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Voices from the War
The rubble from a gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s
notorious concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. The Nazis destroyed
most of the camp’s gas chambers and crematoriums in a failed attempt to
hide their crimes. (photo by Kolton Rutherford)
Has “Never Again” Become an Empty Slogan?
Tuesday, Jan. 27, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that day 81 years ago, Soviet troops from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front liberated prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s notorious concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. In less than five years at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis and their collaborators systematically killed more than 1 million people as part of a larger campaign of mass murder that ended in the deaths of more than 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Romani people, Serbs, people with disabilities, German political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
On Aug. 2, 2024, Katie and I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a week-long trip to Germany and Poland. We walked the halls of the main camp’s barracks, stood a few feet away from the hooks prisoners’ bodies would be hung from as a form of torture and paid our respects at the Death Wall, the site of the executions of several thousand prisoners in the yard outside Block 11, one of the camp’s most notorious barracks in which prisoners were regularly tortured and starved to death. We looked on in horror at massive piles of luggage, shoes and glasses, the last remnants of the camp’s many victims. Empty Zyklon B canisters – the hydrogen cyanide used to kill people in the camp’s gas chambers – reflected back at us through a glass partition. We walked through the camp’s lone intact gas chamber and stood steps from the ruins of multiple other gas chambers the Nazis destroyed in a failed attempt to hide their crimes. More than 17 months on from our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the experience still sticks with me.
I often wonder how a society can devolve to such a sorry state that barbaric crimes like the ones perpetrated at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the many thousands of camps like it could occur. In remembering my experience on that hot summer day in Poland in 2024, I’m reminded of my two previous visits to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and its suggestion to “think about what you saw” the “next time you witness hatred,” “see injustice” or “hear about genocide.”
On April 23, 2009, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. In that speech, the president asked how we can “ensure that ‘never again’ isn’t an empty slogan, or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?” Nearly 17 years on from that speech, I’m worried that “never again” has become the empty slogan the president warned us against.
I see human rights abuses and killings at home and abroad – from the ongoing violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to the ruins of Gaza in the Middle East. I see political movements that borrow the language of Nazi Germany’s policies rising in countries around the world. I see leaders ignore national sovereignty and advertise a “new world order” in which might make right, an echo to a worldview in the early 1900s, that led to two world wars and many millions of deaths. Nearly 81 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, have we really learned anything from the killing fields of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s? I’m not so sure. I see leaders and political movements around the world making the same mistakes as before, engaging in policies of appeasement, isolationism, territorial expansion and attacks on press freedom that put the globe on the brink.
In the words of President Obama, “in the face of horrors that defy comprehension, the impulse to silence is understandable.” But silence is dangerous, the president said. “Today, and every day, we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, to confront these scourges – to fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us, or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others’ sufferings are not our own,” the president said, adding that “we have the opportunity to make a habit of empathy; to recognize ourselves in each other; [and] to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take.”
Tuesday, Jan. 27, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that day 81 years ago, Soviet troops from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front liberated prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s notorious concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. In less than five years at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis and their collaborators systematically killed more than 1 million people as part of a larger campaign of mass murder that ended in the deaths of more than 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Romani people, Serbs, people with disabilities, German political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
On Aug. 2, 2024, Katie and I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a week-long trip to Germany and Poland. We walked the halls of the main camp’s barracks, stood a few feet away from the hooks prisoners’ bodies would be hung from as a form of torture and paid our respects at the Death Wall, the site of the executions of several thousand prisoners in the yard outside Block 11, one of the camp’s most notorious barracks in which prisoners were regularly tortured and starved to death. We looked on in horror at massive piles of luggage, shoes and glasses, the last remnants of the camp’s many victims. Empty Zyklon B canisters – the hydrogen cyanide used to kill people in the camp’s gas chambers – reflected back at us through a glass partition. We walked through the camp’s lone intact gas chamber and stood steps from the ruins of multiple other gas chambers the Nazis destroyed in a failed attempt to hide their crimes. More than 17 months on from our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the experience still sticks with me.
I often wonder how a society can devolve to such a sorry state that barbaric crimes like the ones perpetrated at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the many thousands of camps like it could occur. In remembering my experience on that hot summer day in Poland in 2024, I’m reminded of my two previous visits to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and its suggestion to “think about what you saw” the “next time you witness hatred,” “see injustice” or “hear about genocide.”
On April 23, 2009, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. In that speech, the president asked how we can “ensure that ‘never again’ isn’t an empty slogan, or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?” Nearly 17 years on from that speech, I’m worried that “never again” has become the empty slogan the president warned us against.
I see human rights abuses and killings at home and abroad – from the ongoing violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to the ruins of Gaza in the Middle East. I see political movements that borrow the language of Nazi Germany’s policies rising in countries around the world. I see leaders ignore national sovereignty and advertise a “new world order” in which might make right, an echo to a worldview in the early 1900s, that led to two world wars and many millions of deaths. Nearly 81 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, have we really learned anything from the killing fields of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s? I’m not so sure. I see leaders and political movements around the world making the same mistakes as before, engaging in policies of appeasement, isolationism, territorial expansion and attacks on press freedom that put the globe on the brink.
In the words of President Obama, “in the face of horrors that defy comprehension, the impulse to silence is understandable.” But silence is dangerous, the president said. “Today, and every day, we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, to confront these scourges – to fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us, or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others’ sufferings are not our own,” the president said, adding that “we have the opportunity to make a habit of empathy; to recognize ourselves in each other; [and] to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take.”