70 Years Ago Yesterday

Seventy years ago, on January 25, 1945, the Russians walked into Auschwitz and rescued those who remained alive in one of the most notorious of the death camps built and operated by the Nazi regime. Those prisoners still in the huge complex were those considered too sick or weak to go on the forced march the others had been forced on. It is the one time in their lives when being sick actually saved their lives and when being in the infirmary didn't equate with death.

Several camps had the "Arbeit Macht Frei" signs, but this one
is notorious. Arbeit Macht Frei, translated, means Work (will)
Make (you) Free. What a joke! 

Why start a week out with something so shocking? Why dredge up old history one more time? Because there are still some children who survived that day who still live and still remember January 25th as the start of their changed and forever interrupted lives. And because there are some of us, including myself, who are inextricably tied to Auschwitz and the events that happened in that place of horrors.

All tracks led to Auschwitz/Birkenu. The tracks have been straightened
in more modern times to make a more pleasing entry. 

While I write about Mordor and the evils of man towards man, I always have the death camps of the Nazis in the back of my head. My father's parents were killed at Auschwitz, my grandfather's trunk is/was in the museum there for many years. Is it still? I have no idea. But I do know that my father's half-brother went to the camp one year and he saw his father's trunk there. When he visited us some years later, he told Dad and me about having seen it.

In the selection process, men would be separated from women, children would be
pulled away from parents. Most people would be dead within 24 hours
of their arrival. You can see the tower from the previous picture in the back
left side of this one. 

The camps existed because people turned their backs and said if things didn't affect them directly, everything was all right. They turned their backs on human rights, they turned their backs on what was happening in the next nation, the next city, or across the pasture. They turned their backs and closed their eyes and that left sadists a wide field in which to operate. Sauron's got nothing on how easily men turn their backs on their brothers.

Everything was taken from the murdered, and everything was kept - stockpiled
for some unknown future use. There's a lot of people represented by this
pile of shoes. 

It was not only Jewish people who were killed in the camps. Never lose sight of the fact that even though the Jews were the larger percentage, there also were Gypsies, political malcontents, and homosexuals. Basically, those perceived to not fit the mold of the Aryan race were imprisoned, pulled into ghettos, pushed onto packed rail cars, worked to death, shot to death, or gassed to death. Millions upon millions of them. That happened less than 100 years ago! So as we look at the world and tsk about the conflicts throughout the world, let's not kid ourselves. This kind of mass death happened in modern times and if it happened once, it can happen again. What are you doing to keep that from happening?

One-and-one-half million people killed in five years. That's
amazing. And the fact that we continue to kill our fellow man
for any number of reasons astonishes me. 

Have a good Monday and I'll be back tomorrow with something a bit more uplifting.