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Non-Fiction
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| Necessity | |
| By Goddess | ||||||||||||||||
| 30 April 2007 | ||||||||||||||||
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I wrote this piece after I came back from Auschwitz on a History trip across Hungary, Poland and Germany. I wrote this mostly to sort the confusion out in my mind and because I thought it was so important - not only for me - but for others to try and understand what really happened at Auschwitz and the significance of it. Hope this gives an insight. ‘Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe Auschwitz - Berkanau 1940-1945’ I stared at the plaque deep in thought. I stared at the stones from the visitors past. I did not however stare merely at the stones but rather what they represented. The rocks represented a life taken from so long ago in history. My mind was cast back to the gas chamber that echoed with silent screams and terrified tears. Every man or woman entering the room imagines the horror crystallised in the room as the ceiling shafts used to open, down, which the Nazi gassed all the innocent Jews and political prisoners standing below. Through the next door was the crematorium, which I’m sure, smells sweeter now than it did 66 years ago. Ghosts of the past seem to writhe into people’s heart and minds. Never had I felt so connected to something that was nothing to my generation. Is the war is now simply whispers forgotten over time? Or is it more than that? My head still spun with questions. Why did they do it … well of course I knew ‘why’ what I mean is - WHY. How could anybody kill innocent people on mass? How could they sleep at night when they went home to their own naive families? They feed their families a feast in contrast to their owns prisoners who ate scarcely more than six ounces of bread. This was not enough to eat away at the feeling of starvation that plagued their every waking moments. Here I am. Alive. Well. My life seems peaceful. When asked to describe Auschwitz words seem empty and descriptions seem understated. Nobody understands the sheer size of the people murdered throughout the concentration camps of Poland and Germany – Six million people. It is just a number and this very number is hard to imagine. These prisoners were treated below animals and were overwhelmed with the heavy contemplation of death. For some the Star of David seems to be more of a burden– a sign of death and suffering whilst the swastika overruled it with secret plans. The Final Solution. My own great-grandmother had survived a concentration camp... which one I will never know. It is not a question that is asked in polite conversation to grandparents or parents and so forth. My Grandad fought in the war and my Great-Grandfather in the First World War and still war is a mystery to me. When I saw the tears on the faces around me, my fellow students crying for a past that they were neither part of or understand, I seemed to put a key into a lock that I have never thought existed. A secret door where the unknown resides. The forbidden fruit. Knowledge. The key clicks and fingers tremble on the door handle. Opening to a world of horror that nobody has ever known. To a world where people are made to question their moralities. Now when I attached the blood red poppy to my jacket, it will remind me of the six million people who died in these camps and the many more that died for what they believed was morally right. I turned around from the plaques to stare at the length of the track in Berkanau. I remembered the Berlin Holocaust Memorial – two thousand seven hundred stone slabs each to represent the thousands of people who perished in the hands of the Nazi. Some people hate this memorial. It’s cold and heartless, people say. It is a reminder to all humanity. It is the not wanting to see it… but it is the Necessity to do so. The Necessity to open the door to a heart-wrenching truth. The Necessity to learn from history. The Necessity never to let it happen again.
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