Auschwitz

Why were this year's celebrations marking the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp 60 years ago more high-profile than any previous year, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

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On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops liberated the largest Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, a town in southwest Poland whose name will forever be associated with one of the blackest chapters in the history of humanity. The celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the event have been unprecedented in scope. Although for obvious reasons there were more Holocaust survivors when its 50th anniversary was held ten years ago, a far greater number of statesmen and international personalities participated in commemorating the event this year than ever before. The importance given to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz reflects the determination of the international community to keep the memory of Hitler's death camps alive.

Auschwitz was the largest of the camps at which the Nazis undertook the systematic extermination of "inferior" racial groups, including Jews, throughout WWII. When the Red Army stormed the camp, they found only 7000 emaciated survivors, many others having been taken as human shields by their jailers as they fled from the Allied advance. Between 1940 and 1945 1,100,000 prisoners were killed in Auschwitz, including 960,000 Jewish men, women and children from various countries in Europe, 75,000 Poles, 2,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet POWs and many others. Originally designed to accommodate 10,000 prisoners, the camp had been transformed into a slaughterhouse where prisoners were herded to their death in gas chambers then cremated or buried in mass graves.

The irony is that the Jews, who succumbed to their fate with virtually no resistance at the time, have since exhibited a stronger ability to resist their enemies than any other community. How to explain this shift from passivity to belligerence, this mutation from extreme weakness to extreme strength of purpose? Why was it possible for the Jews to accomplish such a miracle and not the Gypsies, for example, who were also targeted by the Nazi extermination campaigns?

To answer these questions, we should first begin by clearly distinguishing between two different things. The first is that the Jews are entitled, like any other segment of humankind, not to be persecuted by reason of their ethnic identity. That is, on a racist basis. At a time that animal rights activists are campaigning vigorously for the humane treatment of animals, how can we justify the inhumane treatment of humans on ethnic, racial or religious grounds?

The second is that the Jews are not entitled to exploit their victimisation by the Nazis to justify depriving the Palestinian people of their basic human and political rights. Being subjected to persecution does not justify persecuting others, nor does the abusive exercise of a "right" legitimise that right. One of the main accomplishments of the 20th century has been the UN Charter's consecration of the right of peoples to self-determination.

Denying the rights of Jews carries implicitly an invitation for them to deny the rights of the Arabs to their lands and holy places. Rejecting other peoples' rights deepens mutual enmity. History teaches us that neither an approach based on hostility nor the current approach based on trying to right past wrongs can overcome conflicts. A useful lesson can be drawn from the German experiment in this regard.

German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder has expressed the "shame" felt by the German people for their embrace of the Nazi system. He said that Evil is neither a product of politics nor of science, but that after Auschwitz no one can claim that it does not exist. Evil showed its ugly face in the extermination camps and the racist ideologies of Nazism. Moreover, it is no longer possible to attribute its existence to the old theories about Hitler the "demon". Ideologies are created and embraced by humans. Today Germany is witnessing a revival of neo-Nazism, especially among the young generation and in parts of the former GDR. Obviously Nazism has not been completely eradicated and seems unlikely to be eradicated in the context of the current balance of power in Germany and, more generally, in Europe.

Today, Auschwitz has become more of a symbol for the Jewish problem than for the Nazi crimes taken as a whole. This mutation found expression in the creation of the state of Israel in 948. From the viewpoint of Zionism, the war against Nazism and Fascism did not end in 1945, but continued after that and the creation of Israel was a further step in focussing attention on the persecution of the Jews, more than on any other community that went through similar sufferings.

For the first time, the UN General Assembly met in special session to commemorate the Holocaust, while 20 heads of state and one thousand survivors of the Nazi genocide participated in the many commemorations held to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But side by side with this unprecedented show of global solidarity with the Jewish ordeal, there has been a flare-up of anti- Semitism. Recent years have also witnessed a rise in sectarian violence and race-related crimes not only in Kosovo and Rwanda but even in many European cities once noted for their tolerance. Islamophobia is rife in the West, and little or no attempt is being made to bridge the wide gulf between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian worlds. Meanwhile, the Arab nation is at its lowest point, while Sharon, now flanked by Peres in a new Likud-Labour coalition, is at his highest point. Even the redistribution of territory is running according to Sharon's plan, where the surrender of land in Gaza and in a small part of the West Bank is being executed not in the aim of beginning a withdrawal process but of ending the process definitively.

The liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago was a victory for the human race as a whole, a triumph for the values of humanity over the dark forces unleashed by the Nazi ideology of racism and hatred. It was a message that did not come across in this year's anniversary celebrations, however, which attested more to Zionism's ability to mobilise public opinion at the global level than to anything else. If the ideological offensive of Zionism is to be successfully countered, a clear distinction must be made between Jews who suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis for no other reason than that they were Jewish, and Zionists who have appropriated the experience of the victims to further a political agenda based on fostering the welfare of their community through the negation of Palestinian rights.

We should not fall into the trap of allowing Zionism to portray our legitimate censure of Israeli policies as motivated by anti-Semitism and thus find ourselves isolated from the international community. Twenty members of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, recently submitted a complaint to the Public Prosecutor against what they called the "anti-Christian activities" of Jewish organisations, demanding that all these organisations be banned for their "extremist views and for spreading hatred of Christians". The US State Department was quick to respond, issuing a report claiming that anti-Semitism is thriving in Russia. Moscow has dismissed the report as false.

Although Putin took part in the Auschwitz celebrations, the Russian media, contrary to the Western media, ignored the event. Though keen on confirming its condemnation of Jewish persecution, the Russian media has also been keen to resist giving Nazi persecution of the Jews any special status.