Auschwitz
The sobering reality had set in as soon as we arrived in the town of Oswiecim. Just knowing that Auschwitz was here just gave me chills.
Flashes of Schindler's List went through my mind, and looking at the surroundings toggled between what I was really seeing and what I had seen in black and white...and something that my history teacher had quoted, many years ago. Something about not repeating history??
The well preserved site of Auschwitz took me off guard. I was expecting a place uninhabitable, a formidable surrounding and a sense of evil. None of this was true. As a sort of oxymoron, it was formidably beautiful!
Fortunately, or unfortunately as some might think, we arrived at the end of the day, and too late for a formal tour, so we did a quick education with a mini movie and a lot of sign reading and headed out for a self-guided tour.
What I didn't know was that Auschwitz was only part of the tour. The other, larger facility was Birkenau, or Auschwitz II as it was called. We did not get to tour that area, but we got some pretty great impressions of it as we took our tour...impressions I won't soon forget.
We started through the iron gate that deceptionally read "Hard work brings freedom" in German. I was incredulous at the site of the buildings, the housing facilities themselves. Built of brick and modest architecture, they just looked like normal buildings on the outside. I guess I expected deterioration. Signs of the suffering that had taken place.
We made our way down between the buildings, taking everything in. We then arrived at the first gas chamber and took an inside tour. I will say I just didn't feel that it was right to take pictures inside. As much as I want to share my experiences, it was horrid to stand in the middle of that place and even imagine any part of what went on in there. It was a small death factory. There was a small room to the right, presumably where the victims were told to stand. To the left was a room with several ovens and an entire setup to lay the corpse, strip it of all belongings, and burn it. Behind was a small storage space.
Behind the gas chamber was a facility for hanging. This was all very close to the buildings where prisoners were lodged. I had a hard time imagining it all being so close in proximity and the prisoners knowing exactly what must have been going on. The gas chamber was built into a small hill, though, so it was not detectable from the air.
From there we toured several of the buildings themselves, most of which have been made into mini museums, housing posessions left behind, letters, photographs, hope. They told tales of where the prisoners were from, the horrific day to day lives they had to lead, and everything from how cramped they were for sleeping quarters (the massive buildings were overstuffed, most slept on the cold, hard floor) to how the children were mistreated and abused.
Although it is in my mind's eye, I just can't describe everything I saw and felt and still feel. There were 3 places that I will never be able to erase from mental imagery. One was a mini model of the massive gas chamber at Birkenau. This was housed in a room by itself and though was a scale model, the story unfolded before your eyes - this was a massive death factory. The gas chamber I had just seen was nothing compared to this. It was able to gas hundreds at a time - and cremate them. Many arrived on their train, a long, stressful journey, only to be herded immediately into this place at Birkenau.
The other was a room I happened into. The room was long, maybe 30-40 feet. I didn't see the significance at first....then it hit me hard. The long wall was a long wall of glass, holding in a deep area, and it was filled with something. ??
The something...was human hair.
To drive the impact, they had taken human hair and woven it into cloth. Not cloth as you are picturing, but...look down at your shirt. I kid you not, you could not tell that there was any hair at all in this fabric.
So here is a room with thousands of innocent people's hair, and that is one thing they did with it, and it hit me so hard it brought me to tears.
We continued on our journey through the camp. The swimming pool placed strategically on the outskirts of camp, presumably to fool outsiders that this was a legitimate working camp. The tall trees and neatly designed walkways just don't equal that horrific image in your mind. And then I arrived at Block 11.
Block 11 was the area of experiments and reserved for the worst of the worst. The execution firing wall is located just outside. The inhumane treatment only worsened, and there were several solitary cells located in the basement. The worst, I thought though, were the 4-people holding cells. In the deepest part of the cellar, there were these individual compartments, all separated by brick walls. Picture your coat closet, free of the coats and shelves, with nothing but a small hole in the bottom, and brick walls all 4 ways around. Placed in that size cell were 4 people at a time, often for days at a time. They could not sit or lay down. They could barely breathe. It made me never ever want to complain about anything ever again, for these innocent people suffered things we can't even fathom.
After that, my mind just didn't, couldn't absorb anything else. It was time to go anyway, so we walked a bit more and left through the very same gate "Hard work brings freedom"...
Flashes of Schindler's List went through my mind, and looking at the surroundings toggled between what I was really seeing and what I had seen in black and white...and something that my history teacher had quoted, many years ago. Something about not repeating history??
The well preserved site of Auschwitz took me off guard. I was expecting a place uninhabitable, a formidable surrounding and a sense of evil. None of this was true. As a sort of oxymoron, it was formidably beautiful!
Fortunately, or unfortunately as some might think, we arrived at the end of the day, and too late for a formal tour, so we did a quick education with a mini movie and a lot of sign reading and headed out for a self-guided tour.
What I didn't know was that Auschwitz was only part of the tour. The other, larger facility was Birkenau, or Auschwitz II as it was called. We did not get to tour that area, but we got some pretty great impressions of it as we took our tour...impressions I won't soon forget.
We started through the iron gate that deceptionally read "Hard work brings freedom" in German. I was incredulous at the site of the buildings, the housing facilities themselves. Built of brick and modest architecture, they just looked like normal buildings on the outside. I guess I expected deterioration. Signs of the suffering that had taken place.
We made our way down between the buildings, taking everything in. We then arrived at the first gas chamber and took an inside tour. I will say I just didn't feel that it was right to take pictures inside. As much as I want to share my experiences, it was horrid to stand in the middle of that place and even imagine any part of what went on in there. It was a small death factory. There was a small room to the right, presumably where the victims were told to stand. To the left was a room with several ovens and an entire setup to lay the corpse, strip it of all belongings, and burn it. Behind was a small storage space.
Behind the gas chamber was a facility for hanging. This was all very close to the buildings where prisoners were lodged. I had a hard time imagining it all being so close in proximity and the prisoners knowing exactly what must have been going on. The gas chamber was built into a small hill, though, so it was not detectable from the air.
From there we toured several of the buildings themselves, most of which have been made into mini museums, housing posessions left behind, letters, photographs, hope. They told tales of where the prisoners were from, the horrific day to day lives they had to lead, and everything from how cramped they were for sleeping quarters (the massive buildings were overstuffed, most slept on the cold, hard floor) to how the children were mistreated and abused.
Although it is in my mind's eye, I just can't describe everything I saw and felt and still feel. There were 3 places that I will never be able to erase from mental imagery. One was a mini model of the massive gas chamber at Birkenau. This was housed in a room by itself and though was a scale model, the story unfolded before your eyes - this was a massive death factory. The gas chamber I had just seen was nothing compared to this. It was able to gas hundreds at a time - and cremate them. Many arrived on their train, a long, stressful journey, only to be herded immediately into this place at Birkenau.
The other was a room I happened into. The room was long, maybe 30-40 feet. I didn't see the significance at first....then it hit me hard. The long wall was a long wall of glass, holding in a deep area, and it was filled with something. ??
The something...was human hair.
To drive the impact, they had taken human hair and woven it into cloth. Not cloth as you are picturing, but...look down at your shirt. I kid you not, you could not tell that there was any hair at all in this fabric.
So here is a room with thousands of innocent people's hair, and that is one thing they did with it, and it hit me so hard it brought me to tears.
We continued on our journey through the camp. The swimming pool placed strategically on the outskirts of camp, presumably to fool outsiders that this was a legitimate working camp. The tall trees and neatly designed walkways just don't equal that horrific image in your mind. And then I arrived at Block 11.
Block 11 was the area of experiments and reserved for the worst of the worst. The execution firing wall is located just outside. The inhumane treatment only worsened, and there were several solitary cells located in the basement. The worst, I thought though, were the 4-people holding cells. In the deepest part of the cellar, there were these individual compartments, all separated by brick walls. Picture your coat closet, free of the coats and shelves, with nothing but a small hole in the bottom, and brick walls all 4 ways around. Placed in that size cell were 4 people at a time, often for days at a time. They could not sit or lay down. They could barely breathe. It made me never ever want to complain about anything ever again, for these innocent people suffered things we can't even fathom.
After that, my mind just didn't, couldn't absorb anything else. It was time to go anyway, so we walked a bit more and left through the very same gate "Hard work brings freedom"...
May the knowledge of history prevent it from being repeated.
posted by Gluten Free Gourmet at 1:07 AM
1 Comments:
Wow....Powerful word picture of unimaginable acts. I look forward to processing some of this with you.
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