AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

I DID NOT WANT to write about Auschwitz after visiting it because the suffering inflicted on humanity by the Nazis cannot be captured in few sentences.  However, the personal experience of seeing the extermination camp has kept me thinking about the power of evil to eliminate difference and at the same time the power of love to triumph over suffering and death.
Millions of persons from the entire world have visited the grounds of the former concentration camp since the creation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau National Museum in 1947.
The Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz—symbol of terror, genocide and Holocaust—was operational from 1940 until 1945.  It had functioned as a concentration camp for various nationalities, and as the principal center of mass and instantaneous extermination of Jews.   The Poles were the first ones to be brought to the camp.  Prisoners of other nationalities from the Nazi occupied countries were also sent later to the camp.  It was only in 1942 that the extermination of the Jews began in Auschwitz.  Unlike other nationalities that had to be registered in the camp, Jews—especially women, children, the aged and sick—were sent immediately to perish in the gas chambers without any prior registration.  Others who were considered fit for work perished due to starvation, illness, terror and murderous labor.  Close to 2 million people were murdered at the concentration camp.   The inscription Arbeit Macht Frei (work makes one free) at the camp’s main gate was absolutely a lie because only a few were able to get out of the camp alive.  The Nazis did all they could so that the only way to freedom was through death.  Freedom through death was the actual meaning of the inscription at the camp’s main gate.  Many places in the camp spoke about death.  The Roll Call Square (Appellplatz) became a place for the daily execution of prisoners by hanging at the gallows.  Prisoners were asked to stand at the square for ten to twelve hours when Nazi guards were looking for a missing prisoner and death could come to anybody in place of somebody who was missing.  The Death Wall was situated inside a square between Blocks 10 and 11 where prisoners were executed by firing squad.  A stream of blood flowed from the Death Wall like water from a spring.  Block 11 was an isolated prison where thousands of prisoners were tortured and killed.  It was in Block 11 that Saint Maximillian Kolbe was confined and where he suffered death through starvation and suffocation in place of another man.  Block 10 was the place where the infamous SS Doctor Mengele carried out sterilization experiments on Jewish women and anatomical procedures on children who would later be killed and whose body parts were sold to medical schools.  The Gas Chambers where Zyclon B granules were poured through holes in the ceiling of the chamber killing people instantly through the gas coming from the granules activated by the body heat of victims.   Visiting Jewish youth were weeping and consoling one another.  Flowers were placed at the places of death.  Silence pervaded the whole camp.  Visitors walked through the buildings with reverence and remembrance of a fellow human being who died simply because they were considered different and inferior to the ideal humanity according to the standard of Nazi murderers.   While on my way out of the camp, I prayed for all who died in Auschwitz through the intercession of Saint Maximilliam Kolbe and Saint Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)–-who conquered suffering and death at the camp with heroic love for Jesus Christ.