June 13, 2005 The extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau It is no masochistic tendency that forces me to face the reality of the Holocaust. A few years back, I visited Dachau, a work camp where many perished. Recently, I saw Terezin, a concentration camp in the Czech Republic. There victims were regrouped and transited before going to the dreadful death camps. I had now to witness the final step of this annihilation process to become fully aware in my heart, soul and bones of the vastitud of this indescribable tragedy. Yesterday, I went to the extermination camp of Aushwitz-Birkenau, the worse of its kind.

As I walked around the compounds of both Auschwitz and Birkenau, I felt almost nothing. I was in a strange state of total emotional numbness. I can only explain this as being a way for me to protect myself and cope with the evidence of this heinous act. No words being strong enough to convey the monstrosity of what I saw. I will mostly state to the facts.

First I watched a documentary shot by the Russians when they liberated the camp. Many pictures, classics of the Holocaust media, I had seen before. Some so unbearable that I had to force myself not to turn my head away. The most striking sight for me was this row of children, clad in their striped uniforms, a number tattooed on their skinny arms, walking in pairs, hand in hand, behind a Red Cross nurse. These Jewish children had survived for the simple reason that they were twins on which German doctors had wanted to experiment. In their eyes, a look of immense weariness as if they were one hundred years old. Some could not remember their names until much later after the liberation, others had no names being born in the camp; they were just a number. Auschwitz is a gruesome sight. Rows upon rows of prisoners' barracks, watch towers and barbed wired fences everywhere.

A vision of hell on earth. At the main gate a sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei", meaning “Labor make you free”, the ultimate in cynical irony. Most of the inmates were Jews: they died in hundreds of thousands mostly in the gas chambers. Other groups were targeted too, as representative of an inferior race like the Gypsies who perished in tens of thousands. Many Polish resistance fighters, Russian prisoners along with anybody being suspected of being against the Reich were incarcerated there and in most cases died in painful and inhuman conditions.

I saw the crematoriums, the gas chambers, the execution wall and the death block. I saw the pitiful remains of so many innocent victims. Vast window cases full of female hair that the Nazis had used to weave cloth or stuff pillows, others crammed with glasses, others overflowing with empty suitcases bearing labels from all over Europe, more piled with crutches and orthotics. A nightmare: all these objects had belonged to real people, of flesh and blood with feelings, emotions, with likes and dislikes, with dreams and fears. They had been reduced to ashes and nothing was left of them apart from immense heaps of colorless objects beside which tourists wanted their picture taken. For me, it was almost too much to realize the degree of machiavellic plotting, organization and precision behind the genocide. Victims had to be not only annihilated but also useful in their deaths to the Fatherland. All the items described earlier and many more were recycled and sent back to Germany. Dentures with gold fillings were extracted from the mouths of the cadavers before they were cremated. Victims were often deceived until the very end. Hungarian and Greek Jews were persuaded to be taken and relocated under false promises. The Nazis went as far as selling them nonexistent plots of land. In the same way, people heading to the gas chamber were even reminded to remember where they had left their clothes before unknowingly marching to their deaths. How refined can cruelty be?

Birkenau was no better. With the advance of the Russian Army, the Germans tried to obliterate any evidence of their crimes. There, many of the barracks and storage houses had been burned. However, some remain. Among them the dreadful railroads tracks that had brought death convoys from various parts of Europe. Walking around Birkenau made me realize how huge it is; it is there that the greatest number of killings took place. This immense expanse surrounded by electric fencing is chilling to contemplate. I wondered... How can such a monstrous deed have been possible? Humans systematically killing other ethnic groups without any of the other countries knowing about it? How can people be capable of such utmost cruelty? I salute the victims of the Holocaust as I salute victims of other genocides that we do not know as much about. What happened in Nazi Germany can happen anytime, in any country, if the conditions are right. There is an angel and a devil in every one of us. May we always remember that and be vigilant of not letting it happen again.

Krakow, the city...