I was born in 1942. I grew up in a Malta which was still devastated by war, and ravaged by destruction, unemployment, poverty, and political incertitude.
For me 1945 was not the end of the war, but the year I was hospitalised for diphtheria. 1947 for me, at that young age, was the year I started primary school, and not the year of the formation of the State of Israel.
I grew up as a British subject, and in school and at home, believe it or not, I never ever remember being lectured on what the Germans and the Italians did to Malta, let alone being indoctrinated against them. Simply put, we accepted the fact that we passed through a war, which we had won with the help of the British.
Our history lessons in secondary school, up to 1956, dealt only with a dry, uninspiring, and unrelated collection of dates and events of British history, and the same with the lessons on the history of Malta. What had happened in Europe more than a decade before simply did not feature.
It is only years later when I realised how beautiful and interesting the subject of history can be, that I realise why I hated the subject so much when still at school.
We had no computers and no television then. In my post secondary and early university years I became an avid reader of any printed material I could lay my hands on. The weekly magazine Everybody introduced me to the wider world beyond our shores. I gobbled up Pan books, Pelican books, and all sorts of literature I came across, of course in between my textbooks of physics, chemistry, biology, and later on medical textbooks.
I wanted to know more about Hitler, and about the causes of World War II.
Inevitably, I come across material on the fate of the Jews in Europe during the war. A completely new chapter opened up for me to read and to explore. As a young University student, eager to widen my knowledge, it took me beyond the purely historical dimension, beyond dry information of numbers and figures; it helped me reflect on human nature, the limits of depravity. It made me compare with other historical incidents, which though not on such a scale, compared easily in the low levels to which human depravity could descend.
As a student of medicine I could understand a little bit better, and comprehend more thoroughly the unspeakable psychological and physiological torments and suffering the victims of this genocide went through.
In 1964, immediately following my final year results, my destination was Auschwitz, Poland. I arrived there from Krakow on August 23, and I still remember the train station manager in Krakow asking me why I wanted to go to see the concentration camp. He tried to dissuade me from going. His name was Antony Porebski, and I still have the train tickets for that journey. He met me again on my return from Auschwitz, and wanted to know my reactions.
In Auschwitz, walking under the iconic Arbeit macht Frei arched gateway, and through what used to be electrified barbed wire fences, punctuated with regular notices bearing the skull and crossbones sign over the words Halt-Stoj, was like walking into a sanctuary, a hallowed place. The visitors were few. It had not become a tourist attraction yet.
It was evident from the solemn behaviour, the reddened eyes, the sobbing, and the emotion evident on their faces, that many could possibly be visiting the place where their parents, grandparents or relatives had met their horrible fate. Many were simply praying.
I had already seen many pictures of the cabinets containing various articles confiscated from the Jews who had just arrived in Auschwitz; spectacles, luggage, shoes, artificial limbs, brushes, combs, human hair, and even objects made from tattooed human skin. But seeing them in reality sent shivers down my spine. I was dumbstruck and speechless.
Faced with all this a simple question comes to mind: “How could all this have happened?”
Looking back over all these years, however, can we honestly say that we have learnt the lessons we should have learnt, or were expected to learn?
It is difficult to express one’s emotions in seeing for the first time the Death Wall, entering Block 11 known as Block Smercia, or the Block of Death, or the blocks where experimentation by Mengele and Carl Clauberg took place; activities described by the kamp kommandant Rudolf Hoss himself as “unmedical activities of the SS doctors in the Auschwitz concentration camp”.
I still remember vividly the thousands of mug photos of the people who perished, lining the walls of the corridors. I still see clearly in my mind’s eye going up a short flight of stairs to be met on the landing by a photo of an angelic face of a young lad, and below the photo a facsimile of a letter he must have sent to his mother, clearly intending to reassure her with the opening words: “Mutter, Ich bin gut hier!” (Mother, I am okay here).
On that occasion I did not visit Birkenau in detail. Of course I saw the gas chambers, the crematoria, the gallows. Auschwitz was more than enough to numb my senses and change my whole perception of the upper and lower limits of human dignity, depravity, and suffering.
I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau again many years later. This time it was with fellow parliamentarians, and we were guided through by a very knowledgeable Rabbi who not only filled us in with details, historical information, and anecdotes about relatives of his, who had perished in the concentration camp. He also took us on a tour of Krakow to see the famous ghetto, the synagogues, and most interestingly, all the sites featuring in the film Schindler’s List.
All these memories raced back to me again on the two occasions I had when I visited Israel some years ago, and on both occasions visited the famous Vad Yashem Holocaust Museum.
Laying a wreath at the memorial of the victims of the Holocaust was indeed a very moving, emotional experience for me.
The Holocaust is one of the major milestones in modern human history. It stands out because it happened when man boasted of having become civilised. It stands out because of the millions of people involved. It stands out because it was so selective. It stands out because of the vast organisation needed to carry it out. For a number of years it was kept secret. The figures were so daunting, the details emerging so staggering, that many simply would not believe that such an ethnic cleansing could really have happened.
The post-war years, with the famous Nuremberg Trials, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Doctors’ Trial also in Nuremberg, and that of many others, were meant to heal the collective stigma of what had happened.
It became a collective guilt of humanity, and not of any nation in particular. It became a “monitum”, a warning, against racial hatred, and ethnic cleansing. It was assumed to be the watershed in the way we respect human dignity. It was supposed to mark the lowest ebb of human depravity. The lowermost level of lack of respect for human dignity.
Having gone through all this and realising how evil it all was, one would have expected this black episode in the history of humanity to be an eye-opener for all future generations.
Looking back over all these years, however, can we honestly say that we have learnt the lessons we should have learnt, or were expected to learn?
It hurts to have to admit that though we religiously commemorate this event, and reflect on what it must have meant to the millions who perished, and the millions who were left behind to mourn and remember, we have unfortunately witnessed similar episodes in recent history, which though not involving comparable numbers, do however compare very well when it comes to the callousness, the depravity, the hate, and the determination to squash, to annihilate, to cleanse, or to exterminate fellow human beings.
From recent history I have no hesitation to admit that we did not learn the lessons we should have learnt.
George Vella is a retired medical practitioner and former Minister for Foreign Affairs.