In June I had the privilege of listening to Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Vera Sharav in Hamilton, Ontario..Vera Sharav founded the Alliance for Human Research and Protection after her son died suddenly and unexpectedly from side effects caused by an antidepressant medication that he was taking in his early 20s..As she related, medical authorities had knowingly failed to warn of the medication’s dangerous side effects..For decades, Vera Sharav (now 86) has been a tireless advocate for compliance with the Nuremberg Code, which emerged in 1947 in response to the trials and convictions of Nazi doctors who perpetrated medical experiments on patients without their consent..Sadly, the Nuremburg Code’s basic principle of full and informed consent for medical treatment has been violated repeatedly by governments and corporations in the decades that followed..Most recently, starting in the fall of 2021, governments took away basic rights and freedoms from Canadians who failed to get injected with the new COVID-19 vaccine, and also forced the entire population to reveal personal and private medical information to total strangers..When Canada’s governments pressured people into getting the COVID vaccines on threat of job loss and other forms of coercion, Nicole Bogart of CTV News argued that this does not violate the Nuremberg Code because this new vaccine was “approved by government.”.Ms. Bogart ignored the fact that medical experiments imposed on unwilling prisoners by Nazi doctors were also 'approved by government.'.The core principle of the Nuremberg Code is full, informed consent by the individual patient. Whether a treatment has been 'approved by government' is besides the point, and is not mentioned in the Nuremberg Code..Unfortunately, most Canadians are ignorant of what happened during the eight years between Hitler taking power in 1933 and the start of murder on a massive scale in 1941..Before mass murder began, Jews were gradually stripped of their basic human rights..Step by step, Jews were forced out of the civil service, academia, the judiciary, the legal profession, the medical profession and other spheres of life..Eventually, marriage between Jews and Aryans was made illegal. Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes in public..On November 9, 1938, Jewish-owned shops throughout Germany (already subjected to government-endorsed boycotts) were vandalized and synagogues lit on fire: the infamous Kristallnacht (crystal-night), 'the night of broken glass.'.German firemen watched synagogues burn, intervening only to stop the flames from spreading to other buildings..As Vera Sharav explained it in her 2022 speech at the 75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Code:.“The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The Holocaust was preceded by nine years of incremental restrictions on personal freedom, and the suspension of legal rights and civil rights."."The stage was set by fear-mongering and hate-mongering propaganda. A series of humiliating discriminatory government edicts demonized Jews as ‘spreaders of disease.’"."We were compared to lice. Medicine was perverted from its healing mission and was weaponized."."In 1933, the primary target for discrimination were Jews. Today, the target is people who refuse to be injected … the media is silent — as it was then.”.The Holocaust was preceded by, and facilitated by, people blindly obeying government edicts rather than thinking..At the same time that German Jews were slowly being turned into second-class citizens in their own country, all Germans gave up their freedoms of speech, association, assembly, conscience, parental rights in education, and so on..Only when these freedoms are destroyed can a government succeed in the mass murder of citizens who belong to the 'wrong' group..Since March of 2020, there has been a significant destruction of our rights and freedoms here in Canada. Canadians gave up many of their fundamental rights and freedoms to a greater or lesser degree..It matters not that many Canadians did so willingly, unquestioningly, or even gratefully, in the name of the 'public good.'.What matters is that when citizens’ rights are suspended or cancelled, even with their consent, then governments are no longer constrained by the rule of law, constitutional imperatives, or even basic morality..The Holocaust should not be compared to mandatory vaccination policies..At the same time, however, the world should heed Vera Sharav’s warning about the danger of blindly obeying authority..Citizens should not give up their civil liberties on the basis of a politician’s claim that our rights and freedoms are worth less than some supposed higher good..John Carpay, B.A., LL.B. is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
