The main train track at Auschwitz-II Birkenau, photographed from inside the camp
I was last in the United States for a weekend in February, visiting my 90-year-old grandmother, when a breaking news alert crossed by phone. “BREAKING: TRUMP FIRES CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF” it read, a banner in Sky News yellow peeking from below the top of my phone. I can still feel the shiver it sent down my spine - a cold dagger of dread as the most important military safeguard was removed on a Friday evening under cover of a deluge of bad news. At that moment, I saw a stark parallel in history - Adolf Hitler’s consolidation of power in 1934, giving him command over the military, and the unilateral ability to deport and disappear those deemed enemies.
On the spot, I booked a flight for a few weeks time to Krakow, to visit Oświęcim, and to see the place that resulted from Hitler’s supreme grip on power and his burning hatred of a minority - Auschwitz.
Fast forward to a frigid, overcast Saturday in Poland. After wandering around Krakow for a couple of hours to visit Oskar Schindler’s Factory and to see the Ghetto Memorial, I boarded a train, just as those unwitting victims did so many years ago, to make the short trip to Oświęcim.
An hour and a half later, I stood in front of the monolithic gates of Auschwitz-II Birkenau.
Auschwitz-II Birkenau
The first thing you notice at Auschwitz is the scale of it. The complex is larger than the town I grew up in, and at its height, had a larger population as well. It takes time to walk the grounds, and everything is so stark, so vivid, so…real. I felt a physical weight standing there, a darkness that wrapped around me. Poking my head into the ‘barracks’ - if you can call them that - and the various other buildings on-site brought the depravity into clear view. Those in barracks, confined to a space not much larger than their own body, with no health care or hygiene to speak of…were the lucky ones. Everyone else was killed.
I walked around Birkenau for two hours, trying to see everything I could, before hopping on the short shuttle bus to the museum, located at Auschwitz-I.
Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau
A block at Auschwitz-I
The entrance to Auschwitz-I and the museum is relatively innocuous - a mass of tourists pushing towards turnstiles, a securing checkpoint that wouldn’t look out of place in an airport. It’s all very civil, very controlled, very organised - the opposite of what those who were deported to this place would have felt. When you pass the checkpoints and show your ticket, you then descend a staircase into a concrete tunnel; a literal descent into hell.
You emerge from the entrance way at the camp’s former administration building, and stand before the iron gates bearing the cynical message ARBEIT MACHT FREI - “Work will set you free.”
The main gate at Auschwitz-I with the ARBEIT MACHT FREE sign
The museum has done an incredible job to preserve the site, and to use the existing camp buildings as exhibits - with each of the blocks exposing the brutal history of Nazism, of beatings, of vile experimentation, and of death. There is also hope in these exhibits - stories of survival, of rebellion against their captors, and of those who knew that the world needed to know what happened in this place. But mostly, it is a place of incredible, organized pain and suffering. Walking through the exhibits, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see everything, but tried to take in as much as I could.
The way the site is laid out, the last two places you visit are the most violent, the most hopeless, and the most evil. The first is Block 4, one of the old camp blocks, a two-story brick building that looks like all the rest. The door is simply marked “EVIDENCE” and it is in this building that the museum has kept the most physical reminders of the Nazi’s crimes.
Pairs of glasses piled into a mass of wire and glass. Hundreds of thousands of shoes thrown in a mismatch pile. Stacks and stacks of suitcases, still bearing the names of the murdered, written with the hope they would be seen again. And hair - piles, and piles, and piles, of human hair, removed by force from victims before their murder. It is here where the evil of this place becomes so physically real. I found myself in shock - reading about the Holocaust and knowing the facts cannot prepare you to confront the reality.
Shoes of Holocaust victims piled up inside Block 4 at Auschwitz-I
Then, as you pass through the barbed wire towards the exit, you reach the final building. Crematoria-I, the first gas chamber at Auschwitz, is dug halfway into the ground, covered in moss and grass, with the reconstructed chimney the only indication of its purpose. It takes no more than a minute to walk through the entire building, but in that minute, you are changed. The Prussian Blue stains are still on the walls, the telltale sign of Zyklon-B gas use. The furnace carts still stand ready to feed victims to the flames, their tracks worn shiny from heavy use. It is a place of death - no redeeming qualities, no hope to be found. It is the final punctuation mark in the story of hate.
Crematoria-I at Auschwitz-I
Facing History
I found myself in a daze after my visit, trying to comprehend - I don’t think I will ever fully understand - evil at scale, the industrial murder of an entire race, and how it could be possible in my grandmother’s lifetime - my grandmother, a New York City Jew from a Dutch Jewish family. She was lucky, and never in any danger - but only by fate and chance, not skill or merit. She is one of the last of her generation, the last to have actually lived through these events, even if there was no awareness at the time.
I also thought of my grandfather, Maurice Zarchen, who fought to free Europe from the Nazis - a man who, following the D-Day landings in 1944, only went in the ocean again in 2009, dragged in by my youngest sister, his granddaughter. What would he have thought of the world now? How would he have confronted the actions taken by the US administration, when they so closely parallel those from Nazi Germany?
I didn’t need to visit Auschwitz to figure out what I believe and how I see the world. I needed to visit Auschwitz to understand how evil can become normalised, how those in power can take hatred and turn it into the vilest action possible, and how everyday people can become immune to abject horrors. I needed to visit Auschwitz for it to become ‘real’. I needed to visit Auschwitz to learn exactly how far I would go to fight against those who would perpetrate similar crimes. That limit no longer exists.
A PARALLEL PATH
Some - many - of you reading this may think comparisons of a concentration camp to the current US regime are hyperbole. I would never want to trivialize the Holocaust, the suffering of the Jewish people, nor compare those who I disagree with with such a murderous, evil regime. However, history never looks the same as it is repeated; there’s no benefit of hindsight or historical context in the moment. In that vein, here are the factual parallels as they stand:
Donald Trump has freed the violent insurrectionists who tried to seize power for him during his first term. So did Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump has complete executive control of the United States, governing exclusively through executive orders. So did Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump has signed executive orders that have resulted in the deportation and disappearance of American citizens to foreign detention camps without due process. So did Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump has declared all those opposed to him as enemies, bad people, crooked, etc. He has made the ‘other’ the scapegoat for his decisions, with marginalized communities the first target. So did Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump is continuing to consolidate power, aided and abetted by his loyalist collaborators. So did Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump has removed the safeguards that would protect the Constitution and the current rule of law, including ignoring Court Orders. So did Adolf Hitler.
Appeasement will not stop Donald Trump. It did not stop Adolf Hitler.
Fascism does not start on a random Thursday afternoon with no forewarning. It starts by grinding down the systems of governance and control, eroding the truth, and scapegoating a small minority - until the population has been broken, or until the population declares it has had enough and fights back. It does not have to end with death camps - but the conditions now have created a path where history’s darkest stain on humanity can be repeated, perhaps with different targets, wrapped in Stars and Stripes rather than Swastikas. If we, Americans, do not want this to be our legacy, we must act - now - to ensure it does not, or else the decision will not be ours.
Auschwitz is an awful, evil place. It is right that it is preserved to share its history and its warnings with the world. May we listen now before it happens again.