I spent Memorial Day weekend in Poland with a group of friends and colleagues. Over the course of our journey, we visited the Warsaw ghetto and three Nazi death camps. It's one thing to read, or even watch films, about the Holocaust; it's quite another to stand with your own two feet in places where thousands of people were systematically murdered. The Nazis killed millions of people during World War II, including enemy soldiers, civilians, and dissidents. Their fanatical, bigoted, scapegoating hatred of Jews was singularly obsessive, however, sparking the utterly evil and infamous "final solution." With bullets, starvation and gas chambers, they set out to wipe Jews from the face of the earth. They met with a blood-curdling degree of success, killing an estimated six million Jews over the course of just a few years, mostly between 1941 and 1944.
Here are a few of the photos that we took, as well as some sobering observations (content warning):
Sobering early morning at Auschwitz. pic.twitter.com/g141GD8hAX
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 25, 2025
Not statistics. Real human victims. Approximately 1.3 million people were annihilated by the Nazis at Auschwitz, the overwhelming majority of whom were Jews. pic.twitter.com/m6kBr1OCrL
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 25, 2025
(Literally thousands of similar mass graves exist all over Eastern Europe. This is just one of them, near one of the few old synagogues that wasn’t destroyed at the time)…
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 23, 2025
(Literally thousands of similar mass graves exist all over Eastern Europe. This is just one of them, near one of the few old synagogues that wasn’t destroyed at the time)…
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 23, 2025
📍Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Originally built as a POW camp, this place was repurposed and retrofitted as a death factory later in the war. “Only” around 80,000 humans were murdered here by the Nazis. Much of this place is preserved. Chilling: pic.twitter.com/jspT3I8MDu
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 24, 2025
Walking through the original Auschwitz gas chamber was extremely disturbing. The Nazis operated this death factory for awhile, then "perfected" their system at nearby Birkenau, where they build four gas chambers and crematoria that murdered and burned up to 20,000 people every single day:
For context, when we landed in Europe for this trip, we arrived to the appalling news that a pro-Hamas radical leftist had shot and killed two young Jewish people in Washington, DC. He did so while shouting Palestinian 'liberation' slogans and chanting about 'Intifada.' In just the last few weeks, the 'Globalize the Intifada' crowd has attempted to kill the Jewish Governor of Pennsylvania and his family while they slept in their home, and succeeded in murdering two Jewish diplomats in our nation's capital. Many of their allies openly support and justify the bloodshed. The dirtbag alliance of Islamists and hard leftists have fomented a very serious and growing violence problem:
The Intifada has come to America.
— Jesse Arm (@Jesse_Leg) May 26, 2025
In @TheAtlantic, @reihan and I explain how rationalizing anti-Jewish violence—and other forms of left-wing extremism—is putting our civic order at risk. pic.twitter.com/oRUEpWU87x
Finally got around to reading the new report on anti-Semitic incidents from CAS. Impossible to get around the fact that the far left is by far the biggest source of anti-Semitism and associated violence since 10/7. pic.twitter.com/j5pH2aydXT
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 26, 2025
The 'news' media, naturally, remains biased willfully clueless, which is a hallmark of the industry:
I have had a ~dozen reporters call me in the last two years for quotes about political violence, with the assumption it’s a right-wing problem.
— Peter Meijer (@petermeijer) May 25, 2025
Each one seemed surprised when I say that, especially post-10/7, the far-left is most primed to devolve into chaos and killing. https://t.co/4B0MPbn9KO
Meanwhile, in response to the Holocaust posts embedded above -- both on Twitter/X and other social media platforms -- my colleagues and I received a small number of comments and messages that must be thoroughly refuted and swatted down. I did so in this post, and I'm re-publishing most of that mini-essay here:
I’d like to make a point regarding a small handful of comments, DMs and replies on social media as I’ve posted my experiences at the Nazi death camps in Poland over the last few days. These ignorant and/or bigoted comments claim that Israel is now committing a “genocide” against the Palestinians. This is a vile lie that defiles the memory of the Holocaust. Having been to Israel multiple times (including post-10/7/23), having followed that conflict closely, and having just witnessed what the Holocaust was, such slanders are particularly offensive. The Nazis rounded up and systematically exterminated nearly 6 million Jewish people (and others, but Jews were the primary target for compete annihilation. This was the utterly sick “final solution” to the “Jewish problem).
In Poland, where we just visited, there were nearly 3.3 million Jews before the war. Today, the number is estimated to be less than 50,000. THAT is what actual genocide looks like. Millions were killed, and many of those who survived fled to other places. Like Israel. The necessity of an armed Jewish state was made abundantly clear in WWII, and continues to be made clear on a daily basis. The UN established the modern state of Israel after the Holocaust. It is a 100% legitimate state, located in the ancestral Jewish homeland. Israel has been forced to win multiple defensive, existential wars since 1948. Their current war was initiated by explicitly genocidal Hamas terrorists in 2023.
If Israel wanted to commit a real genocide in Gaza, they easily could. They are not. They are prosecuting a necessary, difficult war that was started by their enemies (who could stop the destruction immediately by releasing the innocent hostages and surrendering). They take extraordinary measures to minimize civilian deaths, despite Hamas’ evil strategy of operating within civilian populations and infrastructure. Even Hamas’ own “stats” admit that the overwhelming majority of deaths in Gaza have been among military aged males. Conflating this with “genocide” is revolting and false. Those who do so should either own their bigotry openly, or educate themselves. I will not allow these disgusting untruths to go unchallenged and uncorrected.
The anti-Semitic Nazis and the anti-Semitic Palestinians collaborated in World War II. Today, some Hamas supporters explicitly say they wish Hitler had finished the job. Hamas is genocidal, in word and in deed. Yet they, their supporters, and their enablers abuse the word 'genocide' to misappropriate the history and memory of a true genocide against the Jews, in order to invent a fake one supposedly perpetrated by the Jews. Again, it's a grotesque lie of immense magnitude and moral weight. Shameful. That sense of disgust led to this vignette:
…one more thing: After being at Auschwitz yesterday, some of the ladies on the trip were having outdoor cocktails in Krakow. A small pro-Hamas rally marched past them, and boy, did these ladies let them have it. Booing, heckling, etc. Don’t mess with @EmilyCompagno and…
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 26, 2025
I wish I'd been present to join Emily, Kennedy, and Mary Katharine Ham in letting the Hamas marchers know precisely how I felt about their demented cause -- especially having spent the morning at Auschwitz, just miles away. I'll leave you with this, which much of the vaunted 'international community' is simply ignoring:
Breaking: Hamas is telling Palestinians in Gaza not to accept food delivered with Israeli involvement — warning they'll “pay the price” and face “all necessary measures” if they do.
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 26, 2025
Are you getting it? Hamas is literally threatening to kill people for eating — and nobody cares. pic.twitter.com/nokywxywJW
Thousands of courageous anti-Hamas Gazan protesters are screaming "Hamas get out, we want to live, damned are Hamas's leaders, children have a right to live"! Will anyone listen? Will pro-Palestine activists, NGOs, politicians, journalists & online personalities take notice?!💔🙏 pic.twitter.com/atsRfs1IEg
— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) May 19, 2025
So the German leader can have a seat. Canada's new Prime Minister can, too:
I've actually reached my limit of Germans deciding whether Jews can fight to survive or not, but thanks https://t.co/06a2uxGMZm
— Sunny (@sunnyright) May 26, 2025
Congrats to Canadian PM Mark Carney on his recent ‘thank you’ note from Hamas, whose supporters are trying to disrupt the food supply in his own country. https://t.co/7Um81oKKQ1
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 26, 2025
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