Aid Group Failed Wartime Jews
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer
This coming Sunday, May 1, is Holocaust Memorial Day, set aside to remember the millions of victims murdered in Hitler’s death camps in the Second World War.
On Prince Edward Island, it has been observed since 1999. This year, the ceremony will be held on Monday, May 2, at Memorial Hall, Confederation Centre of the Arts, Charlottetown, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
Leo Adler, past director of National Affairs for the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Toronto, and the son of Holocaust survivors, will be the speaker.
Many governments failed in their duty to rescue Jews, Roma, and others from death at the hands of the Nazis. But international non-governmental organizations, too, were found wanting.
The failure of the Red Cross to help Jews during the Holocaust is the most shameful episode in its history.
Founded in 1863 to provide aid to military casualties and prisoners of war, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), headquartered in neutral Geneva, Switzerland, by the 20th century faced a new challenge: how to deal with unprotected civilians targeted by totalitarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany.
In the Second World War, having failed to extend Geneva Convention protections to these new victims of war, it retreated into becoming a cautious and ineffectual organization.
The ICRC opted for a strategy of not addressing the question of Jews directly.
It made only general approaches concerning the victims of mass arrests or deportation, and then it made no reference to their religious affiliation or racial origins, although it was clear that the people in question were, for the most part, Jews.
On April 29, 1942, the German Red Cross informed the ICRC that it would not communicate any information on “non-Aryan” detainees, and asked it to refrain from asking questions about them.
This was accepted by the Geneva headquarters.
Information about the persecution of Jews did, however, filter out of Germany and the German-occupied countries and reached the Allied governments. Some of this information also became known to the ICRC.
Therefore, in the summer of 1942, the ICRC debated whether to launch a general appeal on violations of international humanitarian law.
It prepared a draft, but decided in the end not to issue the appeal, believing that it would not achieve the desired results.
As reports of extermination camps began to spread in 1944, a Swiss ICRC delegate, Dr. Maurice Rossel, visited the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia at the invitation of the Nazis. His June 23 visit was carefully orchestrated.
He walked through the ghetto under the escort of SS officers, but he did not have the opportunity to talk with the Jewish prisoners there.
The Nazis had cleaned up the ghetto by lessening overcrowded conditions by sending prisoners to Auschwitz and adding a bank, shops and schools.
The ruse worked. Dr. Rossel signed a report approving of the treatment of the Theresienstadt Jews.
On Sept. 27, 1944, Dr. Rossel went to Auschwitz. There he spoke to the commander of the camp, but he was not authorized to go inside it. Again, there was no protest.
In her memoir “The Art of Darkness,” published in 2002, Charlotte Opfermann wrote: “Why was the International Red Cross Commission duped during their so-called inspection of the (Theresienstadt) camp in June 1944? The commission wanted to be misled.”
Ruth Schwertfeger’s 1989 book “Women of Theresienstadt: Voices from a Concentration Camp” contains the following comment made by the survivor Klara Caro:
“It was never clear to me to what extent the so-called commission was in league with the Nazi criminals. If it had been a serious commission who really wanted to investigate our living conditions, then they would have examined more than the façade built for the purpose and would have gone independently into the stables and attics. They on the other hand only saw what the Nazis showed and presented them.”
In his book “The Red Cross and the Holocaust,” published in French in 1988, with an English translation in 1999, Swiss academic Jean-Claude Favez noted that the ICRC’s desire to maintain balance, borne out of its neutral, Swiss orientation, and the habit of reticence among most of its leaders, was no match for the Nazis.
The ICRC in 1996 released copies of its Second World War files, some of which provided verification that it knew of the persecution of Jews in Nazi concentration camps but felt powerless to speak out.
The files, 25,000 microfilmed pages, were turned over to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Red Cross has long acknowledged its awareness of the treatment of Jews during the Second World War, maintaining that if it had disclosed what it knew, it would have lost its ability to inspect prisoner of war camps on both sides of the front.
This is nothing but rationalization.
The Red Cross stood by while millions of Jews, and others, were murdered in gigantic factories of death.
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Should Hawaii Belong to the U. S.?
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The so-called “birthers” insist that Barak Obama should not be president of the United States because he was not born on American soil, as required by the U.S. constitution. They may be right—but not in the way they think.
A loosely organized group of conspiracy theorists, right-wing extremists, racists, and religious bigots, these people claim that the president was born in Kenya, or perhaps Indonesia, and is secretly a Muslim.
Of course this is nonsense. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961.
But should this archipelago, America’s 50th state, belong to the U.S?
The Hawaiian islands are not offshore, the way Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland are. On the contrary, they are the most isolated inhabited pieces of land in the world: 2,390 miles from California; 3,850 miles from Japan; 4,900 miles from China; and 5,280 miles from the Philippines.
Honolulu is three time zones west of Los Angeles. It takes as much time to fly there from the west coast as it does to get to New York, three times zones to the east.
Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, a U.S. Commonwealth, is much closer to the mainland United States.
Hawaii was an established, ethnically homogenous, Polynesian kingdom. The islands were unified under King Kamehameha I in 1810. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839-1840.
In November 1843, the British and French Governments formally recognized Hawaiian independence. The U.S. followed in 1849, and Japan and Germany afterwards.
But European and American settlers began to meddle in the affairs of the kingdom, and in 1893 the last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, was deposed in a coup d’état led largely by American businessmen and missionaries.
They were opposed to her attempt to establish a new constitution for the country, one which would have strengthened the power of the monarch relative to the American business elites. Sanford Dole, a member of the family later famous for its pineapple plantations, declared a republic.
The islands were formally annexed by the United States in 1898. It was part of a wave of American expansion that year. The U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War also added the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and, temporarily, Cuba, to the American empire.
Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1900 and a state 60 years later. It is the home of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, based in Pearl Harbor, which was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, bringing the U.S. into World War II.
A Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress adopted in 1993, the centenary of the 1893 coup, and signed by President Bill Clinton, “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum.”
The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009, introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii in the U.S. Congress, proposes to establish a process for aboriginal Hawaiians to gain federal recognition similar to an Indian tribe.
There are nationalist movements in the state seeking some form of sovereignty for the islands, which they spell as Hawai‘i (pronounced Havayi, the proper pronunciation in the Polynesian language).
Others would be content with some form of self-government for indigenous Hawaiians, in effect creating a special entity within the state. They want recognition that there is an aboriginal people in Hawaii, one which had formed its own nation prior to annexation.
One group, the Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom, a few years ago landed on a small island and planted its own flag, symbolically laying claim to the state.
In her recent book Unfamiliar Fishes, about the American takeover of the islands, author Sarah Vowell recalls hearing her tour guide recount the story of when the Hawaiian flag was lowered and the American flag was raised. “It happened more than a hundred years ago, but she was upset about it, as many Hawaiians are,” Vowell said.
Can Hawaiians reclaim their country, or is it too late? Today, native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, at 21 per cent of the state's population, are now a minority in their own homeland. They have been surpassed by Caucasians, Japanese-Americans, and other Asian-Americans.
It would take a lot for an American state to secede from the Union. But proponents of some form of self-determination for native Hawaiians may yet succeed.
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The so-called “birthers” insist that Barak Obama should not be president of the United States because he was not born on American soil, as required by the U.S. constitution. They may be right—but not in the way they think.
A loosely organized group of conspiracy theorists, right-wing extremists, racists, and religious bigots, these people claim that the president was born in Kenya, or perhaps Indonesia, and is secretly a Muslim.
Of course this is nonsense. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961.
But should this archipelago, America’s 50th state, belong to the U.S?
The Hawaiian islands are not offshore, the way Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland are. On the contrary, they are the most isolated inhabited pieces of land in the world: 2,390 miles from California; 3,850 miles from Japan; 4,900 miles from China; and 5,280 miles from the Philippines.
Honolulu is three time zones west of Los Angeles. It takes as much time to fly there from the west coast as it does to get to New York, three times zones to the east.
Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, a U.S. Commonwealth, is much closer to the mainland United States.
Hawaii was an established, ethnically homogenous, Polynesian kingdom. The islands were unified under King Kamehameha I in 1810. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839-1840.
In November 1843, the British and French Governments formally recognized Hawaiian independence. The U.S. followed in 1849, and Japan and Germany afterwards.
But European and American settlers began to meddle in the affairs of the kingdom, and in 1893 the last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, was deposed in a coup d’état led largely by American businessmen and missionaries.
They were opposed to her attempt to establish a new constitution for the country, one which would have strengthened the power of the monarch relative to the American business elites. Sanford Dole, a member of the family later famous for its pineapple plantations, declared a republic.
The islands were formally annexed by the United States in 1898. It was part of a wave of American expansion that year. The U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War also added the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and, temporarily, Cuba, to the American empire.
Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1900 and a state 60 years later. It is the home of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, based in Pearl Harbor, which was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, bringing the U.S. into World War II.
A Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress adopted in 1993, the centenary of the 1893 coup, and signed by President Bill Clinton, “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum.”
The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009, introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii in the U.S. Congress, proposes to establish a process for aboriginal Hawaiians to gain federal recognition similar to an Indian tribe.
There are nationalist movements in the state seeking some form of sovereignty for the islands, which they spell as Hawai‘i (pronounced Havayi, the proper pronunciation in the Polynesian language).
Others would be content with some form of self-government for indigenous Hawaiians, in effect creating a special entity within the state. They want recognition that there is an aboriginal people in Hawaii, one which had formed its own nation prior to annexation.
One group, the Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom, a few years ago landed on a small island and planted its own flag, symbolically laying claim to the state.
In her recent book Unfamiliar Fishes, about the American takeover of the islands, author Sarah Vowell recalls hearing her tour guide recount the story of when the Hawaiian flag was lowered and the American flag was raised. “It happened more than a hundred years ago, but she was upset about it, as many Hawaiians are,” Vowell said.
Can Hawaiians reclaim their country, or is it too late? Today, native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, at 21 per cent of the state's population, are now a minority in their own homeland. They have been surpassed by Caucasians, Japanese-Americans, and other Asian-Americans.
It would take a lot for an American state to secede from the Union. But proponents of some form of self-determination for native Hawaiians may yet succeed.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Voters Would Welcome Majority
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
On the very day the election was called, I predicted a Conservative majority, without bothering to see how the campaign would develop. Why?
First of all, Canadians are tired of minority government, which turns Parliament into a circus and makes for an American-style “permanent campaign.”
This is our fourth election since 2004. And the mud-slinging, from all sides, has been endless, with manufactured outrages an almost daily occurrence.
So, the voters asked themselves, how to put a stop to this? Which party is closest to a majority?
Obviously, that would be the Conservatives. At the dissolution of the House of Commons, they held 143 seats. They just need another dozen to cross the “finish line” to govern without worrying their government will fall.
The Liberals, at 77, would have to double their total. Unlikely.
Secondly, Stephen Harper has successfully convinced the voters that, one way or another, Michael Ignatieff, who can’t win a majority on his own, will, if the Tories fail to secure one, form some sort of working arrangement (let's call it that) with the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois, because the Liberals and NDP will, together, probably still fall short of the 154 seats needed to govern.
It's not just that Canadians are uncomfortable with the notion of a coalition, it’s having the NDP and Bloc as part of it, even if informally.
This will lead, they fear, to “extortion” on the part of both these parties, as the Liberals will need to placate them to stay in power.
For many in the rest of Canada, it would be particularly galling to see the Bloc having its cake and eating it too.
The emergence of the Bloc (and the Reform Party in the West) destroyed the old Mulroney Progressive Conservative party, which was decimated in 1993 and never recovered.
However, the Bloc has done just as much damage to the Liberals.
The party used to “own” Quebec, winning virtually all of its 75 seats in the days before Mulroney’s victory in 1984, which included the Quebec nationalists that would later form the Bloc.
Since that time, the Liberals have consistently won fewer seats in Quebec than Gilles Duceppe’s party. Without their Quebec base, they are no longer Canada’s “natural governing party.”
These days, the Bloc has become the hegemonic force in francophone Quebec and Harper’s Conservatives keep making gains in the rest of Canada.
Outside of anglophone Montreal, Atlantic Canada, and metropolitan areas of Toronto and Vancouver, the Liberals are hardly competitive. One of these days, even the NDP might surpass them in many of these ridings.
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
On the very day the election was called, I predicted a Conservative majority, without bothering to see how the campaign would develop. Why?
First of all, Canadians are tired of minority government, which turns Parliament into a circus and makes for an American-style “permanent campaign.”
This is our fourth election since 2004. And the mud-slinging, from all sides, has been endless, with manufactured outrages an almost daily occurrence.
So, the voters asked themselves, how to put a stop to this? Which party is closest to a majority?
Obviously, that would be the Conservatives. At the dissolution of the House of Commons, they held 143 seats. They just need another dozen to cross the “finish line” to govern without worrying their government will fall.
The Liberals, at 77, would have to double their total. Unlikely.
Secondly, Stephen Harper has successfully convinced the voters that, one way or another, Michael Ignatieff, who can’t win a majority on his own, will, if the Tories fail to secure one, form some sort of working arrangement (let's call it that) with the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois, because the Liberals and NDP will, together, probably still fall short of the 154 seats needed to govern.
It's not just that Canadians are uncomfortable with the notion of a coalition, it’s having the NDP and Bloc as part of it, even if informally.
This will lead, they fear, to “extortion” on the part of both these parties, as the Liberals will need to placate them to stay in power.
For many in the rest of Canada, it would be particularly galling to see the Bloc having its cake and eating it too.
The emergence of the Bloc (and the Reform Party in the West) destroyed the old Mulroney Progressive Conservative party, which was decimated in 1993 and never recovered.
However, the Bloc has done just as much damage to the Liberals.
The party used to “own” Quebec, winning virtually all of its 75 seats in the days before Mulroney’s victory in 1984, which included the Quebec nationalists that would later form the Bloc.
Since that time, the Liberals have consistently won fewer seats in Quebec than Gilles Duceppe’s party. Without their Quebec base, they are no longer Canada’s “natural governing party.”
These days, the Bloc has become the hegemonic force in francophone Quebec and Harper’s Conservatives keep making gains in the rest of Canada.
Outside of anglophone Montreal, Atlantic Canada, and metropolitan areas of Toronto and Vancouver, the Liberals are hardly competitive. One of these days, even the NDP might surpass them in many of these ridings.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Libyan War Becomes an Unnecessary Stalemate
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer
Barack Obama for far too long seemed unable to muster the effort to confront Moammar Gadhafi, despite calling for the removal of the tyrant.
Only when faced with an imminent victory by Gadhafi’s forces, and prodded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did Obama finally act – and even then, not before receiving the go-ahead from the UN Security Council, and only because it was framed as a humanitarian mission.
Strange how western war aims have come full circle since the Second World War. Back then, humanitarian aims were subordinate to military ones, and so nothing was done to save people from Hitler’s death camps. Today, it’s the reverse.
But Obama is a reluctant warrior. From the moment the campaign began, he has made it clear he wants it over as soon as possible – whether Gadhafi and his henchmen are overthrown or not.
American power, for Obama, is almost an embarrassment, and its use a necessary evil, to be employed sparingly – even against a mentally unhinged tyrant who has committed acts of terrorism around the world, including against Americans, and turned his own country into a vast prison camp.
Gaddafi will not step aside voluntarily, despite recent defections by top aides.
Nor is he likely to be driven anytime soon from his Tripoli base, where he has surrounded himself with highly-paid fighters and tribal kinsmen who remain fiercely loyal, U.S. officials have told the Washington Post.
Without massive amounts of aid, the rebels will not dethrone him.
Since he runs a kleptocracy, and considers Libya his personal property, he wants to hand over “ownership” to his sons.
Gadhafi would also, as soon as the pressure from the NATO coalition eased, resume his slaughter of his opponents in Libya.
So if Gadhafi survives, ruling a rump state in western Libya, he would certainly try to retaliate, using his tried and true method – terrorism.
He is said to have chemical weapons and perhaps other unconventional tools.
Such a deadlock could also dramatically expand the financial and military commitments by the United States and allied countries that have intervened in the conflict.
This impasse could easily have been avoided, had the president thrown his weight behind the opposition to Gadhafi in the first weeks of the uprising.
It’s impossible to separate the humanitarian objective from the political one, as Obama has tried to do. We’ve come a long way from the “unconditional surrender” days of the Second World War.
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer
Barack Obama for far too long seemed unable to muster the effort to confront Moammar Gadhafi, despite calling for the removal of the tyrant.
Only when faced with an imminent victory by Gadhafi’s forces, and prodded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did Obama finally act – and even then, not before receiving the go-ahead from the UN Security Council, and only because it was framed as a humanitarian mission.
Strange how western war aims have come full circle since the Second World War. Back then, humanitarian aims were subordinate to military ones, and so nothing was done to save people from Hitler’s death camps. Today, it’s the reverse.
But Obama is a reluctant warrior. From the moment the campaign began, he has made it clear he wants it over as soon as possible – whether Gadhafi and his henchmen are overthrown or not.
American power, for Obama, is almost an embarrassment, and its use a necessary evil, to be employed sparingly – even against a mentally unhinged tyrant who has committed acts of terrorism around the world, including against Americans, and turned his own country into a vast prison camp.
Gaddafi will not step aside voluntarily, despite recent defections by top aides.
Nor is he likely to be driven anytime soon from his Tripoli base, where he has surrounded himself with highly-paid fighters and tribal kinsmen who remain fiercely loyal, U.S. officials have told the Washington Post.
Without massive amounts of aid, the rebels will not dethrone him.
Since he runs a kleptocracy, and considers Libya his personal property, he wants to hand over “ownership” to his sons.
Gadhafi would also, as soon as the pressure from the NATO coalition eased, resume his slaughter of his opponents in Libya.
So if Gadhafi survives, ruling a rump state in western Libya, he would certainly try to retaliate, using his tried and true method – terrorism.
He is said to have chemical weapons and perhaps other unconventional tools.
Such a deadlock could also dramatically expand the financial and military commitments by the United States and allied countries that have intervened in the conflict.
This impasse could easily have been avoided, had the president thrown his weight behind the opposition to Gadhafi in the first weeks of the uprising.
It’s impossible to separate the humanitarian objective from the political one, as Obama has tried to do. We’ve come a long way from the “unconditional surrender” days of the Second World War.
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