Not so long ago. Not so far away.

Rudolph Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, got to thinking that Theodor Eicke, at a place called Dachau, had a stroke of genius when he decided that his camp should erect a welcome sign, Arbeit Macht Frei, which means something to the effect of "work sets you free," and might have been a half-truth that Dachau, but was never anywhere close to the truth at Auschwitz, a factory, stunningly, designed from the very first stroke of a pencil, to house an industry whose sole purpose was extermination of human beings, as if they were lice.

Why not a lie? Men and women, strong and weak, Jews and Gentiles didn't leave Auschwitz. They were gassed burned. 

You want to know how people left Auschwitz?--have a look at this drawing created by an inmate. People left Auschwitz in a column of smoke from the specially designed crematoriums, where bodies were incinerated dozens at a time. The genius of the Auschwitz method was that both the killing and the incineration were handily arranged for peak efficiency. 

Perfectly evil. 

In truth, the exhibition at Union Station in Kansas City was remarkably. You might think it impossible to overdramatize what happened at Auschwitz, but if the story was told with nothing huge photographs of naked human beings--some dead, some half-dead, and some still alive--the effect of the story would be different. We've all seen them--boxcars spilling emaciated bodies lying atop each other like cord wood. There was very little of that, which meant that throughout the museum of artifacts, photographs, videos and striking quotes (like the one above), your brain could remain engaged because your sensitivities weren't burned. 

The exhibition's subtitle carried the vital theme: "Not long ago. Not far away."

To me, among the most horrifying pictures was this one:

Every eye awaits his his every facial expression, every ear his every word. The crowd of cultists cannot get enough. Hitler, they once thought, was the Savior of the Reich, the Third Reich. He promised to take them to a station in the world Germany deserved to be. After the desolation of the First World War, the legacy of defeat, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, the subjection of a once proud and powerful empire, he--Adolph Hitler--would make Germany great again. 

Last weekend, the Republican National Committee met to determine its direction, and then took one. They tossed out the two members of their party who had determined to work with the January 6 committee, and then passed a resolution that called what happened in the nation's capital "legitimate political discourse."

Legitimate political discourse.

It's impossible not to draw parallels. The riot--the insurrection--that occurred that January day now more than a year ago, to his supporters, can not be in any way attributable to Donald Trump. If you take those Nazi armbands out of the picture and superimpose the head of a man with orange hair on the man with a moustache, the picture will look a lot like the kind of rally the man with orange hair feeds on.

For me at least, the most chilling chapter of "Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not Far Away," was not the crematorium, the crowds of hairless women, not even this, a onesie from a child who, like so many others, was gassed and incinerated.

The most horrifying of the pictures were these:

intelligent, educated, thoughtful men, oohing and aahing over plans for an impressive and efficient place to kill millions of human beings; and this

German people having fun while whole families burned.

They were lied to, but their guilt lies in having accepted the lie. Their guilt lies in these artifacts:

A peephole from a crematorium, a door behind which the fires raged, and a pole, just a tool.  This is Hannah Arendt.

Not so long ago. Not so far away.