Walking through the Nazi death camps with history and imagination crawling up your back
It’s drizzling. Raindrops fall on the camera lens, spoiling the photographs. Besides, the sky is white. Not the blue that makes a good backdrop for pictures. I have to clean my lens every time I click.
I step into a large, darkish foyer. It’s crowded. A gang of college students is in a serious discussion. An anxious mother is running after two children. A small kid, dressed in a yellow jacket, is wailing. There are a couple of stalls, selling brochures, guidebooks and magazines.
The guide takes us out, into the cold. There were roll calls every day here. The inmates had to stand in rows of five, and groups of hundred. This is where they were shot: The wall of death. The windows in the building next to this wall were sealed. This is where people were hung — men and children — for crimes like not saluting an officer, for smiling, for not smiling, for walking fast, for walking slow. In Night, Elie Wiesel writes about a boy, whose face was as innocent as an angel, being hung by the SS as a warning to others. An inmate is horrified and asks himself, “Where is God?” Wiesel gets an answer from within: “He is hanging here on the gallows.”
(This story appears in the 02 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)