Do the photos of Auschwitz and Buchenwald mean anything today?

When I first saw a cold black and white photo in a gallery of this (a huge pile of bodies) nearly 20 years ago, my eyes filled with tears and my heart was enraged with the act, and the disengagement of the photographer documenting death with no dignity whatsoever. Such a strong image.

Most people had the same reaction to Dianne Arbus's work at the time - another more contemporary photographer.

Now with the media showing killing everyday, and suffering becoming everyday news events, we have become a desensitized society.

But even now, writing this, I remember being choked by emotion and the sadness of the inhumanity of that photo.

Without these uncomfortable images, we can only imagine the suffering and the cruelty. I have never known that pain, and so that photo will haunt my mind, and the conscience of humanity forever.

Auschwitz Photos Today

That largely depends upon the mentality of the viewer.

I would hope, in my heart of hearts, that for most people it does mean something. I do know that some people immediately avert their eyes rather than deal with something so confronting.

That being said, I can really only speak for myself.

I am not a Jewish person, I don't think I even know any Jewish people, it is not common in my part of Australia . The Jewish people mean no more or less to me than people of any other denomination.

I'm mentioning this so that it can be seen that my views come from a humanitarian viewpoint, not a cultural one.

I have always been drawn to watch documentaries and view photographs related to the Nazi's treatment of the Jewish people. I don't do this happily, or even enthusiastically.

I do it out of a sense of duty to witness the suffering of my fellow man and also to bare witness to the inhumanity that many seem to find in their souls in times of war.

The photographs of the corpses in the pits and of the walking skeletons are horrific, and compulsory viewing for all. Anyone who has ever smelled death will do so when they view these photographs.

Also very troubling to me were the photographs of forgotten lives, the piles of spectacles, the pile of hair..... the shoes..... images of scraps of extinguished lives etched into my soul forever.

All I can be is honest and to say how I feel, these images do mean something to me today, and will for the rest of my life.

I cannot speak for others.

Sorry, I get very emotional on this one.

I sincerely believe the photos of Auschwitz and Buchenwald should be a traveling display and be sent to every high school in the world.

They should be accompanied by a lecture on why it is necessary to stop aggression as early as possible. Had England and France (who KNEW that Hitler was violating the Treaty of Versailles by re-arming Germany and building his military strength) simply stood up and confronted him its possible WWII in Europe would have been averted. Instead, they kowtowed to him and willingly believed his lies and adopted the "go along to get along" philosophy. If Neville Chamberlain doesn't bear as much responsibility for the Holocaust as Hitler than someone else needs to be writing the history books.

Unfortunately, America must aslo shoulder some of the responsibility. Our focus was on recovering from the Great Depression and we had an isolationist Congress. After all, we'd sent our boys to save England and France from German aggression in WWI, not to mention millions of dollars worth of food and military equipment. We believed the Atlantic and Pacific would be all the protection we needed. Even one of our heroes of the time, Charles Lindbergh, gave speeches across the country supporting Hitler.

So send out the exhibition of Holocaust photos and begin teaching that aggression must be met head-on with the force necessary to stop it.

They will mean as much as we allow them to. For me, they are a painful window into the past. I lost family members in Dachau and Buchenwald. I look at those pictures of the dead, the dying, the infirm, the suffering, and the suffered, and I ask why humanity could have sat by and allowed this to happen to anyone.

Then I realize that humanity didn't allow for this to happen. Humanity was the first death in the Holocaust.

It means that there was a time when people acted like selfish, violent animals and that there may be no one that will stand up if it happens again like no one stood up to prevent it when it happened then. Yes, it still means something to a lot of the world. the thinking world, that is.

They should mean everything. It goes to show that when one group of people gain absolute power, and no one steps up to oppose them, they will try and force their will, their eay of life on others.

The 1900-1948 saw Hitler and the Nazi's try to force the world to follow their rules and beliefs...and now we have radical Islamists doing the same.

As the saying goes...those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

With disgusting regularity, people like Ahmadinejad come along and insist that there were no death camps, that Jews are using these stories for evil purposes.

The photographs present a truth that cannot be denied, and must not be buried.

Absolutely. It should serve as a reminder of what people are capable of doing. The world should keep this in mind the next time we here of trouble in Rwanda or Darfur or anyplace that has an ethnic minority.

I'm pretty sure they still mean something--not like you can do a whole lot about what happened so many years ago--except learn from what was done--and prevent it from happening(if possible) again.