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 feldman@forward.com 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, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
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.