The enormity of what happened at Auschwitz is very difficult to describe . More than a million and a half people, roughly equivalent to the population of Prague or Greater Richmond, or Washington DC during rush hour(this figures are from Wikipedia), died at Auschwitz. The kind of cruelty, or insanity do such a thing is difficult to matter, and to be honest, I expected…rings of fire, maybe a lidless eye, some sign that something so terrible happened...but in a way its much worse than that.
The extermination camp at Auschwitz was established in 1942 by order of a man that who would become infamous, especially in the Czech Republic, where he served as Governor, Reinhard Heydrich. In January, Heydrich chaired the Wannsee conference, which planned the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, the mass murder of the Jews. Under the direction of Heydrich, and Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, Rudolf Hoss was named the camps first commandant, and it was he, and Dr. Joesph Mengele, who were responsible for some of the worst actions at Auschwitz, including the use of Zyclon B as a way to murder human beings.
Auschwitz I, the first camp, and the one that is mostly intact, is located in a village, which if it hadn’t been the site of one of the worst atrocities in human history, would actually be kind of a nice place to live. Upon arriving at the camp, you pass through a visitor’s center, and then arrive at the actual entrance to the camp, with the famous or infamous gate. Inside, the gate the camp looks very much like a military compound, with a number of uniform structures surrounded by a wood and barbed wire fence, with signs in German that warn you not to approach, on pain of death.
Buildings
Barbed wire
The inside of the buildings have been turned into a museum. One contains images of many of the people that were sent to Auschwitz and never returned, another recreates the conditions in which prisoners would have lived, a third has some of the prison cells in which prisoners that broke the rules would be confined, and basically tortured, the last one contains many of the items that the prisoners brought with them to the camp. I found this one especially chilling; in one room in particular there were several thousands of pairs of eye glasses, and in another, suitcases with names and addresses, and artificial limbs, and crutches.
Beyond the walls, is probably the worst part of the camp. A small gallows sits there, where they hanged some prisoners and Rudolf Hoss in 1946(If it’s not the most deserved hanging in human history, I don’t know what is). Beyond the gallows is the one gas chamber at Auschwitz that is still standing (the Nazis blew up the others to try and cover their guilt…didn’t work, thank god.). The gas chamber is really chilling. You walk in, and there’s literally nothing except pipes, which were used to bring in the gas, and gouged pretty deep in the wall, scratch marks, were people tried to claw their way out. Past that, and you get to the crematoriums, which are still more or less intact…and then you pretty much run out into the fresh air.
That’s also about the time that noticed that Auschwitz is chillingly silent, and chillingly still, very few birds seem to sing inside the camp, and no one talks...but they have a book shop and a candy store, and wonder of wonders, they had Skittles in the candy store(the first I’ve seen in Europe), and a much needed Chaka boost, especially considering where we went next. We piled back on the bus, and drove across the village to Auschwitz II/Birkenau.
Birkenau is where most of the victims of Auschwitz were sent to die. Of the complex of camps that was located at Auschwitz, Birkenau was the pure extermination camps…most people who were sent there dead in something like three days, if they weren’t sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival, as many woman, children and old people were.
Unlike Auschwitz I however, anything the Nazis believed might implicate them in the Holocaust was destroyed. The crematoriums/gas chambers there are simply piles of rubble, blow up more than 65 years ago. The barracks at the camp still stand however, like silent witnesses. Like Auschwitz I, the camp is completely silent, and you can almost hear ghosts, wanting to speak. The Poles apparently say that nothing will grow at Birkenau, and having been there, I believe it.
We explored the ruins of the pausing briefly at the ruins of the gas chambers, a memorial to the victims, and one of countless barracks. Inside the barracks, some of the prisoners had written their names and/or the dates of their imprisonment. With that, we headed back to Prague...
If only 1.5 million people could have done the same 65 years ago.
Next Prague Ten: Spring Days, and the Final Countdown Begins.
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