Liberation of Auschwitz

Recently, I happened to watch the documentary Liberation of Auschwitz which deals with rescuing prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet military forces. It contained real footage of the atrocity of crimes that were inflicted on these people. Should you choose to watch this film, I request you to not watch it on a Friday night like I did. There are a number of things that I learnt after watching this film. The most important thing is that you can read as much as you want about crimes committed by the SS but nothing will impact you as much as the visual scenes. Let me just summarize some of the inhumane things that were carried out by the SS.
- They gased [poisoned by using cyanide] the prisoners in a gas chamber after they became weak and were unable to work.
- The doctors purposely injected diseases like yellow fever into weak patients and carried out medical experiments on them.
- Women who were old and could not work were kept in stables [Yes, you read that right]. They were kept in stables like horses where no sanitation was provided. Upto 5 or 6 women were put into a stable.

What baffles me is this - I can accept that 1 person is mad. But how could he convince an entire army that his vision and actions were right. I have no answers, but I suspect that given the right conditions it is easy to influence people's thoughts drastically. A lot of research has gone into this field and I am sure I cannot add anything of value to this topic. All I can say is that it is good to evaluate yourself periodically, have a neutral perspective, a calm demeanour and spread the joy.

Cheers folks!