Tag Archives: Auschwitz

DC riot, national news

Dad would be enraged!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You know already that my father wasn’t a particularly political individual.

Pete Kanelis and I did not talk much about politics, or even much about current events. Dad didn’t have an attention span that would allow him to digest the complexities and nuance of public policy.

He did, though, believe deeply in this country. He loved the U.S. of A. He was a patriot’s patriot. Dad signed up to fight in World War II on the very day that the Japanese attacked our fleet in Hawaii.

Dad spent the bulk of his combat duty fighting the Germans and the Italians in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations … which brings me to what Dad would have thought had he seen the terrorists who attacked the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January.

My father would have flown into a frothing rage at the sight of the t-shirt that bellowed “Camp Auschwitz.”

Dad knew who the enemy was when he suited up for the Navy. He endured constant bombardment from Nazi fighters and bombers while serving in the Med. He also knew that Adolf Hitler was a tyrant and a demon who needed to be crushed. Dad did his level best while he was thrust in harm’s way to crush that monster.

Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp, didn’t become known to Americans until nearly the end of World War II. Dad certainly knew then the nature of the beast he enlisted to fight.

I cannot help but think of the anger that would boil up inside him had he been around to witness the insurrection we all saw unfold … and the nature of the morons who ransacked the seat of our democracy while wearing an emblem that salutes Auschwitz. 

International news

Elie Wiesel: ‘Messenger to mankind’

wiesel

The Nobel Peace Prize citation said it with simple eloquence.

Elie Wiesel, the document stated, had been the “messenger to mankind.”

His message was to alert the world of the horror that occurred in Europe prior to and during World War II. The Holocaust became thrust onto the world’s conscience thanks to the Wiesel, who died today at the age of 87.

He was born in what is now Romania and became a captive of the Nazi tyrants who rounded him up and kept him captive in one of the death camps scattered throughout Europe.

That he survived Auschwitz in itself is a miracle. That he found his voice later to bring to light the horror that occurred throughout Europe is his lasting contribution to humankind.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/elie-wiesel-auschwitz-survivor-and-nobel-peace-prize-winner-dies-at-87/ar-AAhVt8M?li=BBnb7Kz

It would be Wiesel who would remind the world of a once-little-known truth. It was that the opposite of “hate” wasn’t “love,” he said. The opposite was “indifference.” Indeed, Wiesel reminded us that “indifference” was the antithesis of many human emotions, such as love and compassion.

He was courageous, scolding President Reagan for touring a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where many SS officers are buried. The president should be with the “victims of the SS,” Wiesel said.

President Obama paid tribute today to Wiesel: “He raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms,” the president said Saturday in a statement. “He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of ‘never again.’”

The world has lost a powerful and eloquence voice against evil.

May this courageous and good man rest in the eternal peace he deserves so richly.

International news, legal news

Ex-SS guard gets five years for atrocities … enough?

hanning

This one is giving me fits and I’m likely to ask for some guidance on what to think about it.

A court in Germany has just sentenced a 94-year-old former SS guard to five years in prison for complicity in the atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp where many thousands of people were sent to their death.

Reinhold Hanning accepted the sentence apparently without emotion.

My questions are many:

Is the sentence long enough for a man nearing 100 years of age? Is it tantamount to life in prison? What has this man done with his life since the end of World War II? Would any contribution to society be enough to erase what he was accused of doing? Has he sought spiritual salvation for what he did?

“This trial is the very least that society can do to give… at least a semblance of justice, even 70 years after and even with a 94-year-old defendant,” chief judge Anke Grudda said.

“The entire complex Auschwitz was like a factory designed to kill people at an industrial level… You were one of those cogs” in the Nazi killing machine, she told the accused on convicting him as an accessory to murder in 170,000 cases.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ex-ss-guard-94-convicted-for-complicity-in-auschwitz-murders/ar-AAhc6I3

auschwitz

As the son of a World War II veteran who saw intense combat against Hitler’s war machine, I grew up believing that the men who carried out the madman’s orders bore a large measure of responsibility in the crimes against humanity they committed in Fuehrer’s name.

My hatred for Hitler over what he did in committing the atrocities hasn’t wavered.

I’m struggling, though, with the punishment being handed out so many decades later to those who were following orders. Did they understand fully — in the moment — that they were committing unspeakable atrocities?

Just seven years ago I had the honor of touring the Yad Vashem memorial and museum near Jerusalem, which chronicles the story of the Holocaust from its victims’ point of view. One cannot come away from seeing that exhibit without feeling the combined sense of horror and shame over what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings.

Therein lies the crux of my conflict.

I am inclined to believe the sentence was as just as one can expect, given the defendant’s age. I also am inclined to hope that his time in prison is made as miserable as is humanly possible. I know, of course, that the German prison system must not inflict on Hanning the same horrors he’s been convicted of inflicting on his victims at Auschwitz.

Your thoughts on this?