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Auschwitz - Execution Wall
In a courtyard between two brick buildings. For death by firing squad - Now we shoot photos - but in one day over 200 people were shot at this wallToday was the day to visit Auschwitz - one of those days that are not enjoyable, but essential to do when travelling - when we come into contact with the physical reality of an historical event, we can get a glimpse of the human reality - and come out the end of it different people. We have learned about the holocaust at school, through films and movies, but it was always a bit theoretical - over there. Seeing the physical buildings, standing in the gas chamber, seeing the sheer physical size of Birkenau, trying to comprehend the numbers, seeing the two tons of human hair that was to be woven into fabric - and then actually seeing a bolt of fabric--the finished product. Standing on the railway siding that minutes before we had seen in a photo from 60 years before covered with incoming Jews - going through the selection process and 80% of them crossing the railway and walking up the road towards the gas chambers behind the trees and their “showers” and death. These experiences have made it real and able to be internalised. It was revealing looking at the grim faces of the other tourists who were coming
Auschwitz - Gas Chamber 1
This was the first Gas chamber as the Nazi's learned how to do mass executions out of the buildings as we were going in - all were undergoing similar experiences - struggling to understand how people who were just like us could actually do this incredibly vile thing. And how ordinary people just like us could let it happen, could even be guards, could be sucked into behaving like that. Lots of ideas about tolerance—the importance of tolerating other peoples differences acknowledging that they are human too, while not tolerating small little changes in ideas that eventually cascade into something like this. There is no easy answer and I can see that I would be just as likely to be a guard or a bystander as the people living then. At the beginning of the museum is a quote from George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." At the end is a memorial sculpture and an inscription in each of the languages of those killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau and in English for the rest of us which starts “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity ....”
I (Alison) did in fact manage to get out of the car and go into the
Birkenau - Railway Siding
Railway Siding - with the main gate in the background. This is where the prisoners were unloaded from the trains and selected - for death immediately by gas chamber or for being worked to death buildings, and we had an excellent guide, a Polish teacher with excellent English and passionate with resolve to tell others what had happened, yet expressed in a way which involved learning our own lessons, not blaming any one country. Apparently the Allies knew what was happening yet were not able to stop it—whether they lacked the resources because all was involved in winning or whether their own anti-Semitism was showing, it is hard to know but no country is without responsibility in this. Poland had many concentration camps because it is central to Europe and had an excellent rail system, it is the only country where the families of anyone who helped the Jews were rounded up and imprisoned and killed in the same way. Anyway, I cried along with several others, and could not go into one of the buildings which had been used for punishment of the prisoners.
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