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Days 43 2nd June Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland
“Nations who forget their own history are sentenced to live it again”
Lest we never forget….
Countless words have been written about the Holocaust and many writers have struggled to find adequate words to express their feelings having visited the Polish State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of us use the word ‘unbelievable’ but rarely use it in the true sense of the word –beyond belief. Truly I can say that Auschwitz-Birkenau is beyond belief; it IS unbelievable that members of the human race could inflict such atrocities in a calculated, planned, efficient and above all systematic way. It was murder in the first degree.
I, like a lot of people of my age, learnt and knew about the Holocaust and concentration camps, not only from history lessons at school but also from the war films that abounded in our youth. But, like my own history of Poland, there were gaps – following my visit I realise how huge the gaps were. It was me that wanted to come to Oswiecim, the unassuming middle sized town some 50 miles from Krakow. The town that was the site of one
of humanity’s more unspeakable tragedies. Although Il P had been happy to oblige he did not realise, until we had spent some 4 hours at the two sites, how extraordinary the visit would be. Perhaps visiting a notorious concentration camp is a strange thing to do on holiday but without doubt neither of us regrets the decision.
I cannot begin to adequately describe to you in a travelling blog what this place is like. I hope that one day some of you will be able to visit to see for yourselves. But what I can give you is a brief overview and some chilling statistics.
Auschwitz actually refers to several concentration/labour camps in Poland. Auschwitz I was in Oswiecim and Auschwitz II was in Birkenau, a few miles away. Both parts are now Polish National State Museums and the philosophy of the camps is to spread the story of Auschwitz so that we may learn from its lessons. The preservation of the sites, the exhibitions therein and the reverence encouraged is exemplary. There were a great many visitors of every age and from every country; understandably many Jewish groups visit and a visit here is obligatory
for Polish 14 year olds. The gravity of what you see, read and hear affects everyone and a church-like hush prevails throughout. The exhibits are gruelling. Photographs, documents, human hair (tons of it), spectacles, shoes, clothes, suitcases with neatly painted names, dates of birth & places they have come from, the list goes on.
The Nazis killed at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In total some 4,500,000 Jews were murdered in Poland by the Nazis. Not only did they gas women, children and men that couldn’t work but those that escaped the gas chambers were tortured by beatings, deprived of air & thus suffocated; made to stand up, 4 to a tiny standing cell, all night long & then work the next day; murdered by lethal injection to the heart; shot, hanged and starved. Medical experiments were performed on women and children and both men and women underwent crude sterilization experiments.
The one thing that struck me more than anything was the meticulous records that were kept. It was astonishing that anyone performing such grotesque acts should write everything down as living proof of the existence of such crimes. Every prisoner was recorded
and given a number, if a ‘crime was committed by a prisoner it was recorded and the sentence written down, there were hand written records of those that went to the ‘hospital’, what their illnesses were and what they died of. There were records of the gold taken from the teeth of dead people (named) and how much the gold weighed. There were execution orders. There was an order to a local agricultural merchant for the delivery of plant ‘screening’ for a gas chamber being constructed. And many more.
After you visit Auschwitz I you go a few miles down the road, alongside the original railway track, to Birkenau. Still standing are the majority of buildings erected for the purpose-built concentration camp housing over 100,000 people. This camp covered 425 acres and was built on completely flat treeless swampy farmland. The wind whistled around us chilling us to the bone – this was July, what could it have been like in the depths of winter, scantily clad in prison stripes, with temperatures plummeting to minus 10 and below? It is to Birkenau that the trains came, they offloaded their human cargo, a selection took place – those to
Birkenau.
Only the brick chimneys are left standing in this section of the camp. The camp had over 300 huts. work, those to gas – and the two groups were separated. One group destined to a short life of hard labour, poor nutrition, shocking conditions, inevitable illness and eventual death. The other to the gas chambers.
We have done many things on this trip but today’s visit was the most profound. We move on tomorrow into the south west of Poland, we need to be near the planned meetings for Monday. The weather has turned and a cold wet front is sweeping across Eastern Europe – time to go home?
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