Welcome to Birkenau: No Jews with flags allowed
Hitler must be apoplectic in his grave. Never, in a million years, did he imagine a situation where Jews – more specifically IDF officers and other Israeli security officials – arrived willingly at one of his state-of-the-art concentration camps only to be turned away by the local police. But that’s what happened last week in Birkenau, Poland. Sort of.
The 180-member Israeli group was participating in the “Witnesses in Uniform” Holocaust Commemoration program. Many were carrying Israeli flags. As they moved towards the entrance they were told by local authorities that they could not enter the extermination camp with their Israeli flags. Heaven knows everyone else is waving a flag these days but nothing agitates people more than a blue and white flag with a Star of David.
According to Ynet, which originally reported the story, the police were inflexible and the Israeli group ended up entering the death camp without their flags. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum people said they hadn’t received advance notice so they couldn’t let the flags in. If only it had been so easy not to get in the first time – “Oh, you have a Jewish symbol? Sorry, you will have to find another gas chamber. Your symbols are too contentious for us. We don’t want to upset everyone else we are planning to kill this week.”
There’s more.
The spokesperson for the Israelis said, “This shows that we are still fighting against antisemitism in Europe and there are still those who are trying to change the Zionist narrative and the sanctity of this place for us.”
What is the Zionist narrative concerning Nazi death camps? What’s more antisemitic: being turned away from Birkenau or ultimately being let in? Whoever doubted that Europe was “still” antisemitic? Has there ever been a time when it wasn’t antisemitic?
Concentration camps were the crown jewel of the Nazi death program. According to theholocaustexplained.org, roughly five to six million people died in one of the six specially built extermination camps during World War II. Most were Jews, but there were also non-Jewish Poles, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah Witness and disabled people. All the degenerates and undesirable groups were represented.
At first the camps were supposedly detention centers for “enemies of the state”. But as time progressed the Nazis tweaked the enemies definition so they could more easily concentrate all their undesirables in a few select locations and kill every one quickly. Spoiler alert: The program was a great success.
We are still fighting antisemitism in Europe. And now we are fighting it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia too. If only the penguins at the South Pole could speak and wave flags, then surely they would be there as well. The reasons why don’t matter because it was never something logical and now it is even less so. A quick trip to YouTube will give you many videos of anti-Israel protesters don’t know which river; which sea; which continent; let alone what the real issue is.
Every time you think you’ve now seen it all, something else happens to surpass your most recent shock. The Birkenau incident just demonstrates how off kilter the world has become. Did you ever think you would see the day that an Israeli had to beg to get into a death camp?
The biggest difference this time is that antisemitism might not go back underground after a few years because there are no longer millions of downtrodden Jews who can’t protect themselves for the world to pity. This is not World War II. Today we are strong.
There was also some other good news after the absurdity of the rejected flags. According to one of the Witnesses in Uniform organizers, “No ceremony has ever been stopped midway — never in Treblinka, Warsaw, or Majdanek.” Well, that’s a great relief. We’re still welcome in those places.
