Narrative to Aperture of Power:

Beginning in 1942 at Mauthausen, the Schutzstaffel (SS) began using Zyklon B on its first prisoners of war—Soviet captives transferred to Mauthausen for a sweep of political reasons, all converging on the same predetermined end. The gas chamber, in operation until April 29, 1945, sat in the cellar between the camp prison and infirmary. At least 3,455 inmates, including the
sick and weakened, were forced into that underground room. In the metal door, a single aperture allowed SS guards to watch as up to 120 human beings at a time struggled through their final seconds. Through that aperture, power condensed to a point: a circle of glass through which death was administered, observed, and normalized. Today, the aperture endures as a stark reminder—an opening not only into the past, but into our own capacity to feel, to intervene, to question the machinery of cruelty or to allow it to continue.

 

Reflection:

Standing before that door, the small circle of glass becomes momentarily immobilizing. To imagine one human watching the mass killing of others—watching breath collapse into silence—is nearly beyond comprehension. And yet it happened, repeatedly, by the hands and eyes of people not so distant from us.

 

In another era, under different circumstances, might those who died and those who carried out the executions have been neighbors, colleagues, even friends? What social, racial, political, cultural, and psychological currents would have needed to shift for connection to form instead of fracture? Viewed through today’s social media landscape, which ideologies and inherited constructs demand confrontation—and unlearning? As watchmen of our own time, what accountability do we bear for what we see, what we choose to ignore, and the harm that follows when the alarm goes unsounded?

Through the peep hole, we confront not only what occurred, but the human capacities—obedience, fear, hate, conviction, and indifference—that allowed such acts to be carried out, and the responsibility we bear today to ensure we never stand silently looking through the aperture of a gas chamber door again.