As I sat watching the second part of BBC programme,
‘Auschwitz remembered,’ on 28th January 2020, when the 75th
year of the liberation of Jews from the concentration camp at Auschwitz by
German troops at the end of World War II was being observed, I was moved to
tears as some of the 200 odd survivors of Holocaust gave their testimonies at
this ceremony at Auschwitz. They were old and frail, wearing a scarf of
stripped design to remember the stripped pajamas they were made to wear in the
concentration camp. Out of the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis
during the World War II, 1.1 million perished at Auschwitz concentration camp. The
books I had read about this gruesome pogrom and the movies like Schindler’s
list I had watched, where some humane Germans help the condemned Jews to survive, came
flooding to my mind. ‘Diary of a young girl,’ by Anne Frank, a Jewish girl in
hiding with her family, who lost her life in the last few months and the Book
Thief, The Pianist, were all powerful movies.
What remains in my mind uppermost are how the hair of the
women gassed were gathered to be sent to industries in Germany to be converted
into wigs and bones of these victims crushed and sent to fields in Germany to
serve as manure; how they conducted experiments using these
victims as guinea pigs to test how much heat or cold human body can tolerate,
by immersing them in very hot and very cold freezing water alternatively. Young
and old, babies and teenagers were all killed, murdered and buried in mass
graves. What horror! What trauma they must have undergone! The survivors would
have been seared for the rest of their lives.
How did this happen? How did the German people allow Hitler
and his henchmen SS officers to carry on such heinous crimes? Did they not
know? As one of the survivors recalled, Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. It
was in the making. First Jews were segregated; not permitted even to sit on the
same bench as others; sold bread only during the dusk after everybody else had
had their fill; treated as separate and second class citizens; their properties
confiscated and no one objected. German people watched with amusement and
satisfaction, so also others in Europe. Then one fine morning they were hurdled
in trains like cattle and taken to the concentration camps to be slaughtered
like infected cattle. It was only after the war the horrors of these
concentration camps and the torture and killings indulged by Hitler and his SS
henchmen came to light. Nuremburg trials though highlighted these, really
couldn’t do much as the dead have died. They cannot be brought back. Families
broken were broken; they cannot be made whole. It is surprising that not one
German was harmed or killed in the post war world by the afflicted Jews. May be
we can say, they had taken it in their stride.
Again and again the plea of the survivors at this function was ‘let it not
happen again,’ not just in Europe, but anywhere in the world and not just to
Jews but to anyone else. Someone had invented a Eleventh Commandment in this
respect. “Thou shall not be indifferent!” When good people keep quiet in the
face of wrongful happenings it is then that evil flourishes. Germans watched
and kept quiet allowing such discriminatory policies of the ruling elite to go
without impunity. No one objected, not even the church, excepting a theologian
of repute, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted Nazism, was arrested in 1943 and
hanged as a traitor, just 21 days before Hitler himself took his life. May be
the fear of the ruling regime was a factor in people keeping quiet!
Did these six million people lose their lives for nothing? Was it just a fodder
to the power hungry and xenophobic rulers of that time? Or was something else at
stake? May be out of all these sacrifices and mayhem emerged Israel as a country,
a nation for the Jews! Was it a price paid for the establishment of the nation of
Israel? I don’t know! May be!
I am troubled when I recall things that are happening today
in India. Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC)
being pushed through by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Home
Minister Amit Shah who are spearheading these to eliminate those who are not
able to prove that they are citizens of India, cast a long shadow of doubt. In Assam,
the one State where this exercise has been done, 19 lakh people have been categorized
as foreigners, not citizens of India. Detention centres have been built to accommodate
these people till their fate is decided. Some are already in detention in the regular
prisons along with criminals and murderers. Among these people, Hindus will be accommodated
and made Indian citizens to set right the so called historical injustices. But Muslim
refugees will be separated and dealt with separately, perhaps similar to the harsh treatment
meted out to the Hindus in Islamic countries like Pakistan. This CAA and NTC are
to be brought to cover the whole of India.
Does the story remind you of similar pogram some 75 years back
let loose by Hitler and co in Europe, the scars of which are yet to heal? Is this
another pogram to separate the Muslims and exterminate them in the detention centres?
Once the Muslims are dealt with, won’t they train their guns at the other minority,
Christians? Should we let these horrible things to be repeated in India, the land
of accommodation and tolerance, which our forefathers carved as a secular, democratic,
Republic? Should we allow the heritage of age old India to be spoiled and ruined
by the BJP (Bharatya Janata Party), and it's the political arm the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh)?
Fortunately, in India the youth are up against arms in this respect
continually carrying out agitations and protest marches in the face of police atrocities
and thousand lies of repeated assurances from the ruling elite. Even women have come out of their homes to protest. Yes, Union government
can bulldoze and try to implement these laws, but they cannot do it against the
will of the public. Regional and opposition parties in nine States namely Maharashtra,
Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Andra
Pradesh have declared that they will not implement these draconian laws.
Let us hope and pray that the time tested secular spirit of India
will triumph against such divisive forces and its people can live in peace proudly
as Indians.
God bless India!
