gas chambers – praag.org

Showers at Auschwitz shock Israelis

Israelis who visited the Auschwitz concentration camp museum in Poland on Sunday were shocked to discover that the museums’ management had placed mist showers near the facilities entrance, in an effort to beat the heat. Anyone who saw the showers could not help get past the gas chamber connotation.

“As soon as I got off the bus I walked into the shower contraption,” said Meyer Bolka, an Israeli visiting the museum. “I was in shock. It was a punch to the gut. I walked up to the reception and asked the worker there about the showers, she said it was a hot day. I told her: ‘With all due respect it reminds me of the gas chambers,’ she told me she is very sorry.”

According to Bolka, Israeli youths who were visiting the museum used the mist showers to cool down, but the placement of the contraptions raised anger among the older visitors. “I think that in a place like this they should have thought about the type of connotation this would raise,” he added. “If you want to cool the people down, you need to find another solution. It was not a pleasant sight to see those sprinklers.”

The Auschwitz museum management responded saying that there was no intention to hurt the feelings of the visitors, but rather to make their visit more pleasant on one of the hottest days of the year. The Museum will assess the continued placement going forward.

Source: ynetnews.com

Marine says Le Pen should no longer speak for party

France’s National Front chief Marine Le Pen said Sunday her father should “no longer be able to speak in the name of” the party, as a bitter public feud between the two continues.

Jean-Marie Le Pen infuriated some last month by reiterating his long-held view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a “detail of history”, as well as making other controversial remarks defending the “white world”.

Previously he hailed the outbreak of Ebola in Africa as welcome. His latest comments also come in the wake of a recent controversial interview with Ursula Haverbeck on Germany’s ARD channel in which Haverbeck claims that the “Holocaust was the biggest pack of lies in history“.

Le Pen earlier praised French wartime leader Philippe Petain, who collaborated with the Nazis.

Marine condemned the comments as “political suicide” and a highly-publicised spat between them saw the 86-year-old party founder forced to pull out of upcoming regional elections.

“Jean-Marie Le Pen should no longer be able to talk in the name of the National Front, his comments are against the fixed (party) line,” she told French radio.

Marine Le Pen has been actively trying to distance the party from its racist and anti-Semitic image as she plans her bid for the next French presidential election in 2017.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was conspicuously dropped from a line-up of National Front leaders on stage during the party’s traditional May 1 rally in Paris.

But determined to upstage his daughter, he nevertheless strided uninvited onto the podium to take the ovation of the crowd.

“I think that was a malicious act, I think it was an act of contempt towards me,” Marine said Sunday.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has been summoned Monday to appear before the party’s top executive authority, which will examine whether to take action against him following last month’s comments.

The FN’s honourary president was in hot water just days before because allegations emerged that he had stashed 2.2 million euros in a secret Swiss bank account.

Some protesters also tried to take the stage at the event, but the old patriarch upstaged the opportunists.

Marine furious about Le Pen’s gas chamber remarks

France’s right-wing was plunged into disarray Wednesday as National Front leader Marine Le Pen openly split with her father and party founder after gas chamber comments she described as “political suicide”.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the outspoken 86-year-old founder of the FN party, has dominated headlines in recent days, repeating his view that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail of history” and defending war-time French leader Petain, who collaborated with Hitler’s regime.

In an interview with the far-Right review Rivarol, Mr Le Pen stood by his gas chamber remarks, saying: “I am not the type of man who changes his mind or crawls.”

Then, when asked to comment on the presence of Pétain supporters within the party, he replied: “I have never considered Marshal Pétain a traitor. They were very severe with him after the Liberation. I never considered as bad French people or pariahs those who still hold the Marshal in esteem.”

He then attacked Mr Valls, France’s Spanish-born prime minister, who became a French national aged 20, saying: “Valls has been French for 30 years. I’ve been French for a thousand years. What are Valls’s real ties to France? Has this immigrant changed dramatically?”

His latest sorties appear to have been the last straw for daughter Marine, who has been trying to clean up the party’s anti-Semitic and racist image since she took over in 2011, a move that has seen it soar in opinion polls as it attracts more mainstream voters.

And some analysts say that while splitting from her father will be painful, it could end up making the FN more electable.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is veering between “political suicide” and “a scorched earth strategy”, said Marine, 46.

“His status of honorary president does not allow him to take the National Front hostage, to make such crass provocations that appear aimed at harming me but which unfortunately hit the entire movement, its officials, candidates, members and voters very hard,” she added.

Political scientist and FN specialist Virginie Martin told AFP that Marine’s latest move could benefit the party’s standing in the polls.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is “a historic figure who always amuses the crowd and… appeals to the historic, hard-line wing of the FN,” she noted.

“But at the same time, they’re never going to lose that part of the electorate. What’s the risk of cutting off Le Pen? You might lose one or two percent but you might gain five or six.”

“Think of the section of the (centre-right) opposition UMP that are disenchanted by traditional political parties… for them, the barrier presented by Le Pen has disappeared.”

Mayor of Paris, minister call for ban on French comedian Dieudonne

The mayor of Paris is also calling for comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, known for his anti-Jewish humour, to be banned from performing in public.

France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, voiced his displeasure first in wanting Dieudonne, as he is known, banned from the stage.

The well-known comedian, started out years ago with a Jewish partner in sketches that mocked racism.

But in 1997, he fell out with Elie Semoun over money owed to him.

He has now joined the political right and alienated some fans with anti-Jewish comments. Dieudonne maintains that most people find joking about blacks in order, but not humour about Jews.

His latest joke about gas chambers has irked Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who likened Dieudonne to a criminal who “defends crimes against humanity”.

“We must ban the performances” he said, echoing recent comments made by interior minister Valls. Valls himself has been accused of discrimination after he said in September that Roma did not want to integrate.

Dieudonne has already been fined a couple of times for defamation, insults, hate speech and racial discrimination, and over his salute, called the “quenelle”.

The “quenelle” has been used by several personalities since, including footballer Nicolas Anelka, who recently used it to celebrate a goal.

But the 47-year-old comedian says the Holocaust gets too much attention to the exclusion of other crimes.

Valls, meanwhile, has said he wants to ban performances by Dieudonne on his nationwide tour this month, after the comedian joked about Jewish radio presenter Patrick Cohen.

“When I hear Patrick Cohen speak, I tell myself, you know, the gas chambers… A shame,” joked Dieudonne.

Despite the criticism, the comedian has scores of die-hard fans who feel he is unjustly being hounded by the media and politicians.

Dieudonne’s official page has 466,000 likes.

He won fans by exposing a well-known Jewish author’s denials of ethnic focus as flimsy and insincere.

The French-born son of a Cameroonian father and a white mother, Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala shot to fame in the 1990s in a double-act with his childhood friend Semoun.

He stood for EU-wide elections in 2009 on an anti-Zionist platform, describing Holocaust commemorations as “memorial pornography”.

But his shows at a small theatre in Paris that he manages attract packed audiences.

At his show on Thursday, the comedian joked about “kippa city” and “the banking slave master” to general hilarity.