First I am going to focus on the visit to the exhibition. I didn’t live the Holocaust as close as one of the naval battles that were described in the Naval Museum of Madrid, so in that sense the visit was less interesting. But I consider that attending an exhibition of these characteristics is an obligation, as much as watching videos of slaughterhouses or tough images of the current meat industry. You can’t turn your back to reality, you can’t forget the past. And the emotions that got stirred in me have led me to research more about my grandfather in my immediately previous life to this one. I believe I have found out who he is, with a name and a surname. I still can’t say it for certain because it is not completely verified, but perhaps I have taken a step more in this quest.
It is obvious for those who know me that I am not too sensitive to the topic of the Holocaust. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me sad just like any other person or that I don’t regret the death of so many human beings in a genocide that was unprecedented due to the industrialization of death, but I can't deny I get upset by certain viewpoints of some Jewish people, like rabbi Yonassan Gershom, author of a book about reincarnation focused on Holocaust victims. And even though I know that no generalizations can or should be made, and in no case the individual is guilty or deserves a death of this kind, I can’t help to feel a certain rejection towards the Jews for what they have represented in history. I have realized this is due to purely religious reasons, not racial, the same way I don’t like the Catholic church, and it comes from the time of Jesus. Jews are not saints. Jews are not martyrs. They were not the only victims in World War II. Does this mean they must be exterminated? Of course not. I don’t justify any kind of violence. None at all. It is fine that every January 27th the Jewish Holocaust is remembered, but I don’t like the fact they have monopolized the suffering that corresponds to the rest of actors in World War II as well. I would like that victims of other genocides, victims of other races and nationalities, were much more remembered. I would like German soldiers that participated in World War II had their acknowledgment too, in their own country... though I fear their country doesn’t exist anymore.
It is not easy for me to talk like this, because I know that many times what I say comes from my feelings and irrational ideas that formed in my mind as a consequence of my experiences. Often, I don’t know if it is my current self the one that is talking, or Katrina or Fritz or a mixture of all. I know I might say some nonsense, and might be that something is not historically correct, but that is how I feel it. A non-reincarnationist person is not aware of how much our current way of thinking is influenced by experiences of the remote past. I know that in some instances I lack specific memories that explain the reason for my feelings, but I know they are there, hidden in some part of myself, in what is commonly known as the subconscious. In the next entry this will be understood much better.
The Auschwitz exhibition.
However, I had no problem at all looking at the eyes of every portrayed prisoner I later saw. They were already a number, not a name, but I think these portraits were much more important than the shoe with shock of a Jewish child. I don’t know why this is so. Perhaps because I need to put faces to the victims, humanize them, not objectify them even more. Perhaps because one of the prisoners could have been me, when I was Katrina. For example, Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl who was captured in Poland. The picture is from the exhibition’s website and was taken by Wilheim Brasse, another Polish prisoner. Czeslawa died in Auschwitz on March 12th, 1943. My heart goes out to her. It could have been me, when Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. But strange as it may seem, I feel the same pity for her as for the perpetrators. I know we all were victims of the war.
Then the crudest part came, the one dealing with crematoria and gas chambers, the children they killed straight away or were subjected to medical experiments. The use of Zyklon B and the medical instruments that belonged to Dr. Mengele, which, incidentally, are just ordinary medical instruments, at least the pieces exposed. The account of a woman called Irene Hizme, who arrived to the camp at six years old, describes how she met Dr. Mengele and how blood was drawn from her neck. I must admit these stories about medical experiments always leave me quite cold. I wonder how much sensationalism there is behind them and how much is true.
To me, it was harder to know the existence of the Sonderkommando, the prisoners who did the dirty work of the Nazis, in the crematoria and gas chambers, in return for certain privileges. I think that the account of one of these men, telling how you have to become immune to what is happening and do anything if you want to survive, is the one that gets closer to the reality of what goes through the mind of a human being when they are caught in extreme situations like this. They say these Jews were recruited by the SS personnel upon their arrival to the camp , and they couldn’t refuse, under threat of death. Some integrants of this Sonderkommando could take the only photographs known of what was happening in Auschwitz in relation to the gas chambers, and they even organized a revolt that failed.
After four hours that took the visit, I was hungry and exhausted, so we had to return to the following day to take photographs of the wagon, as we had completely forgotten about it.
This is, very briefly, what I saw in the exhibition. In the next entry I will explain more in detail what makes me feel, from a more reincarnationist point of view.
Part 2.