What Makes Us Human

On Valentine’s Day, I found myself at Union Station in Kansas City at the exhibit “Not Long Ago. Not Far Away” about the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. You might think that this exhibit, which provides an extensive look at the suffering and genocide of millions of people, has little to do with the celebration of love. You would be wrong.

The exhibit includes stories of people who, in the midst of the most dehumanizing circumstances imaginable, clung to the part of their humanity that could not be stripped of them: the choice to love. One young Jewish mother who was selected to be a laborer chose instead to accompany her disabled son to the gas chamber so he wouldn’t face death alone. Another woman risked punishment by hiding her tin engagement ring, sometimes under her tongue, throughout her imprisonment. The Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, a married man with children.

Camp survivor Edith Eger said, “We were a family of inmates, we had to care for each other. If you were just for the me, me, me, you never made it.” Similarly, Mindu Hornick said, “It's a notorious thing that people in the camps survived in pairs, or because some other people were taking care of them. When people say, how did you survive? We lived for each other.”

Barry Lopez wrote, “It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.” The stories that emerged from the camp at Auschwitz, despite the Nazi attempt to silence them, help us distinguish what is true: All people have value. Hatred is what makes people inhuman, not their bloodline, religious/cultural beliefs, or sexual orientation. We are mutually dependent on each other for our survival. And, most important of all: Love is imperishable.