Holocaust Survivor: North Korea’s Prisons Camps ‘Even Worse’ Than Auschwitz
A judge who survived the Holocaust called North Korean prison camps “as terrible or even worse” than Nazi concentration camps upon hearing testimony from former prisoners of the regime, The Washington Post reported.
Thomas Buergenthal, who survived a ghetto in Poland and the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps as a boy, is a former human rights judge on the International Court of Justice. He made his statements after hearing testimony on the conditions of the North Korean regime’s labor camps as part of an inquiry conducted by the International Bar Association.
“I believe that the conditions in the [North] Korean prison camps are as terrible, or even worse, than those I saw and experienced in my youth in these Nazi camps and in my long professional career in the human rights field,” Berguenthal said.
Buergenthal is serving on a three-judge panel tasked with hearing testimony from defectors who survived the camps.
Investigators say there are up to 130,000 North Koreans held in four labor camps in the reclusive country.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!