Thoughts on Auschwitz

Yesterday I couldn't write anything about our tour of Auschwitz. It was too emotional to attempt to express and I didn't feel that anything besides the pictures was necessary. However after a night's sleep I realize that's doing the people who suffered and died there a disservice, because the buildings themselves, aside from a few notorious examples, are just buildings. Much of it was an army barracks before the war, after all. It's the people who matter, and their stories, and for that pictures won't suffice. There's no way I could adequately describe the emotions of the place, I can only make a few observations and encourage you to visit, or at least learn more about it.

Auschwitz is without a doubt the most important, powerful place we'll visit on this trip, and I'd say it's the most important place in all of Europe. It's a little out of the way for the typical American traveller, but well worth it. You can only tour it with a guide, and if you can afford it (and it isn't expensive) hire a private guide for your small group, which you can do easily through their web site. Our guide was Marta, who's been there for seven years and could answer nearly every question from us five history buffs. She was fantastic. In 3.5 hours she took us through the highlights, explained what we were seeing, told a number of fascinating and moving stories and made for a very personal visit.

The most important thing to understand about Auschwitz is that it was both a concentration/work camp, where the victims lived short lives in squalid, brutal conditions while performing slave labor, and an extermination camp that killed about a million and a half people. Most of the buildings you see were for the concentration camp, and the need for the barracks after the war is a major reason Auschwitz survived to become what it is today.

In the first part of the tour saw the site where the prisoner orchestra would play marching tunes, which were found to speed the inmates up and so increase efficiency. Surreal. There's the famous sign reading "Work will set you free", and the main permanent exhibits. Enormous piles of shoes, luggage and other detritus of the murdered. A pile of hair that was perhaps 50 feet long, and a bolt of the cloth they made from it.

Having a young daughter the children's things were by far the hardest part for me. Luggage with "kind", meaning child, dolls, and one particular photo of a little girl standing in line sort of fidgeting and looking down at her shoes. She could be any little girl.

We then went over to Auschwitz II, or Birkenau after the beech trees. It's enormous, and had wooden barracks instead of stone. We saw the famous tower at the entrance, the gas chambers, the toilets and train tracks. Now here's the thing about the place that really got to me. The trains would roll right into the camp and everyone would get out, many relieved to finally be outside again after being locked in a packed train for days. They'd file past a doctor who would point left or right, and you'd then either be a slave laborer or you'd go straight to the gas chambers. Children, the elderly, the sick and most of the women were just herded into what they were told were showers - they were even told to remember the peg number where they hung up their clothes - then some Zyclon B pellets would be tossed in and all of these innocent people would suffocate. The Germans killed a million and a half people in this one place - that's more than the population of Prague today. It's unfathomable, and being there felt like being in a place that will forever be tainted soil.

So, it's brutal but it's one of those experiences that will have a positive impact on you for life.