Edmund Burke once wrote, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” I would like to add, “One must learn from it as well. Otherwise, the whole cycle repeats itself.”
ONCE long ago when I was probably 9 or 10, while scouring through my aunt’s bookshelf, I came across a tattered pocketbook. I can’t remember the exact title of the book but it had the words “6 million” on the cover.
Leafing through the pages, I saw black and white captioned pictures. In one photo, there were images of skeletal men and women with sunken, sad eyes staring at the camera wearing black and white striped uniforms with tattooed numbers on their left forearms. There were barbed wires around brick buildings in this place called Auschwitz in Poland.
The haunting images were seared in my mind. In the intervening years, life happened. Although I would occasionally pick the book and browse through it, I knew that book showed me the darkness of the human soul. It forced me to grow up. That book showed me pure horror.
Fast forward to 2018, more than 50 years later, …
A side trip to Poland from Rome gave me the chance to see Auschwitz up close. The complete name though is Auschwitz-Birkenau to include another camp in the area. In fact, there were 3 Auschwitz camps, designated I, II and III as Nazi Germany thrived on forced labor. The tour bus drive from beautiful Krakow, where we were staying, was a little less than an hour.
It was a bright day but the tall stand of verdant, mature weeping willow trees with their bowed heads of drooping leaves at the entrance of the Auschwitz Memorial set the somber tone for the day. There were a good number of visitors and sure enough, there were stringent security procedures. These days, tightened security measures are signs of our time. Then as now, things Semitic seem to trigger hatred among the evil ones that boils over to insanity, rage and cruelty.
Pure hatred for the Jews moved Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany at the height of its power in World War II to murder brutally and systematically 6 million Jews.
I listened intently as our expert guide told us the story of how a million Jews were murdered in that place. I had to keep up because there was so much to take in. We walked between the barracks where the prisoners were kept. Auschwitz Camp I had 20 barracks initially. I felt as though silent ghosts were still looking out from behind bars after 73 years since the last living prisoner left hell on earth for freedom in the winter of 1945.
In 1939, Germany invaded Poland and much of Europe’s neck was under its boots. Auschwitz, a part of Hitler’s final solution to exterminate the Jews in Europe, was kept a secret from the world for 2 years in the beginning of the war. It was located in South Poland on 15 acres. It was chosen for the main railroad that went through Poland and Germany. The death camp was converted from a complex of Polish military barracks. Crematories, gas chambers and warehouses were added. There was housing for the camp commandant, Rudolf Hess, and the brutal SS guards.
There was, alongside the camp, an industrial complex of factories that systematically fed off the camp’s slave labor for a host of companies that was building Nazi Germany’s war machinery. In many parts of Europe, these companies supported Hitler. Most were German companies but a few were from England, like Barclays, from Switzerland, like Nestle and even from the US, like Chase.
Complicit with the war effort at the time are globally recognized names. They included Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Daimler Benz of Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW and Bayer. Hundreds of thousands of slave labor were used, particularly in the automotive industry. Hugo Boss manufactured the smart looking, sleek German uniforms. There are many other companies that continue to thrive globally to this day, 75 years later.
Sadly, billions of people today remain largely unaware or ignorant of these companies’ involvement in various capacities in the holocaust. Some of these companies were forced into cooperation by expediency or the need to survive but most were clearly in for the pure profit motive — humanity be damned.
After the war, there were recriminations and sanctions. There were political apologies and largely unknown and undisclosed monetary reparations made to the Jewish nation through the years that followed.
But if there was genuine contrition and complete change of heart, only God knows for certain. With the passage of time and our collective human tendency to refuse to learn from the past, anti-Semitism is percolating and heating up once more. True and final reckoning is yet to come.
Walking through the exhibits, I was riveted by the display of the mountain of empty canisters which contained the gas Zyklon (Cyclone, an insecticide) used for the gas chambers. The exhibits showed the mountains of luggage, shoes, and personal effects — of eyeglasses, pipes, canes and myriad others. There was a huge mound of hair cuttings. These drew gasps among the visitors.
The black and white photos of the prisoners along the corridor walls of one of the barracks put a face to the numbers. Each photo staring out of the walls told a tragic story.
(To be continued …)
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Nota Bene: Monette Adeva Maglaya is SVP of Asian Journal Publications, Inc. To send comments, e-mail [email protected]
