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Page A—4 Shelton-Mason Journal Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021
32.33%“ dOrtWSQN
EDITOR’S
CHAIR
Imagine a crisp, cool fall
morning, much like this
one.
Blue skies mingle with a
patchwork of clouds, a slight
breeze stirs the air.
In the streets, families
gather.
It’s the first week of Sep-
tember 1942. The Lodz Ghet-
to, created after the German
invasion of Poland, is home
to more than 200,000 Polish
Jews.
In the morning stillness,
dread fills the air.
Jewish parents are or-
dered to turn over all chil-
dren under 10 and all adults
over 65. V
Within a week, more
than 15,000 children will
have been taken from their
families.
Some were killed in mobile
gas chambers, others were
shot.
Many of the children and
the elderly were taken to
the Chelmno extermina-
tion camp, where they were
stripped of their clothing
before being told they were
being taken to showers to be
bathed and disinfected.
Instead, they were herded
into mobile vans and gassed
to death.
More than 150,000 people
were murdered at Chelmno.
At Auschwitz, the larg—
est and most notorious of the
Nazi death camps, the mur-
der process had a factory-like
precision. ,
Jews were stripped of their
clothes and sent into one of
four chambers to be gassed.
Two of the chambers were
filled with 1,000 'people at a
time. After they were killed
with a gas called Zyklon B,
the bodies were removed.
Women’s hair was cut off,
jewelry and dental work was
Station-momentum lloumal
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Mailing address: PO. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584
‘ Telephone: 360-426-4412
Website: ‘www.masoncounty.com
removed before the bodies
were moved to crematoriums
to be burned.
Bodies turned to ash, float-
ing from chimneys. Bones
that wouldn’t burn were
ground to powder.
More than a million lives
were erased at Auschwitz.
Now flash forward to Oct.
12, 2021.
The place is a twice-
monthly meeting of the Shel-
ton School District school
board.
A discussion regarding
Gov. Jay Inslee’s requirement
that state employees, includ-
ing K—12 school teachers and
staff, ensues.
Sandy Tarzwell, repre-
senting Shelton’s District No.
1, speaks:
“Some people say it (the
vaccination mandate) is for
the public good. I don’t nec-
essarily believe that public
good should triumph individ-
ual rights. The Germans used
‘public good’ to exterminate
six million Jews.”
In that sentence, Tarzwell
compared people taking a
l
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Owned and published by
for Mason County addresses and
$75 per year ($55 for six months)
outside of Mason County.
proven, life-saving vaccine to
the horrors of the Holocaust.
It’s hard to imagine some-
one being more willfully
offensive.
And let’s be clear, she
knew what she was saying.
Tarzwell has been on the
Shelton School District board
since 2014. She’s educated
and has run in political cir—
cles long enough to know that
what she said was explosive
and how it would be received.
Furthermore, it wasn’t just
an off-hand comment made
in private. Tarzwell said it in
the middle of a public school
board meeting.
Tarzwell’s comments were
a heinous, bankrupt attempt
to score cheap partisan politi-
cal points at the expense of
the well-being of children at-
tending Shelton schools.
Many others disagree with
iInslee’s mandate and have
done so without tying it to
one of the darkest times in
history.
No one is holding a gun to
anyone’s head, forcing them
to inject the vaccine or be
Matt Baide, Reporter
Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter
Shelton-Mason County Journal, Inc.
Gordon Weeks, Reporter
Kirk Ericson, Columnist/ Proofreader
a;
Children line up in to Lo'dz Ghetto for deportation to the Chetmno
death camp in September 1942. Public domain photo
executed.
As of today, the Pfizer/
BioNTech vaccine is fiilly ap-
proved by the Food and Drug \
Administration. It'is not, as
many of those who choose
not to receive it say, an ex-
perimental vaccine. It’s gone
through the same rigorous
safety protocols as hundreds
of thousands of other medi-
cines have.
More importantly, it’s still
a choice to receive it or not.
Making a vaccine a condition
of employment for certain
jobs is not forcing anyone to
take it.
It certainly doesn’t remote
ly compare to the Holocaust,
as Sandy Tarzwell did in her
detestable comments.
It’s possible that like too
many others, Tarzwell has
spent too much time reading
social media posts, exposing
her to people that repeat this
kind of nonsense daily to the
point where it doesn’t feel
weird or inappropriate to her.
Sadly, we know too many
people who are mired in the
‘sludge of misinformation that
Niel Challstrom
Composing room:
Kim Fowler, Advertising Design
marinates online. I
Regardless of her reasons,
as a member of the very
group charged with ensur-
ing the education, health and
safety of Shelton’s students,
Tarzwell’s comments should
disqualify her from the school
board going forward. ,
As an educational deci-
sion-maker, Tarzwell has
abdicated her duty to the
students and families she
serves. She is unfit to lead.
Tarzwell owes our com-
munity a sincere, unscripted
apology.
She also owes an expla-
nation for her comments.
As such, I invite Tarzwell
to respond, to me and to her
community in this space next
week. It will run unedited.
Anything less allows her
shameful comments to stain
our schools and the reputa-
tion’of our community.
I Justin Johnson is the
editor of the SheltOn-Mason
County Journal. He can be
reached by email at justin@
masoncounty.c0m.
Creative Director: Llo'yd Mullen
All regular editorial, advertising '
and legal deadlines are 5 pm. the
Monday prior to publication.
To submit a letter to the editor,
email editor@masoncounty.com.
Linda Frizzell, Advertising Design