SWIMMING POOL AT AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP

Auschwitz concentration camp "amenities" reportedly included a swimming pool, houses of prostitution, and sporting grounds. Serb-run concentration camps reportedly included "amenities" as freedom of movement in front of TV cameras (propaganda). But, the fact remains that for Jewish, Bosniak and Croat people - these camps represented HELL.

Radovan Karadzic is accused of masterminding the worst attrocities in Europe since the Nazis, the first acts of genocide since the Holocaust. Yet, he is still in denial. He is in denial that the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide ever took place (a proven fact Serbs perpetrated genocide at Srerenica), he is denial that Serb forces committed two Markale Market massacres in Sarajevo (a proven fact Serbs did it), he is denial about every piece of evidence pointing to his guilt.

During his four hour-long testimony at the Hague Tribunal, he denied everything. No wonder, the Holocaust survivor Ellie Wiesel remembered him as "the pigheaded Karadzic that denied it all." Karadzic has also characterized the Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia (like Manjaca concentration camp, Trnopolje concentration camp, Keraterm concentration camp, Trnopolje concentration camp, etc) as the so called "transit camps" used for the "protection" of non-Serb population. Of course, everything Karadzic says is a lie. There was no safety in the above mentioned concentration camps. Bosniak and Croat civilians were subjected to daily physical and mental abuses, they were malnourished, tortured, beaten with electric cords, thousands were killed, women raped - it was a hell on earth.

Karadzic's sympathisers often argue that Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia were too comfortable to be considered "concentration camps." In the case of Trnopolje camp, German extremist Thomas Deichmann (who had no formal training in journalism) claimed that Bosnian Muslims were not imprisoned inside a barbed wire fence and that they had a freedom of movement. Deichmann is a discredited liar, but even if his allegations were true (which is not the case), so what?

Consider the case of Auschwitz concentration camp in which at least 1 million of innocent Jewish victims perished in WWII. This concentration camp even had a Swimming Pool. Contrary to some belief, but the camp was not used only by Nazi soldiers. Inmates from Auschwitz and surrounding concentration camps "enjoyed" swimming and sunbathing beside the pool on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Marc Klein, a detainee, recalls the swimming pool at least twice in his recollections of the camp. In an article entitled 'Auschwitz 1 Stammlager' he wrote:

"The working hours were modified on Sundays and holidays, when most of the kommandos were at leisure. Roll call was at around noon; evenings were devoted to rest and to a choice of cultural and sporting activities. Football, basketball, and water-polo matches (in an open-air pool built within the perimeter by detainees) attracted crowds of onlookers. It should be noted that only the very fit and well-fed, exempt from the harsh jobs, could indulge in these games which drew the liveliest applause from the masses of other detainees."(De l'Université aux camps de concentration: Télmorgnages strasbourgeois, Paris, les Belles-lettres, 1947, p. 453).

According to the Deichmann's logic, just like Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia, the Auschwitz concentration camp, too, would be too comfortable to be considered a place of torture and death. After all, it's a fact (according to the Auschwitz-Birkeneau museum) that Jewish inmates at the camp also "enjoyed" prostitution services:

"Towards the end of the war, therefore, new productivity incentives appeared—not only shortening the time spent standing at roll call and limits on the freedom to beat prisoners, but even houses of prostitution to which, as a bonus, non-Jewish prisoners could resort for a fee of two marks (more precisely, the prostitute received 0.45 marks and the madame 0.05, with the remaining 1.50 marks going to the camp treasury)."

And, according to Auschwitz.org:

"Houses of prostitution for the use of prisoners functioned under SS supervision in the German concentration camps for several years. Until recently, however, there was a reluctance to speak about them."

Regardless of the so called "luxuries" offered to the "residents" of Auschwitz - like sporting grounds, swimming pool, prostitution services, etc. - nobody can claim that this camp was a safe refuge for Jewish people. This was nothing but hell for all Jews. All these concentration camp "amenities" show how sick human mind can be and what can happen when we sit silent and ignore the danger of genocide denial. Just like at Auschwitz, Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia were places of death, torture, rapes, forced labor, malnourishment / starvation, unlawful confinement, and mass killings of civilian inmates. Although the Serb leadership did not implement gas chambers in these camps, it doesn't make them less than what they really represented - CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

Take a look at photos of the Nazi-like Serb-run Concentration Camps in Bosnia. According to Jerusalem Post, "freedom of movement was strictly limited. Muslims and Croats had to wear white bands around their arms and to have white flags on the windows of their apartments." In the words of a hhighly respected Jewish author Antony Lerman - the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research:

"After the Holocaust we may have believed that 'Never again' was so deeply seared into Europe's liberal consciousness that a Srebrenica massacre was inconceivable. Instead, we learned that 'Never again' meant 'Never again will Germans commit mass murder against Jews in Europe.' The wall came down on the same day as the commemoration of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom in Germany, but it was not a sign that the past had finally been overcome, rather that a true reckoning had yet to take place. True reckonings with such horrors will never be easy to achieve. Bosnian Muslims know this, as do European Jews... I'm sure someone will take me to task for linking Srebrenica and the Holocaust. 'Well, it wasn't Auschwitz,' they will say. Yes, of course it wasn't Auschwitz. But as Timothy Snyder explains: 'Auschwitz, generally taken to be an adequate or even a final symbol of the evil of mass killing, is in fact only the beginning of knowledge'. For me, one meaning of Snyder's words is that Muslims should not be attacked for identifying with the Jewish tragedy, for dramatising their current experience of demonisation in Europe by referring to themselves as the "new Jews". In the light of Europe's unfinished business, as symbolised by the Karadzic trial, this could help to generate a new knowledge and understanding, based on sharing histories, to combat anti-Muslim racism and would not devalue the Jewish experience of persecution one jot."