Day 7: Auschwitz and Birkenau

This was a very interesting day…started off early to head to 2 former concentration camps. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t dreading it as much as the others…a lot of them were nervous about it, almost feeling sick to their stomachs. But I was looking forward to it…I just love history, and love WWII even more. 

Hitler was a genius- militarily, politically, logistically. The way that he carried out his invasions and the mass murders were in fact genius. Absolutely atrocious, but genius. If he had used his powers for good, the world would be a much better place.

I have a lot of pictures from the camps, but I don't feel right putting them here or on Facebook, so I'll just be putting a select few. 

Here is the infamous entrance to Auschwitz... it translates to "Work makes you free," which, of course, never came true for those in the camps.

 

Auschwitz is very much like a museum these days, with lots of tours going through it, so the magnitude of what you're seeing is a bit watered down in magnitude. But every now and then, you get a punch to the gut from what you're seeing. 

One of the first views when entering

Just inside the gates

Walking the paths between the buildings

Pictures lined the walls on both sides in one of the buildings of all the people killed at Auschwitz.

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A picture of the warehouse holding all the shoes collected from the dead

 Apparently, when he was mass murdering the Jews and other minorities, he sent them letters, telling them that they were moving, and to bring along a suitcase of their livelihoods- so everyday items, as well as valuables. When they arrived to the camps, they were separated by able-bodied and the “weak”, the ones who couldn’t work. So almost all children under 13-16 (depending on the time of the war) and the elderly. They were taken straight to the gas chambers. But they were told they were going to get showers, disinfected. That's why there was no panic. And they never separated a mother from her baby, in order to reduce panic even more.

Suitcases taken from the Jewish people. Those with
writing on them were the names of the people who
 owned them, along with their birth date. 

Once they were killed, they would move their suitcases to a warehouse to be sorted for valuables that could be used- textiles, watches, jewelry, sewing machines, etc. And other Nazi officials would comb through the corpses in the chambers, removing jewelry and cutting hair- all to be used in the war effort

The original paint and walls, exactly how it was during the war, inside the living quarters of the victims. 

"The Killing Wall," where people were secretly executed in the camps

Double electric barbed-wire fences lined the camp

The concrete bunker with the chimney is the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Inside, it was downright depressing. 

Last view of Auschwitz

Birkenau was much more difficult than Auschwitz, at least for me. Here, they had outlines and chimney of every single building that housed the victims. And they stretched for miles on either side. 

The chimneys signifying each building housing the
people, behind an electric fence and guard tower

Some of the buildings that are still intact

 These were the beds that the victims slept on. Each wooden platform looked big enough for 6 people to lay on.   This building is also completely original. Nothing has been done to modify it, other than putting gates in certain areas.                                                                                                               Also , it was extremely hot and muggy while we were outside, but once we stepped in the building, it got quite cold... I could only imagine how cold it must have been during the winters. 

This is looking at the entrance to Birkenau, from the inside of the camp. The big brick tower is where the trains full of people would come in, riding into the center of the camp. Electric fences then ran around the camp.

I cannot explain how absolutely massive Birkenau was...it was actually right across the major railway tracks from Auschwitz, because it was supposed to be transfer overflow, as Auschwitz was too full. 

We walked 1/4-1/2 mile from the entrance of the camp to the back, where the Gas Chambers were... and from there, I could see more building off in the distance, destroyed and decrepit but in the same style as the ones in front. They were closed off to us, but it was mind blowing that there was even more structures that once housed the prisoners. 

These are the gas chambers, now in ruins, as they were blown up at the end of the war. There were about 3 ruins of separate gas chambers that we saw, all at the end of the camp. The purpose was, of course, to hide them from the prisoners to avoid mass panic. They were hidden behind trees, at the edge of a forest, so the giant concrete buildings didn't stand out.

Now, between the ruins of the gas chambers, is a memorial for those who died at the concentration camps. There are plaques in about 13 different languages, all saying something along the lines of 'never forgetting the atrocities committed here.'

After the concentration camps, we all headed back to the city and had a nice big dinner and some drinks to cheer up. Although sad, it was definitely a cool experience, and a huge piece of history to be able to walk through.