For some reason this resolution is going pretty much unnoticed.
In a joint press release the bi-partisan sponsors of this House Resolution 49 state, in part:
“More than 1.1 million men, women, and children, the vast majority of them Jewish, perished within the walls of the Auschwitz death camps before it was liberated by Soviet troops 70 years ago today. The horrific methods for systematic murder employed at Auschwitz, including mass executions, gas chambers, starvation, and torture, encapsulated the brutality of the Nazi regime that claimed the lives of over 11 million people and successfully exterminated more than 60 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe.
“We offer this resolution today out of our shared responsibility to ensure the world knows what evil is possible when hatred and intolerance go unchecked and basic human dignity is denied..."
The reporting on this Resolution in one publication stated on January 29, 2015:
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch (FL-21) announced the introduction of a bipartisan congressional resolution with Reps. Chris Smith (NJ-04), Eliot Engel (NY-16), Nita Lowey (NY-17), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27), Steve Israel (NY-03), and Peter Roskam (IL-06) recognizing the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz that took place on January 27, 1945. More than 1.1 million people lost their lives in the Auschwitz concentration camps, making it one of the deadliest manifestations of the Nazi’s Final Solution plan to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Today, millions of people around the world remember those who lost their lives in the Holocaust through the United Nations’ designation of January 27th as International Day of Commemoration.
Ironically, the U.S. Senate version (Resolution 35) omits the fact that it was the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz.
Not noted in either version is the fact that the final part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, an IG Farben factory, was built by concentration camp inmates (some 7,000 that expanded to 35,000 as these concentration camp inmates and slave laborers from across Europe died). The IG Farben factory was intended to produce a synthetic rubber to be used by Hitler in his war efforts. The construction of the plant ended up "employing" over 35,000 concentration camp inmates and slave labor from all over Europe, most of whose lives ended after approximately three months. IG Farben was a huge conglomerate corporation profiting from Hitler's wars. Perhaps this omission is made because someone might draw a comparison to the U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex? Another embarrassment not mentioned is the fact that the Rockefellers and DuPonts collaborated with IG Farben, a major financial backer of Hitler and his Nazis, in business ventures--- including various international monopoly price-fixing scams and collaborating with Hitler in ways that hindered efforts of the anti-fascists to stop Hitler.
It should also be noted that some Americans and their companies that were involved with the fascist Hitler backed regimes of Europe who worked in cahoots, politically and economically, with IG Farben were: William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Kennedy (JFK's father), Charles Lindbergh, John Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon (head of Alcoa, banker, and Secretary of Treasury), DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil (now Exxon), Ford, ITT, Allen Dulles (later head of the CIA), Prescott Bush, National City Bank, and General Electric. These wealthy Americans and their corporations working with Hitler and Mussolini helped bring Franco to power in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
However, in many ways, the Senate version, also bi-partisan in nature, is better; and if the historical fact regarding that it was the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz were included in it, this Senate Resolution would become the better of the two since it emphasizes peace.
Both Resolutions have the short-coming of failing to point out the United States should withdraw from its involvement with the fascists now in power in the Ukraine before this counter-productive relationship and activity starts World War III. These "new age fascists" openly state their support for the Ukrainian collaborators with Hitler. In fact, many Ukranians, resistance fighters against the fascist occupation who fought alongside the Red Army, perished in Auschwitz and were used as slave labor in building Auschwitz. Anti-fascist Ukranians, like those now opposed to the present Ukranian regime, were among the Red Army soldiers which liberated Auschwitz.
In fact, Auschwitz was much more than an extermination camp; a fact all these Wall Street bribed politicians would probably rather evade.
Auschwitz stands as a monument to everything evil that is bred by the merging of state-monopoly capitalism where the corporations come to dominate the economic and political life of the country with democracy becoming a hindrance to their greedy drive for maximum corporate profits.
In Auschwitz we find big finance capital merged with industrialists and banking interests all managed by the government to carry out the "final solution" in the process of building an imperialist empire to dominate the world through building up a huge military-industrial complex intended to enable Nazi Germany to dominate the world.
Really, is it any coincidence that Wall Street was Hitler's biggest backer and these Wall Street politicians would rather not discuss what Auschwitz really was?
For some strange reason, it appears no one in Washington wants to talk about just how long Wall Street investors were profiting from their investments and activities, which included powers of decision-making, in IG Farben.
Also omitted from both the House and Senate Resolutions is the need to defend and implement the intent of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights which would further mobilize public opinion and sentiment against the re-occurrence fascism.
Here is Senate Resolution 35:
http://www.kirk.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1311
The text of the resolution is available below:
S. Res. 35
Whereas on January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz
extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated by Allied
Forces during World War II after almost 5 years of murder, rape, and
torture at the camp;
Whereas 1,100,000 innocent civilians were murdered at the Auschwitz extermination camp;
Whereas nearly 1,300,000 innocent
civilians were deported to Auschwitz from their homes across Eastern and
Western Europe, particularly from Hungary, Poland, and France;
Whereas 1,000,000 of the civilians who
perished at the camp were Jews, along with 100,000 non-Jewish Poles,
Roma and Sinti individuals, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's
Witnesses, gay men and women, and other ethnic minorities;
Whereas these civilians included farmers,
tailors, seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers,
small-business owners, clergy, intellectuals, government officials, and
political activists;
Whereas these civilians were subjected to
torture, forced labor, starvation, rape, medical experiments, and being
separated from loved ones;
Whereas the names of many of these civilians who perished have been lost forever;
Whereas the Auschwitz extermination camp symbolizes the extraordinary brutality of the Holocaust;
Whereas the people of the United States
must never forget the terrible crimes against humanity committed at the
Auschwitz extermination camp;
Whereas the people of the United States
must educate future generations to promote understanding of the dangers
of intolerance in order to prevent similar injustices from happening
again; and
Whereas commemoration of the liberation of
the Auschwitz extermination camp will instill in all people of the
United States a greater awareness of the Holocaust: Now, therefore, be
it
Resolved, That the Senate—
(1) commemorates January 27, 2015, as
the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination
camp by Allied Forces during World War II;
(2) calls on all people of the United
States to remember the 1,100,000 innocent victims murdered at the
Auschwitz extermination camp as part of the Holocaust;
(3) honors the legacy of the survivors of the Holocaust and of the Auschwitz extermination camp; and
(4) calls on the people of the United
States to continue to work toward tolerance, peace, and justice and to
end all genocide and persecution.
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