Auschwitz, Poland

"Whether or not you choose to go to Auschwitz is up to you to decide. However it should be understood that Auschwitz is not a site of Jewish concern, Polish concern, German concern, Gypsy concern, historical concern... It is a site of Human concern. As such, everyone should visit...."

I can't say that Auschwitz has ever been on my 'list' of things to do, places I want to visit, things I want to experience. Of course I've heard of it, who hasn't? I've seen films and documentaries about it and read disturbing accounts, but nothing could have prepared me for the day ahead.

It's late January 2012 and I'm in Poland with close friends to see in my 40th birthday. We're staying in Krakow and depleting the city of vodka fast, so it's a welcome relief to escape the city for a day and make the journey 70km west of Krakow.

It's a bitterly cold day. A biting, viscous cold that I've not experienced before. The temperature is -16 and the city and surrounding areas are carpeted in a blanket of snow which makes a beautiful contrast to the piercing blue sky.
Our little tour bus chugs out of the city and into Polish suburbia. A small screen plays a documentary briefing us on what will lie ahead. There is a sombre mood onboard. I look out of the iced window, shivering in my expensive tri-climate clothes and try to imagine just how bad it's going to be. I'm an emotional person naturally and find it hard to shake thoughts and feelings that upset or affect me. However, I remind myself of something I read the day before...

"Until you've actually visited the site, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who has made the trip and recommends against going"

After an hour we are here. I step off the bus and I'm faced with what over 1.1 million people would have seen first over a period of four and a half years. 

Auschwitz I is built on the site of the former village of Oświęcim. The Nazi's chose the site as there were already former army barracks in place. These red brick buildings each served a purpose, some buildings (10 and 11) more notorious than others. 

We meet our guide Syzmon (Simon) and I warm to him immediately. He is factual, passionate and unassuming. You'd be hard pressed to find a better chaperone.
Syzmon starts with the bare facts.
The deaths: (approx)
1,000,000 Jews
70,000 Polish Political prisoners
21,000 gypsies
15,000 Soviet Prisoners of War
1000's of Catholics, Jehovah Witness' and homosexuals.

And then the tour begins.
We see the railway line and where it ends...inside the camp. There is a sign in place warning of danger if you do not halt on disembarkation. Here the innocent victims would have stepped off the train with just one bag of belongings each in the pitiful belief that they were to begin a new life here. Why did they believe that? Who knows? Perhaps when you have nothing, have been stripped of everything, you just want to believe. They brought with them pots and pans, the children brought toys... 

The majority of people to perish here were Hungarian Jews. Some journeys would have taken up to two weeks, crammed into a cage in sub zero temperatures. I shudder, but this really is the tip of the iceberg.
There were many ways to die at Auschwitz, not just the gas chamber.
Upon arrival people would be divided into two lines. Strong men and women and children aged over 10 who were healthy, were sent to the 'right' and prison cells. They had escaped immediate extermination by the gas chamber. But I think perhaps their fate was worse.
If you were sent 'to the left' you first had your details recorded, were then stripped and then gassed. 

Death by the gas chamber was a fairly new experiment in 1940 and quite often the unskilled and untrained SS soldiers got it wrong, very wrong. It was not unusual to still have people alive after hours and hours. Sometimes it would take the entire night to kill them. This method of execution was designed to take between 20 and 30 minutes to kill. It was used because it was cheap, quick and efficient. It was also one of the most painful and wretched ways to die. Suffocating and burning from the inside.
So what happened if you were 'sent to the right'?
Your average survival rate at Auschwitz was to be 4 months. You would most likely die a slow death of starvation, exhaustion or hypothermia.
If someone should escape (and about 10% of escapees were successful) then 10 random prisoners would be drawn from morning roll call and either shot at the 'Wall of Death' between blocks 10 & 11 or hung from the 20 ft of steel scaffolding in the central courtyard; and then the Nazis would visit the escapees relatives and bring them to Auschwitz to die. Could you live knowing that others would die because you had escaped? There were also various torture chambers; sickening vile rooms that housed inhumane atrocities.
We walk from barrack to barrack and on each wall there are photos upon photos of prisoners. Their heads shaven, their eyes pleading at the camera, some just stare in sheer terror.
I'm drawn to 13 year old Klara. I stand and stare at her picture. Large tears sit in her eyes, too afraid to cry. Her head is cut where the scalpel has cut too deep when shaving her hair off. She arrived in April 1941 and died in August 1941.
There are pictures of families being marched to the gas chambers. Mothers cradling their babies, toddlers holding hands, old people struggling to walk fast enough. Pictures taken just moments before impending death.
We see glass cabinets full of hair. Tonnes and tonnes of hair mainly in plaits. I plait my daughter’s hair each night before she goes to sleep so it's no surprise that I have to step away. Then there are the shoes. Thousands of pairs and then a separate glass cabinet full of children's shoes.

Tiny little leather boots. Little scuff marks where children played and tripped. A tissue is passed to me by my friend Jacqui. She couldn't see my face so I assume she just guessed.
I look at their clothes. Children's clothes. Toys, hairbrushes....
Syzmon warns us that if we are parents then this room is particularly hard. But I don't think you have to be a parent to find this harrowing. Just a human with natural compassion.
 

The Nazis deported to Auschwitz 232,000 children; including 216,000 Jewish children, 1100 Gypsy children, 3000 Polish children and 1000 plus children of other nationalities. The majority of Jewish children perished in the gas chamber immediately upon arrival. Altogether about 22,000 children of various nationalities were registered as prisoners at Auschwitz. On the 27th January 1945 The Red Army soldiers liberated at the camp just 650 children. 

 

I step out into the icy air and realise that this is worse than I thought it would be. Much, much worse.
And then the gas chamber itself. There is only one gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz I. It was only used for 6 months when it became apparent that something much bigger was needed. Cue Auschwitz Birkenau.
So here I am standing in a dark gas chamber, with scratches still etched into the wall. It's strange because there is a sense of emptiness here. I thought maybe I would sense something. But I sense nothing. If ghosts do exist then there are none here. A place too evil, too harrowing even for ghouls. The chamber leads directly into the crematorium. Four giant furnaces menacingly greet you. The floor, although a pale concrete, is dusty and dry and mimics ash. I feel suffocated and need to get out.
 

We then make our way over to Auschwitz II -Birkenau. A small polish village a short drive away ripped down and rebuilt to house and murder the increasing number of deportees. This place is built with efficiency. A large rail road runs to the centre. It stops half a mile in. A platform is then split into two. Those to the left and those to the right. Two huge crematoriums would have lay ahead. They have now been destroyed (by the Nazis in January 1945, days before the liberation on the 27th), but their remains lay in the snow untouched. 

Whilst one chimney would have been churning out black, acrid smoke another train would have been unloading and stripping its victims naked. By 1942, the volume of Jews to be murdered was so high the Nazis stopped registering and recording them. These humans were meaningless to them.
I'm glad we are here in the winter. Had we visited in the warm summer it would have been hard to imagine just how cold and deathly trying to survive Auschwitz would have been. I'm shivering, cold and actually in pain with the cold. No wonder some didn't survive their first night here in thin striped overalls.
We stand on the spot where Josef Mengele's had his laboratory. Here he conducted his experiments on twins, triplets and pregnant woman. All so that the Arian race would multiply at a rate faster than most. He was never brought to trial, he escaped to Argentina. In fact 7000 SS Soldiers served here, yet only 800 were brought to trial.
We spend time at the memorial. 

A large sculpture funded by the people of Poland and Italy. Candles burn, wreaths are placed, tears are shed.

The tour is over.
The Auschwitz Museum and Tour presents one of the most horrific acts in human history with a level of tact, passion, poignancy and professionalism that it is so profound, it almost makes as lasting an impression as the site itself.