There are strong similarities between the innocent Jewish and Gypsy civilian deaths at the Treblinka and Auschwitz ‘extermination’ camps in wartime Europe and the suffocating deaths of hospital Covid patients in the dead of night from midnight to early morning at a hospital in Goa.
Jewish victims were lined up outside what was called a bathhouse but which was in reality a gas chamber and each one was handed a fresh towel and bar of soap to allay their fears and show they were going for a hot shower. Once inside as everyone knows, the shower spouts were opened to emit cyanide gas and finish off Hitler’s ‘inferior’ races. After the dastardly deed of the night was over, the commandant of the death camp Franz Paul Stangl in the case of Treblinka or Rudolf Hoess in Auschwitz, would stride in and find out if any improvements could be made in the smooth despatch of larger numbers as there was increasing pressure on them from Nazi command to achieve higher targets. So also in Goa, Covid patients in two wards who were as good as marked for ‘termination’, were put on ventilators connected to oxygen tanks or central supply that was known to run out after a set number of hours. Suffering patients however, were happy that they had a shot at improvement and relatives were relieved that something was being done for them. Of course doctors and medical personnel were totally unaware of the plan that was hatched at Central Command. The die was cast and at the witching hour of midnight, the spouts would open, in this case close, and the victims would gasp for life-giving air in a replay of the Nazi death camps of 1944 and 45. The following morning the camp, sorry health officials would also like in Poland, stride in and enquire around as to what the problems were, terming them as in the words of one Commandant “some issues need to be sorted out”. Of course the real intent was: no intervention is necessary. In the case of Teblinka and Auschwitz, Russian troops filled with hatred of Nazis for wreaking havoc on their country, battered their way around the German cordons and into the death camps, freeing the remaining prisoners and hauling away the Slav guards and their German officers, to face justice (though to the Russians, justice and mercy probably meant a bullet to the head). Who will turn out to be the scales of justice for the Goa hospital Covid dead? PS: any resemblance of this narrative to actual persons or events in Goa are purely coincidental. The WWII scenario however, is unfortunately all true. Roland. Toronto.
