“For The Animals It Is An Eternal Treblinka” By Sharon L. Wallenberg

In the words of Nobel Literature Prize Winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, “How much longer, God, will you look on this inferno of yours and keep silent?  What need have you of this ocean of blood and flesh whose stench spreads across your universe?  Have you created this boundless slaughterhouse merely to show us your power and wisdom?”  He also said that The Sixth Commandment – “Thou shalt not kill” should apply to all God’s creatures, not just human beings.  “What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you?  They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation.  All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated.  …for the animals it is an external Treblinka”.

The United Nations Climate Action Summit, December 12, 2020 and the United Nations General Assembly 31^st Special Session – In Response To the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) Pandemic, December 4, 2020 had one thing in common:  They both missed the point. 

The greatest contributing factor to Climate Change is the meat and dairy based diet.  Methane from animals raised to be murdered and eaten holds heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than carbon dioxide.  Destroying forests to create grazing land for animal is also a major contributing factor to global warming.

Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease caused by human animal interaction, in this case an extra judiciously executed animal in a wet market who was then eaten by a human.  Vaccines will not change this.  In addition, the deadliest diseases on Earth are all zoonotic.  Vaccines will not eliminate the problem, only respect for all species can do this.  It is only when the human species decides to stop exploiting other species, and give them rights, that the ongoing destruction of the planet and innocent people will stop.

Go Vegan!

Worldwide Response to Speciesism

Covid-19 originated in a “Wet Market”, a place where individuals of another species are murdered for the profit of the human species.  This resulted in Covid-19, a zoonotic disease.  Zoonotic disease is the cause of many worldwide epidemics and pandemics including HIV AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Black Flu, Spanish Flu, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, among others.  In addition, the meat and dairy based diet is a causative factor in Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer and antibiotic resistance.  Speciesism has also been linked to Climate Change, Species Extinction, Habitat Destruction, and other worldwide issues.  There is a growing movement in the world today to right these wrongs!  Specifically:

Asia - Nepal - Animal Rescue Mission and local Nepali organizations:

Nepal’s Dashain Festival to the ‘blood thirsty’ Goddess Kali is one of the most brutal events on Earth.  The streets run red with the blood of tens of thousands of innocent animals.  Animals are subjected to unimaginable brutality.  Crowds scream, push, and fight with machetes.  Terrified animals are dragged through these crowds of people.  Other animals watch the murder of their friends and relatives knowing they will be next.  No animal is safe.

 

The festival is carried on throughout the night and into the next day.  The larger animals, mainly water buffalo, are reserved to be beheaded on “Black Night”, which supposedly commemorates the victory of gods over demons.  During the darkness of night, a convoy goes to a secluded, sacrificial epicenter. In the morning, a two-hour killing spree frantically erupts, and a sea of water buffalo are decapitated.  Water buffalo are often preyed upon in Nepal.  Local sources estimate that 70,000 to 80,000 are killed violently in animal sacrifices every year.

Animal Rescue Mission and local Nepali animal advocate groups are working tirelessly to create awareness of this situation and hopefully end the bloodshed by promoting alternative sacrifices. 

Pacifica:     Animals Australia, and SAFE For Animals, New Zealand

Live export is one of the cruelest practices on Earth.  Recently, Gulf Livestock 1 capsized.  The casualties included 41 crew members and almost 6,000 cows.  This tragedy led the government of New Zealand to announcing a temporary ban on live export, and yet another fruitless review into this cruel and unnecessary trade.  Soon the live export ship, Yangtze Fortune, will take thousands of New Zealand cows on a long and stressful sea journey with no food, water, removal of excrement or deceased individuals.  In sweltering heat, individuals literally cook to death on these ships.  The animals live exported from New Zealand and Australia are sent to countries with lower animal welfare standards, or no animal protection laws at all.

In Indonesia, Animals Australia learned that the banned and brutal Mark 1 slaughter box is back in action.  Cattle who survive the conditions of live export are subjected to horrific roping slaughter - a practice supposedly wiped out of the industry ten years ago.  Terrified cattle are tripped, roped and killed in brutal slaughter boxes.  Frightened sheep are dragged, man-handled, stuffed into car boots in searing heat, sold for backyard slaughter or killed in the streets where they lay beside the flailing bodies of other animals.  In Jordan, the ‘Festival of Sacrifice' awaits individuals who survive the live export ordeal.  Rough and brutal street slaughter is 'the norm' for sheep shipped there from Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

Animals Australia, SAFE for Animals New Zealand, other organizations and individuals are working tirelessly to stop cruel and barbaric live export which has already affected hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals over the years.

Africa     Governments of Kenya, Senegal, Gabon, and others

 Poaching, the murder of innocent individuals for profit, is a tragedy of enormous proportions on the continent of Africa.  It is wiping out large populations of individuals resulting in species extinction.  Murder of an innocent gorilla for ‘bush meat’ is the original cause of the zoonotic disease, HIV AIDS.

In order to the prevent the murder of innocent elephants, the Governments of Kenya, Gabon, and others have disincentivized ivory poaching by burning existing stockpiles of ivory.  Senegal considers their lions a national treasure, and is very concerned about the effect that climate change and other unnatural events are having on them.  Preventing speciesism is one of the priorities of many African governments.

 Europe     Ireland, Ban Blood Sports

Currently the Irish grass roots organization, Ban Blood Sports, is seeking amendments to the Irish Animal Health and Welfare Bill which would eliminate Fox Hunting. Hare Coursing, Greyhound Racing, Badger Culling, Horse Racing. Digging Out, Terrierwork, Ferreting, Badger Culling, Fur Farming, and the use of Animals in Circuses.  Ban Blood Sports, other organizations and individuals are working tirelessly to achieve the goal of preventing the cruel and unjust exploitation of innocent individuals.

 Planet Earth     The Save Movement:  Animal Save, Climate Save, and Health Save

The Save Movement, started in Toronto, Canada, currently has 1,000 chapters on 6 continents, and has held 4170 vigils in 2019.  The Save Movement’s mission is to hold vigils at every slaughterhouse; bear witness to every exploited animal; reverse catastrophic climate change by defunding animal agriculture; and ensure that plant-based diets, which prevent disease and improve quality of life, are accessible to all in the world community.

It is time to finally have a comprehensive solution to the global issue of Speciesism:  A United Nations Convention Against Speciesism proposed by Vegan International (www.VeganInternational.org).

"Never Again"

 “Never Again” has come to represent a universal goal to prevent future genocides.  When the Holocaust ended and people in the death camps were liberated, almost immediately survivors began to say:

“Never Again”.  Never again would genocide devastate any ethnic, national, racial or religious group.  In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

It is time to extend this protection to everyone on Planet Earth including those of other species:

Isaac Bashevis Singer – a member of a family perished in the Holocaust and a Nobel Prize winner for literature:  “As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”  From: “Enemies, A Love Story”

 Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, Dachau concentration camp survivor:  “I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings.”  From “Animals, My Brethren”.

Albert Kaplan, a Jewish-American whose parents’ families perished in the Holocaust:  “Around two hundred feet from the main entrance to the [Holocaust] museum is an Auschwitz for animals from which emanates a horrible odor that envelopes the museum. I mentioned it to the museum management. Their reaction was not surprising. ‘But they are only chickens.'”

Lucy Rosen Kaplan, daughter of a Holocaust survivor whose wife and two daughters were shot and killed before his eyes:  “I have really been haunted by Holocaust images my whole life, and there is no question but that I was drawn to animal rights in part because of similarities I sensed between institutionalized animal exploitation and the Nazi genocide.”

Dr. Alex Hershaft, Warsaw Ghetto survivor and Founder of FARM Animal Right Movement:  “It finally dawned on me. “Never again” is not about what others shouldn’t do to us. It’s about what we shouldn’t do to others. “Never again” means that we must never again perpetrate mass atrocities against other living beings. That we must never again raise animals for food or any other form of exploitation.”  “For the Animals, All Men are Nazis“

Charles Patterson, “I always felt that there was something ethically and aesthetically obscene about taking a beautiful, feeling animal, hitting him over the head and cutting him up into pieces and stuffing the pieces in my face.  My experience led me to a lifelong pursuit of justice for the oppressed. I soon discovered that the most oppressed beings on earth are non-human animals and that the most numerous and most oppressed among them are farm animals.”  From “Eternal Treblinka”.

Alexandra M., Holocaust survivor:  “In a state established on the scarification of more than a third of its people – the enslavement and mass murder of living beings has become part of the lifestyle: TV cook shows devoted to the best way of serving the flesh of living beings – murdered babies; and panels of judges voraciously delighting in the successful outcome.

Mark Berkowitz – one of “Mengele Twins”, a Holocaust survivor whose mother and one of his sisters were sent to the gas chambers in front of his eyes, during a public meeting to defend Canada geese:  “I dedicate my mother’s grave to the geese. My mother doesn’t have a grave, but if she did I would dedicate it to the geese. I was a goose too.”

Theodor Adorno, German Philosopher,  “Auschwitz begins wherever

someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks “They’re only animals.”

 

John Maxwell Coetzee, Nobel award winner in literature,  “Let me say it

openly: We are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and

killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed

dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating,

bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the

purpose of killing them.”

 

Dr. Helmut Kaplan, German Writer and Philosopher, “Our grandchildren

will ask us one day; Where were you during the holocaust of the animals? 

What did you do against these horrifying crimes?  We won’t be able to offer

the same excuse for the second time, that we didn’t know.”

 

Charles Patterson, “All who are not afraid to understand that the suffering that humans have so relentlessly inflicted on animals over the course of our species’ history is one and the same with the suffering that humans often inflict on each other, must read and re-read this book.”  From Foreword to the book “Eternal Treblinka”.

Anna Kelemen, a Holocaust survivor who lost two of her relatives in the Holocaust:  “…an impassioned plea for justice for all creatures.”

www.VeganInternational.org,  www.RaoulWallenbergSearch.com