Starting during our flight to Poland, Lindsey and I have been reading The Bloodlands, the history of how Stalin and Hitler murdered 14 million people in the 1930s and 40s. I knew about the horrors of the Holocaust, but I didn't know about how Hitler killed Soviet prisoners of war, or of how the Nazis killed millions of non-combatant civilians, or how Stalin chose to starve a few million Ukrainians in the 1930s. Most of these atrocities occurred in the lands between the Soviet Union and Germany, and most actually happened outside of concentration camps, through shooting or starving.
On our second full day in Poland, we took a bus an hour and a half to visit Auschwitz, the most infamous site of the Holocaust, where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were put to their death in gas chambers and then cremated. By the numbers, more civilians were shot or starved than gassed during World War II, yet I still find the gas chambers the most terrifying part of these years. The civilization of Jews in Eastern Europe was destroyed, partially through the efficiency of these chambers. It is especially disturbing to walk around the former Jewish district of Krakow. Jews were once about a third of the population of the city (and 10 percent of Poland's polulation). Now there are almost none.
Below is a photo of the former gas chamber, which the Nazis blew up before the arrival of Soviet forces. Also pictured is the train tracks, which brought passengers to be gassed.
For my job, I help a foundation with its efforts to fight climate change, largely through education campaigns of the U.S. public. I believe that climate change is a serious threat that we must address. Yet as I look at these death sites, apart from the overwhelming disgust, I feel luck. It is a luxury to worry about problems like climate change in comparison to the horrors of World War II.
Another book I read this year (or read most of) was The Better Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker. It made the argument, somewhat convincingly, that violence has declined remarkably over history. Pinker claims that as a percentage of the population, far fewer people died due to violence or warfare in the last decade than in any decade in history. The decrease is largely cultural–due to education and increased empathy, acts of violence are not acceptable in the way that they once were.
Once, in a land where people were killed in the millions, I can ride my bike safely across borders and my only threat is saddle sores. It seems like a different world entirely. I asked one of our hosts, who is our age, about what people think about the Germans and Russians today. Mostly, he said, people respect the Germans for their economic organization.
Poland was decimated by WWII. It lost its large Jewish population (which settled there partially because the region was slightly less intolerant than the surrounding regions), as well as much of its elite, who were also murdered by Soviets or Nazis. Yet today we can easily cross borders, there is no fear of war, and people are worried about economic issues and not violence. I'd say that's progress. It is as if we have moved, as a society, higher on Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs. Once we figure out (or have mostly figured out) how not to kill each other, we can worry about how to better live together.
