I have been trying to understand the handful of Holocaust survivors who compared the Israeli government's deportation of African work migrants to Nazi extermination camps. Reporters seeking headlines pounced on this declaration as if it were a buried treasure, embellishing at will to titillate their readers' imaginations.
Comparing those who were forced into gas chambers, made to face firing squads, marched to their deaths or buried alive to the African infiltrators cheapens the memory of the Holocaust, an unprecedented event in human history.
Here is just one example of many from that time, when I personally faced the angel of death. In the camp, children who did not contribute by working and only consumed resources were put to death immediately upon discovery. I was found, a 3-year-old boy, and they dragged me into a line with a large group of men and women – the "daily quota" of the condemned. I was whipped hard as we were marched out, once across my back and again across the shoulders, because my small strides were unable to keep up with the group. The lash across the shoulders hurt most; the whip wrapped around my emaciated neck and knocked the air out of my tuberculosis-stricken lungs.
Terror gripped me as I stared into the barrel of a machine gun mounted on a tripod. My whole body was overcome by uncontrollable shivers. I had to muster all my strength just to try to stand still, and even that proved impossible. My heart pounded and my limbs trembled from the fear.
I looked at the soldier behind the pitch-black nozzle of the gun, and my eyes were unable to peel themselves away. There were snowflakes on his helmet – it was fiercely cold. When our eyes met for a moment, I thought I saw bewilderment in his eyes, as though he were seeing a baby for the first time. The order to open fire came in a sharp cry. The last thing I remember is the deafening sound of the machine gun in my ears.
I don't know how much time passed, but it was certainly nighttime when, from the depths of the underworld, I heard my mother weeping. I screamed at the top of my lungs that I was still alive, but I was unable to move because of the frozen bodies that covered me. My mother heard me and began moving the dead bodies that enveloped me like a too-heavy funeral shroud.
Apparently I was spared because of the simple fact that the tripod was precisely the same height as I was. With the exception of a bloody scratch left by a bullet that grazed me and sent me falling into the mass grave, I was physically intact.
Perhaps this was so I could advocate for children who weren't as fortunate.
And I ask in the name of all of our people who were murdered: Is any part of what I described here comparable to the plight of migrant workers?!
