Berlin: Concentration camps and walled cities

Memorials of grave deeds

Some things just defy explanation or understanding and sadly they are at first part of our history and are constantly at the risk of repeating and recurring in the present with the same horrors of the past.

The remains of the Berlin Wall preserved in a memorial are sited just outside Nordbahnhof Station. The record of a deliberate decision of people in power to cage people under a ruthless authoritarian Communist rule. [Berlin Wall Memorial]

The architects of the wall destroyed life and property to plant this rotten edifice that ran through a cemetery and in the process the disinterment of over 1,000 graves to fit that purpose. The memorial now sits on what was once part of a cemetery.

Concentrated evil

When people sought to escape this regime, because the primordial cry of humanity is for freedom, they were shot. Someone took orders to shoot both young and old without mercy and it was done. At the memorial stands portraits of each person martyred in their quest for freedom.

Not even 16 years before this wall was conceived and erected in 1961, there was the liberation of the concentration camps, the first of which was sited near the seat of power to cater to political prisoners at Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg.

These were operated by the Nazis with an efficiency and organisation that today still baffles imagination and comprehension.

In this and many other Nazi concentration camps, they perfected the art and science of human extermination with an almost sense of omnipotence and power over life, livelihood, death and disposal.

History in present replay

Anyone who visits the memorial will fail with words with which to appreciate this enterprise. What however all in our touring group was when I noted to our tour guide how when the Communist government of the GDR were planning a memorial to the souls lost in the concentration camps in 1961, the people who said never again were building a new wall around Berlin.

Man’s capacity for evil is never trammelled, when power is absolute and that fear of the other is exploited, resulting in the persecution of the other and the considered different by the Nazis, then by the GDR, was repeated in the Brexit campaign, is showing a Genesis in the aftermath of the failed coup in Turkey and is a fearful prospect if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America.

Walls are not bridges and bridges are not walls, whichever is built would either celebrate or denigrate our common humanity. The populist rhetoric aims to accentuate our differences, and if we do not stand up to this narrative, before long, people will be victimised and how long before this poison colours our doorstep?

Berlin: That We May Never Forget

A sign of times past

Just at the entrance of Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn Station is a panel board of place names. Twelve in a list that spells the recording of one of man’s greatest inhumanities to man.

A list of Nazi Concentration Camps

These were the Nazi Concentration Camp names of which if you have read a bit of World War II history, Auschwitz is the most prominent.

The Nazis used these camps for various activities as hostage, labour, prisoner-of-war, re-education, transit and extermination camps. It was in some of these extermination camps that they systemically killed off people, most especially the Jews in what is known as the Holocaust.

Feeling the presence of pain

Now, I have never visited any of these places, but in 2007, I visited Pawiak Prison in Warsaw and that experience still lives with me, for I am of the opinion that where innocent blood is shed, there is always a memorial of feeling and uneasiness that beclouds that place.

Blog - PAWIAK!

However, what struck me more about the Nazi setup was their attention to detail that created a bureaucracy of such efficiency that the particularity of things they documented just took your breath away.

Badges of badgering

One good example of this was the identification in the Nazi Concentration Camps where tattooed numbers, badges and armbands immediately identified the type of prisoner you were.

Nazi Concentration Camp Badges – Courtesy Wikipedia

So, you had political prisoners (red), professional criminals (green), emigrants (blue), Jehovah’s Witnesses (purple), Homosexuals and sexual offenders (pink), asocial elements (black), Roma gypsies (brown) and so on. Pink triangle along with the rainbow flag now signify LGBTI causes and diversity.

The Original Rainbow Flag – Courtesy Wikipedia

The two superimposed triangles in the sign of the Star of David depicted Jews, typically yellow but could have other colours signifying Jew and another offender category.

That we may never forget.

The most important lesson to learn from this and in that understand why World War II was fought and won for our liberty, freedom and acceptance of difference and diversity is in the many memorials that say as shown on that sign, “Orte Des Schreckens, Die Wir Niemals Vergessen Dürfen.” This roughly translates to, “The Places of Horror, That We May Never Forget.”

They who have no history and keep no memorials are destined to repeat history, those reminded of the horrific past are quicker to embrace the greater good of humanity and human existence.

More correctly, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana or “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” Edmund Burke.

We speak of history because there is a burden of truth we must carry for the present in order to secure a future of peace and happiness.

Child sexual abuse requires greater parental indignation

Where is the outrage?

Words have begun to fail me before I have finished the first paragraph but I will not relent until what is to be written is written.

I cannot muster enough righteous indignation to the lack of boiling outrage to the report about the abuse of children in Ireland and the implications to abuse all around the world vested in the bosom of the Catholic Church.

I know some abuse

My interest is simple; I was first sexually abused at 7 and then even though we lead a seemingly privileged life by Nigerian standards of having servants, cooks, gardeners, security men and drivers, that in itself bought other issues.

These were people employed by my parents or the companies my father worked for who were trusted by my parents to ensure that we were well cared for, safe and out of harm’s way.

Some of these people were sponsored even up to tertiary education level by my parents, but behind the scenes at least 3 of the male servants took sexual favours by inducement, enticement and veiled threats – between the ages of 7 and 11, I do wonder if I was a sexual deviant, a willing participant in games or an abused child in sexual activity with people at least in their 20s.

Tough but bearable

I cannot say any of the abuse was systematic, persistent or violent, but it was sustained, I welcomed my parents home, they none the wiser, the servants expressed their loyalties and things just happened.

I went to a co-educational boarding school, it was tough in terms of discipline and the regimented lifestyle, I was at one time bullied but the whole experience was hardly indelible to the extent of leaving psychological scars, I was fortunate, I was lucky.

I talk about it for the hopeful benefit of helping others walk away from those nasty events of their past but nothing I went through can compare in any manner to the things other children went through as revealed in the reports of The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse [1].

A charity camp in a church

It is sorrowfully and painfully heartrending to read of the sustained, systematic and endemic abuse [2] in Catholic-run children’s institutions in Ireland, it has taken over 8 years to fully compile this report but it has done little to assuage the pain of the victims.

I am compelled to put Concentration Camp, Christian Charity and Catholic Church side by side as synonyms of each other and until much is done to bring the perpetrators to justice, I hope that this alignment gains more momentum.

It is societal compassion that compels us to seek ways of caring for children who are orphans or seriously underprivileged and somehow in our naivety we believed that Christian Charities had volumes of the milk of human kindness to care and cater for the wellbeing of these children.

Our faith and trust in them

Even parents thought these Catholic institutions would instil both discipline and Christian conduct in their children such that many sent their children to these places.

For those children with parents, they probably suffered less but those for whom society had bequeathed the trust of parenthood and guardianship to the agents of the Catholic Church seemed to have been sentenced to hell on earth and here we were thinking they were been brought up as goodly Christian ladies and gentlemen.

The nuns and the priests terrorised the children, raped and molested many, these places were residential homes to society but the reality for the children who lived in these places was akin to concentration camps.

The children were not gassed but what they suffered is heinously unspeakable, and unfortunately, I do not see enough indignation and outrage to bring the perpetrators to justice.

This was a Christian Charity running Concentration Camps supported by the Catholic Church; reprehensible does not begin to help appreciate the situation, when shall we really lose faith and exact judgement?

Secrecy and succour to the perpetrators

These were children who had no voice, who when they spoke suffered more privation and violence than we can ever imagine and now that the atrocious acts have been exposed it is unfortunate that we see the faces of the damaged children now adults but those holy priests and nuns are given succour within the church.

Like concentration camp commandants and guards, when they have done their evil in one place and they were at the risk of exposure, the church moved them to another concentration camp where they had new children to abuse and gratify their sadistic perversion in the light of their vows of celibacy.

The Catholic Church is complicit in the abuse of the children and paying up for the abuse does not half address the way our trust, hope and faith in Christian Charity has been dashed, shattered and damaged.

Suffer the children not make the children suffer

If we as a society will do nothing about this, I would go back to where the idea of real Christian Charity to children began.

The parents brought their children to Jesus, he touched them and blessed them and the disciples saw this and began to rebuke the parents, it is there that Jesus then said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” [Luke 18:16 KJV]

The idea here is than a child enters a Christian situation to be blessed and their character, implicit trust and faith in the people who care for them is characteristic of those of seek the kingdom of God. Where a child has had this trust breached by adults gratifying their inordinate and despicable desires through persistent and systematic abuse, what we have is children made to suffer rather than children suffered to see Christian goodness.

Millstones and necks in the sea

To those people who have damaged the children, Jesus had one message to whoever has the authority to carry out the right and just action. “These little ones believe in me. It would be best for the person who causes one of them to lose faith to be drowned in the sea with a large stone hung around his neck.” [Matthew 18:6 GWT]

I find no ambiguity or equivocation in that statement, these children arrived in these residential homes with the hope that they would find succour and preparation for worthwhile lives, they found hell meted out by trusted religious figures given the responsibility for their care.

They caused these children to lose faith, in other translations, they offended the children, they caused them to stumble, they caused them to sin – for all the heinous acts committed against the children, if the least is to cause them to lose faith – lose faith in society, in Christian Charity, in mentoring, in hope and the will to live, the statement is the same.

Put a weighty millstone around their necks as one translation says and drown them in the sea. These abusers by the basic invocation of Jesus Christ do not deserve another day of oxygen, they were not to be hanged or crucified which is the punishment of the day but thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around their necks.

Only the severest punishments should suffice

It calls on any form of justice that we might have in our seemingly civilised world to address this abuse in the most exacting way, the severest punishment we can find in our law books without any recourse parole, rehabilitation or reconsideration.

I am no death penalty advocate, but if that be on the books of the countries in which the act was perpetrated then that should be the just punishment. However, I see no necks to put weighty millstones around and there is no sea in sight.

Where is the honour in the Catholic Church?

It is incumbent on the church not only to apologise and show contrition through condemnation of the acts, they should follow the Christ-like idea to its conclusion – expose these vermin and have the law take its full course.

We still hunt after Nazi criminals, more so should be hunt down child abusers, I would dare to equate their acts with those of the Nazi regime, in fact, their acts for the way it has affected the victims is probably worse.

The church must be compelled to cooperate in exposing all those involved in serious criminal activity; society must not be complacent with being blindsided by the religious entities when they harbour criminals.

Parents must speak up

Most of all, if you are a parent and are not already filled with outrage about this, I do wonder.

The children once had parents, I do not think it was the wish of their parents to leave their children orphans and in the least if they had any choice in the matter, they would have liked for society to care for their children in some loving and caring way.

If I were a parent I would want to know that if I expressly left my child in the care of anyone they were really being cared for in the way I would where I also have a choice in choosing the carer and where I can make none of the choices, I will still have those expectations.

Where children have no parents, I would be hopeful that other parents in society would offer the blanket of parent care or at least parental oversight to ensure the children are not used and abused. What has been exposed is bad enough, their sure is much abuse going on still somewhere in our neighbourhoods and it all should stop.

The children lost their childhood, it was taken from them by people we trusted would do a good job on behalf of society under the auspices of the church – if this matter ends here, we have done our humanity a great injustice and the victims a second injustice – we should be bold enough to take the scare out care.

Sources

[1] BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Abuse report - at a glance

[2] Sex abuse 'endemic' in Catholic institutions - Telegraph

PAWIAK!

Of evil and good

Whilst man can be capable of heartfelt selfless and incomparably magnanimous good, their propensity for unimaginable and abominable evil cannot be discounted.

In Poland, I had planned to see some of the machinations of the Nazi and Russian occupation of a country and people who for hundreds of years fought to gain self-determination and only just attained it in 1989 after the fall of Communism.

An English expatriate who sold up in England and moved to live in more affordable Poland offered to take me to a site that featured the deepest and darkest memories of man’s inhumanity to man.

Pawiak (Peacock) Prison

Pawiak Prison which was built by the Russians in the early 19^th century as a political prison and a entry point for Poles that would eventually be sent to the gulags of Siberia.

The Russians, Poles after their first independence 1918 and finally, the Nazis used this prison for all sorts of devilish inquisition and unspeakable torture.

The main elements of the sprawling prison that extended the whole length of the street above ground has disappeared as the perpetrators of evil tried to obliterate evidence of their deeds, but the underground cells have been converted into a museum now called the Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and the Pawiak museum.

Memories, dark memories

As I approached the museum, memorial stones of groups that were persecuted in the prison lined the outer walls and there stood eerily, a tree without leaves – now replaced with a fibre-glass replica as the original tree is being infused with chemicals to give it a more enduring quality – with little posters which I later learnt to be obituary notices.

Down into the cellar, one long corridor with cells on either side where the occupancy of two was usually bumped up 14 in some cases. Spartan and barren those cells were, the social rooms were really communal places were people visited toilets in the presence of everyone else.

Refusing mental slavery

Then one room with relics of an age so palpable, rosaries made from hardened bread, poetry too grim and yet full of hope because of the enduring power of having breath to dream, to wish, to desire and above all pain able to keep true to a quest and aspiration for liberty and freedom.

This prison did not house criminals, rather, it was the minds and brains of Poland, the intellectuals, people who were emancipated who allowed their God-given ability for self-determination to gain ascendancy over the peasantry of the many who allow themselves to be lead by the nose by every trendy doctrine including the most heinous ones.

Like Bob Marley once sang - emancipate yourselves from mental slavery - no matter the cost as that is what makes us men and separates us from animals.

A death carnival of men

37,000 of these people perished in this prison and 60,000 were sent to concentration camps. Basically, totalitarianism and despotic regimes cannot countenance independent thought because it is the predisposed entitlement of men to live free of bondage and repression.

After signing the visitors’ book, I went into the main museum which showcased the many concentration camps that thrived in Poland – Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, Treblinka and Warschau where 200,000 non-Jewish Poles perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Too much for me

When, I got to one end of this room, the back wall was filled with portraits of persons who were believed to have died in this prison, I could not look at anymore of the stuff in the museum again, I had to get out, it is unimaginable what went on in that prison over 60 years ago, thankfully, the doors or the walls could not talk, but places where innocent blood has been spilt can never keep silent and will never sleep.

I felt the weight of the place and the price that many paid for the freedoms we now take for granted and are ready to give up for the temporary safety from terrorism real and contrived.

Our duty to rise in honour

And we all citizens of this world, beneficiaries of this great emancipation of humanity from savagery to enlightened civilisation, who have hardly had to fight to the death for any of the rights we now enjoy denigrate the many who were sacrificed and martyred for the selfsame fundamental human rights subsuming our objectivity and logical analysis to accepting the patently unacceptable.

The illegal wars, the rape of Zimbabwe, the troubles in Darfur, the abuse of democracy in Nigeria, the plight of the Palestinians, the men who still seek freedom all around the world – all these take lightly the great sacrifices of fellow human-beings hardly a century before.

I sometimes wonder if we would ever learn from history not to commit the same mistakes, my visit to Pawiak convinces me that we have not, I do wonder what the eventual visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau would teach me.

Never forgotten

However, since men learnt to record events in writing, sketching and photography, we cannot wilfully ignore the realities of times past, the smiling guards, the medical staff and the suffering people – the history of mankind in a microcosm of evil.

To Pawiak memories and many places like this, we owe, if only a fraction, no matter how minuscule, our freedom to express ourselves.

Thank you!