(Jerusalem Post) Irwin Cotler - Of the 1.3 million people murdered at Auschwitz, 1.1 million were Jews. The genocide of European Jewry succeeded because of a state-sanctioned ideology of hate. The Jew was seen as the enemy of humankind and humanity could only be redeemed by the death of the Jew. Jews died at Auschwitz because of anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism did not die. It remains today. The Holocaust crimes resulted not only from state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, but from crimes of indifference, from conspiracies of silence from the international community. Some say that if there had been no Holocaust there would not have been a State of Israel. But it is the other way around. If there had been a State of Israel, there would not have been a Holocaust. The writer, Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, is a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
2020-01-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive