Auschwitz-

Auschwitz- 

Main Gate at Auschwitz I

I recently watched a documentary on HBO on Steven Spielberg and the part that showed the making of Schindler’s List brought back some potent memories of a trip I took to Auschwitz back in the day.  I was living in Moscow at the time, but my Russian visa was expiring and I had to leave the country to renew it.  I decided to go to Warsaw to accomplish this, as it was a relatively short flight and, since I had lived there previously, I could schedule some meetings with clients and brokers I knew.  Also, since I would be in the neighborhood, I decided to stay for the weekend to finally accomplish a long overdue item on my hit list: a visit to Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  I had actually been planning on visiting Auschwitz since 1999, the time when I lived in Poland, but something always came up and I never made it and this was a regret that had hung over me ever since.  It’s so important to always push yourself to do things even if they’re a seeming hassle.  I can tell you from experience that turning down excursions, trips, even just meetings with people you cross along the way, while thinking that there will always be a “next time” is a fool’s folly…there usually is never a better or next time.

I took a train from Warsaw to Krakow on Friday after work.  I arranged for and then met a driver at my hotel in Krakow at 9:30am on Saturday morning.  We arrived at Auschwitz just before 11:00am.  For those who do not know, Auschwitz is comprised of three main camps.  Auschwitz I was the first camp and it was used from 1940 onward.  Auschwitz II- Birkenau is the one our worst nightmares try to prepare us for.  It was built in 1941/2 and the Nazis’ way to scale up their designs for a “final solution to the Jewish Problem”.  This is the camp where the train tracks end and most Jews where marched straight from the muddy train platform into the gas chambers.  It is a terrible and evil place.  Auschwitz III- Monowitz is the last camp and its primary function was to regulate Auschwitz and all the smaller camps (about 40 others) in the vicinity. 

I visited Auschwitz I and II during my trip….I and II was enough.  While this is not a excursion to make you feel happy, I always felt that each man owed it to humanity to witness first hand the evil we have done onto ourselves.  Auschwitz I is where the main museum has been established and they have guided tours in many different languages daily.  I strongly recommend getting a tour guide to walk you through the place- it really makes a big difference. 

You enter the Auschwitz I by going through a black iron gate with the German words “Work brings Freedom” cast above it.  This first camp was, on the most part, largely what I expected: you get to see the compound, living quarters, huge piles of shoes, eye glasses, luggage and other things that were being stockpiled for recycling…one of the most eerie and dark spectacles is a massive pile of human hair that has been there for seventy years.  There is something like 2400 kilos of it (over 4,000 pounds).  Human hair was used by the Nazis in making some war munitions and the pile was nothing short of amazing, and very sinister….many braids are still in place, though the sheer size and weight of it all was really amazing.   It is somewhat telling that my strongest adjective to describe the experience is the word “amazing”.  I have been saying it whenever anyone has asked me about the trip and now, many days later, it is still the most relevant way I can describe what I saw there.  The whole place blows away reality by such a wide margin that one does not really even comprehend what they are seeing when standing there….that being said, standing in Gas Chamber I where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in a room not much larger than my small Moscow apartment at the time was the most stirring and poignant moment of the first camp.  The enormity of the history (and tragedy) surrounding the place is really hard to grasp at first, but it slowly pervades your defenses and gets under your skin and stays with you....it is a much stronger experience than one can take in at first and it is surely one that you will not forget anytime soon. 

Auschwitz II- Birkenau is incredible.  It’s huge and when you approach the complex, you follow train tracks through another iron gate to where the unloading took place.  The camp feels endless and the barracks are on both sides of where the train tracks end.  It is so industrial, so systematic, so unbelievable….I still have a hard time understanding how there was never any major uprisings or attempted prison breaks, as it was clear from that place that death was only minutes or, if lucky, a few days or weeks away….so expansive, so dark, so real yet surreal at the same time.  Birkenau is the place where the Germans applied their strong engineering minds to the most hideous of enterprises.  It is one of the most amazingly sinister things I have ever seen and it turns my stomach even just thinking about it.  The Nazis stopped keeping strict records of the prisoners, mainly Jews, that they brought there after 1942 when Himmler visited the camps.   Himmler also ordered at that time that all mass graves be dug out and the corpses burned so that no future historians would be able to calculate the scale of their atrocity.  Estimates on the total number of people the Germans sent to the gas chambers and crematories at Auschwitz have changed dramatically over the years and current estimates say that approximately 1.5 million lives ended at this place….the Nazis also had plans to increase the killing/burning capacity to 20,000 people per day, but luckily, the tide of the war changed before that could become a reality.      

I think I went at the best time of the year, when it was cold and snow covered and feeling very desolate and alone among the surrounding forests.  I hear that in the summer it gets very green, but in the days of war, it was all mud and dirt.  Our guide was truly great and he took his job seriously.  He told stories of survivors he has met who have returned and he was very good at communicating the atrocities that occurred---he didn’t sugar coat anything and at times you could tell he wanted the tour group to be repulsed by what he was saying.  We all were.  He always repeated the words, “Can you imagine? Can you imagine?”  These words would follow a very evil story about how the Nazis operated the camp or what the prisoners had to endure.  I’ll never forget how he stressed these words throughout the tour. 

When I was informing my friends that I was going to make this trip, everyone I talked to advised against it or couldn’t understand why I would go so far out of my way to see such a place.  I invited lots of people to come along with me, but no one did.  Everyone I know who had been there said it was unnecessary and too depressing for me to go.  Luckily, I didn’t listen, as my conviction that we all owe it to ourselves as well as our species to witness the most beautiful and the most sinister places on this planet was only strengthened.  Auschwitz helps one become more aware of the prejudices and stereotypes that our culture breeds into us while also highlighting man’s truly unlimited capacity for apathy and evil.  Against the current backdrop of what is unfolding politically in America, and the world in general, I believe a visit is even more relevant and recommended today.

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