congratulations

to the iraqi people, for pulling off what appears to be a very successful election. keep up the good work over there.

Blogburst: Remembering Auschwitz

Remembering the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz

"This article is posted by participants of the January 27, 2005, BlogBurst (see list at end of article), to remember the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, sixty years ago, on January 27, 1945.

On January 20th, we marked the anniversary of the 1942 Wannsee Conference. In the course of that Conference, the Nazi hierarchy formalized the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Understanding the horrors of Auschwitz requires that one be aware of the premeditated mass-murder that was presented at Wannsee.

Highlighting these events now has become particularly important, even as the press reports that '45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz' (Jerusalem Post, December 2, 2004)."





The Holocaust, symbolized by Auschwitz, the worst of the death camps, occurred in the wake of consistent, systematic, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda campaign. As a result, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how.

As Germany expanded its domination and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, Poland, parts of the USSR, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Italy and others countries, the way was open for Hitler to realize his well-publicized plan of destroying the Jewish people.

After experimentation, the use of Zyklon B on unsuspecting victim was adopted by the Nazis as the means of choice, and Auschwitz was selected as the main factory of death (more accurately, one should refer to the “Auschwitz-Birkenau complex”). The green light for mass annihilation was given at the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942, and the mass gassings took place in Auschwitz between 1942 and the end of 1944, when the Nazis retreated before the advancing Red Army. Jews were transported to Auschwitz from all over Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated Europe and most were slaughtered in Auschwitz upon arrival, sometimes as many as 12,000 in one day. Some victims were selected for slave labour or “medical” experimentation. All were subject to brutal treatment.

In all, between three and four million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles and Red Army POWs, were slaughtered in Auschwitz alone (though some authors put the number at 1.3 million). Other death camps were located at Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec (Belzek), Majdanek and Treblinka.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, sixty years ago, after most of the prisoners were forced into a Death March westwards. The Red Army found in Auschwitz about 7,600 survivors, but not all could be saved.

For a long time, the Allies were well aware of the mass murder, but deliberately refused to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Ironically, during the Polish uprising, the Allies had no hesitation in flying aid to Warsaw, sometimes flying right over Auschwitz.

There are troubling parallels between the systematic vilification of Jews before the Holocaust and the current vilification of the Jewish people and Israel. Suffice it to note the annual flood of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN; or the public opinion polls taken in Europe, which single out Israel as a danger to world peace; or the divestment campaigns being waged in the US against Israel; or the attempts to delegitimize Israel’s very existence. The complicity of the Allies in WW II is mirrored by the support the PLO has been receiving from Europe, China and Russia to this very day.

If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the complicity we are witnessing, knowing where it inevitably leads.


well, there you have it. thanks to Joseph Alexander Norland from IsraPundit for getting this set up again, and to all the people who participated.

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last." --Winston Churchill

another blogburst

still a bit of time to get in on this one, if you're interested. send the following info to IsraPundit@yahoo.com.

name
e-mail
site URL
site name
country

or, you can visit the info site, and get information on signing up there. this blogburst is to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz. there are currently around 150 participants, but it would be great if we could get more in on it. i think this is a great idea, and we've already done it once before (read: joseph norland from israpundit put it together, and i hopped on board), so all the bugs should be worked out this time.

"How exactly would you describe the North Koreans?" --me
"Not nice people." --a professor who knows what he's talking about

what the pro-choicers are supporting

here. and here. and here's some more. if you're not convinced that this practice is totally wrong, go here, and look at the rest.

and don't give me any of your "its my body" crap. because its not.

the new game

so this is what has been draining my time of late, and part of the reason i haven't been posting much. its very addicting, and way more fun than it should be. you should give it a try.

happy inauguration day

this one is for you, forrest:


and these others are for the other liberal morons out there, who i don't mind offending so much:

cool and not cool

cool: gold bond
not cool: writing papers
really not cool: playing video games when you should be writing a paper

at some point in the future, i'll do a real post agian. if anybody is actually reading this, you're either really dedicated or really bored. if nobody is reading this, then you won't really care how long it takes me to update. so i guess i'm in a win-win situation. or something like that.

these sound fun

weapons that may or may not have been developed. if not, i think they should be.

time for bed, but this couldn't wait

the new quote of the moment... actually, i think this one may be worthy of at least a week, maybe even a month.

"If you can't find something nice to say about someone, you're probably talking about Hillary Clinton." --Jeff Foxworthy, Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again

skip this post if you're squeamish

more from our past presidents later... but for now, this (courtesy of wizbang) brings new meaning to the phrase, "oh shit, that hurts": after a man refused to have sex with his girlfriend, she got pissed, and ripped off his left testicle. adding insult to injury, she then proceeded to pop it in her mouth. full story here. unless you're at whitworth, in which case the filter blocks it.

presidential humor, part II

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" --Abraham Lincoln

"About the tiem we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends." --Herbert Hoover

"Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it." --Harry Truman

presidential humor

its a good thing for a president--or anyone, for that matter--to have. here's a small selection of funny quotes from our presidents, taken from "uncle john's bathroom reader plunges into the presidency."

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." --Andrew Jackson

"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." --Abraham Lincoln

expression of the day

"testicular fortitude"

found here. try dropping that one into a conversation with your friends.

more or less

that's about how alive i am at the moment. i had something fun i was going to post about, but totally forgot it.

class is going pretty good. the teacher seems like a cool guy, and he knows a lot about the subject. like this: 암소 일을 붙잡으십시요 (something along the lines of "the day of catching the cow", an expression of celebration).

jan terms means a lot of movie watching, too. the other night, i finally saw eurotrip, which is a hilarious movie. true, there are some parts that just make you go (unspellable sound of disgust), but for the most part its genuinely funny. it was a little odd seeing michelle trachtenberg--probably best known for her roles in "inspector gadget" and "harriet the spy"--playing a fairly adult role, though. it kind of made me question my sanity. but then i remembered that i was crazy, and that i shouldn't keep asking myself that question.

probably the best part, though, were the crazy shirts, like this one (written in white in the movie) and another one i couldn't find a picture of, that simply said "kill something." it had a really good soundtrack too.

so before i start rambling too much, i'm off.

the "enlightened" ones

over Christmas break, i read what i thought was going to be a fairly interesting book: "The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ", by lynn picknett and clive pierce. after reading it, i am forced to conclude that their state of "enlightenment", which they are trying to share with us, is very literally lighter, due to some missing grey matter.

here are some of their conclusions:

1) the great gothic cathedrals in europe are based on "sacred geometry", a closely guarded secret of the master masons. apparently, sex was very important, as the arched entrances to the churches supposedly represent a vagina, while the interior of the church is a womb.

2) Jesus was married to mary magdalene, or at least had sex with her on a regular basis

3) Jesus was a disciple of john the baptist, but they had an argument and Jesus started his own "movement." the authors speculate that Jesus used his political connections to have john killed after he was imprisoned by herod.

4) Jesus was an egyptian magician, initiated into the cult of osiris (or something like that) by mary magdalene, who was actually a priestess of isis (in egyptian mythology, isis was the consort of osiris).

those were some of the more interesting ones. the book started out pretty good, with its in-depth look at the templars and the mysterious priory of sion. but then they really started reaching, stretching facts to absurd lengths to try and prove their thesis. it was like they were trying to build a boeing 747 with nothing more than a roll of tin foil and some scotch tape.

if you read and liked "the da vinci code", you might like it. if you read this book and believe it... well, i've got some prime real estate in florida that i'm willing to sell you. but if you call within the next 30 minutes and use your credit card, i'll double your order, and throw in a free alligator. that's right, you get two lots of prime florida real estate and a complimentary alligator, for only 42 easy payments of $59.95!* if you are not completely satisfied, return the land within 30 days for a complete refund**--but keep the alligator as a free gift! don't delay! call today! the number is: 1-800-968-7-386. that's: 1-800-YOU-R-DUM.

*plus $14.95 shipping and handling
**minus the cost of shipping

happy new years!

which really just means--for me at least--a bunch of wrong dates for the first month or so. i wasn't going to post, but i started getting irked at some of my friends who weren't posting much over the break (you know who you are), and realized that me not posting makes me even worse.

all my friends gave up early, which is the only reason i'm posting this, really. rachel has to take off for Cali at like 7:30 tomorrow morning, so she has an excuse. everyone else... you're all wimps. oh well. sleep is good. i'm still mostly awake, but if you haven't noticed, i'm having a little trouble with coherence, so i'm going to bed. g'night all.

"first you made me grab your boob, then you made me grab my own..." --unnamed friends