When spending time in a public square in Wrocław, Poland, a group of around fifty young people walked as though they were in a parade, while chanting "extermination" regarding the situation in Gaza. Because of the proximity of the buildings in the square, their voices carried quite easily, but they lacked weight. Whether or not they realized it, or cared, they were a train ride away from one of Europe's most sobering sites; it wasn't just Auschwitz that scarred Polish soil.

Nearby, you can find the Racławice Panorama, which wraps you in 1794, when the scythes of peasants joined the regulars of Kościuszko, fighting the Russians for the nation's soil. The panoramic canvas, approximately 50 feet high by 375 feet long, surrounds you with a visceral reaction to the price of freedom.

Throughout history, words held weight; then, like silver coins shaved down until only a stamped face remains, people clip them. Once, the word "extermination" meant the industrial murder of people: Accessories included trains, gas chambers, and crematoria. Over 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz alone, nearly 1 million Jews; six million Jews were murdered in the European Holocaust. Before World War II, around 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland; roughly three million Polish Jews were killed, around half the Jewish dead.

That's the weight the word "used" to carry.

Here's another example: Quarantine originated from quaranta giorni, which meant ships had to wait forty days before entering a port during times of plague, which wasn't folly; it was a matter of life or death.

Language evolves, which is fair enough, but when words forged in catastrophe become nothing but casual slogans, it creates a permanent fog in memory.

This history sounds like fiction, but Poland kept the receipts; under German occupation, the murder of Polish Jews was nearly total. Polish Jews weren't the only victims of German terror; the country lost vast numbers of non-Jewish citizens. This culling should've been enough, but history decided something else: Soviet purges, targeting the leadership class.

The NKVD executed nearly 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners in sites like Katyn, Kalinin, and Kharkiv, administering a decapitation strike on a proud nation's mind.

From where I stood in Wroclaw, Auschwitz is just under 200 miles away; the physical distance isn't far, however, the moral difference should be impossible.

Watching the protest in Wrocław, I realized it's part of a broader pattern: Poland has been a witness to pro-Palestinian rallies, including student encampments at Wrocław's university.

Tell me if you've heard that story before.

Here in the states, we see campus occupations and vandalism; plus the mass arrests at Columbia became a months-long national story, which was probably the goal of the protesters. The university, meanwhile, canceled its main commencement ceremony in 2024 due to the turmoil. Large demonstrations across Europe were punctuated by clashes with authorities, similar to the Italian actions that became violent in Milan and Bologna.

It's during these actions that people "borrow" the strongest words available, typically found on Wikipedia, and treated as nothing more than stage props. Very few have read Levi or Wiesel, and fewer have walked the barracks at Majdanek, Treblinka, or Birenau's ruins. Those words, dug from history, are nothing more than efforts of moral thunder; however, because they do such poor homework, their goals are rarely met.

Regardless of the circumstances, there are two hard truths: activist ecosystems on the political left often push extremely simplified binaries, making complex wars seem simple and legible for those on social media. It's an easy pattern visible in groups that organized campus engagements and the labor-linked strikes and street actions across Europe.

Then, we find a subset of the hard-right actors swinging the other way, using the Holocaust as nothing more than a conversational trump card, swatting down any criticism of Israeli policies at all. Regardless of which end people belong to, precision dies, leaving a common denominator of death as nuance.

If you consider words as currency, the extremists launder them.

For Nazi Germany, the Holocaust was a state-designed program of murdering every Jew within reach; in Poland alone, the Jewish community was nearly annihilated. In this setting, "extermination" means deportations directly to killing centers, such as Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Berkenau, where there were selections made on the ramps near the railcars, leading to poison gas, then cremation. This evil was planned, methodical, and nearly total. History doesn't show the number as abstract: It's an erased population map.

In Katyn, the Soviets' crime differed in method, but the intent was the same: To remove the leadership stratum to engineer a dependent Poland from the top down. Declassified documents from 1990 confirmed the Politburo order, resulting in a death toll of 22,000.

When protestors chant "extermination" for each and every wartime horror, the original reference blurs, saying only that the language needs to keep its distinction, or it stops warning anybody about, well, anything.

Think of it this way: if every storm is a hurricane, then windows don't get boarded.

What the world needs today is moral clarity that aligns with reality. The Holocaust isn't a synonym for war; "genocide" and "extermination" aren't interchangeable with high civilian casualties, regardless of how wrenching those casualties are.

Until the evidence meets the legal thresholds for those crimes, they need to be named with precision and proof. Until then, those words must be treated like the gold they truly are, instead of plastic badges handed out at rallies.

Let's dig a little deeper: Which words are used, and what was the original definition? If the crowd yells, "extermination," ask for a definition in occupied Poland between 1941 and 1945, and how effective were Nazi plans and methods? If the crowd yells, "colonizer," ask how that word matches the lived history of Jews who were expelled from Europe, and Middle Eastern Jews expelled from lands in Arabia after 1948. Precision isn't a weakness of compassion; in fact, it keeps it honest.

Now, ask which political faction insists on those frames that tolerate or excuse intimidation. Look who staffs encampments, and who composes the placards? Then, take a peek at the officials and unions who green-light escalations; while we see which protests end in violence or vandalism, while calling it "... mostly peaceful?"

The September demonstrations in Italy included violence and resulting injuries, while the Colombian occupation brought about mass arrests and a canceled commencement.

These are facts: Not talking points.

The lesson the Racławice Panorama teaches us is simple: Nations can be lost by force, yet recovered by courage. Camps and forests teach us that civilizations murder at scale once language is bent into permission slips. People marching in Wrocław should feel the ground underneath them argue back: The words chanted belong to the ghosts who can no longer answer, so the responsibility lies with the living, who still can.

I watched protesters in Wrocław chant, "extermination," while standing in a country that doesn't count the word as a metaphor. Poland's soil records what happens when people trade history for slogans: keeping categories bright, the language honest, and the memory intact.

If words are currency, we should damn well spend them like silver. Not scrap.

I saw Wrocław protestors claim "extermination" while standing in a country where that word was not a metaphor. Poland's soil records what ideology does when people trade history for slogans. Keep the categories bright. Keep the language honest. Keep the memory intact. If words are currency, spend them like silver, not like scrap.

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