Execution wall between Cell Blocks 10 and 11 at Auschwitz. Here, several thousand Poles and Russian prisoners of war lost their lives. Eventually, the executions were moved to other locations, including Auschwitz II – Birkenau. The blacked out window to the left is Cell Block 11, the gynecological torture center. Though it seems vaguely ironic, the Nazis decided that the constant executions were apparently too much for the women being tortured to withstand, so all the windows facing the yard were shuttered. Photo by Eric Francis.
WE ARE ACCUSTOMED to the story of the Nazis being about mass murder, hearing about thousands at a time gassed and cremated. At the beginning, the killing happened one person at a time; and inside the gas chambers, it also happened one at a time even though hundreds of others were present. Was it really the tendency of the Nazis to kill millions that made them what they were, or was it their nonexistent value on the life of an individual?
In seeing the scene above, you are witness to a Nazi execution facility. People such as your mother, your sister, your grandfather, your boyfriend or yourself were forced to strip naked, walk barefoot out into the cold, face that wall and be shot in the back of the head. Their killers could not face them. The pattern of that compressed string was the last thing they saw before they died. These people had no trial, no lawyer and had committed no crime except for existing. The philosophical rationale was that certain groups were undesirable. But it always comes down to an individual person being held as worthless.
This is how we must think of the Holocaust: remembering that each life was indeed a life; that each person who was murdered experienced the fear, horror, shame and loss of being thrown violently from the Earth, for nothing — on the basis of a lie. Imagine facing that wall yourself, and that wall being the last thing you see before you close your eyes and brace for whatever comes next, however it might feel. Imagine that this conduct was a government policy perpetuated under color of law (that is, supposedly legal), which many people approved of, and many, many others stood silent as it went on.
Part of how it went on was because people had no rights. The German government, in part by terrifying people, and in part by blatant trickery, had suspended them all, just like the American government is doing now. People were convinced they were safer without their rights. The German government committed many of its crimes on foreign soil, just like the American government is doing now. But the most menacing thing that both have in common is that the enemy can be anyone, including you. Then, step two: You have no right to prove otherwise.