Pure Evil

Auschwitz I- Auschwitz II-Birkenau

This post is supposed to be my reaction to Auschwitz Concentration camp and Birkenau Extermination Camp. While I will do my best to give my ‘reaction’ it is impossible to describe these places using words.

One of only 4 people to ever exscape Auschwitz, now 93, returning for the first time in 50 years.

Auschwitz is about 45 min- 1 hour outside of the beautiful Polish city Krakow. Our bus was confined to the road by vast fields of green and country side that is so peaceful that it is hard to imagine the life there was some 70 years ago. Arriving at Auschwitz feels like arriving at any American museum; tons of cars fill the parking area and everyone runs to the rest room right after stepping off the bus. It isn’t until you make it passed the entrance building that you realize that this museum is like no other museum on the planet for this museum housed millions of humans for the express purpose of slave labor and murder. To see a half dozen strands of high voltage electrified barbed wire used to keep humans captive is an indescribable sight in itself. Barrack style houses with 1000+ people crammed into a space that seemed suitable for no more than 200. Living conditions at Auschwitz were much better than that at Birkenau, one due to the fact that at least at Auschwitz you had a small amount of hope.  Several rooms were filled with hair (only 2 tons of the 7 tons were on display), eye glasses, combs, prosthetics, and luggage. Pure evil that those in Poland have still not fully forgave the German nation; with good reason to me. Of the millions murdered, the vast majority were Polish Jews. The Nazi’s used Birkenau as their answer to the ‘Jewish Question’; slave labor for some, total extermination for all. Hundreds of chimneys dot the landscape; each one representing where thousands of people where crammed into pole barn like structures designed to house around 50 horses.  One person in our group said they felt they were trampling on someone’s grave and in truth, we were. Nazi’s spread the ashes from the millions of bodies across the land as fertilizer, as paving, and to help gain traction for vehicles in icy weather.

End of the rail at Birkenau.

Seeing these places changes you or at least did me. Something small inside your soul breaks when you realize not only what people can do to others but, with more sadness, what people will stand aside and let others do. Mass murder happens in our world; we live among monsters even today. We must stand up for righteousness or history will again repeat.  

“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
― Yehuda Bauer H,olocaust Expert, born in Prague