Monday, March 11, 2013

Stephanie Principal: Concentration Camp


Our visit to Auschwitz I was very moving. We had a tour guide who explains what the buildings were used for. We saw several buildings where the Jews and many others were kept prisoners.  They hated Jews, Poles and Gypsies. There were two steps before deportation. There were identification and isolation. Some prisoners had more privilege than others. Prisoners such as Kappo were mostly German criminals. All Kappo are not sadistic like the SS. We saw the standing wall where four prisoners would work but they would die because of the lack of air and asphyxiation. The hardest part of the trip was seeing the death wall, the gas chamber. It is so cruel to shoot someone facing a wall and you would just stand there and watch that person lying on the ground. Or again, move them into a room with cans that contain Cyclone B used for killing in the Gas chambers. The gas Chambers were very efficient, they killed 2000 Jews in 20 minutes I mean you are not just committing a crime or crimes; there are literally no words for such things. How did they feel when a prisoner would volunteer to die, to be shot in the Death wall?
            Furthermore I saw pictures where the Jews were so skinny due to starvation and they would use them for experiments, inject them with phenol which go straight to the heart and kill them. How could you ask a mother to live her children because being seen with them was an instant death? When I entered the camp the first thing I said was first of all this is huge. This thing was not plan overnight; it was well thought way before Hitler even knew he was being elected.
            When I saw the hair, I said to myself those are not real, they’re like displays and such things. When the guide said that they were real, I felt sick to my stomach. The amount of hair that I saw was just too much!! And it is not even half of what they shaved off. They were treated as if they weren’t human, Their prayer shawls were taken away as if torturing them physically was not enough but they had to do it morally too. The SS officers were told that the Jews were not human and it was easier to kill them. I feel that even though they knew it was evil, the fact that they believe that they weren’t human helped them being even more evil.    
            But, where is God in all that cruelty? He is supposed to know what will happen even before we make it happen. God Is supposed to be omniscient and omnipresent and that his vengeance takes time. It takes way too much time. It did not have to take the lives of millions of people in order to finally be noticed.

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