The Worst of Humanity

The entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau, sometimes called the “Gate of Death”.

Upon hearing the title, “the Gate of Death” I immediately thought of hell. However, now that I have been to Auschwitz Birkenau, I can see why it is given this nickname: it is not very different from the horrors of hell described in afterlife.

After joyfully writing my last blog post about the best of humanity, I feel it is only fair to force myself to let go of the core optimist in me, and face the truths I witnessed today. The last two days at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz Birkenau showed me the worst of humanity. Put simply, the worst of humanity is genocide. In class we learned that this term was created after the Shoah, as it is the killing of many people from one specific group. In the case of the Shoah, it was the intentional, planned out, mass murder of the Jewish race by Hitler and the Nazis. But what brings one to this point?

The term “mass murder” already haunts me, after I sat in lockdown for four hours in 2012 as 20 children and six adults from my community were gunned down at a local elementary school. This mass murder left me with nightmares, worries, and profound thoughts about humanity. Here in Oświęcim, I have no choice but to accept the fact that the grounds I walk on, sleep on, eat on, and pray on are the graveyard to six million. Not 26, but 6 million. How does one come to terms with this? The only thing that comes to mind is that the perpetrators in both situations were the worst of humanity. The way they treated their victims is so horrific, I now believe, because it began as hate but turned to indifference.

This indifference is exemplified in the lack of dignity they gave their victims. This was directly spoken of in The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat and his wife Lena. Lena describes the awful treatment from the guards. “Half an hour later those selected to die would be marched slowly to Barrack 25. An hour before they were all fighting for a piece of bread, for an assignment to a Kommando…the Kapo would be very impatient: why did such carrion move so slowly? And would urge them on with kicks and abuse.” She describes the pain they faced in the moments before their death, being yelled at, pushed around, and made to be inhuman.
What made me recognize the worst in humanity was truly the photos. The land may not always tell the entire story, but the photos, especially those taken by Wilhelm Brasse, hurt the most. Seeing the children who had experiments done on them, and then later hearing of them during the documentary Portrecista displayed the indifference clearly. Brasse vividly describes the horrors he witnessed first hand. One example was when he watched Dr. Mengele pull out a woman’s uterus and inject a disease into it.

The sights, sounds, and stories of Auschwitz are emotional and scary. But, I need to leave here in advocate. I need to leave here and give voice to the 6 million voiceless whose stories can’t be told by their family, friends, or communities, because they crossed through the “Gate of Death” as well. So, instead of running from it, I need to remember it and always seek to learn, empathize/understand, and speak up. I will not be a bystander now that I have seen the worst of humanity.