Auschwitz, September 23rd

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing —Edmund Burke

There are times we do things because they are important, not because they are pleasant. There are things we as individuals and a society must remember, teach about and never allow to leave the conscience of humanity.

The Holocaust, and atrocities committed during WWII are not enjoyable to think about. The horrors will make the most stoic mourn. The potential depth of human depravity is shocking to our sterilized perception of the world; but just because it is upsetting and admittedly unpleasant does not mean it is something we can afford to gloss over, or forget.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. –George Santayana

That quote was emblazoned in marble and drew the immediate attention of all who walked by at the entrance to Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous concentration camp of the Nazis in WWII.

Dan steadied me, as I grasped his arm and set my gaze ahead. I was not looking forward to this trip. Most of our sightseeing thus far had been fun, interesting, exciting—pleasant. We both knew this leg of our journey would be none of those things. This was something we were doing because it was important, because those who died here deserved to be remembered; not because either of us wanted to subject ourselves to the unpleasant reality of the past. So much of our society is uncontaminated by inconvenient and disagreeable truth. We easily gloss over the appalling aspects of history, because it’s so much nicer to focus on victories and achievements of man, instead of the potential evils that lie in the depths of human nature.

World War 2 always held a special interest for Dan, as his grandfather fought on the battle fields of Brest, France, near Normandy. However, it was not the WWII buff that brought me to Auschwitz that warm day in September, but the Christian man who sincerely believed it to be his duty and privilege to memorialize and honor those who died at the concentration camp and extermination camp in Auschwitz.

I was not eager to go, but I understood the importance of seeing the site, and sharing what my heart took in there. I can’t give you a blow by blow description of our visit, chronicling it doesn’t seem to do justice to the hallowed ground Dan & I tread.

1,500,000 people, mainly Jews, were callously murdered on the acres of countryside in southern Poland that is now one of the largest memorials to both humanity and evil. I cannot fathom how I could document just our trip, so instead, please allow me to impart to you the most significant and lasting impressions I came away with, and tell you truth, as disgusting as it is, was, and will remain.

Auschwitz, originally built as a concentration camp for polish political prisoners would become, in the short 5 years it was active, the largest extermination camp enacting what the Nazis would term “the final solution”.

The main entrance to Auschwitz One (there are 3 main camps including Birkenau the extermination camp and approximately 5 smaller satellite camps encompassed in Auschwitz) is bannered with the notorious and ironic sign Arbeit Macht Frei, or Work Brings Freedom. The Iron Gate stands tall, but seems too frail to have engendered the terror it undoubtedly sparked in its inmates. Shadows of horror, which holds horror still. Rusted barbed wire fences two stories high that were once electrified stand at the end of the “kill zone”. Guard towers loom with ominous meaning. The entrance on this sunny day visibly darkens the mood of all those who pass through.

As our guide softly speaks, her words thickly accented and her features distinctly polish, she explains the origins of this camp, and succinctly states the reality of what happened here. One and a half million people; mostly Jews, but also political prisoners, Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities, and anyone else the Nazis felt were not worthy of life were held against their will, forced to work for the cause which persecuted them, and irradiated at the whim of a psychotic dictator and his minions.

Nadia tells us of the public executions held on the square on which we stand. She explains that 141 people escaped from Auschwitz, in the entire time the camps existed. That is 0.000094%. Not good odds. Worse still, when you consider that for every escaped prisoner 20 people in the camp were executed through starvation as a form of enforcing "group responsibility". Imagine knowing that if you were able to escape you would be sentencing 20 people to death, quite a deterrent.

As we walked from building to building, each holding its own disgusting history we were greeted with pictures, taken by the Nazis themselves of starving people, women and children walking off to the gas chambers, children—twins usually—emaciated and in pain having experiments being performed on them and other atrocities so unspeakable it overwhelms.

We approach a cell block, on the outside like every other brick cell block, only this one is presented as a museum of artifacts from the prisoners. Prepared from our visit to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. we step over the threshold thinking we knew what to expect.

Even now, two full weeks later my stomach churns with dread as my mind relives the experience.

Efficiency. I can think of no other accurate description. The Nazis were evilly efficient.

Room by room we walk through what they had saved from their victims, for their profit. Every item taken from the prisoners, catalogued, separated, given to the officers or German citizens for their use. Disgusting, but nothing compared to the room filled with over 10 tons of human hair, shaved from prisoners and those executed (posthumously). 10 tons of hair, from men, women and children; saved and exported to factories to make cloth, some of which was exhibited.

Efficient. Utterly disgusting.

All of that hair put into perspective the mentality of the Nazis. They had so dehumanized their enemy that they were no longer able to see any of the victims, even the children, as anything but a nuisance that was unworthy of life and to be used for the most profit possible. The men working at Auschwitz had families, wives and children who they must have loved. Mothers and fathers they would help in their infirmity. Nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents—people they loved, respected, cherished. Yet, they were able to look at other human beings, their neighbors, and see nothing but cattle and a problem that they had the final solution to, extermination.

Auschwitz One has many other horrors (I can’t find many words expressive enough to accurately describe what was there and what had happened there), including their "death row" Block 11 and the wall were untold hundreds, perhaps more, were stripped, forced to kneel down, and shot through the back of the head. It held the cells where people were packed in, standing up, and starved to death, without even the ability to lie down in their distress. It holds the cell where a Catholic priest, knowing a man had a family on the outside volunteered to take this man’s place in forced starvation as the punishment for an escaped prisoner and sacrificed himself (this priest has since been sainted). Story after story our guide told us, of nobility in the face of depravity. Of despicable acts, and the victims who suffered no sin other than their heritage.

Leaving Auschwitz One we passed by commandant, Ruldolf Höss’s home, just outside the prison’s gate where the supervisor and director of the camp lived with his wife and 5 children—a stone’s throw from the only remaining gas chamber (the other 5 gas chambers and crematorium were bombed by the Nazis in hopes of covering their crimes at the end of the war). Again my mind reeled at the thought of a man and his family living comfortably and happily in the midst of mass murder.

We also passed by the gallows that the very same commandant was hanged from after he was found, two years after the war ended. Fittingly dying behind the gas chambers where he ordered thousands of others to death.

A bus took us the 3 kilometers to a second Auschwitz camp, Birkenau, the extermination camp. Walking in, Dan & I both were struck dumb by the sheer size of the camp. Cliché though it may sound, as far as the eye could see in every direction barrack after barrack stood. The men’s camp sectioned off from the infirmary camp, followed by the women’s camp, the children’s camp (complete with a kindergarten), the gypsy camp, and so on. A sign informs us that the bombed out building we are standing in front of is one of the five gas chambers and crematoriums contained in this mindboggling huge camp.

A picturesque wooded area with benches beckons us and as we sit a moment to rest our tired feet (we easily covered 5 miles in Auschwitz Birkenau alone) we read the sign explaining the area we relax in. This lovely wooded area, with a pond across the path, is where the Jews coming in on the cattle cars would wait, told that they were next in line to receive a shower and hot bowl of soup before being assigned their barracks. In reality they were waiting there for the gas chambers to empty, sometimes for over 12 hours, because there were too many Jews to exterminate at once. The gas chambers and crematorium was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers they were taking on as each cattle car arrived.

The pond has a sign in front of it, as well as tombstones, each in a different language. This pond marks the final resting place for untold thousands of people. It was one of the places the crematorium just behind the grove of trees dumped the ashes.

Each building, each ruin, every stone and pathway is a monument to the intricate, exacting, methodical and efficient wickedness of the Nazi régime.

When we reach the main memorial, behind the camp, fittingly at the end of the railroad track that brought so many to their doom my eyes are misted with tears, but the sheer enormity of it does not allow me to grieve in proportion. One death I can mourn. One thousand deaths, I can be shocked and horrified by. One and a half million murders, committed on the very soil on which I stand, I can’t even fathom. Six million Jews alone, murdered in 8 short years, how can I begin to wrap my mind around that?

The memorial is simple, but eloquent in its simplicity. Each tablet written in a different language, explaining the meaning of the site has small pebbles and rocks deliberately placed around the writing—none obscuring, but a mark of respect and a symbol of a citizen of that nation remembering and honoring what the memorial stands for. Dan & I walk around, hand in hand, silent and in reflection of the vastness, the potential—not for good, but for evil. Resolved to remember, to memorialize, to honor those who deserve honor and to recognize that this is human history, which must not be forgotten.

The Holocaust is not the only act of genocide in history, even in recent history. Rwanda was during both of our lifetimes, and Darfur is going on even now. Many other incidents deserve to be remembered, and those going on now must be acted on. It is easy to focus on the genocide of people who share our heritage. However, a human life is a human life, and the genocide in Africa is just as worthy of mourning and intervening in. Lord help us when we stand accountable before Him, and we say “but it didn’t happen in our area!”

There is a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller which I think speaks volumes.

First They Came...
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Never before have I been able to so passionately groan, "Thy Kingdom Come!" Seeing Auschwitz, and dwelling, just for a few hours on the recent history of mankind, and their absolute failure to prevent such an occurrence gives me such a yearning for God's intervention, and Jesus' triumphant return when He comes with a sword to right the wrongs, bring justice, and peace to this sinful earth. God, wise and just, merciful and loving will wipe away every tear and give every human the opportunity to love Him and become His son or daughter. Lord, thy Kingdom cannot come soon enough and thank you for being able to see the potential—this time for good—that is in mankind, despite our wicked and evil actions.

Glory be to God! He can make all things new, even this little part of Poland so marked by evil.