Seeing_Auschwitz

Today is . A day to raise awareness of their human rights and also to remember & learn about the fate of ca. 23,000 Sinti and Roma who were deported to the German N**i camp. Around 21,000 were murdered there.

Germans regarded Sinti and Roma (Zigeuner, as they were referred to in official German documents of the period) as enemies of the Third Reich, and therefore sentenced them to isolation and extermination.

N**i Germany followed pseudoscientific arguments supplied by the Institute for the Study of Racial Hygiene and established strict principles for dealing with the Sinti and Roma, whom it regarded as racially alien, inferior, and “asocial”.

Auschwitz did not begin with the gas chambers. It was the consequence of a society full of hatred that, with small and large gestures, made it possible for one of humanity's greatest genocides to happen in a civilized society.

Oświęcim, Poland. Family photograph of Waksman family before the war, with Bela Gitel in the bottom left. All of them perished during the Holocaust.

All through German-ruled Europe, Jews were a special target. In what became a policy known as “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the Germans aimed not only to kill every last Jew, but also to remove all evidence of the Jewish people’s contribution to human civilization.

Berta Friedova was born in Lukov Czechoslovakia in 1910. Prior to WWII she lived in the Czech town of Chrast. She was a housewife and was married to Arthur Fried, in picture.

They were sent to Auschwitz together with their son, Karel.

The three of them were murdered.

"I had stood there thinking this would be just like every other educational experience of the Holocaust until I was proven totally wrong ... made me realise that the deaths in the Holocaust weren’t just a statistic, they were real people."

– Grade 9 Learner, about the exhibition at the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

This photograph was taken after the liberation of Auschwitz, after January 1945. It shows a warehouse that held clothing that German n***s took from victims of the camp.

This was only one of many warehouses at .

Most of the people arriving in would meet their deaths in the gas chambers. In winter 1945, the SS tried to erase the “visible” traces of its crimes before fleeing. But not everything disappeared.

The evidences included photographs of the systematic extermination.

Josko Lereov was born on December 18, 1919 in Kiustendil (Bulgaria). He joined the French Resistance but was caught by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz, where he perished.

The visit to the "Seeing Auschwitz" exhibition takes around 50-60 minutes, although you can stay as long as you like (until closing time).

Remember it is open at the VAPA center in Charlotte (NC).

March 18, 1900 | Arthur Rosenbaum is born in Germersheim, Germany. He works as a merchant in Mannheim until WWII, when he is deported to the camps of Gurs & Drancy.

On August 31, 1942, Arthur is deported to , where he will die only four months later.

Taking pictures at the exhibition is allowed but flash, tripods, selfie sticks and other devices that can obstruct the visit of other guests are not allowed. Please respect the memory of the victims at all times.

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