The places of evil men and their deeds stand not only as a reminder of the atrocities committed but as a memorial to those that died, to show the strength of those that survived, and as a monument to those that fought to liberate the oppressed. These places remind us of the lowest of human acts but also the strength of the human spirit, of humanities ability to fight, to survive, and to resist those that would seek to harm us.
The history of man is that of many cruel and inhuman acts, but within the threads of history are the stories of strength, of hope, and of those that stood up and said no more.
Auschwitz is a place that show the worst of humanity, and the best.
Spending a day within the electrified wire fence it is hard not to find what occurred there to be anything more than vial. The treatment of every human held or killed in the camps is something I would never wish upon any person, animal or living thing. The camps, there are three major facilities surrounded by forty sub camps, showed a systematic and planned attempt to wipe not only the Jews, but the Gypsies and Slavs from the face of the earth. Their design was purposeful, built to deceive the new arrivals, to keep them calm, make them easier to manage.
The Gas chambers themselves included false shower heads, the changing room hooks numbered to reassure the entering Jews that they would be able to find their clothes again – they would never see daylight let alone their belongings after entering this place.
These small acts of deception, culminating in the fleeing SS troops destroying the gas chambers, show that even before they began they knew that they were committing an atrocity in these places.
While these vial acts make the blood boil, I take comfort that like many points in history the things that stand out for me are the stories of those that fought back. The stories of those prisoners that whispered to the new arrivals of what was to occur, of how they could avoid death, how they could avoid the fate of over a million of their fellow humans. Of the grandparents that took infants from the mothers so she would be spared from the gas chambers.
Above all others the story of a man that kicked the stool from beneath his own feet, moments before the SS soldiers could, hanging himself to deny the Nazis the satisfaction of making him an example. He grasped the little freedom he had left and with nothing more than a step showed that to his death he was willing to fight for his freedom and to defy those that would seek to take it from him.
Today was a sad one, one that showed me that there are humans that will seek to suppress, to wipeout and to destroy those they disagree with, but it also showed that there will always be those that stand forth, that declare in which ever way they can that freedom is not something that can ever be taken away, that freedom is not given but is exercised through our own actions and that no matter the evil in the world humanity will strive to rise above it, to stop it, and inevitable punish those that commit the most inhuman of acts.
MC is the real struggler having to keep a crowd happy inbetween what can be described as decent talent. They have to deal with the hecklers, the talkers and the damn right rude.
