Auschwitz-Birkenau

Drew and I jetted off to Krakow, Poland for the bank holiday last weekend and let me just start by saying...Krakow is beautiful.  It's a wonderful, old, gorgeous city and everyone should go there.  But I think I'm done with the eastern European former Nazi/Communist anti-semitic countries for a little while.  Just for a bit.

Poland unfortunately has some of the same tragic history that Hungary has, but while we could feel the focus on the former Soviet presence in Budapest, Poland in turn is completely scarred by World War II.  We hardly heard a word about communism but heard an incredible amount about the Nazis.  Which...is understandable, as Poland is where the war actually started (with Hitler invading from the west and the Soviets invading from the east), and the fact that the most horrible death camp that existed is in their backyard.  

So today's post is not so happy, or uplifting, but I'm going in order of the trip and this was up first.  Sigh.

We got in Friday afternoon, walked around, took a cat nap, went out for an amazing dinner at Pod Barenem (probably our best meal of the trip!  Two thumbs up!), and hit the hay.

Saturday morning, our driver picked us up for a long day's journey into Poland for a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Salt Mines.  I had been dreading this part of the trip for weeks.  I couldn't actually go to sleep the night before, so anxious was I about visiting this horrible place.  I know it was something we had to do but it wasn't something I particularly wanted to do.  The place was PACKED and initially much less foreboding than I anticipated...it was actually a decent looking place and I told myself that "I can do this!"  There were children there, for crying out loud.  Anyway, the tour started.

You walk into the camp under this iconic sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei" - Work Makes You Free.

Then you basically wander along between the blocks, these pretty red buildings that don't look so bad on the outside but were actually terrible and horrible.  If you even made it that far, as a prisoner.  You stop along the way, listening to your tour guide tell you disturbing things about this death camp.

Several of the "blocks" were dedicated to different things.  Extermination.  Possessions.  Living Conditions.  Pictures of prisoners.
This room shows thousands of pairs of glasses.

Thousands of pots.  The Jews were told to bring all of their most valuable belongings with them, what they needed to start a new life.  They were LIED TO and their stuff was then taken after they were gassed.   It makes me sick to my stomach.

Baskets and suitcases.

The electric fence and watch tower.

This is a courtyard turned memorial between Blocks 10 and 11 where they shot several revolutionaries, musicians, politicians, intellectuals, leaders.  Not even Jewish ones.  Just people they thought were influential and could do potential harm to their cause.

One of the former gas chambers.

I took about a thousand pictures but I eliminated a lot of them for the blog.  Pictures and descriptions can't really do this place justice.  I think the most disturbing and upsetting part for me was a Block where they had hundreds of pictures of each inmate, like mug shots almost, and the men's heads and faces were all shaved, and the women's hair was short, and they all looked so hopeless.  I could hardly look at them without crying so I had to keep my head down through that part of it.  There were several Blocks that I just couldn't go into because it was too much for me to handle.  And the details the guide goes into...it's just sickening.  I'm not going to write about it but it literally makes you physically ill.  It was a long tour and I thought I'd never recover...but the clouds seem to lift after you leave Auschwitz and you become your normal (though slightly more disturbed) self again.

But wait!  There's more!  We then headed over with our guide to Birkenau, the camp they built a couple miles away to house and kill MORE people.  And let me just tell you...Auschwitz is a five star resort compared to Birkenau.

All that remains on the vast property are a couple of brick buildings, and the frames of some wooden barracks.  You can see the chimneys (that were never used, just for propoganda) of several of the houses still standing, but it's mostly just an enormous field of...ruins.  

They had the train tracks extended to come INTO the camp, so they could speed up the extermination process.  

This is a train car that would hold 80-100 people being brought to these camps.

Ruins of the gas chamber.

A Jewish group having some sort of ceremony here.  I think the only time Drew and I even cracked a smile was when we saw one of the guys grab a brick from the gas chamber ruins and hide it in his coat and attempt to walk off like he didn't just steal it.  Nice.

We got to go inside one of the barracks, and it was pretty grim.

The women would sleep on these wooden planks, usually 6-8 across.  And there would be no heating.  In the middle of a Polish winter.  Can you imagine?  Another thing that makes me sick.

We got back in the car and tried to compose ourselves, return to a state of normalcy, compartmentalize the depressing things we just saw, and shove them into a drawer in the back of our minds.  But now I'm having to open the drawer again to write about this and I DON'T LIKE IT.

One thing we noticed was that our Polish tour guide was NOT so pro-American/Britain/Allies as we thought they would be.  I think we so often pat ourselves on the back for being back-to-back World War champs and liberating the oppressed people of Europe, but the Poles don't see it this way.  Or at least this Pole didn't.  He would talk about how the "A-lies" knew that these atrocities were happening but did nothing to stop them.  And that the U.S. sold Poland to the Soviets when the war was over, "betraying [them] yet again."  We get all the glory but we did nothing to help the Jews or the Poles during the war.  So that was...a new perspective, one that I wasn't used to, because I'm a stereotypical American and think we're the heroes. But new perspectives are a good thing and I'm just now sorry that people feel that way about us.  And that we did/didn't do those things.  We did ask our guide at the end how he managed to do tours at Auschwitz, going over these upsetting facts and stories with people in great detail DAILY, and he said that he, along with most of the other tour guides, have relatives and family members that were murdered there.  So keeping them in mind and having a personal reason for not letting the world forget these atrocities certainly helps.  

We left there with sad and angry feelings, new perspectives, new information, and an even deeper hatred of Hitler.  Sorry not sorry.

In conclusion, I leave you with this quote from George Santayana, which was plastered all over the camp:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.