Independent inquiry fails to answer important questions on the UN’s role in Myanmar

An independent inquiry into the UN system’s response to the mass violence against the Rohingya population in Myanmar found “systemic and structural failures”, echoing an earlier finding of a similar investigation on Sri Lanka. At the same time, the inquiry conducted by former Guatemalan diplomat Gert Rosenthal leaves important questions unexplored. Crucially, Rosenthal did not explore allegations that the UN Country Team in Myanmar was complicit in the regime’s discrimination against the Rohingya population. For the UN to learn from the past, it needs to have a more detailed record of the decisions taken.

This text first appeared on medium.com on 15 September 2019.

Learning lessons from past mistakes is important. That is true both on an individual level as well at the level of the United Nations. Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sri Lanka, Haiti, South Sudan: there have been many independent inquiries into the UN’s actions in a situation where serious human rights violations took place. They have spurred influential, albeit imperfect reform processes of the organization’s institutional architecture, processes and policies. Unfortunately, the latest such report, into the UN system’s response to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar between 2010 and 2018, is too shallow and generic to allow for substantial learning to take place how the UN system could have used potential leverage to prevent the atrocities. It also fails to investigate allegations of the UN’s complicity in the systemic discrimination of the Rohingya population that are already part of the public record.

The Rohingya people have suffered from systemic discrimination by the Myanmar government for decades. In a Buddhist-dominated country, the government and many Buddhist citizens regard the Rohingya as foreign, rejecting even their name and calling them “Bengali”, i.e. belonging to neighboring Bangladesh. The Rohingya have lacked citizenship and associated rights since the 1982 nationality law. Amid the democratic reform process in Myanmar since 2012, discrimination against the Rohingya has increased, including restrictions on their freedom of movement. In reaction to an attack on police stations by a Rohingya armed group in August 2017, the Myanmar security forces engaged in indiscriminate violence against the civilian population, killing thousands and driving around 700,000 people across the border into Bangladesh. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein described these attacks as “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. A fact-finding mission recommended that senior military commanders should be investigated for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It found six indicators of “genocidal intent”, including in its most recent report evidence of sexual violence by the security forces, with hundreds of women and girls gang-raped.

Existing allegations: timidity or even complicity?

For several years, there have been serious allegations of misconduct by the UN Country Team based in Myanmar and senior UN officials elsewhere, including through leaked internal reports, statements by former employees, and investigative reporting. These allegations are complex, but essentially fall into either of two main points. The first concerns a lack of coherence both within the UN presence in Myanmar and among the UN leadership in New York. Even though the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his deputy Jan Eliasson had spearheaded a reform to improve the UN system’s processes and internal mechanisms in the wake of the Sri Lanka inquiry, these reforms were not effective in Myanmar. Specifically, public reports charged that the Resident Coordinator, the highest UN official in the country, excluded critical voices from meetings and suppressed a report warning of a deterioration of the situation in early 2017. Mirroring differences between public advocacy and quiet dialogue at the country level, senior UN officials disagreed on the organization’s overall approach, with Eliasson and al-Hussein on one side, and the head of the UN Development Programme, Helen Clark, and Vijay Nambiar, special advisor for Myanmar, on the other side. Limited public or private criticism by the UN after an earlier massacre, “proved to the Myanmar government that it could manipulate the U.N.’s self-inflicted paralysis in Rakhine”, a UN official told the journalist Column Lynch. In other words, the activists allege that contradictory messages from different parts of the UN system and relative muteness on major human rights issues signaled to Myanmar’s security forces that it could get away with them.

The second point that those reports make goes even further. They allege that the UN Country Team was complicit in the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government towards the Rohingya people. The UN and its international partners sustained displaced Rohingyas in internment camps, which the government did not allow them to leave, and collaborated with the government in the so-called Rakhine Action Plan. The plan, supposedly aimed at improving the humanitarian situation, included the registration of Rohingya as “Bengalis”, thus erasing their identity. Liam Mahony, an international consultant, spoke with representatives of the humanitarian community in Myanmar and observed in a critical report in 2015: “The State benefits not only from having the cost of minimally sustaining the population carried by others, it also gets a legitimacy benefit from having all these international organizations present (and better yet, present and quiet.)”

Explaining “systemic failure”

In his report, Gert Rosenthal largely confirms the first allegation, and ignores the second one. He identifies the tension between quiet diplomacy and public advocacy as the core challenge for the UN in dealing with the situation in Rakhine state, and “systemic and structural failures” in resolving them. In a chapter of just six pages, Rosenthal describes five reasons for these failures: lack of support from member states; the absence of a common strategy by the UN leadership; too many points of coordination; a dysfunctional country team led by a Resident Coordinator out of her depth but unable to receive more expert support from headquarters because of government opposition; and competing lines of reporting from the field, muddling information and analysis available in New York. Because the problems were systemic, no single entity or individual should be singled out, he concludes, pointing to the “shared responsibility on the part of all parties involved”.

The report’s observations are pertinent, and in mentioning the lack of executive decision-making by the Secretary-General go beyond the findings of the Sri Lanka inquiry that was published in 2012. As a new generation of UN Country Teams has started to deploy since the start of the year, extracting lessons for their engagement would be important. Rosenthal acknowledges that pushing for change in the government of Myanmar’s behavior towards the Rohingya while simultaneously working with it on humanitarian and development issues as well as supporting the democratic transition process was “a difficult balancing act”.

Diplomacy on human rights issues often involves such balancing acts for the UN. The restrictions present in Myanmar – a repressive government, divided member states, and lack of dedicated UN capacities on political and human rights issues – were not unheard of. The Resident Coordinator was in a very difficult position to engage in advocacy, as Mahony had already concluded in 2015: humanitarian organizations were “expecting UNHCR and the Resident Coordinator to do it all for them.” Yet it is difficult to conclude from Rosenthal’s synoptic account which kind of advocacy and at what points in time could have been successful in dissuading the security forces from their attacks.

Lack of detail, counterfactuals and potential leverage

A detailed narrative investigating incidents where the UN was faced with a concrete incident and needed to make a choice between advocacy and diplomacy would have been helpful. Which information did which UN entity have, how was it handled within the system, and who used it in which form in any engagement with the government? In which ways did the actions of the government, member states and the UN entities interact to inform decision-making in the UN Country Team and at UN headquarters? For example, the journalist and Myanmar expert Francis Wade writes about the way in which an incident in the village of Du Chee Yar Tan had instilled greater caution in the UN’s advocacy. Based on initial reports of a massacre, the UN had raised the issue with the government authorities, only to be rebuked and find out later from further sources that the alleged incident was apparently not as serious as initially assumed.

Closer attention to such incidents would have been important. But Rosenthal had very limited capacity, having to work on its own without support staff or colleagues. He did not travel to Myanmar. Investigating inflection points would have helped to persuade the reader of his conclusions. It would have also allowed to point out more counterfactual decisions, or the consequences of the choices that were made for the calculus of the security forces and for how events unfolded on the ground. The only benchmark that Rosenthal mentions is an observer mission in Rakhine state that could have monitored the actions of armed groups and the military. Such a mission could have investigated incidents such as the attacks on police stations in 2016 and 2017 that provided the excuse for the security services’ “clearance operations”. But, as he himself acknowledges, such a mission was impossible without the agreement of the government.

Lastly, Rosenthal hardly enquires into the potential leverage of the UN system, or any other actor to change the government’s behavior. He briefly mentions China, India, Indonesia and ASEAN as “privileged” partners of the UN, but does not discuss any specific efforts UN officials made to convince them to put pressure on the government, including for the failed upgrade of the UN presence in the country. Nor does he inquire whether the US gave in too quickly to Chinese opposition to dealing with Myanmar in the UN Security Council earlier on. Rosenthal observes that even when Guterres wrote a stern letter to the Security Council in early September 2017 after the start of the ethnic cleansing campaign, it did not lead the council “to respond in either a forceful or a timely manner.”

In contrast, Mahony’s 2015 assessment talks of the “uniquely privileged position” of the UN and member states in relation to a government that desperately sought international legitimacy for its democratic reform process and the “huge financial rewards that this new leadership brings”. It would have been essential to learn if UN actors felt the same and in what ways they used such leverage.

Why accountability matters

The shortcomings of such an internal review matter. Not only does the UN owe greater accountability to the Rohingya victims of the systemic discrimination, forced displacement, and indiscriminate killings, but also to its own staff, and to the wider public. The Secretary General’s Office is currently leading a follow-up process to the Rosenthal report. Its first task will need to be to expand on Rosenthal’s very short recommendations.

Even though Rosenthal does not say so explicitly, some commentators have drawn the conclusion that his report “assigns collective responsibility for the atrocities committed during the 2017 Rohingya crisis to both the UN civil service and UN member states.“ That is misleading – there is nothing in the report to suggest how a more coherent UN system supported by member states could have prevented the atrocities. Maybe more pressure could have emboldened the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi to try and stand up to the military, or earlier and more widespread targeted sanctions could have influenced the military leadership. Without a more thorough analysis of international engagement, we can only guess.

In the meantime, the UN’s reputation further deteriorates, potentially undermining its work elsewhere as well as the reform of the country team system. No official, diplomat, or government representative has been held accountable for a responsibility that is shared collectively. More than one million Rohingya refugees continue to live in horrid conditions in Bangladeshi refugee camps.

A Question of Leadership: Lessons from the UN’s Actions in Myanmar

The UN’s inquiry into its own actions in Myanmar since 2012 draws significant parallels with a similar exercise that focused on the UN’s role during the end of the war in Sri Lanka. Once again, the UN found itself in a situation where a government was committing atrocities, but the UN showed an incoherent, ineffective response. Without clear leadership adjudicating differences among key stakeholders in the UN system, the principled engagement to which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had committed himself remained elusive.

This text first appeared on Strife Blog hosted at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

Engaging with severe human rights violations requires courage and coherence, setting clear principles and the readiness to stand by them if they are under pressure. An independent inquiry on the UN’s action during the Rakhine crisis in Myanmar, which came out in June, observed that the international organisation showed a “systemic failure” in dealing with the state’s repression of the Rohingya people between 2010 and 2018. Choosing his words carefully, its author, the former Guatemalan foreign minister Gert Rosenthal, echoed a similar exercise on the UN’s behaviour during the end of the war in Sri Lanka in 2008/09. Importantly, the UN system’s shortcomings were not a simple matter of failing to speak out, but of incoherence across the system, exacerbated by the lack of executive decision-making in Myanmar and at headquarters level. The lack of leadership by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, despite his strong rhetorical commitment to human rights and atrocity prevention, deserves further attention.

From the UN’s perspective, the situation in Sri Lanka and Myanmar showed uncanny parallels, despite all objective differences. In Sri Lanka, the armed forces pursued a relentless final assault on the Tamil Tigers’ last hold-outs in Sri Lanka in 2008-2009. In Myanmar, the security forces attacked Rohingya civilians repeatedly, culminating in full-scale ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population in 2017. In both countries, governments were the major perpetrators of violence, the presence of armed groups notwithstanding. Both governments were opposed to a strong human rights presence by the UN, and frustrated efforts by the UN Secretariat to increase its relevant capacity.

Myanmar and Sri Lanka, though both at the time host to significant armed violence, had successfully objected to any political or peacekeeping presence. The Resident Coordinators (RC), the head of the UN Country Team, in both countries had been chosen at a time of relative peace and with a strong development focus, not a profile in international humanitarian and human rights law. There were even some personal overlaps: Vijay Nambiar, the special advisor on Myanmar between 2012 and 2016, had been one of the most important UN officials during the Sri Lanka crisis, as Ban’s chef de cabinet. Lastly, there were strong geopolitical divisions that manifested themselves in a reluctance of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation as an official agenda item. In short, they were among the most difficult situations for the UN to work in.

The central challenge, as identified by Rosenthal, is a familiar and highly pertinent one: “how the United Nations can maintain some type of constructive engagement with individual member states where human rights abuses are systematically taking place, while at the same time pressing for those states to uphold their international commitments.” In other words, the UN needs to find an adequate mix of “quiet diplomacy” and “outspoken advocacy”, approaches that are associated with different parts of the UN system. For such a mix, the UN needs an inclusive organisational structure to produce a coherent policy, communicated across the system, owned by the leadership, and based on current, on-the-ground information and analysis.

The failure in Myanmar, according to Rosenthal, was that none of those prerequisites were present. Both at country and at HQ level, there were stark differences of opinion regarding the most adequate modus operandi. These manifested themselves in an increasingly polarised working environment, as a function of the high stakes involved in the crisis in Rakhine state. Both sides of the argument thought that the other approach was not only wrong-headed, but potentially dangerous and counterproductive to de-escalate the violence and reduce discrimination. The emotionally charged atmosphere explains the reports about critical individuals being excluded from key meetings by Renata Lok Dessalien. The UN also had difficulty accessing the most volatile areas of Rakhine state and providing independent monitoring after alleged incidents.

Perhaps most importantly, there was a lack of strategic leadership, not just at the country level, but also at the highest level of the UN system. Differences between Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who pressed for advocacy, and Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, who stressed quiet diplomacy and development efforts, respectively, were never resolved by Secretary-General Ban. Rosenthal writes, “even at the highest level of the Organization there was no common strategy.”

These shortcomings are particularly salient because Ban and Eliasson had vowed to turn a page after the damning findings of the Sri Lanka inquiry. They launched the “Human Rights up Front” initiative in late 2013 with the aim to improve coordination, information management, engagement with member states, and the UN’s organisational culture. One of the new mechanisms established as part of the initiative was the so-called Senior Action Group (SAG). The SAG brought together the system’s most important parts at the top leadership level, including the UNDP Administrator, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, and other high-level officials. It was chaired by Deputy Secretary General Eliasson.

In the SAG’s discussion of the crisis in Rakhine state, Helen Clark, then UNDP administrator, protected UNDP and her RC, insisting that investing in development would also benefit the Rohingya, which should not be jeopardised by an overly focus on human rights advocacy. Allegations of specific incidents required more investigation, she often insisted. According to a UN official familiar with these discussions that I interviewed, “any time there was a contentious issue, a dilemma between quiet diplomacy, public diplomacy and so on, the differences were simply discussed, and no executive decision was taken.”

While the UNDP administrator is appointed by the Secretary General, he or she also reports to the UNDP Executive Board. At the time, Clark had the final say on appointing or replacing RCs. The UN official that I interviewed described her behaviour as “territorial.” In any case, Ban could have insisted on a common position on the Rakhine crisis, not the least since Helen Clark had officially signed up to Human Rights up Front. Eliasson, who knew the destitute situation of the Rohingya from his time as Emergency Relief Coordinator in the early 1990s, had pressed for the replacement of the RC as early as 2015. Still, Ban did not overrule Clark nor did he “arbitrate a common stance between these two competing perspectives,” as Rosenthal writes.

The lack of leadership was highly problematic: the whole purpose of such high-level meetings as the SAG was to deal with questions that UN officials at the country level had not been able to agree on, and to create a common analysis and joint ownership of decisions. The different perspectives are ingrained in the distinct mandates and ways of working of the parts of the UN system; it falls to the collective leadership of the UN system to resolve tensions arising from the operational work. “Systemic failure” sounds like the reasons for incoherence lie mainly in structural differences. While these are important, ultimately responsibility for ensuring that the whole UN system works falls to its leadership, including the Secretary General and member states.

Clearly, the UN system is subject to the same cleavages and divisions that characterise the international system as a whole. As Renata Lok Dessalien herself points out in a paper written after her assignment in Myanmar, conceptual differences regarding the meaning and interpretation of basic principles are ingrained in the UN Charter, for example between the promotion of human rights and the respect for national sovereignty. No internal UN reform such as Human Rights up Front can do away with those tensions, or abolish geopolitical differences. What it can do, and it has done with some mixed success, is change the way the organisation works, improving communication, analysis and decision-making procedures.

If the UN can hope to influence events in situations like those in Rakhine state in Myanmar at all, a coherent and coordinated policy across the whole system is a prerequisite. Otherwise both governments and critical member states are always able to play different parts of the system against each other, muting their respective effectiveness.

Luckily and despite significant opposition from key member states, the UN has started to improve its coherence in dealing with the crisis in Myanmar. Shortly after he came into office, Secretary General António Guterres appointed a permanent monitoring group within the UN, and prioritised strategic dialogue with Myanmar’s government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. He also championed a reform of the RC system. When Myanmar’s armed forces began their military offensive that included ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state in August 2017, Guterres resorted to public diplomacy. In a rare step, he wrote to the UN Security Council, urging its members to take action. Also in 2017, Renata Lok Dessalien finished her position as RC in Myanmar. Her successor, the Norwegian Knut Ostby, emphasized communication and principled engagement, for example threatening to reduce all but essential aid to IDP camps in Rakhine state if the government did not improve the Rohingyas’ freedom of movement. At the same time, renewed fighting between the ethnic Rakhine Arakan armed group and the government as well as continued denial of citizenship have left around a million Rohingya refugees stranded in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

UN diplomacy consists of difficult balancing acts, in particular in dealing with unrepentant governments committing atrocities against their own population. Faced with an increasing emphasis of state sovereignty, including by the United States, Guterres has, at times, appeared to waver on human rights. If his prevention agenda is to succeed, he needs to mobilise all pillars of the UN to support each other, not just in Myanmar.

Ein Besuch in Auschwitz

Rampe und Tor vom Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ein dunkles Augenpaar von einer alten Schwarzweißaufnahme blickt mich direkt an. Es ist Teil des Aufklebers, den jeder Besucher und jede Besucherin der Gedenkstätte von Auschwitz trägt. Mein Aufkleber ist hellblau. Oben steht groß „Deutsch“ drauf. Ich klebe ihn mir aufs Hemd an die Brust, gehe durch die Sicherheitsschranke und stehe in einem weiten Hof mit vielen anderen Menschen. Hinter einem Baum am anderen Ende des Hofs sehe ich bereits den Eingang mit den berüchtigten Worten: Arbeit macht frei.

Nacheinander kommen Menschen mit Namensschildern, halten Schilder hoch und sammeln so ihre jeweilige Gruppe um sich. „Wo kommen Sie her?“ fragt die Führerin, „Sind Leute aus Österreich, der Schweiz oder Holland dabei?“ Ich komme aus Deutschland, aus Berlin noch dazu. Dem Ort, an dem der Plan zur Vernichtung der europäischen Juden entworfen wurde.

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Zuerst wollte ich gar nicht viel über meinen Besuch in Auschwitz sagen. Beiträge auf sozialen Medien wie Instagram, Facebook und Twitter, die ich sonst regelmäßig nutze, schienen mir nicht angemessen zu sein. Bilder von dem Tor und der Rampe des Lagers zwischen Reiseeindrücken und Schnappschüssen – ein Besuch in Auschwitz passt schlecht zur schnellen, oberflächigen Kultur des Likens und Teilens. Unsere Profile dort dienen zu einem erheblichen Teil unserer eigenen Selbstdarstellung, unsere Timelines der ständigen Zerstreuung. Auschwitz verlangt Konzentration und tiefste Demut, erst recht für einen Deutschen.

Aber wir müssen darüber reden, was in Auschwitz geschehen ist, immer und immer wieder. 2,1 Millionen Menschen besuchten die Gedenkstätte letztes Jahr, die meisten von ihnen Jugendgruppen. 76.000 Besucherinnen und Besucher kamen aus Deutschland. Jeder sollte diesen Ort einmal im Leben gesehen haben, höre ich hier mehrfach. Allein schon aus logistischen Gründen ist das kaum möglich – im Sommer gibt es jetzt schon Engen wegen der vielen Besuchergruppen. Umso wichtiger ist es, dass wir, die wir diesen Ort gesehen haben, davon erzählen, so gut wir können.

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Ich besteige am Busbahnhof von Kraków einen Kleinbus nach Oświęcim, das die Nazis bei ihrer Ankunft in Auschwitz umbenannten. So viele Leute drängen sich in den Bus, dass die letzten im Gang stehen müssen. Ich bin der einzige mit einem Koffer. Der Bus hält an kleinen Orten und fährt durch dunkle Wälder und an weiten Wiesen vorbei. Welche Taten verübten Wehrmacht, SS und Einsatzgruppen in dieser Gegend? Von der ehemaligen Königsstadt Kraków beherrschte, plünderte und drangsalierte NS-Gouverneur Hans Frank das besetzte Polen.

In Oświęcim angekommen laufe ich noch ein Stück von der Haltestelle zu meinem Hotel. Dazu muss ich das abgesperrte Gelände des Stammlagers umrunden. Die SS räumte die gesamte Stadt und die Umgebung, die sie zum sogenannten Interessengebiet erklärte. Erst nach dem Krieg konnten die Bewohner zurückkommen. Auf der abgewandten Seite des Eingangs stehen Mietshäuser. In den Vordergärten spielen Kinder auf Gerüsten. Wie muss es wohl sein, hier zu wohnen? In der Ferne höre ich das Quietschen von Containerzügen.

Wir haben die Studientour gebucht, insgesamt sechs Stunden für das Stammlager und das ein paar Kilometer entfernte Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau, auch Auschwitz II genannt. Die Führerin erklärt, wo das Lagerorchester spielte, zu dessen Märschen die Gefangenen im Rhythmus laufen mussten. Wo der Appellplatz war, zu dem selbst während der Arbeit am Tag gestorbene Menschen gebracht werden mussten. Die Zahlen mussten stimmen, sonst gab es Strafen: stundenlanges Stehen in sommerlicher Hitze oder winterlicher Kälte. Die Stehbunker, in denen mehrere Gefangen in völliger Dunkelheit mit nur kleinen Luftschlitzen für kleinere Vergehen geschickt wurden. Die doppelten Stacheldrahtzäune, die Wachtürme in schwarz gestrichenem Holz und die Stoppschilder zeigen, dass es aus dem Lager kein Entrinnen gab.

Das Stammlager, das früher als Kaserne der polnischen Armee diente, ist praktisch komplett erhalten. Die roten Backsteinhäuser stehen in geraden Reihen, die Wege sind von erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten gepflanzten Bäumen gesäumt, wie schmale Alleen. Es ist herrliches Sommerwetter, nur wenige Wolken verdecken den blauen Himmel und die warme Sonne. Besuchergruppen drängen sich durch die Ausstellungen in den Baracken, und mehrfach müssen wir warten, bevor wir in den nächsten Raum gehen können.

Viele Besucherinnen und Besucher halten ihre Handys und Tablets beständig hoch, um Fotos zu schießen. Mehrmals muss unsere Führerin Leute ermahnen, auf dem Gelände des Konzentrationslagers nichts zu essen. Auch zwei Deutsche aus unserer Gruppe packen ihr Brot in einer Pause aus. „Menschen sind hier massenweise verhungert, wir müssen den Respekt waren,“ sagt sie. Auschwitz ist keine Touristenattraktion wie jede andere.

Von Station zu Station und von Ausstellung zu Ausstellung hören wir von den Verbrechen, welche die Nazis hier begingen. Von Zahlen, die wir längst kennen, und die dennoch unfassbar bleiben. 1,3 Millionen Menschen waren im Lagerkomplex bis 1945, etwa 1,1 Millionen von ihnen wurden ermordet, an einem einzigen Ort. Über 90% der Opfer waren Juden. Die Menschen litten unter den Unterbringungsbedingungen, der harten körperlichen Arbeit, dem Mangel an Nahrungsmitteln und Hygiene. Die kargen Rationen reichten nicht zum Überleben aus. Auch das Arbeitslager Auschwitz diente letztlich der Vernichtung.

Die wahrscheinlich wirkungsvollste Ausstellung im Stammlager kommt ohne viele Worte aus. Sie zeigt den industriellen Charakter der Todesmaschine Auschwitz. Ankommende Menschen mussten ihr Gepäck zurücklassen, das sie im Glauben, umgesiedelt zu werden, mit vielen Gegenständen des täglichen Bedarfs mitgenommen hatten. Ihr Haar wurde rasiert. Alles verwerteten die Nazis weiter. Mäntel schickten sie an die Ostfront für Soldaten, Haushaltsgegenstände zur Verteilung ins Reich, und aus Haaren ließen sie Matratzen anfertigen.

Große Glasvitrinen zeigen Berge von menschlichem Haar, links und rechts eines Ganges. Andere Vitrinen zeigen die Lederkoffer, die noch die Beschriftungen ihrer Eigentümer tragen, wieder andere Haufen von Schuhen, Brillen, Schuhbürsten und Emailletöpfe. Jeder Gegenstand steht für einen Haushalt und für Menschen mit Persönlichkeit, Erfahrung und Charakter. „Es sind nicht nur Zahlen“, betont die Führerin, die uns auch immer wieder Geschichten von einzelnen Gefangenen aus Auschwitz erzählt.

Hinter einer Glasscheibe liegen Dutzende leere Blechbüchsen. Sie enthielten Zyklon-B, das Gift der Gaskammern. Während die SS die Gaskammern und Krematorien in Auschwitz-Birkenau vor dem Verlassen des Lagers sprengte, ist die erste experimentelle Gaskammer im Stammlager erhalten bzw. rekonstruiert. Das frühere Munitionslager der Kaserne erhielt Öffnungen im Dach, durch die das Gift geschüttet wurde, und direkt daneben, Krematorien. Die Führung geht durch diesen Bau. Innen ist es dunkel, die Menschen drängen sich durch die Räume mit den bloßen Wänden. Nur fünfzig Meter weiter, in Sichtweite, wohnte Lagerkommandant Rudolf Höß mit Frau und Kindern.

Ein Shuttlebus bringt die Gruppen in das wenige Kilometer entfernte Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau. Um ein Vielfaches größer als das Stammlager, vermittelt der Ort einen Eindruck des Ausmaßes der Vernichtung. Schienen führen bis in die Mitte des Lagers, zwischen Baracken, die hier meist aus Holz waren. Ich muss an Fotos denken, die wir in einer Ausstellung gesehen hatten. Man sieht ankommende Juden nach oft tagelanger Fahrt in Viehwaggons mit schwerem Gepäck, das sie noch auf der Rampe zurück lassen mussten. Im Hintergrund zeigen zwei hohe Schornsteine, was sie hier erwartete. Ein anderes zeigt die Selektion noch auf der Rampe. Korrekt gekleidete Offiziere und Ärzte sortieren die Menschen innerhalb von Sekunden. Alte, Kinder, Schwangere, Kranke wurden sofort zu den Gaskammern geschickt.

Die Gaskammern mit angeschlossenen Krematorien hier in Birkenau waren nach dem neusten Stand der Technik mit Lastenaufzügen ausgestattet. Ofen grenzte an Ofen. Sie hatten eine deutlich größere Kapazität als das Krematorium im Stammlager. Es sollten so viele Menschen wie möglich getötet werden.

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Wir sehen und hören viel, was hier geschehen ist. Und doch bleibt es unvorstellbar. Wir sehen die Rampe, die Barracken und die Öfen. Doch das Leid, das hier herrschte, sehen wir nicht. Wir hören von der Konstruktion der Gaskammern, aber die Schreie der Menschen hören wir nicht. Wie riechen auch nicht den Gestank der menschlichen Ausdünstungen in den Unterkünften. Wir fühlen nicht die Schläge der Aufseher und die Enge der hölzernen Pritschen.

Sich vorzustellen, was in Auschwitz passierte, geht gegen jede menschliche Vernunft. Wir kennen Rache oder Neid als Motive für Gewalttaten, auch Abschreckung und Kriegführung. Doch die Shoa lässt sich damit nicht erfassen. Die Shoa war nicht spontan oder aus dem individuellen Hass Einzelner geboren, sondern ein strategisch angelegter Plan zur Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, der auf der ganzen Macht des Staates und tausender von Tätern beruhte.

Das Verbrechen lässt sich nicht aufs Pathologische schieben. Das ist der ganze Abgrund von Auschwitz: dass Menschen dazu fähig sind, Morden zum System zu machen. Was bedeutet angesichts dieser Fähigkeit noch Menschlichkeit?

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Am Ende der Tour zeigt uns die Führerin ein Foto mit zwei Kindern, beide Opfer von Auschwitz. Sie hatten ihr Leben noch vor sich, hatten Träume, Wünsche, Hoffnungen. Das Augenpaar auf dem blauen Aufkleber gehört einem von ihnen.