We are now on our way from Warsaw to Berlin and after
spending nearly two weeks, not nearly enough to really get to know the country,
in Poland it seems like a good opportunity to capture some thoughts.
One of the main reasons we visited Krakow was to head out to
Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps and learn about what happened there.
We know we have touched on it briefly before, but we somehow felt we needed to
explore our experience in a little more detail. Auschwitz is a name familiar
with most and it does not just refer to one camp, it refers more generally to
the forty or so camps operating in Oscwiecm, the Polish name of the nearest
town changed by the Third Reich upon conquering Poland. Exactly what happened
at Auschwitz, and later Birkenau (a camp specifically designed to carry out the
‘final solution of the Jewish problem’) is graphic, terrifying and cruel beyond
imagining. Conservative estimates suggest over one million people were gassed,
experimented on, shot, starved and burned in the purpose built crematoriums or
open pits. This is the equivalent of the entire Perth population in 1991.
Imagine the entire population of Perth being lead onto incredibly overcrowded
transports and just taken to their deaths. Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers,
babies were all the same to the German’s executing this ‘final solution.’ Only
the Jews selected as fit to work were inked, tagged and recorded and even then
they were subject to daily cruelty consisting of long roll calls, brutality at
the hands of their German guards and inhuman conditions while having to walk
twice a day under the words ‘work makes you free’ inscribed on the main gate at
Auschwitz. The life expectancy was short. A few months for those selected to
work and less than a few hours if you were not.
The plan, as gruesome and cruel as it was, was well thought
out. The Third Reich sold their new labor force to factories and farms in the
area for a tidy sum and recycled everything they could get their hands on.
Cheap labor supplied to factories supplying goods for the German army, while
making money for the Third Reich. Those taken to Auschwitz were promised new lives
in a new home and told to bring only their most valuable possessions with them.
This deceit started before boarding the transports, that sometimes had to
travel for days to reach Poland, and continued right up until the end. Before
being gassed they were told to leave their luggage behind, as it would be taken
to their homes later, and to disrobe and prepare for showers (shower heads were
even fitted into the gas chambers to make it look like a washroom). Once they
(the elderly, pregnant women, children, disabled or diseased) were herded into
the chambers and exposed to cyclone b, which stops the transfer of oxygen into
the blood stream and suffocates you from the inside out, the chamber was
motionless in less than 20 minutes. There were teams of Jewish prisoners
assigned to remove the dead from the chambers, remove any valuables (like gold
teeth) and burn the bodies two or three at a time. The German’s feared these
teams of people would be able to give estimates to how many people were slain
in these camps so every couple of weeks these teams were ‘refreshed’ and we do
not think we need to explain what that involved. Quite often they were gassed
in the same chambers they had been working. One of the crematoriums at Birkenau
had a gold smelting room directly above the chamber and another had a medical
laboratory where they would conduct experiments on women and children not fit
to work. All their personal belongings were recycled, clothes and household
goods were often given to German’s who had lost their belongings in bombings,
while even their hair was used to make fabric for the German army. It was a
disgusting, calculated and horrific exploitation of undeserving people.
Never before have we seen a place subject to such impossible
cruelty and such a willingness and diligence in executing brutal punishment for
being different. One act that really confused us is the way retreating German
troops tried to destroy the concentration camps. For us this showed that
somewhere deep down in the only part of their souls that had any sense of
humanity knew what they were doing was wrong. If what you are doing is right,
why destroy the evidence? Should not you be proud of what you are doing if you
believe in it so much to impart unimaginable pain and suffering on people just
for not being born into the right race or religion? I know this does not apply
to many German soldiers during the war, but some of them fled cowardly when the
war was over and many of them received the justice they deserved. One of the
commanders was sentenced and forced to be hung at Auschwitz, the very camp
where he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jewish
people, prisoners of war and political opponents.
Our tour guide was excellent and you could really get a
sense that she cared about what happened here and wants to help people
experience and understand the suffering many went through at the hands of a
few. This is a difficult topic to write about as these words do not explain the
magnitude and scale of what occurred here. Only those who have been or those
who have studied the history of Auschwitz and Birkenau will understand this is
a place that acts as a warning to this and future generations that fear and
misunderstanding can have irreversible consequences of incredible magnitude.
These camps were given museum status shortly after the war and the people who
wanted this the most were the survivors and families of survivors who wanted
not to forget what had happened, but remember all those who were lost and warn
us of the consequences of mass genocide.
These are the only photos we took in this place. It didn't feel right to glorify this place. It is something you need to experience not see in a shitty pixelated .jpeg.
