Most of the world will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz today, January 27th. It is likely the government of Poland is planning the annual photo-op with Polish political prisoners who survived the camp as teens or children. They will wear reproduction striped uniforms bearing a triangle with a P and lay memorial wreaths at the executioners’ wall.
The international delegation of world leaders will also march through the Arbeit Mach Frei gates to lay their own wreaths and issue proclamations of “never again!” And then they walk away, believing these actions absolve their predecessors’ inactions. Just last week, a five year investigation in Belgium concluded that its national train company does not have to pay reparations for transporting 25,000 Jews to Auschwitz and other camps. Less than 1,200 survived.
Speeches will be made by the Polish President referencing the “German” crimes against Poland, and, if tradition holds, a mention of the million Jews who were killed at Auschwitz, and five million more across Europe. They will be shoved together with the requisite Poles, Roma, gay people, and Jehovah’s Witnesses to all be memorialized for their suffering and death.
At this point, it will not be surprising if the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is completely politicized, and the war in Gaza will be compared to the Holocaust and destruction of European Jewry. The alleged combatant and civilian death toll in Gaza is equivalent to about three days of the Nazi’s Operation Reinhard.
People love dead Jews, but they are very much concerned by the existence of the living ones, and, without irony, cannot bring themselves to muster the regard for Jews remaining captive by a terrorist regime hellbent on their violent, absolute destruction.
80 years ago really isn’t that long ago.
