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ShareA bird calls in the trees; there is otherwise a hush all around.The hush that comes from knowing that here, in these idyllic surroundings, there was unfurled a saga of death, terror, deprivation and violence of an intensity that can even today curdle the blood.
We walk through the rooms one by one; the place is relentless in its horror. Pictures and captions tells us of the numbers, the identities and nationalities of the millions of Jews who were herded into conditions that would have killed cattle, fed rations that would have starved mice, and killed off in inhuman and ghastly ways that chill the blood.
Men, women, and millions of children, some as young as a few months old!
Rooms that hold ceiling high piles of human hair, that was shorn off for selling to make into wigs, or broken spectacles that could be recycled for profit, are almost as blood curdling as pictures of the 'beds' or the sight of the standing punishment grids
that we see.
It takes many days to get over the knowledge that what we have read of in books and seen glimpses of in war movies is but a fraction of the horrible immensity of the cruelty of a racist idea.
Nothing brings home the inhumanness of racial hatred as clearly as a visit to a German
concentration camp. And considering thousands visit the camps every season, the lessons learnt must be wide spread and have a ripple effect.
But one wonders if that is really so.Is it true that each generation must learn its lessons for itself? Are the lessons of the last World War and the terrible things hate and war can do so quickly forgotten?
Even as we abhor the Nazis' mindless viciousness, are we not, across the world, following almost closely in their footsteps?
The war of caste against caste, the indignities heaped by one sect on another, more helpless one; the racial cleansing that nations and communities indulge in the name of holding on to what is their own; in fact the very battles that are waged in our own country in the name of religion and culture, are they any different?
Each of them holds in them the seed of an Auschwitz, a Birkenau. In fact, today, with our heightened knowledge of technology, and weaponry, and our much more delicate balance of sensibilities; hatred and power if unleashed, can make a mix so powerful that it could put the camps to shame.
If only we could see the danger!
