Auschwitz Liberation Day

As I hope everybody will know, today is Auschwitz Liberation Day. It marks the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Soviet Army in 1945, and the full revelation to a shocked world of the true extent of the Holocaust.

I find it incredibly difficult to write anything meaningful. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? How can I, a middle class Englishman who has spent his 37 years on this planet in peace and comfort, comment on the appalling brutality and dehumanisation that occurred there and in so many other camps? It’s simply not possible.

That the world now stands and does nothing while genocide occurs in Sudan shames us. But we did nothing in Rwanda, nothing in Srebrenitsa, nothing in Uganda until it was too late, and it is a stain on the conscience of us all. When will “Never Again” really mean NEVER? It’s not too late to realise that we are all small parts of one humanity.

Below I have copied a letter written in October 1944 by Zalmen Gradowski shortly before he was killed in a revolt at Auschwitz. Please read it. And then thank whatever god you believe in that you will never have to witness anything similar.


Dear reader, I am writing these words in the hour of my greatest despair. I neither know nor believe I will ever reread these lines after the "storm" that is to come. Who knows whether one day I will have the satisfaction of revealing to the world the profound secret I carry in my heart? Who knows whether I will ever see or speak to a "free" man again? Perhaps these lines will be the only witnesses to the life I once lived.
But I will be content if my account reaches you, a free citizen of the world. Perhaps a spark from the fire that burns inside me will ignite within you and you will accomplish our shared desire. You will take vengeance, vengeance on the murderers! Esteemed discoverer of this account! I am writing to make this request of you: that some meaning is given to my condemned existence. That my infernal days, my futureless tomorrow will be of some use in times to come.
I am describing only a tiny part, the very minimum, of what has happened in this hell that is Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have written many other things. I think you will at least find their traces, and from all that you will gain some idea of how the children of our race were murdered.
In the large room, deep underground, 12 pillars support the weight of the building, harshly lit by electric light. Along the walls, benches and hooks await the victims' clothes. A sign advises the victims in several languages that they are now in the "baths" and they must remove their clothes so they can be cleaned. We find ourselves there with them and look at each other, petrified. They know, they understand. These are not baths. This room is the corridor of death, the antechamber to the grave.
The room fills and refills with people relentlessly. More convoys of new victims continue to arrive and the "room" continues to swallow them. We all stand there in a daze, unable to say a word to them. It's not the first time. We have already received many such convoys and seen many similar scenes ...
We are all stupefied ... They study us with dark, deep, saucer-like eyes ... We watch them compassionately, because we can already see a different scene, a scene of horror. In a few hours all these beating lives, these lively worlds, all this hubbub will be rigid and lifeless ...
I stand here next to a group of 10 or 15 women, knowing that it won't be long before their bodies end up in a wheelbarrow of ashes. No trace will be left of those who were here, so many of them, enough to fill entire towns. They will be wiped out, eradicated. It will be as if they were never born.
Our hearts are rent by pain. We feel and suffer the torments of the journey from life to death along with them ... You have to harden your heart, dull all sensitivity, stifle all feelings of grief. ... You have to become an automaton, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing.
Your arms and legs set to work, a group of comrades, each charged with his own task ... Bodies are pulled and dragged from the tangle, one by the foot, another by the hand, however you can. You would think that they would be torn limb from limb by all the tugging this way and that.
The corpse is dragged across the icy, dirty cement and the beautiful polished alabaster body sweeps all the mud and grime along with it. The soiled corpse is seized and laid out, face upwards, outside. Two frozen eyes fix upon you, as if asking, "What are you going to do with me, brother?"...
Three men are there to prepare the body. One has a cold pair of pincers that he thrusts into the beautiful mouth, looking for the treasure of a gold tooth, which he pulls out, flesh and all. The second uses his scissors to shear their curls, stripping them of their natural crowns. The third grabs roughly grabs their earrings, often dashed with blood, and uses the pincers to force off any rings which resist removal.
Now it's up to the goods lift. Two men pile the bodies like logs on the platform and once seven or eight have been loaded a signal is given and the lift rises ... Up there, next to the lift, are four more men. On one side, two of them drag the bodies to the "reserve pile". The other two haul them straight to the crematoria. They lay them out in pairs in front of the mouth of each furnace.
Children are heaped at the side then added afterwards, thrown on top of each pair of adults. The corpses are piled on each other on the iron stretcher, the mouth of Gehenna is opened and the stretcher pushed in. The infernal fires reach out their tongues like open arms, seizing the body like a precious treasure. The hair catches light first. The skin swells and blisters, bursting open after a few seconds.
Arms and legs twist, veins and nerves seize up and cause the limbs to jerk. By now the whole body is ablaze, the skin splits open, fat spills out and you hear the fire sizzle. You can no longer make out the body, just a furnace of hellish fire that is feeding on something at its centre. The stomach bursts. The intestines and entrails pour out and within a few minutes no trace remains. The head takes longer to burn. Two little blue flames flash in the eye-sockets, consuming the brain and everything within, and the tongue chars in the mouth. The whole process takes 20 minutes, a body, a world, is reduced to dust ...
We had already seen hundreds of thousands of young, robust, vigorous lives pass before our eyes; from Russia, from Poland and from Hungary-and ... not one had tried to resist or put up a fight. They went like lambs to the slaughter. In six months, there were only two exceptions. During a convoy from Bialystock, a brave young man launched himself upon the guards with knives and stabbed several of them before being killed as he escaped.
The second incident was ... that of the "Warsaw convoy". They were from Warsaw who had taken American citizenship; some of them had been born in America. They were supposed to be transferred to an internment camp in Germany then eventually to Switzerland where they would be placed in the care of the Red Cross.
But instead of doing so, the great and "civilised" powers-that-be had them brought to the crematoria here. It was at this point that a heroic young woman, a dancer, committed an act of great bravery. Seizing the revolver of Kwakernak, the head of the camp's political section, she used it to shoot Schillinger, a notoriously nasty character. Her act inspired the other brave women with her, who launched bottles and other missiles at those savage, rabid animals, the uniformed SS.

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.