She was not very tall. Her white hair and wrinkles revealed a personality that was both sweet and strong. On two occasions, she asked me to accompany her to visit her “brother’s” tomb in the Vatican grottoes. She walked slowly. When she arrived in front of the marble tombstone set into the ground, she looked at the inscription: “Ioannes Paulus PP. II.” In a low voice, she murmured a prayer. A few tears escaped. Her name was Wanda Poltawska.

The GESTAPO captured her in 1941. She was tortured in Lublin. Later, she was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where the Nazis performed unspeakable experiments and mutilations on her body. She was liberated in 1945. She died in 2023.

Meeting her in 2006 had a huge impact on me. I knew that her “spiritual director” had been Karol Wojtyla. However, I hadn’t heard of her book, “I Am Afraid of My Dreams,” in which she recounts her time in the camp. When I read it, I realized that the absurdity of systematic violence exceeds our capacity for understanding. I remember that Professor Poltawska, in the final pages, recounts a detail that summarizes part of the horror she experienced. One day, in the concentration camp, Dr. Karl Gebhardt, one of the most famous doctor-criminals working for the SS, approached her and whispered in her ear, “Was für ein hübsches Mädel! What a beautiful girl!” while examining her deformed, mangled legs, which had been subjected to various experiments. The perversity of the scene is shocking.

How is it possible for a human being to turn evil? What must happen internally for a seemingly normal person to cauterize their conscience and proceed to the most vile abuse, heartless torture, and eventually, murder? What does it mean for a society that there are hitmen, and those accomplices of hitmen, who orchestrate the disappearance and death of thousands of people? What sense does it make that many battered human bodies are turned into ashes?

We all now know that these scenarios are not uncommon in Mexico. The controversy over whether there are crematoriums or mere incineration pits, over the exact number of disappeared people or the number of executions per day, will surely be useful for official analyses. However, the most relevant thing is that these scenarios clearly show us that death governs communities, territories, and institutions. Furthermore, that violence seeks to become normalized as a mechanism for social intimidation and the suppression of any solidarity and fraternal resistance.

I think again of Wanda Poltawska, who fought for human dignity her entire life. We must not accept that evil defines the rules of the game. The sacrifice of so many young people murdered in recent years must not be in vain. Those who try to erase their stories with gasoline and fire have the metaphysical pretension of totally annulling the other. However, we must not forget that those who commit an injustice fail in their humanity, while those who suffer an injustice silently affirm throughout their lives, and until the very last moment, that their dignity is transcendent and inalienable. In other words, even in the most extreme humiliation, the dignity of every person is not extinguished. It is indestructible. And for this reason, the fight for justice never loses its meaning.