Kaitlynn O'Reilly: Love?

I was looking through my rain-washed notes this morning, and wondered how it was possible to internalize more at Birkenau.  If I sit quietly by myself I can retrace each of my steps at Auschwitz. 

Time passes differently here, not only because of the time difference from the US, but because it feels like a different time, in a whole other surreal world.

Different people and different cultures have varying definitions of evil.   I found that I like this one, “Being evil means not doing justice to the responsibility to which we are called.  To hurt love.  Not to share the bread.  Evil is a form of dialogue, it occurs between humans; it is a betrayal of trust, breach of a promise” (Manfred Deselaers, “God and Evil: An Anthropological-Philosophical Reflection”).  Evil occurred between the Nazis and their victims during the Holocaust.  It seems easier to think of actions of the prisoners, which hurt their fellow prisoners, as acts which hurt love because they hurt the love between brothers.  Thinking of the Nazis actions it seems the Nazis have no love to hurt at all, that there could not possibly be any love involved with these evil people.  However, there is always God’s love.  There is love between neighbors and Jews and Christians once lived side by side in Poland.  The Nazis hurt the love that connects us all.  We all feel lingering pains of the Holocaust because the Nazis attacked the thing which universally connects us all.  Thankfully, the love between Christians and Jews is progressively being repaired and strengthened. 

There was love in the camps, familial love, love between friends, romantic love.  Of course families tried to stay together.  A person’s motivation to continue living could be to live for the other person, not for themselves.  Holocaust survivor Mr. Krasnokucki said that while his mother was alive they were living for each other, and this as well as hope to see his father and brothers again is what kept them going.

Friends will share food or try to get each other better jobs or clothing.  Friendships in the concentration camps are put to ultimate tests.  If a Nazi threatens your friend, do you protect your friend or forsake them?  There are instances of both.  Mr. Krasnokucki had a pact with two friends.  They tried their best to always stick together.  Mr. Krasnokucki is an electrician and he used this knowledge and his ability to speak German, to lie and secure his friends jobs as electricians as well.  A job working inside as an electrician would save a life, or at least prolong it, when working outside doing hard labor certainly meant death.  In the documentary The Last Days a survivor spoke of his experience on a death march.  He also had a pact with two other friends, that if one of them was threatened by a Nazi, they would all stand or fall together.  However, his excuse being that they were only 16 year old boys, when a Nazi was going to shoot one boy who had gangrene they abandoned their pact and only the one boy was shot. 

Romantic love also existed in the camps.  The love story of Edward Galinski and Mala Zimetbaum is famous and published as a comic book, “Episodes from Auschwitz Love in the Shadow of Death.”  The two met in “Canada” which was the warehouse where the belongings of deported Jews were sorted.  Canada was the only place where men and women worked together, and the job was coveted for its working conditions and food rations.  The lovers decided to escape together.  Their escape was well planned but their success was short lived.  Unfortunately Edward was caught as an SS man with no papers and the two were captured.  They were imprisoned in Block 11 and in cells 20 and 23 Edward scratched drawings of Mala’s face.  After being punished in Block 11 they had one last secret meeting together before their execution.  It is for their execution, more than their love that they are known.  When Mala was taken to the gallows she fought back against the Nazis until overpowered and taken half alive to the crematorium.  When Edward was taken to the gallows he shouted out the beginning of the Polish national anthem, a prisoner gave the order for “hats off” and all the prisoners present complied.  The resistance exhibited by the two gave them renown at Auschwitz. 

 

Block 11 stays in my mind in a defining way for Auschwitz I.  While walking through the block with my classmates my camera died.  We were going down the uneven stairs on our way to the Death Wall when I had a small personal experience separate from our tour.  My cellphone wallpaper is a photo of my boyfriend, actually one he had sent me recently.  When I looked down to unlock my phone for the camera I saw him looking up at me.  I think I may have sighed or at least exhaled, and I thought, “This isn’t a place for him.”  I didn’t want to look.  Reflecting on this moment later I thought I had experienced a faint idea of the way a prisoner would have felt seeing someone they love in such a place.