Arbeit Macht Frei — those infamous, arched words, fashioned out of steel — that wrought iron gate at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest Jewish graveyard in the world; those deceitful German words, strung together, hovering as a greeting over the head of every prisoner who ever crossed the threshold of that hell — those words, as cold and chilling as the steel from which they were fashioned.
Arbeit Macht Frei. “Work sets you free.”
These three cynical, all too familiar words have come to symbolize the horror of the Holocaust; the horror of the concentration camps.
On January 27, 2020, it is the 75th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Jerusalem, delegates from around the world are gathered to mark this liberation of Auschwitz.
Tributes and homages abound. One such example was a story that the Daily Mail ran on January 15, 2020, a poignant story titled, “The Last Survivors of Auschwitz,” the stories of survivors, now in their 90s, showcasing their photos, including their wrinkled arms bearing their branded, infamous, blue-black Auschwitz numbers.
Another tribute, so to speak, was part of a PBS documentary January 21, 2020 called “Secrets of the Dead,” which aired an episode called “Bombing Auschwitz.” While I have not yet seen it, the documentary says it explores the dilemma the Allies faced in 1944 as they contemplated bombing Auschwitz.
The documentary tells the story of prisoners Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler who miraculously escaped the notorious Auschwitz, and spared no detail in describing what they had lived through and what they witnessed in warning the world what was taking place. Through these two people and other sources, the Allies were aware of the evil Nazi machine, but this apparently led not to action, but to philosophical discussions, including a cost-benefit analysis. Stopping human atrocities vs. killing innocent prisoners in the process. Exploring “one of the greatest moral dilemmas of the 20th century” is how the documentary is billed.
The documentary presents varying points of view of different scholars on the moral complexity of bombing Auschwitz and why ultimately that path was not pursued.
Maybe I’m missing something. But how exactly was the question of whether to bomb Auschwitz a struggle? What was the great moral question?
To say that innocent prisoners being killed in the process of stopping the evil Nazi machine would have been horrendous is an understatement. But how does that negate the clarity one should have about stopping pure evil?
Also, 1944? Why was this discussion portrayed in the documentary undertaken so late in the war? Why does the documentary frame the dilemma in terms of these two Auschwitz escapees, as though nothing was known before their escape?
And what about the binary of the moral dilemma — bombing Auschwitz or doing nothing? What about other options by which the Nazi program of mass murder could have been stopped? What about addressing the haunting question as to why the rail tracks to Auschwitz were not bombed, and at a much earlier time? What about rendering it impossible to for the cattle cars to transport prisoners to Auschwitz? What about the ability of air forces to blow up significant bridges that enabled this evil machine? What was the “struggle” in all these cases? Where is the “moral question”?
By presenting the issue as to whether Auschwitz should have, on moral grounds, been bombed, we have a gross distortion of what moral considerations ought to be. It is devastatingly warped to create a complex gray area out of every single thing, every single atrocity.
Certainly, life is most often not black and white. To explore grey areas is essential to a healthy dynamic and engagement, be it for moral, psychological, emotional, mental or intellectual integrity.
But if the clear-cut evil, the extremes of Auschwitz, become relative and debatable, then the conversation has been warped.
On the 75th anniversary of the liberation from Auschwitz, black should not be called white and night should not be called day. If there is anything that ought to be morally crystalline, it is the Holocaust. If stopping the Holocaust is something than needs to be wrestled with, if stopping genocide is not an unambiguous moral imperative, then we have forsaken our last survivors.
Arbeit Macht Frei. These three words seared into the collective Jewish memory, three words that the Nazis distorted — let them be a warning that the legacy of Auschwitz not be inversely distorted or destroyed by Western civilization marring its memory with a discussion at to the moral merits of destroying Auschwitz — or not.
Arbeit Macht Frei.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
