Sixty Three Years Ago Today

[Silent Hunter]

Sixty-three years ago today, on 27 January 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, bringing an end to the activities of the worst of the Nazi death camps. There alone, over a million people were murdered.

If you are in Poland in holiday, try to visit Auschwitz. You will not enjoy the experience, but that is not the point. The sheer scale of the mass murder carried out by the SS does not fully hit home until you have been there.

In the museum in Auschwitz I- there were three camps there, there are a number of exhibits of what the Soviets found when they liberated that camp.
 
A massive pile of suitcases, brought by people who thought they were merely being resettled.

A pile of shoes, removed by those who would be gassed to death because they were deemed unfit to work.

A pile of human hair, removed for use by the Nazis in their war industry.

Children’s toys.

In Auschwitz II- with the infamous railway arch, there is a reconstructed hut. You note its size and just how many people were forced to live in it.

About ten million people were murdered by the Nazis in The Holocaust. Not just Jews, but Slavs, Balts, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled and political opponents to Hitler. They had committed no crime except for existing and being in the way of one man’s megalomania.

If you have not already seen it, I would strongly recommend you watch Schlinder’s List. Again, this will not be a pleasant experience- but again it helps you to realise the sheer scale of the atrocity.

Mention must go to those who helped protect people from being taken to the camps, such as Oskar Schlinder and Corrie Ten Boom. They risked the camps themselves- and many ended up there. May your courage never be forgotten.

The Holocaust was of course not the only genocide in history.

Cambodia saw people being killed merely for owning glasses.

Armenia saw enforced mass starvation of an entire ethnic group, which still remains unacknowledged by the government of the country that perpetrated it.

Rwanda saw people killed merely because they were of the wrong tribe.

Bosnia and Kosovo saw people murdered because of their religion and the inability of people to move on.

We may forgive, but we must never forget.

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. I hope and pray we will not have a repeat in Darfur.

Mr. Hunter