The Holocaust: a memory of the past and a lesson for the future

"If the international Jewish financiers outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe"
(Adolf Hitler addressing the German Reichstag, 30 January 1939)

A child dying on the street in the Varsaw Gheto, during the Nazi regim

Today, 27th of January we celebrate the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, th day when the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, was released by Soviet troops and the Holocaust period became officially to an end.
It was created in 1st of November of 2005 during the United Nations General Assembly resolution, in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the World War II. However, only this year I will leave a post about it, not because only this year I remember this big crime against the Human-Kind and the Human Civilization, but because last year in August I visited for the first time a concentration camp, the kz gedenkstaette Dachau, near to Munich, the first concentration camp.
And I need to say that, even with all the pictures, all the movies and all the stories, we can only realize what really was a concentration camp, when we visit one with our eyes, and we still feel the sadness, the despair and the hopeless that remains in these camps.
But, before talking about my experience, I will explain some things about the Holocaust.

Despite the years, the European continent has fresh the memory of this crime. Even the youngest generations (like myself) that were born many years after the end of the World War II know what the Holocaust was and have (at least) a vague idea of what it worked. And despite the non-involvement, it's known in all the continents, not being of course, a present memory like here in Europe.
But sometimes the people don't realize the extension of this phenomenon. The Holocaust wasn't only the building of some camps where the people were put to die or to kill instantly. There was a big structure behind, many people working just for it, a great long-term preparation and execution, and a whole system working.
In fact, it reflects the real idealism of the nazi regim. Because more than the Economic or Political Changes, the basic principle of the nazist regime was the the segregation and the xenophobia.

So, how did it started? The tortures against the jewish started far before the opening of the concentration camps, when the Nazi party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, came to the power in 1933. In that time, Germany was facing a extremly bad economic, social and political situation, and a huge humiliation caused by the World War I. So, for Hitler the big responsibles for that were the jews, knowing by a people that can become rich very fast, that were taking away the opportunities for the Germans. The jewish turned into the Germany's main enemies. Before the massive deaths in the Holocaust, a long process was made. First all the jews were registrated and forced to use a specific symbol. They were humiliated and let to die in the most miserable conditions. And no one was saved: even the old, the women and the small kids.

Pictures from Dachau, The first concentration camp opened in 1993

The Nazi regime started to create the concentration camps: but initially they were just a few and weren't the most important element of the regime's xenophobia.
The big part of the jewish population started to be concentrated in the big cities, in Germany and in the occupied territories (especially Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia). Many jews from the countries came to the cities and were put in the ghettos: urban districts separated from the rest of the cities, where only the jews could live. They were deprived of all their rights and became employees of the German industry.

Evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943

However the big intention of Hitler wasn't leave the jews in these ghettos. He intended to invade the Soviet Union and put them - the jews and the other discriminated groups - in Siberia. But, when Hitler failed to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler turned to the massive creation of concentration and extermination camps. The ghettos were evacuated until 1943, and the jews were taken to these concentration camps.
But now, not only the jews are being arrested, but also members of other groups: gypsies, homosexuals, politicians (especially Hitler opponents), priests and other members of the Catholic church, black people,

Soviets massively murdered in Belarus

people from the occupied territories who were considered inferiors, and physical and mental disabled.
Many concentration camps were opened in Germany and the occupied territories. The living conditions in the forced labour or concentration camps was extremely bad. The physical and psychological terror were a constant by day and by night. The prisioners were constantly fearing by their lifes. And of course, all the work was completly unecessary and had only one purpose: to humiliate and to weaken the prisioners until the death, usually some weeks after they arrived to the camps. Of course, many other prisioners were killed by massive shootings, physical and psychological tortures and starvation.

Entrance to Aushcwitz-Birkeneau camp

In 1942 started the construction of the first extermination camps, like Treblinka, Berzec and Sobibor. Big ovens were built, as the destination of the people that arrived by trains in terrible conditions - many of them dying before the end of the travel -, and were killed in a couple of hours. The most common way to the quick death was the use of toxic gases.
Later, also the forced labour camps become extermination camps, as a consequence of the so called Final Solution decided in the Wannsee Conference (1942). In this conference it was decided that there was only one "good solution" (in the nazi way) for the jewish problem: take all the jews present in the nazi territory and bring them to the extermination camps to be killed quickly (some of them could work under extreme conditions until their death). The objective was to kill all the jewish population, in the so called genocide.

But of course not all of the prisioners had this treatment: some of them were considered "special" prisioners and didn't pass by this slow death process. Prisioners like politicians, militaries, special members of the church, high-educated people and others that didn't belong to the groups to be exterminated. In fact, many germans that weren't jews, gypsies, homossexuals, etc, were arrested - usually by the opposition to Hitler's government - and were sent to these camps, not having to work on them or die in the gas chambers.

Victims of starvation

Victim of the nazi medical experiments

The nazis abused of the prisioners in other way. Many doctors and scientists used the prisioners as guinea pigs for medical experiments. For example the homossexuals were tested to see why did they have a
different sexual orientation, and many mental disables to study they diseases. The medical experiments brought some considerable results to the scientific community. However, they were obtained by the less human way: abusing, torturing and making the tests without the person's agreement.

During the World War II, when the Nazis realized that the things could not be going as they wished, and the possibility of loosing the war started to be a reality, the death of prisoners increased a lot. The activity of the gas chambers was continuous. In Auschwitz about 8000 people were killed by day, during the final solution, and arrived to 15000 in the last year the camp was used.

The persons that survived from the concentration camps were never looking like before

When the soviet troops released these camps, they were shocked about what they saw. And very quickly the world was in shock too. It's true that the population wasn't allowed to visit the camps, and they were very far away from the cities. And obviously in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, the population was against them. And what about the german population? Even not being authorised to visit the camps, it was obvious for everyone that the things that were happening inside these camps weren't good. Despite the fact that the people were in shocked when they discovered the extreme barbaric conditions of the camps, the true is that the german population was indifferent about was going on in the camps. The anti-Semitism wasn't only a crazy idea of the members of the Nazist party. The German population was in general extremly anti-semitic. They just didn't care about the destination given to the jews or to the other groups of prisioners. For them, the killing of these people was a benefit for the society. They were more worried about the war.

Gas chambers.

So, what happened after the release of these camps? Did the deaths stop immediatly? No. The soviet troops were busy in fighting the nazis and to arrive to Berlin. The most near cities to the camps, were devastated. And the prisioners didn't have anything - just the clothes they were wearing. So in many cases, after the release, the prisioners came back to the camps. Of course it was a bad idea, because many of them commited suicide. The nazis were cruel, but they didn't know anything about the soviets. Without knowing what could happen to them, many of the prisioners killed themselves.

The world is still in shock everytime the theme of the Holocaust is discussed. And it should be. In Dachau, even decades after its close, I could feel that there wasn't no hope inside the walls. The happiness, the joy, the fun... remained beyond the walls. In total, about 15000 camps were created by the nazists, among big camps, supporting camps, forced labour camps and extermination camps.
No one can imagine the horror lived in these camps. The prisioners weren't human beings anymore. They became less than a living creature.
Should these concentration camps be preserved as a memory of what the human being can do to himself, even in the center of the Western civilization.
There's no words to describe this atrocity and unfortunately there have been similar cases like this after the end of the World War II in many countries around the world.
I just hope that this could come to an end, in honour of these innocent people. These kind of cruelties only destroy the Human kind and the best we have: the respect for the others, and the richness of being different.

"There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."
Words of the Colonel William W. Quinn of the US 7th Army about what he discovered in the Dachau concentration camp.