reminder

By GEORGE LAMBERT
.. Tribune Staff Correspondent

WARSAW
UNDAY, April 19 was a day
of sad memories for the
people of Poland. On that
day a monument was unveiled
to the 4,000,000 victims of Nazi
inhumanity — defenseless men,
women and children whose life
was snuffed out in the gas cham-
bers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Over 100,000 people from all
parts of Poland and large groups
of former Auschwitz prisoners
from all over Europe came to
the site of suffering, agony and
mass murder in order to honor
the dead and to express their
determination that never again
shall there be an Auschwitz,
that never again shall the armed
thugs of German monopoly ca-
pital be in a position to commit
such crimes against humanity.
It was a beautiful Sunday
morning, the sky perfectly blue,
but as I walked for miles
through the area of the former
death camp I felt I was going to
cry. For undoubtedly on similar
lovely mornings hundreds of
thousands. of innocent, deceived
people walked to their death
here believing, as they were
told, that they were going for
a shower. But instead of water
there was zyklon, hydrogen
cyanide gas, that suffocated
them, killed them mercilessly,

‘without a chance of defending

themselves. From there their
bodies were taken to cremato-
riums and turned ‘into ashes.

Everything here is terrifying
— the barbed wire fences, the
eerie-looking concrete posts of
the fences, the watch towers,
the soggy ground, the deep
ditches, the barracks without
windows, the vastness of the
place (475 acres), but above all
the ruins of the crematoriums
(blown up by the Nazis when
they knew that the jig was up,
but for the occasion of the un-
veiling belching forth smoke and
flames), the thought of the mil-
lions who died here, and the
sight of people, former prisoners,
walking around in striped camp
uniforms.

Among the latter was Zyg-
munt Sherwood-Sobolewski, of
Toronto, who came here especi-
ally for the unveiling. But more
about him and a place here
called “Canada,” later.

Speaking at the unveiling
ceremony Premier Jozef Cyran-
kiewicz, himself a former pri-
(No. 62933) in the camp said:

“We are gathered here at the
biggest cemetery of four million
human beings whose ashes had
been mixed and trodden into the
ground so that nothing would
remain of them.”

Actually, the monument, de-
signed by a team of Italian and
Polish sculptors and architects,
stands in the Birkenau section of
the camp — for here was the
place of mass murder, here mil-
lions, mainly Jews from Poland
and other European countries,
did not even get a number, but
marched straight from the rail-
way platform to the gas chamb-
ers. The monument, a sprawling
composition situated between
the ruins of two crematoriums,
is composed of blocks of hewn
stone that resemble Roman sar-
cophagi, a central section which
symbolizes a crematorium chim-
ney, and a large terraced area.
In front of the monument are 19
stone tablets, each with an in-
scription in a different language.
The English one reads: “Four
million people suffered and died
at the hands of the Nazi murder-
ers between the years 1940 and
1945.”

No monument could reflect a
crime of such magnitude as was
committed at Auschwitz - Bir-
kenau. The best memorial, the
finest homage to the dead, the
best reminder and warning to
mankind, is the camp _ itself
which, by an act of the Polish
parliament passed in 1947, was
to be preserved for all time as a
monument to the martyrdom of
the Polish nation and other
peoples.

“Canada” forms a part of the
bigger monument. The name
“Canada” was used by the pri-
soners to designate the ware-
house with fabulous wealth
taken from the millions of vic-
tims, sorted here and then sent
to the Reich — gold, including
gold from the teeth of the dead,
platinum, diamonds, money,
clothing, blankets, furs, hair, etc.
(The millions sent to Auschwitz
were told to take all belongings
— they were supposedly being -
shipped to the East for resettle-
ment.)

Today “Canada” is a museum
and contains the useless remn-
ants left behind by the thieves.
Yet even those remnants tell a
sad story: piles of toothbrushes,
shoe polish boxes with inscrip-
tions in every European lan-
guage, showing brushes and raz-
ors, empty suitcases, and so on.
The whole floor of one barracks
has a mountain of shoes, else-

where we see piles of children’s
clothes, toys, etc., and in an-
other hall 4,400 pounds of
human hair.

As I was looking at all the tra-
gic evidence I was wondering
what impression it made on the
Canadian parliamentary delega-
tion which visited Auschwitz
last year and whether deep
down in his heart the Hon. Paul
Martin had second thoughts
about Canada’s contribution to
the rearming of West Germany.

And now a few words about
the Torontonian, Sherwood-So-
bolewsky, who highlighted the
Auschwitz tragedy by travelling
all the way from Canada to
Poland in a camp uniform and
staging a one-man demonstra-
tion at the London, Paris, Brus-
sels, Amsterdam, Frankfurt am
Main and Vienna airports. He
carried a sign: “Polish ex-Prison-
ers’ Association in Canada”. His
Auschwitz number was 88,
which means that he came with
the first transport to the camp
in June 1940. He was 15 years
old at the time and had been

BRIEFS on the BRITISH SCM

By JOHN WILLIAMSON

THOUSAND people attend-

ed a Press Teach-In, spon-

sored jointly by the Com-
munist “Morning Star,” Left
Labor “Tribune” and Coopera-
tive “Sunday Citizen” in Cam-
den Town Hall in London.

The central issue was: what
to do about the growing mono-
polization of the press, with the
continual closure of papers with
both small and large circulation?

Speakers included the editors
of the three papers, plus the
editors of the Guardian (former-
ly Manchester Guardian) the
Daily Mirror and The New
Statesman. Also the secretaries
of two big unions in printing,
the National Graphical Associa-
tion and the Society of Graphic-
al and Allied Trades. The chair-
man was Eric Moonman, Labor
MP. .

The sponsors introduced a
statement declaring “Newspa-
pers and the opinions they voice
should not be crushed out of
existence because the combines
are favored.’”’ They proposed two
measures of relief: a newsprint
finance subsidy and a fair dis-

arrested together with 320 oth-
ers in his town.

In a press interview upon his
arrival in Warsaw he is quoted
as saying: “In the West not
everybody. understands what
that death camp represented.
Our duty, the duty of those who
survived, is to explain things in
order that there should be no
repetition of Auschwitz, and to
warn against what’s happening
today in Vietnam.”

At the conclusion of the un-
veiling ceremony the deputy
minister of culture, Kazimierz
Rusinek, a former Auschwitz
prisoner, read “An Appeal to
World Opinion” which in the
name of the four million vic-
tims called for the continuation
of the struggle “against the vi-
cious theories and practice of
nationalism, militarism, racism,
colonialism, anti-Semitism and

‘ imperialism.” The appeal warned

against the danger of neo-Nazi-

ism in West Germany and called .

for condemnation and punish-
ment of those who, by resorting
“to means of mass destruction,

‘ tribution of government adver-

tising throughout the national
press.
* * *

Britain’s second biggest union,
the 1,100,000-strong Amalgamat-
ed Engineers Union, and the
Scottish TUC, representing uni-
ons with 841,000 members, both
went on record at national con-
ferences rejecting the Labor
government’s incomes policy—

‘and called for the repeal of the

Prices and Incomes Act.

There was a bitter fight at
both. In Scotland, after listening
to Chancellor Callaghan the vote
was 970 to 637. At the AEU,
with right-wing President Carron
and Secretary Boyd both stating
that to vote for the resolution
was “in effect, voting for the
replacement of a Labor govern-
ment by a Tory government”,
the voting was very close—26
to 25.

A TUC report says that on
average the British worker is
paid less per hour than in almost
every country in Western Europe
today. Austria is the only excep-
tion. Outside of Europe, Japan
is also far below Britain and the

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