Some Will Never Believe

Poland tightens border in hunt for Auschwitz sign
By VANESSA GERA and MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writers

Saturday, December 19, 2009
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(12-19) 11:10 PST OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) --

Polish authorities stepped up security checks at airports and border crossings and searched scrap metal yards Saturday as the search intensified for the infamous Nazi sign stolen from the Auschwitz death camp memorial.

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The brazen pre-dawn theft Friday of one of the Holocaust's most chilling and notorious symbols sparked outrage from around the world, and Polish leaders have declared recovering the 5-meter (16-foot) sign a national priority.

The sign bearing the German words "Arbeit Macht Frei" — "work makes you free" — spanned the main entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed during World War II.

The grim Nazi slogan was so counter to the actual function of the camp that it has been etched into history. The phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" appeared at the entrances of other Nazi camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen, but the long curving sign at Auschwitz was the best known.


Police deployed 50 officers, including 20 detectives, and a search dog to the Auschwitz grounds, where barracks, watchtowers and rows of barbed wire stand as testament to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

Spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said police had questioned all security guards at the site and searched local scrap metal businesses, while Dariusz Nowak, a police spokesman in Krakow, said investigators were working around the clock on the case.

The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum, visibly shaken by the dramatic theft, told The Associated Press he believes the theft was carried out by professionals.

"I think it was done by specialists," Piotr Cywinski said. "It was a very well-prepared action."
British historian Andrew Roberts said the sign would generate huge interest on the burgeoning market for Nazi memorabilia.

Irony. Yes, I admit a lifelong cynic like myself has a great love of irony when it comes to certain situations, most often in matters of politics. It usually provides an opportunity for a bit of insight into my own heart at times as much as anyone else's. In the final analysis, how it impacts the person themselves is the only valid indicator of anything, for who really can ever look into the heart of other people other than by what they do.

Today is the last day of Chanukah, the "Jewish Festival of Lights".  "It celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality."  It is a sad, yet predictable, sort of irony that we must feel today , as a collection of sick and sad human beings chose this time of year, which cannot be a simple cooincidence, to steal the most vile symbol of man's inhumanity to his fellow man than the "Arbeit Macht Frei" — "work makes you free" sign that was the first thing you would have seen if you passed through the front gates of the Nazi concentration death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazi's died. It was designed to be the principal Nazi killing center to achieve the "final solution", and it did it's work with deadly efficiency, making it the death camp with the single highest total.

The saying itself is a bit of satan inspired devious irony. "Work will set you free, or, "work frees one" is a hedious testament to the dehumanizing hatred troubled people can inflict on others with no rhyme or reason other than fear or jealousy or needing someone to blame for their own diffculties or failures. Yes, you'd be free once they worked you to death, or shot you to death, or you died from exposure or sickness, or malnutrition, or because you might be the subject of a medical experiment, or just because some guard had a bad day, or just for sport.

No, this was no accident, this theft. Whether done by right-wing loving poachers, or the ever growing legion of  those who want the world to  believe the Holocost never happened, this was clearly well planned and the timing was not accidental.

I cannot imagine the horrors of this camp, or the special camps like them. My father, as I've written here before, spent almost six months in a German POW camp, and when asked what he would have done differently when captured, he said he would have rather been shot to death than ever have to go to another POW camp. And in comparison to the death camps, what he went through was a brutal experience not devoid of all hope. I know that dehumanizing experience ended up killing him years later. So, no, I cannot fully grasp the level of concentrated hatred  at these death camps handed out like a leaflet on a street corner.

Maybe a review of what the death camp looked like might make us all think long and hard about what happened over 65 plus years ago. Let us also try to consider the societal brutallity dished out to this people solely on the basis of their religion for a over a full decade prior to construction of death camps, and for generations before WWII, and since it's end. Imagine being sent to a death camp because  someone in your family tree had been Jewish, that you carried "Jewish" blood in your veins. Such insanity was the province of the most educated and legally trained minds in all of Germany, who before the Nazi rise to power were considered by collegues as leading figures in Law, Industry, Medicine and scientific research around the world by their peers. It can happen again. It can.

 Again, this is the main gate to Auschwitz -Birkenau death camp

This is the view of the back of the front gate

A view of the brick barracks after entering the front gate.

The universally recognized prison garb of death camp victims. It is difficult to view, and gives but a hint of what it must have been like while the camp was full and working to it's maximum just before the liberation of the camp in January of 1945 by the Russian Army

A "No-Man's Land" in the death camp... an immediate death sentence to enter in a camp full of nothing but death. The fences were electrified and guarded by machine gun towers.

This is the "Execution Wall". Only God knows how many prisoners were lined up against it and mudered for any reason the guards and commanders picked.

A cremetorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This one had been an armaments storage bunker for the Polish Army.

Simply look......and believe

Where the trains brought innocent  human cargo

Wooden barracks for the prisoners

Camp toilet facilities

Daily roll call

What the location in the last picture looks like today at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Same field and area as they appear today

Actual photo of selection to work or be gassed. This decision was often as arbitrary as the temperature that day. The line at the top , right,  are those awaiting their final fate in the gas chambers.

Inside the wooden barracks. Those on the bottoms had the greatest chance of death due to the cold and rats.

One of the gas chambers destroyed by the attack to liberate the death camp

I firmly believe the theft of the "Work" sign was not accidental. The timing is far too suspicious for any reasonable people to think otherwise. You see, there will always be people, for whatever reason, and they are ususally very evil reasons, that will NEVER let themselves believe that human kind is capable of such brutality, such concentrated hatred and murder on a mass scale. Think again. It did happen. It has happened to the Jews , in particular, and others as well, many, many times before. It has happened many times since the end of WWII. Pol Pot. Sadam Hussien, Al Queda, My Lai, Ethiopia and the Congo. Yes, it can happen again. So while this may seem out of place for the Holiday Season, on this the last day of Chanukah, it serves an important purpose.

That is, to remind us to strive everyday, in what we do, what we say and even what we think, to remember our fellow traveller on this earth with kindness and understanding, regardless of faith you may or may not hold or which they might practice. We are all one. No simple contrived excuses, like the amont of some race's or people's blood flowing  through our veins should ever be used to qualify a person in any way, for any reason The fact that it continues to be should make us see a reminder is often the only way we will remember.

To the Rabbi and his lovely wife and children who live in Neeham, I say thank you  and wish you and yours a wonderful, peaceful and happy Holiday Season...Happy Chanukah!!!!!

For those of us who do not share the Jewish faith, I found this explanation of the meaning and traditions of Chanukah :

Chanukah in a Nutshell

Chanukah -- the eight-day festival of light that begins on the eve of Kislev 25 -- celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality.

More than twenty-one centuries ago, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who sought to forcefully Hellenize the people of Israel. Against all odds, a small band of faithful Jews defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G-d.

When they sought to light the Temple's menorah, they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks; miraculously, the one-day supply burned for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity.

To commemorate and publicize these miracles, the sages instituted the festival of Chanukah. At the heart of the festival is the nightly menorah lighting: a single flame on the first night, two on the second evening, and so on till the eighth night of Chanukah, when all eight lights are kindled.

On Chanukah we also recite Hallel and the Al HaNissim prayer to offer praise and thanksgiving to G-d for "delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few... the wicked into the hands of the righteous.


Chanukah customs include eating foods fried in oil -- latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiot (doughnuts); playing with the dreidel (a spinning top on which are inscribed the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hei and shin, an acronym for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, "a great miracle happened there"); and the giving of Chanukah gelt, gifts of money, to children.

Happy Holidays !!