Harsh Mander: It happened, so it can happen again – a journey through Auschwitz

“It happened, so it can happen again…”

This is the caution that chemist, writer, and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi pronounced for all humankind to heed. When after the war he was released from the concentration camp in which he was held both for being a Jew and fighting fascism in Italy, he was unrecognisable. His face was bloated with malnutrition, his body reduced to a skeleton. For the 40 remaining years of his life, he battled the demons of his memories of the death camp.

When, 79 years after its liberation, I walked through Auschwitz, it was fitting that the sky was overcast and rain fell sombrely as cold winds blew. Walking over soil in which the ashes of a million victims of hate was mixed, the words of Primo Levi haunted me.

A 2023 survey by the Pew Institute revealed that 85% of the Indians interviewed preferred to be ruled by authoritarian or military rulers, more than in any other country in which the survey was held. I wished I could gently hold the hand of every Indian who feels elevated by the politics of hate and fear and unfreedom, and walk with them through the bleak grounds of Auschwitz. Let each of them at least know...

Read more