Jan 12 - Auschwitz: Our Experience and Vital Lessons
By Mark Eliot Montegriffo
We are still Learning From Auschwitz. Here is what I took from the experience and how I think we can continue to prevent violence and injustice in Gibraltar as a community and as part of a wider Europe and stand in solidarity with freedom seekers and the ideals of equality.
I highly recommend a visit to Auschwitz should you get the opportunity. The LFA students are currently working on projects to show what we have learned on the trip including documentaries, poems, prayers and presentations.
Never had I felt such a rollercoaster of emotions as I did during those five days on the Learning From Auschwitz trip. Thirty students were selected from the application process to join the trustees and two teachers from Bayside Comprehensive and Westside Comprehensive School respectively. Upon receiving the news of my acceptance, I began to feel frightful anticipation. Of course, I felt very fortunate, but a part of me was expecting the experience to be an altering self-discovery of sorts. So much so, that on the morning of the 30th of June, I told myself that I will return to Gibraltar from the cool air of Poland as a changed person.
After sitting my AS Level exams, Auschwitz was a wakeup call. Not a nagging call of mother begging me to spend more time studying but instead it woke me up to the potential inhumanity of humankind that, when allowed to flourish over man's virtues, can lead to disastrous effects. I realised that because of what was really the agenda of a select view in abusive positions, many kids my age and younger lost their lives in camps like Auschwitz before having the privilege as I do, to study and learn in a stable environment.
We witnessed a lecture from Holocaust survivor Bernard Offen. He was a short man with a white ponytail hairstyle and a fairly tidy beard. Beneath his presentable appearance and seemingly good health, this 85-year-old man had been through the gates of hell on Earth. Spending his pre-adolescent years in 'the camp', after the Nazis promised they were taking them to a family holiday camp instead of what was essentially a slave farm and abattoir, Bernard had experienced more than any of us could imagine. He told stories with such courage. Like the countless nights when he was crowded in a small room with nothing but straw as a carpet. They were given bread and soup if they were lucky. And if they were really fortunate, each person in the room could take a crumb each. Hearing the stories and seeing it in the flesh had a huge impact on me. It was so surreal that it was discomforting to know that it was true. And there he was, in front of all of us. Living, breathing, fighting.
Courage is an Aristotelian virtue, one that I found myself having to summon on the day that followed. The visit to Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz Birkenau will stick with me until I perish. 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. A lie so deceitful that anybody associated with Nazism would find it a stretch to believe. Mind you, Nazi sympathisers were either servile beyond belief or cowardly swine. From the railway track, to the gas chambers, to the 'lavatory rooms', no section of the area failed to boil the blood. Such anger would mix with unimaginable sadness when I saw the ‘mug shots’ of innocent humans. Our cousins. More than that - our brothers and sisters, of multiple ethnic backgrounds and beliefs but sharing the same ability to be virtuous and also sharing the innate ability to be unique.
I shall go no further on the detail of Auschwitz because words can only go so far when it comes to something so alien and callous. I also promised I would be terse. I shall say though, that the world has not learned from Auschwitz. It is true that the experience has changed me. In fact, it has driven me to a stage of helpless reflection at times. But the reality is that similar things are happening and have happened. From Cambodia to the Congo, the list goes on. We are presented with new extreme threats and enemies, usually with a self-proclaimed mandate from the Divine. This is not prestidigitation. It is very real and incidents in Europe as seen most recently in France prove that we have still a long way to go as a human race.
But for those who think I may be digressing, you are wrong. You see, what the LFA trip (and my thought process since then) has taught me is that there is at least hope. The answer? Compassion, courage, solidarity, something that the late Bernard Linares had in droves. Everything else will come from these virtues. And there is no better place to start than at home. Seek good and we can avoid evil...be courageous and don't allow yourself be misled. We are a fortunate community in this sense. But now as part of a wider community in a shivering Europe and a World where desire is more important than compassion, let our brotherhood and sisterhood remain as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar herself. We have shown our resolve in the most trying circumstances, and we continue to do that despite a recent surge in Spanish incursions and border checks. Let us not forget what human beings are capable of when we unite to overcome the forces of evil. And let us never forget the victims of the worst atrocities. Let us never forget the courage of the victims of Auschwitz.
Learning From Auschwitz website: http://lfa.gi/index.html
Holocaust Survivors website: http://holocaustsurvivorswalk.org/
