{"id":7631,"date":"2009-09-05T08:26:17","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T07:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=7631"},"modified":"2009-09-05T08:26:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T07:26:17","slug":"my-experience-in-auschwitz-birkenau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=7631","title":{"rendered":"My experience in Auschwitz Birkenau"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following piece is being submitted by me (Bir Krishna das Goswami) for Radharadhya das who wrote the article. Radharadhya das is a devotee in Germany.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

By Radharadhya das<\/strong><\/p>\n

After changing the dates of my visit to Poland thrice, I booked it exactly around the date of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland – without being aware of it. The Polish nation suffered a lot in this war. They lost 6 million people, mostly civilians, both through German and Russian atrocities. When I understood this strange coincidence of me as a German visiting Poland for the first time in his life on that exact date, I requested my Polish friends to visit Auschwitz together. They have never been there, and were not very enthusiastic to go to this horrible place, either. <\/p>\n

I was not really ecstatic about this also, but something in me really pushed me to make this a priority. We arrived in Auschwitz late in the afternoon of a sunny Ekadasi. The original camp was a perfectly organized work camp to squeeze the last drops of life out of the slaves who worked for the German war industry. We walked around and chanted with low voice the Holy Name. It felt very sad: so much suffering and killing without any purpose, so many lives slaughtered for no obvious reason. The camp was organized in very similar ways like the meat industry, but less food and more cruelty. The camp closed, and we had to leave. I still really wanted to go the main camp 3 km away where they had the gas chambers in a remote corner of Auschwitz Birkenau camp. So at sunset we arrived, and as a miracle this camp was still open. One Polish devotee went along, and we started out to go to the gas chambers. It was a very long way around a huge, huge camp with “wooden staples” where they kept their human slaves like animals, a lot of them Jewish, but also Polish, gypsies etc. I got more and more upset internally why God could allow all these innocent, harmless people to be tortured in this way. I do not know who was more deplorable. The ones who could not work (too young, pregnant; too old, sick) and were killed on their arrival or the ones who first were stripped of all humanity, working as slaves, being treated worse than animals. I was challenging God and my Polish friend and we were discussing. One thing was clear: we MUST get out of this material world, it is a place of unlimited suffering. <\/p>\n

We walked in silence. We were alone in the killing fields. <\/p>\n

Then we spontaneously started to sing the Holy Names and it entered into a roaring kirtan of a two men Polish-German harinam party. The whole horror scene transformed into pure spiritual ecstasy. All sorrow, doubts and despair vanished. The sun set and it got dark. The Polish police came, as they closed down the place, but they did not throw us out, but showed us how we could continue our way all around camp. And we blissfully chanted and walked by the gas chambers onwards and completed a full clockwise approx. 3 km circle around the camp, singing blissfully the Holy Names of God. My friend told me that he lived in the area for a long time, but he never heard that kirtan was performed there. It seems that Krishna used us as instruments. We were the last visitors, nobody was there except those killed and tortured souls still suffering in their agony of hopelessness and wrath against God and humanity. We felt SOOOOOO happy and ecstatic that we could sing the holy name there to them.<\/p>\n

I have never experience such a transformation from total horror and utter despair to the peaceful and blissful atmosphere of the spiritual world. It was at the sunset and night of Ekadasi, the 31st of August. 70 years ago, in the early morning of the same night, the second world war started with Germany invading Poland, starting the probably most horrible and disgusting war in mankind. The chanting of the Holy names was the answer to my questions and doubts. It is the greatest benediction: when we chant sincerely, it can transform the greatest suffering, unite enemies, nations and people, and open the way back home, back to Godhead. We both felt it deep in our hearts – more convincing than any argument or any reasoning. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Radharadhya das<\/strong><\/p>\n

After changing the dates of my visit to Poland thrice, I booked it exactly around the date of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland – without being aware of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}