Three holocaust survivors spoke of the horrors they at the Auschwitz death camp, on Friday, the second day of the trial for the former SS sergeant on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder.

94 year old Reinhold Hanning sat a few yards from the witnesses yet showed no emotion as they spoke of roaring flames, naked prisoners thrown into gas chambers, and seeing victims being shot.

The prosecutors say that Hanning agreed that he was a guard but denied taking part in any of the executions.

The youngest witness, Justin Sonder, 90, was brought to Auschwitz at 17 and sent to work as a slave laborer for the IG Farben company instead of being sent to the gas chambers.

He then went on to tell the court that he was the oldest and always feared “selection days”. These days consisted of SS men having to stand naked for up to four hours in line to let the officers decide who was still fit to work and who needed to be killed.

“I don’t have the words to describe how it was, when you know that you could be dead in one or two hours, it made you sick, it made you crazy,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

“I survived 17 selections,” added Sonder, a retired police officer from Chemnitz, who lost 22 of his family members to the Holocaust.

Hanning is being accused of being a SS Unterscharfuehrer (junior squad leader) in Auschwitz from 1943-44.

A retired dairy operator, he admitted when first questioned, that he had served in Auschwitz I part of the camp, but not in Auschwitz II, where most of the 1.1 million Hungarian-Jews were killed.

Though prosecutors argue that he is guilty for accessory to murder, there is not concrete evidence for this accusations.

He has only spoken one word and that is responding to Judge Anke Grudda’s question, inquiring how he felt after the first day of trial with “good”.

Sonder said he looked forward to hearing what Hanning has to say.

“Perhaps he will try to explain — it would be good if he did.” Sonder said. “I hope he finds the courage to say something”

Other Survivor Erna de Vries told reporters that when the Nazis came to his house, since her father was not Jewish they would not have to take him, however she decided to stay with her Jewish mother.

After only two months, the SS took her, along with 85 other half-Jews, to the women’s concentration camp in Ravensbrueck.

“That was one of the worst days of my life when I was sent to Ravensbrueck and my mother stayed in Auschwitz,” she said. “I never saw her again.”

She said that her mother had been happy to know that her daughter would be going to Ravensbrueck, knowing that it was better than Auschwitz.

“Auschwitz was a death camp, and she had the hope it would get better for me,” she said.

Leon Schwarzbaum, 94-year-old Auschwitz slave laborer said that he could not see the actual gas chambers and crematoria from where he was kept, but everyone knew what was going on.

“We saw the fire from the chimneys,” he told the court. “So much fire came out of the chimneys, no smoke, just fire. And that was burning people.”

These three testifiers are among the 40 survivors and families who have joined that trial as co-plaintiffs. Though no all will testify, the trial is scheduled to hear three more testimonies next Thursday and two more Friday.

I do not believe that Hanning is not guilty and should not go to jail for multiple reasons. One, he is 94 years old. It takes a substantial amount of funding, especially when you add in the medical care needed, to care for a prisoner. Two, this event literally happened 60+ years ago, and as Hanning testified, he only was only a guard, not an executor. As of today, he is not causing harm to any individuals. If we were to jail every person who has commited a crime that was formed with social norms, the prisons would be full. Ever heard of slave owners?

Abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/auschwitz-survivors-testify-ss-sergeants-trial-36887727

The liberty bell is silent and the arc of freedom is bending backwards away from justice and peace. This troubling reality was brought forth with a recent report from Freedom House. The quality and level of equality have been steadily decreasing over the past years with 2015 marking the sharpest decline yet.

This is, after all, no surprise; we have been watching the dilapidating state of the Middle East and North Africa, the least-free region of the world, for several years. We have been a witness to the imprisonment and murder of journalists, the shooting of protests and inhumane beheadings of extremists and, of course, the millions of refugees fleeing from Syrian violence.

But how do we measure this rise in oppression?

Obviously, different matters are measured differently, but Freedom House, the self-described independent democracy watchdog, uses a system that rates real-world observations of freedom, including women’s freedom, religious freedom, the rule of law, and transparency of government operations. The score then produces three categories: Free, Partly Free, and Not Free.

Overall, only 40% live in countries judged free (down from 46% a decade ago). That means that out of 195 countries, only 86 of rated free and even those the report notes that leading democracies are going through a crisis of confidence. Instead of leading, they have divided, unwilling to come together to make a successful policy to overcome these global challenges.

This self-doubt could not have been timed worse. In 2015, the freedom level deteriorated in 72 countries and gained only 43. This enormous decline is undoing the advances seen in the last quarter of the 20th century.

The freest regions in the world still stand with the Americas and Europe, along with India, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. However, in the Middle East, only Tunisia and Israel are ranked as free. Also, Russia and China also stick out for significantly lacking individual rights. This is where Freedom House points to Russian President Putin for challenging liberal rights at home, and notes that the Communist Party of China has to rely on economic growth and political repression in order to keep a firm grip on power.

In addition, there were saddening finds on women’s rights which accentuated the failure of the world’s 20-year-old commitment to advance women’s rights and equality. The bar has been lowered so much that even the smallest of achievements are treated as victories, such as Saudi Arabia now allowing women to vote for weak municipal councils with permission from a male guardian.

This is painful to watch from the United States as we have head into the idea the humanity steadily moves towards freedom. The kind of optimism brought forth by people such as Martin Luther King Jr. After all, President Obama’s words on the night he won the election, back in 2008, were to put our hands “on the arc of history, and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.” Yet, the words of our leaders have not been reflected in the world around us.

I agree with the writer because it is evident that freedom is being reversed significantly. It’s all over the news and basically plastered onto our eyes. If we do not that the step to bending towards freedom, the built-up pressure could result in a devastating snap, harming both oppressed and oppressors. That is why this affects both me and the world.

<http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/30/opinions/freedom-world-reverse/index.html>