sixty years ago today

Sixty years ago today, a group of Nazis processed 800 children known as Gypsies, through gas chambers, to their deaths at Auschwitz. Hitler believed that Gypsies were unreliable and dirty, and marked them for extermination as he did Jews. His regime managed to kill plenty of them; the estimates vary widely, as they do for other groups, but the numbers aren't what matter to me. It's the principle: find a person who belongs to a group I don't like and kill him or her for that reason. For that matter, find as many of the people belonging to that group as you can, round them up, and kill them. No, worse: don't kill them right away. Use them first to do stuff we don't want to do ourselves, like build our war machines, or kill the other people we don't want around us.

But I digress. I don't mean this to be a post about Hitler. If you're reading my blog, odds are really very good that you already think he was not an admirable chap.

I mean for this to be a post about those Gypsies and how they died 60 years ago today. Someone got up that morning and knew it was his or her job to gather, along with a team of other staff and tragic inmates (who earned another day of life by serving the process, but were sent to their own deaths later), 800 children--eight hundred--and take them to the disrobing building. The children complied, not only because they were children, afraid and alone, but because they did not know what lay before them, could not have imagined it, were in denial about it, knew they could not have done anything about it, hoped some adult would rescue them, or welcomed relief. They likely disrobed without much incident; protesters were probably shot, which would effectively deter other potential protests. Throughout the disrobing process, the staff assured the children that they were just going to be deloused and showered. They maintained for the children the illusion that they were surely going to survive whatever was about to happen, because they instructed the children to fold their clothes neatly and place them into piles for easy retrieval afterward. Every instruction was carefully scripted and orchestrated to indicate to the children that they would need to find their belongings in a quick and orderly manner when they came out of the showers.

After disrobing, the children filed into the showers--large enclosed tile rooms with drains in the floors and shower heads in the ceilings. Instead of water, though, the deadly gas Zyklon B came down upon them. The children gasped and coughed, some prayed, probably all cried. Eventually their breath left them, if they were lucky, for afterward, when the appointed time arrived, the staff and inmates moved the still (dead, unconscious, or just weary) bodies to the crematoria. There their physical selves finally escaped this world and floated into the lightness above. I hope that there they found the freedom that matched their spirits.

Comments

[Pauly D]

Didn't know of that either! Thanks for the info.

[Jim]

I lived through WWII and have heard no end of Nazi atrocities, but this is a new one on me.