With more than three decades under my belt as a journalist, one reports on evil in the world – horror stories that appear on news wires or are delivered by colleagues.
I’ve also reported on my fair share.
These stories are read on your television or radio and we become somewhat desensitized to the reality of what happened. It was a headline in your bulletin – designed to capture the attention of those listening or watching.
But then there is the actual reality of what is broadcast, the life experience of seeing it with your own eyes.
Very often these experiences cannot be matched by a movie or book – no matter how dramatic the scripting.
One movie that did drill down into my core was Schindler’s List. It left me angry and devastated.
My daughter, Chloe, and I visited Auschwitz and later the Berlin Wall in 2023 – those feelings returned, but this time were a thousand times stronger.
This is our experience.
World Holocaust Day is held at the United Nations General Assembly Hall on 27 January this year.
This is under the theme “Recognizing the Extraordinary Courage of Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust”.
Our journey was exactly that – we heard story after story during our visits to Auschwitz and Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz 2.
After traveling from Krakow, Poland, we met our guide outside the complex, joining many other tourists as long lines snaked towards the entrance.
There is high security as the area is being protected from extremists and those wanting to do harm.
But once inside, this all falls away – and before you lies the death camp.
We had seen the front sign: Arbeit Macht Frei in books – it always seemed bigger.
But as we passed through the main gate, I was amazed as how small it is.
However, it was not lost on us that thousands of people had walked through that same gate, their last act before being murdered.
Auschwitz was originally a military base, but after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it became a concentration camp.
A diagram inside the camp shows how Jewish people were transported via train from cities throughout Europe to the camp.
On arrival, they were divided into men, women and children.
The fittest were kept for labour, while the rest were murdered.
Those targeted for death were stripped naked and shaved.
There is a large room containing suitcases, which had housed the possessions of those killed. Another contains shoes.
And another – human hair.
It was at this point that the reality of Auschwitz began to hit home – we were witnessing the industry of murder.
Imagine being naked among a large crowd of strangers – taken into a room where the lights go out.
And then a strange smell, panic, weakness, despair…. death.
But there was more to come. Something that brought a tear to my eye.
There is another section.
We were taken to a building of torture. Those who went there knew they would not survive.
The methods of torture varied from starvation to suffocation.
And when the depraved guards finally brought an end to the suffering, a person was taken out and placed in front of a wall and shot.
We stood for a long time at the wall – silent in the heart of evil.
Flowers had been placed there, the only colour in a black world.
The Nazis were good engineers. Once the Final Solution had been approved, they went into top gear in their mass murder.
We visited the nearby Birkenau death camp. Auschwitz had become too small for mass slaughter, so they built this camp (Auschwitz 2). Railway tracks entered the camp through a large brick gate structure.
Their sequence was swift and efficient. Prisoners were moved from the train carts, divided into men, women and children, gassed and then cremated.
This was a gigantic conveyer belt of death. The ashes were placed in an adjacent swamp-like section.
We stood where the ashes of hundreds of thousands of people had been discarded.
There is an urn in Auschwitz where the remaining ashes were placed.
After exiting Birkenau, my daughter and I went for coffee.
It was a lot to take in – that happens when you are stunned.
Taking a month off from work is probably one of the highlights of my more than half a century on this earth.
We hired a car and visited nine countries, snaking our way from The Netherlands, through France and then through several other countries.
Our destination was Berlin, where we visited the sites, including what remains of the Berlin Wall.
The Holocaust and the Cold War continue to scar many areas in Europe – especially the German capital.
Those same feelings from Auschwitz returned as we walked into a park adjacent to the Wall.
Many people lost their lives trying to cross from East to West.
Again, we were confronted by tales of murder and atrocities.
But there is a strong theme in Berlin with a massive video presentation on a wall at the Reichstag.
It calls out extremism and hate – identifying the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler as killers – an embarrassment to Germany.
Hopefully, history won’t repeat itself.
My daughter Chloe pointed out a word written on the Berlin Wall.
One word, so powerful. Peace.
