"I had no idea" - Auschwitz and Birkenau

Yesterday Graeme and I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau.

It is a personal decision as to whether you want to visit such places, but I feel that it is important to bear witness to the atrocities that took place there, to try and understand and to support the survivors by showing respect and interest.

For most survivors the key issue is that it never be forgotten,  and for the million people who visit these two places every year it is a sign that they continue to remember.

This is not an entertaining blog so if you don't wish to read any more or look at the photos that is your choice.

Graeme and I booked a tour and traveled by minibus for over an hour before we arrived at Auschwitz. The first impression is that the two storey solid brick barrack buildings look surprisingly ordinary.  However the electric barbed wire fence and the high wooden towers, and the clear but sensitive descriptions from our guide about the purposes of these buildings, soon dispel any myths about this being ordinary.

The photos that are displayed add reality to the guide's words: some of them are included below. 

I will let the photos tell the story.   But remember, approximately 1.3 people died here including jews, gypsies, soviet prisoners - men women, children and babies. They were transported in from Poland,  Hungary and many other countries by train. .

It made me feel both sad and angry.

The part of the tour I found most distressing was the building that housed displays of the personal items of those killed: hundreds of pairs of spectacles tangled together,  hundreds of pairs of children's shoes, a huge pile of suitcases labelled with the names of those who thought they would be getting them back,  and, by far the most powerful,  two tonnes of human hair shaved prior to death.

The hair was sold to industries who used it in textiles and there was some carpet that had been tested and was found to contain human hair.  Just horrendous.

Birkenau was enormous: we walked nearly 3 kilometres to follow the path of those who died and to see the poor quality buildings and the hopeless conditions where people were forced to live. 

The other thing that struck me was the amount of effort, energy and skill that had been invested in the efficient killing of so many. Who were these highly skilled people and how could they distance themselves from the the appalling outcomes of their work? Many would have had no choice.

There were two stories told that I remember.

When someone escaped ten people would be killed in retaliation.  A Franciscan priest called Maximilian Colbert offered to exchange his life for the life of one of the men chosen, as the man had a family. The priest was killed and eventually made a saint. The man whose life he saved lived until he was 92.

After liberation one of the Camp Commandants,  Rudolf Hess, was hanged on a gallows carefully located so that the last thing he would see before death was the gas chambers and the buildings of Auschwitz where he was responsible for so many deaths ? (See photo)

I heard someone comment: "I had no idea" as we got back on the bus.  That's why I think it is important to go.

In my head I kept seeing this as a horrendous example of 'man's inhumanity to man'.

Your saddened correspondent

Dianne