Those who don't study are bound to repeat it.
I've heard that expression hundreds of times, but this time I couldn't stop thinking of it. There we were, diplomats and human rights activists discussing ethnic tolerance, when just three hours south stood a monument to the worst impulses in human nature. Auschwitz. I had heard about it, even studied it, but as a grandchild of the Word War II generation it just didn't resonate in me the way it did with my parents or grandparents. That would soon change.
I hopped a train to Krakow and was met by a driver who took me to Auschwitz. I quickly learned that Auschwitz is, in many ways, a misnomer. "Auschwitz" is the German pronunciation of a Polish town where the Nazis established three concentration camps. I had the opportunity to visit two: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, better known as Birkenau. The third, of somewhat lesser significance, was attached to a chemical plant, the inmates providing the plant's workforce.
Auschwitz I is the one I had seen in pictures. It was built before the war as an army barracks, and I was surprised at its relatively small size. The camp began as a detention camp for Polish political prisoners and was only later expanded to include Jews, Gypsies and others.
To be sure, Auschwitz I was a horror, but in a strange way it was a comforting horror. For the most part, the punishments inflicted there had already chronicled in human history. Prisoners were worked hard, food and clothing were sparse, and solitary confinement was a way of life. Indeed, I was hardly surprised to come across the gallows. If not for the laboratory of Dr. Mengele and one relatively small gas chamber, Auschwitz I could almost have been written off by history as just another terrible prison.
I realize that it is strange, if not absolutely bizarre, to speak of such a horror as being, in some sense, a relief. But by that I mean that Auschwitz I was, in many ways, a confirmation of the known ability of human evil. One could walk among the buildings and think "yes, these things have been done before." We already knew that humans throughout history were capable of such terror. Even the horrible irony of the sign above the camp's gate -- "work makes you free" -- was a testament to the cruel regimes that have dotted our period on the earth.
Still, the displays at Auschwitz I brought the terror home in very personal ways -- the clothing made of human hair, some of it with traces of the gas used to kill its victims; the suitcases with the victims' names stenciled on the side, signs of their false belief that they would be released in time; the clothing of children stripped off before they were killed; the photographs of those liberated, many subjected to crippling experiments.
When I say that Auschwitz I was comforting, I probably really mean that it was confirming -- that as horrific as it was, it confirmed what we already knew about the human potential for evil. Birkenau, however, was entirely different.
It is difficult to explain the feel of Birkenau. On its face, it could pass for a UN refugee camp. Less than half of the original buildings still stand, and these are the former barracks of its victims. In fact, at first glance, Birkenau might even appear benign.
But as I looked beneath its layers, an utter and depraved filth poured forth. This camp, this horror, was literally a factory of death. The mechanization of Birkenau shocks the conscience in a way that I have never encountered before. Like many Americans, especially American Jews, I had heard tales of the concentration camps, but they had never settled in like viewing the remains.
It would be too easy to say that the Nazis were animals, and in fact, animal would be too kind and non-judgmental a label. I cannot even think of a word that properly describes the utter depravity of these Nazis. They constructed an efficient, almost business-like mechanical system for exterminating a whole line of people. They had a goal, they had a plan, and they were carrying it out -- and very well until the Soviets liberated the camps. It is almost as if the Nazis thought of themselves as ranchers preparing cattle for market. But their goal was extermination -- complete annihilation of a people.
The railroad tracks still run through Birkenau. Trains would pour in, and the victims would be let out before a line of SS. Able-bodied men and women were picked out and placed to side. They did not realize it at the time, but they were the lucky. They were being culled out to work. Their jobs were excruciating, usually with little nourishment, but at least they had a chance to survive.
The vast remainder, including almost all of the children, were destined for immediate death. The SS instructed them to leave their belongings on the platform and then marched them to the end of the platform. There the victims were told that they had to shower before entering the camp. These, of course, were the gas chambers, where all were killed immediately.
Once the gas dissipated, dentists and others were sent in to extract gold from the bodies and teeth of the dead. Then, the mass of the dead were moved to an adjoining room where they were fed into the crematoria.
The Nazis had four crematoria at Birkenau, none than 200 yards from the train platform. It was a death science: off the train, out of one's clothes, into the gas chambers, off with the gold and into the oven.
It was here that the horror overcame me. Although the Nazis had tried to destroy of the gas chambers and crematoria, two still remain, although crumbled. The other two have been replaced with a monument to the dead, nearly 4 million at Birkenau alone. As I stood there in the cold November wind, I couldn't keep my mind off the picture of those innocent victims being herded to their deaths. It was like visiting a crime scene and seeing the chalked outlines of 4 million bodies.
I knelt down in front of the monument and started to cry -- for the dead, for the horror of it all, and for the human race in general. I cannot understand how such evil impregnates one to do what the Nazis did there. I still get shivers as I write this. Nothing I have ever experienced was like Birkenau. I doubt I could ever have been prepared for it.
I know that I will never understand how the human spirit can become so utterly depraved. But I did come away from this experience knowing that I, and indeed the rest of us, must learn from Birkenau. Especially now, with the rise of ethnic violence in Yugoslavia, Russia and even Germany. Everyone should have to come to see Birkenau. Not necessarily for political reasons, not to chastise the Serbs or to warn the Germans, but rather to confront the possibility of evil in all of us. It is not so much that we must ensure that a holocaust never happens again, but rather that we do not allow ourselves to become such wretched beasts as the Nazis and their death machine.
For those of us who believe in human rights, the first step begins with ourselves.
- Jon Gould, Chicago, USA
[If you enjoyed this article interested you, I highly reccomend that you go and see the movie Schindler's List, directed by Stephen Spielberg. If you have already seen it, go and see it again. - Ian]
