Un-men and un-women

It was not merely the extreme cold that was making our bones shiver and our mind freeze. Nor was it the shrieking sound of quiet that was wrapping us into a blanket of increased self-consciousness. It was the chilling sense of hatred, of pain and suffering that seeped into the pores of the very ground we were slowly treading upon. It was the realisation that, in every inch of space here at Auschwitz-Birkenau, men and women were stripped naked of their dignity, were deprived of their very essence, were turned into an un-man or un-woman. And were killed. In gas chambers. In twenties of thousands. Everyday. For the simple reason that they were Jews.

Travelling on the coach from Krakow - the land of Karol Woytyla - towards Auschwitz I and then Auschwitz-Birkenau, we were introduced to a retired colonel of the Israeli army who survived the extermination camp and fought in all the wars Israel has been through in the last generations. He was brought to the extermination camp as a child from Hungary. He actually thought - like the child in the Life Is Beautiful masterpiece - that it was some kind of adventure, until he realised, when he grew up, that in Auschwitz-Birkenau he lost all his family and was left all on his own.

"Are you a hero in your own country," I asked him. The elderly colonel had difficulty to speak in English and, with a smile, he managed to find enough English words from his mental vocabulary to coin one or two sentences. "I am a very simple man. I am no hero at all. I don't know how to make philosophy or how to make reflections. I try to enjoy life to the full. I leave the job of doing reflections to people like you."

And then, he helped me to walk on the slippery icy surface through to the ruins of the gas chambers, past the dormitories, past the open space wherein thousands and thousands of people lost their lives due to the sick design of one or two world leaders. We were a group of parliamentarians from all over Europe but there was nothing distinguishing the Maltese from the Irish, or the Germans, or from the Spanish.

We felt like emitting a horrifying scream, like Edvard Munch's painful painting, as our eyes tried to make sense of the blood and terror that turned this extermination camp and others all over Europe into a painful memory, which we must revisit over and over again. The moment that memory is wiped out from our collective consciousness, then Auschwitz-Birkenau would not have existed and will repeat itself again. As long as the memory is relived, then all the atrocities that happened are brought to the fore to remind us that, if we fail, we are doomed to repeat them.

As we walked out, slowly, from that field of terror, I could not help but reflect on the reality that Adolf Hitler's cruel depiction of Jews as "a virus" or "parasites" in his Mein Kampf are not very different from the adjectives used by some members of our own society with regard to people with a different colour of skin.

Failing to remember Auschwitz-Birkenau in our collective memory would sentence mankind to the despicable destiny of reliving it again, against another race or another tribe. Remembering Aushwitz-Brikenau means bearing in mind the very basic notion, not tolerated by some, that there is no such thing as an un-man or un-woman.

Anything short of that would mean the triumph and victory of the horrors perpetrated in World War II.

According to Yad Vashem, 1,400,000 Jews were killed at Auschwitz II.

Dr Bonnici is a Labour member of Parliament.

The author formed part of a parliamentary delegation that visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on the occasion of the 65th anniversary since the liberation of the camps by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.

owenbonnici@onvol.net