Auschwitz: A Simplified Brutal Community

Auschwitz was undoubtedly one of the most brutal and horrendous places in Nazi Germany back in the World War Two days, but surprisingly a place that has caused so much pain and suffering can be looked at as a learning and teaching moment for many people because it illustrates aspects of human beings and how the world around us works. Auschwitz, despite the death camp part, has many concentration camp additions to model it more about the world outside of the walls. They had a soccer stadium, a library, photographic lab, and its own symphony orchestra. It also housed resistance groups along with religious services. It even had a brothel for the prisoners who had been behaving well and earned a good time. Tadeusz Borowski, a surviving prisoner and Polish writer, made the bold statement that "the whole world is really like a concentration camp. " Although tough to look at our world as a place with all these cruel events occurring, it holds similar basic fundamentals for human survival to a concentration camp. For example, the strong people control the weak ones and force them to work for them and when they can no longer work, they die. Borowski expressed that "There is no crime that a man will not commit in order to save himself." Essentially, the world is ruled by power, not by morals or being nice to everyone. Sometimes, things need to get done to survival and the basic primal instinct kicks in to push people through the hardships and work when they are holding on to any sliver of hope. A less extreme example would be in business in the real world. The strong ones who were able to make it to the top of the business are now able to hire the weaker or less experienced ones to do the dirty work for them. The most important part that ties these together is how the low wage, low experience workers are expendable much likes the prisoners in the camp. If the worker can't keep up with company standards or starts to rebel then they are fired. Much like at the camp, if a worker gets too weak and cannot keep up with doing work for the SS then they either die from starvation or are killed by the SS.