{"id":50022,"date":"2019-12-09T08:24:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T13:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50022"},"modified":"2019-12-09T08:24:41","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T13:24:41","slug":"assange-and-auschwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50022","title":{"rendered":"Assange and Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Assange and Auschwitz<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I read that Angela Merkel visited Auschwitz this week (for the first time ever, curiously, after 14 years as Chancellor, and now it\u2019s important?), my first thought was: she should have visited Julian Assange instead. I don\u2019t even know why, it just popped into my head. And then reflecting on it afterwards, of course first I wondered if it\u2019s acceptable to compare nazi victims to Assange in any way, shape or form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many paths to argue it is not. He is not persecuted solely for being part of a group of people (we can\u2019t really use \u201crace\u201d here). There are not millions like him who are being tortured and persecuted for the same reasons he is. There is no grand scheme to take out all like him. There is no major police or army force to execute any such scheme. These things are all obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I grew up in Holland, where unlike in Merkel\u2019s Germany, the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust was very much present. I looked it up, and it\u2019s already almost 10 years ago that I wrote Miep Gies Died Today<\/strong><\/a>, in which I explained this. Miep Gies was a woman who worked for Anne Frank\u2019s father Otto, helped hide the family in the annex, and after the war secured Anne\u2019s diary (or we would never have known about it) and handed it to Otto Frank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So accusing me of anti-semitism for comparing the Holocaust to what is being done to Assange is not going to work. Why then did Merkel never visit Auschwitz before this week, and when she did, said how important it is to German history? And why did she not visit Assange instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assange and Auschwitz When I read that Angela Merkel visited Auschwitz this week (for the first time ever, curiously, after 14 years as Chancellor, and now it\u2019s important?), my first thought was: she should have visited Julian Assange instead. I don\u2019t even know why, it just popped into my head. And then reflecting on it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1890,21116,14976,14933,13249,3771,11865,28634,13924,5177,1794,23586],"class_list":["post-50022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-angela-merkel","tag-anne-frank","tag-assange","tag-auschwitz","tag-climate-emergency","tag-guardian","tag-holland","tag-persecution","tag-raul-ilargi-meijer","tag-the-automatic-earth","tag-torture","tag-viner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50023,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50022\/revisions\/50023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}