We were all surprised this morning by the early snow. The locals say that the couple of inches received this morning is the earliest accumulation on record. (We got a solid dusting "in town" and heavier falls in the countryside.)
Today I headed to Auschwitz, via Polish public transportation, which translates into paying the equivalent of $2 USD for an hour and a half ride crammed into a multi-passenger van. The heat was almost unbearable and read 40 degrees centigrade on the hanging thermometer.
I didn’t really know what to expect from visiting this site, but was sure that it would be worth the effort. After visiting the Killing Fields in Cambodia, where you literally walk on human remains protruding from the paths, there wasn’t anything that would evoke such a tangible response here. However, almost everyone who visited definitely felt the weight and personal contemplation of moment.
The actual grounds of Auschwitz are large but no where near there size of what imagination would create. Auschwitz is actually not just a single camp but three separate facilities built for differing purposes. Auschwitz I, shown in this diagram was the first camp, previously a Polish military base, and served primarily as a political prisoner holding, torture, and execution facility.
The camp that most everyone associated with Auschwitz is called Birkenau or Auschwitz II, as it was built second. The purpose of this camp was genocide and it was designed as an efficient twisted factory of sorts towards this mission.
The third camp built, Auschwitz III no longer exists and was a forced labor camp many kilometers away. Its purpose was the manufacturing support of the German war effort.
Focusing on Auschwitz I, prisoners were initially processed at the reception office, where three photos were taken of each and they were tattooed with the now iconic numbering system. This was the only camp to use this process of identification. All other known camps used metal numbered wristbands.
Prisoners were then walked through the front gates and under the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” sign.
For a forced labor camp to have as its credo “Work makes you free” was just one of many humiliation tactics.
Another tactics, was that as prisoners headed out each day for forced labor, a prisoner band played lively marches. On return to the camp the same band was forced to play the upbeat music again, as the prisoners drug them selves home carrying the day’s dead along with them. Obviously, the prisoners hated this music and the musicians hated playing it.
Beyond the main gate and dining hall, two rows of brick buildings formed perfectly straight columns. This is where prisoners would spend the nights, doubled up two per each layer of a bunk bed.
Our guide for the day was a history major with a lingering Soviet Era accent to her English intonation. She had a nice approach of emphasis, description, and factual reconstruction, without being overcome by the moment.
The last building on the left of the second row, number 11 was somewhere that no one wanted to go. If you did, the likelihood of return was minimal.
To help shelter the executions taking place in the yard between building numbers 10 and 11, all the facing windows in building 10 were boarded. This obviously only hid the visual and not the audible impact.
Number 11 was the experimental spawning ground for practices that would later be implemented in the camp Birkenau, then under construction. In the basement of this building, the first mass gas executions with Cyclone B were exacted. The basement was also filled with differing cells for various punishment purposes. There were starvation cells that served their purpose until the inmate perished. Suffocation cells, where groups of inmates were packed in with very limited ventilation. And finally standing cells that were three feet by three feel and four prisoners were forced to occupy the same space. The confinement was so tight that everyone was force to stand all night. In the morning they would be evacuated, forced to work for twelve hours and returned to the cell. This continued until each died of exhaustion.
This particular basement moved many high school age girls to tears. I watched as one began to sob, then the next, and a wave of emotion passed right down the line. It wasn’t so strange that they were moved, but it did make me wonder why we all didn’t have the same release. They were by far the exception.
We then moved down the gravel path to the commandant’s house, ....
... the garden where his post war hanging took place, ...
... and the original gas chamber and crematorium constructed under his direction.
Even without a single SS manning the grounds this camp remains imposing. The double electrified barbwire fences leave little to the imagination as to their purposes.
Every sign was obviously placed to intimidate.
Thus far I had done a pretty good job of eliminating tourists from the pictures, but the complex is crawling with them. The expectations are clearly posted at every entrance. But, it can be safely said, “Americans have been replaced, in holding the title of most culturally ignorant/insensitive, by the Chinese.” The accumulation of glaring disapproval had little to no affect on the loud jabbering, joking, and outbursts of laughter.
The group then boarded a bus and headed on the five-kilometer trip to Birkenau.
The magnitude of this camp is apparent just on approach. Jews, Gypsies, and intellectual or political opposition prisoners would not have seen these guard houses, except maybe through the cracks of their sealed cattle cars.
Just like in the movie “Schindler’s List” they would have passed under the main tower…
… and up the tracks …
… to the sorting platform.
Thousands of people could be herded onto this gravel surface from the trains. First, men were separated from women and children. This would have been the first realization that the lie told to them, “That they were being resettled to a new area” may not be exactly true.
Then the masses would line up to be inspected by one of the SS doctors, who in fractions of a moment decided who went to his right or not. In this picture, he is sending the man with the cane off to the right.
If you were among the fortunate, depending on your perspective, then the gate to the SS officer’s left was preferable.
From there, you would be shepherded to one of the hundreds of converted horse barns to await your work orders. Life would now consist of filthy subsistence hard labor and possibly being the subject of medical experimentation or torture.
Today only a few buildings remain in tact and were reconstructed from the remnants of partially burned buildings.
Accommodations were packed and unsanitary. Prisoners slept two to a single bunk.
This is what a barrack looked like, after liberation.
There were only two sanitary barracks for thousands of prisoners.
Today, hundreds of smoke stacks remained from the former barracks. This actually allowed for a broader view than if the buildings remained and instilled a greater sense of the shear human capacity.
Even though, not as tightly packed as Auschwitz I, Birkenau’s restraining system was no less impressive.
All the barbed wire was electrified.
The current was strong enough to simply run a line up from the barbed wire for an overhead spotlight.
Back at the train platform, ...
... if you were directed to the right, life would be surprising and short.
Still under the illusion of “re-settlement” women, children, and weak men would be lead to one of two gas chamber / crematoriums.
They were told that everyone needed to be sanitized from the long rail journey and would receive a shower.
There were neat subterranean locker rooms, with coat hooks and benches, where everyone undressed en mass. Then they were led to the next empty room and the doors locked behind them.
A specially trained SS official would then empty several cans of Cyclone B into several openings in the ceiling. A mere 20 minutes later and everyone would have perished.
One of the prisoner functions was to plunder the bodies of hair and gold fillings, then cart them into the third room for incineration. It estimated that between 1.1 and 1.5 million people met their end in chambers 1 through 5 across the three Auschwitz camps.
Before abandoning the camp, the Nazis dynamited the structures, in an effort to hide their atrocities. Obviously, this did little to diminish the evidence.
Some may question the importance of visiting a site like this or the Killing Fields in Cambodia. For me, it points to the reality of the human condition and our inherent capacity for evil. If we individually choose to ignore or gloss over the actuality of these events, then a flawed human mind is inclined to dismiss them in favor of a “rose colored” world view, providing an opening for the obvious logic trap that all is good, when indeed it is not. The horror of recognizing the genocide of Hitler (21 MM killed), Stalin (13 MM killed), Mao (78 MM killed), Hideki Tojo (5 MM killed), Pol Pot (2+ MM killed) , who are only the top five of twenty leaders (who were responsible for killing at least 250,000 people) in the last 100 years, should draw us to active prevention, but sadly we still sit on the sidelines while ethnic cleansing continues in Africa. (source: http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html)
So we should recognize the Auschwitz deaths and mourn them in principle, recognizing that this is not an isolated human condition but a reoccurring militant theme that denial cannot erase.
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