An Australian Medico's "Cruel Misrepresentation" of the Shoah

Few remarks regarding the Holocaust can be as frightfully disgusting as those made by a senior Australian doctor, Paul Bauert, comparing the plight of (immigration queue-jumping) "asylum seekers" at present detained offshore, and Jews incarcerated in the Auschwitz death camp.

As reported in The Australian newspaper,

'The paediatric representative from Australia’s peak medical body has suggested asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru are in a worse situation than Jews in Auschwitz because people who knew they were going to be gassed by the Nazis “found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening”.

Paul Bauert of the Australian Medical Association [pictured]... said the mental health of detainees in Manus and Nauru had deteriorated because there was no certainty about their future.

 “The main reason for the impairment of mental health — as Viktor Frankl the psychiatrist from Auschwitz described very well in his book Man’s Search for Meaning — the main problem that these people have is a lack of meaning, a lack of any end to what is going on, a lack of certainty,” Dr Bauert told Sky News.

 “And this more than anything causes severe mental health damage. Even those who finally knew they were about to be condemned to the gas chamber at least found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening.” ....'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjA7bxH4uRE

He's been shamed into tweeting an apology of sorts for his foul comparison: 

“My comments this morning were intended to reflect the writings of an eminent Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz. The words I used did not convey the complexity of what he wrote. My deep apologies for causing offence. Auschwitz was a humanitarian disgrace."

In a Sky News interview with Peta Credlin, Peter Wertheim, joint CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), has robustly condemned Bauert's odious remarks, terming them "an offensive dumbing down of history," "extremely cruel to the few Holocaust survivors we have left", and "a cruel misrepresentation of what these people actually went through".

And the ECAJ has not surprisngly and quite justifiably made a formal protest to the Australian Medical Association, terming Bauert's apology on Twitter "inadequate".

As Dr David Adler, president of the non-leftist Australian Jewish Association (AJA), has written:
 :

"I worked for the AMA as Deputy Medical Secretary when it was a quality professional organisation in the past. That’s where I learnt something about policy and advocacy. I put my heart and soul into it and have a sense of gratitude for the experience and contacts gained during my time there. So it is distressing to see the decline of this once prestigious and respected body."

Declares the AJA:

"Trying to conflate an analogy with the Holocaust to support the "Medivac" Bill of Dr Kerryn Phelps is a shameful disgrace.

The Holocaust was a systematic attempt on an industrial scale to exterminate an entire people. Whatever your view of off-shore detention, it is nothing of the sort and to link the two is as ridiculous as it is offensive.

Dr Paul Bauert for the Australian Medical Association (AMA) even suggests that Holocaust victims found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening as they were taken to gas chambers. He is grossly in error - many Holocaust victims were deliberately misled with the gas chambers disguised as shower blocks.. Even the Zyclon B gas was dispersed through shower heads.

AJA President Dr David Adler is formerly AMA Deputy Medical Secretary. He adds "It saddens me to see a once presitigous and highly professional body fracture into an ill informed political activist group. No wonder AMA membership has declined dramatically and only a minority of doctors belong".

We note that Australian security experts have warned that the Medivac Bill would result in people who present risks to others entering Australia.

Would the AMA be comfortable with the restoration of people smuggling and its associated death toll at sea? What of potential victims of those who are a security risk gaining entry? How does it reconcile this with the mission to preserve life?

The AMA stands condemned for using the Holocaust as leverage for a political agenda and meddling in matters of border security."