Just a few years ago I ended up in Warsaw on a business trip to Poland where my former boss Eric Dodd had been invited to talk to top government officials about reforms to Poland’s embryonic private health system.

Work sets you free: the gates to hell at Dachau.

As a journo and an amateur student of history, I was astonished to learn that our hotel in Warsaw was located on what was previously the Jewish Ghetto in World War II from which tends of thousands were shipped to their deaths.

And just a matter of a few hours drive away was the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews and gypsies were imprisoned in the most horrific conditions and slaughtered in the gas chambers.

Journo curiosity got the better of me and with a free day available I persuaded Eric that we should get in a car and drive to Auschwitz to see this scene of industrialised genocide of historic proportion for ourselves.

That brings me to Kyle Sandilands – he of the grotesquely tactless and insensitive remarks about Magda Szubanski and the so called ‘virtue’ of concentration camps for weight loss.

Sandilands has been suspended from on air duties. Perhaps he should use the stand down to re-trace the journey that I took with Eric Dodd to Auschwitz .He can walk through the entry gate and under the disgusting sign placed there by the Nazis, which says in English: ‘Work shall set you free’. It’s still there to this day and so is the gas chamber.

Kyle can stand inside the chamber and look up at the holes through which the guards dropped the canisters of deadly gas to envelop the naked and terrified prisoners huddled below.

From there it is just a stroll next door to the ovens where the corpses were incinerated in their thousands in furnaces that the prisoners themselves were forced to prime and tend through week after week of wholesale slaughter.

And if Kyle hasn’t already been shocked to the core by all of what he has seen so far he can walk over to the buildings that prior to the war were part of a large Polish Army barracks.

On the way he can check out the concrete wall between two barrack buildings – that’s the wall where Jews were lined up and summarily shot by brutal guards. Or go downstairs and look at the torture chamber where prisoners suffered intolerably.

But even the hardest heart could not fail to be moved by what is to be seen next at Auschwitz. Walk inside the barrack buildings where hundreds of people were jammed cheek by jowl with the loss of all dignity or basic care from their captors.

Upstairs there are glassed in sections that have been left pretty much as they were when this concentration camp was liberated. Behind the glass are piles of battered suitcases and clothing, some still showing evidence of the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear by Hitler’s Nazi bastards.

These are the last known possessions of innocent people who didn’t deserve to be subject to such evil. But most heart wrenching of all is the pile of children’s tiny shoes – even babies and toddlers weren’t spared the slaughter of those terrible years.

Over the years as a journalist I’d seen a few things that people would say were macabre and shocking. My boss at the time, Eric Dodd was very experienced in the sometimes tough business world.

None of that could prepare either of us for what we saw that day at Auschwitz. In fact, Eric came away deeply of the view that everyone once in their life should see Auschwitz for themselves to help ensure such inhumanity can never happen again.

So Kyle my advice is to use your on air suspension to visit Warsaw and Auschwitz – it might just make you a better person for the experience of seeing man’s inhumanity to man at first hand.

And you might come to understand by visiting Warsaw why Magda was so understandably offended by your remarks. Her Dad served in the Polish Resistance and by her account experienced very hard things.

Here is another reason to appreciate what went on in those days. In the week that I was in Warsaw, work was only just underway on a memorial wall to remember the men and women who died in the Warsaw Rising in 1944.

When the war was over, the Soviets who had stood by on the other side of the river and allowed Warsaw to be flattened by the Germans, dominated Poland with harsh Soviet rule.

For his own warped reasons, Stalin regarded the Polish heroes as traitors. It was only after Poland won its freedom with the collapse of the Soviet Union that its national heroes could be honoured with a memorial wall.

Learn from history, Kyle, and maybe you’ll no longer regard concentration camps as funny.

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65 comments

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    • Tim says:

      03:22pm | 09/09/09

      If he did this David,
      would he then be allowed to make jokes about it?
      Some people need to use their own hard won freedoms and not listen to Kyle Sandilands and stop whinging about him.

    • Steve says:

      03:32pm | 09/09/09

      Please any petty arguments stating that “if you don’t like him, don’t listen” or “it was just a joke” or “free speech” should be spared.

      1. 2dayFM do anything for publicity and you are bound to hear about his antics in some form of media. So just “not listening” doesnt help.
      2. Kyle is not smart enough to be able to craft a witty joke using the holocaust a’la Gervais.
      3. Free Speech is true, however ‘‘To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction” I cannot tell my boss to get f*cked without consequence.

    • Matt says:

      03:33pm | 09/09/09

      What a ghastly side-show is the Life of Kyle. The sooner he Jackie-Odious are gone the better.

      Matt

    • annette thornton says:

      03:53pm | 09/09/09

      Get rid of him, he is a waste of space, and could also do with losing a few pounds himself, especially his big head.
      Blah!

    • jonathan says:

      03:54pm | 09/09/09

      Tim:  seems like you’re missing the point.  I think what David is saying is that the experience of visiting Auschwitz would be so profound that even someone as thick-skulled and moronic as Kyle Sandilands would be affected, and perhaps have a road-to-Damascus experience where he will decide to turn his back on his foolish ways and devote his life to helping rather than boring/offending people.  I’ve never visited Auschwitz myself, but have been an amateur scholar of the evil perpetrated in the name of the 3rd reich.  It seems that Kyle has no sense of history or of what his comments really mean: if he did, he either wouldn’t have made them or would have been so ashamed and embarrassed that a true apology would have been forthcoming.  That old chestnut of “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” just doesn’t cut it.

      I for one don’t now and never have listened to Kyle.  But I applaud the decision to take this muppet off the air.

    • Tim says:

      03:57pm | 09/09/09

      So only good holocaust jokes are in Steve?
      Good luck with that.

    • Bec says:

      04:02pm | 09/09/09

      Thank you David. Your post is something that the pathetic teenagers who mindlessly support whatever that moron does need to read - I’m sure so many people defending Kyle have no idea about the significance of the phrase “concentration camp”.  I’m sure they may not realise that the pain from the deaths, violence, torture etc suffered during that time still exists, generations later. My husband’s grandmother was Polish and was forced to work for the Nazis before she was able to escape, pregnant with my father-in-law, desperate to give him a better life. I’ve sat with her while she has cried hysterically telling me about her memories of that time. My own grandfather was kept POW during his time in WWII, and he died not long after he returned from the war - from a heart attack, which was caused by the constant starvation, violence and overwork he was exposed to. So, no, concentrations camps are not something to joke about. World War II is not a great punchline to a cheap line from a moron. It is not PC gone insane - it was one of the worst times in the world’s history and it should not be forgotten.

    • CJ says:

      04:07pm | 09/09/09

      For those who think it’s acceptable for Sandilands to make light of the Holocaust, consider how you might have reacted had he “joked” that Magda S could have lost more weight if it was burnt off her body during the Victorian Bushfires. What face would you have pulled if he’d “joked” that Magda could have lost weight by being blown in half during the Bali bombings? Are these scenarios any different from the notion Magda could have lost weight in a Nazi concentration camp? Had Sandilands “joked” about Black Saturday, I reckon most people would want to lynch him. But unfortunately, and for some bizarre reason I cannot grasp, many people in this country - Sandilands included - consider Jews and the Holocaust fair game for comedic material. It’s a great, great shame.

    • bella says:

      04:11pm | 09/09/09

      Thats not what Steve is saying Tim.

      What Ricky Gervais and those like him do is satirise modern day view points of the holocaust, ie Kate Winslett’s doing a holocaust movie, win an oscar bit (which happened in real life not long after).

      Saying someone should go to a concentration camp so they can like fully not be fat anymore is nothing like gags on Extras, Mitchell and Web Look etc. In fact people like Ricky Gervais do a good job at making fun of unfunny scum like Kyle and thier attitudes.

    • Serious Steve says:

      04:23pm | 09/09/09

      Getting a bit Touchy Tim.

      Only good jokes can use the excuse “its only a joke”. But feel free to read the racism that is so obviously between the lines.

    • Philip Crowley says:

      05:10pm | 09/09/09

      Tim, I’m sorry but there is absolutely no room in our country for detestable racially inspired jokes. You can be racist if you wish, but I’d advise keeping that filth to yourself.

    • Dan says:

      05:27pm | 09/09/09

      Sandilands should have been taken off the air long ago. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, this is about inciting and perpetrating racism. If he’s allowed to come back into air, it will prove that the radio owners care more about making money than ensuring that their talent don’t defame religions and make light of genocide. He’s suspended; may he never work in the media again.

    • Ruth says:

      05:32pm | 09/09/09

      Mel Brooks managed to get a laugh while making a show (The Producers) about the Nazis.

      And also so did Hogan’s Heros, eliciting jokes while representing life in a German WWII prisoner camp.

      I suppose it’s possible to do this, one just has to be tactful and use their brains.

      Kyle is obviously no comic genius.

    • mark says:

      05:32pm | 09/09/09

      why do the media keep referring to this guy as a ‘shock jock’? I imagine this would send a little shiver of pride up his spine, when reality he is an unintelligent, unfunny jockstrap with a lisp
      Testament to the fact that you don’t have to have many positive attributes or talents at all to make big money in the media ; a vacant skull attached to a vile mouth will do just nicely.

    • Zedimus says:

      05:37pm | 09/09/09

      CJ (4:07) - You said it all right there…

      ... but I will add,

      I was once an amateur comic and I remember one guy on stage telling a graphic cancer related joke (No need for more details).
      You could have heard a pin drop after his punch line and the place was packed.

      I thought afterward why he would make a “joke” about something that negatively affects so many people and I came to the conclusion that it could have been funny among a small group of drunken friends that never had any experience with the disease.
      These friends laughed, so the guy though the joke was good.

      To this end David Jones suggestion that Kyle “experience” a concentration camp seems like a good one. 
      The trouble here is we would have to add it to quite a list experiences required to get him up to some kind of average human level.

    • G says:

      07:16pm | 09/09/09

      I am shocked by this article, how dare you sully the memories of all those people with this.

      I abhor the acts that occurred during these times, however tasteless as Kyle’s remarks who are you to deny him the right to freely express them.

      There is a price to freedom of speech, but there is no fundamental ‘right not to be offended’ and nor should there ever be.

    • Matt says:

      07:50pm | 09/09/09

      Clearly Kyle’s action was calculated. With nothing other than his social tin-ear he took a cheap shot and missed the mark in spectacular fashion.

      What on earth would posess anyone to take a low-rent fat joke shot at Magda Szubanski? Much less combine it with a snide reference to the Holocaust?

      Time for Kyle and his vacuous assistant to depart the airwaves I think.

    • Gravit 8 says:

      08:29pm | 09/09/09

      I think ‘‘shock-jock’’ is Kyle’s personal prmotional idea…Proving so often to be nothing more than a heartless, thoughtless, attention seeking, so-called presenter…

    • Julie Coker-Godson says:

      08:51pm | 09/09/09

      @Tim:  NO jokes about the concentration camps are acceptable.  I can’t imagine why you would want to ask such a question.

    • Lyndon says:

      08:51pm | 09/09/09

      Krakow Is closer than Warsaw. If your going to visit austwitz people it’s best to head to krakow and do a tour from there. Very moving and yes I think if sandilands did visit the camps he would never make such a comment again.

    • Cathy says:

      08:54pm | 09/09/09

      How do we know that Kyle is not just a talking puppet for his masters?
      Where do you draw the line for bad jokes? Remember all the jokes about the baby in the microwave and the aborigines with one thong in the 80’s ?
      I find it challenging to know where the truth lies and the spin begins. With freedom of speech comes responsibility and consequences.

    • Paul Palmer says:

      09:13pm | 09/09/09

      I visted Auschwitz in the middle of winter, snow and ice up to my hips, I swore then I would never complain about being cold. Lets hope Kyle right along with that awful period of history never sees the public light of day ever again.

    • Maozze says:

      09:22pm | 09/09/09

      Oh come on - if being limitlessly unfunny and calculatedly offensive was really such a crime, the gaols would be packed.  Forgive the eighties references, but Kevin Bloody Wilson, Rodney Rude and Steady Eddie would be doing life without parole.

      And, while I absolutely and unreservedly acknowledge the Holocaust, let’s remember that concentration camps were a British invention.  Can’t hear any outrage from our South African friends.

      By the way, well done Magda - losing weight is really hard.

    • shane says:

      10:44pm | 09/09/09

      before we get too caught up in the outrage:
      sounds to me like you are talking about Birkenau, the extermination camp a few kilometers away from Auschwitz, the concentration camp.
      Magda, according to Wikipedia, was born in England. 
      And finally, let’s show some respect for the people who died and suffered at the hands of the Nazis by not using their memory to bring down a publicity seeking shock jock.

    • JE says:

      10:49pm | 09/09/09

      David - it was not only Jews and gypsies but also homosexuals, socialists and others who were also condemned to the camps. 

      On another note, Kyle would have a hard time visiting as he’d not be able to stay quiet in a place that truly compels silence.

    • Doug says:

      10:53pm | 09/09/09

      He’ll be back next Monday and a lot of people will be listening for the next on air incident. Gosh, the 14 year old being asked about the sex, the drinking and drugs is just so last season.

      Next….!

    • Fez says:

      10:57pm | 09/09/09

      Maybe he meant ‘boot camp’

    • Ivan says:

      03:18am | 10/09/09

      Sandilands will be back on air again. he’s controversy. That will keep the sod on air and in a well paid position.

    • lofipi says:

      07:48am | 10/09/09

      You have to actively seek out the advertisers and purposefully stop buying their products to get Kyle off the air. No oxygen, no fire. It’s that simple. 2Day-FM/Austereo have already proven themselves to be heartless business thugs interested only in the bottom line by continuing Sandipants’ contract after an on-air child-rape revelation that was all but forced out of an unwilling contestant. If money isn’t the bottom line to them, what is? They don’t give a damn about Sandilands’ popularity and neither would he. They are a step removed from all us outraged folk. They need to be whalloped where it hurts THEM, not us, and that’s the hip pocket. BOYCOTT their ADVERTISERS. I will too.

    • Liz says:

      08:16am | 10/09/09

      Kyle is the new John Laws,just ignore him,stop paying him and he’ll go away.People have always loved to be shocked and be able to show outrage and righteous indignation, he trades on it, just stop listening to his cheap and offensive remarks.

    • Bec says:

      08:42am | 10/09/09

      Shane posted: Magda, according to Wikipedia, was born in England. 

      Magda’s father was a Polish freedom fighter who fought against the Nazi occupation. So whether or not she was born in England, her own personal history is scarred by the Holocaust.

      PS I wouldn’t be using Wikipedia as the ultimate in accurate sources…

    • food for thought says:

      09:33am | 10/09/09

      The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as: “The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place”,
      the term “concentration camp” carries many of the connotations of “extermination camp” and is sometimes used synonymously. A concentration camp, however, is not by definition a death-camp
      Whilst i dont like Kyle, i do feel that he is being publicly flogged when we can each look at ourselves and declare we are without fault then perhaps we can cast a stone

    • Alex says:

      09:41am | 10/09/09

      I am 30 years old and NOT once did we really learn about WW2 in high school to the point where we would have an understanding of the of the horrible things that took place at that time. But lets be realisitic, WW2 is not the only horrible genocide to have taken place. Just look around the world it is still happening today yet we say nothing, except to bag Kyle for making a joke. And lets be honest, how many jokes have been made about Jews at one point or another and does society react in this way…NO!
      And to the author of this story….. why would he need to go to Poland? Just visit outback Australia and speak to the indigeneous australians about what happened to them at the expense of our government .... yet we harp on a “fat” joke by Kyle. Come On GET REAL!

    • Warren says:

      10:07am | 10/09/09

      I think 2Day should make a habit of this and just suspend him for a few days every 3 or 4 weeks.

    • Michael says:

      10:38am | 10/09/09

      Good on you Alex that is a good point. Why are we not talking about what horribble things us human beings are still doing to each other today all over the world .......  no doubt today’s stuff will be an outrage in 50 years or so.  In the big picture Kyle’s comments are only a problem because we make it one.  Again…Get Real !

    • Mark says:

      11:27am | 10/09/09

      Kyle, calling someone fat?

      Pot calling the kettle black…

    • Jarrad says:

      11:40am | 10/09/09

      His remarks are taken out of context. I still cant believe he would even mention it though. What was he thinking!!!

    • Sharon Girdley says:

      12:29pm | 10/09/09

      Send him along with Jackie O - isn’t she giggling during part of his rant about Magda ?

    • Ursula says:

      12:57pm | 10/09/09

      If KS goes back to air (and he will!), it would say far more about his sponsors than about 2DayFM/Austereo or himself.  He is just the ugly face and big mouth of what the radio station and its sponsors are all about: lack of decency.  This guy has shown in recent months what a big man he is by picking on women and children.  First, it was the 14 year old girl who was the victim of rape, then the 4 year old disabled child, and now Magda and the victims of concentration camps. I mean, when one thinks KS cannot sink any lower he does!  If those recent events are not grounds of dismissal by his sponsors, what does it say about the lack of morality of those companies who keep him employed?

    • Michael says:

      12:59pm | 10/09/09

      He’s a human being, they sometimes do really stupid things, sometimes on purpose to destroy themselves, perhaps that’s what’s going on here.

    • Jonno says:

      01:37pm | 10/09/09

      I heard an old lady on Melbourne talkback radio crying over Sandilands’ remarks….she is an Auschwitz survivor. It was very moving.
      However, she hadn’t heard his remarks on Sydney radio….....she had read the front page headlines and report on the day’s newspaper. This deeply upset her.
      Sandilands wasn’t responsible for the upset this poor lady felt…....in fact he’s only responsible for those people he upset whilst they were listening to him. They have the right to be upset and to never listen to his show again.
      The media is more broadly responsible….....they pour the fuel on the fire by giving his comments the oxygen it needs to spread.

    • dan says:

      02:03pm | 10/09/09

      I spent a few weeks in Poland a couple of years ago and visited Auschwitz and Birkenau.  I walked through the gas chambers and the torture rooms.  I stood at Birkenau and looked over the rows upon rows of huts that were once packed with 200 or more people awaiting death.  I walked along the railroad tracks that lead to the Industrial furnaces.  After witnessing such things I can’t imagine how anyone would find it possible to make poor and crass jokes of what happened there and in other places like it.

    • R.E.L. says:

      02:44pm | 10/09/09

      Not only should Kyle read this article, but so should all those who have had the audacity to compare our own refugee detention centres to concentration camps. They’re more like the sorts of sites that we used to stay in on school camp.

      Alex is right that the Holocaust was not the only genocide to take place. So why does it stand out?
      Not because of the identity of its victims, but because of the identity of its perpetrators. It was engineered and carried out by the most educated class of supposedly the most enlightened country in Europe, if not the world. If such a thing were to gd forbid happen today, it would be in Canada or the USA, not Rwanda or Bosnia….that is the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

    • Joe says:

      04:50pm | 10/09/09

      Please try to remember:  “concentration camp” is about an awful lot more than WW2 Nazi Germany.  Many countries have used them (Russia, China, North Korea, etc.) and there are still concentration camps in the world today,  camps that are very efficient in what they do.  If the level of indignation that has been cast at Kyle Sandilands could be redirected into action against the existing evil of these concentration camps it could surely make a noticeable difference.

    • Juan S. Groman says:

      05:59pm | 10/09/09

      Could anyone pass this messaage to Mr. Kyle Sandilands ,

      Kyle,  many members of my family died in the concentration camps. Do you really think that this is a good subject for jokes?
      Thank you for your reply

      J. S. Groman

    • funk says:

      06:40pm | 10/09/09

      HARDEN UP! It’s a historical fact, it happened, it’s over and if you can’t handle it don’t listen to radio, don’t watch tv and don’t read newspapers.
      GET OVER IT!!!

    • Venise says: says:

      10:25pm | 10/09/09

      David: Kyle wouldn’t even understand the significance of Auchwitz, Bergen Bergen, Belsen. His whole psyche is centered on himself, which is a common enough trait with theatricals. He would only think to himself, How dare these people have earned a higher esteem than me when they’re just dead, whereas I’m alive.
      Of course he is gross. However, how many people out there have unquestioningly listen to the man and supported him, in spite of his many distinguishable prat-falls. Does he make these howlers by accident? I don’t think so. Actually I’d never heard of him until the fourteen year girl being questioned about her sex life.
      Had his adoring audience written in to the station early in the piece, expressing their distaste he would have been stopped cold, before the fame bit took over.
      Anyone is only as bad as his/her audience allows them to be. These are the people who should be taken to concentration camps. To wish it on someone as facile and superficial as Kyle Sandilands is a total waste of time. And you, if you are the gentleman whose is the president of the Oz/Jewish association, should know this.

    • DM says:

      11:17pm | 10/09/09

      So Joe, are prisoners in your notion of a “concentration camp” made into soap and lampshades?  Are they marched off, naked, into gas chambers?  Are pregnant prisoners giving birth while their legs are tied together?  Go home you moron.

    • Alan says:

      07:49am | 11/09/09

      The above photo is NOT the gates at Auschwitz!! More likely to be Dachau in Germany.

    • Andrew says:

      08:10am | 11/09/09

      @Tim
      Whether a joke is funny or not depends on the audience. If you make a joke about my mother’s cancer, someone, somewhere may find it funny. Don’t expect me to. Likewise, those who have heard stories of concentration camps from surviving family members are unlikely to appreciate anyone’s humorous insights into what they - and those who did not survive - experienced. If they are horrified and deeply hurt by such attempts at humour, don’t be surprised. People who sympathise with what they went through might also be horrified at such conduct.

    • S.Levy says:

      08:52am | 11/09/09

      Kyle can’t even be used as manure or fertilizer, it would have the opposite effect: all the land around him would be destroyed!

    • ?? says:

      09:31am | 11/09/09

      Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this was a great little piece of PR for 2dayFM.  Given they do anything to get ratings. Don’t worry, the knob be back behind the mike in a couple of weeks time.

    • bruno says:

      10:14am | 11/09/09

      I have nothing against Kyle Sandilands, but I could never comprehend why anyone listened to anything he had to say. He was clearly out of his depth as a judge on Australian idol to the point that I felt embarrassed for him.
      To really show our disapproval, Australians should abandon his lousy show en masse, and boycott all of the products advertised during his section. Maybe someone could register a website to publicise products worth boycotting in this way?
      Meanwhile Kyle, please do take time out and visit Auschwitz. I visited Dachau near Munich as a teenager, and saw a picture of a family being forced into that place. The children were the same age as my own brothers and sisters, and that really shook me up. We really have forgotten what really happened. Come on Kyle, get over yourself and become a real person. You’ll be the better for it.

    • Jozef Goj says:

      11:17am | 11/09/09

      I visited Auschwitz with my Polish parents when I was just 11. Being born in 1947 this was a very short time after it was liberated.
      Like many Poles my parents lost family.
      An Uncle, after who I am named, was shot for deserting the German army after being conscripted at the point of a gun and a mother that spent 4 days aged 16 in a cattle truck , so hungry that she ate stale green bread , to eventually work on a farm in Austria as slave labour.
      My own father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht and after the invasion of France was liberated and volunteered for the Polish Free Army and fought the Germans in Italy till the end of the war.
      Unable to return to Poland he would like many that were forcibly repatriated have been executed by the Russian invaders. Allies!
      Shortly before liberation my father in German uniform had leave to find his sister that just disappeared. Not bombed and killed just disappeared. Told to mind his own business “he would disappear” himself if he continued searching despite him being in uniform. The Red Cross attempts post war never found her and we to this day have no way of knowing what happened to her.

      This maggot should take a trip and talk to survivors.

      And yes it still goes on to this day in concentration camps around the world.
      Concentration camps were first named and used during the Boer War in South Africa by the British to “concentrate” the dutch families so they could not help the Boer army by providing food and shelter.

      Jozef Goj

    • Jozef Goj says:

      11:16am | 11/09/09

      I visited Auschwitz with my Polish parents when I was just 11. Being born in 1947 this was a very short time after it was liberated.
      Like many Poles my parents lost family.
      An Uncle, after who I am named, was shot for deserting the German army after being conscripted at the point of a gun and a mother that spent 4 days aged 16 in a cattle truck , so hungry that she ate stale green bread , to eventually work on a farm in Austria as slave labour.
      My own father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht and after the invasion of France was liberated and volunteered for the Polish Free Army and fought the Germans in Italy till the end of the war.
      Unable to return to Poland he would like many that were forcibly repatriated have been executed by the Russian invaders. Allies!
      Shortly before liberation my father in German uniform had leave to find his sister that just disappeared. Not bombed and killed just disappeared. Told to mind his own business “he would disappear” himself if he continued searching despite him being in uniform. The Red Cross attempts post war never found her and we to this day have no way of knowing what happened to her.

      This maggot should take a trip and talk to survivors.

      And yes it still goes on to this day in concentration camps around the world.
      Concentration camps were first named and used during the Boer War in South Africa by the British to “concentrate” the dutch families so they could not help the Boer army by providing food and shelter.

      Jozef Goj

    • John says:

      11:20am | 11/09/09

      I think some of these points are valid but please get your pictures right. The picture labelled “Work sets you free: the gates to hell at Auschwitz” is incorrect The gates at Auschwitz look very different to this. These are actually the gates to one of the German camps, either Sachnehausen or Dachau. The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign at Auschwitz in Poland was part of an an archway over the main gate to the Stammlager or main camp.  a quick Googe search confirms this.

      I hope Kyle gets the sack but these self serving sloppy articles aren’t much use either. This article is more likely a chance for Jones to brag about his visit to Auschwitz and to let us know how he understands the holocaust because he visited Auschwitz. Only those who experienced concentration or extermination camps can understand. Kyle understands nothing but Jones understands only a little more.

    • Not Amused says:

      11:36am | 11/09/09

      The issue isn’t necessarily this comment (though it was entirely crass, stupid, and clearly mindless). The issue is that Kyle Sandilands does this sort of thing all the time, and when he’s called out on it, he issues an apology that says, basically, “I didn’t intend to offend”. He says highly offensive things and then says he didn’t mean to offend? Come on, Kyle, who are you trying to kid?

      This is just the latest in a very long line of stupid, thoughtless, insensitive, ridiculous, and downright mean comments he’s made. He referred to an Idol contestant with insult “mong” (meaning “mongaloid”, an outdated term for those with Down Syndrome). He went off on a rant about Fiona Connolly (the columnist at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph), calling her “a liar” and “fat” (she was six months pregnant at the time). He referred to a police officer who had given him a speeding ticket as an “arsehole” and and to the Highway Patrol as “scum”. He claimed that reports of the dangers of smoking were falsified and that it’s actually not that harmful to you. These are only a few of his antics.

      The fact is, Kyle Sandilands is neither clever nor funny, he’s just mean. He has no self-censoring and apparently no common sense whatsoever. Until and unless he wakes up to himself and gets over himself, you can expect more of the same from him pretty much in perpetuity.

      And for the record, the “free speech” that we have in Australia is only that which is implied by the virtue of living in a democracy, that is, political free speech. There is no guaranteed right to be a mean-spirited, immature, and perpetually obnoxious, “shock jock”.

    • Bel says:

      12:25pm | 11/09/09

      They say teenagers today have no respect for what has happened in the past to able them to live their lives the way they do today….

      Well with people like Kyle on the airwaves it answers that the question that many older generations ask ‘why?’... the only people standing up for the Discriminative and heartless individual are the younger generation, as they too, do not understand the pain and suffering that was endured during this history changing, traumatic event.

      In my view 2dayFM PR representatives need to understand that it is only a miniority of people that believe that Kyle Sandilands is ‘entertaining’. Whilst the majority see him as a disrespectful individual that only cares about humilitating other to make him feel a little better.

      Furthermore, commenting on someones weight is low. This issue is what causes so many kids today into eating disorders, rehabilitation centres and some time resulting in death. Of all people he should not be one to comment on weightloss, at least Magda took theinitiative to lose weight, what’s his excuse?

    • Daniel Lewis says:

      03:38pm | 11/09/09

      In the context of Sandiland’s comments, the focus on Jewish concentration camps, which should not be diminished, negates other concentration camps and their victims. You don’t need to be Jewish to be offended by what this guy said.

      For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kyle is an antisemite. But boy is he a schmuck!

      Speaking of which, whilst the headline mentions Auschwitz, of which there are many photos, the caption on the image refers to Dachau. I believe however that photo is actually of the gate to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
      See a similar photo at http://www.mindspring.com/~july20/page6.htm

      Weak.

    • SherpaG says:

      03:49pm | 11/09/09

      * sigh *
      The PC Nazis are in danger of sanitising media to the point where it is just plain and simple prograganda.
      Excercise your ratings rights by not listening to Kyle Sandilands. Encourage other to do the same…but for goodness sake braying for his blood is just plain stupid.

      Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

      Stop complaining lest your mind reduce any further to around Kyle’s size.

    • Jay Mann says:

      04:11pm | 11/09/09

      Bel,
      how can it only be a minority that find Kyle ‘entertaining’ given he’s winning the ratings in his time slot? Seems to me it’s the screeching MINORITIES that are trying to DICTATE what is good taste to the sensibly realistic MAJORITY.

      ... and to the rest of those who’s comments show they can’t seem to distinguish between Concentration Camp and Nazi Germany, I suggest you get a clue. His comments had nothing to do with the Holocaust - don’t buy into that propaganda

    • daffy duck says:

      05:40pm | 11/09/09

      Oh how boring!!! Once again this is the perfect opportunity to only remember what happened to the Holocaust!!!... They are not the only people who have suffered or are suffering! Are you not happy with all the ohhh’s and poor things that the world has given you.. We get it! 6 million people were killed for no good reason! If you want to fight injustice today then protest against the largest prison full of innocents in the world PALESTINE!!!! The irony is that it was the jews who suffered back then and it’s the Zionist jews who are murdering innocent women and children today! Thank god not all jews are on the same wavelength as the terrorists of the isralie govt!!!!!!!  Dose this site have the guts to post this comment???

    • Okay, Now I'm Amused says:

      10:33pm | 11/09/09

      daffy duck, you’ve just proved the old adage that multiple explanation points are the sign of an addled mind. This is supposed to be about Kyle Sandilands. Where did Palestine come into it? Has Kyle said something nasty about the Palestinians when we weren’t paying attention?

    • SherpaG says:

      10:52pm | 11/09/09

      Someone said to me today “It’s ok for Kyle to be a shock jock as long as he doesn’t shock people”....ummm…whaaa?

    • West End says:

      01:35pm | 17/09/09

      Daffy Duck, you have stupidly attempted to sidetrack the whole issue.  Firstly, there haven’t been millions of deaths in Palestine/Israel, more like thousands ; we can argue about rights and wrongs but the Palestinians still exist as a nation and their population is growing annually which somehow wouldn’t occur if that was a genocide !

      Back to the point, no one ever said that only Jews were offended. In fact out of 12 millions dead in Hitler’s camps,
      half were Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally disabled etc. So Kyle has actually offended a number of different groups and NO - such comments on a public radio station are not acceptable.

 

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