Yesterday we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. As many of you know, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children were murdered there. Auschwitz proper was actually a whole network of sub-camps, forty in all, that exploited the prisoners as slave labor. [The website, by the way, is very good for more information: https://www.auschwitz.org/en/] Birkenau, which is about 3 kilometers away from Auschwitz, was the largest of those sub-camps, and the majority—probably about 90%—of the victims of Auschwitz died in Birkenau. This means approximately a million people. The majority, more than nine out of every ten, were Jews.
(Today, by the way, is Rosh Hashanah, and tonight I will be going on a tour of the old Jewish area in Krakow and learning more about the tragic history of Poland’s Jews, as well as the current Jewish population here. Today especially it is worth remembering that [and this is according to the Vad Yashem website] “Jews lived in Poland for 800 years before the Nazi occupation. On the eve of the occupation 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland – more than any other country in Europe. Their percentage among the general population – about 10% – was also the highest in Europe.” After the war, only 380,000 Polish Jews remained, scattered over Europe and the Soviet Union.)
Personally, I find it really challenging to process so much death; it is overwhelming and incomprehensible, really. But, I learned a lot, and there is one overarching lesson I want to be sure to take with me. Before that, however, let me share just a few observations.
The various exhibits try to convey the scale of the destruction. For example, there was one room that was full of women’s hair: 2 tons of it. After the women were murdered, they were shaved before their bodies were sent to the crematorium, and the hair was used to make textiles, mattresses, blankets, etc. Our guide shared that there are some who feel that it is wrong to have the hair on display, that it should be buried; but others feel it is important for people to see the extent of the killing. This is just one example of the tensions that surround such a place: some survivors apparently wanted the whole thing torn down and destroyed; others don’t think anyone should be allowed to visit—after all, the brutal reality is that the ashes of the murdered victims are buried throughout the entire site. But, the site was set aside as a memorial in 1947, right away, so the view that it should be preserved as a reminder was obviously very strong.
All possessions, including clothing, were taken from the victims, and there were enormous piles of shoes, combs, suitcases, eyeglasses, and crutches/artificial limbs. Many of Germans with disabilities, including veterans who fought in World War I, were also sent there and killed. These physical objects are all that remain.
The living conditions were terrible: crowded sleeping quarters, inadequate toilet and shower facilities, and many people simply froze to death in the winter. What I also didn’t know was that most of the people who were sent to Auschwitz [and they were brought here from all over Europe, as far away as Oslo], were killed immediately–the same day–so there aren’t even good records of all those who died there.
The over-arching point that our guide wanted to make, however, was that it was ordinary people who made all of this happened—and this point is the main things that I am taking away.
According to our guide, Hitler never even visited a death camp. He may have given the order, but it was ordinary people, people on the low levels of the totem pole, who carried it out and made it happen. For example, it was travel agents who organized the deportation of the Jews. It was a company that made ovens that made the crematoriums. Engineers and architects were the ones who built the barracks and maintained the equipment. The medical doctor who performed the horrific sterilization experiments on women had a regular practice 50 kilometers away, and his patients said he was a good doctor. Another guard apparently was a renowned birdwatcher, who documented all the birds around Auschwitz. The guards, too, were ordinary people, who, after their shift, went home to their families, played with their children, and took vacations on the weekend.
It’s hard to make sense of it.
The fact is that the technology and systemization of mass murder may have been new with the Nazis, but the ideology and the hate were centuries old. Hitler didn’t create the Shoah, he created a climate in which the deeply-rooted seeds of anti-Semitism were able to thrive, and he gave thousands and thousands of ordinary people permission to give their prejudices free reign: people who really did harbor anger against the Jews, and those who maybe didn’t feel so strongly themselves, but also who weren’t motivated to actively defend and protect them–and who were happy enough to take advantage of business opportunities that came their way in the implementation of “the Final Solution.”
We like to look at Hitler and the Nazis and tell ourselves that such evil is so extreme, something like that would never happen, could never happen where we live. But that is an illusion. People’s silence, their indifference, their reluctance to get involved, and their eagerness to look out for themselves—these reactions to injustices are all too human, and all too common. They are, in the end, what make genocides possible (along with thousands of people “just doing their jobs”)–much more than any individual dictator: genocides in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Myanmar, and everywhere and anywhere people are set apart and their humanity denied.
In all of this, I was reminded of the very famous quote from German Confessing Church pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Our guide said, “Auschwitz is a good place to see what ordinary people can do to others.”
We are ordinary people. We have been shown what we are capable of; we have been warned.
Happy Lutheran 