A trip to one of saddest places on earth today! To say it is one of the world's darkest periods is probably not an understatement. Sure there have been dark moments before and since the Holocaust, but never was one organized so specifically to murder a group of people over such a long period of time. Auschwitz was the chosen spot by the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people. Records show about 1.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz and surrounding area. At one point the Nazis were gassing and burning 6,000 people a day at Auschwitz. They were bringing in Jewish people from all over Europe to either kill them in the gas chambers or as slaves. Many people believe the numbers to be much higher but they can only go by the records they got from the Nazis when they retreated from Auschwitz. The tour we went on today was based on survival accounts and recovered records. We were walked through the exact program the Nazis used at Auschwitz and the exact path that many people walked to their deaths. We saw the places where they were housed, where they were gassed, and where they were cremated and the ashes buried. We all learned about the concentration camps when we were in school, but I don't think we ever really realized the full extent of what went on. I guess for me to see for myself was important. I never truly really understood all that took place. I knew the numbers, but I guess until I walked the grounds and heard the specifics did it really hit home how bad it really was. Katelyn and I returned back from our tour in a truly different state of mind. We are sitting in our room trying to make sense of what we saw today and trying to figure out why a group of people would do what they did. We went on the internet to gather an opinion for the reasons. Truth is whatever we found for reasons were so poor that it makes it even worse. I can only hope something like this will never happen again, but I have no faith that it won't. Ethnic cleansing is a common term used nowadays and it has popped up in Africa, former Yugoslavia, and more recently in the ISIS aggression. If we as a world want to stop this from happening, we can't let these things be forgotten and we have to act quickly and decisively when they do. History has a way of repeating itself!
A few years ago my oldest daughter worked in a co-op program for a company that helped create the chemicals the Nazis used to kill all those people. I was shocked that Bayer had such a role in the Nazi war effort. I was shocked today to hear of other companies that are still prominent, which had major or minor affiliations with the Nazi war machine. A lot of these companies used the Jewish people as slave labour and paid the Nazis for their use. Both profited and many Jewish workers died because of it. I personally will not support any company that was a part of this atrocity. My opinion is that these companies should have been destroyed when their involvement was realized. Never too late in my books! This has been the most significant day of my trip so far.