Auschwitz

Author : davina
Status : foot sore... Bloody new shoes
Location: train going to Warsaw

A little family history first.

My brothers and I where all given piano lesson when we were small. My
brothers both got the same teacher while I only had her for a short
tome as unfortunately she passed away. Her name was Mrs Claire (Clara)
Martos.

What makes Mrs Martos special, apart from being able to put up with
the young Tredgets and actually teach them something was the fact she
had a pretty amazing life. One that I would never swap with her for
anything.

You see Mrs Martos, apart from being a gifted musician was a Hungarian
Jew. Not necessarily important apart from the fact she lived in
Hungary when World War 2 broke out.

This women was a survivor of auschwitz. Not only that but she came
through the Hungarian uprising 20 or so years later. We are talking
firing squads, torture beatings starvation and she survived that to
teach a 6 year old me the piano.

Mrs Martos is a legend in my family as anyone who has met a survivor
can understand. They take on this quite dignity. They instantly become
someone you respect and am in awe of. When I met a survivor who came
to our school you just can't help looking at them in amazement. This
little old person has more fight determination and bravery then I
could ever hope for.

So having this background and being a history teacher, I was
determined to go to auschwitz.

The trip there was rainy and cold. The red brown and yellow leaves
were falling beautifully to the ground. It was chilly and grey. Not a
nice place for anyone to be outside. Especially not with out proper
clothes and shoes. The worst part was it was only October. No where
near the minus 20 it can get if it was a few months later.

Auschwitz 1 was an awful place. There were rooms with chambers piled
high with suitcases, toothbrushs, plates, glasses, shoes and human
hair. 8 tones of human hair which hadn't been sent to Germany yet to
make uniforms. Imagine how many tones had been sent.

There was a wall where naked prisoners were forced to stand facing it,
while someone held them there. Soon someone else walked up behind them
and shot them in the back of the head.

There are flowers and candles everywhere. On pictures of long dead
prisoners, (the only reason we have these photos is because someone
hide the negatives inside a heater) on the ground where the gallows
stood and next to this wall.

There are no flowers and no candles at the glows where they hung the
commandant of auschwitz. Here he died 2 years after the war, next to
the small gas chamber which wasn't big enough as it only killed 300
each time and in sight of his house. Where his wife and children used
to live and play.

This was auschwitz 1. The camp which was ok. The houses were made of
brick so even though they had no fuel to put into the heaters there
was still some heat retention.

Mrs martos was not taken hear.

We then left for auschwitz - birkenau which is a few kilometers down
the road. Cold grey rainy and mud all around.

There are only a few photos of what happened when Jews arrived here
and even they were a surprise. The Nazis knew they were doing
something wrong and hid what they were doing. Why else destroy the
evidence?

But the photos we do have are of a transport of Hungarian jews. You
can see the trains. You can see them being separated, men from women,
and you can see the Nazi doctor point to the right telling an old man
with a cane he was to join the line of children, women, the sick and
the elderly who are to go to the showers.

Now we can see the railway tracks, the platform and the place where
selection happened.

Mrs Martos would have stood here. She could be in that photograph.
She would have had to stand infront of the doctor. She would have been
sent to the left. Did she know this was a good thing? What family was
with her that day? When was the last time she caught a glimps of them?
When did she find out that they weren't going to the showers?

So many unanswered questions and questions I can't believe I am asking
with the expectation of getting an answer. These shouldn't be
questions you should ask anyone because they should not have happened.
The very idea should not be there.

I have walked in the foot steps of a lady who had everything taken
away from her and yet she survived. I then walked in the footsteps of
those who did not even spend one night in auschwitz.

I saw the ruines of a place where someone thought it was ok to open a
hatch and throw poison into a room with over a thousand people inside.
And then walk away.

Sent from my iPod