeans to a survey conducted by Europe's Agency for Fundamental Rights -- is an issue in their respective countries. Of that number of respondents, 44 percent claimed to have been targets of anti-Semitic harassment in the 12 months leading up to the survey. The time of the global pandemic has seen an inexplicable rise in anti-Semitism, linking a Jewish conspiracy to SARS-CoV-2, loosed on the world by reprehensible Jews.

Controversially, the yellow Star-of-David forced on European Jews as a demeaning symbol to set them apart from all others during World War 11 under Nazi occupation, was co-opted by anti-vaccination conspirators protesting protective-mask wearing during COVID-19 and societal closures as victimization by health agencies, equating public measures to control the virus with Nazi fascism. Mocking the hell-on-earth for Jews as commensurate with public unease over health measures.

Holocaust museums and memorials during the last two years have been defaced in many American states, as with other areas in Europe. A surge of online activity with hateful content was found and reported by the European Commission, particularly in France and Germany, on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, with a sevenfold increase in French and 13-fold in German. Resulting in the EU announcement it plans to unfold a new strategy in combatting anti-Semitism.

The Auschwitz 11-Burkenau vandalism marked the barracks with phrases in both German and English, with "two references to the Old Testament, often used by anti-Semites, and denial slogans", stated museum representatives of the nine barracks used to house male prisoners that were defaced.

Most of those who died in the complex of camps at Auschwitz died at the Birkenau extermination camp   Getty Images