Lately, with all this newfound free time that I have on my hands, I’ve been realizing that I haven’t shared as much on this platform as I had intended to. I looked down my archives at all the content from years past and noticed that I honestly slacked off. The year 2018, which was filled with ALOT is actually scanty, 2019 is much much worse. Given that we’re on lockdown and the outside world and traveling is a distant memory, I have decided to dig up all the things that should have been posted here so that you all can know that my life was actually interesting. COVID19 has honestly inspired me to get off my behind and to do a little better.
On These Tracks: Holocaust Victims were transported to the concentration camp to face their deaths. The tracks led directly to the Gas Chambers
In 2018, I went on a law school trip to Poland. There we stayed in the city of Krakow and the main purpose of our visit was to go to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz that claimed the lives over a million Jews, Polish people and others during the Holocaust and WWII.
At Auschwitz, at least 1.1 million were killed before the liberation of German-occupied-Poland by the Soviet Union in 1945. It is a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps, portions of which are now in ruins as the Nazi’s tried to destroy evidence of their crimes.
I can still remember even 2 years after the fact how chilling of an experience it was. Going through the well preserved concentration camp and standing inside of the only remaining gas chamber was a very polarizing experience. It cemented deep into my soul that humans have always had the capacity to do great evil. Given my own background and the reason for my existence in the Caribbean was due to the history of slavery, being present in this sort of space where human degradation and unwarranted death occurred just weighed heavily on my soul.
Even though hundreds of tourists were passing through the site, I remember that everything still felt extremely solemn and the air felt heavy. You could tell that the earth was saturated in death and if anywhere could be haunted by the dead, this would be one of them. I would look through rooms and look at the ruins of the gas chambers that the Nazi’s bombed to try to cover up their crimes and feel the overwhelming urge to cry. It was this visit that made me decide to study International Human Rights as a final year option in University.
I remember walking through the entrance of Auschwitz I, the site of the work camp, and being told that the words that hovered over the gates translated simply to “work sets you free”. The entire structure, which had initially been army barracks had been converted and designed to instill fear into the minds of those who entered as inmates. At this camp alone; 960,000 Jews were killed (865,000 were gassed on arrival), 74,000 Polish persons (non-jew), 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet war prisoners, and approx 15,000 other Europeans. Those who were not gassed died due to starvation, experimentation, shootings and exhaustion.
It is alarming to me, having visited Auschwitz, to know that individuals exist who think that the Holocaust never happened. It is even more alarming to me that there are people who acknowledge that it happened but agree with the ideology behind it and wish to continue to carry out such violence.
I remember staring at piles of shoes. Thousands of shoes belonging to women, men and children. Shoes of people who have been gassed to death and cremated simply because they did not fit one brand of white, that “Aryan” standard that Hitler preached about. Simply because they were viewed as inferior human beings. They were forced to build their own holding cells and forced to watch their loved ones die.
It is abhorrent that people have always found some sort of way to weaponize differences. This cycle has persisted throughout our history. We fail time and time again to look and learn from these wretched events and understand that this sort of thinking is rooted in ignorance and breeds evil. Remember slavery and its everlasting deep rooted consequences across the globe, remember the Rwandan Genocide, remember xenophobia that led to BREXIT, remember the xenophobia that exists in our region amongst ourselves and further afield. Remember the lessons and do well to no longer repeat the mistakes of history.
History often seems unreal or distant when you don’t have anything tangible to attach to it. I think that is the problem with a lot of people’s understandings of these events. It’s because they’ve never seen it up close.
I can sit and type about all that I remember, but here are the pictures that best tell the story. This is what I remember.
The entrance of Auschwitz I. “Work sets you free”
The Electric Fence
This is a memorial set up at a Death Wall. Here persons were shot to death.
A warrant of arrest for a polish person who was sent to Auschwitz for “political crimes”
Remembering Auschwitz…
