Spent the day at the industrial town of Oświęcim 40 KM west of Krakow. It’s a pretty non discript little town which may have faded into history, had it not been for the decision of the German authorities to locate one of the most lethal and efficient killing machines here and to give the town its German name Auschwitz.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, I knew the Germans destroyed much of the infrastructure before they left, but what was left and how much there was to see? Auschwitz I was the first camp, and is the best preserved. I was expecting wooden huts, but these were all brick and quite substantial. It was converted from an old Polish military camp and most of the huts are now filled with exhibitions on the holocaust and its effects on various peoples across Europe. There are several memorials in the ground. The place where public hangings of failed escapees took place, the prison yard where thousands of men, women and children were striped naked and then shot dead for some crime, or as an act of vengeance by the authorities. There are the cells where dissidents were tortured and killed. And there is the underground bunker where the first gas chambers where built and the crematoria where the bodies were disposed of.
There are rooms full of the remnants of lives, hundreds of suitcases labelled with names and birth dates, thousands of abandoned shoes and glasses and a room full of human hair, over seven tons of which was found when the camp was liberated. What really brings home the reality of the crime, are the pictures of the victims which line several of the huts. Young, old, rich poor, male, female the faces stare out at you. Faces like you and me. All full of life, all with so much potential, whose life and legacy was snuffed out for a vicious ideology.
However it’s not until you get to Auschwitz II 3km away, which was called Birkenau, that the enormity of the crime hits you. It’s far larger than Auschwitz I. In 1944 row after row of wooden huts stood in the fields stretching as far as the eye could see. Most are gone now, but the brick chimneys remain, marking the locations where 1000 humans were crammed into space designed for 50 horses. Over 100,000 people were in the camp at its peak. Most inmates of course, didn’t even reach the huts. Once the train, bringing victims from every corner of the continent, trundled through that infamous arch and disgorged its bewildered and frightened passengers, a simple selection was made. Those fit for work into one line, and the rest, some 70% including the elderly, children and the disabled, into another.
For the lucky 30% the future held beatings, starvation, disease and poverty and, for a tiny fraction, survival. For the others, life would only last a matter of a few more hours. There were led down to the end of the tracks and into the buildings which now stand in pieces, dynamited by the retreating guards desperate to hide evidence of what they had been party too. You can see the steps down into the void where the underground room stood. Where the prisoners were stripped naked unsure of what was to come. You can see the rubble where the gas chambers stood and where ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims whose only crime was one of birth. And you can see where the huge crematoria disposed of the dead human flesh, created as a nation tried to destroy a race. And this was not a crime carried out by some medieval warlord or some pagan state. This was carried out by educated Europeans, by members of our Grandparents generation.
Auschwitz is a very peaceful place to wander now, Once you get away from the crowds and the tour groups you only have birdsong for company. It’s hard to believe that over 1.5 million humans perished here and the green vibrant fields all around, are full of the ash from their bodies.
