Auschwitz

Author: Simon

A visit to Auschwitz could be nothing but shocking.
Simply it's the grave of over a million people.
But as I expected to be horrified and upset before I got there it
allowed me to focus on others thoughts and feelings.
I set my own expectations of the horror meaning I could take it in my
stride.
We had visited a concentration camp before on our first visit to
Prague two years ago and although a much smaller scale it still
contained similar horror.

The 'concentration' camp of auschwitz is made up of over 40 camps of
varying sizes, the three well known and biggest were Auschwitz I,
Auschwitz birkenau and Auschwitz III.
Auschwitz I was an old polish military barracks that the Nazis
converted and expanded into a prison. At first only for political
prisoners, something like 10,000 lived in cramped brick buildings. It
also housed all the administration buildings.

It was here in a bomb shelter the nazis first used gas on a large
scale killing 300 people at one time.

I was struck by two things.

First was the camps location. I was expecting it to be in the middle
of no where, I was even a little confused as to why we could get
public transport there. But it was in the middle of a residentiall
area. This makes sense of course because Auschwitz is the German
translation for the name of the polish village, Oswiecim, where the
orginal polish barracks was located.

The second thing was the proximity to the camp of rudolf hoess's
house. He was the commandant, manager, of the camp and he lived with
his wife and 5 children right next door, within meters of where people
were being killed.
I remember noticing this when we visited the camp just outside of
Prague. The manager of this camp lived with his children just the
other side of the wall to the camp, also next to the place where they
executed prisoners. What made this stand out was the swimming pool he
had the prisons dig for his children. 14 Jews died digging this pool.

Auschwitz one has been restored and many of the barracks converted
into exhibitions. There is no need for me to go into detail about what
is displayed.

Auschwitz birkenau has been left as it was. And it's a different beast
altogether.
Unlike the first camp which had been a converted military base. This
camp was purpose built to quickly and efficently murder thousands of
people.
There was only one small adminastration buiding, no need for more. One
gate through which the trains came in. One platform where the
transportations of people were sorted into fit to work or not. One
path to 4 gaschambers and crematorium where 20,000 a day could be
murdered and burnt. 80% of the people that arrived there would not
live untill the next day. The rest, 100,000, were put to work in
conditions I am unable to imagine.
The sheds where they slept were wooden, pre-fab animal barns. They
were wood because it was quicker and cheaper than brick. They were put
up so quickly they still had the rings to tie horses to on the walls.

Visiting these places, as well as the other museums of communist
occupation that we have seen in a number of counties, has shown me
what we as humans are capable of.

What makes this worse is it was not one crazy person or even a group
of soldiers getting trigger happy and following an order. Hitler was
not 100% to blame. There must have been thousands of SS officers and
admin staff, policemen, factory managers, the two companies that
supplied the gas crystal, even train drivers of the transportations
that had an idea what was going on and either believed it was the
correct thing to do or were too scared to act against the machine that
was the Nazis.

Throughout all the stories of horror there often came stories of
bravery where one person would either give or risk his/her life for
others some times for just one other person.

Lest we forget.

Sent from my iPhone