Auschwitz

On October 19th I went on a half-day tour to Auschwitz. I can't say I was excited to go to a place where millions of innocent people lost their lives, but my grandfather had fought in World War II and I knew I had to see this place with my own eyes. I was with 5 others from my group, and we all traveled together on the same tour group and bus. On the bus ride to the concentration camp, we watched a video that was filmed by a Soviet army cameraman during and after the war.

Once we arrived, we toured Auschwitz I, the first of the three camps located in the area. We entered through a gate that said "Arbeit Macht Frei," which is meant to convince the prisoners that this was in fact a work camp and if they worked hard they might some day be free. The day was cool and foggy, making the tour of this place even more chilling. This first camp was smaller and was more for political prisoners than for exterminating races of people, but the buildings have been partially turned into museum exhibits displaying the items that were found after the camps were liberated. Most of the items were taken from warehouses that the prisoners called "Canada" because this is where all their stolen items were stored, and these were places of wealth. The various rooms showed the thousands of eye glasses, clothes, shoes, and kitchen items that were confiscated once the prisoners arrived at the camp.

Our tour guide under the sign "Work Makes Free"

Two sets of barbed-wire fence surrounded the camps.

Prisoners in Auschwitz came from all across Europe

There were at least four items in these rooms that were particularly disturbing to me. First were the baby clothes--most, if not all young children were immediately exterminated because they were not fit for working in the concentration camps. My Dad was born in 1941, so he was just a baby and would have been wearing clothes like the ones I saw on display. Second were the women's shoes, which looked just like shoes we would wear today--many of them were sandals, which reminded me that the days some women were forced to leave their homes and travel to the camps were probably sunny and warm. Nature kept doing what it always has even in the face of horrific events. Thirdly, there was a room displaying tons (literally, thousands of pounds) of human hair. When prisoners arrived at the camps, their heads were shaved and the hair was stored. The hair was going to be used in making ropes, fabric, and other items, examples of which were also displayed. Finally, there were hundreds of suitcases, many had last names written on them. I was half expecting to see a name I knew, but thankfully I did not.

[I did not feel comfortable taking photos of the exhibits, so there are none to put here.]

After we toured these rooms, we walked by the part of the camp that was the infirmary, which among camp prisoners was known as the waiting room for the crematorium. Although technically these were for sick prisoners, the Nazi doctors carried out experiments on their patients that often resulted in death or permanent injury. Also in one of these buildings were the torture rooms, where prisoners who disobeyed or escaped and were caught were sent to die. There were suffocation rooms, standing rooms, and starvation rooms. Finally, we walked through one of the gas chambers and crematoriums, which were in fact retrofitted from Polish army arsenals. I could not bring myself to take pictures inside this building.

One of the "infirmary" buildings.

Outside one of the gas chambers and crematoriums. At the time, I didn't fully
understand that we were headed inside a gas chamber, and only fully
understood when I saw the holes in the ceiling where the German soldiers
would have dropped the deadly gas.

After this first tour, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the majority of the murders took place. This camp had room for 100,000 prisoners at a given time, while there were less than 7,000 German soldiers in charge of the camp while it was operational. Here we could see the train tracks that brought in the prisoners, the location where "selections" were made (if you were chosen for work or sent directly to die), and the remains of the barracks that housed the thousands of prisoners. We also saw the remains of the major crematoriums and gas chambers, of which there were four originally. The Germans did their best to destroy evidence of their misdeeds once they realized how close the Soviet army was, so there was only walls and rubble remaining. However, architectural plans of the camps were found so the world knew what had been there.

The gates through which prisoners entered in livestock cars.

Prisoners exited the trains here and were made to stand in line for selection (work or death).

Ruins of a gas chamber/crematorium.

Ruins of a gas chamber/crematorium.

Our last two stops in this tour were the barracks, where 700 prisoners slept in horrid conditions, and the toilets, which were simply rows of holes on a concrete slab over a common sewage area--no privacy whatsoever, and prisoners were allowed very limited time to finish their business. The German prisoners were adept at taking away any semblance of a normality, the prisoners never had a way to escape the horrors of their situation. 

These were the bunks where people slept, 6 to a bunk, on hay.

At the end of the tour I saw a bird flitting around the ruins. It's amazing to me that such horrid things can happen in a place that was so beautiful. When I was there, the grass was green, the breeze was blowing lightly, and the sky was blue with white puffy clouds. What I tend to imagine are grayscale images that are in textbooks and on video, but the reality is that the Holocaust happened in color. I can hope that the beauty of nature, of a passing bird singing its spring song, gave hope to the prisoners...but Auschwitz was a hopeless place. I'm glad I went, but I hope I never have to go back.