Dinknesh Ethiopia

The ‘New Auschwitz’: Wollega, Oromia Region, Ethiopia – OpEd

Prof. Girma BerhanuBy 

Introduction:

A few years ago, I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, on the sites of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp. Last week, I visited a Jewish cultural center/museum in Riga, Latvia, with similar content. The two camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau and the one in Riga, are now prominent memorial sites on the holocaust tragedies. The Auschwitz Museum relates the in-depth history of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. It stands today as a reminder of the horrendous harvest resulting from  hate and discrimination.

The core message, as most aptly expressed by Ellen Germain, the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, on the 75th Anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on 13th July 202, was: “We must safeguard your testimony, their testimony, so that truth will never die. The world must never forget. The world must never deny. The world must never downplay the Holocaust. We must remain ever on guard, and we must do far more to teach the lessons of the Holocaust and apply them in our own time. We must counter hate and lies with tolerance and truth. And we must stand up for human dignity and freedom wherever they are imperiled.” Indeed, that is what we learned during the visit!

More than 75 years after the crematoria ceased their most inhuman deadly work, the State Museum continues to ensure the site is preserved in perpetuity. The holocaust site is maintained so as to help future generations understand that such cold-blooded cruelty and systematic mass murder must never happen again. Indeed, it must be mantained as irrefutable evidence of the holocaust to all perverse persons who may attempt to deny or refute its real occurence. What amazes me is that similar atrocities are conducted right now, as I write this piece. It is not a thing of the past. It is happening in Ethiopia as well as in Ukraine. The only difference between the two is that virtually no one cares about the poor Ethiopians who are the victims in the New Auschwitz, the Wollega Zone in Oromia Region. The victims in the Wollega Zone New Auschwitz are prevented, by the Oromia state authorities, from escaping. They are helplessly “reconciled” to their impending brutal death.

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Source: eurasiareview

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