That name probably doesn’t ring any bells for you I would guess. Well perhaps the German name of the scene of the most extensive experiment in genocide in the history of humankind does…. Oswiecim is the actual Polish name of Auschwitz. That is where I spent this morning exploring, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau as well as the Jewish ghettos here in Krakow (the setting of Schindler’s List). It was certainly an interesting, yet horrifying, morning.
I began at Auschwitz and was surprised at the location near the town, in a nice bit of trees, and the like. Really not at all what I expected and at first not nearly as impactful as the Killing Fields outside Phnom Pehn in Cambodia, the other site of mass genocide I have visited. Then, after wondering through the barraks, the death wall, etc. I arrived at the crematorium which was also the site of the first test of using Cyclon B as a gas chamber agent for mass murder. All the sudden I was just about sick… 850 Poles and Soviet POWs were murdered in cold blood and then burned to ash in the very room I stood in.
Then it was on to Birkenau (Auschwitz II). All the sudden I actually felt the very of essence of the ex-Nazi concentration and death camp all over and inside. Out at Birkenau, it is stark and barren with nothing but a few ruined buildings and the standing chimneys left where the hundreds and hundreds of wooden barraks once stood. Much more what I expected, it was surreal. The ruined buildings were the remains of the gas chambers and crematriums used to mass murder somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million innocent people.
The train tracks run right through the middle of Birkenau and the gas chamber was not 10 yards of the track. A train of Nazi prisoner would arrive here carrying a thousand or more people. 15% were selected who looked like strong laborers for work and the others were told they had to be bathed before being introduced into the barraks. All of these people were moved into a confined room with fake shower heads on the wall to keep chaos from breaking. The door was locked, the Cyclon B was turned on, and 15 minutes later the chamber was a crypt of thousands of dead bodies. All because they weren’t within the chosen race. Often there weren’t even people picked to labor, just one entire train load of people offloaded directly into a gas chamber and terminated. What the HELL is wrong with mankind? Why would we ever feel this is an appropriate course of action?
In certain circles back home it has become fashionable to put swastica patches on your clothing, and the next person I see with one I am seriously gonna tell how sick they are. Hitler and his ilk were clearly evil to the very most core of the word. And while the Nazis were in a class of their own, what I think is worse is it seems to me we didn’t even hardly learn anything from it as a human race. The same kind of genocide went on since then in Cambodia, Somolia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and even as we speak in Zimbabwe and Darfur. I may just be in a rant at the minute but what ON EARTH is the point of having a group like the United Nations if these kinds of things (the very most agregious of crimes ever known to man) are still aloud to happen? What else could they possibly have to attend to that is more important? I don’t get something. We will one day live in a world where borders, cultures, religions, ethnicity, etc. is not a means for hatrid… hope it comes soon.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:08 am
I remember having some of those same feelings during a world history class my first time around college. Didn’t know a thing about WWII until college!! Here is my thought for the day - “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”. (Alvin Toffler) Just think how many of our leaders and future generations are being taught by people who teach because they can have summers off!