Preserving a symbol of evil

[Forkboy]

Local Holocaust survivors are heartened by an international effort to restore Auschwitz and maintain it for future generations

NEWTON — Israel Arbeiter doesn’t waste time wondering how he survived the Holocaust, which tore him away from family members he would never see again and swept him from one concentration camp to the next after the Nazis occupied his native Poland in 1939.

Rather than shrink from the memory of its horrors, Arbeiter embraces a chapter in world history that he and others insist must never be allowed to fade.

Now, the 85-year-old Newton resident and other local survivors of Auschwitz are voicing support for international efforts to preserve crumbling barracks, gas chambers, crematoriums, and other evidence of atrocities at the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp where more than 1.1 million people, including at least 960,000 Jews, were murdered between 1940 and 1945.

“It’s important that Auschwitz be preserved the way it was so that future generations will go and see what human beings are capable of,’’ said Arbeiter, president of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1944.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/01/30/holocaust_survivors_laud_global_effort_to_preserve_auschwitz/

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

Here is some more on preserving the history.

Auschwitz Oven Factory Reopens as a Memorial












Thinking of you!

[Forkboy]

4. Thank you for adding more to the story.

Ultimately, the company equipped Auschwitz with ovens capable of incinerating 8,000 bodies each day.

I first learned about the Holocaust in detail when I was around 16, and started reading as much as I could on it. I'm now 43 and I still can't really begin to wrap my head around this. I sometimes wish that I was religious so that I could simply chalk it up to "evil", but I'm not an I can't. It was humans, and I fear this potential is in all of us given the right conditions. It's forever changed my view of human beings as a species, and not for the better.

[Raine]

5. I just started rereading The Diary of Anne Frank

I've read it many many times before. No matter how many times I read it and no matter how much I ponder on it I will never understand how people could do such horrible things to other human beings. :cry:

[Forkboy]

6. Part of me is afraid to understand it.

I'm afraid I won't like what i find out about us. :(

[emilyg]

2. Thank you for posting. K/R

[Forkboy]

3. You're welcome.

:hug: