I am writing this text a few hours after the big commemorations in Auschwitz. I have been here many times. As the son of Holocaust survivors. As a diplomat. Now as a negotiator, fighting for the hostages abducted from Israel. Eighty years ago, the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated. But no one knows how many of our hostages will be released. I saw the release of the young female soldiers, the Hamas staging, from Poland: that was painful!
Now Auschwitz. After countless visits, I still cannot understand this place. A huge area, carefully planned for the sole purpose of destroying human life. Auschwitz marks the lowest point of morality. This interplay of the division of labor processes of the industrial age, top logistical performance and the achievements of the chemical industry. The mass murder itself was based on an ideology that, although idiotic, would have been impossible without the scientific knowledge of the time. Auschwitz is proof that civilized progress can also lead to the abyss.
You probably want to know my personal story now. Well: My mother was a survivor of Auschwitz. My father was a survivor too. But it was not my parents' Jewishness, nor the fact that they both had Polish citizenship, but rather the German extermination policy that brought them together. Yes, that's how it was. Little connected the young man from an eastern Polish village and the girl from the educated middle class of Warsaw. Little more than the fate of being the only one in their family to escape the Holocaust. Yes: Without the Holocaust, I would never have been born. For the survivors of that time and for their descendants, Jewish life will always be in the shadow of Auschwitz.
On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz had almost completed its terrible task: well over a million people had been murdered there, and Soviet soldiers found just seven thousand survivors. Two thirds of Europe's pre-war Jewish population was no longer alive. The extermination camps of Bełzec, Sobibor, Kulmhof and Treblinka had been dissolved by the Germans. Auschwitz was only still in operation because the Germans had conquered Hungary less than a year earlier and now wanted to exterminate the Jewish population there too. The Holocaust did not end because the Allies liberated the Jews, but because there were almost no Jews left.
Now, in Auschwitz, we heard the declaration "Never again!" everywhere. It was once an honest resolution. Since October 7, 2023, we know that even the security offered by the Jewish state is fragile. Hatred of Jews is showing its face more openly than I would have thought possible.
Next week I'm going to visit the Pope, who is constantly criticizing Israel. I want to ask him again to help the hostages. I don't expect much more.
This editorial was originally published in German in Die Zeit.
