It was here at Auschwitz that the term “Canada”

Consider a warehouse filled to capacity with suitcases where the walls are out of view. It was here at Auschwitz that the term “Canada” was coined. Not that Canada was a good place; it had too many stolen items from the victims brought there.

These were not random items but systematically collected. After prisoners were taken off the trains very few returned to pick up their belongings. The belongings became a kind of inventory of a larger system just as men women and children were used as numbers within it.

Prisoners including young children and teenagers were required to separate these belongings. They had no choice. They opened the bags and found things that reminded them of former lives like books with names in them stuffed animals eyeglasses and food prepared for a trip that ended in tragedy.

The belongings that remained were sorted and reused. Clothing items were cleaned and sent to soldiers in the war effort. Any jewelry in the bags was taken and reused. No personal items continued to belong to their original owner; all were converted into “useful items” for the war.

Everything about the organization was cold and the items were treated as if they were not human possessions but resource numbers.

This is not just history; it is a cautionary tale. When a system is created to dehumanize individuals and evaluate them only as numbers…

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