The human condition, and indeed human nature, conditions us to be ashamed, to be horrified, sometimes to be appalled; and then, to move on. When Neville Chamberlain’s slow, monotone voice caught the attention of a listening Nation, as he stated that our Country was going to stand by its Treaty obligations, and was therefore declaring war upon Nazi Germany, he could not have imagined that the policies of the British Government, in declaring war upon a confident, highly-organised and -armed Germany because of a Treaty with Poland: would allow the uncovering of the greatest crime in modern human recorded history.
In the early days of Nazi Germany, very few people in Germany knew of the plans for the systematic murder of people, just because they were Jewish. As the war raged on, very few outside onlookers knew of the huge pressures placed upon the infrastructure of the Nazi war machine, which took entire railway systems away from the Generals who needed their fuel, ammunition and indeed armies to come to terms with the vastness of Soviet Russia: because those same trains were allocated instead to the death camps.
Some rumours, some whispered news began to filter out of the incredible (to people who believed that the Nazis were just orchestrating their ideals of Lebensraum) activities, where, instead of supporting an ever-expanding war of conquest, vast amounts of treasure were being spent building camps, and railway access to those camps, which did not make any sense, that is in terms of any normal occupying army. Those rumours, that campaign to try and get the Allies to understand that something very strange, very dangerous, was being put into operation in the conquered lands, where the Nazis ruled without any opposition at all.
The Establishment, in both Great Britain and in the United States were, to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic about Jews coming out of conquered Europe, and trying to gain access as refugees. The anti-semitism was veiled, but it was there. The MS St Louis, a cruise liner laden with Jewish families all desperately seeking asylum, were prevented from disembarking in Cuba; and all the passengers were told that the Refugee Quota in the USA had been filled, and they were not welcome. The liner returned to European waters where they were taken in, indeed grudgingly, by Britain, France and Belgium. But the only country not invaded by the Nazis was Great Britain, and out of the 937 refugees, 650 survived, and the rest went straight to the death camps.
The true nature of the camps, and the truth of the use of the railways in supporting the nature of those camps, was not uncovered until the Soviet Army began liberating and broadcasting the truth about the Nazi death machinery, about the sickening architectural significance of the sealed ‘shower rooms’ where no water was piped in, and the engineering excellence of the vast crematoriums built purely for that ‘Final Solution’. I wrote and indeed spoke about this during the campaign to stop the so-called Holocaust Memorial, to be excavated and built adjacent to Parliament. That campaign succeeded, but only through the Appeal and High Courts.
But, in reality, today I do not write about the genocide of eighty-odd years ago, instead I speak of a small village in the Republic of Ireland. Tuam was where the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home sat, run by nuns from the Bon Secours order. But before I speak of the unutterably sad facts resulting from the ‘iron rule’ of those sisters, I would remind those who watch of the sad truth that the word of the Church was Law to believers, and God’s spokesmen spoke on many issues, and the various Irish Governments allowed the Church great leeway in the manner in which it operated. Its charities, its schools and educational establishments were given preference, its teachings, especially around contraception and abortion, still carried a great deal of weight in the Republic until the real Truth became known about the real ’Invisible Government’ of that Republic
But, back to Tuam, and the Industry, yes; the Deadly Industry which grew because most young Irish girls knew little to nothing about their bodies, how they work; and the fact that most schools were Roman Catholic schools, and sex education was, literally, non-existent. The Tuam Sisters based the ‘help’ given to the many pregnant girls and young women around the statement that to give birth outside of wedlock was a mortal sin, the children were the product of those ‘sins’, and they were no longer the illegitimate offspring of young women, but a ‘commodity’ to be used and abused as those supposed ‘Brides of Christ’ saw fit. There were no true obstetric medical facilities at St. Mary’s, to aid the health of the hundreds of infants born into that obscenity masquerading as a charitable maternity hospital, the strong and healthy survived; the weak and struggling infants were literally cast aside, and left to their fate.
But worse was to follow. Those babies who survived were literally marketed to the absurdly wealthy Catholic communities of America, and that trade was indeed supported by the Catholic Irish Bishops, to the extent that formal adoption papers were issued with no questions asked, because who, in those days, could question the actions of an Order of Nuns who were doing the ‘Work of the Lord’? As for those infants who were left behind, a gruesome fate was in order; when an infant died, no notification was made or written, and those sad remains were dumped into the sewers, with absolutely no records kept of those who had survived, just to be dumped once dead.
Those who read this post might reject my comparisons of the actions of a Catholic Charity operating in the Irish Republic, with the vile outcomes of Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Holocaust; but I believe that the mindless, murderous atrocities carried out by the Nazis within their Concentration Camps, where the deaths of six million and more human beings were indeed reduced to mere statistics presented to Himmler, are as one with the actions of a group of so-called Catholic nuns who couldn’t even dignify the callous dumping of 796 babies and children’s bodies into a sewer with a simple religious service, because they didn’t want to be reminded that what they were doing was both illegal and immoral.
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