Representing Jewish Communities in 100 Countries Across Six Continents
Representing Jewish Communities in 100 Countries Across Six Continents
29 July 2010
The websites of the memorials and documentation centers of the former Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora have been attacked by hackers. The intruders replaced a ‘Book of the Dead’ on the Buchenwald website with neo-Nazi slogans and symbols and completely erased the Mittelbau-Dora camp website. "Brown is beautiful," read one slogan in English, referring to the color of the uniform shirts of Adolf Hitler's SA storm troopers. "We will be back," threatened another in German.
"By damaging the services and documentation that we offer – such as the Book of the Dead at Buchenwald concentration camp – the perpetrators were trying to efface the memory of the victims of the crimes of the Nazis," said Volkhard Knigge, head of the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation, in a statement. The foundation, which is dedicated to preserving the camp's remains in commemoration of the victims and promoting public knowledge and historical research into the Holocaust, said the hacker attack had been reported to police. The websites, www.buchenwald.de and www.dora.de, have now been restored.
In Buchenwald, the Nazis incarcerated nearly a quarter of a million people, many of them Jews, who were forced to work in arms factories. An estimated 56,000 of them died of exhaustion, starvation or illness, or were executed. Nearby Mittelbau-Dora also provided forced labor for a Nazi weapons factory. It is estimated that one third of the 60,000 prisoners held there died.
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Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize genocide we send a critical message to the world. As we continue to live in an age of genocide and ethnic cleansing, we must repel the broken ethics of our ancestors, or risk a dreadful repeat of past transgressions. We know from captured German war records that millions of innocent Jews were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany - most in gas chambers. These facts have been proven repeatedly through countless thesis and dissertation research papers. Virtually every PhD in the world will stake their career on known Holocaust facts. Despite this knowledge, Holocaust deniers ply their mendacious poison everywhere, especially with young people on the Internet. Such deniers have only one agenda - to distort the truth in a way that promotes antagonism against the object of their hatred, or to deny the culpability of their ancestors and heroes.
Museums and mandatory public education are tools to dispel bigotry, especially racial and ethnic hatred. Books and films can also establish the veracity of genocides, such as recent Holocaust films. They help to tell the true story of the perpetrators of genocide; and they reveal the abject terror, humiliation and degradation resulting from such blind loathing and prejudice. It is therefore essential that we disclose the factual brutality and horror of genocide, combating the deniers’ virulent, inaccurate historical revision. We must protect vulnerable future generations from making the same mistakes.
A world that continues to allow genocide requires ethical remediation. Books, films and required public education about genocide can help to reduce such unacceptable behavior. We must show the world that religious, racial, ethnic and gender persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope. Only through such efforts can we reveal the true horror of genocide and promote the triumphant spirit of humankind.
Charles Weinblatt Author, Jacob’s Courage http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/
I just dont understand. Muslims are the cause of more deaths of white people Jewish people and even other Muslims. I just don't get it. Israel the only nation in the middle east with Human Rights. The only nation for Jewish people on this earth.
This is why we need Israel. A safe haven for all Jews no matter who they are.
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