The events of the last few days across Israel and the Gaza strip have caused a stir in my soul that I cannot shake. The devastation and heartache at the death of innocent lives, the shocking reaction from the western world – It sends my mind to a recent trip in December I had to Krakow, Poland with a dear friend.

This trip brought us to face the closest thing to the gates of hell that is earthy possible, Auschwitz. The air of death lingered, almost tangible in its weight, as we traversed across the three sites that comprised this meticulously designed extermination project. Each step across the camp heavier than the next. There was not a single sound of life heard across the entire site except for the crunch of snow under the treading feet of thousands of visitors. Birds sat silent in trees outside the borders, yet not a single one dared to fly across the land that comprised Auschwitz nor sat on the buildings inside. 

We were brought to witness the stockpile of personal items stripped from the prisoners, that included; children’s shoes, hair, prosthetic limbs, glasses; tons upon tons of remaining possessions belonging to the innocent lives of Jews from across Europe. They were not just stripped of their property but of their dignity and humanity - all because of their identity.

They were treated as savages, as blots that needed to be eradicated off the fabric of the Earth – They were humiliated, manipulated, and told that they deserved it. From man to child no one escaped the cold grip of the death machine, except the lucky few who's lives had been forever marked with what they had witnessed and experienced. 

I will never forget walking into a gas chamber into which innocent Jews were led, having believed they were taking a shower - to then be given poisonous gas killing hundreds at a time. Seeing the claw marks of those seeking to escape their impending death, was harrowing and caused me to involuntarily sob at the thought. To walking across the courtyard where the Nazi officers would parade and humiliate naked Jews, ultimately lining them up and shooting them in the back of the head - All for being of Jewish descent.

They were stripped of their lives and told they deserve it. This is not a notion from the Nazi regime, this is the current overwhelming message being spread across social media, across global protests in major cities and across those being educated to hate. Israel is being told it deserves all that is happening to it and its citizens, that they are savage colonialists who are not a legitimate state. Jews are fearing for their lives across the western world and praying for their nation and family back home who are under the storm clouds of constant impending doom. Yet the social reaction is that they deserve it, that it doesn’t matter how many civilians are killed or beheaded or paraded as war spoil in the streets, that it doesn’t matter that the incited violence on 7 October was by Hamas and that this is merely an Israeli retaliation to defend itself and its people –  because according to the masses they deserve it. They deserve it because of who they are and who they represent, they deserve it because they are ‘colonists’, they deserve it because the land is not their own.

These words echo from a not so distant past – They should be left as an echo unless they materialise into the originating voice.