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| Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes One Free) |
I've heard Auschwitz experiences described different ways by different folks. A couple of people have simply called it unsettling. One girl came back all gung-ho to be an Auschwitz tour guide. One very dear priest friend said it can take a couple of weeks to shake off the depression. So I wasn't sure what to expect.
What bothered me most about my fellow visitors was that many people seem to go to Auschwitz looking for an experience. They want to be shocked, to be moved, to be changed. I can understand this. At some level, these desires are in us all. I just don't know that a mass grave site is the appropriate place to go for shock factor. The level of suffering and the immensity of tragedy seem to suggest something far bigger at play. When I visited there were various types of individuals and groups. Some were school groups that seemed to be there because of some duty rather than because of personal interest. (Is there some rule that all European high school students must visit Auschwitz? I feel as though I heard that somewhere. It is a good idea.) Some were there because it was an easy daytrip from Krakow and this is one of the "Top 10 Sites To See" in the area. Some were there because they wanted to be appalled. And some were there to honor the dead.
Before going, like a dutiful little type-A personality, I did my research. This involved reading up on other people's reactions in my efforts to obtain correct train and bus schedules. "Never again" seemed to be the most common remark. I feel as though the Russian gulag, some of the massive death tolls in Eastern Asia, the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides, and the ever-increasing number of abortions all seem undermine this comment, but I digress.
I walked through the whole thing - well, really there are two parts since there is Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz II/Birkenau. It was beyond words. Birkenau was absolutely huge, the train tracks are still there, as are huts, ash ponds, and the remains of gas chambers and crematoriums. It was systematically dehumanizing and awful. Auschwitz I had lots of things that were found in what were called the "Canada" warehouses. Apparently the Germans thought Canada was a land of plenty, flowing with milk and honey as it were. They soon had warehouses full of confiscated things with no owners - yes, no owners - that made these storerooms very much like Canada: perfumes, gold, pots and pans, baby buggies, and whatever else your little heart desired could be found. Anyhow, there were rooms with photos upon photos and piles of things: glasses, shoes (so many shoes), prosthetic limbs, crockery, hair, suitcases, and more. The point of this post is not to shock or horrify you, so we'll move on to the material point.
Which is this:
This isn't the sort of event that you can sunnily buck up after and say: "Well, now, we all learned a good lesson, didn't we?" Some of the tour guides kept mentioning the evils of racism or the criminal nature of the camp. Both points are very valid and true. My own tour guide kept mentioning that only 700 of the 7,000 people directly involved were tried after the war was over and even those weren't all punished. He kept bringing up the injustice of it. And he's right. Also, what strikes you when you're there is the utter despair and misery of it all. It was hell on earth. It almost makes you feel guilty for the beautiful life you've got, with your plumbing and your bed and your three square meals a day + snacks + coffee.
I don't think the thing to be taken away from this is shock value. Or simply "Racism is bad." I also don't think it brought back a single person or healed a single survivor if guilty parties were tried and sentenced to death. Guilt at this point is on the guilty parties' own heads and it is good that none of us are Judge in the end. Also, the fact that these poor, poor people, many of whom were simply the wrong folks at the wrong place in the wrong era, suffered so much and had so little doesn't mean that we should feel like we need to do likewise. Don't give up blueberry jelly because they didn't have it in Auschwitz and don't feel guilty for having access to it. Just thank God for His goodness and the fact that you do - and maybe find someone to share it with. The few things that did ring true with me were these:
1) The inhumanity and degradation of the system allowed for nothing personal: your red shoes weren't your red shoes, your hair was cut off and put in a sack, you had a number not a name, and you wore the same unwashed striped uniform that everyone else did. Everything was systematized and very, very efficient. Isn't there something to be learned from this . . . just on the front of personal tenderness? Don't you run into people - especially in crowded and city environments or with your job - and get frustrated that they can't just "follow the system" or "get with the program"? If you truly treated everyone you came in contact with as a person rather than an inconvenience or an obstacle or a number - even if they do bumble and slow the "system" down - wouldn't you have accomplished something rather beautiful and great on the front of human dignity and . . . tenderness?
2) We really don't know how many people suffered and died here. We do know that it was brutal and cruel and that even the best of us cuss or curse our so-called enemies (the man that cut us off on the highway? our ridiculous boss? our neighbor with his aggressive dogs?) when driven to the edge of our patience. And our enemies haven't ripped us from our homes, taken all we have, killed our families and friends, erased our identities, and are now going to end us. Wouldn't you have a dreadfully hard time dying without an angry, hateful soul? Could you really forgive those people . . . so you in turn could be forgiven? So wouldn't it be kind and wise to pray for these poor souls, that God has mercy on them and, if they aren't there already, leads them into His light? I do hope they are, but I think it is a little premature to forget about them in this sense (or in any sense).
3) This really was hell incarnate and was miserable in every imaginable way. There was no area of the person or of life that was not degraded and living - and dying - conditions were just horrific. So it makes it all the more beautiful when a person takes these horrific circumstances and introduces to them God's all-powerful grace, redeeming even the ugliest of situations. One of the cells on Block 11 (the Death Block) houses a room with a shrine to St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest that offered to take the place of a father that had just been selected for death by starvation. One of the policies of the camp was that whenever one prisoner escaped, ten others were selected for death, either by starvation or hanging. Kolbe took this grim situation and transformed it, making the senseless ugliness a beautiful example of sacrifice.
I'm not a deep person, nor am I a particularly good or tender one, but I'm very, very glad I went to Auschwitz for Good Friday.
"No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?" ~ Maximilian Kolbe in the last issue of the Knight
"For Jesus Christ I am prepared to suffer still more." ~ Maximilian Kolbe
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