What follows are Kyle's impression of Auschwitz and a photo of Keoni taking a photo of where the train tracks led into this horrific memorial to mankind's madness.
I encourage you to read Kyle's words as he tries to understand the enormous tragedy that was Auschwitz. Here are his words:
Diane and I are truly fortunate to be able to travel the world. It is our hope that our boys will enjoy a global perspective along with having many happy memories. As part of these trips, we tour museums and historical sites. Today we visited the 2 Nazi death camps which made up Auschwitz / Berkanau (Ikaika was sheltered from the horrific descriptions and photos).
I'm going to share some thoughts from visiting these hallowed grounds. While walking the sites, I found myself trying to understand how people could come to work and perpetrate these unspeakable horrors on other human beings day after day. In a college history course, I was introduced to the concept of the "banality of evil" and around that same time, my college coach, George Raveling while sharing his experiences in the civil rights movement described the ability of a group of people to victimize another because they saw them as "less than human." Those lessons from 25 years ago became quite poignant for me today.
When I was a police officer, I was at several murder scenes and I appreciated that the city would spare no expense and would pursue justice for decades if necessary. That was for the murder of one victim and I juxtapose that perspective with the site where an estimated 1,100,000 had their lives criminally taken from them.
Our guide was a young Polish woman who just completed her 5th year giving these daily tours. She was quite knowledgable and thoughtful throughout the day. Just before the end of the tour, I asked if she had garnered any insight into how people can commit genocide. She said that she had given this question a lot of thought but could not fathom how anyone did this let alone go home everyday to their family and then return to work and murder whole families (she was referring to Rudolf Hess, the commandant of the camps). Many of you are likely thinking that history is littered with genocide (Armenian, African, Native American to name a few) and killing and this is but one example. You are right except that Auschwitz was a site where murder was industrialized on a scale never seen before or since.
The point and conclusion that I came to was that this will happen again as there was no special evil gene that these perpetrators had which is no longer within us. What will stop this from happening again is us. We must learn from history and speak out so that we don't repeat it. I recommend visiting Auschwitz and more importantly bringing the next generation with you.
The picture below shows Keoni taking a photo on the train tracks where many thousands of people rode through the front gate ahead to their deaths.
Dick
To learn more about Auschwitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
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