GENOCIDE – A Definition: The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
‘Arbeit Macht Frei’. These infamous words that ‘work sets you free‘ are arched over the entrance to the death camp of Auschwitz
We have chosen Auschwitz as the recognised symbol throughout the world of the horrors in the extermination camps of Europe.
More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War Two combined - but for Auschwitz also read Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Babi Yar, ghettos – the list goes on.
In fact the 20th Century saw the brutal and ruthless extermination of millions of people in Europe: the Nazi death camps, Armenian massacre, Russian gulags, ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. A roll call of shame.It is estimated that 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust alone. 1.1 million murdered were children. Six million were Jews, representing two thirds of all Jews living in Europe at the time. Others slaughtered included gipsies, homosexuals, the disabled, Poles, Protestant and Catholic clergy.
The Armenian massacre saw an estimated 1.5 million people killed during a systematic destruction of their country by the Turkish Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The majority of the population was deported, with whole families dying of thirst and starvation while abandoned in a desert. Others, many women and children,
were tortured, raped and abused.
More than 1 million people died of inhumane conditions or starvation during the Communist era in the Russian Gulags – a system of thousands of prison labour camps, mostly in Siberia or on the freezing Arctic Circle.
The figure could actually be higher as many were released on the point of death in a bid to keep the official death toll down. The prisoners, usually critics of the totalitarian regime, were often sent without trial for crimes as petty as telling a joke about the State.
The death toll in Bosnia is still being argued over. If a narrow definition of genocide is used, as favoured by the international courts, then during the Srebrenica Massacre between 8,000 and 9,000 men and boys were murdered and the remainder of the population, between 25,000-30,000, women, children and elderly people, was forced to leave. If a wider definition is used, then 200,000 people were killed, 12,000 of them children, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million were forced to flee their homes.
The healing of Auschwitz would represent the healing of all those who died in such camps. We believe these huge reservoirs of pain, hurt and negativity are still being expressed and manifested in geo-political, tectonic style fault lines around the world. 
Could we make a difference? Could our global collective healing in Auschwitz heal the wounds where this pain might be re-surfacing today, such as in the Middle East, the birth place of Judaism, Christianity and Islam?
THE MISSION
Friday May 28
The Path for HOPE core team arrives separately in Krakow, Poland during the day, coming together to tour this beautiful city and attune to its energy, while staying in the old Jewish Quarter.
Saturday May 29
We visit Auschwitz, German name for the Polish village of Oswiecim, and its adjoining camp Birkenau.
Wherever you are in the world, please attune with us during this day, whenever and wherever you can. On our site you will find our suggested way to channel unconditional love in the universal heart.
You are a fundamental part of this process. This is a collective healing – a sharing of energy, love, global consciousness.
There are many other ways you can participate. Why not plant a tree or a flower? Hold a group vigil or contemplate individually in meditation and prayer?
It will be 70 years since the first concentration camp prisoners, 30 hardened criminal offenders, arrived at Auschwitz on May 20 1940. Three weeks later on June 14, 1940 the first mass transportation started of 728 Polish political prisoners.
Seeing its potential, German SS and police chief, Heinrich Himmler a year later ordered the expansion of the camp to hold 30,000 prisoners and the construction of Birkenau to accommodate the influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners. By September 3rd 1941 the first gassings using Zyklon B were carried out on 600 Soviet prisoners and 250 ill or weak prisoners.
The extermination had started. Under the now famous banner Arbeit Macht Frei – Work will set you free – the European ghettos were emptied as men, women and children were packed into the infamous death trains for the camps. Soon 2000 people a day were being exterminated. In all, more than 1 million Jews lost their lives in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
Sunday May 30
We visit Jasna Góra monastery, the Polish spiritual home and third largest Catholic pilgrimage shrine in Europe that contains one of the world’s greatest spiritual icons – the painting of the Black Madonna.
According to traditional, this painting was created by St. Luke the Evangelist on a table top from the house of the Holy Family. St. Luke was said to have painted two images of Mary, one of which found its way to Italy and was kept in Bologna where it is still venerated. The other was said to have been removed from Jerusalem and brought to Constantinople by the Emperor Constantine, eventually finding its way to Poland.
During the Second World War part of the monastery was invaded by Nazi troops who remained there until January 16, 1945. Although organised pilgrimages were prohibited, those who managed to reach the sanctuary were comforted by messages of hope from the pulpit. At Jasna Góra, partisans, prisoners and Jews found relief and unconditional love.
The Black Madonna represents the returning energies of the Divine Feminine top our collective psyche and the compassion and empathy she embodies.
Wherever you are in the world, please attune with us during this day, whenever and wherever you can. On our site you will find our suggested way to channel unconditional love and the energy of the Divine Feminine in the universal heart (click link)
Monday May 31
The core team returns home.
