By Jeffrey Berger
Seventy-two years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz. On this anniversary, we commemorate innocent victims of persecution whose life possibilities were cut mercilessly short. We remember missing persons of a family tree whose fates may never be known. On this day, I honor a forebear whom I never met.
The exact death toll at Auschwitz remains elusive. Many inmates were undocumented, and large amounts of incriminating evidence were destroyed in the final weeks of war. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum sets the official record: 1.1 million total victims including 960,000 Jews, 75,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and 15,000 disabled persons, among others.
The Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Only 7,500 emaciated inmates were found alive among 600 corpses, 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 8.5 tons of human hair. Among the survivors who recovered and resumed full and productive lives:
Elie Wiesel (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986), Simone Veil (served as President of the European Parliament), Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler (escapees who saved an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 inmates), Imre Kertesz (writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature), and the parents of American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, as examples.
Little is known of my great grandfather. He was an author, philosopher, and college professor living in Prague when the Nazi army occupied Czechoslovakia. No letters or literary works survive apart from anecdotal accounts handed down by word of mouth – until the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1961 revealed his fate.
In 1961, I recall my mother and grandmother watching the trial on national television, and their stunned silence when the fate of our forbear was finally was revealed. According to trial testimony, Eichmann ordered the SS to stop a deportation train headed for Auschwitz and execute by firing squad a prominent human rights dissident onboard. The condemned man was my maternal great-grandfather.
Are some people more predisposed to obedience than others and willing to follow even the most heinous orders? Yale University research psychologist Stanley Milgram tested this hypothesis with disturbing results:
The percentage of test subjects willing to inflict pain on command was constant across all population groups – ranging from 61 to 66 percent regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, or circumstance.
Milgram’s experiment reveals a grim truth about human nature: Everywhere in the world are people innately capable of unspeakable savagery. Genocide did not end with World War II. It happened again in Tibet (1959-1966), in Cambodia (1975-1979), in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), and in Rwanda (1994). Even today, atrocities continue unabated in Syria and Yemen. The record of human history is grim:
Vainglorious wars of aggression and oppression. Centuries of persecutions and pogroms. True believers torment and condemn infidels. Whites enslave blacks. Nazis murder Jews. Hutus slaughter Tutsis. Butchery and bloodshed begin with dehumanizing words.
Yet, there are deniers and historical revisionists who still dispute the indisputable, and madmen who still target innocent civilians. Are some atrocities worse than others? Does the tormented history of one people overshadow the tragic history of another? Every account is deserving of validation and remembrance.
Arbeit macht frei. Work sets you free. Perversely cynical words meant to exterminate, not liberate. Words more aptly inscribed above the Gates of Hell: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
Consider the diversity of life on Earth evolving over eons of time. Here is a single species united in time but divided in culture, language, customs, and tribe. ‘Ecce homo.’ Behold the human condition.
Will humanity ever find peace? Shall we forget the tragic voyage of the MS St. Louis whose 900 passengers were refused sanctuary and condemned to death? Shall we separate people behind borders and walls and stop the free exchange of commerce, creativity and invention? Or shall we learn how to tolerate, integrate, and appreciate the rich cultural heritage of all humankind?
There will be no peace, no hope, no freedom from tyranny and war until people come to terms with their darkest impulses.