Superheroes- By James Smith

Superheroes

                Today we visited the biggest unmarked graveyard of all time. Auschwitz- Birkenau nicknamed the death factory. Over 900,000 people were killed at this camp alone. What bothers me the most though is the amount of survivors that had put up tremendous feats of strength for so long and not have that “honor” for beating all of the persecutions the Nazis had put on the Jewish people.

                It’s simply not fair for people like Maximilian Kolby who have the ability to go two weeks with no food at all and desperate hunger. It’s simply a remarkable feat of strength, and a superhero like quality. These people made it through years of work and labor and to the ones who came so close, the ones who earned it, and were killed or burned because they remarkably survived the gas chambers or the standing cells I feel the worst for because there superheroes. Because of these remarkable feats these so called “Jewish super heroes” were given the ultimate penalty for being incredibly strong and extraordinary.  

                Today I got to meet one of those superheroes who made it. Who got to walk away and share his story and explain his incredible feats of strength. Mr. Krasnokucki. A survivor of some of the German death camps, his story is undoubtedly captivating, and gave me a much better understanding of those heroic qualities.

                Unfortunately to survive at Auschwitz or any concentration camp, its survival of the fittest. You have to be smart and a lot of these men were that, whether it was “street smart” or pure sophistication. It was how you used that education in a productive way against the Nazi’s which kept you alive. In Mr. Krasnocki’s story he used his smarts for not only the safety of himself, which was to use his trade in electricity, and being a technician for the camp, but also to save his friends in secretly getting them jobs in electricity to.

                Well it turns out that when he was there for his friends, his friends returned the favor. Mr. Krasnocki explained that on his way to being transferred to another camp he was so worn down at one point that we could not walk. But his friends were there for him and so courageous that they helped him walk off the cattle car.

                We all know the stories of the rations given to the Jewish people. The tiny amount of soup dished out, the one piece of bread and the small cup of coffee. But I think until I actually saw the depiction of what was rationed made me realize how impossible that would be to live off of. That’s why I think of these people as super heroes. To go put in a full days of work in nothing but hard labor off of only those small amounts of nutrition is inconceivable. But what is even more outstanding is how these people could do that routine, over and over and over again.

                The last heroic quality I think some of these people have is the absence of fear. When I made my title yesterday “the absence of presence” is that there was unquestionably that emptiness everywhere. But there was also an absence of fear in these camps. Brave enough men and woman who had enough guts to go out and stand up for those who were weaker, whether it was giving there ration of food to someone who needed it more, or someone who was put to death, but someone stood up in their place.

                Everything that I have described and everything that I've learned about or listened to sound like super heroes to me. Real life super heroes. People who aren't afraid to look evil in the eye. That’s who these people are to me. - James Smith 2018