The Question Auschwitz Left Me With: What Are Human Beings Capable Of?

This is a personal reflection, not a scientific or historical analysis. I usually avoid writing about politics, but recent events in Europe, combined with my visit to Auschwitz in July 2026, have made me think deeply about history, human behavior, and the societies we build.

I usually refrain from making political comments. But recently, I have been seeing political posters around Stockholm that caught my attention. One slogan in particular stayed with me: "Vi gör Sverige till Sverige igen." – "We are making Sweden, Sweden again."

As an Indian expat who studied in the United States and now lives and works in Sweden, I find myself reflecting on what Europe has become, where it may be heading, and what its history can teach us about the present.

I love living in Sweden. I have experienced a society that values fairness, trust, openness, and individual freedom. More broadly, I believe Europe has made extraordinary progress in the decades since the Second World War.

The European project is, in many ways, one of humanity's remarkable experiments. Countries that once fought devastating wars have built systems of cooperation. Borders that were once battle lines have, in many places, become crossings that people can pass freely. People study in one country, work in another, marry someone from a third, and build lives that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations.

Europe's diversity is one of its greatest strengths. But Europe also carries a deep history of division, conflict, and war. And diversity, by itself, does not automatically create harmony. Integration is difficult. Social problems are real. Crime is real. Migration creates challenges that governments must address seriously. The question is not whether these problems exist. The question is how we choose to respond to them. Do we respond by solving difficult problems? Or do we respond by looking backward toward an imagined past? That question has become more important to me since I visited Auschwitz.

Standing at Auschwitz

In July 2026, I visited Auschwitz. I had wanted to go for a long time. I had seen films such as Schindler's List. I had read about the Holocaust. I had seen photographs and documentaries. But watching something on a screen is not the same as standing in the place where it happened. I wanted, in some small way, to confront the reality of what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

The first thing that struck me was how ordinary the place looked. The sky was blue. It was summer. The land was open. The buildings stood in an almost orderly arrangement. There was nothing in the landscape that could visually communicate the scale of the suffering that had occurred there. And perhaps that was the most disturbing part.

I had expected to feel the same overwhelming sadness that I had felt while watching films about the Holocaust. But I did not. The feeling was different. More distant. More difficult to grasp. Perhaps that is because it is almost impossible for someone living in the safety and comfort of the present to truly understand what it meant to be inside that system of terror. We can learn the history. We can see the photographs. We can read the testimonies. We can visit the buildings. But can we truly imagine ourselves there? I don't know. And that question has stayed with me.

It is easy to say: "That was Nazi Germany. Those people were monsters. That could never happen again." But is that really enough? Were they fundamentally different from us? Were they born monsters? Or were they ordinary human beings who, under the right—or perhaps the wrong—circumstances, became capable of extraordinary cruelty? That is a much more frightening question.

The uncomfortable universality of human cruelty

Last year, I also visited Berlin, including the location associated with Hitler's final days and death. Standing there, I found myself thinking about how history is often reduced to a few names. Hitler. The Nazis. The Holocaust. We place these names into a category called history and, psychologically, create distance between ourselves and what happened.

But history is not only about extraordinary individuals. It is also about ordinary people. People who followed. People who remained silent. People who resisted. People who benefited. People who were afraid. People who believed. People who simply looked away. That is what makes history uncomfortable. Because if the people involved were simply monsters, we could reassure ourselves that such events could never happen again. But if they were human beings, then we have to ask a more difficult question. What would I have done? And what would you have done?

Nanjing and the universality of human behavior

One of the things that has made me think about this differently is learning more about the Nanjing Massacre. During the Second World War, when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing, then the capital of China, the city experienced horrific mass killings, sexual violence, and other atrocities against civilians and prisoners. I knew very little about this history until my wife introduced me to the story of John Rabe, a German businessman living in Nanjing at the time. Rabe was a member of the International Committee that helped establish a safety zone in Nanjing, providing refuge to large numbers of Chinese civilians. His diaries and photographs became important historical records of the atrocities taking place around him.

What struck me was not simply the historical parallel. It was the uncomfortable universality of human behavior. Germany and Japan were very different societies. Their languages, cultures, traditions, and social norms were different. Yet human beings in both countries became capable of extraordinary brutality during wartime. The lesson, for me, is not that one culture is inherently evil. The lesson is almost the opposite. No culture is automatically immune from cruelty. And that leads to an uncomfortable question:

If I had been born in a different time, under different political circumstances, surrounded by different propaganda and social pressures, what would I have done?

Would I have resisted? Would I have remained silent? Would I have convinced myself that someone else was to blame? Would I have simply followed the crowd? I don't know. And I think that uncertainty is precisely why history matters.

The myth of the monster

I recently watched Nuremberg, the 2025 film starring Rami Malek, which brought renewed attention to the work of American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who evaluated leading Nazi defendants during the Nuremberg trials. One of the unsettling aspects of Kelley's work was the realization that the Nazi leaders he examined could not simply be dismissed as people who were clinically insane. They were human beings. Some were intelligent. Some were articulate. Some were ambitious. Some were psychologically complex. And yet they were capable of participating in or enabling unimaginable crimes.

That is a deeply uncomfortable idea. Because if evil were only the product of madness, perhaps we could reassure ourselves that it could never happen to ordinary people. But history suggests otherwise. The most dangerous lesson of history may not be that there are monsters among us. It may be that ordinary human beings are capable of extraordinary things, both good and evil, depending on the choices they make and the systems they live within. That is why I believe the question of "How could they?" is less useful than the question: "How could we prevent ourselves from becoming them?"

Why does this matter today?

This is where my thoughts return to Europe. We often speak as if the darkest chapters of European history are ancient history. But it has not even been 80 years since the end of the Second World War. The modern Europe that many of us know today was built, in large part, as a response to that history. Cooperation was chosen over permanent rivalry. Integration was chosen over isolation. Borders that had once been battle lines became, in many places, crossings that people could pass without even stopping. This was an extraordinary achievement.

But today, across Europe and beyond, we are seeing a growing appeal of nationalist and populist politics. The political movements are not identical from country to country. Nor are the problems they address imaginary. Concerns about immigration, crime, economic insecurity, and cultural identity deserve serious discussion. Pretending otherwise is neither compassionate nor practical.

But I become cautious when political solutions increasingly rely on a simple division between "us" and "them." The slogan "We are making Sweden, Sweden again" is an example of this broader political trend. I understand the emotional power behind such messages. When people feel that their country is changing too quickly, they naturally look backward. They remember a time that felt safer, simpler, or more familiar. But nostalgia is selective. The "old Europe" we sometimes romanticize was also a Europe of wars, nationalism, borders, ethnic conflict, and enormous human suffering. The Europe that emerged after the Second World War was not created by returning to the past. It was created by learning from it.

The ancient instinct of "us versus them"

Perhaps part of the problem is deeply human. For most of human history, survival depended on belonging to a group. There was "us." And there was "them." The people inside our group were familiar and trustworthy. The people outside it could be competitors or threats. Modern societies have built institutions, laws, economies, and international organizations to move beyond that instinct. But the instinct itself has not disappeared. It is still politically powerful.

It is easier to say: It is their fault. It is easier to say: They are the reason things are getting worse. It is easier to promise: We will take our country back. Perhaps this is why such messages resonate so strongly. Complex problems rarely have simple enemies. Crime can have many causes. Immigration can create both opportunities and challenges. Economic inequality can have structural causes. Integration can fail in some places and succeed in others. Governments can make mistakes. Communities can change. None of these problems become easier by pretending that an entire group of people is responsible for them. The real challenge of leadership is to address problems without turning people into enemies.

Does the future look bleak?

So, does this mean the future looks bleak? I don't think so. In fact, I think the opposite. The fact that humanity has built international laws, human-rights institutions, democratic systems, and international organizations shows that we are capable of learning. These institutions are imperfect. They fail. They are sometimes ignored. They can be manipulated. But they represent something important: an attempt to create systems that are stronger than the impulses of any one individual or political movement.

The lesson of Auschwitz, for me, is not that humanity is doomed to repeat history. The lesson is that progress is never permanent. Every generation has to choose what kind of society it wants. We cannot simply say: "That happened in the past, and therefore it cannot happen again." We have to actively build the conditions that make it less likely to happen again. That means defending democratic institutions. It means protecting the rule of law. It means respecting human rights. It means taking crime seriously without demonizing entire populations. It means addressing legitimate concerns about migration without turning migrants into scapegoats. It means allowing people to be proud of their national identity without defining that identity through hatred of someone else's. And perhaps most importantly, it means resisting the temptation to divide the world into "good people like us" and "bad people like them."

Looking forward

I don't believe Europe should be afraid of its diversity. I believe Europe should be afraid of forgetting why it chose cooperation in the first place. Standing in Auschwitz this summer, I found myself thinking about how ordinary the place looked. The blue sky. The open land. The quietness. There was nothing about the landscape that could explain what had happened there. And perhaps that is why we need to remember.

Because history does not always announce itself when it begins. It begins with words. With divisions. With fear. With the idea that some people belong and others do not. With the belief that our problems would disappear if only "they" were gone. The distance between political rhetoric and historical catastrophe is not always as large as we would like to believe. But neither is the distance between ordinary people and extraordinary acts of courage. John Rabe was a German living in Nanjing. People like him chose to protect others when they could have chosen to look away. That is another lesson of history. Human beings are capable of cruelty. But we are also capable of courage.