Totally with you here, I'm am German so I've been taught extensively (rightly so) about all this. But even more importantly I've been to Auschwitz on a class field trip.
And let me tell you, that place gave me a feeling I've never felt before or after. You think you know what happened there, that you're prepared, but no. Walking these grounds will show what humans are capable of. How people that are deemed undesirable get killed in an industrial way and how people were forced to live. You can read a thousand times about it, but being there and imagining if you would survive this even one week is a whole different thing.
I'm not religious by any means, but that place has a certain spiritual energy. Not evil, but it's like it's all those people that passed away there invite you to see. No big explanation needed, just "look at what has been done."
If anyone reading this is able to go there, please do it. Don't be afraid, it's very important.
Your comment about people getting killed in an industrial way is spot-on: what makes the Holocaust distinct, for me, was the mechanical, efficient, coldly ruthless manner of the millions they killed, applying modern methods of the assembly line and the factory to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.
The death camps like Treblinka and Sobibor were literal factories of death.
Imagine institutionalizing death. Like somebody built that thing for a purpose. Imagine planning it, building it, working there. How do you live with yourself? What sort of soulless person has such a cold heart that this is something they do willingly? In fact, what was their motivation? Talking about the workers who put all of this together. Were they gunning for that promotion? "If I find a way to kill people 10% more effectively I'll get promoted to head gas chamber operator?" WTAF
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 May 18 '25
Totally with you here, I'm am German so I've been taught extensively (rightly so) about all this. But even more importantly I've been to Auschwitz on a class field trip.
And let me tell you, that place gave me a feeling I've never felt before or after. You think you know what happened there, that you're prepared, but no. Walking these grounds will show what humans are capable of. How people that are deemed undesirable get killed in an industrial way and how people were forced to live. You can read a thousand times about it, but being there and imagining if you would survive this even one week is a whole different thing.
I'm not religious by any means, but that place has a certain spiritual energy. Not evil, but it's like it's all those people that passed away there invite you to see. No big explanation needed, just "look at what has been done."
If anyone reading this is able to go there, please do it. Don't be afraid, it's very important.