Romanian minister apologizes for Auschwitz analogy
July 26, 2018
The agriculture minister of Romania had to backtrack after comparing the incineration of dead pigs to Auschwitz. But he has so far stopped short of heeding calls for his resignation.
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Romania's minister of agriculture, Petre Daea, said on Thursday that he did not mean to offend anyone when he compared the incineration of dead pigs to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Speaking about the issue of African swine fever in pigs on Tuesday, in a televised interview, Daea said that in breeding grounds affected by the disease, "pigs are incinerated, it's extraordinary work, it's like Auschwitz."
African swine fever is a highly contagious disease that causes fatal hemorrhages in pigs. It is transmitted through contact with infected pigs and ticks, and by ingesting infected kitchen waste. Some 400 outbreaks of the disease have been reported in Romania's Danube Delta and near the Hungarian border.
"I respect all the members of the Jewish community and clarify that I only wished to describe the difficult situation facing Romanian breeders due to the African swine fever," Minister Daea said in a statement.
"I have never offended anyone. I just expressed my pain," he added.
Former Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos, who has also served as agriculture minister, publicly condemned Daea's comment, saying it was "unacceptable to compare the incineration of pigs to a world tragedy."
The social democratic minister faced calls to resign from two opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the Save Romania Union. His party's chairman, Liviu Dragnea, issued an official apology to the Jewish community and said the Holocaust was "a tragedy that should never be repeated."
Dragnea also explained that Daea had not meant to be offensive, but urged him to avoid expressions "which can deeply offend."
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sven Hoppe
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Israel: Holocaust cannot be 'trivialized'
The Israeli Embassy in Romania expressed its "dismay and consternation at the affirmations of the Minister of Agriculture."
"We hope, though, that such an association was made by Minister Daea due to the lack of detailed information on what was the Holocaust and Auschwitz, without the intention of dishonoring the memory of millions of victims," the embassy statement read.
The death of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust "should never be forgotten, trivialized or minimalized," the Israeli Embassy added.
Over 1 million Jews were killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from 1940 to 1945. Located in present-day Poland, Auschwitz is today a symbol of the genocide of European Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany.