Auschwitz

I recently finished the book "Auschwitz: A New History," by Laurence Rees, the Creative Director of History Programs for the BBC. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the Holocaust or WWII.

Its harrowing descriptions of the death camps of the National Socialist German Workers Party will, I think, trouble even the most hardened reader. For example, in describing the first few months in Treblinka, a death camp in Nazi occupied Poland, the author describes the chaotic atrocity:

To begin with, Treblinka operated more or less as the Nazis had planned, with about 6,000 people arriving to be killed each day. But by August the numbers had doubled and the operation of the camp began to fall apart. Yet the camp Commandant, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, still kept it open. "Dr. Eberl's ambition," said August Hingst, another member of the SS at Treblinka, "was to reach the highest possible numbers and exceed all the other camps. So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled." As a result, many people were simply shot in the lower camp, but that, of course, destroyed the subterfuge that was the basis of the camp's operation -- no one believed they were at a disinfecting station when they saw corpses on the ground.

One survivor of Treblinka described the scene as thus:

As we disembarked we witnessed a horrible sight: hundreds of bodies lying all around. Piles of bundles, clothes, valises, everything mixed together. SS soldiers and Ukrainians were standing on the roofs of the barracks and firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Men, women and children fell bleeding. The air was filled with screaming and weeping.

The author goes on to describe the death rate in Treblinka: "In slightly more than a month's time, from between the end of July and the end of August 1942, an estimated 312,500 people were murdered at Treblinka. This is a phenomenal figure, a killing rate of around 10,000 a day and a death toll not even approached by any other camp until the height of the Hungarian action at Auschwitz -- in 1944 --when the four crematoria of Birkenau were functioning at full capacity."

Starting in Germany, with their own citizens, Hitler and the Nazis rounded up millions of Jews, Poles, gypsies, and others, loaded them onto freight trains and sent them to their deaths. For example, toward the end of the war in 1944:

400,000 Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz. The percentage on each transport selected for forced labor varied -- sometimes it was as low as 10 percent, sometimes around 30 percent -- but the majority of people on board each train were always sent to the gas chambers. The camp had never seen a killing spree like it, with more than 320,000 murdered in less than eight weeks -- indeed, for sustained killing within the Nazi State the only comparable slaughter on that scale was the initial murders in Treblinka...

It was against this backdrop, then, that I watched the recent election coverage where I heard some left-winger refer to the Patriot Act as "fascism" and President Bush as a "Nazi." I realized then that these cutesy elitist references are not merely 'harsh rhetoric,' but are instead ridiculously repugnant. What a sickening ignorance one betrays to suggest that we live under a regime comparable to one that systematically carried out the execution of millions of its own citizens. Whether such a heinous lack of historical perspective is a failure of our educational system or a simple lack of moral restraint on one's vocal cords matters not. One can be free to vigorously oppose President Bush, the GOP, and all of their policies but I cannot think of a comparison more offensive to the memory of entire families weeping together on their way to the gas chamber than to suggest that our safe, consumptive little lives are similarly impacted by the policies of the present administration.

So the next time you see someone knowingly chuckle at a cartoon like this, remember Auschwitz. The next time you hear someone complain about the Abu Ghraib prisoners being forced to pose in a pyramid, remember this stack of bodies. The next time you hear someone condescendingly cluck at the "torture" of Abu Ghraib's prisoners posed for photos with underwear on their heads, remember "Dario Gabbai and Morris Venezia, cousins from Thessalonika in Greece, ...unwittingly caught in the Nazis' Sonderkommando recruitment drive":

Morris and Dario were taken to a brick building in Birkenau, given huge scissors, which they thought more suitable for shearing sheep than cutting human hair, and led into a room that was packed with naked human bodies. "We couldn't believe it," says Morris. "They looked like sardines in a can. The Kapo who accompanied them started clambering over the bodies, cutting off the women's hair at a frantic rate, demonstrating what he wanted Morris and Dario to do. But when the two of them both tried to cut the hair of the dead women, they were wary of standing on the bodies and moved carefully around them. This angered the Kapo, who beat them with his cane. So they cut more quickly, moving among the corpses, but as Dario stood on the stomach of one dead woman he pushed gas out through her mouth and the body emitted a groaning noise. "Dario was so scared," says Morris, "that he jumped from the top of the dead bodies."

There had been no explanation from the Kapo or the Germans about the nature of the job they were now expected to do, no preparations just immediate immersion in a world of horror. "Unbelievable!" says Morris. "How could I feel? Nobody can imagine what really happened and what the Germans were doing to us." What they did not know at the time was that the authorities at Auschwitz and other concentration camps had been ordered by the SS economic division in August 1942 to collect any human hair longer than about a couple of centimeters. It was to be spun into thread to make "felt socks for the submarine crews and felt hose for railways."

Dario and Morris learned that, to survive, they needed to adapt -- and quickly. As transport after transport was brought down into the basement of the crematorium,
they swiftly mastered the routine of their job. The new arrivals would be forced into the long, underground undressing room. Then, as the Germans shouted, "Schnell! Schnell!" they were told to take their clothes off and to remember where they had placed them, because the Germans also said they would need to recover them after their shower. Many of the women shouted "Shame! Shame!" as they were forced to rush naked towards the gas chamber that lay beyond. Says Dario Gabbai,

"There were people who were starting to understand that something funny was going on, but nobody could do anything. The process had to go [on], you know. Everything was done from the Germans' point of view. They'd been organizing this for many, many years --so everything was going through well."

The gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 were below ground, so the delivery of the Zyklon B (cyanide) once the chamber was crammed with people and the door secured was relatively straightforward. Standing outside on the gas chamber roof, members of the SS would take of hatches that gave them access to special wire columns in the gas chamber below. They would then place canisters of Zyklon B inside the columns and lower them, sealing the hatch again once the gas had reached the bottom.

From the other side of the locked door, Dario Gabbai and Morris Venezia heard children and their mothers crying and scratching the walls. Morris remembers how, when the gas chamber was crammed with around a thousand people, he heard voices calling out, "God! God!" "Like a voice from the catacombs -- I still hear this kind of voice in my head." After the noise ceased, powerful fans were turned on to remove the gas, and then it was time for Morris, Dario and the other Sonderkommando to go to work. Dario recalls,

"When they opened the door, I see these people that half an hour before were going [into the gas chamber], I see them all standing up, some black and blue from the gas. No place where to go. Dead. If I close my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up, women and children in their hands."

Well, at least Dario and Morris didn't have to wear underwear on their heads.

Am I suggesting we ignore or minimize what happened at Abu Ghraib prison? Absolutely not. It is disgusting. But for the left compare the excesses of a few soldiers, or the perceived legislative excesses of this adminstration, with the Nazis' systematic infliction of cruelty and death on entire races of people, and to do so for political gain, betrays an indifference to the plight of millions of dead people that makes a mockery of the whole concept of cynicism.

Note: All quotes from Auschwitz: A New History.