What are you suppose to feel the first
time you walk though the gates of the largest Holocaust concentration camp?
Sadness? Repulsed? Scared? Anxious? Fearful? Worried? Uncomfortable? Perplexed?
“Arbeit Macht Frei” meaning “Work Sets You Free”
To be honest, I didn’t know how I
should feel. On a gloomy day in March of
2017, I walked through the very same gates that ‘welcomed’ the millions of
innocent victims to their own personal hell.
I entered a place where, those who survived the harsh transportation
conditions, were separated from their loved ones, stripped of their personal
identities, mocked for their physical features or religious beliefs, required
to participate in hard labor and forced to live inhumanely, that is if they weren’t
killed immediately upon arrival. So if
you asked me “How one is suppose to feel walking into a concentration camp?” I
wouldn’t know what to say, because everyone is different and has a unique
background, so two people may respond very differently. If you were to ask me, “How did you feel
walking through the gates of Auschwitz?” I would say numb.
Auschwitz I Bunkers
For most of the day, I found myself
taking the educational approach to Auschwitz I.
From briefly learning about the Holocaust in school, to watching a few
documentaries in my free time, to now standing in the place where these atrocities
occurred, I was so eager to learn everything and anything. I asked all sorts of questions to our tour
guide Bart, but the one thing I was super focused on was the facts and statistics
relating to Auschwitz. Every new statistic
he shared or question he answered, I quickly regurgitated into my cell phone. I was so concerned about missing or misinterpreting
the information, that I was primarily focused on properly recording the data. However, the one thing I failed to do was: process
the information Bart was actually sharing with me.
After visiting the disinfecting
chambers, starvation cells, hanging sites, public execution sites, prison
cells, prisoner’s bunkers and the Death Wall, we were given free time to
explore Building 27. This building was
home to the exhibition of “Suffering and Struggle of Jews”, which focused on
Jewish life before the Second World War commenced. Since we had time to explore this exhibit at
our own pace and I wanted to soak in as much information as I could, I found
myself towards the back of our group.
I wandered into a dark room that
had pictures of people with their names below projected on the walls. Shortly after pre-war video footage began
playing on all four walls. Within a
minute I was watching beautiful videos of people from all over Europe go about
their every day lives within their communities.
After watching a clip of a happy, well dressed elderly couple dance and share
a kiss, I began to cry.
For the first time in Auschwitz, the numbness
fled and it everything began to feel real. The facts and statistics Bart shared with me
finally became a reality, because the people shown in the videos were once
ordinary people, just like you and me.
They had families, significant others, children, jobs, went to the
beach, shopped in local markets, ate ice cream, learned how to ride bikes and
so on. However, within a few years,
these ordinary people would be
deprived of all of that.
I began to realize, the people
shown in the videos could’ve very well stood in the same bunker I was now
standing in, or walked through the very same gate I did earlier that day. They could’ve been one of the thousands that
died in transportation. They could’ve
been part of the 75% of people that were killed immediately when they arrived
at Auschwitz. The children in the videos
could’ve been one of the 240,000 children that died in Auschwitz. Of the 80,000 shoes on display in the museum,
I wondered if any belong to the people in the video.
Granted there were less than 100
people shown in the videos, I tried to multiply that amount to match all of
those who were affected by the Soah. I
deeply thought about how these horrific events could’ve occurred and remembered
an article published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about
hateful rhetoric at a white nationalist conference. The article stated, “The Holocaust did not
begin with killing; it began with words”. (Museum Condemns White Nationalist
Conference Rhetoric) I later connected that to Martin Luther’s ‘The Jews and
Their Lies” where he describes Jewish people as ‘stupid fools’. He goes on to say, “They stand as a
terrifying example of God’s wrath” and later prays “we all can be rid of the
unbearable, devilish burden on the Jews”. (Luther). I began to understand that public speakers,
like Luther, were able to persuade their audiences to whole heartily believe their
falsified words, which intensified the hatred of minority groups and lead to
the creation of a hell-type place, such as Auschwitz.
At the end of the day, the Soah shouldn’t
be just about the factual numbers, because those who were victims were people. They had faces, stories and unique experiences,
which should be remembered and honored by all.
WORK CITED
Luther, Martin. The Jews and Their
Lies. York, SC: Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. Print.
"Museum Condemns White
Nationalist Conference Rhetoric." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 21 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.
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