Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

Monsters

I visited Auschwitz today. I call this evil place by the name the Nazis used, and not its Polish name. The Poles were as much victims as the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and all the others that were sent to this death camp.

[Douglas De Bono / DouglasDeBono.Com] Electrified barbed wire mounted on concrete pylons rings the barracks. Guard towers minus the SS Troopers and their machine guns stand in silent testimony to the horror that took place here.

What struck me was the number of Jewish groups, visiting the camp. Most of them were teenagers and their guides looked to be mostly in the thirties, yet this place was built to exterminate the Jews.

Inside, most of the barracks have been converted to museums. While the Holocaust Museum in Washington is stark and foreboding, it is nothing but a whisper of what happened here. Pictures of the dead hang everywhere: Names, birthdates and death dates. The photographs vary from front and side mug shots to memories of a happier time before the final solution was implemented. Occasionally, I noted a flower or wreath hanging next to one of the photographs.

Then there are the isolation chambers—solid concrete cells behind heavy wooden doors down a narrow basement corridor that has another set of bars and locks. The execution yard where they funneled people into a bloody shooting gallery, but that proved too slow. The Nazis came up with Zyklon B to kill people faster.

There is one building filled with shoes, suitcases, combs, eye glasses. These are the merest fraction of what the Nazis plundered. I guess it was the baby clothes and suit cases that got to me the most. People had written their names on their belongings: Jacob, Peter, Marie.

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the holocaust never happened. I wonder if he could stand at Auschwitz, with the dead silently looking on and make the same claims. Only a monster can justify what happened here. Monsters are real. They built Auschwitz 66 years ago. Those who claim otherwise are either ignorant or monsters themselves.