The anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp 60 years ago has received considerable media coverage. What happened in that and other camps is a great crime against humanity.

This overflowing of concern now is also hypocritical. When Jews were persecuted and many wanted to escape, no western country including England, U.S. and Canada were willing to accept these political refugees. It should be noted mass murder of Jews and communists started in 1941 with the war against the Soviet Union on occupied territories.

During the war, when Allied forces controlled air space over Germany, no bomb was dropped to disrupt the killing machines in concentration camps. Allied leaders did not care the least about the Jews in these camps.

After the war, there has been much talk about this particular Holocaust. Books and movies have been produced on the subject and some made good money.

This overkill related to the Jewish Holocaust has been justified by some claiming if people know about it, it will not happen again. Yet there have been holocausts in Yugoslavia, Cambodia, China, Rwanda, Soviet Union and Sudan.

The Soviet Union and China killed 20-40 million, mostly after the Jewish Holocaust, but these deaths are apparently not worth remembering. Communists are still in power in China, but now they are good trading partners. Russian President Putin was a member of the KGB, which carried out these crimes, and he has made no apology. Present German leaders, on the other hand, have apologized numerous times for Nazi crimes.

There seems to be a rule only former and present enemies can be accused of holocausts, but perpetrators friendly to us should not be accused. This makes our struggle against terrorists difficult.
The largest ethnic cleaning and mass murder happened after the war when about 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. In the process, thousands were killed. This ethnic cleansing is hardly mentioned anywhere.

If we want to learn from history, we should be aware of all of it, not to concentrate on specific events which give a distorted picture. We expect from our supposedly free press a balanced view, not to get on a media bandwagon.

KALJO POHJAKAS,
Lethbridge

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