Someone called my attention to this picture of pro-Palestinian protestors at an Israel Day Parade in 2009:

This is sickening. There is not only a sign showing predatory rabbis gloating over an Aryan-looking child (conjuring up der Stürmer-like images of blood libel), but also one asking God to nuke Israel. Worst of all, there’s a sign calling for the closing of Guantanamo prison and—the bad part—the re-opening of Auschwitz.

Let me first say that while I decry these protestors as rabid and stupid anti-Semites, I strongly defend their right to publicly parade their lunacy and hatred. I also decry the failure of the Obama administration to close Guantanamo. It’s morally unconscionable to hold prisoners for years without trial, or without informing them of their supposed crimes. These people should be on mainland U.S. soil, subject to U.S. criminal laws.

That said, it is indefensible to equate Guantanamo Bay with Auschwitz. People are not gassed or shot in droves on Guantanamo.  They are not slowly starved to death or made to stand for three hours in the snow for roll call. They are not made to do day-long, backbreaking work on a cup of thin soup and a crust of bread. They get medical treatment. They are not killed upon arrival. The prison is not part of a concerted effort to exterminate all Muslims.

It is curious that those people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened still invoke it when it’s politically expedient to do so.

What kind of a sick mind would call for the re-opening of Auschwitz, except for one that truly wants the Jews wiped off the face of the Earth—as do many Muslims?

We hear much about Islamophobia (and I abhor a general hatred of Muslims, though I approve the denigration of Islam), but hear almost nothing about “Jewish-ophobia,” also known as anti-Semitism—a view widespread in the Middle East and publicly exhibited in its state-run newspapers and television. Indeed, I claim that anti-Semitism also plays some role in Western liberals’ public disapproval of Israel. After all, the Gaza strip has often been compared to the Warsaw Ghetto. That shows a complete failure of perspective.

I will in fact be visiting Auschwitz in a week, and will report on my experiences. I don’t expect it to be a pleasant trip, but for me it’s a necessary one. And just to remind people of the difference between Guantanamo (or Palestine) and what happened in Nazi Germany, here is a photograph that my host, Malgorzata, showed me. Taken in 1914, it shows her ancestors, including her mother:

In the center, holding the second-youngest daughter among his ten children, is Mordechai Wahrzager (“truth-sayer” in Yiddish), Malgorzata’s grandfather. Mordechai was born in 1878, so he would have been 36 at the time.  His youngest daughter, Malgorzata’s mother Anna, is in the arms of Mordechai’s wife Chana, to his left.  The third-youngest daughter stands in front on the left. To Mordechai’s right sits his sister, who moved to the U.S. before World War II. Her descendants are still in America.

The family lived in Turka nad Stryjem, formerly in Poland but now in the Ukraine.

Mordechai and his family were poor; he made his living by making thin wooden boxes for holding shoe polish.  In the evenings the entire family would sit around and assemble these boxes. Despite his poverty and menial work, Mordechai was educated: he spoke fluent German and translated German poetry, including Goethe, from German into Yiddish. He also helped the largely illiterate non-Jews of his village in their dealings with the authorities.

The three youngest daughters, who were by then grown, were taken by the Soviets and relocated to Kyrgystan in Russia in 1940 (Russian policy was to subdue the Polish population by removing its educated classes). They survived and returned to Poland after the war.

By 1941, the nonagression pact between Stalin and Hitler had been broken, and the Germans took over all of Poland.  When the Germans came to Turka nad Stryjem, Mordechai’s non-Jewish neighbors, whom he had helped, offered to hide him and the family from the Nazis.  He refused, claiming that a country that had such culture, that had produced people like Goethe and Schiller, could never be so barbarous as to kill the Jews.

He was wrong. Mordechai, his wife, and his remaining seven children were captured in 1941 and sent to the Lager, probably the Majdanek concentration camp. None of them survived. Killed along with them were 45 other relatives: the future spouses and children of the youngsters shown in this picture.

Majdanek is one of three concentration camps that retain their original gas chambers. Here are views of the outside and inside of the killing room at Majdanek. The first picture shows the outside: real showers to the left, gas chamber to the right:

Inside the gas chamber: the “Prussian blue” color on the wall comes from the hydrogen cyanide gas:

As Wikipedia notes:

The camp, which operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, was captured nearly intact, because the advance of the Soviet Red Army prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure; but also, due to ineptitude of commandant Anton Thernes who failed his task of removing incriminating evidence on himself. Majdanek, also known as KL Lublin, remains the best preserved Nazi concentration camp of the Holocaust.

Here is the Majdanek crematorium: the wooden surrounding walls are rebuilt, but the interior and chimney are original:

 Estimates of the number of people exterminated at Majdanek vary; the lowest estimate is 80,000, with 60,000 of these being Jews.

Those who compare Guantanamo or Gaza to Nazi concentration camps should be mindful of the very real differences between these.  And calling for the re-opening of Auschwitz brands you as someone who doesn’t belong in civilized society.

It also behooves us to remember that something like Auschwitz could return if people like those brandishing the signs above ever get political power.