By Yechezkal Freundlich, Senior Science and Technology Editor
After the start of World War II, a Jewish lawyer from Poland, Raphael Lemkin, escaped war-torn Europe to the United States, where, after hearing of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews, he invented a word everyone knows today: Genocide. Combining the Greek word genos (race, tribe) with the Latin word cide (killing), he created a word that the United Nations would soon use in legislation to try to prevent any similar event from occurring again. After World War II, the UN created a treaty called the Genocide Convention, bringing the word into the modern lexicon.
After finals ended in May, I went to Poland for the first time with my family. We visited a variety of famous Jewish sites like the Warsaw Ghetto, the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, the Majdanek concentration camp, the kever (gravesite) of Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk and, most notably, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The entire trip was a maelstrom of emotions.
All my life, I grew up on Holocaust stories, books and films. My paternal great-grandparents were in Dachau and my maternal great-grandparents were in Auschwitz-Birkenau, so their stories were a part of my childhood. I remember seeing the numbers tattooed on some members of my shul when I was younger. All of this inculcated some foresight for the journey. Nonetheless, I was not prepared.
I did not like the Auschwitz experience. I know this is a bold statement. “Auschwitz I,” the first of the Auschwitz camps, was established in 1940 and is the main “attraction” for anyone who wants the “Holocaust experience.” We arrived at 8:00 AM, and the place was packed. Dozens of buses filled the parking lot, and there was a long line to get into the camp. There were no Jews, only Poles, and of those, mostly Polish high schoolers.
They had a snacks and drinks section when you went through security. The entire camp was more or less a museum. Very few things were exposed to the public (in an attempt at conservation), and the exhibitions focused more on presentation and emotions than actually showing everything in its evil element. It lacked a certain authenticity.
While our guide was Jewish, he was accompanied by staff of the organization who commented incessantly on Polish casualties whenever the guide discussed the Jewish deaths for too long. They ensured that the information given aligned with the Polish government’s perspective. The guide spent as much time on the Polish suffering and deaths as on the Jewish deaths. Yet, of the 1.1 million murdered in Auschwitz, roughly 70,000 were Poles and 1,000,000 were Jews. The statistical difference is huge, and that should have been made clear in the camp.
The Birkenau camp was a lot more impactful and emotional. There were no signs or glass panes. We walked through the camp, where the Jews were taken from the cattle cars. Where the guard towers loomed by the barbed-wire fences. Where the barracks that held the Jews now lay partially in ruin. Where the gas chambers once stood, killing thousands of Jews daily.
We walked by the two ponds where the Nazis put the ashes and bones. We went into the bunks and saw the wooden boards that they used as beds. And we saw the destroyed part of the camp where the Nazis tried to hide all evidence of what happened there. As I walked on the very ground where my great-grandparents stood 80 years ago, anger swelled inside of me. Anger toward the Nazis and Germany, anger toward the Polish for letting this happen, anger toward the volunteer Ukrainian guards, anger toward the Dutch and the French; I found myself furious at the Western world. How could such a genocide take place, such destruction, such chaos?
As antisemitism is on the rise once again — in numbers not seen since WWII — it is important to never forget. I live in Brooklyn and the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that occur at the Brooklyn Musuem remind me that people are willfully ignorant. We must push forward and be loud. We must call out the Holocaust deniers. We must publicise the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. I have seen so many videos and photos of Hamas propaganda. The world is a very forgetful place. People need constant reminders not to forget what happened. Don’t be afraid to shame those protesting for our deaths. Don’t remain silent. These issues won’t resolve themselves. The delusional and the ignorant need little excuse to hate, to attack, to oppress. All it takes is to stand up for what is right. It is the voice of the few that bring change to the many.
Photo Caption: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Photo Credit: Yechezkal Freundlich