In the Shadows of Humanity
Are there words adequate to describe the emotion of passing through the gates of Auschwitz? Can a photograph truly do justice to the memory of those who met their dreadful end in the gas chambers at the end of the railway tracks? Those were my thoughts as I entered the infamous camp, which left such an indelible stain on 20th-century history.
What surprised me the most as I arrived at Auschwitz was how close the camps were to their surrounding communities. For reasons I can't adequately explain, I imagined they would be situated in the remotest areas, far from oversight. In reality, they are very much in the midst of the Polish town of Oświęcim. From within the camps, it is easy to see the everyday comings and goings on the other side of the barbed wire fences, just as it would have been during the war. For the victims of Auschwitz, the proximity to the outside world must have made the despair of their suffering even harder to bear.
Since its inception, following the Nazi occupation of the town, Auschwitz had a reputation for horror, but it was the scale of the brutality that earned its dreadful place in history. By 1942 freight trains were transporting Jews from all over occupied Europe. Of the estimated 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered, most almost immediately after their arrival.
With so many words already written about Auschwitz and so many photographs, I couldn't help but enter the camps full of preconceived ideas and expectations. And yet, all fell away instantly as I approached the sinister gates, baring the immortal words "Arbeit macht frei", meaning "Work will set you free", through which so many walked to their end. The atmosphere was like nothing I'd experienced before. Immediately, I realised why Auschwitz must be preserved exactly as it was so we will never forget the depravity the human species is capable of.
Complacency is the fertile ground in which evil thrives. Like a malignant rot, if left unchecked, it will gradually erode society until the good is powerless before the onslaught of evil. We must never allow ourselves to forget what happened there, as to do so allows the rot to take root once again.
The victims of Auschwitz came from all walks of life. They were students and teachers, builders and accountants, mothers and fathers — ordinary citizens living ordinary lives before the outbreak of war. But so were the guards and wardens, whose shocking brutality was such an affront to humanity. They, too, were ordinary people who committed unimaginable acts of evil. They weren't born into evil; the rot consumed all the good in them until evil was all that was left.
As I walked through the camps of Auschwitz, I struggled to comprehend not only the scale of the murder that took place there but also that the killing was so routine it became ordinary. I imagined the victims' thoughts as they arrived, the horrors they must have witnessed. I imagined the terror of the children as they were ripped from their parent's embrace. And I imagined the small talk of the guards as they made their way each morning to report for yet another ordinary day of killing.
No matter the elegance of the words I try to write or the emotive photographs I try capture of this terrible place, they will never truly reflect its chilling reality. Rather, the silent memories of the victims, forever etched into the walls of Auschwitz, will testify to the abhorrent evil ordinary people can perpetrate when malevolence takes root. Those memories cry out to us from the shadows of humanity. Let us never turn away from them; our very survival in the fight for good over evil may depend on them.
