Thursday 26-06 - The camps.

There are no photos for this post. Other people took photos, but it felt to me as bad as phone texting, so I didn't.

Today was the day I had not been looking forward to. Todays activities were not something I wanted to do, but I felt I had to do. Today we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau. We started on the hour and a half bus to Oswiecim, Polish for Auschwitz. We could have spent less time on the train, but taking a train to a concentration camp would have been even more uncomfortable. Waiting to arrive and not knowing what to expect. Each old house and brick factory we passed on the way made my heart skip a little. We arrived at 11 sharp, just in time to catch the 11 oclock group tour.

The tour started with a 30 minute video about the liberation of the camp. It had footage by the Russian soldiers who were there and at the hospitals after. The film narrated the footage of skeletal survivors with details about who they were. Writers, scientists, Jews. Everyone really. I was already in ´holocaust head space´, with each detail adding to the feeling.

We received headphones to hear our guide as we walked between the other groups. We approached the main gates. slogan here. Works gives freedom. The first of many many lies they were told to smooth the procession of people. God, so many lies they were told. Bring your suitcases for relocation. Buy a train ticket to the cattle car. Use these clothes pegs getting undressed for the giant shower. So many fucking lies. So many fucking deaths. After a while you just have to take a step back from it all. You cant stay on that emotional level the whole time, its too much.

The barbed fences were one of the things that got me the most. Now surrounded by green grass, but still ominous. The barracks themselves have been converted into mini museums. Each handles a different aspect.

One had an entire room full of hair. 2 tonnes of human hair, of 7 tonnes found at the camp. 7 tonnes of hair, shaved off the bodies of men, women and children. Pulled one by one out the gas chambers and stripped of final dignity. To be used to make linen.

Everything was going to be reused. Stock piles of clothes. Piles of underwear. Of children´s clothes. Of baby clothes. Who were they going to give it to? Which boy or girl was going to wear the spoils of a murdered child?

We went to barrack 11, home to the torture cells and firing squads. Starvation rooms, suffocations rooms, rooms so small you couldn't sit. Rooms for medical experiments on children.

We finished Auschwitz at the gas chambers and crematorium. There was a sign outside asking for quiet in respect for those who died there. I don't think it was needed. It would be hard not to feel the presence of that room. I felt the weight of the room, it was heavy. I stood at the same point in space as all those who perished, in pain, in fear and without hope. We were only separated by time, which seemed so thin and fragile. I walked the same route they had traveled, from the sunlight into the darkened room and finally to the furnaces next door. Then we parted ways as I silently returned to the sunlight.

We made our way to the shuttle bus to Birkenau. The bus was crammed with people. Someone awkwardly made a joke about it being like the cattle carts. It was an emotional breath of fresh air as the mood lightened during the journey. It felt ok to have a conversation as we traveled the 3km to the next camp.

We stepped into the camp. Most was open field with the ruins of barracks. Ahead of us ran the rail road and the unloading area, up to the remains of the far crematorium. On either side were more fences separating the left and right sides of the camp, the mens and womens camps. Near the gates on each side were the few remaining barracks. They were deadly still and silent. The sky was overcast by then, threatening to rain and share its sadness with us.

The first thing to hit me was the scale of the place. It was so huge and unfathomable. The outside fences, sprinkled with barbed wire, stretched out into the distance. They stretched out so far I could hardly see the end, appearing as specks on the horizon. I could never have imagined a place like this. A place this big filled, crammed, with people. Almost a town in itself, if one could ever call it a town.

We walked into the wooden walled men´s barracks. 700 to 1000 people in each. We saw the 3 teared beds. Each tear of wooden slats holding up to a dozen people. I had seen photos of these beds (if you can call them that) when they were full of striped prisoners. It was hard to imagine those people in this empty room. Next, the toilet building. Now without smell, but one could imagine what it would be like.

The crematorium. Mostly burnt and in ruins as the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence at the end of the war. We filed past. Most of the people in Aushvitz and Birkenau had ended up in one of these four. I wondered if a part of them had never been able to leave. And maybe, if we listened closely, if we could hear them. Or feel them. Or know some part of all these people that didn't just disappear. Of hundreds of thousands, only 7,000 were liberated at the end of the war. There has to be something left in the hole in the world made by the rest.

The women´s barracks were made of bricks. They were only finished near the end of the camp´s life, so conditions were worse there for longer. You keep thinking, would I have been here? Would I have been lucky enough to survive selection and suffer in these barracks? So few did. Only 7,000 got out. Only a fraction.

First I felt angry. So angry at anyone who could do this. I hated anyone who had walked through these gates as part of this and let it happen. Then anger became defiance. Defiance, because I was alive. We were still here. I wanted to scream back into the past and yell:

You failed you bastards. Heres one more that you didn't get your hands on. I defy you by being here.

I felt fresh air as left the camp and got some lunch, then started the long journey home. I know it was a worthwhile experience which I hope I will never forget. Maybe it will have an effect on how I see the world and how I see myself. On the bus ride home, I thought about how easily we could have not been here at all. I felt a sense of responsibility to those who didn't make it. Like I owed it to them to do something spectacular. To make my life count. It is a miracle that I´m here at all and I cant waste it. I want to make my life amazing.