Hopeless

A quote by Simon Peereboom about listening to the media throughout WWII.

A picture of a Hungarian woman before the Shoah next to a picture of her after the liberation.

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again” -Anne Frank.

Reading that is quite uplifting, until one remembers that Anne Frank was captured alongside her family, sent to multiple camps, eventually died at Bergen-Belsen. Did she lose hope? Since her writings halted on August 1st, 1944, we will never know. But Frank’s diary depicts a very joyful girl despite the hopeless end to her life. This stuck out to me today as we returned to Auschwitz I. I recognized a reoccurring theme of hopelessness today.

But, this is not a foreign idea, as we read through The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat and noticed this constant loss of faith in the future. In the first chapter of Donat’s story, he describes life in a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. He speaks about the gradual changes that turned his every day life to misery. From the German soldiers robbing Jews without any repercussions, to their eventual beating and killing of people, these people participated in Donat’s eventual loss of hope. Donat’s story begins with the loss of hope by a loss of reputation. Early on, propaganda began to kill the reputation of the Jewish people. “Polish-Jewish relations deteriorated…the wartime sharing of experience had brought Poles and Jews closer together…but the idyl was short-lived. Poisonous Nazi propaganda soon reawakened native anti-Semitism.” (pp. 11). This exact quote struck me today in Block 21 of Auschwitz on the third floor. This area is a memorial dedicated to those who were killed during the Shoah, specifically from the Netherlands. An entire section of the area was dedicated to Nazi propaganda, which is a large reason they were so successful. These soldiers were able to recruit more non-Jews to join the SS and the non-Jewish citizens to remain bystanders, since they were fed lies. Reading these advertisements, posted publicly throughout the Netherlands and (in Donat’s case) Poland after German occupation, caused me to lose hope in people, especially those in power who used their media presence to spread false accusations.

Later in the day, I found myself again losing hope as I walked through Block 18 on the third floor. This section is a memorial to the Hungarians lost in the Shoah. Throughout the floor, there is no music, only a heartbeat playing on repeat. A section that struck me was from the time frame of 1944-1945, There were dozens of pictures of corpses of Hungarians that had starved to death in Auschwitz Birkenau and pictures of Hungarian women shortly after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. The skinny, sick bodies made me hopeless. I imagined the perpetrators and lost hope in humanity, most especially the lack of empathy throughout this time. How could they not stand up for those starving people? How could they eat their meals knowing that they were going to spend their days next to hungry people? I recall Donat facing the same thoughts in the Polish ghettos during The Holocaust Kingdom. “Even a crust of bread that went to sustain life was dearly bought with Jewish blood.” (pp. 31). Our author begins to lose hope in the perpetrators, who grew harsher and harsher each day.

A third moment of hopelessness came today during our lecture. We reviewed “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah”. It was written in 1998 by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Although it was a step forward for the Catholic faith for addressing Judaism in a document, it turns into an apologetic for Catholics. An apologetic is a defense, specifically used to defend religion. In this case, the writers attempt to defend Christian participation in the Shoah; “many did, but others did not”(pp. 10). Being that Catholicism is the largest religion, the word “many” is a poor word choice because it makes it seem as though a majority (millions) helped. But, we know factually this is not true. Reading this brought me full circle to this morning, reading the propaganda and losing hope. This exaggeration by the writers, though not full propaganda, ruined the clean intention of defending the dignity of the Jewish people, and instead tries to make Christians look good.

I have hope, however, that through our trip to Poland this week, as well as the use of these blogs and social media, we can bring hope to preventing something like this from happening again. We can spread the truth and advocate for populations that do not have a voice, with the click of a button. As Dr. Procario-Foley said moments ago, “what is on the internet, is forever”, so let’s take that challenge and use it for good.