Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I studied history for much of my academic career in one form or another and as part of this had the terrible privilege of visiting several sites deeply connecting with the worst point of human history.

In a Berlin suburb lies villa Am Großen Wannsee. It's a beautiful building with lovely grounds and views across a lake. In 1942 the Wannsee Conference was held there and it was at that conference that senior members of the Nazi party and the SS organised their so-called 'Final Solution'.

Villa Am Großen Wannsee

I found visiting this place deeply unsettling. It's undeniably beautiful yet the evil that was decided on here haunts it. What I find most disturbing is how this could really be anywhere. There is nothing especially Nazi about the place and it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to think this could have happened anywhere else- indeed, it has a feel not unlike the Prime Minister's country residence at Chequers. It's easy to associate the Holocaust as something that happened under a unique regime a long time ago but in reality it's horribly tangible. 

I've visited both Sachsenhausen near Berlin, a concentration camp, and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, a death camp. Going to these places changed something in me. 

Millions of Jews as well as other minority groups were shipped off to the camps. They'd probably arrive by train and one of the first things they would see of the camp would be a sign saying 'Arbeit Macht Freit', which translates as 'Work for Freedom'. This was a lie. 

Entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Sign at Sachsenhausen 

At Auschwitz, many of the victims would be met by twisted doctor Joseph Mengele. He would give a quick look at each person and point them into one of two lines. Those he thought looked strong would be sent in one direction so they be put to work and those who he considered weak, mostly women and children, were sent straight to the gas chambers. 

The Nazis thought that they may as well make use of the people they were holding prisoner. They thought they could be given manual work but they had no intention of letting them live in the long-term. This meant they could be treated like animals, crammed into wooden huts with limited facilities, barely fed and worked to the bone.

For most of the people who were sent to the camps, sooner or later they would be sent to their deaths. They were told to give up their possessions and undress and were then, naked and vulnerable, they were herded into the gas chambers. They were told they were heading into showers. Pellets of Zyklon-B containing toxic prussic acid or hydrogen cyanide were then dropped into the chamber. It would take up to twenty minutes for some to die and the shouting and screaming of the victims was audible from the outside. 

Groups of Jewish prisoners were then tasked with extracting gold fillings and then removing the bodies. In an attempt to hide the evidence, the bodies were burnt in specially built crematoria. At Auschwitz these were torn down shortly before the camp was liberated but ovens remain at some camps, including Sachsenhausen. 

Ovens at Sachsenhausen 

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. Other minority groups were targeted including ethnic poles, slavs, romany gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's witnesses, mentally ill and disabled people and many more. It is thought there were up to seventeen million deaths overall. 

Numbers of that size are hard to imagine. But what you can imagine is the individuals whose lives were taken away. Even those who survived might return to a world where everyone they had ever known was dead. At Auschwitz I there are huge piles of objects that belonged to the victims of the Holocaust. Shoes, suitcases, crutches, hair. For me these objects made me feel a connection to the real people who were murdered.

Shoes at Auschwitz 1 (image from Holocaust Matters)

The Holocaust was not even a unique event. This year's Holocaust Memorial Day marks forty years since the end of genocide in Cambodia and the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Reports in recent years tell of ethnic cleansing of the rohingya people in Myanmar.

I was disturbed by statistics today on the UK population's knowledge of the Holocaust. Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place, one in twelve believe the scale was exaggerated and two-thirds of people couldn't say how many Jews were murdered or grossly underestimated the number. How can we have forgotten, not care or not believe in such an awful thing. 

This seriously matters. I think it's so important to understand how the Holocaust began. Hatred of the Jews really began to rise after the 1929 Wall Street Crash, a 20th century credit crunch. People were suffering and they were looking for someone to blame. The Nazi party came to power and began to pass laws to exclude Jews from civil society. The rise of nationalism across Europe led to an increase in xenophobia. Then the Nazis began to actively kill. 

Even with a basic knowledge of modern politics, the parallels are surely obvious. Countries across the world are becoming more nationalistic and right-wing parties are gaining power. Parties like the Front National in France who came second in the most recent election and whose leader Marine Le Pen has been accused of Holocaust denial. Since the Brexit vote, hate crimes in the UK have risen dramatically. So many parts of the world teeter on the same horrible cliff-top as Germany did in the 1930s and we have to make sure we keep humanity firmly gripping onto the good place.

Hate is not the way forward. With the challenges the world currently faces, we should be pulling each other closer together. The Holocaust shows us what we can be at our worst and we should all be striving to be as far away from that way of thinking and being as possible.