In elementary school, Auschwitz survivor Erling Bauck shared his story. It made a strong impression then. But I didn't expect to react as powerfully when I recently walked through those gates bearing "Arbeit macht frei" myself - part of our family's journey through Krakow's Jewish ghetto, Schindler's factory, and finally Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Standing on that platform, seeing the tracks that brought over a million people to their deaths - it provided a physical understanding of evil no book can convey. For the young people with me, it was "absolutely awful."
Amid that darkness, I shared a story of light: their great-grandfather, who at young age refused Nazi weapons. Sent as 'cannon fodder' to the Eastern Front, captured by Russians, released only at war's end from a camp near Mongolia. Two years to work his way back to Berlin. Individual moral choice in the face of overwhelming evil.
🌈 The Machine of Dehumanization
What shocked me most wasn't just the killing - it was the total dehumanization. Hair from the murdered collected to make belts and carpets. Shoes sorted and reused. Glasses stacked in piles. People reduced to resources in an industrial killing system.
It didn't start with gas chambers. It began with laws gradually stripping Jews of rights. Businesses choosing profit over principles. People looking away when neighbors disappeared.
🌈 The Signals We Must Recognize Today
Authoritarian forces rise again. Tech giants cut diversity programs and allow their technology be used in warfare, ethnicity tracking and surveillance. Leaders normalize dehumanizing rhetoric. "Alternative facts" replace documented history.
This isn't drama. This is pattern recognition from someone who has seen where that road ends.
🌈 Our Responsibility
Companies supporting authoritarian forces at the expense of human dignity must face consequences. We can choose alternatives. Invest in companies standing for inclusion. Refuse to normalize discrimination - step by step.
All people, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, or identity, are equally valuable. This isn't a political opinion. It's a fundamental principle of civilized society.
🌈 For Those Who Think "It Can't Happen Again"
Auschwitz wasn't built by monsters. Ordinary people, bit by bit, abandoned their principles. Chose career over conscience. Believed they were "just following orders."
Looking at colleagues, fellow humans, society today: Where would I have stood? Where would you have stood?
The answer to that question isn't determined in crisis - it's forged in the small, moral choices we make every single day.
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Our choices are the only thing that can change the verse.