All of us strive to be good human beings, I am sure. And whether we believe in the concept of evil or not, we know that we have free will and we’re forced to make choices in life. Whether we should do something or we should not do something really depends on our education, on the way we see the world, and ultimately on our family help. Right? Our parents guide us in life.
This becomes an important concept. Dante, in the Divine Comedy, actually, did something I thought was rather interesting. He broke hell, hell itself down into 9 levels. We start with limbo. We descend to lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, treachery.
And I would like to add one more, Auschwitz. Auschwitz in modern Poland. During World War 2, of course, it was actually part of Germany for tax reasons. It was incorporated inside the Reich. And there were 2,000 companies, 2,000 companies that were involved in the operation, the fiscal operation of running this camp.
Now what was Auschwitz? Auschwitz supposedly was one of the death camps that were situated throughout the German the Nazi empire of the time. Now in your wildest dreams, you really cannot believe and understand what had gone on in Auschwitz. Imagine now that you’re an ordinary person, probably Jewish, and over time, once the Nazis come to power, you slowly lose your rights. You lose your rights of liberty, rights of employment, things along this nature, and things are getting tough.
And then they tell you, but wait. But wait. We’re going to resettle you in another place far away from here, and you could start a life once again. So they come to collect you. So you put on your best clothing, of course, and you pack your valuables because you’re probably not coming back, and they put you in a cattle car, a cattle car, and they ship you across Europe.
Now if you’re in Greece, for God’s sakes, it takes 2 weeks. But usually, if you were in perhaps Holland or France or Germany, it took 2 to 4 days and you’re not allowed out. Slow, you’re starting to suspect that something is very, very wrong here because, of course, you can’t wash, you can’t defecate or urinate properly, so you’re soiling yourself and it just goes on. Then you arrive. You arrive in Auschwitz, and they shuttle you along to a certain area and the doors are open.
And people are screaming at you. Gosh, you don’t know what’s going on. Why are they screaming? Women to the left, men to the right and you form up in queues and these queues then are judged. If you look healthy, you’re into the camp.
If you’re perhaps weak or you’re pregnant or you have young children, you go to the right. You go straight ahead. And straight ahead, you’re told meant you’re going to have a wash. And you think, oh gosh. Thank god.
After 4 days of this mess, I can finally clean myself. Take your clothes off, but in reality, you’re going into a shower And into the shower, they’re actually going to pour cyclone b gas, and within 30 minutes, you’re dead and on it goes. Now, many books and many stories have been written about Auschwitz, but when you actually get there, you’re kind of at the beginning a little bit virtually disappointed because the camp itself, Auschwitz, is relatively small. It’s made with brick buildings. You know, you could imagine it was dirty and muddy, but, probably people survive.
But then they take you to Birkenau. Now Birkenau is as far as the eye can see, and it was supposedly getting bigger. And there are 100 of thousands of people housed here at one point in history. And the job was, essentially, with these 2,000 companies, of which you were a slave laborer in, was to ensure that you’d lived at least 3 to 6 months, and then you died and you were replaced by new people. But in your wildest dreams, you can’t really imagine that this is possible.
And there were over 8,000 guards that were in this camp. But all of this culminates in the question, wait a moment. It’s easy to blame the Germans or the Ukrainians or whomever were actually working in this camp, but could it be me? Oh, no. Impossible.
I’m a good guy. But wait. Given the circumstances, given the time, it could be me. It could be me. I could be a person working in that camp.
And, you know, most were not punished. Most under 5% of all the guards and the personnel that worked in Auschwitz Birkenau actually were punished. They just went home. Grandfather, what did you do during the war? I was a soldier.
The conversation ends. So I think when it comes to evil, we should not be so smug. We should realize that we are faced with evil on a daily basis and we must pray to our God and decide what is the correct thing. Because if we can’t decide, we ultimately can be a part of perpetrating one more Auschwitz, one more death camp, one more horrid, horrid situation. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary, certainly when one is faced with evil, and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.