From a survivor's account, prisoners were also locked in windowless cells, and right on the other side of the wall, people were forced to stand in a row and then promptly gunned to death. Imagine what the people in the cell had to endure. All they were faced with were 4 grimy walls, and the only way for them to find out what was happening outside was through listening to the sounds beyond their prison walls, and yet the only thing they can hear were of gunshots and the dying screams of the gunned victims. Experiments were also carried out on a select group of people, mainly twins and dwarves. Experiments to change people's eye colors, or to determine the effects of lethal injections, were carried out within the camp. I still remember images of people forced to strip in front of thousands and subjected to humiliation and ridicule from the Nazi soldiers, as well as images of thousands upon thousands of dead bodies, literally skin and bones, piled up in a corner, while other prisoners emptied carts upon carts of bodies into mass graves as it they were emptying nothing but mere gravel. Perhaps the most infamous of all were the gas chambers into which too many people queued up to be squeezed into too small a room, with no knowledge of what they are being subjected to, nor where they are, and these were their last thoughts as deadly cyanide gas was pumped into the chambers, killing all. When the last person had stopped breathing, fellow prisoners took on the role of shovelling these lifeless bodies into mass graves, each not knowing when their turn would be. The Holocaust signalled one of the worst tragedies in history, with over 6 million Jews killed in one man's mad desire to purge the world of what he did not like. One man's desire to recreate a 'perfect' world by destroying the lives of millions to achieve what he wanted. In a way, I'm glad that I'm born in a time of [supposed] peace and security. Being exposed to a period of darkness and devastation, I too, am grateful for the peek into one of history's bleakest period because it constanly serves as a reminder that I now possess a memory tainted by history's darkness so that I can appreciate what I currently have, even though it took me five years to remember it. So whenever things do not go smoothly, and we feel that life is out to get us, always always remember Auschwitz.I was catching up on my weekly dosage of The Amazing Race this morning and one of the places they visited was the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I'm usually not one to turn on the waterworks, but I couldn't help tearing up during that sombre albeit short segment. Anyone who has ever studied the history of World War Two would be familiar with the Holocaust, Auschwitz being the epicenter of it all.
I wouldn't call it a privilege, but I had the opportunity of watching a documentary - Auschwitz, during my JC days. It showed film footage and still images of the events happening during the Holocaust, as well as containing interviews with survivors or the families of those who survived. I cannot even begin to imagine what those people went through. Even as we sat in that darkened auditorium, far removed from that life and time, the scenes depicting such immense cruelty still, and will always remain with us as a reminder of the darker side of human history.
I believe that Man by nature is not evil. War is an evil thing. It changes people. Where there's human ambition, war will inevitably be looming over the horizon. Human greed is but a catalyst, and war the consequence. Man has never been easily satisfied. The ceaseless pursuit of power and status have long been a marathon doomed to go on forever. Perhaps it's this superiority complex inherent in us (some more than others) which makes us feel that we have to be better than the next person. War is simply an umbrella term for all the tussles that many of us will nevertheless face as part of life's journey. We all have our own wars and our own demons to fight.
Back in 1939, one man's desire for power led to such widespread destruction. World War Two was not solely about Adolf Hitler, but he was one of its main perpetrators. The rise of the Nazi Regime under Hitler's dictatorship was one of the darkest period in history. Countries were destroyed, lives were lost, families torn apart, and dreams shattered. All because of one man's relentless pursuit of power, and his ruthless methods to achieve what he so desired.
Auschwitz was a place of great cruelty and discrimination. What horrors were visited upon the innocent lives there simply because they were different were unfathomable. Hitler wanted a pure Aryan race of blond haired, blue-eyed, strong and fit people. Anyone else who deferred from this ideal were sent to Auschwitz, especially the Jews. Ironically, Hitler himself did not possess these traits which he so gluttonously coveted.
Though it has been a good five years since I last watched the Auschwitz documentary, the images and details were not easy to erase from memory. I remembered seeing the cells in which the prisoners were locked in, and their only view of the outside world was through a narrow strip of windows at the top of the wall, and on the other side of the cell wall, hooks or nooses were placed where people were hung till they died. What little the prisoners inside could see of the outside world were of the faces of their fellow prisoners as they hung from the hooks or nooses until they breathed their last.
War is an ugly ugly thing. The hands of war spares none, but reaches out to grip both the young and the old alike. Many who have studied this period of time would remember seeing images of long lines of people (mainly Jews) waiting to be taken into Auschwitz, or other similar camps, for a future none were aware of. The most heartbreaking would be to see images of young children gripping tightly onto their parents' hands, not knowing what awaited them beyond the gates of Auschwitz. Mere kids plucked from normalcy and placed where they were forced to live out the rest of their young lives, never knowing which day would be their last. Kids who were at the age where they began to dream big dreams about their futures and what they wanted to be, where the sky's the limit for these promising young lives, ripped from their youthful ambitions.