A Visit To The Grave Of Humanity |
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Philip Topham has recently returned from Poland Poland is a beautiful country and its people are friendly and hospitable. I recently had the opportunity to stay in the Southern part of that country and to visit several places of mainly religious and historical interest. However, the best part of one particular day was taken up with a visit which was unforgettable in a different way. We went by minibus out into the countryside to a small place near to the beautiful city of Krakow, the onetime ancient Polish capital. The place was O_wi_cim, the hamlet itself very ordinary - even dull. It is only when you arrive at the focal point of this place and see the cynical legend in German which crowns one entrance: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – (‘work will make you free’), that you fully realise that you have arrived at the place, unparalleled for infamy in the annals of human history: the notorious death camp of Auschwitz. In the pages of each edition of this magazine you will read about various sorts of marginalised people but here we are focusing on what must be the ultimate in marginalisation. For it was here that, sixty years ago, up to 1_ million people, perhaps 25% of all those who suffered in the Nazi genocide were callously exterminated. The vast majority were Jews, but also Poles, Gypsies as well as political prisoners and others such as Catholic priests and religious men and women and those of other faiths particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses. Homosexuals and so-called social misfits and undesirables, were all callously exterminated in this vast engine of death. The guide books tell you that the whole place is now an International Heritage Museum and that it certainly now is, clean, sanitised and organised with plenty of information, both written and pictorial, posted all around. What became clear to me, however, is that this place is no mere museum, it is in every sense a vast tomb. I use the words: ‘in every sense a tomb’ because this is not only the actual grave of those who perished, but it is also the grave of humanity – of the human soul, where mankind’s capacity for evildoing reached its nadir. The place has a strange quietness. Even on a hot day, with the large car parks full of coaches testifying that there must be hundreds of people there, the entire camp exuded an awesome silence. Even the singing of birds was distant and muted, as though even nature itself stands aghast at the enormity of what was perpetrated here. Of course there is little now than can convey the unimaginable misery and suffering undergone by the thousands of hapless people who had the misfortune to be prisoners here and what exists, by way of exhibits, beggars belief. A cased-in room full of human hair (all prisoners were shaved on arrival) weighed in tons, which will give some idea of the quantity. Another case showing a bale of cloth woven from human hair and used to stiffen the uniform collars of the SS officers. Other glass-fronted rooms full of suitcases, shoes, spectacles and even artificial limbs – everything was looted from prisoners and sorted with ruthless efficiency for re-cycling amongst the populace of the Reich. In the past, I have read accounts of those who survived or escaped from this camp. There must have been many deeds of heroism and heartache most of them now known only to God. As a Catholic, I was uplifted to see the cell where St Maximilian Kolbe selflessly offered himself in place of another (because the other prisoner had a family) selected for slow death by starvation with 19 others as a reprisal for an escape. After about 20 days I think, all had died except Maximilian who was then despatched by a lethal injection of phenol. There are actually three camps here, known as Auschwitz I, II and III, of which the first was the original brick-built Polish Barracks used by the Nazis to incarcerate prisoners mainly from the Polish intelligentsia. The prisoners from Auschwitz I were used to build Auschwitz II fairly close by at Birkenau and this was the vast death camp. Auschwitz III was a Labour camp at Monowitz. Birkenau comprised rows of large wooden buildings, really huge sheds based on a design for stabling horses and containing a couple of brick-built chimneys each – another cynical move because no fuel was ever provided. When the liberating Russian army was approaching, the Nazis burnt more than three quarters of these sheds but did not bother with the chimneys, so that over a large area of the Birkenau Camp all that remains is a still, silent forest of brick chimneys. About 100,000 prisoners were found in the camp by the Russians, roughly the entire population of the town where I live. The Nazis also tried to destroy the (underground) gas chambers and their ante-rooms but one survives largely intact except for the ceilings. One can see the thoroughness and premeditation in designing the ‘changing rooms’ sufficiently large to provide space for the victims to remove their clothes, whilst the ‘showers’ – the actual gas chambers are much smaller allowing no space even to move. I believe about 1,000 people were crammed into these chambers at one time. The extermination area and crematoria is surrounded by tall trees to screen it from the rest of the camp. Apparently, the crematoria could not cope with the volume and so many of the dead were burnt on pyres in the open air. So the Holocaust was a true holocaust - the sacrifice of millions of victims on the altar of racial hatred bigotry. My visit caused me to wonder what Almighty God must think of His creatures who could do such things to each other. This thought was then immediately followed by the reflection that they were human beings just like me and then the awful realisation that, if that is so, then ordinary human beings could do this again. And have we learned this lesson? I think not. Look at what has happened to the Kurds and Marsh Arabs in Iraq, the tribal conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi, Pol Pot’s reign of Terror in Cambodia and the civil wars in the Balkans to name but a few of the places where genocide has been wholly or partially attempted since World War II. My belief is that the Almighty does not waste what he has created, nor does he permit it to be wasted. Therefore, whatever human beings do to each other, they cannot destroy the soul and the many, many souls of the innocent who perished here and who are now with Him are being used by Him to accomplish His purposes. My hope, which is also a prayer, is that He will use them (and perhaps these souls themselves now pray to Him) to strive for such progress in human affairs that never again will such atrocities be committed. Everyone who can should visit Auschwitz; it must never be forgotten. I left the place pondering the haunting words of George Santayana, emblazoned over one of the Block entrances: " Those who forget the past are condemned to re-live it" |
