1018;518 not just numbers but all individual stories.

The most disturbing aspect of the Holocaust is the numbers of people being killed. No one of us can even begin to imagine the horror.

Many knew their fate before they got killed. They were put on transports on journeys that sometimes would take days. Journeys under unfathomable inhumane conditions, many would already die during the journeys. The ones who survived the journey only survived to be killed immediately after they arrived at any of the death camps. Or otherwise to be slowly worked to death or killed as part of experiments. Eventually some of those who survived to be liberated, still died because of the weakened state their bodies were in, and even getting proper food would cause such a shock to the system that it killed them.

On June 23 1943 1018 Jews were transported from Drancy, near Paris. to Auschwitz. Of those 1018,518 were killed immediately in the gas chambers. Each one of them an innocent human being. All individual stories, stories like the one of Arthur Goldstein who had been German Jewish journalist and socialist politician. In 1933 when the Nazis took power he fled to Paris. 10 years later the state he had served before as a politician condemned him to death. He was one of those 518 of the Drancy transport who was murdered in the gas chambers on June 25,1943.

I would love to tell the individual story of all the 6 million Jews, 312,000 Serb civilians, 250,000 people with disability, 1.8 Million non Jewish Poles, and all those other victims like homo-sexuals, Gypsies, Soviet POW’s, Soviet civilians and so many others. But it would be impossible for only one man to tell these individual tales of bravery and sacrifice.

One task that lays on all of our shoulders is to make sure we never ever forget and we do not allow for some individuals to rewrite history to accommodate their own political narrative.

 

Source

USHMM