Auschwitz: 75th
Aushchwitz-Birkenau was a death concentration camp way back World War 11. An infamous extermination camp, it was primarily built by the Nazis to murder Jews. With an estimated 1.3 million prisoners of war who were thrown there, approximately 1.1 million Jews were gassed there-and that was about a sixth of their whole population. Other cases of deaths in the dire camp were starvation and infectious diseases of sorts. Exactly 75 years ago, Auschwitz was at last liberated by the Red Soviet Army.
Last January 27, 2020, the International Holocaust Memorial Day was commemorated by the world. Put up by United Nations, it was attended by known world leaders, Holocaust survivors and sympathizers of the humanitarian cause.
Lecturing about the Holocaust to my students in World History was no easy feat. For one thing, I wasn’t around yet when that horrifying genocide in history transpired. And my students were mostly born in the early 2000s. So there was a wide discrepancy in terms of knowledge, understanding and assimilation into the matter.
My edge is that I have always been a World War 11 buff. I have read a litany of books, seen movies and mini series on the war stuff and collected memorabilia about that span of time. I don’t know why or I can’t explain clearly. It’s just that I have a gnawing feeling and an inclination to recline on the past and relish its historical heritage that has continued to shape our world today.
What my students couldn’t fathom is how come a maniacal and evil-possessed tyrant like Hitler would have wanted to extinguish 6 million Jews and get away with it in the end? What did the Jews have that made them different from the other races?
I had to picture to my students the concept of the “Aryan Race” that Hitler used to encapsulate the German people. Hitler was a firm believer that their race was superior and thus above all other races. He was obsessed with “racial purity.” He poisoned the German people into believing that the Jews were outcasts and stateless breed that needed to be expunged and eradicated from the foot of the earth.
Auschwitz was not the only death camp that the Nazis constructed. There were others like Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen and Treblinka. But among these, Auschwitz was the most distinct because it was were the inhumane gassing mostly occurred. During the peak of World War 11 between 1942-1945, around 6,000 Jews were sent daily for disinfection to the camp. It meant those who were unfit to do forced labor were made to go to the “shower rooms” where they met their untimely deaths. Inside the gas chambers, the lethal insecticide Zyklon B was released to kill the innocent Jews. The dead bodies were then deposited into the “ovens” or crematoriums for disposal.
Relaying to my students the root cause of the Jewish genocide was just as hard. I had to explain to them about German philosophy, misplaced hatred and bigotry. And that racial discrimination is a worst crime to deal with and it has to be combated.
Not all proved futile among the Jewish people who survived the War. For in 1948, the state of Israel was finally given to them. If there was one great lesson that could be gleaned from the Holocaust- it was the right of every human being to have a home he could claim as his own.