Terrorism Refuge in Canada

"It is a principle of long standing that an applicant for insurance has an obligation to reveal to the insurer any information that is material to the application. The deceased knew that his past activities were relevant."
"The past actions of the deceased were material to the risk that he posed for the purpose of having his life insured."
"There is no suggestion that [Manufacturers] ought to have known that the information related to the deceased's past existed, and therefore cannot be faulted for not having inquired into it."
"Our conclusion that the deceased intentionally withheld this information is sufficient to establish fraud."
Ontario Court of Appeal

"On Boxing Day 1968, Mohammad and another PFLP member stormed an Israeli passenger plane as it was preparing for takeoff in Athens. They fired 83 rounds and lobbed six grenades at the Boeing 707, killing a[n Israeli] passenger."
"A Greek court sentenced Mohammad to 17 years in prison, but the government released him in 1970 after Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Greek airliner and threatened to kill everyone on board unless he was set free."
"Mohammad eventually made his way to Madrid, where he applied to immigrate to Canada with his wife and three children. He failed to disclose he had been convicted of a terrorist crime, and by the time Canadian authorities caught up with him, he was already in Canada."
"Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad, who slipped into Canada in 1987 after attacking an El Al plane in Athens and killing an Israeli passenger, was escorted to Lebanon on Saturday by Canada Border Services Agency officers."
Stewart Bell, National Post, May 13, 2013

A fighter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) aims his rifle as he walks past the rubble of destroyed building in the Yarmouk refugee camp in the Syrian capital Damascus on September 12, 2013 ANWAR AMROANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images

The Palestinian terrorist known as "Triple M" lied to immigration authorities when he sought a visa to relocate to Canada for himself, his wife and three children in 1987 and entered under an alias to settle in Brantford, Ontario, not far from Toronto. A member of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was convicted in Greece of manslaughter and other offences and imprisoned after he and a fellow terrorist with the PFLP attacked an El Al passenger aircraft at Athens airport.

Image copyright Reuters

The PFLP's  Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, launched numerous attacks from Gaza

He failed to serve his full sentence of 17 years when a demand was made for his release by the PFLP through a hostage negotiation when another plane was stormed by them in Greece. Once free, he moved to Lebanon and from there applied with Canadian consular officials in Spain, for residency in Canada. A year later an immigration official sought to revoke his visa after uncovering his past association with the PFLP.

Mohammad insisted on his innocence, that: "I was a freedom fighter – not a terrorist. I was fighting Israel, the enemy of (his people)... My record in Canada is clean, clear and good. I'll fight to the last moment [to avoid deportation]. I am not going to give up." As was his right under Canadian law, he launched a number of appeals and ended up remaining in Canada another 23 years, at a cost to the government of up to $3 million to contest the appeals.

He was eventually deported back to Lebanon in 2013 where he died of cancer two years later.

He had, while living in Canada, taken out a life insurance policy with Manufacturers Life Insurance Company. His wife, Fadia Khalil Mohammad attempted to collect on the life insurance. The insurance company informed her the contract was voided in view of the fact that her husband had lied on his application and there was no obligation on the part of the insurance company to honour the $75,000 policy. He had informed the insurer he had moved from Spain to Canada, providing a social insurance number.

Image copyright AFP 

The PFLP was officially created in the wake of the 1967 Six Day war

He was not questioned about his citizenship or residency status or whether he had any criminal convictions, and made no mention himself of his past activities. His widow had argued last May before the Superior Court that she should receive the insurance and Justice Shaun O'Brien ruled that no misrepresentation had taken place over immigration status or background, because the insurance company had failed to ask those questions on the application form. The insurance company appealed, maintaining the failure to disclose material facts voided the policy.

And the Appeal Court agreed with the insurance company; that insurance legislation requires applicants to disclose all facts material to the insurance. Shortly after applying for the insurance, pointed out the higher court, the man himself had argued his life would be endangered if he were to be deported to Israel. He had with intention, hidden his past from Manufacturer's, in the very same manner and for the same reason that he had done with immigration authorities.

He was not the sole member of the PLFP to come to Canada. Canada's easy immigration and refugee programs are hugely appealing to those with murky, violent pasts who feel it time they searched out a new life, from post-WWII when Nazis arrived concealing their past, along with East European Nazi collaborators, and later those involved in the mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda, to active members of Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah.

Image copyright Hulton Archive

Image caption The group gained international notoriety for a series of airline hijackings

Trump to the Rescue ... ! ?

"The Saudis, Emiratis, Omanis, and Bahrainis aren't exactly besotted with Israel, they just hate Iran more and view it as a serious destabilizing influence and even an existential threat. They see the Israelis, however, as being clever, strong, tenacious, powerful and as close to fearless as it gets. Israel also has quite the knack for technology and security, both attributes of significant value to its Arab neighbours."
"To top it off, many Arab countries are fed up with Palestinian extremism, which has yielded nothing positive for more than 70 years."
Vivian Bercovici, journalist, former Canadian Ambassador to Israel

Trump and Netanyahu announce the peace plan at the White House Tuesday. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States was hailed worldwide with great acclaim and hopes for a more peaceful future under his guiding hand. So great was that anticipation of his post-racist election victory to the most powerful political post in the world body in the affairs of humankind that before the genial, smiling man of mixed ancestry could prove the expectations were not misplaced, he garnered the distinction of becoming a Nobel Laureate.

As a Democrat, he looked first to ensure that greater equality of recognition and opportunity be apportioned to all those whom he governed, and the long-awaited American universal health care system was introduced accompanied both by praise and censure. Bipartisan relations in Congress were to be healed, but under his administration they grew even more divisive and remote than under the previous Republican administration.

On the international stage he went to Egypt to inform the Islamic world that America was prepared to interact differently with the Middle East and to surrender any vestiges of command-and-control of purely Arab and Islamic fortunes. To hostile Islamist Iran, he extended the hand of friendship, and the Islamic Republic was pleased to slap it away in contempt. When Syrian President Bashar al Assad brought mass destruction of lives and heritage to his own people, President Obama stirred his sense of outrage warning that the use of chemical weapons on Sunni Syrian opposition would bring harsh consequences. None arose.

When Egypt's Arab Spring revolution brought down Hosni Mubarak, its long-time president and ally of the United States, Barack Obama favoured the presidency of Mohammad Morsi, and was content to let Mubarak dangle in the wind. The Muslim Brotherhood was well entrenched in Washington and the White House appeared content with leaving Egypt in their hands. Whereas, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House his treatment was invariably frosty and insulting.

Enter Donald Trump, whose accession to the presidency stunned the international community by the very absurdity of the choice; a crude, egotistical, boastful bully and womanizer, a man of base intellect and baser instincts; the very thought of whose residence in the White House was beyond understanding. His tawdry reputation both as a businessman and a human being was wince-inducing. Then time revealed that where Mr. Obama failed to meet his promises, Trump met his unfailingly.

Where Mr. Obama felt justified in his worldly wisdom in negotiating clandestinely with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and finally handing over to the Islamist theocracy both trust and treasury for an agreement whose loopholes Iran laughed at and grasped, Mr. Trump wrote the U.S. out of the agreement and reinstituted crippling sanctions. In the time between the transition, Iran was enabled to unleash its malign power and influence in Syria and Yemen and to handsomely fund its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

Warm relations striven for with Iran and its vassal state Qatar, and icy relations with Israel. The Sunni Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, threatened by Shiite Iran, found common cause with Israel which Iran directly threatened repeatedly to annihilate. The U.S. Congress had agreed decades ago to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but no president would take the risk, until Trump did. From Presidents Carter to Clinton, Israeli-Palestine 'peace plans' came to nothing.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Palestinians do not support the US President's peace plan

Palestinian leaders from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas refused all offers extended by Israel, even those acceding to all Palestinian demands. President Donald Trump has now proffered his own, offering the Palestinians what they claim they are owed, but from the perspective of a history that includes Judaic heritage and Arab belligerence in failed efforts to destroy Israel which retook its historical geography.

The Palestinians are much misunderstood by the world at large, which accepts their narrative of victimhood and eagerness to achieve peace. What is not understood is that peace is consonant with the disappearance of Israel and the Palestinians given free rein to repopulate all of the territory that had originally been Biblical Judea, while excluding amy Jewish presence. For them, the very prospect of a Jewish State is horrifying, though that state has given citizenship to two million Palestinian Arabs and the Palestinian Authority will permit not one Jew to live among Arabs in what they foresee as a Palestinian State.

This is decidedly not the end of the story. Arab-Palestinian intransigence and commitment to belying history and denying Jewish heritage shows no sign of abating. Nor can it, given the reality of fomenting hatred against Jews among Palestinians from birth to death and celebrating martyrdom in the cause of destroying the Jewish presence in the Middle East. Days of Rage interminably mounted. Incitements to violence ongoing. Refusal to countenance a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism, a touchstone of malicious hatred.

In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an offer to provide 100 percent of (Biblical Judea and Samaria) the West Bank (with land swaps that would cut out portions for the existence of Israeli settlements in exchange for the Arab towns within Israel's borders), along with an agreement for a divided Jerusalem where each would have their capital. Mahmud Abbas flicked it away, deeming it unworthy of any kind of response whatever.

When no Agreement is Possible and Peace Eludes

"Today Israel takes a big step towards peace. My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel's security."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"[It may take the Palestinians] a very long time [to get an independent state, but] if they agree to abide by all the conditions you've laid out in your plan, Israel will be there."
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take part in an announcement of Trump's Middle East peace plan at the White House on Tuesday.  Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

After rejecting the 1947 Partition plan that the United Nations offered, Palestinian leaders and negotiators rejected one offer after another, each offer coming closer and closer to the entitlements that the Palestinians demanded as their right, until the last gave them everything, and they still found fault and had no problem rejecting it. And to this one, which doesn't give them their demands by any means, but places restrictions and responsibilities on the Palestinians a definite response has resulted from PA President Mahmoud Abbas: "We say 'no', and a thousand times 'no'".

 Pres.Abbas, Ramallah. Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The only possible 'peace plan' acceptable to the Palestinian leadership, it seems patently obvious, is to give to them what surrounding Arab national leaders before 1948 never considered: agreement on allowing the Arab peoples who now call themselves 'Palestinians' -- co-opting that identity from the actual Jewish Palestinians to match their contentions that all ground historically sacred to Judaism, notable Judaic figures and symbols were really Arab Palestinian -- to declare themselves a nation.

Under the revealed plan that President Trump takes credit for, Israel's sovereignty over all the Jewish settlements in the Judaic heritage region of Samaria and Judea -- which the international community is content to call  the West Bank, ceding it thus to the Palestinians -- is established.  The Jordan Valley, another heritage Judaic region, is also to come under Israeli annexation, to retrieve to the Jewish State geography that was once its and is now again.

The Palestinians are left with areas of territory carved out of Samaria and Judea which roads are to connect for the establishment of their state, connecting to Gaza through a tunnel. Surrounding Arab armies marched on Israel time and again to destroy it and each of those conflicts failed to succeed. Israel's military, at the cost of many Jewish lives, defended its right to exist, and its territory. It took East Jerusalem from the illegal occupation of Jordan, and the Sinai from Egypt.

In any other similar conflict of defence and victory, the victor has always historically absorbed the territory defended and acquired. In Israel's case, surrender of the Sinai came with a peace agreement with Egypt. And Jordan was graciously accorded by Israel control of the Temple Mount, Israel's most sacred Judaic site, whereas under Jordanian control, Jews were expelled from the Old City and never permitted access to Judaism's most holy site.

Now, Trump's plan for peace gives Israel full sovereignty over Jerusalem, the Old City and holy sites, including the al-Aqsa mosque, representing the third holiest site for Islam. Neighbourhoods to the east of the city would be given to the Palestinians and there they are able to establish their capital for a Palestinian state that could be established on meeting conditions including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; that Hamas must disarm; and Israel maintain military control of the area.

All conditions that can be negotiated further in direct negotiations between the established and the nascent state. President Trump, whom Mahmoud Abbas refuses to meet with, is giving the Palestinian Authority four years to ponder and accept the proposal. In response President Abbas appeared on television announcing his rejection of the plan as soon as it was released. "I am ready to die for the sake of my people", he floridly promised.

Today, the day following the release of the Trump peace plan, Hamas and Fatah, two deadly opposed Palestinian factions, both fully immersed in terrorism, met to coordinate opposition to the plan they have reviled. A "Day of Rage" was called for. Nothing odd or unusual about that. Arab Palestinians have been expressing their rage over the presence of Israel since it declared itself prepared to accept the UN invitation to re-establish its nationhood on a tiny sliver of land, a partial portion of its former, Biblical-era glory.

A masked Palestinian protester sets tires on fire during clashes with Israel forces as they protest Middle East peace plan announced Tuesday by US President Donald Trump, which strongly favors Israel, at Beit El checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Jan 29, 2020 (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Nazi Collaborators, Eastern Europe

"This is like a nightmare."
"This is all happening once again in the lifetime of survivors."
"It has to be tearing their hearts out."
Bernie Farber, former chief executive officer, Canadian Jewish Congress

"[Such events as Ukraine's honouring of Nazi collaborators are] internal issues of Ukrainian politics."
"[Israel's decision to condemn such parades is] counterproductive."
Gennady Nadolenko, head, Ukraine diplomatic mission, Israel

"We must challenge all those who distort the historical record on governments, military units or organizations that fought with, supported or sympathized with the Nazis during World War II."
"This includes government leaders who acquiesce in, or fail to condemn, a process of Nazi glorification that amounts to Holocaust distortion."
"Those who glorify the record of such organizations or units cannot dismiss criticism as 'fake news'."
Michael Mostyn, CEO, B'nai Brith Canada

Veterans of the Latvian Legion, a force that was commanded by the German Nazi Waffen SS during WWII, and their sympathizers carry flowers as they walk to the Monument of Freedom in Riga, Latvia on March 16, 2016 to commemorate a key 1944 battle in their ultimately failed attempt to stem a Soviet advance. Jewish groups, Moscow and some in Latvia's ethnic-Russian community see the parade as glorifying Nazism because the Legion, founded in 1943, was commanded by Germany's Waffen SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party's Schutzstaffel SS (Protective Squadron). / AFP / afp / Ilmars ZnotinsILMARS ZNOTINS / AFP/Getty Images

For Jews around the world the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Red Army's liberation of Poland's Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where Nazi Germany engineered the death of almost a million Jews, along with Roma, Soviet POWs, Polish political dissenters, gays, the very thought that Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Poles would in the 21st Century, celebrate their national heroes who were Nazi collaborators is unthinkable.

Yet the reality is that throughout Eastern Europe countries are celebrating their nationals who collaborated with the Third Reich and took active participation in the rounding up and murder of Jews. Torchlight parades were held in a number of cities in Ukraine early this month in honour of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist Ukrainian and Nazi collaborator involved in the killing of thousands of Jews and Poles. Despite which, Ukraine sponsors such events celebrating Nazi collaborators with links to the Holocaust.

A school was named in Lithuania for Jonas Noreika whose own family agrees was involved in the killing of Jews. A Ukrainian diplomat talked about punishing "k----", while posing for photographs with a cake baked in the shape of Hitler's memoir Mein Kampf, and blaming Jews for the Second World War. Once a minor kerfuffle passed, when he was condemned by Jewish groups, he was reinstated to his diplomatic position.

For the approximately 200 Canadian military trainers currently deployed to Ukraine, it is likely that on the first of January they would have witnessed a torch lit procession. Throughout Kiev and numerous other towns in Western Ukraine, thousands of civilians took to the streets – not to usher in the New Year – but to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of a man named Stepan Bandera.  Scott Taylor, Canadian Military Magazine

Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine have all held parades in honour of those who fought in Nazi SS units. The Latvian SS units who fought for the Nazis in the Second World War were praised by Latvian Defence Minister Artis Pabrike in December, who spoke of them as "the pride of the Latvian people and of the state". One of the unit's officers, Viktors Arajs, participated in the murder of 26,000 Jews with his unit. At a dinner party in Riga he entertained guests with his method of killing Jewish babies.

Throwing the babies into the air, then shooting them would avoid any ricochets that might occur if the babies were shot while lying on the ground. Eastern European nations such as Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania are involved in rebuiilding their national identities, "rediscovering" individuals from the 1940s to elevate them to the status of national heroes, according to Holocaust researcher, Professor Per Anders Rudling.

Latvian Herbert Cukurs was a key member in the Arajs Kommando, known as the "Butcher of Riga". In 2014, the Israeli government raised concerns relating to a musical performed in Latvia celebrating his life, that of a Nazi war criminal whom Holocaust survivors linked to the murder of Jews. Over 50 members of the U.S. Congress in 2018 condemned Ukraine's efforts to glorify leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, along with the 14th SS Galizien Division, comprised of Ukrainian volunteers.

"It's particularly troubling that much of the Nazi glorification in Ukraine is government-supported", the letter stated. Poland passed legislation to make it illegal to accuse Poles of any complicity in the Holocaust when the simple reality is that fascist Germany felt confident in placing a number of forced labour and death camps in Poland, knowing there would be no popular outcry from a country where antisemitism was well entrenched.

In Western Ukraine, thousands of civilians took to the streets to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera

Lithuania's pro-Nazi government had been involved in the rounding up and murder of Jews, according to well-researched conclusions, yet a new law is under consideration in Lithuania to declare that neither Lithuania nor its leaders had ever participated in the Holocaust. Ukrainians, for their part, push back against Israel's condemnation, insisting that Stepan Bandera had never supported Nazi Germany, just as the Latvian government claims the Latvian SS units hadn't fought in support of Hitler, but to fight the Soviets.

News articles and research relating to Nazi collaborators have been dismissed by officials in Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Lithuania, claiming them to be the product of Russian disinformation campaigns meant to cast their countries in a bad light. Canadian officials failed to join Jewish groups condemning Latvian Defence Minister's Pabriks praise of the Latvian SS and two months later, he met with Canadian Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan, while next month he returns to Ottawa for a defence conference.

Chrystia Freeland, formerly Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and in this new Liberal government named as deputy Prime Minister, is of Ukrainian background. She has been banned from entry to Russia. Her grandfather was a Ukrainian patriot who collaborated with Nazi Germany, publishing a newspaper in Nazi-occupied Poland, supportive of the Third Reich and rife with antisemitic tropes. The Ukrainian-Canadian community has always denied that members of the 14th SS Galizien were Nazi collaborators, many of whose members immigrated to Canada.

After Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, their initial collaboration with the Nazis and participation in the slaughter of Ukrainian Jews prevented Bandera and Shukevych from being considered national role models. However, much to the consternation of the Jews, and the Poles – whom Bandera’s OUN also massacred in the thousands – over the past three decades history in Ukraine has been revised.

At the time of the Maidan uprising in 2014, the spirit of Bandera was revived by the right wing, ultra-nationalists, and, just five years later, his past crimes have been whitewashed to the point where his date of birth is a national holiday.  Scott Taylor, Global-Politics,EU

Auschwitz-Birkenau ... Horror Tourism

"The realities of mass tourism that is destroying Venice and Amsterdam are destroying Auschwitz."
"Where do you put the public toilets at Auschwitz? People always complain about Auschwitz as a tourist site and, of course, with so many people wanting to visit, it cannot be anything but a tourist site. This is the reality of mass tourism."
"We are entering the last decade of having survivors with us who are able to testify as eyewitnesses. Along with losing the eyewitnesses, the site itself, in its present, sprawling form, cannot be maintained forever. We are losing another touchstone of authenticity."
"One of the problems with the success of Auschwitz is that other places of the Holocaust are suffering. Dachau, for example, has too few visitors and Auschwitz has too many. It would be good if the wealth could be spread."
There are buildings that are really fragile ruins and you really don't want anyone to step on those ruins and there are always people who will ignore it. You see from time to time groups of Israeli students climb on the roof of the crematorium to wave a flag. It really is problematic from the point of view of preserving those ruins."
"We have no other comparable catastrophe, if there is any comparable catastrophe, that we have so many artifacts with personal stories attached to them. The Holocaust is, in general, still the best-documented genocide in world history."
Robert Jan van Pelt, architecture professor, University of Waterloo

"In a few years there won't be a single survivor of the camps left, there is no getting away from that."
"While we remain alive, as eyewitnesses, we have to testify to what has happened and to the importance of it."
"Everybody comes out of there [Auschwitz] a changed person. History is the greatest teacher. We need to remember history. We cannot hide history."
"It's not for the past. It's for the sake of the future."
Auschwitz survivor Paul Herczeg, 90, Montreal resident

"Auschwitz has been a relatively manageable symbol for Germany after the Second World War, significantly reducing the actual scale of the evil done."
"The gates and walls of Auschwitz can seem to contain an evil that, in fact, extended from Paris to Smolensk."
"Yet while Auschwitz has been remembered, most of the Holocaust has been largely forgotten."
Timothy Snyder, historian, Black Earth

A focal point for visitors today, the gateway sign says "Work Will Set You Free," a monstrous lie told to the men, women and children imprisoned there. (Maciek Nabrdalik)

 Unlike Auschwitz, points out Mr. Snyder, in the death camps at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno no Jews survived. Those were camps dedicated to total annihilation. Whereas at Auschwitz there was also slave labour, enabling some Jews to survive. And he writes as well of other realities; Jews throughout eastern Europe forced to kneel in front of an open pit while mobile killing squads machine-gunned them, positioning them just so that the impact would throw them into the pits, ridding entire villages of their Jewish populations.

This survival of Auschwitz inmates went beyond piecing together the carefully contrived mechanism of state murder of millions. Most of the Holocaust-era destruction of European Jewry, points out Mr. Snyder took place even before Auschwitz-Birkenau set out to systematically, methodically and swiftly finish that Final Solution genocide meant to spare none whatever. Forced labour and death camp, both, the complex camps that are part of Auschwitz are less than an hour's drive from Poland's second largest city, Krakow, once home to 68 thousand Jews.

According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, over 2,320,000 visitors came to the world-renowned site in 2019. The guard towers, gates and crematoria serve as testament to the agony and anguish of the inmates and the fierce determination of the Third Reich to destroy their presence for posterity. Among the inmates, Roma, gays, political prisoners, dissenters, Russians and Poles but mostly Jews marked for destruction. It is where an estimated 1.1 million people were gassed and incinerated; almost a million of them Jews. It is the survivors who bring to agonizing life the trials of those who perished. They, in their aged sorrow, stand witness to history.

Bodies of victims

In 1944 when the camp was operating at peak efficiency it covered 40 square kilometres with sub-camps extended beyond that acreage. Private hands today hold much of the property, outside the state museum. Some of the old barracks that once held starving prisoners being worked to death are now in people's gardens. "There is enormous pressure of development all around the site. Private business is very much exploiting the economic opportunity that comes from 2.3 million visitors", explained Mr. van Pelt.

"It is a very important historical site and for the last five or six years there has been construction around it. People are developing their property. Now you are in a neighbourhood. Inside Birkenau, there is only a barbed-wire fence. There is incredible transparency You can see what is happening on the other side. You can see the parking lot, you can see the reception centre, the businesses."

Auschwitz Birkenau, a tourist site, a business opportunity, a Polish 'world heritage' site.

Arriving at Auschwitz

How Prepared to Cope? The Classic Closing the Barn Door...

"For me, that is a sign that the information at the border did actually percolate through to the patient and his family."
"The system is working and the person obviously got the information that they needed to enter the health system in a safe and responsible manner."
"[The Toronto man] has been managed with all appropriate infection and prevention control protocols, so the risk of onward spread to Canada is low."
"Nevertheless it would not be unexpected that there will be more cases imported into Canada in the near term given global travel patterns."
"The risk to our community remains low."
Dr.Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer, Canada

"[Once he became more ill], when he needed medical support, in fact, he followed all the information provided at the airport."
Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu

Passengers, and people waiting to pick them up, wear masks at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Sunday. (Evan Tsuyoshi Mitsui/CBC)

At Pearson International Airport in Toronto, China Southern Airlines flight CZ311 brought home to Canada citizens who had visited relatives in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of a novel coronavirus outbreak. Among the passengers was a man in his 50s who had boarded the international flight in Guangzhou, already feeling ill, but saying nothing to anyone. Throughout the flight back home to Canada the man felt increasingly ill, as well as on arrival in Canada. He failed to report to border service officers that he had been in Wuhan and now felt ill.

The airport has instituted "detection" measures including screening questions at electronic border kiosks, asking whether travel to Wuhan had taken place in the past 14 days. Reminding people to report any symptoms similar to flu to border service agents. At those kiosks fact sheets are available printed in English, French and Chinese, outlining the symptoms that people should be aware of, and to seek out medical attention should they begin to feel ill.

The man left the airport, revealing nothing, and went to his home. This is a typical human reaction; never believing anything could happen to you, preferring to believe you're afflicted with a minor cold, and just need a good rest at home. A family member a day later dialed 911 to report that the man had recently travelled to Wuhan and was feeling ill. Wearing protective gear, paramedics responded, to take the man to Sunnybrooke Health Sciences Centre, where he was placed in isolation in a negative-pressure room. A day later, the man's wife entered the system with the very same symptoms.

"We are informing these people [passengers of flight CZ311 who may have come into contact with the man] that they may have been exposed to a potential health risk, what signs and symptoms they should look out for and when and what type of medical treatment should be sought out, if that becomes necessary."
Toronto Medical Officer of Health Dr.Eileen de Villa

There are now 19 suspected cases of coronavirus under investigation in Ontario. Numbers are growing, in a micro-reflection of China, where it is now reported that there have been 106 deaths from the coronavirus, among a growing case load exceeding two thousand, seven hundred in number and steadily increasing. In Toronto, people are beginning to panic, asking whether their medical procedures including surgeries and childbirth can take place in hospitals other than those holding patients with presumptive coronavirus.

Chinese officials have reported the illness has now infected more than 2,700 people. Several countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America have also confirmed cases. (Evan Tsuyoshi Mitsui/CBC)

Testing of all suspected cases takes place at the national microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg. In China, over 50 million people have been placed under quarantine, with new research arising in fears of "substantive" human-to-human transmission and where travel in Wuhan and 15 other cities have been restricted, all public transportation systems shut down as China desperately scrambles to halt the spread of a new virus that has spread to Europe and North America.

On average, each case in China is held to have infected 2.6 other people, up to January 18. A theoretical estimate given the population density and travel patterns of Chinese at New Year's following traditions of returning home to reunite with family during Chinese New Year. China's health minister has issued a warning that the virus is at a "crucial stage of containment". Which is to say, China hopes that the spread is being contained.

Early studies published several days ago in The Lancet reported people can become infected without being symptomatic, a condition that ensures the virus will be more difficult to contain, of a novel coronavirus of which the initial 41 confirmed cases saw one-third of those people developing acute respiratory distress syndrome or required intensive care.

106 people have died from the new coronavirus; newly infected have almost doubled

"There's a certain amount of the infection control system that relies on people's proclivity to self-report."
"You can't rule out that anyone who came into contact with this person, no matter how brief that contact was, could have been infected. But the likelihood is extremely low."
"The real risk would have been for people in his immediate vicinity [to have been exposed to the man] for prolonged periods."
Matthew Miller, associate professor, Michael G.DeGroote Institute for Infectious Diseases Research, McMaster University

It takes approximately 12 hours, slightly longer, for a China-to-Canada flight. That's a considerable amount of exposure time. Given a small enclosed area where at least a hundred people are packed closely together, and from time to time move about to access toilet facilities, to stretch their legs, contact accessibility is fairly high. Air quality aboard planes is not exactly first-class. It appears that self-reporting reliance is a dead end to singling out possible infectious agents. Which translates to Canada's system of detection on arrival is beyond faulty.

Project Final Solution

"It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory."
"Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes."
"After Auschwitz, the human condition is not the same, nothing will be the same."
Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Night

Soviet soldiers arriving at the gates of Auschwitz in 1945.

REUTERS:HO AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM REUTERS

It is now 75 years since Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz, opened the gates and met the sight of gaunt, starved prisoners who had managed to survive their years in the concentration and death camp, while others, of a total count of 1,100,000 were sent to the gas chambers, their bodies then incinerated in giant furnaces whose smoke stacks belched black ashes over Poland. It is fitting that liberation of the camp came at the hands of Russian soldiers, since Auschwitz originally functioned as a prisoner-of-war camp for Soviet prisoners of war whom the Germans captured.

Most of those Russian prisoners did not survive their internment in Auschwitz. The camp was later transformed to an extermination camp for Jews. Auschwitz itself was a number of 'camps' linked together, and it also had a slave-labour component camp as well, where relatively healthy and still-strong prisoners (forced laborers) worked in mines and rock quarries or road building until they died of overwork, starvation or disease; in other concentration camps, there were factories producing armaments for the Nazi war effort.

Children who have lived to be liberated by the Red Army from the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945.

TASS via Getty Images

At Auschwitz at the present time, maintained as a museum, there are pavilions housed on site; one primary exhibition details the Shoah. Others curated by a number of countries; a Polish pavilion, and a Russian pavilion among them. Poland, during the Second World War, was occupied by Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union, which first signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, was later invaded by Germany, the two consumed in a massive conflict which Russians endured at the loss of millions of the Soviet Red Army, and millions of citizens. The Soviet victory over the Nazis on the Eastern Front effectively broke the back of the Third Reich, and the Allied victories in the West finished the job.

Nazi death camp of Auschwitz I, in Oswiecim, Poland   AP

But not before close to a million Jewish corpses were fed into the giant maws of the ovens, the greatest number of Jews exterminated in any of the countless death camps strewn all over Europe which succeeded in demolishing the lives of six million European Jews. The Auschwitz site has been preserved as a memorial ground despite calls for its destruction as a 'cursed' place, after the end of the Second World War. It was the demand of the survivors that led to its preservation as a place of remembrance.

Under communist rule, Poland lacked the financial resources to maintain the camp, though the Polish government in 1947 had declared the site would be preserved forever, by law. Lack of resources made it difficult to preserve barracks, barbed-wire fences, watchtowers and gas chambers fallen into ruin. Prisoner artefacts seen to be critical in showing visitors the scale and dehumanization of the atrocities carried out in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were difficult to maintain without resources.

Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz, with a nurse behind a barbed wire fence, Poland, February 1945.

Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images

The inventory of personal remnants of the millions who passed through those infamous gates declaring "Arbeit Macht Frei" has among its sad treasures of the past, 110,000 shoes, 3,800 suitcases, 12,000 pots and pans, 40 kilograms of eyeglasses, 470 prostheses, 570 pieces of camp clothing, and several tons of women's hair, sheared from the heads of prisoners by the Nazis. These are what is left of the millions of personal effects the Nazis took from helpless prisoners, along with more valuable items including gold pried from teeth, marriage bands, jewellery, to help the Nazi war effort.

The Auschwitz Museum regularly consults with conservationists, historians and heritage experts on preservation and reconstruction with a view to preserving the site as it was at the time. The risk being that alteration of the site might support claims of Holocaust deniers that the reality of the Holocaust has been embellished beyond its actual occurrence, supporting their denials and their claims that the program of genocidal extermination had never taken place.

Poland is where Auschwitz was established and where the Polish pavilion was organized as The Struggle and Martyrdom of the Polish Nation 1939 - 1945. Claiming for itself the place of first victim of the Nazis, emphasizing Polish resistance in occupied Poland. Its focus is on Polish losses, not on the number of Polish and other European Jews who were gassed, their ashes fertilizing the countryside. The Russian pavilion too emphasizes its role, with the theme of Tragedy, Valour, Liberation.

Soviet soldiers with survivors of Auschwitz in 1945.

REUTERS:HO AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM

The world now views Auschwitz as the symbol of Nazi depravity in its vicious extermination of Jewish lives. Before Poland liberated itself from the stranglehold of the USSR, visitors to Auschwitz came mostly through representatives of Soviet satellite countries, with 400,000 annual visits. The turn of the century has seen an increase in the number of yearly visitors to 1.3 million by 2009 and over two million by 2017. The largest number of visitors at the present, come from the United Kingdom, United States, Italy, Spain, Germany, Israel and France.

A pathway leading to an observation and security tower between what were electric barbed wire fences inside the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz I in Oswiecim, Poland, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

One Great Big Misunderstanding

"The event coincides with the International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers Red Hand Day on February 12. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Dallaire Initiative’s partnership with Dalhousie University."
"[Omar Khadr and Ishmael Beah will] highlight their experience in conflict and why they are passionate about the protection of children."
Dalhousie University event promotional material

Omar Khadr, 2019  sentence was declared expired.Ian Kucerak/Postmedia

Omar Khadr, scion of Canada's al-Qaeda family of distinction succeeded in persuading sympathizers to his purported plight as a 'child-soldier' that he is innocent of the charges brought against him as an enemy combatant when he took part in an Islamist jihadi attack near Khost, Afghanistan, killing a U.S. Army medic, and injuring and causing blindness to a U.S. Special Forces soldier when he tossed a grenade during an ensuing firefight.

Now 33, back then nearing his 16th birthday, Khadr's claims of childhood negating responsibility for his actions resonates with many who are more than pleased to support his denial of a war crime in his claim that the confession he made to the killing of U.S. Sgt.Christopher Speer and the wounding of Special Forces member Layne Morris on the five charges laid against him was merely a ploy for his release from Guantanamo where he was being held, in the hope that he would be sent back to Canada where he obviously counted on special treatment.

And special treatment he got. From lawyers who were eager to take up the case of a child soldier grievously wounded in a firefight he had little option but to take part in, and a court system wedded to the concept of Canadian universality, equality and the upholding of his constitutional rights inherent in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, neglected in this unfortunate case where an innocent child was being prosecuted after having been subjected to imprisonment and torture.

Omar Khadr suffered grievous body wounds in that firefight where he now denies he took active part; he was just simply actively there with little recourse but to participate with the group his loyal Canadian father sent him to, so he could learn how a dedicated Islamist jihadi confronts, challenges and defeats the kuffars represented by the U.S. military. When he was found, injured and unconscious under rubble after the firefight it was U.S. army medics who tended to him and whose ministrations resulted in his escaping death.

The second featured speaker at the special event of protest against the use of child soldiers in honour of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, Ishmael Beah, 39, formerly a child soldier in Sierra Leone, had an entirely different background experience. In his country of origin, as is done also in other African countries, the rebel Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone abducts and forces children to join its ranks and engage in combat.

Khadr senior was a notorious al-Qaeda supporter, personal friend of Osama bin Laden, and raised funds while living in Canada, among supporters of violent jihad to fund al-Qaeda. He and his wife, his daughter and his sons were all devout Islamists, devoted to jihad. Living in the West, in Canada, this family's children were raised in the nectar of hatred and violence. The family moved from Canada for the distinct purpose of ensuring their sons would be exposed to guerrilla warfare tactics and become skilled at manufacturing explosives.

Omar Khadr on his return to Canada, purportedly to serve out the remainder of his prison sentence where he could be close to his returned family, prepared to sue the Government of Canada for failing to represent his interests as a Canadian citizen. Somewhat like his mother and the rest of his family after his father's death in Pakistan hissing their ferocious contempt for Canada, but accepting Canadian social welfare and healthcare. He was given 'compensation' of $10.5 million on the basis of his 'rights' having been withheld.

"We respect the fact Mr. Khadr was interred for a decade in Guantanamo Bay, and the Canadian government has agreed to issue an apology and settle his claims."
"We also respect the fact you [lawyer] and Mr. Khadr’s other lawyers have invested substantial time and expense on Mr. Khadr’s behalf."
"However, Mr. Khadr’s actions, which led him to Guantanamo Bay, were the death of Christopher Speer, leaving Mrs. Speer a widow and [her two children] fatherless, and blinding Layne Morris in one eye."
"We ask Mr. Khadr [to] do the right thing and accept responsibility for his actions and the pain he caused the Speer family and Layne Morris."
U.S. attorney Donald Winder, Utah

Khadr was sued in a Utah court by Mr. Speer's window and children and Mr. Morris, ordered to pay his victims $134 million. Khadr effectively ignored the lawsuit. No money has been transferred to either Mrs. Speer nor Mr. Morris. Khadr did buy an Edmonton strip mall, presumably as an investment. No word whether he has invested any philanthropic donations to Senator Dallaire's child-soldier enterprise in support of his personal battle against child abuse about which he claims to be passionate.

Omar Khadr (right) speaks with his lawyer Dennis Edney in Edmonton on May 7, 2015. File photo by The Canadian Press

 

Indonesia's Wildcat Gold Mining Dilemma

"I have no worry about mercury. I drank it. We gave it to the cows and the buffaloes. They drank it. Nothing happened."
"There's no problem."
Syarafuddin Iskandar, 58, illegal gold miner, Taliwang, Indonesia

"Initially, we thought of it as just illegal pillaging of resources."
"But when we looked deeper at it, we realized it is a more serious social problem."
"They [the illegal gold mines] are creating an environmental disaster."
Alexander Ramlie, director, Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara, West Sumbawa, Indonesia

"This is a big dilemma."
"If we stop them [the tradition of the illegal miners] we are faced with the economic problem of how to feed them."
H.W. Musyafirin, regent, West Sumbawa

Rescuers work to bring miners out from a collapsed mine in North Sulawesi province, Indonesia.

They're termed wildcat miners. What they do is illegal. But the government of a country with huge poverty and mass unemployment, is loathe to stop the illegal miners. They're working, they're providing for their families. They've been untouchable. But the mining is not without its hazards. Aside from the dangerous and illegal use of proven carcinogenic chemicals, there are other dangers that lurk, such as collapse of illegal tunnels.

A year ago, an illegal gold mine collapsed, leaving people screaming for help and rescue teams leaping to aid them. Three people were confirmed dead by an official of the mine's disaster management division. Two of the dead were felled by falling rocks, reported Abdul Muin Paputungan, an official with the disaster management agency. "Some of the [100] victims who are still trapped are screaming for help. We can hear that they're (able to) respond to us, but we cannot reach them yet because the land is susceptible (to collapse) and moved easily."

Landslides, it would appear, are frequent occurrences that haunt these illegal mines. But in this instance it was the inadequate struts supporting the mine entrance that had given way and caused the collapse. It was the operation of the mine itself that caused the landslide. "The type of soil -- if it is stony or not -- how many trees or other forestation is present in the location, and the ability of the slope to support the burden if it rains (heavily)."

 

Sumbawa is an island 160 kilometers east of Bali. Makeshift mining camps are all over the hills in Sumbawa. These are miners, however illegal, forced to earn their living because of rife unemployment. They make use of mercury, now outlawed in legitimate mining operations in the extraction of gold from ore. Thousands of small-scale miners work illegally in West Sumbawa, using land the government has leased to large mining companies.

 

A rough estimate of a million small-scale gold miners operate across Indonesia where the use of mercury in these wildcat camps devastates health and the environment. Mercury, a heavy metal, is well documented as a slow-acting poison seeping into the food chain, the cause of birth defects, neurological disorders and death. 

 

The police this year ordered the miners to dismantle their camps, cut up their equipment with a chain saw and block the mine entrances with debris.

On the other  hand, these mines boost the Indonesian economy in their employment of poor people, taking them out of poverty, leading the government to practice avoidance of disturbing the status quo. One licensed and land-leased mining company has taken the initiative to protect the environment, where the government itself hesitates to. Officers from a Police Mobile Brigade Corps shuttered dozens of outlaw mining camps on the initiative of PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara mining company.

 

"We are crushed that they are closing this mine because we have no other way to make a living", Zaenal Abidin, an outlaw mine operator pointed out, of the campaign by the mining company to put a stop to illegal mining and the use of mercury. There are no government warnings, much less enforcement of the ban on the use of mercury, so miners dismiss the notion that the heavy metal is in any way hazardous.

 

An Amman Mineral-operated site called Idotan has seen the presence of 7,000 wildcat miners operating for decades with established permanent communities and an industrial-scale village for ore processing. Sumbawa native Anton, owner of several mines and mills, questions why it is that companies like Amman Mineral can get lucrative mining concessions when he and his fellow miners are considered to be illegal.

 

About a million small-scale gold miners operate across Indonesia.

"Why do you allow the outsiders to operate while we, the locals, are forbidden from doing the work?" he has asked reasonably enough. Miners in the Taliwang region earn an average of 15 times over that of other occupations from their gold mining enterprises. Illegal operations represent the second-largest contribution to the West Sumbawa Regency after Amman Mineral's legal operation.

 

Ten percent of the population, representing 26 million people live in poverty. Leaving government officials with the dilemma of how to proceed. Their efforts at trying to persuade the miners to stop using mercury have gone largely unheeded.

 

Wildcat miners digging for gold near Taliwang, Indonesia. The illegal miners use mercury, a toxic chemical, to process the ore.  Photos: Adam Dean, The New York Times

China's Voracious Appetite for Global Wildlife Species

"[The decision] is one I'm only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of the evidence."
"We will need some time to understand the specific measures that are being taken [by China to control the outbreak of the novel cornavirus that erupted in Wuhan, central China last month]."
"[While] China is a sovereign nation with the autonomy to take steps it believes in its interests, [the WHO's role is to provide] rational and science-based [recommendations. We hope the transportation shutdown would be] short in duration."
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyess, director general, World Health Organization

The Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, China, was closed as part of a shutdown of public transportation — an effort to control the spread of what's being called the Wuhan coronavirus.

Barcroft Media via Getty Images

"I think it's [Chinese health authorities decision to close down entrance and exit from Wuhan and several other Chinese cities] really unwise."
"There's very good reason to believe that it could actually backfire very badly [should people start to see the government as oppressing them, sowing fear and mistrust]."
"The most important thing in public health is not to drive the population underground and make them fearful. You want them to cooperate. You want them to report their symptoms. You want them to believe that the government is there to help them and not to violate their rights. It's very, very difficult to control an epidemic once you've lost the trust of the population."
Lawrence Gostin, director, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center,Washington

From today until further notice, Wuhan, the city of 11 million people 1,000 kilometres from Beijing, will be in quarantine. Air, bus, ferry and rail terminals are all shut down to prevent the spread of the mystery virus sweeping China and turning up in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico and the United States. A suspected case of the coronavirus has been reported as well in Russia. It first emerged in Wuhan in December and swiftly began spreading. 17 victims have died, and 551 people have been infected. The WHO has decided to hold off on declaring a global health emergency just yet.

Should that occur, affected countries are obligated to officially report cases to the organization giving them the authority to impose trade and travel restrictions. So far the majority of new cases have been diagnosed in China. When the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) emerged 17 years ago, it infected about eight thousand people worldwide, before it was brought under control, and of that total up to 774 people are known to have died of its effects.

After China, Canada realized the most deaths from SARS, at 44 people succumbing in Toronto, including several health workers. Much is yet a mystery about the virus. There were hopes it would not be transmissible person-to-person, but that hope has been dashed. Speculation is that the virus emerged in bats, and snakes, known for their bat-predation, now carry the virus. Snakes were among the other live animals carried and sold for human consumption in the Wuhan central open-air market, now closed, where the virus is felt to have emerged.

Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, on January 12, 2020.

NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images

"It's difficult on the basis of that [knowing that the novel coronavirus shares a 71 percent similarity in its genome sequence with SARS] to predict exactly how it's going to behave."
"[The WHO meeting scheduled for Thursday] will tell us if we were getting all of the information, because if suddenly what was 300 cases is now 1,700 cases, we need somebody to explain to us how that happens."
"We understand as human beings, the concept of germ theory. We all have a healthy respect for the fear of contagion."
Dr.Dick Zoutman, emeritus professor, departments of pathology and molecular medicine, Queen's University, Kingston

The World Health Organization withheld naming the situation a global pandemic, awaiting more information from China, and feeling that for the present, that country is managing the situation. Unknown definitively as yet is which animals were responsible for transmitting the virus beyond speculation about snake transmission, and how quickly it is spreading from human to human. The pneumonia-like illness caused by the virus leading to fever, coughing and breathing difficulties is spread through coughing and sneezing.

Researchers at Imperial College, London, showed thousands of cases may have emerged but not yet identified. As many as 4,000 people in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, are likely to have been infected, according to the figures they are coming up with. According to Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College, over coming weeks the number of cases would rapidly increase. "It will be much more complicated to estimate for the whole of China". Based in authorities in China warning the virus was quickly "adapting and mutating".

"The virus gradually adapted once it was transmitted from the animals [to humans], and we need more time to study further", stated George Fu Gao, director-general of China's centre for disease control and prevention. For the moment, Mr. Gao added, children and young people don't appear to be susceptible to the virus.

Customers in a Chinese wet market on January 22, 2016.

Edward Wong/South China Morning Post/Getty

"Governments must recognize the global public health threats of zoonotic diseases."
"It is time to close live animal markets that trade in wildlife, strengthen efforts to combat trafficking of wild animals, and work to change dangerous wildlife consumption behaviours, especially in cities."
Christian Walzer, executive director, Wildlife Conservation Society's health program