ELIE WIESEL: "Mankind itself was threatened then, in those darkest of days. And in some ways, it still is."

“We have no right to say that a poor person is of less value to society than someone who is rich“ - Criminal Law is used as a Weapon against those who say: Never Again Is Now. And it is Global.

Signs and evidence are mounting that those in public office were acting not in good faith (or were deliberately misguided by institutions or individuals around them) regarding their decisions taken as “pandemic response”. Hardly anyone has been held accountable for what they did, or didn’t do in public office. On the other hand, especially in Germany, the sword of criminal law is currently being wielded against critics of government policies, of which the experimental and obviously very dangerous injection containing genetically modified nano-tech substances was only one particularly serious, but certainly not the only questionable one.

Among these cases of intimidation of critics, criminal proceedings for alleged “incitement of the people”, such as those not only against Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, but also against Robert Höschele, and Monica Felgendreher are particularly explosive.

What Robert Höschele was accused of by the public prosecutor's office in Munich - and what the Munich Regional Court acknowledged by confirming the guilty verdict against Höschele (only reducing the amount of the fine) - is a serious accusation: to have acted in an inflammatory manner in his statements and thus to have endangered public peace. He was found guilty of having compared the Holocaust with the measures of a democratic government in an unduly and punishable manner.

Several decades ago, in its ruling on the so-called “Auschwitz lie,” the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht, or BVerfG), referring to the case law of the German Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, or BGH), laid out what the punishability of Holocaust denial/trivialization is based on, in particular:

“(T)he Jews living in Germany form an insultable group due to the fate to which the Jewish population was subjected under the rule of National Socialism; the denial of that persecution of the Jews is judged to be an insult inflicted on this group. The Federal Supreme Court stated:

»The historical fact itself that people were segregated according to the criteria of the so-called Nuremberg Laws, and deprived of their individuality with the aim of extermination, assigns to the Jews living in the Federal Republic of Germany a special personal relationship to their fellow citizens; in this relationship, what happened in the past is also present today. It is part of their personal self-image to be recognised as belonging to a group of persons singled out by fate, to whom all others have a special moral responsibility, and which is part of their [human] dignity. Respect for this self-image is for each of them virtually one of the guarantees against a repetition of such discrimination and a basic condition for their life in the Federal Republic [of Germany]. Whoever attempts to deny those events denies each and every one of them this personal recognition to which they are entitled. For the person concerned, this means the continuation of discrimination against the group of people to which they belong and, as such, against themselves (BGHZ 75, 160 [162 f.]).«”

Obviously, the judge in Robert Hoeschele’s case, as well as the senior prosecutor in the trial against Sucharit Bhakdi and the prosecutors in the cases against Höschele, Sharav or Posselt all have applied this rationale. However, the judge in the case against Monica Felgendreher (and also the judge in the Bhakdi case, both of whom were cleared of charges) ruled that there was no incitement of the people.

This resulted, at least in Bhakdi’s case, in the Central Council of Jews in Germany reacting harshly to the verdict: “The court is legitimizing pure anti-Semitism here,” said Chairman Josef Schuster.

Vera Sharav with Marion Schmidt at the Dachau concentration camp memorial on Aug. 23, 2022. Marion Schmidt was dismissed by her employer because she had warned against "fascization" in the sense of "Never again!".

There are numerous indications that it might be otherwise.

Some of them will be presented and explained in the following long-read. Of course, the aim being that it should become clear to all - courts, prosecutors, “Antifa”, and the general public - that Hoeschele, Bhakdi, Sharav, Felgendreher and others might have formulated their warnings with the intention to “nip fascism in the bud” (“Wehret den Anfängen”), as German pupils learnt in school, a call to action that was still applied by Jewish Organizations in Germany as recent as 2014.

In 2014 a large crowd gathered in Munich, led by the President of the Isreaelite Community in Munich, Charlotte Knobloch, and other VIPs to “nip it in the bud”, it being Fascism.

Nip “it” in the bud

This possible motive has not yet been examined or even appreciated in any of the legal proceedings. What is absolutely necessary, therefore, is a debate about what the statements now being pursued actually are in terms of their essence. It should be explicitly taken into account that this debate can indeed be painful and hurtful. There is therefore a mutual obligation to refrain from anything that may cause unnecessary pain and injury, especially with regard to the Jewish people, who were the primary target of the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis.

Note, however, that the German Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that “an expression of opinion does not [lose] fundamental rights protection by virtue of the fact that it is formulated in a sharp or hurtful manner.” In this regard, it could only be a question of whether and to what extent “limits to freedom of opinion” arise in accordance with Article 5(2) of the German Basic Law. “However, freedom of opinion is not guaranteed unconditionally. Pursuant to Article 5(2) of the Basic Law, it is subject to the limits arising from the general laws and the statutory provisions for the protection of minors and personal honor. However, the importance of freedom of expression must be taken into account when interpreting and applying laws that have a restrictive effect on freedom of expression (cf. BVerfGE 7, 198 [208 f.]). As a rule, this requires a case-related weighing of the restricted fundamental right against the legal interest served by the law restricting the fundamental right, to be carried out within the framework of the constituent elements of the relevant norms.” Section 130 of the German Criminal Code (Incitement), the Federal Constitutional Court further states, it is a general law of the kind covered by Article 5 (2) of the Basic Law which can restrict freedom of expression.

Taking into account the above findings of the special duties to protect Jews in Germany, it must therefore be acknowledged in principle that what has been said by critics of government policies may be perceived as belittling, insulting or degrading by official representatives of Jews, such as the Central Council of Jews, but also by individuals.

However, there has been a complete lack of “case-related weighing of the restricted fundamental right” (the critics right of freedom of speech) “and the legal interest served by the law restricting the fundamental right” (protection of the dignity of Jews in Germany against disparagement or even the fomenting of hatred against them), which is required, according to the ruling of the Constitutional Court, to be carried out in each respective case. It wasn’t.

In this respect, it is of critical importance that, as stated by the Federal Constitutional Court, Section 130 German Criminal Code is a law of the kind that “serves the protection of humanity (cf. BTDrucks. III/1746, p. 3) and ultimately finds its constitutional foundation in Article 1 (1)” of the German Basic Law (Inviolability of Human Dignity).

This is where the window of constructive social debate opens recognizably:

To the extent that those warnings by Survivors such as Vera Sharav, Henny Fischler, Sarah Gross, Kati Egett or Irène Tokayer and other critics of pandemic responses center around the “protection of Humanity” their opinion would consequently be worthy of protection not just as an opinion, but also as a contribution to the protection of humanity. Freedom of speech aimed at protecting humanity is very hard to restrict with the aim of protecting humanity with respect to the victims of Nazi atrocities, when what those who are blowing the whistle are pointing to is exactly the possible continuation of the Nazi mindset being the driving force in what has been cloaked into the appearance of public health measures.

So far no factual investigation or examination has taken place with regard to this distinct possibility. Hardly any judge, and no public prosecutor so far, has been willing to contemplate as “possible” what was formulated as a lesson from the downfall of the “Third Reich” by Primo Levi in his famous 1947 quote: “It happened, therefore it can happen again”.

”It happened, therefore it can happen again.“, Exhibition “Auschwitz. Not long ago:” New York, 2019/2020

If the pledge "Never again!", which is engraved on the memorial stone in Dachau, as well as in all other concentration camp memorials, is to have any meaning, the fundamental legitimacy of cautionary references to “Auschwitz,” to the “Holocaust,” and to other terms related to Nazi injustice cannot be ignored in good faith.

Are comparative references to the Holocaust per se likely to disturb public peace?

It is true: at first, it seems obvious to take a restrictive stance, since renowned Holocaust survivors such as Elie Wiesel have repeatedly spoken out personally against making the Holocaust a standard of comparison. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work as a "messenger for humanity." The Nobel Committee called Wiesel “the the world's leading spokesman on the Holocaust” and “a convincing spokesman for the view of mankind and for the unlimited humanitarianism.” What Elie Wiesel said about the Holocaust carries particular weight.

In 2012, when both the President and Prime Minister of Israel warned of the dangers of Iran's nuclear program during Yom Ha'Shoah, the day of remembrance, Wiesel declared in an interview, “Iran is a danger, but to claim that it is creating a second Auschwitz? I compare nothing to the Holocaust.” He added, “Only Auschwitz was Auschwitz. I was in Yugoslavia when the reporters said there was a Holocaust going on there. There was a genocide, but no Auschwitz. If you make a comparison with the Holocaust, it works both ways, and soon people will say what happened in Auschwitz is merely what happened in Bosnia.”

Thus, it is true that Wiesel did see the danger of demeaning the horrors of the Holocaust. Could his words therefore be taken as confirmation for the guilty verdict against Robert Höschele and the charges against Bhakdi, or the criminal investigations against Vera Sharav and Monica Felgendreher being justified?

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate can hardly be the chief witness of those who are outraged by references to the Nazi period in comparison with the Corona measures. Wiesel also disagreed with making the singularity of the Holocaust the yardstick of a qualitative evaluation as the most terrible of all misfortunes:

“I do not like to compare one atrocity with another. That would be a humiliation for both,” he said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Every tragedy is unique, he said, ”just as every human is unique. When a person loses someone dear to her, who am I to say that my tragedy was greater? I have no right. For that person, her tragedy is the greatest in the world—and she is right in thinking so.” It can be seen, then, that the voice which the Nobel Peace Prize Committee called “the world's leading spokesman on the Holocaust” in 1986 was certainly open to different perspectives. As part of his speech on “Hope, Despair and Memory” on the day of the award ceremony on December 11, 1986 in Oslo, Wiesel also said this sentence about the Holocaust in relation to Apartheid in South Africa:

“Without comparing apartheid with National Socialism and its 'final solution' - for that defies comparison - one cannot avoid assigning the two systems to the same camp in their supposed legality.”

Wiesel, too, confirms certain parallels and similarities between historical events. It is therefore already apparent at this point that the standards of the Munich I Regional Court and those of the public prosecutor's offices in Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin or Memmingen, or the General Public Prosecutor's Office of Schleswig-Holstein may contain grotesque simplifications, insofar as they assume criminal punishability already in the case of mere references to the Holocaust. In particular, it should not be forgotten that the purpose of the penal provision is evidently to prevent or punish disparagement of the Holocaust and its victims. What would be the disparagement of the victims in the above-mentioned cases?

Or, to put it in the words of the judge in the proceedings against Monica Felgendreher: ”(T)he crimes against the Jews are recognized [by the defendant]. Only those who assume that the most severe suffering was inflicted on the Jews can criticize their own treatment as state injustice by referring to the situation of the Jews.”

The very term "Holocaust" is much more complex than the indictments or criminal orders and sentences against critics of measures imply. Indeed, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the beginning of the Holocaust broadly: “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945.” However, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance speaks of Holocaust Distortion as

“Use of the term “Holocaust” to reference events or concepts that are not related in any meaningful way to the genocide of European and North African Jewry by Nazi Germany and its accomplices between 1941 and 1945.” (PDF, p.19, emphasis added)

It is thus the period between 1941 [order to prepare a “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”] and the end of the war in 1945 that is referred to as the “Holocaust” in terms of the danger of relativization or even denial. Relativization or denial is said to exist when a meaningful reference is missing.

From this it follows that also for the IHRA the context must always be examined, the “context” of a reference and the purpose connected to it. Why does someone refer to the Holocaust? The Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which the Berlin district judge cited in the decision in favor of Monica Felgendreher states:

“In the case of ‘trivializing’, the intent must extend to the untruthfulness of the factual assertions associated with the trivialization, as well as to the utter inappropriateness of the valuations expressed.”

With regard to the temporal limitation, the IHRA position is in this respect consistent with what survivors have said about the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, for example, asked in a speech to the UN General Assembly:

“When did what we so poorly call the Holocaust begin? In 1938, during Kristallnacht? In 1939 perhaps, when a German ship, the St. Louis, with more than a thousand German Jewish refugees aboard, was turned back from America's shores? Or was it when the first massacres occurred in Babi Yar? 

We still ask: What was Auschwitz: an end or a beginning, an apocalyptic consequence of centuries-old bigotry and hatred, or was it the final convulsion of demonic forces in human nature? ”

The concept of the Holocaust is clearly very complex, and this must not be forgotten when considering statements on this subject from a perspective of criminal law. Clearly, the term describes a tragedy that, as Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski recalled in 2020, gradually evolved into a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions, aided by indifference on the part of the world community as well as unjustified trust among victims in the civility of Germans.

It is the catastrophe in its ethical and moral dimension, which finally led to the vow “Never again!”. A pledge which, in the words of the U.S. President's Commission on the Holocaust, appointed by Jimmy Carter and chaired by Elie Wiesel, also saw the possibility of another Holocaust, previously already expressed by Primo Levi. The commission therefore concluded:

“Not only has the moral landscape of human reality been altered by the Holocaust, but the acceleration of technology and nuclear power now threaten human existence itself. By focusing on the dangers inherent in the ends and means of a technological, bureaucratic society, study of the Holocaust and its implications can encourage a renewal of commitment to sanity and humanity.”

The Wiesel-led commission offers another important reminder that German prosecutors in particular seem to fundamentally overlook: Survivors see themselves as messengers entrusted by the dead, whose task it is to warn of possible dangers of another Holocaust. Primo Levi, himself a survivor of Auschwitz, saw it similarly.

In his book Survival in Auschwitz, published in 1947, he formulated:

“We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

But the right to raise the alarm is not limited to survivors:

“The Commission recommends that a Committee on Conscience composed of distinguished moral leaders in America be appointed. This Committee would receive reports of genocide (actual or potential) anywhere in the world. In the event of any outbreak, it would have access to the President, the Congress, and the public in order to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to bring such acts to a halt (…) to insure that such a totally inhuman assault as the Holocaust—or any partial version thereof—never recurs”

The commission, appointed by the U.S. president, is looking at recommendations for America. But the implications for pending criminal proceedings in Germany are obvious: Germany’s special responsibility would suggest that the warning against a repetition of the Holocaust - or even parts of it - should also be taken very seriously in Germany. Thus, the reference to the Holocaust, as in Bhakdi’s quote or Vera Sharav’s Nuremberg-75-speech, is absolutely essential and therefore must not be criminalized.

It is precisely the danger of making the Holocaust irrelevant for future learnings which on July 1, 2019, led some 600 leading Holocaust scholars to send an Open Letter to the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who had previously called for Holocaust comparisons to be banned. The scholars, mostly of Jewish descent themselves, stated:

“The very core of Holocaust education is to alert the public to dangerous developments that facilitate human rights violations and pain and suffering; pointing to similarities across time and space is essential for this task.”

Although the concerns of scholars are primarily aimed at historical and scientific reappraisal, their statement makes the argument itself incontrovertible: highlighting commonalities across time and space is essential to alerting the public to possibly dangerous developments.

This is precisely the position of survivors like Vera Sharav in her documentary “Never Again Is Now Global”!

A second 'Manhattan Project'

Just how dangerous the mass application of experimental genetically modified substances to billions of people is in principle was illustrated by a 2018 lecture, given by ex-CIA and DARPA researcher Dr. Charles Morgan to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This talk is primarily about the use of new technologies in medicine for warfare, but Dr. Morgan also addresses basics such as editing (CRISPR) the genetic material (DNA) of living cells, even in human mammals. Morgan talks about how “anything” can be genetically engineered, down to the targeted killing of an individual. To do so would require to know the genetic predisposition of that individual.

It is of central importance also for serving justice in proceedings of alleged Holocaust distortion that prosecutors, but also judges and the public, make sure they don’t fall prey to thought control, such as Dr. Morgan obviously attempts to achieve:

His lecture as well as the official narrative for gene editing emphasizes the potential benefits of certain technologies, ideally through references to genetic defects in children which could be targeted for correction using such techniques. “Targeted killing” is mentioned in a way that automatically creates the image of a terrible “villain” in the mind of the audience. However, this is contrasted with the fact that genetic identification and modification to the point of killing is invoked. Mandatory PCR testing, introduced as part of the Corona Crisis, has collected the genetic material of billions of people! If it is possible to identify individual genetic traits, it must also be assumed that certain genetic traits at the population level or ethnic groups are possible. With respect to the binding affinity of the SARS-CoV2 virus, this has already been shown.

These traits could hypothetically be used in the same way for the application of lethal or death-inducing adverse health effects via genetic engineering. Therefore it is evident that the warnings of survivors of the Holocaust against the possibility of a second Holocaust or parts thereof are not at all made out of thin air. At least in principle such crimes are conceivable, which is why such warnings are most warranted. That’s a worrying fact which can not be denied!

It would therefore be obligatory to investigate, and in any case to discuss widely within society, how an open and democratic society, that is already influenced to a great extent by financially powerful private interests, and which even is about to relinquish its sovereignty for the “defense against pandemic emergencies” to supranational organizations whose functionaries enjoy diplomatic immunity, and whose budget depends on such private interests, many of which have historically proven been and may continue to be supporters of concepts of “racial hygiene,” population control, and even infertility programs in humans.

In any case, it is clear that scientists like Professor Sucharit Bhakdi deserve credit and praise when they warn of the dangers of genetic engineering, which propagandists of such technology like Dr. Morgan himself explicitly equate to the development of nuclear weapons. To suspect Bhakdi (or his fellow-whistle-blowers) of anti-Semitism, or even to accuse them and criminally prosecute them, is an outrage, especially considering that the Nuclear Threat explicitly is mentioned in the President’s Commission Report ( pages ii, 6, 32) as a danger for a second Holocaust.

Genetic engineering as a threat was absent from the public consciousness in 1979, even though there had been a symposium of transhumanist eugenicists, with the participation of Julian Huxley, at the CIBA Foundation in London as early as 1962, in which frightening discussions were held about the possible or necessary modification of human genes. (CIBA was one of several Swiss industrial companies that helped the Nazis impose their genocidal policies in Europe. CIBA was also involved in the development of thalidomide.) The debates at the symposium were conducted by leading scientists of the time such as the discoverer of DNA, Sir Francis Crick, in an absolutely elitist, anti-democratic and totalitarian spirit:

Source: Man and his future; a Ciba Foundation volume, 1963

“I want to focus on one particular question: Do people have the right to have children at all? As we heard from Dr. Pincus, it would not be very difficult for the government to have something added to food that would stop offspring. Moreover, it could - this is hypothetical - have another chemical agent ready that would cancel out the effect of the first one and that only those people whose procreation is desired would receive. That would not be at all out of the question.”

So, the question that arises is directed to the inalienable Human Rights, laid out in the US Bill of Rights. Every individual is blessed with a dignity and protected as such, so that already thoughts about "desired genetic material" are forbidden, but even more so the selection - or the transhumanist “augmentation”. It is highly dangerous to cultivate such pseudo-scientific thoughts which show complete hubris. Sucharit Bhakdi is a scientist who humbly acknowledges the limits of the human quest for knowledge and warns of its dangers. Robert Höschele is a German Jew who demands in rigorous clarity full commitment to constitutionally guaranteed rights. Rudolf Posselt is a courageous citizen who holds up a mirror to the public in the form of quotations. Monica Felgendreher and Marion Schmidt are principled anti-fascists who demonstrate great courage.

Vera Sharav and Irène Tokayer are survivors of the greatest horror that has so far emanated from German soil and in German name. To suspect them of anti-Semitism or even of forgetting history, just because their words may frighten and cause pain in the first moment, is short-sighted and negligent. Possibly what was developed among other things also in Mainz, Germany, is anything but a blessing. Technically, what Dr. Charles Morgan compared to the invention of the atomic bomb might actually trigger a new holocaust.

If we do not pay close attention, it may not be Bhakdi, Höschele, Posselt, Felgendreher, Schmidt - and certainly not Vera Sharav or Irène Tokayer, who have failed to learn the lessons from the horror which we remember under the name “Auschwitz” on every 27th day of January, and which - as Marian Turski urgently warned - did not fall from the sky!

Elie Wiesel, in his speech to the German Bundestag on January 27, 2001 warned:

“[I]t was mankind itself that was threatened then, in those darkest of days. And in some ways, it still is. Whatever this new century holds in store, and we desperately want to have hope for the new century and its new generation, Auschwitz will continue to force men to explore the deepest recesses of his and her being so as to confront their fragile truth.”