I began working on a farm when I was in sixth grade. One of the tasks I was assigned a few years later was to take down some barbed wire fencing. There were miles of it. I would go out with good hardy gloves, pull out the “U” nails from the fence posts for about 40 yards or so, and then roll the barbed wire up in roll. There was an art to it. Even with all that protection it was not a comfortable job. I had my tetanus shot up to date.
So, I know what barbed wire is for. It tells an animal not to test the boundaries. Most cows only touch it once and then never do so again.
Feeling the barbed wire in Auschwitz was different. Instead of keeping the cows off the road, it was made and purposefully installed to keep human beings in a terrible machinery of dehumanization and death.
Even it’s shadow is haunting.
In the last century, according to the University of Hawaii (https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM) approximately 262,000,000 people were killed in by governments.
In each case, the political leaders began the same way: the dehumanization of minority group with a majority anxious enough and biased enough and then desensitized enough to go along with it.
We are seeing the same process of dehumanization taking place in many nations – including in the United States.
It is up to all of us to learn from the haunting shadow of dehumanization that we are most human, when we recognize the humanity of all.