Survivors of Exodus 1947 Preserve Stories

From Survivors of Exodus 1947 Preserve Stories:

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in conjunction with several groups in Israel, is working on a project to find surviving passengers and crew members of the Exodus 1947. There never was an official passenger manifest, and so much time has passed that this is not an easy task, says Genya Markon, the museum's curator of collections. The museum has the names of about 2,300 people who were on the ship and has made contact with 270 passengers and four crew members. Most of the known survivors live in the United States or Israel.

Rafael Medoff, director of the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, says lessons of the Exodus 1947 still ring true today. "The important role of American volunteers on the Exodus is a reminder that the struggle to establish Israel was supported by a broad coalition of Americans of all faiths - and that support for Jewish statehood continues among Americans to this day," he says. "It is no surprise that many Americans sympathized with the Jewish immigration struggle, given its strong parallels to American history. Refugees from persecution were trying to build a country based on liberty and equality, only to be blocked."

For more information on the voyage, you can go to www.exodus1947.com to purchase a DVD documentary, "Exodus 1947," narrated by Morley Safer and broadcast on PBS.

The Friendly Fires of Hell

From The Friendly Fires of Hell:

On May 3, 1945 - in the worst friendly-fire incident in history - Britain's Royal Air Force killed more than 7,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps who were crowded onto ships in Lubeck harbor, Germany - one day before the British accepted the surrender of all German forces in the region. In the closing weeks of World War II, thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, the Mittelbau-Dora camp at Nordhausen, and the Stutthof camp near Danzig were marched to the German Baltic coast. Almost 10,000 camp survivors were crowded onto three ships: Cap Arcona, Thielbeck, and Athen. Although the final surrender was imminent, British Operational Order No. 73 for May 3 was to "destroy the concentration of enemy shipping in Lubeck Bay."

At 2:30 p.m. on May 3, at least 4,500 prisoners were aboard the Cap Arcona as the first attack began. Sixty-four rockets and 15 bombs hit the liner in two separate attacks. As the British strafed the stricken ship from the air, Nazi guards on shore fired on those who made it into the water. Only 350 prisoners survived. The Thielbeck - which had been flying a white flag - was packed with 2,800 prisoners. It sank in just 20 minutes, killing all but 50 of the prisoners.

Most who were familiar with the Cap Arcona disaster believed that the Nazis intended to sink the ships at sea to kill everyone on board. In this case, however, RAF Fighter Command did their killing for them. The RAF records of the disaster are sealed until 2045.

Two Sentenced to Death for Cole Bombing

Folks, a Yemeni judge sentenced two men to death and four others to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years Wednesday for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, an attack blamed on bin Laden's terror network.

Saudi-born Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location, and Jamal al-Badawi, a 35-year-old Yemeni, were both sentenced to death for plotting, preparing and involvement in the bombing, which killed 17 U.S. sailors as their destroyer refueled in the southern Yemeni port of Aden.

And folks, this happened under BJ Clinton's watch, as did the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the American embassy bombings in Africa.

In fact, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the "Black September" terror attack during the Munich Olympics, which killed 11 Israeli athletes and a U.S. citizen, the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the murder of 300,000 Iraqi's bodies which were found in mass graves, and the ongoing slaughter of Sudanese Christians, and the persecution, murder, beheadings of Jews by Muslims since the time of Mohammed's birth, ALL occurred before Bush was in office.

So to all the democRATS and the libs out there who blame terror is on the rise because of Bush, go back to your miserable tiny lives and start focusing the blame on where it belongs: Islam's ceaseless intolerance of other people, nations, ideas and beliefs.

Two Sentenced to Death for Cole Bombing

History repeats itself, with Canada's help

Forwarded from Page-by-Page in Jewish History, from The National Post, March 14, 2004:

In 1939, when the Nazi program to kill the Jews of Europe was well underway, 907 desperate German Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis requested sanctuary in Canada. The Liberal prime minister of the day, Mackenzie King -- who had previously flirted with Adolf Hitler and declared him to be "one who truly loves his fellow-men" -- refused their request.

Most died in the death camps of Europe. In 1942, 1,000 Jewish children in a French refugee camp were denied entry to Canada and were liquidated by the Nazis. Of Jewish immigration to Canada, Mackenzie King's immigration minister declared, "None is too many!"

Of course today, we mourn these murdered refugees. We mourn the friends, neighbours, doctors, business people, teachers, writers, engineers, cab drivers, philanthropists and scoundrels who would never be part of the Canadian fabric, because our Liberal government was indifferent to their fate and sympathetic to their persecutors. With such a weight on our collective conscience, we will never again side with the killers of Jews.

Or will we?

When a Canadian Jew, Yechezkel Goldberg, along with 10 other innocents, was massacred recently by a Palestinian terrorist on a bus in Jerusalem, the Canadian ambassador to Israel, Donald Sinclair, was ordered not to visit his grieving family because they lived in the West Bank, a place that official Canadian policy, as well as the suicide bomber and his handlers, believed should be Judenrein (Jew-free). By this order, Canada validated the racist grievance of the Jew-killers.

How much has changed when Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is also the only country targeted for condemnation by United Nations resolutions? Since 1996, there have been 113 resolutions condemning Israel. Canada's vote was 78 yes, 35 abstain and 0 no. Canada's support for the vilification of Israel and the fact that precisely zero resolutions have been tabled criticizing the Palestinian Authority tells us that this is an exercise in global bullying, not even-handed moral suasion.

If our Liberal government was guided by a moral compass that reflected Canadian respect for life and freedom, we would have voted 'no' on every anti-Israel resolution. But what if Israel really is guilty of some imperfection that deserves censure? Until UN resolutions are applied even-handedly in the Middle East -- against suicide bombing, against slavery in the Sudan, against Syria's illegal occupation of Lebanon, against Saudi Arabia for nurturing the mass murderers of 9/11, against the Palestinian Authority for its bloodstained brainwashing of children, against Muslim nations for their misogynistic treatment of women -- then these resolutions have nothing to do with Canadian values, and everything to do with justifying genocide.

But, hold on, the real reason for terrorism is the illegal Jewish occupation of Palestinian land. Our Liberals reinforce, rather than debunk, this mythology, a failure that leaves our government open to accusations of pandering rather than leading. For more than 2,000 years, Jews lived and contributed throughout the entire Middle East, until anti-Semitism and physical threat drove the Jews from every Arab country. Today, the Middle East is 99.8% Jew-free and no Jew can safely live as a citizen except in a miniscule 0.2% known as Israel. This sliver of land -- Israel -- is all that Jews have left.

Today, six million people live in a land without oil or other natural resources, and have created the only democracy in the entire region, the only country with world-class universities, hospitals, technology, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and rights for women, gays and minorities. In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can vote for their representatives in free elections. Amazingly, Arabs are full members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and sit as judges in the Israeli judiciary. The deputy speaker of the Knesset is Abdulmalik Dehamshe, an Arab representative. Both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have free access to the Israeli Supreme Court, and have won cases against the Israeli government.

Yet Canada's voting record at the UN says that Israel is the only country deserving of condemnation. Our government sides with the killers of Jews hoping that, by joining the mob, "Damascus will return our phone calls," to quote a prominent Liberal MP.

As Walid Shoebat -- former Fatah terrorist turned Christian -- said recently in Toronto,

"The only illegal occupation in the Middle East is the illegal occupation of
Palestinian minds by hatred."

He also observed, "The Holocaust never ended. The only difference is that today the Jews have a country and an army." And so the Holocaust continues, and our Liberal government chooses to condemn its victims and appease its perpetrators. Can someone please tell me what's changed since 1939?

Alastair Gordon is communications director for the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.