Saturday marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a date that in 2005 the UN established as Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2005, Jeff Jacoby wrote about the notorious death camp, noting one especially suggestive detail, which is a good reminder of what genocide actually looks like:
From 1942 to 1944, the train platform in Birkenau was the busiest railway station in Europe. It held that distinction despite the fact that, unlike every other train station in the world, it saw only arrivals. No passengers ever left.
Jacoby adds then tries to answer what seems like an impossible question:
The very worst thing about Auschwitz is that, for all its evil immensity, it was only a fraction of the total. Even if it had never been built, the Holocaust would still have been a crime without parallel in human history. It would still have been something so monstrous that a new word—genocide—would have had to be coined to encompass it. Never before and never since has a government made the murder of an entire people its central aim. And never before or since has a government turned human slaughter into an international industry, complete with facilities for transportation, selection, murder, incineration. And none of it as a means to an end, but as an end in itself: the reason for wiping out the Jews was so that the Jews would be wiped out.
In the end, 6 million of them were killed. But only one-sixth died at Auschwitz.
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