Theresienstadt, the Model Ghetto Gitmo, The Model Prison

By DHinMI

I think one of the scourges of the American left is facile comparisons of Bush and the Republicans with Hitler and the Nazis.  But if true, these charges (highlighted by Plutonium Page) would show that the Straussian neocons have gone quite a ways toward becoming that which they claim to be protecting us against:

The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday...

"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.

Saar worked as a translator at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003. During that time, several members of Congress reported visiting the base, but military officials said they do not know precisely how many toured it.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she was "initially impressed" by interrogations she saw on a tour of Guantanamo Bay in February 2004 with members of the Homeland Security Committee. The delegation watched through mirrored glass as interrogators spoke in conversational tones and rewarded cooperative detainees with ice cream. Now, she believes, "we were duped."

"The amount and depth of the torture that's been alleged and corroborated leaves no doubt in my mind that what we saw was a staged interrogation," Norton said.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the legal challenge of detainees' imprisonment and alleged abusive interrogation techniques, said Saar's claims support lawyers' suspicions that the official tours of Guantanamo were phony.

So what's this got to do with the Nazis?  Well, it's hard to imagine that when devising this program that nobody thought of Theresienstadt:

On November 24, 1941, the Germans established a Jewish ghetto in the fortress town of Terezin, Czechoslovakia. Known by its German name, Theresienstadt, until its liberation on May 8, 1945, it functioned as a ghetto and transit camp on the route to Auschwitz. Most of those imprisoned in Theresienstadt were German, Czech, Dutch, and Danish Jews; elderly and prominent Jews and Jewish veterans of World War I were also sent there.             

NAZI DECEPTION

Theresienstadt served an important propaganda function for the Germans. The publicly stated purpose for the deportation of the Jews from Germany was their "resettlement to the east," where they would be compelled to perform forced labor. Since it seemed implausible that elderly Jews could be used for forced labor, the Nazis used the Theresienstadt ghetto to hide the nature of the deportations. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a "spa town" where elderly German Jews could "retire" in safety. The deportations to Theresienstadt were, however, part of the Nazi strategy of deception. The ghetto was in reality a collection center for deportations to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe.

Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was "beautified." Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.    

In no way am I saying that Gitmo is part of a genocidal operation, or that the people in Gitmo are all innocent and incarcerated only because of their ethnic or religious identities.  But in terms of well-planned duplicity, it would be very difficult for anyone with knowledge of Theresienstadt to not immediate think of it when reading these charges of mendacious stagecraft. 

So tell me again, we're supposed to be better than this, right?

Comments

[emptywheel]

An apt analogy. One that needs to be suggested in more venues, I think.

[Kagro X]

It's always hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes, but I have to believe that I would have laughed out loud and declared the whole thing a fraud the minute I saw the ice cream.

Perhaps, out of courtesy -- a residual impulse from more civilized times -- I might have waited to express my disbelief until I had arrived home.

And here I thought they hated us for our freedom, when it turns out they really only coveted our confections.

[DHinMI]

King George: The prisoners are being tortured.

Condoleeza Antoinette: Let them eat Cherry Garcia...

[Abby]

I've been deeply worried about this stuff for a while, and it just seems to fall off the radar. Extraordinary rendition also disturbs me a lot.

A while ago in a Body and Soul thread there was a suggestion that somebody start a bracelet campaign, like those Lance Armstrong cancer bracelets. I think that this would be great--both as a fundraising tool and as a way to raise awareness.

My thought was that a black or red bracelet would be best. If you were really gungho, you might be able to get an extra tag with the details of a specific prisoner that you could rattle off if asked.

Does anyone know how to organize something like this?

[Steve]

Extraordinary rendition is all just a hypothetical...

[The Heretik]

Very impressive connections here. Brilliant. The charge about the fake interviews has been around for awhile. Sixty Minutes picking this up may make a difference. One hopes so. I say this all the time, but it bears repeating. How the weak treat the strong says much about how the strong may be judged. More on this at Blessed Is the Prisoner.

Thanks for the inciteful insights.

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