Auschwitz and Birkenau- November 2013

While my Dad and I were in Krakow, Poland for the weekend, we took a tour of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps.  The camps are about an hour outside the city, and we went on a small bus with a guide.  On the way there they show a film to give some background information.  Honestly, I think they are preparing you for what you are going to see, but as you will read in this blog, nothing could have prepared me for the horror that is Auschwitz.  And if you can believe it, Birkenau is even worse.  I was a history major in college and WWII has always been a favorite topic for me.  I have seen "Schindler's List", I have read "The Diary of Anne Frank".  I always felt I understood the Holocaust.  I didn't.  This was a very sad day.  Visiting a concentration camp makes you understand the horrible acts human beings can perform on each other.  But I am glad that I went.  Because it also reminded me to do my best to always be kind and treat others well. 

Auschwitz was originally a Polish prison, so when the Nazi's invaded Poland, they just took it over.  When you walk through the gates of the camp, this sign greets you:

Translated, the sign means "Work Makes One Free".  I found this quite ironic because very few prisoners left this camp alive, even after they did backbreaking work every day.  And you might recognize my Dad- that's his head with the Irish cap on.
We started off by visiting the buildings at Auschwitz.  Two of the buildings that we entered were lined with pictures of Polish prisoners.  These were Polish men and women who opposed the occupation of their country and the Nazi's deemed as a threat.  The Nazi's were great record keepers, and they took pictures of all of these Polish prisoners.  They also noted the day they came in to Auschwitz and the day they died.  ALL of these photos had an entrance date, and the death date was two to three days later.  The conditions were so harsh that the prisoners only lasted a few days.
Have you ever experienced a Russian winter?  Or perhaps one is Iowa, or New England, or New York?  Then you can imagine what a Polish winter is like.  All of the prisoners at Auschwitz and Birkenau were put in light, long sleeve pajamas (if you have seen Schindler's list you can picture what I am talking about), and this is how they worked.  All day.  In the winter. 
Some buildings at Auschwitz house belongings taken from the prisoners.  As I remember from our tour, 90% of the victims were Jewish, but they also had Gypsies, homosexuals, Catholics, prisoners of war, and Polish people.  When you arrived at Auschwitz, you were told you go put your belongings in a room.  You were asked to label your suitcases and led to believe that you would be getting them back as soon as you were cleaned up and had been checked in to the camp.  This never happened.  The Nazi's lied to the prisoners in order to keep them calm, and then they killed them.  And then they shipped their belongings back to Germany or to the soldiers on the front line and the items were redistributed.  The following is a photo of shoes that were collected from new arrivals.

Those are shoes, and the actual size of the display is about the size of a children's soccer field.  There are also displays (this size) of eyeglasses collected, suitcases, prosthetics and braces that a physically challenged person would wear, and human hair.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I saw one display that was filled with nothing but human, female hair.  Females would have their heads shaved when they arrived at Auschwitz.  The hair was then used for wigs, rugs, and even the stuffing for pillows.  Something amazing about Auschwitz and Birkenau- there were many people visiting that day.  It was quite crowded for a Friday in November.  But it was so quiet.  Every room we went in to, every building we visited, the only sound you heard was the low voice of the guides.  I think it was just too upsetting to speak.
We went to the basement of one building and saw where they held some men and women who needed to be punished.  Perhaps they tried to escape, or they talked back to one of the guards.  I am very claustrophobic, and it turned my stomach to visit these miniscule jail cells, where one had to stand for days at a time as punishment.  We saw the cell where Maximilian Kolbe, who is now a Catholic saint, was held.  Kolbe hid many Jewish people in his friary and was eventually arrested for this and sent to Auschwitz.  One day three men escaped, and the guards decided to starve to death ten men as punishment.  Kolbe volunteered to take the place of one of the men.  After two weeks underground, all of the men except Kolbe were dead.  He was then given a lethal injection and died.  For me, this was a very powerful story. 
The next two photos are of shooting walls.

Our group was then lead into the gas chambers.  Notice the Star of David among the claw marks on the wall.

If you have not been upset by what you have read so far, this is when things get really bad.  Every day, the Nazi's could kill about 2000 Jews and other prisoners in the gas chambers.  But they could only burn about 600 bodies a day in the ovens.  So, the Nazi's had to build a new camp so they could kill more people, and this is how Birkenau came in to being.  (On a side note, can you imagine this? Many of the Nazi officers lived in nice houses next to Auschwitz with their families.  So, did they come home at night, have dinner with their wife and children, and then say excuse me, I have to move to the den so I can work out a way to kill more people tomorrow.  This was all so disturbing.)

I did not take any pictures at Birkenau because this is the saddest place I have ever been.  It's basically just this huge field now, with some buildings dotting the landscape, the train tracks, and one example of a train car.  This is how the camp was described to me:
It often took a week for the trainload of prisoners to arrive at Auschwitz.  There were no bathrooms and no food provided.  On arrival many of the prisoners were already dead.  When you got off the train there were doctors waiting for you.  (Remember doctors- the ones who are supposed to do no harm?  Not here.)  The doctors would look you over  and if you were an able bodied man or woman, you were went in to one of the barracks.  Children under the age of 14 were immediately sent to the gas chambers and were killed.  After everything I saw that day, this was when the horror of Auschwitz really hit me.  My children are all under 14.  If we had been taken here, my four beautiful, smart, funny, and amazing children would have been killed.  Because how do you get rid of a race?  You kill their future.  They even have photos of small children running and laughing as they headed towards the gas chambers, because of course they had no idea what their fate would be.  I will never forget the words of our tour guide as we walked through Birkenau- "you are standing in the spot where 1 million people were murdered". 
This is a sign that is hanging in Auschwitz-

And after I saw that, I saw this sign, one of my personal favorites:

I would take my children to Auschwitz.  (The recommended age is 14 and above, and I would stick with this guideline.)  I have always believed in the power and knowledge you get from studying history.  What these two quotes really made me think of though is current history.  In 2008 the then Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech about Israel's 60th birthday.  In this speech he called for Israel's annihilation, and he called for it again in 2012.  In 2005 he called for Israel to be wiped off the map.  I do realize he was talking about a nation, and not necessarily the Jewish people, but still.  We don't learn.  Look at Bosnia and Serbia.  Darfur.  Yesterday I read in the paper about the government of Sudan dropping parachute bombs on their civilians.  We just don't learn.

And I cannot end this way.  I write this blog for my children, and I cannot end this one on such a sad and depressing note.  So, here goes.  The Nazi's hated a lot of people.  A lot.  Here's what happened to some of them. In many parts of the world homosexuals can get married and they have kids.  Gypsies still exist, I met some in Romania.  They even have a TV show in the US and England.  The Soviets (many Soviet prisoners of war were taken to Auschwitz) were on the winning side of the war and were even the ones that liberated Auschwitz and Birkenau.  They documented survivor stories and are a main reason that we have so much information about the camps.  The Polish people got rid of the Nazi's and then they finally got rid of the Soviets.  Today it is a lovely up and coming country in Eastern Europe.  And the answer to the final solution?  Well, thank goodness we never found out.  There are over 13 million Jewish people in the world.  They even have their own country!  I bet the Nazi's never imagined any of this, and this is a much better way to end this blog.  I feel better.