Auschwitz-Birkenau

Between traveling and schoolwork, I know there haven't been many entries on Paris in a while. I promise to remedy that soon. But first, as promised, a post about my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It won't be a long entry, because there's nothing especially profound I can add to years of newsreels, movies and books. Obviously it was very disturbing. (Side note: Be careful when clicking on the photo links. Nothing graphic, but a couple are kind of disturbing). And it was surreal to see the camps in person, after studying them for so many months starting in middle school. But it's hard, if not impossible, to describe. So I'll just take you through the most notable parts of our visit.

There were actually three camps at the site: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz). Auschwitz I was the first of the camps, and is still mostly preserved. Birkenau was the much larger second camp, but the Nazis demolished much of it (including the gas chambers and crematoria) when they retreated as an attempt to cover up evidence. Auschwitz III was a work camp attached to the Buna rubber factory, which used prisoners as labor. It was also largely destroyed before the liberation, and so was not part of the visit.

We started the tour at Auschwitz I, meeting our guide in the building where prisoners were tattooed, then passing under the iconic "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign. The tour took us to several barracks, each of which had exhibits focused on one aspect of life at Auschwitz.

Row of barracks at Auschwitz

The first building that I found really disturbing was Obviously the Nazis stole enormous amounts of property from the people coming to the camps. Most of the goods were shipped off to Germany for distribution. But some of the items were stored in large warehouses in Auschwitz-Birkenau called "Canada I" and "Canada II" (because, to the prisoners, Canada represented the land of plenty). A selection of these possessions is now exhibited in one of the barracks. I remember seeing a similar exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which I thought was extremely effective. 6,000,000 people is just too large a figure to comprehend; breaking that total down into individual victims makes the Holocaust much more concrete. I was very moved by the displays of suitcases, all carefully labeled with names and home addresses, eyeglasses, pots and pans, children's shoes, even prosthetic limbs. Seeing the distinctive pattern on a mixing bowl, or extra beadwork on a small shoe makes you wonder about the lives and personalities of the people who owned them. Why did one person choose a blue mixing bowl? Was that pot a family heirloom? How old was the girl who wrote her name on that suitcase?

The most infamous--and disturbing--exhibit in the building is a glassed-in room filled with piles of human hair. After 60 years, it's all turned a uniform grayish-brown color, so it's impossible to distinguish any individual traits in it. But it's a powerful visual example of the Holocaust.

From there, we visited several other barracks, including Block 11 (the "Death Block"). It was the building where prisoners were punished for any "wrongdoing." They could be be locked into starvation cells, forced four at a time into cells the size of a telephone booth, or shot against the Death Wall between blocks 10 and 11. The fact that people spent so much time thinking of increasingly sadistic ways to torture and kill the prisoners is unfathomable, and this particular block has been left in its original condition, which makes it all the more frightening. It was incredibly eerie to walk down dimly-light hallways and see the rows of cell doors set into the peeling walls. Most of the rooms are closed to the public, but one of the starvation cells is open. Inside is a tribute to the people to starved to death there, including Father Maximilien Kolbe.

The death wall at Auschwitz

The final site on the Auschwitz I tour was the gas chamber and crematorium. Again, I don't think I need to tell you how unnerving that was, especially considering that the camp commander's house is easily within sight of the gas chamber. It's unbelievable that they could live there with their wives and children in the middle of a concentration camp. The first of these commanders, Rudolf Hoss, was brought back to Auschwitz after the war and hanged on a specially constructed gallows next to the gas chambers.

We spent a shorter amount of time at Birkenau, as most of the camp was destroyed at the end of the war. This second camp was much larger and starker than Auschwitz I, and the living conditions were much worse. The only way into the camp was via one set of railroad tracks. Prisoners were unloaded by the side of the tracks, and then sorted to determined whether they would live or die. The prisoners who were not immediately gassed survived, on average, for three months. Living conditions were terrible, with hundreds of people crammed into brick or wooden barracks (six to a bunk). The wooden barracks were originally designed for horses, which should give you some idea of their comfort level. It's not hard to understand why the survival rates were so low. The barracks were the last stop on our tour, so we headed back to the bus for a pretty quiet ride back to Krakow.

The main gate to Auschwitz II-Birkenau

The visit was a strange experience for me. Having gotten so unexpectedly emotional on my visit to Normandy, I assumed that I would have a similar experience at Auschwitz. It was a deeply affecting visit, and there were absolutely moments where I had a physical reaction to what I was seeing.But I didn't get choked up, didn't have to avert my eyes, didn't feel sick at any point. For one thing, Auschwitz I was much smaller and--bizarrely--prettier than I thought it would be. The day we were there it was cool but sunny, and very quiet. There were grassy pathways, and changing leaves and compact brick barracks, but very little to suggest what had happened at the site. Birkenau was more barren looking, and it was a little easier to picture the living conditions of the prisoners. But considering that very little of that camp is still standing, it's hard to imagine its once-vast scale.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

I think the other thing I couldn't get over was the fact that the majority of the victims were ordinary people. In my head, the are "Holocaust survivors" or "Holocaust victims," and that label sets them apart from average human beings. Trying to imagine my Mom's mixing bowl piled in with the rest, or my Dad's eyeglasses on display was almost impossible. But the fact is, these people were normal families with normal lives, and ending up in Auschwitz must have been as surreal to them as it would be to me and my family.

After a few weeks, the experience has had some time to sink in. And now I feel like there was no way for me to fully grasp what I saw at Auschwitz. I do feel as though I understand more about the Holocaust now. And, as I said, I had flashes where I sort of got it, where I was able to connect with a photograph or an abandoned possession and, by extension, the person attached to it. But can anyone but a survivor really understand what happened? Of course we should try. But, to me, it's an event so singular that even standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz I couldn't begin to understand it.