During WWII, Auschwitz was the most well-known of the Nazi work camps. There, a man or woman could be sent to the gas chambers or used in medical experiments at any time. They could also be given an injection of phenol to the heart, which would kill them in 15 seconds. If they were lucky, they would be forced to work hard under the worst conditions.
A committee chose who would be able to work and who would be killed or used in medical experiments. One "doctor" drew an arbitrary height line at 5 feet 2 inches, and any child who wasn't tall enough was sent straight to the gas chambers.
Many people were sent straight to the chambers when they got to Auschwitz. Because of this, there are not records for everyone who was killed.
Their terrible pain and the terrible conditions they lived in were unimaginable. People would lie to each other to keep their hopes up. "The allied forces have reached Greece." The message was that they would soon be saved. Many other stories were made up to keep each other from being completely sad.
After Auschwitz was shut down and the people inside were set free, there was a day of reckoning. Over the years, the Nazis were found one by one and made to answer for their crimes.
Nazi Germany's time has come to an end. Even so, there are still forced labour camps in China, and people who lived through the Holocaust are still alive. Hasn't history taught us anything?
Like the Nazi death camps, the Chinese Communist Party hurts people it doesn't like by sending them to work camps. They are also used to try to break the spirit and will of people who do the peaceful Falun Gong meditation practise.
The Chinese Communist Party gets free labour from the people who live in these camps. The goods are sold all over the world and used to make money. Like the Nazi concentration camps, these horrible nightmares cause pain, torture, and death. Why are they put up with? Isn't it time to take them apart and get rid of them?
The famous poet Elie Wiesel, who himself survived Auschwitz, said, "I swore that I would never stay quiet when and where people were hurting and being put down. We always have to pick a side. Neutrality never helps the person who is being hurt. Silence only helps the person doing the hurting, never the person being hurt."
Simon Wiesenthal, who also lived through a work camp and helped put many Nazi criminals in jail, said this. "Learn from our tragedy for your own good. There is no rule that says the next victims have to be Jews. It could also be someone else. We saw it start in Germany with the killing of Jews, but people from more than twenty other countries also died. When I started this job, I told myself that I would try to find the killers of all the victims, not just the Jews. I'll fight for what's right."
The Chinese Communist Party is to blame for the use of camps where people are forced to work. Many Chinese people live in these camps today. If you don't do anything, you're ignoring both the lessons of the past and the pain of the present. Shouldn't we say something?
Call the Chinese embassy or a Chinese official and tell them how you feel about their forced labour camps. Tell them to stop making life hard for people who follow Falun Gong. Do not remain silent.
