Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, located on Har Hazikaron (Mount of Remembrance) in Jerusalem.
Yad Vashem Reacts to Gas Chambers in North Korea
In Letter to UN Secretary-General, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev Calls for Investigation of Political Genocide
(February 3, 2004) Yad Vashem is appalled by reports of North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families. Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev has sent an urgent letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which he calls for a full investigation of this insidious abuse of human rights. The issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the UN. The internment, torture, and murder of North Korean political dissenters and their families was recently reported by the BBC.
In his letter, Shalev states with alarm that only six decades after the utilization of gas chambers to exterminate European Jewry, North Korea has apparently employed them against thousands of its own citizens. “The lives of untold thousands of North Koreans are in danger because their totalitarian government perceives them as a threatâ€, Shalev writes. “Although the rationale, scale, and context are vastly different, the chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies is all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism.â€
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(link courtesy of IMRA)
