Staring Into Evil

Horror, terror, misery and pure evil!  There just aren't enough words to convey how dreadfully depressing and sad Auschwitz-Birkenau is. We spent nearly four hours there yesterday and, in spite of having visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the Memorial to the Deportation in Paris, and various other tributes to the victims of the Nazis as well as seeing documentaries on the place, none of that prepared me for actually standing in one of places where the atrocities actually occurred.  Seeing the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate, walking along the railway lines into the camps, standing on the "sorting" platform where, with the flick of a finger, a Nazi doctor sent thousands to their death (apparently as quickly as 40 minutes after stepping out of the railway car), and seeing the dreadful living conditions experienced by those who had a less immediate death were too overwhelming to put into words.  The numbers and facts are chilling: women with children immediately condemned; thousands upon thousands gassed; average life span in the camp for a woman was 2 months and for healthy men about 6. Our hearts broke for the terror and fear all those people (primarily Jews but also gypsies, disabled people, gays, political dissidents and the intelligentsia) must have felt.  Hopefully, the following few pictures will convey the evilness of this place. And, we must never forget!  In the words of George Santayana, displayed prominently here, "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again."  Let us pray the lesson has been learned!  It was a gorgeous sunny day when the three of us were here and we almost felt guilty seeing this mind-numbing place on a beautiful day.