The darkest and cruellest chapter in modern human history - Auschwitz Birkenau, German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945) 31
What and Why
Simply the grimmest of all places that I have visited, just the mention of the name sends shiver down one's spine. Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a widespread symbol of terror, genocide and the Holocaust in the global consciousness. This breath of horror persists until today when Poland (Polish: Polska) refuses to use the Polish name of the town Oświęcim (pronounced /ɔɕˈfjɛɲtɕim/) and Brzezinka (pronounced /bʐɛˈʑiŋka/) respectively to denote the concentration camp locations, so as to put the evil label firmly onto Nazi Germany (German: Deutsches Reich). Even walking around the sites with so many visitors around bring heavy images of terror, cruelty and atrocity into one's mind.
The Auschwitz concentration camp (Obóz koncentracyjny Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Poland during World War II. It actually consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp in Auschwitz (Oświęcim); Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration camp built with several gas chambers famous for the one-way train line as picture above; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp. These camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question (German: Endlösung der Judenfrage).
Altogether more than 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died during the period from 1942 to 1944 CE. The camps did not only kill Jews: amongst the death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans. These victims died not only of executions, but also of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual killings or beatings. Others were killed in medical experiments.
While Adolf Hitler is attributed to be fundamentally responsible for this very dark chapter in human history, including the entire mass-destruction of Europe, not to mention the gravely immoral acts Nazi ideologies, it must be emphasised that Hitler did not invent the hatred of Jews or antisemitism himself. Jews in Europe had long been subjects of discrimination and persecution since the Middle Ages, often for religious and later economic reasons.
Whatever said this must be the most terrifying UNESCO WHS (I refrain from using the word tourist in this context) that I, or anyone could ever visit. And one wonders, how could human do this to other humans?
Toponymy
The Polish name Oświęcim of Auschwitz came from the Old Polish word ‘swęty’, meaning ‘strong’, seemingly referring to the first owner of the town. The name was then germanised to Auschwitz.
Birkenau (Brzezinka) derives from the word 'birch (brzoza, German: Birke)'. Clearly these two towns are now synonymous with the Holocaust, and this has rendered these original toponymies meaningless.
See
Auschwitz (Oświęcim)
One starts the horror show with the reception centre where one does a few processes of registration. The site must be guided with a volunteer who explains the tragedy with every bit of passion. All these volunteers are locals who had relatives who suffered from the Nazi and they brought in a very personal grim to the narratives.
The next step is the famous entrance gate with the arch marked 'Arbeit Macht Frei', meaning Work Makes Free in German, the most blatant lie of all. This was to persuade inmates that working can set them free or give them a mean of survival.
One is then led from camps to camps and is then bombarded with all the atrocities that took place inside these camps...
As read from the sign, many inmates tried to escape and were obviously shot. Their corpse was hung at this spot for display as a warning for the other inmates.
The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz (German: Mädchenorchester von Auschwitz) was formed by order of the secret police SS (German: Schutzstaffel, meaning 'protection squad') in the Auschwitz camp. The orchestra consisted of mostly young female Jewish and Slavic prisoners, and played music as it was regarded as helpful in the daily running of the camp. The orchestra practised non-stop for a day to perform or survive. They also held a concert every Sunday for the SS. This is the spot of the weekly performance.
We were then escorted into exploring many of the bunkers, first were the guard's houses. This represents a well maintained and decorated toilet.
An unknown chamber, but probably for the guards.
Portraits of identified inmates or victims along the corridors. I believe these have been the luckier ones, in the sense at least they had been identified. Countless had vanished without trace.
We then moved to the human hell of the inmates bunkers, which honestly looks like a sty or stable, but is actually slightly better than imagined.
As more and more prisoners arrived into the camps, they built temporary brick niches with each niche cramping a few inside.
The shooting execution yard as we moved to the grimmer bunkers. One main stories we listened to was about Imre Grese, the young beautiful but cruel camp warden who patrolled regularly around the area.
The sign reminding the visitors the death toll in the death camps.
The next few bunkers that we visited really took a mental toll on us. These bunkers are converted into museums of artefacts of the inmates and victims. The first one we saw was a pile of the empty Zyklon-B gas canisters that is used to gas the victims. Zyklon-B (translated as Cyclone-B) canisters were originally cyanide-based pesticides and the canisters were opened and dropped into the gas chambers to mass-kill the inmates. There are literally thousands of these empty canisters lying in the museum, and they are put in these glass chambers for display. The gas chambers will come later in Birkenau.
The next one involves a series of bunker and the side of the walls were all converted into a glass-cargoes. The size of the cargo is at like a long truck to signify the amount of artefacts. The first one shows the amount of metallic utensils found from the killed inmates' luggages and belongings.
When we entered this room, one girl who was just following me passed out and collapsed next to me. This room, again the size of a huge oil-truck, shows inside the glass cargo the number of empty leather items like luggages and bags from the inmates.
While it sounds incredible to say, the German SS were doing every consummate bit to recycle every materials they could extract from the inmates. When they came in, obviously they were stripped of their belongings, and all materials like fabrics, clothings, tools were taken. All metals were sorted and recycled. Jewellery and precious items were sorted and retrieved. The killed would have their teeth, hair, dentures, artificial limbs recycled. One room shows the amount of hair collected from and another girl collapsed.
This room is, to me, the most stunning. It collects all the leather shoes from the killed and heaps them up in these glass cargoes, one cargo after another. One will definitely be stunned by the sheer number and one can imagine the number of people killed during the four years of camp operations.
I was just dumbfounded by the sight but at least I could still stand. When we entered this chamber, three girls in our group immediately collapsed again and broke down into tears. No one can make a realistic count of the number of shoes or make sense of the atrocity.
Before we left Auschwitz-I, we passed by the gallow of the infamous Rudolf Höß. Höß was the chief commandant (German: Standortältester) of Auschwitz concentration camp and served almost from beginning till the end. He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to mass-exterminate the Jewish population, especially the use of gas chambers. He was sentenced to death in 1947 CE by hanging outside the crematorium in Auschwitz, as a symbolic gesture of revenge perhaps.
Birkenau (Brzezinka)
We then slowly made our way, after a short bus ride to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the famous one-way ticket train line in the main picture above. Auschwitz II-Birkenau is much more massive than Auschwitz I (as map below shown) and mainly houses the gas chambers, crematoria and various mass graves.
One slightly less grim story from Auschwitz: the most precious jobs in Auschwitz camps were toilet cleaners! This was a hardship job that no one wanted and tolerated, and for some reasons the camp guards believed it was a very obnoxious job and did not mistreat the toilet cleaners, and hence survived them inadvertently.
We then proceeded to visit the gas chambers, which is quite a large room of around 100 m2, with some non-functional pipes and shower heads to pretend that the guards were giving them a shower, delousing or disinfection. The chamber can cramp in a few hundred people in one go. A hole on the top is where the Zyklon-B gas canisters were dropped into the chamber, killing the people inside within 20 minutes.
The quick-fire crematoria to deal with the large number of corpse. Apparently these furnaces were specially designed and patented to quickly combust the corpse.
A monument of Birkenau.
More stable-like beds and bunkers housing the inmates.
Interior of these bunkers, they really look more like for animals.
We were then led to the former mass graves which had now been converted to a decent cobble-stone memorial piazza.
I have been to a number of similar horror sites before, including Dachau concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Dachau), Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders (Chinese: 侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆, Qinhuarijun Nanjing datusha yunan tongbao jinianguan) in our blogged Nanjing (南京), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington District of Columbia. Nothing compares to this realistic air of terror and heaviness the site induces.
Buy and Do
There is a tiny gift shop selling various memorabilia. I do however remind readers that this is not a tourist spot but a mass grave. So instead of Do, I shall write the Do Not, and I quote from Wikivoyage:
'Please remember that you are essentially visiting a mass grave site, as well as a site that has an almost incalculable meaning to a significant portion of the world's population. There are still many men and women alive who survived their time here, and many more who had loved ones who were murdered or worked to death there, Jews and non-Jews alike. Please treat the site with all of the dignity, solemnity and respect it deserves. Do not make jokes about the Holocaust or Nazis... and do not make Nazi salutes, even jokingly — these are considered offences under Polish law, and if you commit them, you will be placed before the court and could be subjected to a prison sentence of up to two years for propagating fascism. Pictures are permitted in outdoor areas, but remember this is a memorial rather than a tourist attraction, and there will undoubtedly be visitors who have a personal connection with the camps, so be discreet with cameras.'
Getting There and Around
The entire site is easily navigated on foot. The site is around one-hour drive from Kraków but there are so many local tours from Kraków to Auschwitz. Spend at least one day and leave another day to sink in.
UNESCO Inscription
The fortified walls, barbed wire, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers and cremation ovens show the conditions within which the Nazi genocide took place in the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest in the Third Reich. According to historical investigations, 1.5 million people, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and murdered in this camp, the symbol of humanity's cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century.
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