Auschwitz and Islam by John McDonald

On the morning of January 27, 1945, while the Second World War was racing to its final, cataclysmic end, Red Army soldiers stood outside of the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in eastern Poland and became the first humans to glimpse Hell. Stretching out for what seemed like miles in every direction were row after row of wooden barracks,  enclosed and surrounded by double and triple layers of barbed-wire fencing and guard towers with machine-guns.

The whole scene resembled a small city, complete with a set of railroad tracks that ran beside the long platform and ended at the gate at which they stood. Above the gate was a curious inscription in German, "Arbeit Macht Frei", or "work makes freedom.''

Having met no resistance and seeing no sign of activity the soldiers fanned out through the camp and soon came across, seemingly everywhere, in store-rooms and warehouse, piles and heaps of suitcases, neatly packed with their owners names on the outside. There were piles of clothes, shoes, rings, eyeglasses, pocket watches, shaving kits, combs and brushes--things many of the deprived Russians soldiers considered luxuries. Disturbingly they also found piles of human hair and the battle-hardened soldiers noticed the wind carried the stench of burnt flesh. At last, strange, skeletal, emaciated figures appeared in ragged, stripped clothes, starring dead-eyed at them.
 
"What is this place , where are the Germans?'', asked the soldiers. "And who owns all that property we saw and where have they gone"? It was then the prisoners told them they were in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the Germans had evacuated the remaining 58,000 prisoners on forced death marches to the West, away from the advancing Red Army, they had survived by hiding from the guards and 'where had the others gone'? 

Motioning to a chimney in the distance the prisoner said "There''.

As patrols came back with reports of having found large under-ground gas chambers disguised as ''showers'' and crematoriums, the patrols also confirmed the area of Birkenau as the source of the stench. The dawning magnitude of what the Russians had stumbled upon became clear. For here in this single place, as the world would come to know in other camps across the Third Reich, historians estimate some one million people; mostly Jews, but also Christians, Gypsies, political prisoners, homosexuals, and the mentally and physically handicapped were systematically robbed of their humanity, their dignity, their possessions and ultimately their lives in mankind's greatest and most evil crime. They were gassed, their bodies cremated and their ashes scattered in the forests surrounding the camp.

I used this historical prologue to pose first a question, and to state what I believe to be an immutable truth.

Imagine if you had stood on that January morning , seeing Auschwitz, and imagine being told that what you were looking at was ''radical Nazism'', and was not representative of ''true Nazism."  What would you have thought?

The truth I wish to state is this: You cannot separate a founder from his movement or a phophet from his prophecy. They are one and the same. Auschwitz was the logical terminus for centuries of latent European anti-Semitism as was 9/11 the logical terminus of fourteen centuries of Islam. Both systems are and were murderous political ideologies that sought to dominate the world through aggressive warfare, to eliminate world Jewry and destroy any and all who would oppose them.

Does this mean that those Germans, who were after all Christians, are lock-step murderers? Putting aside the brave few who spoke out, yes it does. Every German who followed Hitler and the Nazis in all they did, made the Holocaust possible. You couldn't listen today to someone who claims to be a Nazi and hear them say '' Nazism is peaceful'' as you watch violence carried out in the name of Nazism.

Mohammed was Islam's sole founder, it prophet, its voice. He commanded his followers to wage jihad--holy war--to bring all under its control and to kill the Jews wherever they found them. To follow Mohammed is to follow Islam. It isn't enough for ''moderate Muslims'' to denounce the slaughter committed in its name, it is Islam, like Nazism, that is the evil. As there was nothing redeeming in Hitler and Nazism, so is there nothing redeemable in Islam or Mohammed. The words and deeds of these two men--Adolph Hitler and Mohammed--have murderously and profoundly impacted humanity in such horrendous ways and should serve as a warning to the world of the danger of those who consider themselves ''prophets'' and to those who would become its adherents.

Nazism is gone and Islam is still with us, still threatening and still killing. As long as those who continue to follow Mohammed's teachings commit violence in its name while their fellow Muslims say little or nothing to condemn it,  Auschwitz's legacy will always be us and so will 9/11!

John McDonald
New Jersey