No.14, July 20, 1998

OpEd No.2

WHERE THE GAS CHAMBERS WEREN'T

ABOVE: The former memorial stone at Auschwitz ("Four million...")

... and the present one ("one and a half million...")

Publishing a picture of the widely respected Israeli prime minister walking through the famous iron gate of Auschwitz ("Arbeit macht frei") escorted by guntoting, sunshade-wearing bodyguards, The New York Times on Apr. 24, 1998 used this cautious caption:

"Bitter Refiections on Holocaust Day. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, top, and Sarah, his wife, looking down, joined more than 7,000 other Jews from 42 countries yesterday in a two-mile march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the sister camp where the gas chambers were."

COMMENT: Just as the once-famous memorial plaque to the "four million" murdered by the Nazis (top left) was surreptitiously replaced overnight by a more modest figure (bottom left) -- one more triumph for the "Deniers" over the Liars -- bit by bit, equally imperceptibly, the American media have begun dissociating "gas chambers" from Auschwitz, limiting them now only to the (derelict) Birkenau site in Poland.