Auschwitz, Poland

This is the 3rd site of mass killing I have visited in my life after Hiroshima and the Killing Fields. What sets Auschwitz apart from the rest, or rather the Nazi regime, is the cold systematic efficient means of demoralizing, using, and eradicating the victims. It took a higher level of evil to do this. What I didn't realize is how Nazi Germany was planning to turn the Poles they didn't kill into a slave race whose sole purpose in life was to facilitate German society. They were to be schooled to a roughly 4th grade level, kept semi-literate at best, and indoctrinated to serve Germans as a decree from God. Jews, along with gypsies, were seen as subhuman vermin fit for extermination. It is hard to believe this level of madness was capable of our species en masse. I kept the pictures to a minimum out of respect. The plaque on the memorial at Birkenau (Auschwitz II, where most people were killed) reads: "For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe."