NAZIS--JUST PEOPLE

  Yesterday I arrived in Krakow, Poland to do a series of presentations; more on that tomorrow.  I've been in 30 countries over the years and have never once asked for a "touristy" side jaunt.  But when I realized I was coming to Krakow, I couldn't help but ask my hosts, Jan and Edita, to take me to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp museum.

                  The three-hour tour with an English-speaking guide ranks as one of the most memorable things I've ever done.  Off the top, I confess that many times during the tour my eyes welled with tears.  I just couldn't stop crying. I was bothered by the young people in our tour who laughed and joked throughout the tour.  I didn't see much to smile about. 

                  People who deny the Holocaust or who short-change it with being overblown or in any way minimize it have never been here.  Truck loads of shoes, suitcases, eyeglasses, kitchen pots and pans are on exhibit to show the complete pre-death humiliation and confiscation.  Every one of those shoes was worn by someone, including many children.

                  Everyone, including women, upon arrival was stripped naked--yes, completely naked in front of the SS guards and their blockmasters (prisoners who were in charge of blocks of prisoners).  The German guards never directly interacted with the prisoners, who lived on average four months before starvation, suicide, or the firing squad dispatched them.  Some just ran into the electric fence to end it.                  

                  Nobody knows the actual count, but conservative estimates are 1.3 million.  First, it was the Polish academic and business leadership.  Influential Poles threatened the German occupation, so they were the first to go.  Poland lost 20 percent of its population during WWII; the U.S. only 1 percent. Poland had the largest population of Jews in the world at that time.  They had fled Roman Catholic persecution in France, Spain, and Italy from 1600-1800.  They maintained their distinct communities so were easy to segregate once Poland fell to the Germans. 

                  At the peak, 5,000 people a day--by 1943 nearly all Jews--were being gassed.  It was cyanide crystals dropped into concrete basements that could hold 1,000 people literally crammed on top of themselves.  These bunkers, roughly 30 feet wide and 100 feet long, produced bodies faster than they could be cremated.  Ashes and bones became fertilizer and road building material. 

                  The people closest to the vents died in about 3 minutes.  Many took more than 10 minutes to die.  The 20-minute cycle ensured nobody came out alive.  Bounded by two 10-foot multi-strand electrified barbed wire fences, by the end of the war the camps held a total of nearly 100,000 people.  Auschwitz was first, and used primarily as a work camp.  Birkenau, just two miles away, was 400 acres, worse conditions, and only a holding place until the occupants could be efficiently killed.  The killing was only bounded by the limitations of the chambers and cremation buildings. 

                  A wooden building designed after German horse stables housed 700 people on bunks 3 high.  The strongest got on the top ones because the bottom ones had a rain of feces and urine constantly dripping down.  Imagine 50 of these buildings with one toilet house and one kitchen house.  The toilet house had concrete risers with holes cut in--3 risers with 2 rows of about 60 holes each.  No toilet paper.  Blockmasters allowing 15 seconds to do your business.  No water.   

                  Allowed one shower per month, but no clothes washing, the stench had to be unimaginable.  Some 3,000 babies were born at Birkenau; only 45 survived.  Upon arrival, the prisoners exited the trains and walked to one end of a holding area where Germans, with a wag of the finger, sorted them between potential workers and those destined to be gassed as soon as there was room.  Like sorting cattle.  I wonder if this will be like the Great Judgment where God separates the sheep from the goats; except that will be righteous. And it will be based on faith, not ethnicity or handicap.

                  The experiments performed on people are too unearthly for description.  The  commandant and his 4 children lived just outside the fence in a palatial house with gardens and swimming pool.  His wife wrote that it was one of the most satisfying and enjoyable times of her life.  He was eventually found and hanged a hundred yards from his house, where his last sight was his Auschwitz dominion. 

                  Numerous pictures, which were forbidden, were smuggled out and are on display at various points of the tour through the buildings and gas chambers.  What struck me was how the Nazis looked as human as anyone.  Elitism and prejudice lead to terrible places.  They didn't have two heads; they didn't look like demons; they looked like the well-intentioned neighbor next door, just trying to make the world a better place for their children and grandchildren.

                  Only 5-10 percent of the guards were ever brought to justice.  Those who did stand trial received on average 2 years in prison.  "Just doing my job" is a demonic excuse used by officials throughout the centuries.  It's used by people who confiscate food on a farm because it's missing a comma on a label.  It's used by health department officials who deny entrepreneurs the freedom to sell a chicken pot pie to a neighbor without a $300,000 quintuple-permitted stand-alone certified kitchen.

                  It started with euthanasia in Germany in the early 1930s.  By the end, it progressed to mass extermination of Jews.  Philosophical incrementalism leads to practice incrementalism.  Philosophy always precedes practice.  That's why we have to get our thinking right if we ever hope to get our activities right. 

                  I asked our guide if there was one--just one--example of an SS guard ever defecting.  Ever thinking this was indefensible.  Ever daring to stand against the system.  Answer:  not one.  It was cushy.  Nice houses, no chance of being killed in battle, double soldier pay.  What's not to love?  "Just doing my job, and it's a good one." 

                  Sorry to go on longer than normal on this, but it deserves remembrance because "I'm better than you," or "I need to tell you what to do," or "your existence is problematic" or a host of other subtle prideful thoughts can reap a whirlwind.   These prisoners almost turned into animals, as proven by the Blockmasters who agreed to go along to get an extra cup of food a day.  The lenient ones were executed by the Germans.  The tough ones were executed by the prisoners.  A fine line, that.

                  I was heartened to learn that 7,000 visitors a day tour these camps.  Every day of the year.  They do tours in almost every language and the tours literally criss-cross and stack up.  Every school child in Poland goes as much as three times.  Just to remember.  Perhaps if enough people tour these camps, they will forever notice when a society's censorship and tyranny start down that Nazi path.  It's definitely not gone from our world. 

                  At the end, even the SS guards had a conscience, seared as it was.  With the Russians bearing down on them, they put explosives in the chambers at Birkenau to hide the evidence.  Those have not been touched since that day, testament both to what happened there and the shame among these hardened SS troops.   

                  On a scale of 1-10, 1 being Unlikely and 10 being Likely, what are the chances of this happening again?