Rainbows over Birkenau
Though part of my greater expedition throughout the Western Slavic lands with Mike C, I feel like I need to treat the largest murder factory in the history of man in a separate entry.
Still dazed from the previous night out, we found our way to the bus station and got on the next bus to Oswiecem, the Polish name for the village where Auschwicz I camp is located. Despite their efforts to keep it the name local, Polish, and innocent (it is...the town was depopulated by the SS, and therefore not complicit), the town is inevitably better associated with it's sinister German name, Auschwicz. Auschwicz II, more widely known as Birkenau, is in the nearby village of Brzinka.
We tumbled out of the bus and made our way to the visitor center, where we noted with some contempt that the times for the German language films based on the Soviet liberation footage were much more convenient than the English language version, as there was only one theater. Come to think of it, if I was German, I'm not sure I could go there. The entry uninspiring, Mike and I remarked on the irony that gleaming edifices like the Holocaust Museum in Washington are well funded and modern while the granddaddy of them all is a dowdy testament to 70's Communist stagnation.
We marched onward through the variously translated but always ironic "Work Will Set You Free" or "Work Brings Freedom" gate, where some could not resist the photo op. I still haven't decided whether that's okay or not. Part of me would have liked one, but another part of me says it's tasteless and insulting. Obviously pictures of you holding your nose by the crematorium, making the universal choking sign in the gas chamber, or sticking your head in the ovens are out of the question. I'm not ashamed to admit that even in such a horrific place the human temptation to humor and the ridiculous means the thought at least crosses your mind. You would be overcome by despair if it didn't. For the record, we posed for and took no pictures on that day.
Auschwicz I is more of a museum. It had informative exhibitions about camp life in both facilities as well as on the process of "selection (who dies immediately, who gets worked to death)" and the work details, resistance movements, etc. It detailed the markings you see on uniforms and what they meant, i.e. nationality, sexual orientation, Jew or Gentile, etc. All based on a color and a letter. There were stacks of spent Zyklon B cans and documents detailing the movement of gold from the fillings of the gassed, which were dutifully removed by the SS before cremation to be melted into ingots and shipped off to the Reich in addition to their clothes and other belongings. Nothing was wasted.
It also details the various methods of terror and torture used in the camp, some of which even the Chinese would be proud. For example, the "standing cell." Pretty clear. Too small to sit down. For days. Or the "dark cell" which was in fact so dark that prisoners were known to suffocate therein. We also speculate that the use of electrified barbed wire to surround the camps was also not just a fashion statement, but intended also as a subtle instrument of psychological torture. Think about it. What's the difference between a blank wall and strung barbed wire? Get it yet? You can see through barbed wire and look upon the siren of freedom calling your starving ass from ANY POINT in the camp. And of course, the flat, gently wooded Polish countryside (which the Nazis cleared of all human life for 40 miles around the camp) would be pretty fuckin tempting compared to Blokenfurher Fritz, rats, ersatz coffee, 6 hour roll-calls and your meager rations. Those bastards thought of EVERYTHING.
Also revolting were the experiments performed on prisoners regarding surgery and especially sterilization. How else, after all, can you rid the world of Slavs if not through forced sterilization? There are so many of them! Because of course the Nazis were purely logical and scientific, most of these were carried out on women, who are much harder to sterilize than men. The real sinister aspect of it is that these "procedures" had to be tested for effectiveness right? Who do you think did administered the love shot see if these women were still able to pour out inferior progeny? Other prisoners? Lovers? Volunteers? Or the SS? It didn't say anything about the subject, but I can guess that probably most prisoners did not fall into the old psychological adage of loving their oppressors. Thus the forced intercourse with a healthy Aryan SS Gruppenfurher in the name of science is none other than Murder's good old buddy, Rape. Also disturbing was the display on Dr. Mengle's work with children. Twins were particularly highly prized subjects.
Despite the institution's age, these atrocities really can't fade too much so there were some pretty clever aspects of the presentation. For example, there are pictures lining the walls of all the barracks cum museums of all the prisoners who were photographed. (The authorities eventually ceased the practice due to volume, and most Jews were gassed immediately without documentation.) It put human faces on what are otherwise incomprehensible numbers. It also served to highlight that there were many Gentiles, and particularly Poles, who suffered under the Nazi heel. I feel that this is sometimes a neglected fact in historiography, due only to the (fair but overwhelming) emphasis put on the plight of European Jewry in this affair.
On the other hand, possibly the most amazing part of it all were the bulk exhibitions were featuring piles of brushes, glasses, pots and pans, and suitcases confiscated from deportees, one of which bore an address about a football field away from me here in Prague. All were to be re-used or recycled in some way. Other uplifting exhibits included the prosthetics of invalids and cripples, baby clothes, Red Army uniforms, Hebrew prayer shams and gypsy sarongs, all of whose owners had no place in the Reich. The most revolting display by far was the 7 metric tons of human hair that had not been baled for processing when the Reds swept into the camp. As if it was not enough to make your gorge rise, closer inspection revealed individual braids and such, which almost pushed me over the edge into complete nausea. In case you haven't gotten how it was "processed" yet, this hair was "confiscated" from the living and also from gassed prisoners posthumously to be used as a basis for fabric. The bolts of dingy green cloth replete with traces of Zyklon B were revolting evidence of Reich industries' complicity in the affair which I only glimpsed at briefly since the urge to toss my cookies was rapidly increasing.
Bear in mind that this was only what the Russians found after they stormed the camp and much of what was there had been hastily destroyed or shipped to Germany. It's impossible to grasp the volume of such items that would have passed through that place during the whole of the war.
Everything was documented. Ironic, that most of the pictures in the museum and at Birkenau itself bear the caption "SS Foto." It was meticulous...prisoners separated into different sections based on nationality and political leanings, and of course by sex. But you have to wonder why? The intention was clearly not to create a highly skilled slave labor force. Though these people did perform slave labor, few were around long enough to have become real experts of any kind. If you're going to kill everyone anyway, who cares if Russian POWs are mixed with Hungarian Jews? Maybe I'm missing something.
One thing I thought was lacking, maybe because some would consider it offensive, was an exhibit on the SS. Who were these freaks, and where in society did they generally come from? What did they do to earn the "privilege," or was it a punishment, of working in this place? How many were they? What was the turnover? Did they draw lots for the most odious tasks, like pouring Zyklon B pellets into the gas chambers, or pulling teeth from the dead? You might say "Who cares?," but as a historian, though, you have to wonder.
Auschwicz I is fairly small, and having formerly been a Polish Army barrack, consisted of permanent structures. The best part of that camp is the well-worn gallows where the SS Superintendent Hoss was promptly hung after he was captured by the Polish Supreme Tribunal. The gas chamber and crematorium were merely a modified ammo storage bunker. In severe overcrowding the facility could ONLY hold 20000 prisoners and kill a few hundred in a batch. Therefore, it was not ideally suited for the business of dealing out massive death.
Enter Auschwicz II, or Birkenau. Around 2km away, these days it is reachable by a welcome walk over a highway and rail yard, the latter containing a few overgrown sidings of track we later realized were the spur which transported the condemned to the camp. Birkenau's murderously efficient design allowed transports to roll directly up to selection areas and the waiting gas chambers to dispatch several thousand victims (mostly Jews) at a time.
It's massive, and is a much more chilling landmark than the more diminutive and somehow less daunting Auschwicz I, holding at peak capacity around 120,000 people at a time. It ranges around a mile from one end to the other, and like a Roman military camp, you can actually see from one end to the other. Most of the barracks are primitive wooden barns that I imagine barely kept out the wind, let alone the cold. Only chimney flues remain where these countless barracks once stood, but were burned by the SS in their incomplete "liquidation" of the camp. It shows just how fast the Soviets were coming (or how out of touch the Nazi leadership was with that fact) that the camp was not bulldozed and the prisoners all killed. Still efficient, between the two camps the SS only abandoned some 7000 shades to survive the ordeal.
It has always seemed strange to me that if the Nazis were so convinced of the justice in their "work," then why did they go to such lengths to obscure their crimes? It is a split in psychology, I suppose, we will never fully understand.
"Highlights" of Birkenau include the crematoria, where some speculate up to 2 million people were summarily executed over the course of the Auschwicz operation. Unlike the jerry-rigged chamber at Auschwicz I, the gas chambers and crematoria were designed specifically for their purpose by a reputable German engineering firm, ensuring maximum efficiency, killing thousands in 15-30 minutes. Those crematoria and gas chambers not destroyed by the Subterkomando (prisoners who worked the ovens) in the 1944 revolt were detonated by the SS, but it's not hard to see from the twisted rubble how it the process worked.
To me personally the suffering of the living is not to be overlooked here either. In a way those condemned to death were blessed, as their ordeal ended 45 minutes after detraining. Seeing the overcrowded filthy barracks and the disgusting latrines was as revolting as any gas chamber. Especially since the only way out of the camp, in the words of one commandant, was "up the chimney of one of the crematoria" anyway. Why struggle? But I probably would have too, given the chance.
Denying any dignity even in death, the SS used the ashes for fertilizer or dumped them into nearby ponds as fill, presumably to extend the camp in that direction someday. Some of these ponds are a putrid grey even now. The largest difference between Auschwicz and Birkenau is that an acrid, manure-like odor pervades the latter. Upon smelling fresh manure many times before, we had to conclude that this must be the smell of death.
Crushed by all this, and pining away for some normal air, we slogged toward the "Death Gate" of the camp to leave. As we began our trek down the selection area in the middle of the facility toward "Victory over Fascism Street" outside the camp, we couldn't help noticing that directly ahead of us the intermittent rain which had dogged us all day mixed with the faint Polish sunset to form a perfect rainbow in the distance. It was fucking beautiful to be alive.
Still dazed from the previous night out, we found our way to the bus station and got on the next bus to Oswiecem, the Polish name for the village where Auschwicz I camp is located. Despite their efforts to keep it the name local, Polish, and innocent (it is...the town was depopulated by the SS, and therefore not complicit), the town is inevitably better associated with it's sinister German name, Auschwicz. Auschwicz II, more widely known as Birkenau, is in the nearby village of Brzinka.
We tumbled out of the bus and made our way to the visitor center, where we noted with some contempt that the times for the German language films based on the Soviet liberation footage were much more convenient than the English language version, as there was only one theater. Come to think of it, if I was German, I'm not sure I could go there. The entry uninspiring, Mike and I remarked on the irony that gleaming edifices like the Holocaust Museum in Washington are well funded and modern while the granddaddy of them all is a dowdy testament to 70's Communist stagnation.
We marched onward through the variously translated but always ironic "Work Will Set You Free" or "Work Brings Freedom" gate, where some could not resist the photo op. I still haven't decided whether that's okay or not. Part of me would have liked one, but another part of me says it's tasteless and insulting. Obviously pictures of you holding your nose by the crematorium, making the universal choking sign in the gas chamber, or sticking your head in the ovens are out of the question. I'm not ashamed to admit that even in such a horrific place the human temptation to humor and the ridiculous means the thought at least crosses your mind. You would be overcome by despair if it didn't. For the record, we posed for and took no pictures on that day.
Auschwicz I is more of a museum. It had informative exhibitions about camp life in both facilities as well as on the process of "selection (who dies immediately, who gets worked to death)" and the work details, resistance movements, etc. It detailed the markings you see on uniforms and what they meant, i.e. nationality, sexual orientation, Jew or Gentile, etc. All based on a color and a letter. There were stacks of spent Zyklon B cans and documents detailing the movement of gold from the fillings of the gassed, which were dutifully removed by the SS before cremation to be melted into ingots and shipped off to the Reich in addition to their clothes and other belongings. Nothing was wasted.
It also details the various methods of terror and torture used in the camp, some of which even the Chinese would be proud. For example, the "standing cell." Pretty clear. Too small to sit down. For days. Or the "dark cell" which was in fact so dark that prisoners were known to suffocate therein. We also speculate that the use of electrified barbed wire to surround the camps was also not just a fashion statement, but intended also as a subtle instrument of psychological torture. Think about it. What's the difference between a blank wall and strung barbed wire? Get it yet? You can see through barbed wire and look upon the siren of freedom calling your starving ass from ANY POINT in the camp. And of course, the flat, gently wooded Polish countryside (which the Nazis cleared of all human life for 40 miles around the camp) would be pretty fuckin tempting compared to Blokenfurher Fritz, rats, ersatz coffee, 6 hour roll-calls and your meager rations. Those bastards thought of EVERYTHING.
Also revolting were the experiments performed on prisoners regarding surgery and especially sterilization. How else, after all, can you rid the world of Slavs if not through forced sterilization? There are so many of them! Because of course the Nazis were purely logical and scientific, most of these were carried out on women, who are much harder to sterilize than men. The real sinister aspect of it is that these "procedures" had to be tested for effectiveness right? Who do you think did administered the love shot see if these women were still able to pour out inferior progeny? Other prisoners? Lovers? Volunteers? Or the SS? It didn't say anything about the subject, but I can guess that probably most prisoners did not fall into the old psychological adage of loving their oppressors. Thus the forced intercourse with a healthy Aryan SS Gruppenfurher in the name of science is none other than Murder's good old buddy, Rape. Also disturbing was the display on Dr. Mengle's work with children. Twins were particularly highly prized subjects.
Despite the institution's age, these atrocities really can't fade too much so there were some pretty clever aspects of the presentation. For example, there are pictures lining the walls of all the barracks cum museums of all the prisoners who were photographed. (The authorities eventually ceased the practice due to volume, and most Jews were gassed immediately without documentation.) It put human faces on what are otherwise incomprehensible numbers. It also served to highlight that there were many Gentiles, and particularly Poles, who suffered under the Nazi heel. I feel that this is sometimes a neglected fact in historiography, due only to the (fair but overwhelming) emphasis put on the plight of European Jewry in this affair.
On the other hand, possibly the most amazing part of it all were the bulk exhibitions were featuring piles of brushes, glasses, pots and pans, and suitcases confiscated from deportees, one of which bore an address about a football field away from me here in Prague. All were to be re-used or recycled in some way. Other uplifting exhibits included the prosthetics of invalids and cripples, baby clothes, Red Army uniforms, Hebrew prayer shams and gypsy sarongs, all of whose owners had no place in the Reich. The most revolting display by far was the 7 metric tons of human hair that had not been baled for processing when the Reds swept into the camp. As if it was not enough to make your gorge rise, closer inspection revealed individual braids and such, which almost pushed me over the edge into complete nausea. In case you haven't gotten how it was "processed" yet, this hair was "confiscated" from the living and also from gassed prisoners posthumously to be used as a basis for fabric. The bolts of dingy green cloth replete with traces of Zyklon B were revolting evidence of Reich industries' complicity in the affair which I only glimpsed at briefly since the urge to toss my cookies was rapidly increasing.
Bear in mind that this was only what the Russians found after they stormed the camp and much of what was there had been hastily destroyed or shipped to Germany. It's impossible to grasp the volume of such items that would have passed through that place during the whole of the war.
Everything was documented. Ironic, that most of the pictures in the museum and at Birkenau itself bear the caption "SS Foto." It was meticulous...prisoners separated into different sections based on nationality and political leanings, and of course by sex. But you have to wonder why? The intention was clearly not to create a highly skilled slave labor force. Though these people did perform slave labor, few were around long enough to have become real experts of any kind. If you're going to kill everyone anyway, who cares if Russian POWs are mixed with Hungarian Jews? Maybe I'm missing something.
One thing I thought was lacking, maybe because some would consider it offensive, was an exhibit on the SS. Who were these freaks, and where in society did they generally come from? What did they do to earn the "privilege," or was it a punishment, of working in this place? How many were they? What was the turnover? Did they draw lots for the most odious tasks, like pouring Zyklon B pellets into the gas chambers, or pulling teeth from the dead? You might say "Who cares?," but as a historian, though, you have to wonder.
Auschwicz I is fairly small, and having formerly been a Polish Army barrack, consisted of permanent structures. The best part of that camp is the well-worn gallows where the SS Superintendent Hoss was promptly hung after he was captured by the Polish Supreme Tribunal. The gas chamber and crematorium were merely a modified ammo storage bunker. In severe overcrowding the facility could ONLY hold 20000 prisoners and kill a few hundred in a batch. Therefore, it was not ideally suited for the business of dealing out massive death.
Enter Auschwicz II, or Birkenau. Around 2km away, these days it is reachable by a welcome walk over a highway and rail yard, the latter containing a few overgrown sidings of track we later realized were the spur which transported the condemned to the camp. Birkenau's murderously efficient design allowed transports to roll directly up to selection areas and the waiting gas chambers to dispatch several thousand victims (mostly Jews) at a time.
It's massive, and is a much more chilling landmark than the more diminutive and somehow less daunting Auschwicz I, holding at peak capacity around 120,000 people at a time. It ranges around a mile from one end to the other, and like a Roman military camp, you can actually see from one end to the other. Most of the barracks are primitive wooden barns that I imagine barely kept out the wind, let alone the cold. Only chimney flues remain where these countless barracks once stood, but were burned by the SS in their incomplete "liquidation" of the camp. It shows just how fast the Soviets were coming (or how out of touch the Nazi leadership was with that fact) that the camp was not bulldozed and the prisoners all killed. Still efficient, between the two camps the SS only abandoned some 7000 shades to survive the ordeal.
It has always seemed strange to me that if the Nazis were so convinced of the justice in their "work," then why did they go to such lengths to obscure their crimes? It is a split in psychology, I suppose, we will never fully understand.
"Highlights" of Birkenau include the crematoria, where some speculate up to 2 million people were summarily executed over the course of the Auschwicz operation. Unlike the jerry-rigged chamber at Auschwicz I, the gas chambers and crematoria were designed specifically for their purpose by a reputable German engineering firm, ensuring maximum efficiency, killing thousands in 15-30 minutes. Those crematoria and gas chambers not destroyed by the Subterkomando (prisoners who worked the ovens) in the 1944 revolt were detonated by the SS, but it's not hard to see from the twisted rubble how it the process worked.
To me personally the suffering of the living is not to be overlooked here either. In a way those condemned to death were blessed, as their ordeal ended 45 minutes after detraining. Seeing the overcrowded filthy barracks and the disgusting latrines was as revolting as any gas chamber. Especially since the only way out of the camp, in the words of one commandant, was "up the chimney of one of the crematoria" anyway. Why struggle? But I probably would have too, given the chance.
Denying any dignity even in death, the SS used the ashes for fertilizer or dumped them into nearby ponds as fill, presumably to extend the camp in that direction someday. Some of these ponds are a putrid grey even now. The largest difference between Auschwicz and Birkenau is that an acrid, manure-like odor pervades the latter. Upon smelling fresh manure many times before, we had to conclude that this must be the smell of death.
Crushed by all this, and pining away for some normal air, we slogged toward the "Death Gate" of the camp to leave. As we began our trek down the selection area in the middle of the facility toward "Victory over Fascism Street" outside the camp, we couldn't help noticing that directly ahead of us the intermittent rain which had dogged us all day mixed with the faint Polish sunset to form a perfect rainbow in the distance. It was fucking beautiful to be alive.