Human history has seen many cruelties and those who had perpetrated them. It is still seeing in the form of so many wars (civil and with others) which naturally bring in cruelty as one element. But none can beat the cruelty of Adolf Hitler. One standing example is the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp near Katowice in Poland. Started by Hitler near the village called in Polish village of Oświęcim ostensibly to keep Polish prisoners, he found it later a more comfortable camp to keep all prisoners because he could keep things confidential and buried and transportation was easy because the village was well connected by railways. I decided to visit the camp, having seen in so many movies how the camps were run. Let us remember, mini Hitlers are still alive and run camps like Guantanamo Bay. Anyhow, no one can come near Hitler who had no mercy for even pregnant woman and child in the womb. His aim was to eliminate the last drop of Jewish blood from the face of the earth and had he been successful for two more years, he would have achieved his target very nearly, having already exterminated 6 million out of the 11 million Jewish population of the world.

The first camp (Auschwitz) was a Polish military barrack (there was no Poland at that time) and looks very comfortable in comparison to the Birkenau. In fact some prisoners who were transferred to the second (Birkenau) considered the former as a 5-star facility!!!! But the simple memory of about 60000 people in Auschwitz and 130000 in Birkenau having been killed in gas chambers and cremated, their ashes having been spread over the same place shatters even strong men when they walk on the same roads which led men and women on their last journey and whose ashes and bones may still be under the soil. Many of them were led to believe that they were being resettled and were hoping for a better future. Their faces exhibit the hopes in the few photos and so also the suitcases which bear the names and addresses as if they were all shifting from one town to another. The mound of suitcases kept as sample speaks volumes of the hopes that met with death by cruelty. The other samples wrench one’s heart. The hair of the men and women and children, many of them is the entwined state, the shoes of all hues and sizes, the clothes of children, the spreads on which bodies were lying after having been starved to death and even the metal vessels for heating water or tea cups, pastry rollers, graters – you name it, it is there. These are some remaining portion of the loot and plunder which the Nazi army did. One more heart-wrenching collection was the artificial limbs of war veterans who were sent to the gas chambers directly but whose artificial limbs were taken off to be used by injured German soldiers. This is beyond all limits of conjuring up the cruelty.

The “prisoners among prisoners” is another story. Those who tried to escape or did not obey or committed what the Nazi officer considered a crime were taken to another death chamber where the court martial was ordered in less than a minute and invariably death sentence. The various cells are kept in the same state as they existed then. Even a Hitler’s portrait was hanging in the room of the officer against the Polish law of not depicting Hitler in any appreciative form. The worst part of this cell was the “Standing room” where the punishment was to make four such soldiers stand together in a chamber of 1 square yard all through the night. Along with 3 more, I went and stood in the chamber and not even one could sit. This way they stood all through the night and the next day, they were asked to work. Doing like this for a few weeks or even a few days resulted in sure exhaustion and death. Other soldiers were taken to an open space next to this chamber and were asked to stand against a concrete wall called “the death wall” and a small hand gun was used to shoot them on the back of their heads. This way the noise of the shooting was muted. The windows of another barrack adjacent to this wall were closed with wooden planks so that those in the block could not see or hear what was happening.

There is a gas chamber and a crematorium rolled into one building. Four incinerators are still in working condition. It is almost a replica of the electric crematoria we have in Chennai nowadays. This is a place where about 30000 were murdered and cremated. The commander Hess was living just 100 meters away from this building with his wife and children. Either his whole family was hardened to these crimes or he had skillfully hidden the goings-on from the whole family. The gas used for killing “Zykon” was ironically invented by a German Jew. Ultimately this commander was extradited to Poland after the War and was tried and sentenced to death. He was hanged in the same gallows which he used to hang many. Retribution is quick these days, beware all cruel leaders and soldiers!

The gas chamber here is intact because this was in disuse long before the war ended and though the army tried to dismantle and destroy all construction in the other camp, they forgot this, probably,

I went to the Birkenau camp next which is on a 400 acre piece of land. Though most of it was destroyed before the Nazi army left, the remaining evidences paint a gruesome picture. Because the bricks were in short supply, these were made of wood from the dismantled horse stables of Germany. These stables were not needed because horses were no more used in the WW II. This made the condition of the prisoner still more pitiable because wooden chambers could not protect them from the extreme weather conditions. Sanitary conditions were still bad. One common toilet consisting of some 40 or 50 seats arranged in line in the middle of the sanitation chamber was the only one available for men. No privacy, no hygiene and this can be used only twice in the day. They were sleeping in wooden cots and sometimes 10 were asked to sleep in one such cot which can comfortable sleep two. They could sleep just on one side and if any one wanted to move over to the other side, all the 10 would have to change the sides.

If one man’s (or woman’s) obsession becomes an ideology, then the results are there for everyone to see. We in India are highly fortunate not to have given birth to any such leader and it is my hope that even if one is born in the future, he or she will not be as successful as Hitler because there are enough forces to keep them in check.