Aushwitz and Birkenau: Chilling Reminder and Pertinent Warning

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.

Our Polish escapades began in Krakow. A lovely little city, like so many other eastern European cities, it is centred around an Old Town with all the usual bells and whistles like cathedrals sporting baroque or gothic architecture, bell towers and squares that can literally swallow you and your wallets if you are not careful. We were staying in a really average hostel with ‘basic’ necessities, the upside being a free breakfast that James was able to take FULL advantage of. We do not really mind staying in less than good places, as long as they are free of bed bugs, because we do not really spend much time at all in the room. Our daily routine usually starts at about seven am, so do not think just because we are on holiday that we are sleeping in every day and kicking it by the pool, it is far too cold for that. The air changed so quickly and fiercely we went from shorts and a t-shirts in Prague to three or four layers in Krakow.

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.