The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, throughout Nazi-occupied territory.
The whole year 11 English class went for an excursion to the Jewish Holocaust Museum today.
Before this excursion, I never truly grasped the full extent of the Holocaust. I felt sad about it, sure. But all I knew were facts. Approximately 6 million were exterminated, fact.
In one of the videos that were shown just now, it was quoted that 'numbers make you numb'. It does. What is 6 million? It's just a number. But then.. they related it to 60 MCG Stadiums. 1 stadium can house 10 thousand people. I started seeing faces.. 6 million isn't just a number anymore. Out of that 6 million, 1.5 million were children. My age. Can you imagine? Going through the Holocaust at the age of 3? 16? 21? 30?
They showed us a video. It was taken by an American after Liberation. It was, in fact, a real video that was taped. The images of a pile of dead bodies, of corpse, stripped naked so thin, still haunt me. And these are just images! I can't imagine what the survivors would have had to go through. Some of the people in the video, the one's that were killed, still had their eyes opened.
I don't know. People were taken away from the ghetto to be 'relocated' and 'resettled' in a better community. Or so that's what they've been told. Only to reach there.. and then the selection process occurred. The sickly, the old, the young, they were told to get a 'shower and disinfection' and they would meet with their families after. Only to be brought to the gas chamber unknowingly. Can you image the terror and the manic fright that went through everyone inside the gas chamber that they realize what is going to happen?
There were about a 100 people in hiding, under one of the ghettos. A lady then had a baby. You can silence a toddler by giving them a slap on the arm or something, silencing a baby, however, is not that easy. Do you know what they had to do? They suffocated the baby. To save themselves. Would we be able to make that decision? I really.. just, feel sick thinking about it.
We had a speaker, a survivor, as well. He told us.. that it was pure luck that he managed to survive. He told us as well.. then when he got off the train, he was with his mum. He turned away for a second, and she was gone, forever. A friend started crying.. I almost did. I don't know how to process that. Just having your mum ripped away from you. Just like that. In a blink of an eye. He told us, that everyone would be called out of the houses in the ghettos, and the guards would just pick randomly, and the people who were picked had to go in the back of the 'vans'. He told us he knew, that being picked was no good, that it was a horrible thing. He told us that he found out later on that those who got picked to go into the van.. were gassed. To death. That the vans were portable gas chambers.
I don't really know how to process all these information. It's personal now and it cuts deep. I am sickened by the Nazi. I don't know how they could just obey and kill, so mindlessly. I don't judge those who stood idly by. Because those who spoke up were brought immediately forward to be killed. I wouldn't know what I would have done in that situation. Can't even begin to imagine. I applaud and respect those who showed courage. Who fought back. They are true heroes. I don't understand how the guards and the Nazi and the doctors could exterminate one so easily.
"How can a human being do this to another?"
