Auschwitz-Birkenau

Today we visited Auschwitz. This was one thing we all agreed that we wanted to do when we got over here to Poland on this trip. Having seen pictures and having been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. I sort of knew the gravity of what we were going to experience, but it was so much more than I had imagined. To actually see the sign over the gate that says "Work makes one free" and to know that many of those that passed through the gates believed that upon entering hit me really hard. These many men, women and children who came to this facility all believed that they were coming here to this camp to start a new life. Walking through the gate you are then in the camp. The fence that surrounds the camp once you are inside is a very intimidating barb wire fence with a narrow road and then another barb wire fence. As if the barb wire was not intimidating enough, during the time the camp was operational the fence was heavily electrified. Many of the prisoners of the camp chose to throw themselves onto the fence and be electrocuted instead of continuing to live in the conditions that they were placed. When I heard this it brought to mind the people who on 9/11 jumped out of the World Trade Center just to escape the horrors of what was happening. We were then taken through several of the different buildings that had been converted to really tell the complete story of the size and scope of the operation that was the "Final Solution." We were shown maps that showed the various feeder camps that then fed people to the Auschwitz complex, we were shown what would happen to the prisoners when they arrived at the camp in the train cars, we were shown the photographs that were taken of the prisoners when they first arrived at the camp, we were shown the belongings that were taken from them, we were shown pictures of the atrocities that were performed there including some pictures of the children that were experimented on by Dr Mengele. All of these things weighed on me so heavily it was almost too much to bear at a couple places along the tour. We were shown the "execution wall" were thousands of men and women were sentenced to death by the Gestapo. The Nazi's even blocked the windows of the window next to the execution wall so that the prisoners in that building wouldn't know what was happening outside but I imagine that they knew very well what was happening. After seeing the execution wall we were shown the jail cells that some prisoners were placed in. They ranged from a pretty standard cell, to the inhumane standing cell where 4 people were placed in a very very very small room where they could do nothing but stand. We were also shown the room where the Gestapo decided the fate of thousands of the prisoners. After seeing the cells we were then taken to the outskirts of the camps and shown that within several hundred meters of each other you had the house where the Commandant and his family lived and the crematorium where so many men, women, and children were killed. We were shown the chamber where as many as 2000 people were crammed into and then gassed. Then right on the other side of the wall to the gas chamber is where the furnaces were for the crematorium. That was the end of the first part of the tour. Then it was on to Birkenau. When we arrived at Birkenau you have the famous image of the train tracks leading right up to the gate of the camp. Upon entering the camp the thing that struck me was the sheer size of this one. It was a massive facility, a massive facility whose sole purpose was the torture and killing of people. We were shown the wooden barracks that the prisoners were housed in. We were shown the small wooden beds that they were crammed 5 people to a single bunk. We were shown the facilities where the people were given 5 seconds twice a day to perform bodily functions. We were shown the ramp where the people were offloaded from the train cars and their fate decided. The two choices being instant death in the crematoriums or a slow and agonizing death in the work camp. The last stop on the tour was to see the blown up crematoriums and then the memorial that was built on the location. There really are no words that I can say that can convey the feelings of walking around these two camps and knowing that millions of people were put to death in this place. The facts are overwhelming. There was a huge part of me that was saying we need to destroy this place because of the horrible history of it, but then at the same time the rest of me was saying that we really do need to preserve the place so that it can be a testament to everyone for future generations to the atrocities that man is capable of doing. These places do need to stand as monuments because otherwise they could so easily be written out of the history books. Please never forget and stand guard that we not make the same mistakes again in the future that would allow for this kind of atrocity to happen again.