75th
Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz
Only
the Most Self-Serving and Reactionary Forces Could Use the Memory of
the European Holocaust to Justify Ongoing Violations of Human Rights
and Crimes Against Humanity
- Louis Lang -
Liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Red Army,
January 27, 1945.
In the past week memorial events were held
marking the day 75 years ago, on January 27, 1945,
when Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Red
Army.
Survivors, political leaders, heads of state and
clergy participated in ceremonies, especially one
at the site of the death camp, to pay tribute to
all the victims and survivors. Yet it seems that
the world still has not been able to close the
book on all these historic events. There is still
controversy over World War II and although there
have been great words of sorrow for the events and
even a sense of guilt expressed by some, no single
country in Europe has committed itself to defend
human rights, not just as a mere formality, but
with the content of defending the human rights of
all.
What can we conclude from the declarations and
expressions of sorrow and even guilt from various
heads of state and political leaders? It seems
that their intention is to divert attention from
the fact that various authorities are not
discharging their obligations, but are attempting
to confine the demand for human rights to the
forms which suit their purposes.
Not one can say that they have succeeded in
changing this situation so that the rights of
human beings are guaranteed. Not only have they
not succeeded, they have no plan to do so. Since
World War II how many examples exist of the rights
of human beings being trampled underfoot?
The most recent example of attempts to falsify
history has been the resolution passed by the
European Union which tries to equate the
aggression of Nazi Germany with the role played by
the Soviet Union, claiming that both were
aggressive powers responsible for unleashing World
War II. Such claims fly in the face of facts when
everyone knows that the USSR was the country that
made the greatest sacrifices to stop the German
Nazi aggression.
  Left: Memorial
plaque to those killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz,
put in place in 1948 and removed in 1989.
Right: Soviet Red Army liberates Auschwitz
prisoners January 27, 1945.
How can we explain that after such acts of
boundless brutality and barbarism and the defeat
of Nazi Germany, still, great controversies are
created about what happened and how to stop it
from happening again?
Seventy-five years after the liberation of
Auschwitz, falsifications of history are being put
forward under the guise of sorrow for the victims.
Instead of de-Nazification, which was supposed to
be carried out after the Nuremberg trials and to
which many of the western allies paid lip service,
today we can see that various east European
countries are destroying the monuments that were
built to honour the sacrifices and victories of
the Soviet army in liberating these countries.
Now these same countries, including Ukraine,
Latvia and Poland are erecting monuments to
rehabilitate collaborators who assisted the Nazis
in putting down the revolt of the people against
the German occupation of their countries.[1]
For example, Poland is now passing laws to make
it illegal to discuss the role played by various
forces who assisted the Nazi occupiers in Poland.
1944 photo of Polish Partisans who fought for
the defeat of Nazi Fascism.
State leaders who spoke on January 27 in
Auschwitz, instead of dealing with the real
problems faced by the people in their countries,
used the occasion to impose their own narrow
political goals and invoke the memories of the
Holocaust to further their own interests.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin
Netanyahu, used his speech at the World Holocaust
Forum in Jerusalem on January 23 to justify
Zionist aggression in the Middle East and
elsewhere. He said, "But for the Jewish people,
Auschwitz is more than the ultimate symbol of
evil. It is also the ultimate symbol of Jewish
powerlessness. It is the culmination of what can
happen whenever people have no voice, no land, no
shield."[2]
These hypocritical declarations fool no one. The
whole world is witness to the fact that this
"shield," which the Israeli Zionists claim is for
self-defence, has been used since 1948 to commit
terrorist attacks to expel over 800,000
Palestinians from their lands and has created mass
displacement of people whose villages and homes
were destroyed.
This continues right to today. For the past 14
years the people of Gaza have suffered continuous
bombing and military attacks against civilians by
the Israeli Army. Israel has turned Gaza into the
largest open air prison in the world where over
two million people are under attack and forced to
live in inhuman conditions.
Israeli bombardment of Gaza, January 30, 2020, in
its ongoing terror attacks against the
people of Gaza.
To invoke the memory of the Holocaust to justify
inflicting such suffering on the Palestinian
people is a crime that will not go unpunished.
The speeches by various leaders in the past week
are a continuation of the attempt to rewrite
history. Not only do they refuse to recognize the
unmatched role of the Soviet Union and the Red
Army in the defeat of German fascism, at such
great sacrifice by the Soviet people, but they go
even further to spread confusion about the nature
of fascism.
They go to great lengths to equate anti-Semitism
and Nazism. This is far from the truth because
German fascism was far more than anti-Semitism. It
was unbridled imperialism with the aim of world
domination, which resulted in the mass
extermination of Jews and Slavic people like
Russians and Poles. Hundreds of thousands of
Romani people and people with mental illnesses or
handicaps were also executed in the concentration
camps. The Nazis carried out politically motivated
assassinations as well of trade unionists,
Communists and anyone who opposed the expansionist
plans of Nazi Germany. To reduce Nazi Germany to
anti-Semitism and to declare that today criticism
of Israeli crimes and zionism are tantamount to
anti-Semitism and constitute hate crimes is to
falsify history and use the deaths
of millions of people for narrow self-serving
political ends.
All the falsifications of history promoted by
the Western media on this 75th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz cannot cover up the real
history of World War II and the supreme sacrifices
made by the people of the world who fought to
uphold the cause of freedom, democracy and peace
to achieve victory over German fascism.
Notes
1. In August 2019 a
monument was erected in the Ukrainian Village of
Sambir dedicated to 17 members of Stepan Bandera's
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Nazi
collaborators who were responsible for the deaths
of thousands of Jews and more then 100,000 Poles.
Several uniformed Canadian soldiers, serving in
Ukraine, participated in the dedication of the
monument.
2. The full text of
Netanyahu's speech can be found in the Times
of Israel, January 23, 2020.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 2 - February 1, 2020
Article Link:
: Only
the Most Self-Serving and Reactionary Forces Could Use the Memory of
the European Holocaust To Justify Ongoing Violations of Human Rights
And Crimes
Against Humanity - Louis Lang
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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