In today’s 21st century we are consumed with technology, materialism and fast paced living which quite often erases meaning and true emotion from our lives.Not very many of us will ever encounter something as harrowing and horrific as the Holocaust and each and everyone of us should be glad for that. Any breathing person in the world knows what the Holocaust is and the complete atrocities which were committed in Auschwitz and Birkenau but knowing what it is and actually seeing it with your own eyes are completely different things.
A heavy feeling lay down on me even before the bus arrived at Auschwitz. The feeling of knowing that I was about to walk the same ground that millions of innocent people were mercilessly murdered was resolutely somber. When the bus pulled up and we were walking to the main museum it felt like a cattle market, so many tourists causing hustle and bustle, I felt almost sick. For me my image of Auschwitz was one of desolation and quiet respect for those lost. What I actually got was noise, cameras, phones, people eating and drinking… For me I felt as though I was not going to get the space to think, feel and contemplate this place in a way it deserved.
The tour started with walking under the infamous sign which translated to English means, “Work will set you free.” The greatest lie ever set into cast iron. My first impressions of the camp was how small it actually was, remembering this was only Auschwitz I and was in effect a two week turn around pen for work then death. Going throughout the buildings we started with information about the extermination process in this camp and finding out facts and figures but then we walked into a room which we were told strictly no photography. From floor to ceiling along one wall was a massive cabinet holding 18,000 prisoners hair which was shaved off before their body was cremated. At that point the chill went straight through me. After that we seen similar cabinets with 20,000 children’s shoes, chamber pots, glasses and shaving brushes. But for me personally the worst part was seeing the room full of the prisoners suit cases that carried their luggage when they were told that Auschwitz was a haven for them away from danger and they should bring belongings with them. The belongings were taken by the Nazi’s and used for any purpose they could find for it. In this room was one trains worth of suitcases and one suitcase in particular was a child called Petr his date of birth was also on the front of the case, 20/03/1943. My sister shared a birthday with this child, only she was lucky enough to be born fifty years later. Knowing that he would have been murdered almost immediately after he arrived was extremely emotional for me to realise.
Throughout the rest of Auschwitz I we were shown the prisoners cells, the firing squad wall and sleeping quarters for the prisoners who worked. When we were taken into one of the buildings which had hundreds of framed photographs on the wall, reality really hit home: we were looking upon the faces of real prisoners, real people who were persecuted by the Nazis, brought to Auschwitz, humiliated and eventually brutally murdered. Two of the photographs which will always stay in my head is that of two little twin sisters, one looking at the camera in fear and the other looking at the camera with a smile, completely innocent to what was about to happen to her. Another photograph from the first camp that is utterly haunting is one taken by the group of prisoners who were responsible for cremating the dead, in the picture there are thousands of bodies piled up in the dirt, workers walking amongst them while others set fire to them.
The final but most chilling part of the tour in the first camp was the only surviving gas chamber and crematoria. I cannot put into words what it felt like to stand in that chamber, with one single vase of flowers placed in the centre as a mark of respect, and know that countless innocent people lost their lives in this spot. It is one of the memories that will haunt me forever and I will take to my own deathbed.
After the Auschwitz tour was done we then went to Auschwitz II, the Birkenau camp. It is here that you really see the grand scale of the extermination process by the Nazis. Walking through the main gate, the railway tracks that brought the prisoners in dominate the entrance and run the full 900 meters to the end of the camp. At the first camp it was extremely busy and crowded but at the second camp there is an eerie peacefulness. The quiet somber respect is clear at this place, the barracks are lined up with military precision, the watch towers, the fences and the massive piles of rubble where the other 4 gas chambers were but there is a stillness to it all.
It is in this place that you can actually take in exactly what you are standing on. Walking from the selection point on the railway track down to the gas chambers you are literally walking to extermination. And it really hits home that millions of innocent people walked this path before you, directly to their deaths. Next to where the other gas chamber was blown up, there are four grave stones, in different languages, dedicated to the people who died here, and where their ashes were buried after they were cremated. This combined with all of the other sculptures and memorials are small but effective in their respect.
Overall the experience of seeing and walking through Auschwitz and Birkenau was extremely heart wrenching and harrowing. Particularly for us, having family who lived in Krakow and would have undoubtedly lost their lives to the Nazis, it felt like an honour to their memory having us see what truly happened here. The memories and the experience of Auschwitz will haunt me forever and serves as a reminder of exactly what mans black inhumanity to its fellow man looks like. We can only be hopeful that never again will anyone walk to their own extermination.
