A Visit to Auschwitz

When you arrive in Auschwitz, you leave the train station and see just another small Polish town. Auschwitz is actually the name the Germans bestowed upon Oswiecim to make it more German. There is no scent in the air of human bodies being cremated, no SS officers dressed sharply, stopping to salute one another and say "Heil Hitler."

Thankfully, the memory of what was done here lives on through the museum at Auschwitz documenting the atrocities--horrors beyond belief. And a short drive away, one can go to Bierkenau and see the majority of the gas chambers and crematoria. The Nazis tried to destroy them before the camps were liberated by the Russians, but enough remains to clearly show they were not a mere collection of stones and bricks. Birkenau is where the infamous sadist Dr. Josef Mengele performed his "medical experiments" on prisoners.

Over one million Jews were exterminated here along with 23,000 gypsies who also were marked as unfit for the Third Reich. I came in on a train past abandoned old buildings that must have been stations at one time. A Nazi insignia was on one--it was new. The grass and weeds had grown tall. I kept thinking of Jews transported towards their death at the camps.

Walking onto the museum grounds at Auschwitz, it is overwhelming to see the large parking lot and the kiosks for food--hot dogs and ice cream. It gave the camp an amusement park aura. Other kiosks had books, mostly in Polish, and postcards. What I first found degrading, I later reconsidered as it takes several hours to see the museum. The postcards first shocked me as in bad taste. But I changed my mind when I saw that they depicted the unimaginable crimes that took place. They help to spread that truth where evil forces are denying that the Holocaust ever occurred.

Visitors included mostly Poles as they paid tribute to 75,000 Poles killed at the camps who resisted the occupation of their country. There was a kiosk where they could buy flowers and crosses to commemorate the Polish dead. There were also some French and a few Americans. And there were Japanese groups, armed with cameras. One could not help but wonder if they also visited Nanjing, Bataan, and Japanese POW camps from the War in the Pacific.
The museum, itself, seemed like nothing special until we got out into Auschwitz, itself. Auschwitz and Birkenbau were two nearby camps actually. As we entered the camp, there is a sign in German on an arch stating "Hard Work Will Make You Free." It sounds like a moral saying at a college. Those words were placed there by the camp commandant, the same man who said that prisoners only chance of getting out of Auschwitz was when their bodies burned in the crematoria and they went through the chimneys.

The residential buildings for the prisoners are made of brick. The camp deceivingly took on the aura of an elite Northeastern College with the brick facade. One could imagine, something like North Hall, South Hall inscribed on the buildings with earnest 18-year-olds from well-to-do families back East talking about their courses for the semester. It's easy to lose sight of the moment and think of some energetic American teens tossing a frisbee in front of the buildings, which look like dorms.

Dorms they were. For Jews deemed strong enough to work. Jews considered too weak upon arrival were immediately taken out of line and put on the death line. Those who survived the first death round were put to work--work that led to death, not freedom. They were housed in these "college" dormitories--stacked might be more like it. Lacking sanitary facilities, freezing in winter, the Nazis did everything they could to dehumanize them from tattooing numbers on their arms (who could visit here and ever look at body art quite the same way?) to confiscating any photos of family and any other personal valuables. Sooner or later, these "workers" would be chosen for the freedom of death.

In a couple of dormitories, there was the nightmarish evidence of the Holocaust. Survivors were prescient in sensing that there would be those in the future that would try to deny the reality of what happened in Auschwitz and elsewhere. They collected evidence after the camp was liberated by the Russians near the War's end in 1945.

Our guide, a young Polish woman, led us through room after room. One contained the hair of women whose heads were shaved just prior to their being gassed and cremated. The Nazis, never one to waste potential commercial opportunities, used the hair to make furniture, rugs, and socks for German soldiers. The most moving moment was the most unbelievable--stacks upon stacks of baby shoes. Children--including babies--were taken from their mothers and killed upon arrival. Of the something like 230,000 children at Auschwitz, 625 survived, according to our guide. How can this evidence ever be denied?

Then, of course, there were suitcases topped one upon the other, toothbrushes, glasses, prosthetic devices, and other personal effects. The Germans always looked for valuables in these objects, going so far as to take apart shoes to see if there was anything of value in the soles. There was no surprise that teeth were pulled to get at the gold fillings.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not just a place for Jews and Poles to visit. Every human being from around the world should see the horrors that Nazi ideology and the Nazis, themselves, eagerly performed here. If the Allies had not won the war, or if V-E Day had been delayed for a substantial time, the killing machine would have gone on until virtually every Jew in continental Europe had been killed.

There is one bittersweet sight in the town, virtually hidden away. Before the war, there was an active Jewish community of 7,000 going back several hundred years. The Jews and Poles got along relatively well. There is a Jewish center commemorating the Jews of that period, built in a reconstructed Synagogue which the Nazis had used as a munitions center. The Jews had a rich and vibrant history and there was tremendous variety from the more traditional to the more modern.

There is an old Jewish cemetary there which the Nazis desecrated. They took the headstones and used the marble for construction elsewhere. The cemetary has been renovated in large part by local groups. The day I was there, there was a group of young Poles and Germans--all about 22, or so-- who volunteered to work in the cemetary for two weeks. Although anti-Semitism remains in Europe, there is no doubt that a new generation has emerged and been thriving for a long time. It was quite a beautiful site to see young Poles and Germans willing to give part of their summer for ostensibly a Jewish cause that actually goes far beyond the Jews to touch all.

The beautiful and active Jewish life in Poland have passed into history, never to return. Despite what the Nazis did at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Jewish people still survived. There were so-called "Righteous Gentiles" in the war, who helped the Jews flee the Nazis. They live on in the spirit of these younger people who wish to properly memorialize the Jews who dwelt for centuries in the small village of Oswiecim. No one could imagine what the future would bring.