A day at Auschwitz

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Their history can anytime become our history




“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals. “ Theodor Adorno




“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. “ George Santayana


“The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference. “ Ian Kershaw




“I believe that Heydrich was the worst criminal of them all. I myself saw him and he looked with such a glance of hatred that I shall never forget it. “ Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin


“Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity. “ Billy Graham




“Auschwitz cries out with the pain of immense suffering and pleads for a future of respect, peace and encounter among peoples. “ Pope Francis


“My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself. The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear. “ Hajo Meyer




“This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. “ Jacob Bronowski


“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. “ Viktor E. Frankl




“Humanity’s become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.” Edward Bond


“Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. “ Ken Livingstone




“At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man. To live in a world where there is nothing anymore, where the executioner acts as god, as judge-many wanted no part of it. It was its own heart the world incinerated at Auschwitz. “ Elie Wiesel


Someone dared to ask for his luggage: they replied, “luggage afterwards.” Someone else did not want to leave his wife: they said, “together again afterwards.” Many mothers did not want to be separated from their children: they said “good, good, stay with child.” They behaved with the calm assurance of people doing their normal duty of every day. Visions of Auschwitz




Jewish prisoners were treated like cattle; packed tightly into cattle trucks and locked inside for days as the trains travelled to camps across Europe.


“Mengele was known as a manic collector of things human, including dwarf corpses, gallstones, and eyes. His fascination with eyes led to the infamous experiments in which he injected various substances into the eyes of brown-eyed Jewish children in an attempt to make them Nordic (blue). “ Bettina Beech


10

BLOCK

Dr. Josef Mengele


The Zyklon B pellets turned immediately into a deadly gas. In a panic and gasping for air, prisoners would push, shove, and climb over each other to reach the door. But there was no way out. Within five to 20 minutes (depending on the weather), all inside were dead from suffocation.




“Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. Who knows, it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we have to suffer now. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any country for that matter; we will always remain Jews, but we want to, too. “ Anne Frank


“This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. “ Jacob Bronowski




“We aren’t allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn’t stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think.” Anne Frank


Located in the yard at the side of block 11. The condemned were led to the wall for execution. SS men shot several thousand people there mostly Polish political prisoners and, above all, members of clandestine organizations.




Righteous Among the Nations 26,120 Oskar Schindler

Irena Sendler Archbishop Damaskinos Feng-Shan Ho Constantin Karadja Chiune Sugihara Raoul Wallenberg

... and many others





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