Last week was the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. Visiting the site has been on my bucket list since I was a young teenager. I could not believe the programmes on TV saying over a million people had been exterminated in this camp. Neither could I believe what “man would do to mankind.“ The promise was that one day I would visit Auschwitz.
 June 2012 three of us arrive at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. How quickly the feelings flow when we are confronted by the brutal reality of Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camps.

I am saddened when entering Auschwitz to see the art depicting a Jewish orchestra playing to welcome visitors to the camp. In many cases heading to the gas chambers.

After our visit, three of us, a Polish man, an Indian colleague and myself sat in silence for over an hour in disbelief of what we had just seen. Heinous crimes are a woefully massive understatement. We see small glass rooms full of children’s clothes, shoes, and spectacles knowing the suffering of many. This sight, for me, was more horrifying than seeing what remains of the gas chambers.

When you consider, years earlier in this very location, it took two minutes to decide whether someone should live or die.

Auschwitz is located in southern Poland. It was part of the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, Commander of the S.S. who believed such camps would provide the final solution to the “Jewish problem" via the eradication of the Jewish race. Rudolf Hoss, an Austrian S.S. was the longest serving Commandant of Auschwitz, and was responsible for introducing the pesticide Zyklon B to the gassing process, enabling SS soldiers the ability to kill the maximum number of people at Auschwitz per hour.

Between 1941 and 1944, transport trains brought Jews from around Europe to the camp. It is heartbreaking hearing stories that many Jews actually bought tickets for these transport trains believing they would escape Germany.

The camp’s earlier days were used to detain and kill the political enemies of the Germans, people of German-occupied countries, but also gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses or anyone that spoke out against Hitler. At its peak, there were over 11,000 people, including S.S.officers working on the camp’s expansion.

Above the entrance to Auschwitz, a sign states ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ that translated means “Work sets you free”. How ironic that some people never even saw this sign as the process of living or dying started on the railway platform based on age, sex, health, deformities or the whim of the decision maker. It is difficult to determine the actual number of people transported to the many concentration camps, there seems to be a consensus there were over 11 million people.

News that Germany was losing the war and that the Allied troops were advancing, forced the S.S. to begin destroying the camps and evidence of their activities.

This resulted in many of the detainees being marched out of the camp on what became known as ‘The Death March’. Many perished before the Allies could reach them or the camp. The Russian forces liberated Auschwitz in January 1945. After the war, Rudolf Hoss was convicted of murder, returned to Auschwitz and hanged at the site of his crimes. Unfortunately, many SS officers who were mass murderers escaped trial, thereby saving themselves from imprisonment or execution.

So I visited Auschwitz but was still unable to make sense of what I saw.

I do not understand, and never will, how such hatred could be directed at one religion or race. l thought history could never repeat itself but I watch the mass murder of innocent people, mostly women and children in Gaza and other troubled locations.

I feel saddened that since my visit to the camp, I have watched the television news and seen images of Syrian towns being bombed and now the situation of Palestine and the people of Gaza.

I have no words to describe the horrors of Auschwitz. Today, it remains the most humbling experience of my life. Sadly the world has learnt little.