Friday (May 2nd) was on my calendar as Holocaust Remembrance Day. I didn’t see any other mention of it than on my calendar, but it’s important to remember. So I wanted to give a couple of links.
The first is an online photo album of the SS officers at one of the death camps. There are no photos there of the victims. Nothing grisly at all. And that, to my mind, makes it all the more horrible.
The people who carried out the murders weren’t monsters. They were just people. Ordinary people. People who laughed, had sing-alongs, who got caught in the rain, and played jokes on one another. And did all this in the shadow of the worst horror humanity has to offer. A horror which they, themselves, were perpetuating.
The second is an online exhibit from the Holocaust Museum about a young girl’s story of survival, and the dress she wore. It was the only thing she brought from her home with her, and the only thing she owned as she spent seven months living in, literally, a hole in the ground.
It’s just one person’s story, but all six million people that died during the Holocaust were “just one person,” and like the perpetrators, they were just people. Just regular people until the horror overtook them all.
I want to say something fabulously insightful here, but I’m afraid I have nothing to add that hasn’t already been said by people far more intelligent, eloquent, and insightful than myself. And although silence is the worst stance to take in the face of evil, I think I’ll just be silent now and let those two exhibits speak for themselves.
My FIL was one of those humans on the other side. Not in a death camp, but he didn’t get enough warning the third time the recruiters came to the village, and was trained as a sharp-shooter. His choice was to shoot or be shot.
Around the time he was dying, a war criminal was on trial, based on an elderly lady recognizing him decades after the event. They said he lied to the immigration officials. Opa told us that it wasn’t necessary to lie; the immigration officials didn’t want to know the details. It sounds to me like they were offering amnesty to the rank and file.
But living in fear of that sort of reprisal for something you were forced to do as a teen, after you’ve spent 50 years building a new life and being a good citizen? We didn’t talk about it much. At the school remembrance ceremony, they showed pictures of family members. We sent one of him not in uniform (I don’t think there are any of him in uniform) and didn’t give details of which unit. I discussed it with the teacher in charge, and apparently many of the photos had few details.
So, you are absolutely right, the people on the other side were humans.
The people I have trouble forgiving are the Allied command, who knew the death camps existed, hoped that France would satisfy Hitler, and ignored evidence that one of their spies in Holland had been captured and was trying to tell them to ignore his reports. They weren’t trying to expand their territory, but they didn’t protect their friends, either.
I guess I feel different about this. While 99% of the participants in the Holocaust were normal human beings who would have acted different in a different age, the other 1% were sub-human monsters, who drove normal people to gross and criminal acts. Every person comes to a point where someone asks them to do something wrong. They usually resist and then are threatened. At that point they must make a choice. Right or wrong. Good or evil. Once the choice is made the person must live with that forever in their heart, mind and soul.
At one point in my career I had the opportunity to work for those hunting down those former Nazis. I didn’t get chosen, but I really wanted to find the people who committed those crimes. Later in my career I participated in the prosecution of some of the Nazis who took part in the Holocaust, made the wrong choices and who “lied” to get into the U.S.
I remember growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1950’s. My Mother would take me to the neighborhood park to play. There, sitting on the benches, were many Holocaust victims. They just sort of sat there, staring into space. They had tattoos on their necks and arms. They had survived, but their souls were somewhere else. What unimaginable “Lovecraftian” horror could have deprived them of their future, but not their life.
I would hunt the perpetrators to the end of the Earth and the end of time to make sure that, in the future, there would be no doubt about the fate of those who made the wrong choice,
Harsh? Yes. But you didn’t see those Holocaust victim’s eyes. You didn’t see the identification medallions made out of human ashes or the leather strings made out of human flesh. Or worse. I did see them and I will never forgive or forget.