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Tallinn, 19 October 2003

European summer: the Balkans, Albanian roads, kitten from Ohrid and Auschwitz

Odv
2004-09-15 11:38:46

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be known, but it is estimated to be close to 2 million.

Entering the Auschwitz camp you walk under a sign that says "Arbeit macht frei" (work makes free). A gate which for so many people was the last gate they passed.

A reluctant music band of Jewish musicians would have been forced by the Nazis to play happy tunes to the newcomers as they entered the camp.

In Birkenau the rail line goes directly into the camp, no need to walk the prisoners from the station to the camp. You recognize the place immediately, images from the movie "Schindler's list" come to mind and suddenly you realize more than ever before that it was a real place.

We had joined a guided tour, which turned out to have been a really good idea, the guide did a great job explaining how the camp had worked, what the Nazis did and how the prisoners lived and died in the camps.

A particularly emotional moment is when you enter a gas chamber. You then walk to the next chamber to see the furnaces where the bodies would be burnt.

To make things even worse the Nazis kept everything, even hair. Women's hair was sold to the textile industry. Some of the hair is now on display. You can still see pony tails of some women, cut off, the hair of real people, innocent people, killed as if their life was worthless, their hair sold for a couple of pfennigs.

People were told that they were going to be relocated and were allowed to take 1 suitcase with them. But before boarding the trains to Auschwitz, they were told to write their names on the suitcases. The suitcases would be put on a different wagon and returned to them at arrival. They never got their suitcases back.

In another room some of these suitcases can be seen, the names of their owners still written on them. The contents looted by the Nazis.

Auschwitz was in the part of Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union after the war. Under the resulting Communist rule emphasis was put on the fact that people of many different nationalities had died here. Although this is true, the proportion of Jewish victims was 85 to 90%. The remaining 10 to 15% consisted of Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents and a long list of European nationalities.

These days the proportion of Jewish victims is no longer downplayed in the memorials and the Museum on these sacred grounds.

You cannot visit Auschwitz as you can any other tourist destination. This is a place of pilgrimage, a place that everybody should visit at least once in their life, to face the inescapable facts of our history, European history.

It would be too simple to pass the Holocaust off as merely a German atrocity, while in fact it was the culmination of nearly 2000 years of discrimination, hatred and jealousy directed against Jews, by governments, religious groups and people in general in ALL European countries.

But it also exposes an evil side to mankind. Ponder how people can be driven to do to other people, that what they did here! How could any individual participate in something like this?

We are still the same species, so is this evil still in us? I fear it is, it is called hatred and we are still seeing it these days, as the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s or the terrorist acts of September 11th have shown us.

Auschwitz will leave you thinking about mankind, about Europe and its history and about the nature of human beings. We must learn something from Auschwitz. All of us.

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