Important questions to be answered as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944.

Important questions to be answered as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944.

By Greg Krasovsky

For The Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer

January 27, 2023

Today, on January 27, 2023, we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day [1] and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944 [2].

Never again, we say!!!
 
I hope so, but human history (which tends to repeat itself) suggests a more pessimistic prognosis, especially if it becomes convenient to forget about the Holocaust [3] and use, permit or just turn a blind eye on genocide & ethnic cleansing for political purposes.

As a Ukrainian Jew, I have some questions:

1. Why didn't the Allies, first and foremost the U.S., bomb Nazi Concentration camps, especially after they found out about the extermination / genocide of Jews there as part of the German Nazis' "Final Solution" to their "Jewish Problem?"
 
Were firebombing Dresden (between February 13 and 15, 1945, just three (3) days before Soviet troops entered the city), Hamburg and Tokyo, as well as dropping Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki more important from a political & military point of view?

BTW, the bombing of each city listed above constitutes a war crime & a crime against humanity, but who judges the victors?
 
2. Why were so few Nazi leaders tried and executed before and after the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1946?

3. Why the U.S., UK and Canadian government agencies permit, facilitate, organize and fund Nazi war criminals' and collaborators surreptitious escape from Germany after the end of WWII and allow them to settle in their countries via "rat lines?"
 
This includes not just Nazi Scientists, like Werner Von Braun of NASA fame, who were brought into the U.S. in Operation Paperclip but also

-  Erich Traub, a Nazi "scientist" (a bioweapons expert) who has been suspected to be founder or "godfather" of a U.S. Government laboratory, The Plumb Island Animal Disease Center (also known as "Lab 257") on Plum Island, NY, where he may have continued to conduct experiments started in Nazi Germany on using ticks as bioweapons who could be dropped from airplanes on enemy troops to infect them with lethal varieties of tick-born diseases (sound like nasty dual-use "gain-of function research"). 

Allegedly, during the WWII, Traub ran a Nazi secret biological warfare laboratory in the Baltic on an island called Riems, with a mission to poison cattle in the Soviet Union. 

This facility is now called The Friedrich Loeffler Institute with laboratories rated at Biosafety Level 4 for handling dangerous & exotic agents, i.e. life-threatening pathogens transmittable by aerosol or unknown means.

BTW, Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler also considered research on insect-borne diseases so important that he ordered the creation of a biolab in the infamous Dachau concentration camp, the "Dachau Entomological Institute."

  It happens to be a coincidence that Plum Island is only ten miles away from Old Lyme Connecticut, the place where Lyme Disease was first diagnosed in 1975 and officially discovered by Willy Burgdorfer, another scientist who did some work for the U.S. Army on biological weapons. 

No wonder U.S. journalists, foreign doctors and and foreign biowarfare specialists have suspected that Lyme Disease, a debilitating tick-borne bacterial infection, may have originated as a bioweapon and then escaped via a lab leak on Plumb Island; 

- senior military and intelligence personnel, including those who served in the Nazi SS (Hitler's and the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing), Nazi Germany's Army Intelligence (Abwehr) and were tasked with helping the U.S. and its allies fight the Soviets during the Cold War, such as Reinhard Gehlen;

- Ukrainian members (veterans!) of the Waffen SS Galicia Division, Ukrainians who served in local Nazi Ukrainian Police Units (like the 118th and 201st Battalions)  and Nachtigall and Roland Battalions) and Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators, including Nazi propagandists, like Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland's maternal grandfather Mykhailo Khomiak (Michael Chomiak).

FYI, Grandpa Mykhailo was the chief editor of the Ukrainian daily newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti (News of Krakow) for the Nazi regime during WWII in Nazi-occupied Poland and later in Nazi-occupied Austria.

4. Why did the CIA violate U.S. law and actively hide Ukrainian Nazi War criminals & Nazi collaborators (who should have never been admitted into the U.S. and should have been deported) from the U.S. Department of Justice Nazi Hunters that searched for, prosecuted and deported Nazi War Criminals from America?
 
5. Why did the CIA and U.S. Department of Defense allow, encourage and even actively recruit Ukrainian Nazi War Criminals and collaborators, including those who participated in the Jewish Holocaust, to work for and serve in the U.S. military and and intelligence communities?
 
6. Why did the CIA

    - recruit,
    - organize,
    - fund,
    - arm,
    - provide logistical, material, political and legal support,
    - manage & coordinate

the activities of Ukrainian Nazi War Criminals and Collaborators, including members of OUN-B  (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera's faction) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in Soviet Ukraine after the end of WWII -- activities including terrorism against

- Soviet police, security military and other government personnel,
 
- Local civilians who supported or didn't oppose the Soviet Union (like teachers, nurses, doctors, women & children),

including harassment, extortion, beatings, kidnappings, rape, torture, mutilation and extrajudicial killings (murder)?
 
7. Why did the U.S. government (including the White House, State Department, Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community) after

( a) Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in August of 1991 and the USSR's dissolution in December of 1991

(b) the U.S. obtained political, economic and military control over in Ukraine in February of 2014 after the "Revolution of Dignity" (i.e. violent unconstitutional overthrow of a lawfully elected, albeit corrupt, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich) following the Euromaidan protests,

not just tolerate, but provide material support (with the assistance of its NATO allies) to Ukrainian political parties, politicians, NGOs, government officials and agencies, and paramilitary organizations that

   - Glorify and worship WWII-era Ukrainian Nazi war criminals, collaborators, their organizations and leaders,
 
   - espouse & practice radical versions of ethnic nationalism, religious nationalism, language nationalism, extreme/ultra-nationalism, Neo-Nazism, extremism, xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism (both anti-Judaism and religious antisemitism),
 
   - display, wear and use on military equipment and weapons Nazi symbols, quotes and insignia, including those use by the Nazi SS, an organization that was adjudicated (legal finding) by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and Trials as a criminal organization guilty of war crimes during WWII,
 
   - committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kyiv (February 2014), Odessa (May 2014) and the Donetsk Coal Basin (Donbass) of Eastern Ukraine (from April of 2014 until present),  including

     -- aggravated assault,
     -- kidnapping,
     -- rape,
     -- torture,
     -- mutilation, and/or
     -- murder

of individuals from target socioeconomic groups, the vast majority of who were Ukrainian citizens?
 

8. Considering the evil experimentation on concentration camp inmates by German scientists, like Dr. Josef Mengele, resulting in torture, maiming and murder, as well as modern bans on the use of chemical weapons & biological agents (bioweapons) and on dangerous gain-of-function-research, why did our American government organize, fund and manage extremely dangerous dual-use research in numerous bio-laboratories in Ukraine, as admitted to under oath by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, including working on very lethal and contagious bio-pathogens that can be born and transmitted by animal vectors like birds, mammals and insects?

If true, as alleged by the Russian military, why did the U.S. government tolerate, if not participate (via private contractors) in "medical / scientific research" on institutionalized mentally ill Ukrainian patients in Kharkiv Region -- obviously without their ability to provide legally valid fully-informed consent? 

At least I hope that they didn't end up killing these psychiatric patients like the Nazis during WWII.

 
Why do I pose these questions?

Because, as an American citizen of Ukrainian, Jewish, Nigerian and Russian descent, I don't want to see our (American) government or population supporting groups, individuals, policies and actions that tolerate and/or encourage conduct which is based on political ideology arising out of or related to Nazism & Fascism, whose core components include racial, ethnic, national & cultural superiority (supremacism), exceptionalism, giving the right to punish and rule / subjugate other "lesser" (inferior) peoples (subhumans) and nations.  

Because if we allow this to happen, then it's just a matter of time until another armed conflict will start with genocide and/or ethnic cleansing that may exceed the horrors of the Holocaust and the Blockade of Leningrad, especially with modern weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological).
 
What do you think?
 
***

[1] The International Holocaust Remembrance Day 

 

Photo: German Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland, 

arrival of Hungarian Jews, Summer 1944

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities between 1933 and 1945 by Nazi Germany, an attempt to implement their "final solution" to the Jewish question.

27 January was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.

The day remembers the killing of six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.[1][2]

It was designated by United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005.[3]

The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.[4][5][6][7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day

***

Liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp

Photo: Soviet Army soldiers chatting to the children just liberated 

from the Auschwitz concentration camp

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.

Although most of the prisoners had been forced onto a death march, about 7,000 had been left behind.

The Soviet soldiers attempted to help the survivors and were shocked at the scale of Nazi crimes.

The date is recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Auschwitz_concentration_camp

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Auschwitz concentration camp

Photo: German concentration camp, Auschwitz I (the main camp), Poland (1940-1945). 

Visible old Austrian and later Polish Army barracks dated before 1939.

Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] (listen)); also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939)[3] during World War II and the Holocaust.

It consisted of

- Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim;
- Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers;
- Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben;
and dozens of subcamps.[4]

The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question.  
...
Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered.
 
The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.[7]
 
Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings.

Others were killed during medical experiments.

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising.

Only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended;[8] several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss.

The Allies' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.

As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria.

Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust.

In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

***

The Holocaust

Photo: "Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied

 Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[a] was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.[b]

Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe;[c] around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[d]

The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps;

and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

***

The Siege of Leningrad

 

Photo: Three men burying victims of Leningrad's siege in 1942

The siege of Leningrad (Russian: Блокада Ленинграда, romanized: Blokada Leningrada; German: Leningrader Blockade; Finnish: Leningradin piiritys) was a prolonged military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the Soviet city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front of World War II.

Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while the German-allied Finnish army invaded from the north and completed the ring around the city.

The siege began on 8 September 1941, when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to the city.

Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943, the Red Army did not lift the siege until 27 January 1944, 872 days after it began.

The blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and it was possibly the costliest siege in history due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration.

While not classed as a war crime at the time,[10] in the 21st century, some historians have classified it as a genocide due to the systematic starvation and intentional destruction of the city's civilian population.[11][12][13][14][15] 

The 872 days of the siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. 

This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000^[75] soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment.^[1][2] 

Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege alone. 

Economic destruction and human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, or the bombing of Tokyo. 

The siege of Leningrad ranks as the most lethal siege in world history, and some historians speak of the siege operations in terms of genocide, as a "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally.^[76][77]
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
 
***