Holocaust Essay, Research Paper

Over the past few years I have become increasingly interested in World War II history, specifically the Holocaust. It was part of my family history and I learned all about it from my Grandmother and in my history classes. My Great Grandfather was at one time a prisoner of Buchenwald. On my visit to Europe in the fall of 2000 I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Auchweitz Concentration camp.

I was walking through the Concentration camp by myself, feeling a little rushed because I had only been allowed an hour and a half to view everything. My first impression was a sense of profound mourning. The lighting was very dim, and many people were around. It was as if everyone there was going through their own private agonies, but I was witnessing them, somehow a part of them.

The place where I lost all self-control was about midway through the camp. There was an old train car that had been used for transporting people from other camps to Auchweitz, a death camp. I had to walk through it to continue on, and on the other side of the car there were piles of suitcases with names written in chalk on the sides. I could suddenly imagine the SS officers telling the desperate people to clearly label their baggage so it wouldn’t get lost, all the time knowing the owners would step off the train and into the crematorium. The monsters took malicious pleasure in perpetuating the false hopes of the doomed. I looked around me, and I saw a young woman staring about, tears streaming down her face. I felt like I was being engulfed by a huge wave.

I have all of this anger inside me over all of these lost lives. It just sits and festers in my gut, because I have no outlet for it. I desperately need to do something to avenge or solve the atrocities of the Third Reich, but I often feel that I can do nothing. My deep horror comes not only because of what the Nazis did but also because the world sat by and let it happen. The people of Poland were not crying when their fellow Jewish countrymen were being slaughtered. The United States was suffering at the misery of the Europeans. My disgust at the conduct of the world during World War II has evolved into an aversion to isolationist sentiments. Especially now, with the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, I feel that it is wrong for the powerful nations of the world to stand by and witness suffering, and take no action to relieve it.