In Warsaw, the Nazis walled in the Jewish section of the city in 1940 after they occupied Poland:
The Warsaw Ghetto was finally established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated to be about 440,000 people, about 37% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16th that year, building a wall.
And now the US military is doing the much same thing in Baghdad, walling off a section of the city based on the religious and ethnic composition of its inhabitants:
BAGHDAD- A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it “collective punishment” and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council’s approval.
The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.” The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.
But some residents of the neighborhood, which is surrounded by Shiite areas, complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.
“This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”
Just sayin ….
