“Society is only concerned with its protection and it does not care for damaged life; it looks to the future, at best preventing such things from happening again.”
-Jean Amery, born 1912, imprisoned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald
(quote displayed in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial Permanent Collection)
Today our group went to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, outside of Weimar, Germany (famously known as the home to the failed Weimar Republic and the Hotel Elephant). Concentration camps, different than work camps and death camps, were typically reserved for prisoners-of-war and political prisoners. As the war continued, many of the concentration camps built crematoria and took in Jews, Gypsies, and other groups that were marked as “undesirable” by the Nazi Government. This was evidenced in Buchenwald by the crematorium that was built roughly five years after the establishment of the camp.
The experience for everyone could most easily be described as “hard.” Standing in the “delousing station” or the “hanging room” with knowledge that thousands were there before you and died as a result, could never be described as “easy.” I think for many people it was a really wonderful learning experience; people were exposed to things they had never before learned. As for me, I’m a history major at Carolina. I’ve taken three classes that have dealt closely with the Holocaust (namely, “The History of the Holocaust: The Destruction of the European Jewry” last semester). I hadn’t, obviously, ever been to a concentration camp.
Whenever we talk about the Holocaust, especially as Americans who consider themselves removed from it all, we talk about how we will prevent it in the future, making promises that it will never happen again. We recognize that it was a horrible event, where over 6 million Jews and undesirables were systematically murdered. I wonder, though, who we have left behind. As Christians, Jesus teaches us in the Bible that we are all brothers and sisters and should make sure no one is left behind…Christians across Europe left behind Jews before and during World War II. We continue to leave many behind, as Amery – a victim himself – points out: when we look to the future to prevent another holocaust, we need to pause and remember the men, women, children, husbands, wives, friends, brothers, and sisters. Otherwise, they too are left behind.
So what can we learn from this? How do we apply this to us, as students at UNC, as average citizens in the US? Maybe we should pause and look around to make sure we are not leaving anyone behind – in our every day lives or our quest for progress. I’m sure we can all look back and point to individuals we left behind us.
There was murder and sadness in the Holocaust, but wasn’t that the tragedy: that more average citizens didn’t stop to make sure no one was left behind?
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