Sunday, August 9, 2015

Auschwitz-Birkenau

It is difficult to approach this experience because you cannot really use the term "I enjoyed it" and yet I found it an extremely interesting tour. The guide spoke excellent English and was very knowledgeable about all aspects of the camp.

I would say that if you are unfamiliar with all aspects of the Holocaust then this could be a very traumatic experience and as it was I told myself when I went to bed "don't think about any of it" which I managed to do so I slept well.

Nevertheless the tour was a profound experience.  My purpose at this writing is not to describe what I saw but rather what I felt.  Every time we entered an area I thought about what the prisoners were experiencing and while I stood there dripping sweat until I thought I was going to melt into the ground I kept reminding myself "this is nothing compared to what these people went through, you can go through 2 hours of this".  It is hard to ever again feel self pity when you realize that some of the people actually survived the horror and lived for years after wards and one can only wonder that they remained to live sane, useful and maybe even happy lives.

I cannot and never will understand how such depravity as existed under the Nazi regime is possible.  I don't know how much fear-mongering was needed to make the people complicit in these crimes, even by just ignoring them.  But in the words of Santayana "if we do not learn and remember out mistakes from history, we are destined to repeat them". (paraphrase)

Never again.

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