From the online Jerusalem Post comes this disturbing article about the unsealing of a vast archive of Nazi atrocities - 16 miles of files! - containing the fullest records of Nazi persecutions in existence which has been kept closed to the public for half a century by the International Tracing Service, or ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Yeah, fifty years later and only after pressure from the U.S. and survivors'groups.
Remember this article the next time you write checks to your favorite charity.
11 comments:
From the article:
In a bound ledger is a copy of t of names of Jews rounded up in Holland and transported to the death camps. Buried amo the names is "Frank, Annelise M.," her date of birth (June 12, 1929), Amsterdam address before she went into hiding (Merwerdeplein 37) and the date she was sent to a concentration camp (Sept. 3, 1944).
She was on one of the last trains to Germany before the Nazi occupation of Holland crumbled. Six months later, at age 15, she died an anonymous death, one of about 35,000 casualties of typhus that ravaged the Bergen-Belsen camp. After the war, The Diary of Anne Frank, written during her 25 months hiding in a tiny apartment with seven others, would become the most widely read book ever written on the Holocaust.
But most of the lives recorded in Bad Arolsen are known to none but their families.
I wondered if the files would contain information about Anne Frank. They did. And reading just the little blurb above brings sadness to me. So many wonderful people were exterminated! And for what? To satisfy a megalomaniac's egregious anti-Semitism.
How appropriate that the Red Cross alternates it's emblem with the Red Crescent. They should just go ahead and switch altogether.
There is a town in Illinois called Highland. Huge, luxurious homes keep being built, even though the median income is very low in this rural little city.
Rumor has it that it was settled by Nazis back in the late 40s, and that many of the families still draw from Swiss Bank accounts.
It sounds goofy, but I know a woman that received a diamond ring from a Highland resident. After they broke up, she took the ring to a jewler and he said the cut of the diamond was very very rare, European, and pre-WWII.
Hmmmm....
Ugh, I don't really want to know what went on. The stuff I already know about is bad enough, I don't need to add to that file in my brain.
That said, the information should have always been available to anyone who wanted to see it. What point is there is keeping it under wraps?
I think this information falls in the category of historical information now. I'd love to drag little amadine-nutjob over to those files & have him peruse them for a month or so & then tell me there was no Holocaust.
Keeping these files secret only helps perpetuates new violence or, God forbid, a new Holocaust.
BTW the Salvation Army is a fine charity to throw your money at this holiday season. They aren't plagued by the political machinations that the IRC is rife with. Just a thought.
Thanks for this post Cube...so so important that we never forget!
"...concerns about the victims' privacy ... doling out information ... on a strict need-to-know basis"
Huh? HUH?!
I can't believe they got away with that line of crap for 50 years.
The entire world "needs to know"!
Thanks for posting about this Cube.
woman: absolutely. If we forget, it can happen again.
caz: yes, crap is the operative word. Privacy had nothing to do with keeping this quiet. I see it as blatant anti-semitism & nothing less.
I recall reading somewhere ages ago that the Red Cross actually delivered Zyklon-B to concentration camps. Wondering if there is any truth to this, and has anyone ever encountered this before?
ahmadenijad should take a tour.
Post a Comment