Monday, August 23, 2010

Auschwitz: Upon Further Reflection

After some time to reflect more on the Auschwitz experience and also time to talk to the others on the trip, I keep coming back to two different quotes. The first is by Edmund Burke and is one of my favorite all time quotes: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." The second is a quote that is engraved right next to the exit of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, it is attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller and goes like this: "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up." These two quotes just fit the emotions of today perfectly. We have always had good men throughout history, and we have also always had evil men. The question is which is going to triumph in our time? If you are a Christian you know that in the end the Lord wins and ultimately will defeat evil but that does not mean that evil will not have victories along the way. The facts of history show us many times and places where the forces of evil have triumphed over the forces of good. The mass extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and others by Nazi Germany is definitely a time where for a while the forces of evil triumphed.
The two camps at Auschwitz that we visited are a gripping reminder of the fact that there are times when evil triumphs for a period. The first camp at Auschwitz has the sign above the gate that was a cruel joke by the Germans that said basically that "Work brings your Freedom." There were many people who upon arriving at the camp truly did believe that upon entering the camp and working for a while they would receive their freedom. I really wonder how many hours or minutes it took for them to come to the realization that they were not going to become free at this camp. Surrounding the camp was two barbed wire fences separated by a small road. Each of these fences were severely electrified and many folks chose to fling themselves into the fence and be electrocuted rather than face the horrors of the camps on a daily basis.
The deep hatred that was displayed by the Germans towards the Jews and others is overwhelming visible when you visit these two camps. They were both designed for one thing and one thing only, the extermination of human life. The camp at Birkenau is a huge facility and every square inch of that camp was designed to degrade the human life to the point where it was acceptable for those guards to kill the residents of the camp. When you stand in the barracks and you see where these human beings were given 5 seconds at two separate times during the day to do their bodily function, it will blow your mind the inhumane condition that this must have been. When you see these things it makes you wonder why more people were not standing up for these people at the time. I understand that if people had stood up to the Nazi regime they too would find themselves in these camps, but look at the work of folks such as Schindler and his work in the city of Krakow to keep Jews from going to the death camps and you wonder why there weren't more that did the same thing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer sums up silence in the face of evil very succinctly: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
I had a huge internal struggle while walking around the two camps with one part saying we need to tear this place down because of what it stood for but then there was another part of me that said we need to keep this place as a reminder of the atrocities that occurred. We must keep these places because if we demolish them they can so easily be written out of our history books within a generation. Then today I see a story in the news that there are some schools in the UK that are dropping the teaching of the Holocaust in their history because it might offend Muslims (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-445979/Teachers-drop-Holocaust-avoid-offending-Muslims.html). This makes my heart hurt because it means it is already starting to happen. How can we as humans sit back and allow this to be taken out of history because it might offend someone. Yeah it isnt exactly the brightest time period in the history of the world but if we do not learn from our history then we are doomed to repeat it. We have seen time and time again that when we do not learn from our mistakes in the past that we will make those mistakes again, there are many many examples of this throughout history. Please stand guard so that we NEVER forget the atrocities of the past whether that be the Holocaust, 9/11, the killing fields of Cambodia, or those committed by dictators such as Pol Pot and General Mao. It is our duty to remember and pass on to the next generation so that our children do not repeat our mistakes.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Today we visited Auschwitz. This was one thing we all agreed that we wanted to do when we got over here to Poland on this trip. Having seen pictures and having been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. I sort of knew the gravity of what we were going to experience, but it was so much more than I had imagined. To actually see the sign over the gate that says "Work makes one free" and to know that many of those that passed through the gates believed that upon entering hit me really hard. These many men, women and children who came to this facility all believed that they were coming here to this camp to start a new life. Walking through the gate you are then in the camp. The fence that surrounds the camp once you are inside is a very intimidating barb wire fence with a narrow road and then another barb wire fence. As if the barb wire was not intimidating enough, during the time the camp was operational the fence was heavily electrified. Many of the prisoners of the camp chose to throw themselves onto the fence and be electrocuted instead of continuing to live in the conditions that they were placed. When I heard this it brought to mind the people who on 9/11 jumped out of the World Trade Center just to escape the horrors of what was happening. We were then taken through several of the different buildings that had been converted to really tell the complete story of the size and scope of the operation that was the "Final Solution." We were shown maps that showed the various feeder camps that then fed people to the Auschwitz complex, we were shown what would happen to the prisoners when they arrived at the camp in the train cars, we were shown the photographs that were taken of the prisoners when they first arrived at the camp, we were shown the belongings that were taken from them, we were shown pictures of the atrocities that were performed there including some pictures of the children that were experimented on by Dr Mengele. All of these things weighed on me so heavily it was almost too much to bear at a couple places along the tour. We were shown the "execution wall" were thousands of men and women were sentenced to death by the Gestapo. The Nazi's even blocked the windows of the window next to the execution wall so that the prisoners in that building wouldn't know what was happening outside but I imagine that they knew very well what was happening. After seeing the execution wall we were shown the jail cells that some prisoners were placed in. They ranged from a pretty standard cell, to the inhumane standing cell where 4 people were placed in a very very very small room where they could do nothing but stand. We were also shown the room where the Gestapo decided the fate of thousands of the prisoners. After seeing the cells we were then taken to the outskirts of the camps and shown that within several hundred meters of each other you had the house where the Commandant and his family lived and the crematorium where so many men, women, and children were killed. We were shown the chamber where as many as 2000 people were crammed into and then gassed. Then right on the other side of the wall to the gas chamber is where the furnaces were for the crematorium. That was the end of the first part of the tour. Then it was on to Birkenau. When we arrived at Birkenau you have the famous image of the train tracks leading right up to the gate of the camp. Upon entering the camp the thing that struck me was the sheer size of this one. It was a massive facility, a massive facility whose sole purpose was the torture and killing of people. We were shown the wooden barracks that the prisoners were housed in. We were shown the small wooden beds that they were crammed 5 people to a single bunk. We were shown the facilities where the people were given 5 seconds twice a day to perform bodily functions. We were shown the ramp where the people were offloaded from the train cars and their fate decided. The two choices being instant death in the crematoriums or a slow and agonizing death in the work camp. The last stop on the tour was to see the blown up crematoriums and then the memorial that was built on the location. There really are no words that I can say that can convey the feelings of walking around these two camps and knowing that millions of people were put to death in this place. The facts are overwhelming. There was a huge part of me that was saying we need to destroy this place because of the horrible history of it, but then at the same time the rest of me was saying that we really do need to preserve the place so that it can be a testament to everyone for future generations to the atrocities that man is capable of doing. These places do need to stand as monuments because otherwise they could so easily be written out of the history books. Please never forget and stand guard that we not make the same mistakes again in the future that would allow for this kind of atrocity to happen again.