“Arbeit Macht Frei” reads the letters on the gates leading into the Aushwitz camp. “Work sets you free.” A bold testament to the fact that what transpired here wasn’t just a subjugation of the body, but also of the mind.
There are pictures near the entrance, of the survivors of the camp, retelling their stories. Stories that turn a warm summer afternoon uncomfortably chilly. As you step into the camp, and move from barracks to barracks, the horror hits you hard in the gut. The horror, is soon accompanied with guilt. That somewhere, in not too distant past, we, the members of the human race, allowed this happen.
You get to see not just what the horrors were, but also how they were systematically and efficiently organised. The atrocities that happened here are frightening, but what is even more frightening is the thought that there existed a large group of people who were entirely convinced that they are doing no wrong in the acts they were committing. It proves that our feeble human minds are capable of accepting the most horrific notions as the norm, when pushed with a persuasive force.
And that is what they tried to imprint on the captives of the camp as well. They were mentally tortured to a point that they began to feel they deserve the conditions they are in. They were repeatedly provided false hopes of freedom and periodically convinced that hard labour is their way to freedom. That means no one, neither the captives nor the captors, at the place felt that what was transpiring there was wrong and inhuman. Everyone at this tragic place, were sufficiently mind-washed, to believe their actions were justified.
And that’s what scares me and keeps me up at night. The thought that our minds are capable of being influenced so easily, to be accepting of the most bizarre of notions. What scares me is that all it would take, to tip the humanity towards a failure, would be one entity with skills persuasive enough to pit the humanity against itself.
