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Published: July 13th 2016
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From: "rita feder"
>
I was not sure why I volunteered for this blog, but I know now that I wanted to share today.
Thoughts of Today's trip had been on my mind before we left home --today was the visit and tour of the Auschwitz concentration camps. I don't think it's necessary to talk about what we all know about --suffice it to say that the mountains of hair shorn from terrified new or already dead prisoners, the piles of tattered suitcases that were once filled with victims' precious belongings, along with all of the other graphic reminders are as real and heart wrenching to see as can be imagined. But there were other things that I saw and never knew about that must be shared. Beginning with The first sign I saw , "Halt" (Stop in german) which was an original, small hand made wooden sign on a fence post just after the entrance to the camp ---it was facing inwards, in case anyone was to try and leave via the "front door". It survived over 70 years.
Next, i was struck by The irony of the first sign upon entering the
museum --a poorly worded warning about pickpockets--the only 'disclaimer' or warning posted .
The camp is divided into 3 camps, Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz-birkenau and Auschwitz 3. Auschwitz 1 has the museum , Auschwitz-birkenau is where the barracks, gas chambers and crematorium are preserved and Auschwitz 3 is comprised of 40 sub-camps for different forms of slave labor.
At the museum I was 'ok' with what I was seeing until I saw the area where all the prostetic limbs, crutches and others medical items were piled up. These had been taken away from victims - that hit me hard. Sad enough to have a physical disability, awful to have been murdered because of it. The nazis ordered the disabled destroyed first.
At Auschwitz-birkenau, the indignity of the latrines was one of the worst things I learned. Even basic bodily functions were controlled by the nazis in their plan to totally dehumanize and denigrate people. The latrines consisted of a huge room with boards of holes in them and placed over huge troughs . the room was only opened twice a day, morning and night. There was no privacy, not enough places for the hundreds of prisoners who would run into
the room as fast as possible in order to get a seat and one can only imagine the filth and disease there. And yet, in the camp hierarchy, it was not considered the worst place for the workers / slave laborers who cleaned it. Why? Because it was indoors --out of the hot sun in the summer and the freezing cold or rains at the other times. And because the workers had access for themselves at any time. Unbelievable to think about, but it almost makes sense .
The sleeping platforms looked even smaller than the pictures we have seen --holding 6 or more prisoners forced to lie in one position for the night. Imagine not being sure if the person pressed up against you was dead or alive until you got up for morning roll call.
Then there was the sight of people sitting on the grass, eating and drinking as if they were in a park instead of the lawn outside the Auschwitz museum entrance. I was inwardly enraged by their seemingly callous ability to sit , eat, and chat just a few hundred feet from where man perpetrated the worst things imagineable upon his fellow man. But
as one of the survivors said, "we had to go on".
We left Auschwitz after a beautiful and very meaningful ceremony with each one of the 50+ members of our group reciting names of family members who were murdered in the holocaust and lighting memorial candles.
And then we went to dinner ---because we had to go on.
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