Reflections on My Trip to Auschwitz Last Week
So much has been written about the holocaust that to add further words about so seemingly incomprehensible an event would seem simply self indulgent. Yet, after visiting the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland last week, I feel compelled to say something to the darkness of what I saw there.
Jewish families who are about to be exterimated at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
I already knew the facts - I’ve read books and articles on every facet of the holocaust, I’ve sought out the most penetrating documentaries and searched for some semblance of understanding that could help me to comprehend how such wicked deeds could ever have occurred in the special brand of horror that so-called “civilized” Europe came to resemble from the period of 1933 to 1945. But, missing all this time from my search for understanding, was the connecting strand that would permit me to link the hideousness of the Nazi crimes to the names and faces of the people who endured them until they could endure no more.
This is precisely the connection I found last week in the Polish countryside when I visited the place that I truly consider to be the site of the greatest evil to have ever crept out from the depths of the human experience thus far. Divided into two different camps - Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau - the original Auschwitz was initially established as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners but eventually evolved (or devolved) into the epicentre of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. At its height, the original Auschwitz camp was the prison for up to 20,000 inmates, including men, women and children. It was the site in which many of the infamous Nazi medical “experiments” - which amounted to nothing less than sadist, and often psycho-sexual, torture - were carried out, often on children and the disabled. When this camp had reached capacity and yet had failed to sate the genocidal lust of the Nazi’s, the decision was made to open up a second and far larger camp on the other side of the town of Auschwitz.
Located just 3 kilometres away from the original camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau has come to represent the ultimate horror and articulation of the holocaust and of the German people’s descent (over the course of preceding decades) into a racist state of barbaric and cruel psychosis. It was in Auschwitz-Birkenau where Hitler’s “Final Solution” reached fever point and the custom-built gas-chambers and corresponding ovens beckoned in an age of inescapable darkness under which the human race will forever labour. By 1944 the bloodbath had reached such levels of depravity that the capacity of the four sizeable gas-chambers couldn’t even come close to meeting the number of victims that were arriving daily at the camp (primarily from Eastern Europe but also Holland, Belgium, France and any other places the Nazi’s could get their hands on the Jews). Trainloads of victims were literally arriving and being funnelled into the gas-chambers as the corpses of the previous train-load were still being dragged from the scene. Still more were simply being murdered by mass-shootings and their bodies burnt in open air. Hundreds of thousands more - those deemed fit enough to work - toiled daily in the "labour camp" section of Birkenau, until weakened sufficiently to be judged ready to die by the Nazis.
Fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons, brothers and uncles.
Mothers and daughters, mothers and babies and infants, grandmothers and aunts, friends and relatives and students and teachers.
All vanished in a puff of smoke. Murdered in broad daylight and without remorse or pity. And all for having the indecency to simply having been born.
At Auschwitz today you can still see the mounds of shoes, suitcases and spectacles that remain testament to but a fraction of the number of victims that fell into the clutches of true and terrible evil. Each possession tells its own tale but nothing like that as is told in unforgettable tones by the photographs of the victims that line hall after hall in Auschwitz. No matter how many you stop to study and attempt to imagine the worries and fears of, you can never move beyond the mere surface of the sea of humanity that was drained away from the world in Auschwitz.
Up to 2 million people - Jews, Poles, political prisoners, the disabled, gypsies and other minorities - were murdered there.
One day they were living. Walking through life in familiar ways: family and work; joy and heartache; gradual elemental blurring of life and death - a natural passage through the world. Suddenly that world came crashing down around them. Persecution and national betrayal by nation after nation condemned the Jews and their fellow-victims to that most haunting of deaths - the death that has no purpose and no place in the changing of the seasons and the contours of a recognisable life.
One day they were simply taken away. Sent to ghettos on the edge of town or simply shipped into the jaws of murder without delay.
German men and women (and not necessarily Nazis it must be noted) - along with willing, and also terrified in some instances, assistance from fascist sympathisers in such countries as Hungary and Croatia - organised this daylight theft of the simplicity of life. Ordinary Germans, raised on a diet of hate and racist-delusion, saw fit to crush the life from six million - and, of course, millions more civilians and combatants throughout the course of the war - for the erroneous cause of racial purification. What sets the German’s barbarity above all other genocides and wars in this instance must undoubtedly be the mechanical viciousness with which they pursued their objectives: besides all the summary executions, the medical and sadistic torture, the starvation en masse, the destruction of families, the murder of the weakest and those least able to fight back, the hatred and the fear - besides that poisonous legacy that were the actual daily truths of Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the greatest madness of them all is the pure and unfiltered filth of the Nazi desire to literally exterminate those who were, as they saw it with all sincerity, “unfit to live”.
And, as much as I have read and as much as I have tried to understand what went on in the holocaust, what I find now, having visited Auschwitz (and also Therienstadt Concentration Camp in the Czech Republic last year), is that the more I learn, the further I get from understanding any of this. The madness is certainly confusing and frightening, yes. And yes, I wrestle with the very tip of the iceberg of frozen-hearted cruelty with which the Nazi’s executed their nonsensical and deranged “revenge” upon the Jews. But there is one thing that troubles me above all else about the holocaust and which is the characteristic that I believe we should always reserve the greatest fear for - the lack of mercy demonstrated by the perpetrators of the holocaust.
I walked through the rooms of the admirable and incredibly moving museum display in Auschwitz and was coping well enough (which wasn’t too well at all, to tell you the truth - and I would merely be the norm for anyone visiting the site I am sure) until I came across the saddest room of all - the room which housed hundreds of pictures of the children who were murdered at Auschwitz. These pictures showed the children in the prime of their real lives, before the Nazi's destroyed all.
Now, I have never been one to harp on about how we should “think of the children” when it comes to political talking-points. I always feel that such truisms take care of themselves amongst rational and decent people and that to harp constantly on such phrases is disingenuous and insincere at best (as can be recognised by the quasi-fascist American Christian Right's over-use of the phrase).
However, I felt very different at Auschwitz indeed. I went slowly through that room of photographs, taking the times to try to look at every single photo in that room - little girls and boys, teenagers and infants: all full of smiles and hope in their eyes. All living their lives unaware of the darkness that was ranging against them simply by virtue of their birth. And the terrible and simply unimaginable truth is that each and every one of the children whose photograph features in that room was brought to Auschwitz and murdered. Simply wiped off the face of the earth without a second glance. Most were sent immediately to the gas-chamber, made to suffer for sometimes up to 30 minutes, with their arms tight around their mother or father or brother or sister until it was all over. Others - those deemed strong enough to work - lasted for a few months at a time (the average was three) but all shown in that room perished.
Two sisters who were murdered in Auschwitz:
And the Nazi’s never had mercy. Not one frightened pair of eyes from a child ever saved a life in Auschwitz. No terrified cry for a mother ever seemed able to loosen the grip of nationalist psychosis under which the Nazi’s laboured so willingly (indeed, why would it when the dichotomy is so violent and vast?). In the last room I visited in the original Auschwitz camp, there were photos on the wall of just a sample of the kids that were murdered in the camp. Those photos - as opposed to the previous set of pre-war photos I refer to above - were actually taken by the Nazi’s. They used to take photos of all the arriving prisoners (up until 1944 when the lust for racist murder was so great that the Nazis did away with all administrative effects and simply murdered all new arrivals instantly, photos be damned). All of the photos show vulnerable and scared children but a couple of them in particular will stay with me: pictures of two different young girls in which the look of fear and despair in their eyes is simply unforgettable. Both had such a haunting look that it would surely touch the heart of even the cruellest amongst us.
Photos of some of the kids murdered in Auschwitz (as taken by Nazi's):
And yet they died too. I cannot understand or even begin to come to terms with that. All I know is that I was there, where they suffered and I cannot forget their faces and their eyes. And I cannot believe that someone couldn’t find room in their heart enough to offer them mercy and comfort and love.
I will never understand such hatred and such madness. I only hope I will recognise it wherever it raises its cyclical head - beyond left and right - and that I will fight it however I can. I don’t know that I can trust myself to meet such obligations however. Who among us know how they would react in times of crisis and when faced with such cruelty?
What I do know though is that those eyes of the children who were murdered in Auschwitz and which stare out at the world now still await the world’s answer and the world's action. They are the children of Auschwitz and Rwanda and Iraq and beyond. And they still need our mercy.
The refrain is forever "never again". Yet it goes on, in the world and inside us all.
That is the most frightening truth I discovered in Auschwitz - what people are capable of and what we will and will not do to prevent the worst in us from surfacing and triumphing.
The battle is in us and it rages on. The battle to connect with one another and to be merciful and good and humane.
Jewish families who are about to be exterimated at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
I already knew the facts - I’ve read books and articles on every facet of the holocaust, I’ve sought out the most penetrating documentaries and searched for some semblance of understanding that could help me to comprehend how such wicked deeds could ever have occurred in the special brand of horror that so-called “civilized” Europe came to resemble from the period of 1933 to 1945. But, missing all this time from my search for understanding, was the connecting strand that would permit me to link the hideousness of the Nazi crimes to the names and faces of the people who endured them until they could endure no more.
This is precisely the connection I found last week in the Polish countryside when I visited the place that I truly consider to be the site of the greatest evil to have ever crept out from the depths of the human experience thus far. Divided into two different camps - Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau - the original Auschwitz was initially established as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners but eventually evolved (or devolved) into the epicentre of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. At its height, the original Auschwitz camp was the prison for up to 20,000 inmates, including men, women and children. It was the site in which many of the infamous Nazi medical “experiments” - which amounted to nothing less than sadist, and often psycho-sexual, torture - were carried out, often on children and the disabled. When this camp had reached capacity and yet had failed to sate the genocidal lust of the Nazi’s, the decision was made to open up a second and far larger camp on the other side of the town of Auschwitz.
Located just 3 kilometres away from the original camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau has come to represent the ultimate horror and articulation of the holocaust and of the German people’s descent (over the course of preceding decades) into a racist state of barbaric and cruel psychosis. It was in Auschwitz-Birkenau where Hitler’s “Final Solution” reached fever point and the custom-built gas-chambers and corresponding ovens beckoned in an age of inescapable darkness under which the human race will forever labour. By 1944 the bloodbath had reached such levels of depravity that the capacity of the four sizeable gas-chambers couldn’t even come close to meeting the number of victims that were arriving daily at the camp (primarily from Eastern Europe but also Holland, Belgium, France and any other places the Nazi’s could get their hands on the Jews). Trainloads of victims were literally arriving and being funnelled into the gas-chambers as the corpses of the previous train-load were still being dragged from the scene. Still more were simply being murdered by mass-shootings and their bodies burnt in open air. Hundreds of thousands more - those deemed fit enough to work - toiled daily in the "labour camp" section of Birkenau, until weakened sufficiently to be judged ready to die by the Nazis.
Fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons, brothers and uncles.
Mothers and daughters, mothers and babies and infants, grandmothers and aunts, friends and relatives and students and teachers.
All vanished in a puff of smoke. Murdered in broad daylight and without remorse or pity. And all for having the indecency to simply having been born.
At Auschwitz today you can still see the mounds of shoes, suitcases and spectacles that remain testament to but a fraction of the number of victims that fell into the clutches of true and terrible evil. Each possession tells its own tale but nothing like that as is told in unforgettable tones by the photographs of the victims that line hall after hall in Auschwitz. No matter how many you stop to study and attempt to imagine the worries and fears of, you can never move beyond the mere surface of the sea of humanity that was drained away from the world in Auschwitz.
Up to 2 million people - Jews, Poles, political prisoners, the disabled, gypsies and other minorities - were murdered there.
One day they were living. Walking through life in familiar ways: family and work; joy and heartache; gradual elemental blurring of life and death - a natural passage through the world. Suddenly that world came crashing down around them. Persecution and national betrayal by nation after nation condemned the Jews and their fellow-victims to that most haunting of deaths - the death that has no purpose and no place in the changing of the seasons and the contours of a recognisable life.
One day they were simply taken away. Sent to ghettos on the edge of town or simply shipped into the jaws of murder without delay.
German men and women (and not necessarily Nazis it must be noted) - along with willing, and also terrified in some instances, assistance from fascist sympathisers in such countries as Hungary and Croatia - organised this daylight theft of the simplicity of life. Ordinary Germans, raised on a diet of hate and racist-delusion, saw fit to crush the life from six million - and, of course, millions more civilians and combatants throughout the course of the war - for the erroneous cause of racial purification. What sets the German’s barbarity above all other genocides and wars in this instance must undoubtedly be the mechanical viciousness with which they pursued their objectives: besides all the summary executions, the medical and sadistic torture, the starvation en masse, the destruction of families, the murder of the weakest and those least able to fight back, the hatred and the fear - besides that poisonous legacy that were the actual daily truths of Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the greatest madness of them all is the pure and unfiltered filth of the Nazi desire to literally exterminate those who were, as they saw it with all sincerity, “unfit to live”.
And, as much as I have read and as much as I have tried to understand what went on in the holocaust, what I find now, having visited Auschwitz (and also Therienstadt Concentration Camp in the Czech Republic last year), is that the more I learn, the further I get from understanding any of this. The madness is certainly confusing and frightening, yes. And yes, I wrestle with the very tip of the iceberg of frozen-hearted cruelty with which the Nazi’s executed their nonsensical and deranged “revenge” upon the Jews. But there is one thing that troubles me above all else about the holocaust and which is the characteristic that I believe we should always reserve the greatest fear for - the lack of mercy demonstrated by the perpetrators of the holocaust.
I walked through the rooms of the admirable and incredibly moving museum display in Auschwitz and was coping well enough (which wasn’t too well at all, to tell you the truth - and I would merely be the norm for anyone visiting the site I am sure) until I came across the saddest room of all - the room which housed hundreds of pictures of the children who were murdered at Auschwitz. These pictures showed the children in the prime of their real lives, before the Nazi's destroyed all.
Now, I have never been one to harp on about how we should “think of the children” when it comes to political talking-points. I always feel that such truisms take care of themselves amongst rational and decent people and that to harp constantly on such phrases is disingenuous and insincere at best (as can be recognised by the quasi-fascist American Christian Right's over-use of the phrase).
However, I felt very different at Auschwitz indeed. I went slowly through that room of photographs, taking the times to try to look at every single photo in that room - little girls and boys, teenagers and infants: all full of smiles and hope in their eyes. All living their lives unaware of the darkness that was ranging against them simply by virtue of their birth. And the terrible and simply unimaginable truth is that each and every one of the children whose photograph features in that room was brought to Auschwitz and murdered. Simply wiped off the face of the earth without a second glance. Most were sent immediately to the gas-chamber, made to suffer for sometimes up to 30 minutes, with their arms tight around their mother or father or brother or sister until it was all over. Others - those deemed strong enough to work - lasted for a few months at a time (the average was three) but all shown in that room perished.
Two sisters who were murdered in Auschwitz:
And the Nazi’s never had mercy. Not one frightened pair of eyes from a child ever saved a life in Auschwitz. No terrified cry for a mother ever seemed able to loosen the grip of nationalist psychosis under which the Nazi’s laboured so willingly (indeed, why would it when the dichotomy is so violent and vast?). In the last room I visited in the original Auschwitz camp, there were photos on the wall of just a sample of the kids that were murdered in the camp. Those photos - as opposed to the previous set of pre-war photos I refer to above - were actually taken by the Nazi’s. They used to take photos of all the arriving prisoners (up until 1944 when the lust for racist murder was so great that the Nazis did away with all administrative effects and simply murdered all new arrivals instantly, photos be damned). All of the photos show vulnerable and scared children but a couple of them in particular will stay with me: pictures of two different young girls in which the look of fear and despair in their eyes is simply unforgettable. Both had such a haunting look that it would surely touch the heart of even the cruellest amongst us.
Photos of some of the kids murdered in Auschwitz (as taken by Nazi's):
And yet they died too. I cannot understand or even begin to come to terms with that. All I know is that I was there, where they suffered and I cannot forget their faces and their eyes. And I cannot believe that someone couldn’t find room in their heart enough to offer them mercy and comfort and love.
I will never understand such hatred and such madness. I only hope I will recognise it wherever it raises its cyclical head - beyond left and right - and that I will fight it however I can. I don’t know that I can trust myself to meet such obligations however. Who among us know how they would react in times of crisis and when faced with such cruelty?
What I do know though is that those eyes of the children who were murdered in Auschwitz and which stare out at the world now still await the world’s answer and the world's action. They are the children of Auschwitz and Rwanda and Iraq and beyond. And they still need our mercy.
The refrain is forever "never again". Yet it goes on, in the world and inside us all.
That is the most frightening truth I discovered in Auschwitz - what people are capable of and what we will and will not do to prevent the worst in us from surfacing and triumphing.
The battle is in us and it rages on. The battle to connect with one another and to be merciful and good and humane.