(Note: the piece below is written by my fellow front-liner and Catholic Media Coalition colleague, Jim Fritz)
What was Auschwitz? Built by the Nazis as both a concentration
camp (prison) and death camp, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi camps and
the most streamlined mass killing center ever created. It was at Auschwitz that
1.1 million people were murdered. The majority of the people killed in the
Holocaust were Jews; however many Catholics and Catholic priests were also
killed. The most famous Catholic priest was Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died as prisoner 16770 in
Auschwitz on August 14, 1941. After a prisoner had escaped from the camp,
another prisoner was scheduled for execution – a prisoner with a wife and
children. Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
The concentration camp was actually opened in May 1940 and
operated until January 1945, shortly before the war ended. Auschwitz, only 37
miles from Krakow, Poland, was the largest camp, but only one of many and
included 45 sub-camps. It was the scene of medical experiments, and the home of
Block 11 (a place of severe torture) and the Black Wall (a place of execution).
Auschwitz II was built approximately two miles away from Auschwitz
I and was the primary killing center of the Auschwitz death camp. Auschwitz III
was built as "housing" for the slave laborers at a synthetic rubber
factory. The 45 other sub-camps also housed prisoners used for forced labor.
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, anti-socials, criminals and prisoners
of war were rounded up, stuffed into railroad cattle cars and sent to
Auschwitz. When the trains stopped at Auschwitz ll, the newly arrived were told
to and get off the train, leaving all their belongings on board, and gather on
the railway platform known as "the ramp." Families who had
disembarked together were quickly and brutally separated as an SS officer,
usually a Nazi doctor, ordered each individual into one of two lines. Most
women, children, older men, and those who looked unfit or unhealthy were
ordered to the left; while most young men and others who looked strong enough
to perform hard labor were sent to the right. Unbeknownst to the people in the
two lines, the left line led to immediate death in the gas chambers, and people
in the right line were imprisoned in the camp.
Once the selection process concluded, a select group of Auschwitz
prisoners gathered up all the belongings, and these items (including clothing,
eyeglasses, medicine, shoes, books, pictures, jewelry and prayer shawls) would
periodically be bundled and shipped back to Germany (the spoils of war).
The people sent to the left line were never told they had been
chosen for death. They were told that they were going to be sent to work but
first must shower and be disinfected. The victims were ushered into an anteroom
and told to remove all their clothing. Totally naked, these men, women and
children were ushered into a large room which resembled a large shower room.
After the doors closed, a Nazi would pour Zyklon-B pellets which turned into
poison gas upon contact with air. The gas killed quickly.
Once everyone in the room was dead, special prisoners would air
out the room and remove the bodies. The bodies were searched for gold and
placed in the crematoria. Auschwitz ll had four main gas chambers,
each with its own crematorium. Each gas chamber could incinerate about 6,000
people a day.
When the Allies overtook Germany and the war ended, I was a
teenager. I would view newsreels showing these death camps before each movie. I
saw pictures of the gas chambers and naked bodies stacked like piles of wood;
the crematoriums and the tall smoke stacks. I saw the gold and other items
extracted from the bodies before cremation. One soldier had a small lamp shade
made from the tattooed skin of a victim. All of us who viewed these scenes
wondered how a society could tolerate this.
The German population denied knowledge of this holocaust and to
some extent, this may have been true as Jews and other victims boxed into
traincars did not envision being gassed and cremated. However, the Germans were
aware of the treatment of Jews and others. The Germans knew of the
incarceration and evacuation of Jews in boxcars to labor camps, yet most did
nothing to intervene.
There is an excellent pro-life flyer called “Sing a Little Louder”
which recalls the holocaust and the reaction of the German people. It contains
a story of an old man who approached pro-life activist Penny Lea after a
speech. He told her he had lived in Germany during this time. He was a
Christian and every week attended Sunday services. Like most people, he had
heard what was happening to the Jews, but like most people he tried to
distance himself from reality.
Railroad trains passed behind his small church, and each Sunday morning
the parishioners could hear the whistle from a distance followed by the
clacking of the train’s wheels as it passed by. The parishioners grimly
realized the train was carrying Jews as cattle in those cars. They dreaded
hearing the whistle and wheels because they knew the Jews would begin to cry
out as they passed the church. It was terribly disturbing to them, but they
felt there was nothing they could do to help these poor, miserable people.
They knew exactly what time the train would come by the church, at
the same time they would be singing hymns. When they heard the whistle they
sang as loudly as possible to drown out the screams.
The old man ended his story by confessing he still hears the train
whistle and screams in his sleep. He asks God to forgive all of those who
called themselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.
How many Christians today are doing the same thing in regard to
the Abortion Holocaust? The old man said, “It is happening all over again in
America with abortion.” More babies are killed in one year in America than
were killed in the entire history of Auschwitz.
Another similarity of abortion to Auschwitz
is the recent disclosure of 15,000 aborted babies who were incinerated by a
British hospital as a heating source. This report of babies burned to heat UK
hospitals is a shocking wake up to how callous people are toward abortion It is
comparable to the way the Nazi regime treated human life.
Now, I am no longer a teenager, but an old man myself and I engage
in sidewalk counseling at an abortion facility in Hagerstown, Maryland. I often
plead for people to come and witness in front of the facility. I ask them to do
this by holding a sign, or praying or counseling. I see those from local
churches walk by and look away. I see those who walk on the other side of the
street to avoid us. At most, we get an answer such as, “I will pray for you.”
I think, “Yes, they will pray for us from the comfort of their pews or
living rooms while the prayer warriors and counselors are out there for hour
after hour in the bitter cold of winter, rain in spring and heat in summer.”
Those who say, “I will pray for you” are ignoring the unheard cries of the
babies being killed less than a block from their churches. They are ignoring
the likelihood these woman going through the abortion will suffer from this for
the rest of their lives through depression, breast cancer and even suicide.
They will ignore the fact that two thirds of these women are forced into the
abortion by boyfriends, husbands, parents or others. I wonder how they
manage to distance themselves from reality. I sometimes wonder if they
also sing a little louder.
Jim Fritz
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