“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” - Heinrich Heine. (1797-1856)
(side note: I had hoped to make it back to Dachau Concentration Camp for photography and to show Mike, but time didn't permit. I chose however to at least write about National Socialism.)
In 1933, while the Jews continued to wait in vain for thousands of years for a messiah, Germany’s decided to make an appearance. Unlike the Aryan ideal, this leader showed up short, with dark hair and was weak of physique. This diminutive dictator delivered however. To a people who were starving, he gave bread. To the unemployed, he provided work. To the immobile, he conjured automobiles. And to the trampled down he gave national pride. He was showing himself to be one of the greatest rulers in modern times. The Deutsche Volk fell in love with their Fuehrer. If they could have only seen into the future.
Right from the outset Hitler started implementing his “final solution”. The very first year Adolf seized power, the first concentration camp was built in Dachau. The locals were told that it was an Arbeit’s Lager, a work camp for dissidents and criminals. This sounded good. Every house needs cleaning now and again doesn't it? The Nazis were merely restoring order to a country recently released from chaos.
From there it spread. Quietly, calmly, orderly, people started to be carted off. In the roar of Fascist fanaticism who would hear the cries of an unwanted minority? With the wars beginning, more pressing matters were at hand. Men were dying on the front, consumables were to be rationed and attacks were becoming more frequent. The average German had no time worry about the welfare of others, or the desire to have conflict with the state. They turned away. They were silent. They didn’t want to see. They closed shutters and doors and left the problem with others.
But all the while there was a cancer that was consuming Europe, and Nazism in its most malignant, insidious form would be known to all who played host for her. Work camps proliferated. But they were no longer holding centers, but death camps. These living mortuaries sprang up in eastern lands, far from prying German eyes. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen Belsen. The names to this day inspire utter fear. Camps created for the sole purpose of ending life. It was murder and torment on an immeasurable scale.
6 million were rounded up and exterminated. Each one a single arrest. Everyone a kicked in door, a control of papers, or the tip off of an informant. And as the Nazi regime spread to all parts, there was no more escaping it. One could only hide, and hope, often in vain. The blood of mothers and martyrs boiled upon the altars of Aryan aggression. Many of the finest minds in Europe were incinerated. Doctors, Engineers, Architects, Scientists. Like libraries on fire, the Teutons had gone from burning books to burning people. Each one, volumes of experiences. Each one a human being with parents and friends. Each one with skills and stories to tell. Each one, with hopes and dreams, sadness and joy. Each one with plans and ideas. Each one, now gassed, shot or beaten to death.
In 1945 the war ended. The Jewish messiah never showed up, perhaps himself too terrified of the Germanic hordes. 2/3rds of all Jewery in east and western Europe had been wiped out. What remained was saved by invading forces. Communists to the east, Capitalists to the west.
Finally Germany was forced to see the monster that they themselves had given birth to and suckled. Local citizens in the surrounding villages were themselves now rounded up paraded through the concentration camps. There were no more shutters to close, there were no more doors to lock, there was no more turning away. The Germans were forced to face the hellish child they raised. The gas chambers. The piles of corpses. The ovens. The ashes. The aftermath. Such is the price of complicit silence. Such is the price of turning away.
