Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp

Well I arrived in Krakow at just after midnight on Monday night/Tuesday morning. I then walked to my hostel, got checked in, changed and ready for bed. My next day began with breakfast and a shower at 7am. For anyone who knows me that is extremely early, especially since all my grad school classes are at night, and considering I hadn’t gotten to bed until about 1am after arriving by train. But I took it like a champ – for some reason I persevere for vacationing – just for class or work I’m not interested in doing so – lol.
I got on the bus at 8am to go for my guided tour of the Auschwitz – Birkenau complex. Of the many concentration camps the Germans had during WWII, and the many in Poland alone – none have the notoriety of Auschwitz. But it is often misunderstood. Auschwitz was actually 3 main camps and over 140 sub-camps. The Auschwitz camp (Auschwitz being the German name for the Polish town of Oscwiego) was a small camp that only housed men and only about 20,000 of them. The neighboring Birkenau camp (about half a kilometer away) was the biggie – holding both men and women and over 400,000 of them. This is where the SS exterminated over 1.5 million people in gas chambers and crematoria.
It was one of the hardest things I have ever seen in my life. I thought beforehand that I might cry, one because of the subject matter and two because I figured others would be cry which is something that usually does me in pretty quickly. However – I didn’t and I only saw one woman get teary-eyed once. It wasn’t the type of scene that you really see and cry. No, it felt more like in Harry Potter when he describes the feeling that a Deatheater gives you – “…like I’ll never be happy again.” That’s exactly how it felt – just emptiness really. It was numbing. I don’t know how to describe in words the way it felt to stand in the gas chamber where hundreds of thousands died – to walk on the floor they walked on, to touch the walls that they touched. Mainly – you just sit and wonder how in the world that this could have possibly happen? How could the SS have done this to so many people?
It was somber to see hundreds of kilograms of women’s hair that the SS had shaved off before death and they sent them to Germany to be spun into socks for the military – for their warmth! To see all the suitcases marked with inmates’ names and addresses; suitcases with items they would never see again because the SS took what they could recycle and threw away everything else. I touched the bunk beds (3 high) that were smaller than the twin bed I grew up with and yet were used to sleep 2-3 adults. I saw the gallows where so many people were hung on display to remind prisoners of what awaited those who disobeyed; and where the camp administrator was hung after the war after being convicted of war crimes. A small victory, but it could not bring back those who had already died.
I saw more but won’t recount it here as it will likely just depress you as well. It’s hard to be reminded of what we are capable of. I saw the birthplace in Poland of composer Fredric Chopin and of Nicholas Copernicus and you are reminded of what brilliance we are capable of to understand our world through science and to describe it in detail and to create the most beautiful melodies with music. Then you see something like Auschwitz-Birkenau and are you are reminded of the other, more dark, side that we humans have within us – the ability to do monstrous and heinous things. We are an odd species. I don’t think you will find another species on Earth that is capable of exuding more love than humans, and you will definitely not find another species more prone to fear and hate.
I finished up my day with a tour of Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow where he saved over 1000 Jewish people from extermination. That has been converted into a Krakow Holocaust Museum. Here was hands down one of the single-most amazing museums I have been to in the world. It took you through historically the days leading up to and during the War and what happened in Krakow. Pictures and dates and items tell the story for you, but there are also numerous videos of residents of Krakow recounting the events. Before the war, the city of Krakow was home to over 25,000 Jews and today that number stands at just 200. Of those that survived, they have already died or chose to never return.
It was really one of the roughest days I had ever had and one the saddest things I have ever seen. The quote when you entered the gas chamber said it best and it was something like, “Those who forget history are bound to repeat it.” It is important to see such sights so that the world is reminded of our past. Remembering our past is the only way to prevent it from being repeated. The Holocaust was a terrible blight on the world’s history, on the history of humanity and forever changed what we know humans are capable of. However it is for this reason that we must honor those who gave their lives. Honor them by remembering them to ensure their eternal sacrifice is not in vain, but that we learn something from it.