Wednesday - January 13, 2010

No knee jerk reactions please but … I oppose this suggestion to fund Auschwitz memorial.

This caught our eye this morning and for some reason it really surprised me.

Whoever this person is, and obviously he is somebody knowledgeable about his subject, he is crackers.  Why the hell should the Brit taxpayer fund a memorial and pay anything to preserve that place?  What?  There aren’t enough things for Brits to do and fund in their own country?

This man with a name I can not hope to learn to pronounce, should try and find commercial backers.  Or play some more on German feelings of guilt. Those folks are always prime after generations of left wing guilt trips. 
I think I’m allowed to say that coming from the background I do.  How many more holocaust museums do we need?  The fact that the place is now in a bad state is evidence that there just aren’t many people who care that much.  If private donations along with the monies already promised by the hapless Germans aren’t enough, then tough.  There are already more then enough demands made on taxpayers everywhere.  Besides which, the Brits did not build that place.  Duh. 

When I say people don’t care that much, I don’t mean to say that they are all unmoved by the suffering inflicted on millions of people.  But I don’t think they want to be burdened with the idea that they owe something in perpetuity.  Especially when they had nothing to do with it and have concerns of their own in the world they live in today.

A thousand years from now, the only people to whom the holocaust will mean anything, will be we Jews. Cos ( as I’ve learned ) we never forget anything that has anything to do with Jewish suffering. I hate to say this and I damn well know it’s gonna look bad but ....
I think the world at large (except for the left) is tired, tired, tired of hearing it.  Even I have begun to think, I know, I know, I know!

One person has written in the commentary for the Times, that the buildings speak for the dead.  Really?
I was under the impression, mistaken apparently, that ISRAEL DID!  A very living memorial, even if a troubled one.

Auschwitz asks Britain for help to preserve decaying death camp

Roger Boyes
The Times

The guard towers of Auschwitz are splintering, the barracks are waterlogged: the concentration camp where one million Jews were slaughtered is decaying so fast that conservationists have called on Britain to help to save it.

The theft last month of its distinctive, sinister sign, Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free) has underlined the vulnerability of the Nazi death camp, stretching over 20 hectares (50 acres) of southern Poland.

“Nobody could have imagined such a horrific act of vandalism,” Jacek Kastelaniec, director-general of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, said. “Now try to imagine the public outcry if one of the barracks started to fall down, impossible to restore.”

Auschwitz was built on boggy ground between two rivers; as a result the high groundwater and bad drainage has rotted the foundations. Walls are blistering and starting to lean, roof frames are buckling, plasterwork and wall-paintings are flaking.

Mr Kastelaniec will go to the Cabinet Office tomorrow to press the Government on Gordon Brown’s promise to contribute to a €120million (£110million) endowment fund that will guarantee the preservation of one of the main sites of the Holocaust.

Mr Brown visited the camp last April, and, plainly upset by what he had seen, declared: “We will join with other countries in supporting the maintenance and retention of the memorial at Auschwitz.” No figure has been suggested publicly for Britain’s possible contribution, but Polish sources say that the conservationists are hoping for about €10million.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has said that her country would put up half of the costs, but the managers of the Auschwitz museum need other commitments. Mr Kastelaniec will also visit France, Belgium and the United States. The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has sent an appeal to 40 heads of government.

“The conservationists say we need to start work in the next two years if we are to avert irreparable decay,” Mr Kastelaniec told The Times, “and that will only be possible if the money is paid into the fund now.”

The decay of the camp is politically sensitive. The current trial in Munich of the alleged Sobibor camp guard John Demjanjuk is being seen by the public as the last for Nazi war crimes — the 89-year-old defendant is wheeled into court on a hospital bed.

Holocaust survivors are dwindling. “In ten years there will be no witnesses,” Mr Kastelaniec said, “and it will be easier for the crazy people who say nothing happened in the camps.” Only the buildings will remain.

Auschwitz cannot simply have a makeover because that would undermine its claims to authenticity, and open the way for those on the far Right who try to deny or trivialise the Holocaust. The strategic point of the restoration is to use its almost over-powering sense of menace as a clinching counter-argument against anti-Semitism and racism.

The portfolio to be presented to the British Government underlines the vast scale of the camp. The priority is being set on 45 brick barracks. The managers estimate that it will cost up to €890,000 to restore a single barracks building. On top of that come 22 wooden barrack rooms — where inmates were crowded into bunks up to the ceiling. Each will cost €310,000.

Then there are the remains of 210 barrack buildings. Some sheds have collapsed, but there are concrete outlines where floors and chimneys stood. Without some strengthening, these foundation markings will disappear. Cost: €78,000 per barrack room. The 27 wooden guard towers need to be reinforced at an annual cost, for the next 14 years, of €62,000.

ALL THE STORY IS HERE

Posted by peiper     on 01/13/2010 at 11:28 AM   
Filed Under: • History • International • UK •  
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