Auschwitz
You have learned all about the events that took place here, seen photos, movies, read accounts from survivors. It is definitely an eerie feeling to actually walk the ground which saw such human cruelty and misery. Today was bright and sunny and beautiful, which belies the horror of the place. You want it to be cold and gray with snow on the ground.
I took a bus tour, one of the few times I felt it was necessary due to the complications of local Polish transportation and my inability to speak or read Polish words. During the hour and a half ride we drove through some scenic Polish countryside, with small towns, farms, monasteries, churches. Then we passed by the remains of a German wartime chemical factory which employed slave labor from an adjacent concentration camp. It was huge and imposing and desolate, imprisoned by its own barbed wire fencing.
We arrived first at Birkenau, which was built to accomodate the sweeling numbers of inmates arriving daily at the smaller Auschwitz camp. The older camp was originally a Polish army barracks that was being used mainly to house political prisoners. When the "final solution went into full swing, Birkenau was constructed as a more efficient killing system. It occupies several hundred acres, and although much of it was destroyed, parts have been reconstructed. Several barracks were standing, showing how the Germans used field barns for horses as inmate dormitories. We walked past row after row of ruins, mostly chimneys left, and wound up at the destroyed, ruined gas chambers and crematories. The setting was morbid.
Then we moved onto the original Auschwitz camp, which, being made of brick, still stands. Each cell block houses an exhibit detailing the crimes and horrors inflicted on 1.5 million victims. The effect was chilling, even after knowing what happened here already.
It is sad to think that even today the world cannot agree on how to address genocide while it continues to occur. It is our moral duty to intervene, rather than squabble over the definition of genocide while an entire culture is exterminated.
I took a bus tour, one of the few times I felt it was necessary due to the complications of local Polish transportation and my inability to speak or read Polish words. During the hour and a half ride we drove through some scenic Polish countryside, with small towns, farms, monasteries, churches. Then we passed by the remains of a German wartime chemical factory which employed slave labor from an adjacent concentration camp. It was huge and imposing and desolate, imprisoned by its own barbed wire fencing.
We arrived first at Birkenau, which was built to accomodate the sweeling numbers of inmates arriving daily at the smaller Auschwitz camp. The older camp was originally a Polish army barracks that was being used mainly to house political prisoners. When the "final solution went into full swing, Birkenau was constructed as a more efficient killing system. It occupies several hundred acres, and although much of it was destroyed, parts have been reconstructed. Several barracks were standing, showing how the Germans used field barns for horses as inmate dormitories. We walked past row after row of ruins, mostly chimneys left, and wound up at the destroyed, ruined gas chambers and crematories. The setting was morbid.
Then we moved onto the original Auschwitz camp, which, being made of brick, still stands. Each cell block houses an exhibit detailing the crimes and horrors inflicted on 1.5 million victims. The effect was chilling, even after knowing what happened here already.
It is sad to think that even today the world cannot agree on how to address genocide while it continues to occur. It is our moral duty to intervene, rather than squabble over the definition of genocide while an entire culture is exterminated.