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To bomb Auschwitz would have been the same as yelling to Hitler, "Hey, let's help you out a bit. We'll kill a lot more Jews at once than you've been doing!" It would have made the Nazis' job easier, for bombing this place would have killed even the Jews whom the Nazis chose to spare for labor purposes! Yes, some of the Nazis would have been killed, too, but there will always be more people who are filled with hatred for the Jews, so bombing Auschwitz would have been a temporary and ineffective solution. More of the Nazis would have come along and killed more Jews. They would have built a new, and possibly more efficient, facility for gas chambers. They would have thanked the allied forces for killing so many Jews so quickly.

Bombing Auschwitz would also be a way of denying what happened and just helping the world to forget the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Last summer, I traveled to Germany as a chaperone of a high school trip across Europe. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was when we visited a concentration camp. Before leaving for Dachau, the students were exuberant. On the way back to our hotel that evening, the bus was much more subdued. The deep impact that this journey was obvious.

While these places are horrific, they leave lasting reminders of the terrors that once guarded those prison doors. Anyone who has ever stood in a courtyard where others had been randomly executed knows the power of these memorials. Anyone who has gazed at the rafters that once held nooses and bodies of Jews and political prisoners also knows. Had the allies bombed Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps, we would not have such reminders of the Holocaust. While many of use prefer to forget that world is capable of such cruelty; it is unfair to the victims to hide the truth from the rest of the world.

Genocide should never happen again (although it is happening today, right under the noses of most media moguls). These reminders are needed to help the world to see the terrors that happened and how, if the world had intervened sooner, countless lives could have been saved. This lesson needs to be learned, because genocide happened in Rwanda, and the world ignored it. More lives were lost than necessary. Genocide is taking place in Darfur, Sudan today. The world, once again, is ignoring it. How many more lives will be lost.

When I think of the situation in Darfur, I am reminded of my journey to the concentration camp, and I think of how the refugee camps or destroyed villages of Darfur may someday serve as a similar reminder of the horrors of genocide. That is, if nobody bombs these places before they can become memorials.

Learn more about this author, Genenda Milloy.
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