This week, I visited Auschwitz.
I never before had visited any of the death camps. The experience is absolutely chilling.
Auschwitz, of course, was a complex of camps, the three largest of which were Auschwitz I, the camp most famous for the terrifyingly Orwellian German slogan welded onto its entrance, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”; Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, the massive death factory at which the Germans operated four large gas chambers, each of which could be used to murder 2,000 people at a time; and Auschwitz III, a large labor camp.
Visiting in January, with the ice covering the ground, is a reminder of the cruelties that are possible when human beings commit to the perverse disease of Jew-hatred.
Auschwitz was liberated some 79 years ago this month. But that perverse disease is alive and well. As survivor Marian Turski says, “Auschwitz did not fall…
