AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

"WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN..."  Shakespeare

Probably THE most dubious item on my bucket list has been to make what I feel should be the mandatory trek to see one of man's biggest atrocities...the Nazi German death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.  Of course I heard about it from my ww2 flying uncles, studied it in school, went to Ann Frank's house in Amsterdam and cursed the non-believers and neo-nazi thugs but I still needed to SEE it.  Kind of like dreading a colonoscopy...ya gotta do it, don't wanna do it and are soooo glad once it's over.  And so today I went....to Auschwitz. And I'll tell you right now that all of the pix here were taken by my trembling hands.

So I guess that answers the question-why go? But let's answer some other questions.

Probably the biggest question people ask is WHY DID THE NAZI'S HATE THE JEWS SO MUCH?  A bunch of reasons but the two main are:
1.  the Aryan dream- Hitler was obsessed with purifying Germany's bloodline to make it all blond, blue-eyed yodeling darlings and the Jews, gypsies, Catholics, gays, French, Polish....hell, anyone who didn't look like the von Trapp family was earmarked by Hitler for annihilation.  And the German's bought it because economically the country was seriously struggling and guess who was making the money?  and that bring me to

2.  Jews in Germany and all the surrounding countries made up a huge portion of the population and they typically weren't very patriotic or State supporting.  Their focus was their religion and their own people which would've been fine if they also weren't raking in all the dough and giving none of it back to the government.  Drove Hitler crazy.  Eliminate the Jews and the money goes back to the government and his people.  Again, the Germans bought the idea because they were on the losing end and wanted to end that pronto.


Why Auschwitz Poland?  Once the "Jewish question" (extermination) had been answered, the Reich needed a place they could carry this all out as quietly and as cheaply as possible.  Oscweicim (Auschwitz) had long been a German barracks and small scale extermination camp of Poles and Russians.  Now they just needed to build it up a bit (A LOT!!!!) and of course 1.5 million starving Jews etc became the cheap labor with the average worker lasting about 3 months (if they made it past the first cuts).

The site itself is HUGEEEEEE!!! row after row after row of 3 story reddish brown brick barracks.  There's a pretty serious body and bag check getting into the site and as i went solo, I didn't have anyone pushing me along or holding me back.  I got there at 8:30 am. It was very cold, very foggy and very crowded.

You see that "WORK WILL SET YOU FREE" entrance sign and you...well I....just froze.  This was that point where 95% of 1.5 million of these people would never see the front of that sign again.  It's profound and EVERYBODY just stops there and stares. ..in complete silence.  That was the other thing about today.  NOBODY talked. You could hear the guides talking softly into the headsets but you could hear a pin drop in a room with 100's of people just.looking.  Hell, what do you say anyway???

Right after the gate, to the left is a barracks now an office BUT I happen to know that it was used as the cat house during the war.  In order to get the workers to put out more?? (gee, a 16 hour day on a shitty bowl of gruel and bread made of sawdust slow you down??)  the Nazi's would give tokens to the cat house.  The poor guys who got the tokens were too tired to use them but the soldiers weren't.  Yes, the girls (never jewish girls!) working the cat house got food, a bed and maybe lived a bit longer but they were all sexually mutilated before they could start.

Across from that was where the prison musicians would play each and every morning.  The German's figured out the prisoners would march better off to the ovens with perky music.  ugh.

Out of the 26 Barracks, #4-7 are the most visited.
Block 4= Welcome to Auschwitz!  the torture of these poor people; scared, angry, confused.  Only 20% made it past the front gate...the old, crippled, young, Roma, on and on...they went directly to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

 The rest were stripped, shaved, numbered and shoved into rooms with beds on the floor (3 to a mattress. Only later you might get a bunk or one of the latrine rooms (check out those cute kitties on the wall!)

Block 4 also shows the photos SS took of the prisoners being forced into the "showers" where they stripped, were bolted into the room and told they were going to be disinfected with a fumigant and to breath deeply.  Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide...and it smelled like sweet almonds) canisters (here are the empties) were then dropped into the vents.

  It took about 20 horrible minutes.  Afterward, the 'sonderkomandos' --prisoners forced to take the dead bodies, remove any gold teeth and shave all heads--would then move the dead to the crematorium....about 4,400 per day....7 days a week.

I think the hardest building for me was Block 5 where the displays of things that just shouldn't be displayed are.  The building in Auschwitz where all the goods went...clothes, paintings, jewelry, valuables was called Canada.  I won't attempt to explain.

The first room was the worst.  I literally thought I was going to throw up.
 Photography of any kind isn't allowed (why?? ) but I snuck one....
1,100 lbs of human hair...............50 feet long and 10 feet tall pile of it.  Just let that sit a minute.  And THIS is only a SMALL PORTION of what wasn't sold off to make....?????

The next room was an entire 15 ft squared exhibit of kid's shoes. And, trying to take a picture of it, I just started to cry.

  I couldn't see very well but the next room was 50x10x10 X 2!!! of more shoes!!!!! Pretty shoes, manly work shoes and business shoes, slippers and clogs and a million million more shoes.

The SS told people to mark their suitcases with their name and "kind" if it as a child's suitcase.  That way, those heading directly to the gas chamber wouldn't panic.

Eyeglasses....weird... all the same style.

On and on it went.  All the precious things these frantic people had grabbed that mattered to them the most.....a room of combs and brushes,  an entire building of snapshots of loved ones.  Shoe polish tins by the 100's.

I had to take a break after that.  sit someplace quiet. eat some nuts.

I honestly wanted to go but needed to honor these souls I could feel all around me.
Off in a corner of the complex is a place where 10,000 prisoners were shot, the wall brick so pulverized the SS put up straw backing.  It was really touching to see this large group of Jewish kids and their Rabbi lighting candles at that spot.

I saw them over at Birkenau later, wayyyyyyyy off by the train car which is basically all there is at Birkenau as the German's blew the whole thing up near the end.

(Birkenau was built a year after Auschwitz got going because the means of exterminating large numbers of people was too slow at Auschwitz.  Once you passed thru the tower gate at Birkenau, you were unloaded at a ramp.  Split into 2 groups of women/kids and men, the SS dr would either point you Right=gas chamber now or Left=gas chamber later.

 But the flowers are starting to grow.

I spent 4 hours there but I will never forget it. I'm sorry if this post upsets you...it should.  Share it and upset some others.  If we EVER forget or deny this, we will repeat it.

Love from the road.