Birkenau then Auschwitz

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Saturday 22nd August
Birkenau then Auschwitz
We are lost for words today to describe how we are going to spend our day.’Visiting’ or’ sightseeing’ the death camps at two of the most notorious places that WW2 created is definitely not appropriate.
The weather has changed overnight as expected and a cool front has passed through but it hasn’t yet brought the promised rain and we hope that it holds off for the day as we shall be out in the open.
We shall hold off leaving our hotel until later in the morning as the crowds at Auschwitz reportedly are greatest between 9am and 3pm when bus loads of people that travel from all over converge for their guided ‘tours’ of mainly Auschwitz which is now termed a’museum’.In fact as an individual you have to join a ‘tour group’to enter Auschwitz between those hours.So we shall park our car there and take the free bus to nearby Birkenau first.
It had been a quiet night in our hotel and it didn’t sound like there had been anyone else staying.However a look at the car park reveals another 5 or 6 cars plus RR and then as we were having our breakfast sitting on our terrace we watched everyone else who had been staying load up their cars and leave.It passed an hour or so of the morning quite easily!!
We then spent more time reading up on what we were soon to experience,me on a couple of internet sites and Gretchen reading Michael Palins’ book titled New Europe wherein he was making a similar trip to ourselves around the countries in the eastern part that have joined the EU recently.We were hoping that by doing so we would be better prepared for what was ahead.It wasn’t that neither of us knew,had read or seen movies and TV over the years on the atrocities carried out there by the SS/Nazis between late 1940 and 1945 when Hitlers regime attempted to wipe out by murdering the entire race of Jews and other minorities which they in their depraved minds thought would give them a pure world.
Whether this last minute schooling up would do any good or not to prepare us only time will tell.
So after a casual morning we headed off at shortly before 11am calling in at the local car wash to give RR a well overdue wash to get her original colour back!!
After yesterdays holdup with the road diversion at Oswiecim,where Birkenau and Auschwitz are located,we are going to take a longer but alternative countryside route to get there.
We passed through a succession of small villages until after 20 minutes or so we reached the sizable town of Andrychow where we spotted a supermarket just off the road and as we had no lunch we called in to see what they might have for sale to tempt us.
Shopping and dining has been a challenge since moving into eastern Europe and although we have come across people who understood basic English most of the time this morning was going to be interesting as this was a small and rather out of the way town.We have found the key to making payment is not to listen to what the checkout person says how much we need to pay but simply watch the cash register as the items are rung on and the total comes up.Of course we try and add up the cost of the items in our heads as we go around the store so we have an idea of what the total cost will be.Getting your head around the cheap cost of items compared to what we would have paid in the UK or even at home though takes a bit of getting used to here as food is much cheaper.
Rather than waiting until we got to Oswiecim to have lunch we stopped on the roadside near the town on a bus stop.With a lack of parking stops off the road this was the only place we could find.And luckily no bus came along until just as we were leaving !!
The ‘museum’ of Auschwitz is right in the middle of the town.In 1940 when it was converted from disused army barracks the Nazi cleared houses that people lived in adjacent to the camp but over the years the town has built back around it.
After parking RR we joined a large group of people who we thought were waiting for the bus to Birkenau.
A bus duly arrived and we simply got on !! We looked at each other as we found a seat and remarked that we had just done what over 1.5 million people,mainly Jews,had done during those dark years except we hadn’t been forced to get on!!People being transported during the war had been forced into rail wagons and railed from all parts of Europe as far away as Norway and Greece to a destination that they knew nothing about nor what their fate would be when they got here.
Our trip however was only a short drive away,about 10 minutes in fact,and in reality we could have walked the 3 km or across the rail yards that separate the two sites.
When the Nazis realised that Auschwitz wasn’t big enough to exterminate the millions they had in mind they built another camp across the railyards.
We were on the wrong side of the bus to see anything of Birkenau as the bus drove into the carpark area.
As we got off though the camp stood before us.
We had our breath taken away by the sheer size of the place.The barbed wire fences complete with lights stand as they did back in WW2 and encircle what was big enough to house a small city!!
It took us a few minutes to catch our breath and take in what we were looking at.
Nothing could have prepared us for what we were looking at in terms of the vastness of the site.You look out over the flat site and although many of the blocks that housed prisoners were destroyed by the fleeing Nazis the chimneys from the fireplaces in the centre of each one and some other rubble still marks the long neat rows of what had been there.
Birkenau is not a museum although in some of the buildings left standing after the Nazis tried to get rid of the evidence when they were retreating from the advancing Russian troops in January 1945,do have items left behind.And there are information boards all around the site explaining what was located at the various points around the huge area and what happened there.
The rail line is still laid into the camp and passes under the main watchtower.You can stand on the upper level and look down the track as it passes into the camp and then splits off as a siding to the infamous ‘ramp’.It was here where the wagons were unloaded and SS sorted out who would ‘live’(even that word is not appropriate in this situation)and who would be sent immediately to the gas chambers which were a short walk away.
In the tower there are pictures of the wagons being unloaded and the ramp crowded with people and we both took a look at the rail line as we stood there and then closed our eyes to try and imagine what it must have been like back in those dreadful days.
Over 75% of those people who arrived at the ramp went straight to the gas chambers.They were told by the SS,so not to bring alarm amongst those still getting off the crowded wagons,that they were going for a ‘shower’ before being housed in the dozens of large huts all lined in neat rows within the camp.For many this might have been a welcome ‘thought’ after spending 3 or 4 days and nights in crowded,smelly wagons being transported across Europe to end their journey here.It is said that the German people didn’t know what was going on at Auschwitz and Birkenau,nor probably the other death camps set up by the Nazi throughtout Europe,and so perhaps these poor people arriving here did not know what their fate was about to be.
We started out walking around the camp by looking into some of the huts that have been retained near the electrified fenceline.They are constructed of a lightweight looking timber on a dirt floor and were designed as stables for horses so keeping the interior warm and free of air movement from outside was not a priority.Hundreds of people were housed in each one with dozens of three tiered wooden bunks lining both walls.Three or four people slept in each bed.The hut was heated,for want of a better word,by a single fireplace in the middle of the hut.Winter in this part of the world is desparately COLD!!!!
As we walked down the fenceline we heard band music in the distance and our minds went back to more information that we had read in the watchtower.The Nazis organised a band from amongst the prisoners and ordered them to play German type music for the prisoners to march to so they could be counted more easily at the daily roll check.The music we were hearing however was coming from a band playing for a wedding at a building just outside the camp.What a place to have your wedding so close to the death camp!!!
At the end of the western side of the camp we came across the gas chambers and crematorium that was destroyed by the Nazis as the Russians closed in on them in January 1945.Here too there are 3 simple headstones in the middle of a large grassed area where the ashes from the crematorium were spread over the ground.We viewed the headstones from a distance as we couldn’t bear walking on the area where the ashes had been spread.
On the top end of the camp was the ‘greeting centre’where those transported here and not murdered immediately,were taken to be deloused in a mass shower.had their hair shaved and had their clothes taken off them and given prison clothes.The clothes were sold back to people in Germany at a time when obviously supplying the nation during the war became more difficult.
We walked through the building with information boards explaining in a rather graphic way what occurred in each room.In the last room there are thousands of photographs of people taken at various times in their lives who are known to have died at Birkenau.
Further on there is a memorial to all those murdered with different plaques for each country that the people came from.The memorial is adjacent to two further gas chambers and crematorium that were partially destroyed by the departing Nazis and are currently undergoing work to try and reconstruct the buildings.
As we made our way down the last side of the camp we called into a block that Polish families were housed to look at the drawings made by children that have been preserved on two walls.The sight of the drawings was a rather poignant way to end our walk around the vast site.
A bus was there to take us back to Auschwitz I,which is much more compact the Birkenau, and the museum that has been created from the buildings that was the original camp for the prisoners.
The crowds had lessened as predicted and we made our way through the various blocks with each one having a display and memorial to the people from a different country who were murdered here.There were more exhibits here than at Birkenau and so the story is told in a different sort of way.
One of the chilling places we passed through were the torture cells where prisoners were beaten or had unmentionable atrocities committed against them often because of a trivial thing they had done against camp rules.How a person could be so cruel to another human being is sickening and we stopped short of passing through all that block as it made us both feel sick.
The authorities that run the ‘museum’restored the so called ‘death wall’ where prisoners were lined up and shot but we walked on by this grisly sight.The Nazis for some reason took the wall down about a year before they fled the camp,perhaps because it was easier to murder the prisoners in greater numbers by gassing them.There was an information board that said that the SS used the murder wall as a vivid reminder to other prisoners not to step out of line.
The final building we came across was the huge gas chamber and crematorium that after Birkenau was built was turned into a bomb shelter for the SS.A rather odd way to retain and change the purpose for the building where thousands of prisoners were murdered prior to its change of use.I was already part way through when I realised Gretchen was not with me and could just not face going in.I must say it felt chilling to stand under the holes where the cans of the deadly gas was dropped through to murder those inside the chamber.
Birkenau has probably left more vivid memories with us because of the vastness of the size of the place and the huge numbers who were murdered there by the Nazis.Plus of course the reminder of looking out from that watchtower at the railway line converging into the distance and that siding with ‘the ramp’.
Needless to say that our drive back home was a quiet one as we both felt exhausted and sombre from what we had taken in during the afternoon.
We went back to the cafe in the town square for dinner as it was the only place we could find a menu in English.Rain started as we finished dinner.Was this going to be the end of the heatwave??

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Photos

Birkenau death camp
Nothing really prepared us for the vastness of this place

Wooden blocks Birkenau
Each block housed hundreds of prisoners

Blocks of buildings at Auschwitz
They were originally single level but the Nazis had additional floors added to accomodate the thousands who were imprisoned here

Comments

[R & O]

Birkenau & Auschwitz
Thinking of you both as you recover from this experience. Beyond belief isn't it. Here is a "BIG HUG" for you both.