I was going to do my level best to semantically put you in Auschwitz, to cram you into that barely ventilated train full of nervousness and noise and fear and, above all, heat rising to match the stench, and then I thought better of it because
who here doesn't immediately know what I mean when I say Auschwitz?
From Russia to Portugal, from north of the Canadian Shield to damn near Tierra del Fuego, from those born in the 1910s to the teenagers who will get their driver's licenses today, it is a testament to education and awareness in First World countries (and, to be bloody sure, elsewhere) that if you say "Auschwitz" to the average person, you do not need to say
anything
else.
Nothing beside remains to be said. Auschwitz, like few other words, tells you everything you need to know.
The word will have that power for as long as people can learn about that power.
But the place is losing its power.
I do not need to tell you why Auschwitz needs to be saved.
You do not need an overview of how the Nazis tried to get rid of all evidence that they had been Nazis to know why one of Nazi Germany's iconic locations must be maintained as a lesson in inhumanity.
You do not need to be reminded of the death marches they made their prisoners take so there would be fewer witnesses, fewer Jews living in defiance of the Nazi party's best efforts, to know why a former death camp must be maintained as a lesson in history.
I need not research (again) how many or how high-ranking Nazi officials killed themselves or fled Germany to avoid the justice they knew would otherwise greet them and, in due time, finish the job anyway -- you know why this former workplace must host tourists from anywhere and everywhere, all coming for a lesson in infamy.
How many Jews and gays and Gypsies and political prisoners and people with disabilities and resistance fighters died between 1939 and 1945, and how many more lives were scarred? At one, too many. Exactly how many died in Auschwitz matters none for now; we understand, regardless, that this former melting pot of those sentenced to die must be maintained as a lesson in diversity.
You do not need the specifics just now because you know and I know what Auschwitz means. Not what it meant, what it means. But for it to continue to have that meaning, it must continue to be.
The survivors, every last one of them, will one day be as the survivors of all other atrocities and wars and disasters and anything else -- the last to die.
Those whose mouths could still move told us what had happened to them as the death-claimed carcasses of their friends told us what had happened to so many others.
They were left stacked in piles, the Nazis having fled to postpone the inevitable, like ... art. Like performance art, "Look at how little we care for life, that we drain it from people and then leave them in piles -- we don't have time to burn these last few corpses because we're too busy running away from you, trying to kill just ... a ... fewww ... more."
In the pile, someone's mother, now a corpse, arms as rails and legs scarcely thicker, body long since robbed of fat -- and almost all muscle. Hair stubbly and white, hips no more than an afterthought, breasts long since transformed into elongated skin flaps, a perfectly good body now a corpse.
In the pile, someone's teacher, the mind now dormant, the chalk-friendly hands now strangers to life, the eyes' spark dulled and the feet, having once led students through town on a field trip, now just more bones in a cluster and rows, their job done too early.
In the pile, someone's friend, the hand for holding hands, books, movie tickets, umbrellas, a coffee cup. The lips that smiled, that kissed, that prayed or argued, that blessed or shushed, that spoke in anger and then in apologetic tones, now faint pink and cracked. The years of care, challenged by weeks or months or maybe more than a year of abuse and neglect, finally ended.
In the pile, someone's mother and teacher and friend -- all the same person, and more to her than mother and teacher and friend. And so much to all of them in the pile, except now, just ... bodies in a pile, naked and innocent and dead.
For sanitation reasons, human hands guided machines around, arranging and then dumping the bodies into ditches.
That we had to treat people so impersonally horrifies and hurts our souls now even as we understand why it had to be done then.
We have seen the footage of the living, and we have seen the footage of the remnants of where they lived -- of Arbeit Macht Frei and the concentration camps that were home and cemetery to so many millions. We have discovered the fates of the people who were made free even despite efforts to work them to death. We have read the books and perhaps met the books' writers, and we have smelled and imagined and toured and done what meant the most to us as our wallets and hearts allowed.
And we need that experience -- we must forever remind ourselves of what we can do when left unchecked -- if Auschwitz is to be the place, the place, where all you need to say is Auschwitz.
Tomorrow, 6 million Jews and millions of others will still have died in the Holocaust regardless of how well-kept Auschwitz is.
Millions of other lives, from the survivors to the schoolchildren lucky enough to have met them, will still have been forever scarred.
Dreams will still have been lost, childhoods will still have been snuffed out, innocence will still have been eaten up like thin scraps of paper too close to a fire.
Books will still be being written about the Holocaust, one of those inexhaustible topics. Teachers will still be teaching about the Holocaust, and students will still be writing about it and discovering with each page that, yeah, it can get worse, and yeah, it ... can get worse, and ... yeah, it can get ... worse, and ... Christ, it keeps getting worse, and THEY REALLY DID THIS TO PEOPLE? HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN? WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE STOP THEM! THIS IS AWFUL! I DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT THIS ANYMORE!
But I've lived in a house Nazi soldiers lived in, and I've held a Hitler Youth sword and worn the helmet, and words do only so much, and then you think about breathing where Nazis slept and touching what a pro-Nazi German kid wore and going to the Holocaust Museum and just ... standing ... and looking ... at a pile of shoes left behind by people you don't get to know because they were killed for the unforgivable crime of ... something. You can guess, but you don't know. You only know you're looking at shoes whose owners were killed.
Reading about it is not the same. Far be it for an atheist to suggest this, but the personal experience touches your soul in ways words don't know how to. It's almost like words can go only so far, and deliberately, because that way you feel you must have more, must experience it, must let your soul be hurt by some part of what hurt someone just like you, or someone nothing like you, decades ago.
And then you can't forget.
And now we have a chance to help make sure nobody can forget Auschwitz -- that it means tomorrow and in 50 years what it meant 50 years ago and means today.
Once upon a time, I wrote diaries and made sure to include an action item in each. Stuff about malaria? Donate to provide nets. Stuff about child abuse? Donate to help keep nonprofits running. Stuff about World War II? Donate to help vets.
This is about the most obvious diary in which to invite you to donate.
And to be sure, donations would be lovely, but more than that, I want your word that you have told people what needs to be done.
Comment on this diary by linking me to where you've passed the word on (here or elsewhere; if it's on Facebook, I'll add you so I can see just how far my little effort goes) and I will donate 25 cents to save Auschwitz up to a max of $25 (I'm a journalist; I'm made of words, not money). Unless you indicate otherwise, I will update my diary with the link and your username as time permits. Work is busy today, but when I have time, I do what matters.
And donate so Auschwitz will mean what it means now when you get to visit.
Donation comments: Luthien Tinuviel, MBNYC.