POLAND: AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP

June 22, 2019

After a good night's sleep and a fabulous breakfast in our new hotel in Krakow, (the Hampton by Hilton), a guide from KrakowTrip.com picked us up at 8:30 in a minibus. We made stops at a couple more hotels to pick up six additional passengers, and then headed out to perhaps the most infamous site in Poland: the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.

Auschwitz is located about 35 miles west of Krakow, a 1 1/4-hour-long drive. We passed through beautiful forested countryside, and at some point we stopped to look at some train tracks and what appeared to be an abandoned box car.

It was abandoned--intentionally--to show visitors what prisoners arrived in when they were brought to Auschwitz. Note that there are no windows. Imagine being in one of these for days without bathrooms, without ventilation, without shock absorbers, and without space to lie down or even to sit.

The name "Auschwitz" is the German version of the Polish word Oświęcim, the name of a nearby town that was an important railroad junction. At the beginning of the war, Jews comprised more than half the population of the area, or about 8,000 people. In 1940 and 1941, the Nazis systematically expelled all the residents as part of their plan to create a 15-square-mile buffer zone around what would become their most deadly concentration camp of the war. The homes and other buildings were destroyed, and in the process, eight villages simply disappeared.

Auschwitz I was the main camp and the seat of the camp administration. The first group of 30 prisoners, who arrived in May 1940, were convicted German criminals. Their role was to be "functionaries," or to supervise the other prisoners. Their sadistic behavior established the tone of the camp early on.

I have seen the photo below many times, and it was chilling to stand in this spot myself.  Arbeit Macht Frei means "Work makes you free." The Nazis installed a version of this sign in multiple concentration camps, including Dachau. Made by prisoners, it was placed at Auschwitz by order of Commandant Rudolf Hoss:

Notice anything strange in the word "arbeit"? The B is upside-down, which some say was an act of defiance by its creators:

Inside this gate, we were formed into small groups. Our group had about 20 people in it, and we had a superb guide who led us through Auschwitz for about two hours, then met up with us again after we had been driven to Birkenau, where we had another hour-long tour.

Between spring 1940 and May 1945, the Nazis deported at least 1,300,000 people to this camp, and 1,100,000 died, most of them in the gas chambers. About 90% were Jews.

There were also many non-Jews who were sent here, including 140,000 to 150,000 ethnic Poles, about 23,000 Roma (gypsies), 25,000 from other ethnic groups not popular with the Nazis, and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war. These prisoners bypassed the "selection" process (described below), and could live at the camp as long as they were able to work.

Auschwitz was not strictly an extermination camp. It had a gravel pit, lumber yard, and construction area, and prisoners worked for up to 11 hours/day.

As the number of prisoners grew, new barracks were needed. Everything was built by the prisoners themselves.

This photo from the site shows the camp orchestra, which assembled here to play marches while the prisoners filed past. This was to help exhausted prisoners keep in step and make it easier to count them as they went to and from work.

From a sign on the premises: "One of the many torments of life in the concentration camp was the daily roll-call. The entire prison population of thousands of prisoners had to stand to attention during the roll-calls held on the central square at this location. Later, when new buildings were constructed over the original roll-call area, the prisoners were lined up on the camp streets in front of the blocks. The roll-calls often lasted several hours, and sometimes even a dozen hours or longer."

It's hard to imagine this peaceful street being the scene of such cruelty:

One thing that really stood out was how respectful the crowds were. There was hardly any talking, no pushing, and (as requested) no selfies--and in fact not even photos being taken of other people posing in front of displays or buildings. 

This building below gave a general overview of the camp. Note the solemn expressions on the faces of those exiting:

A map shows the origin of the prisoners brought to Auschwitz:

Signage is in both Polish and English, and often in Hebrew as well:

Photos make everything more real. The members of this group of women and children were likely all killed soon after this photo was taken:

The faces are haunting.

There are lots of original documents, such as this telegram from Heinrich Himmler:

In the beginning, documents like these were created for each prisoner, giving the name, background, a reason for being sent to the camp:

Hundreds are tacked on the wall in the  museum:

Mind-blowing stats are presented in timeline form:

Hundreds of photos illustrate those statistics:

Hungarian Jews disembarking from a box car like the one we'd seen next to the road on our way to Auschwitz:

As the camp began to receive more prisoners, the Nazis began to streamline the process. As soon as the transports pulled in with their human cargo, prisoners were sorted according to usefulness. Most of the women, children, and those who were elderly, ill, or weak were in one line and everyone else was in another line.

This group is on their way to the "showers":

Newly arrived prisoners were told to leave all their possessions on the train platform. They never got them back--but then, they didn't need them anymore. Other prisoners had the job of sorting through them and looking for valuables:

Items were loaded on a truck and taken to a warehouse (named "Kanada I" for some unknown reason). By the time the sorting was done, most of the owners were already dead.

There are scale models of the gas chambers (left) and crematoria (right):

They even have the architectural renderings used for construction:

Other buildings had displays of various artifacts from the camp. These empty canisters once held Zyklon B, a lethal pesticide that was pumped into the gas chambers:

Dozens of Jewish prayer shawls:

Hundreds of crutches, braces, and prosthetic limbs. Perhaps some of these were from World War I injuries:

Thousands of teapots and teacups:

A case full of leather cases and woven baskets:

Children's clothing:

This case of shoes was perhaps four times longer than what is shown here:


Cosmetics, brushes, combs, toothbrushes:

Tins of lotions and creams:

There was another display that I don't have a good photo of that contained TWO TONS of women's hair. That's less than half of what the liberators found in large canvas containers. According to this website, women's hair was "used to make socks for submarine crews and to manufacture felt stockings for railroad workers. The hair was also used to make ignition mechanisms in bombs, ropes and cords for ships, and stuffing for mattresses. . . .  The hair was shorn from the heads of corpses immediately after their removal from the gas chambers (the hair of prisoners selected for labor was shaved off when they entered the camp) and was then 'cured' in lofts over the crematorium's ovens and gathered into twenty-kilogram bales. The bales were marketed to German companies."

Seeing the personal possessions of the victims of this camp was smothering. It was good to get outside again. But outside wasn't much better.

These barrack buildings, called "blocks," were the original women's camp of Auschwitz. This area was separated from the men's camp by a high wall. Many women died here of starvation, epidemics, lack of sanitary facilities, and exhaustion. those who were still alive in August 1942 were transferred to a new women's camp in Auschwitz II (aka Birkenau).

Next stop: inside a prisoners' barrack.

A typical washroom that serviced hundreds of prisoners:

As mentioned earlier, functionaries, also known as "kapos" were barrack leaders who were not Nazi soldiers but were drawn mostly from a pool of criminal prisoners and were generally known to be cruel and sadistic. They got substantially better living quarters than the prisoners. This is a barrack leader's room:

Compare that to the typical barrack, which contained multiple three-level bunk beds that had two or sometimes three prisoners per bed:

Guard towers are everywhere: 

While many of the women or children were sent to the gas chambers on their arrival, some were spared and housed in separate barracks like these:

. . . but read the sign out front:

In infamous Block 11 was the jail for the camp, the place where male and female suspects were held, questioned, tortured, and sentenced to die.

The guards inflicted horrible kinds of torture on the prisoners--starvation, hanging from a hook by hands tied together, "the standing room" where prisoners had to stand all night then work the next day, and so on

We looked through windows at two washrooms where women (top photo) and men (bottom photo) stripped before execution (why waste perfectly good clothes), and then were led in twos to the yard and shot at the "death wall."

From 1941 to 1943, the SS shot several thousand people in front of this "death wall" between Blocks 10 and 11. They were killed for various reasons, including helping others escape the camp or being in contact with outside groups. Polish men, women, and even children sentenced to death in surrounding towns for their part in the resistance movement were also brought here for execution:

Just this week German Chancellor Angela Merkel toured Auschwitz-Birkenau for the first time and laid a wreath at this wall.

Each block had a specific purpose:

Electric fences everywhere:

The chimneys in the photo below are part of the kitchen:

The picture above could be almost any small European village. Over and over, I was struck by the contrast between the almost bucolic feel of the countryside and the  horror of reality, especially when we would come across a sign like this:

Underground bomb shelters for SS guards:

Towards the end of our tour of the Auschwitz I part of the camp, we came upon these gallows. 

I've never wanted to cheer in front of a gallows . . . until I read this narrative:

The last place the tour goes is to the gas chamber/crematorium complexes, which are not far from the entrance.  The Nazis had quite an efficient system with everything neatly fitting into one building:

Prior to the war, this building was a munitions bunker. Beginning in August 1940, it was used as a crematorium, and then a year later, the largest room was made into a gas chamber, the first one at Auschwitz. Using Zyklon B gas pellets, thousands of Jews were murdered here within hours of their arrival at Auschwitz. Other victims included some Soviet POWs, sick prisoners unlikely to recover enough to return to work, Poles from outside the camp who had been sentenced to death, and others.

The gas chamber

Incinerators:

We learned that the human ashes were used as fertilizer for crops.

Visitors were very quiet, very respectful. We did not stay long in this chamber of horrors. After Auschwitz was expanded to include Birkenau, where additional gas chambers were built in 1942, the gassings here gradually stopped. Then in July 1943, even more gas chambers were built, the ones that included crematoria.

Back outside, we made our way out to the parking lot to meet our driver, who would take us the three kilometers to Auschwitz II, more often known as Birkenau.

We sat down on a curb in the parking lot to eat some sandwiches our driver provided for us and fed the scraps to these scavengers:

Again, such a beautiful setting for such horrific deeds.

Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau began in October 1941 as the main camp began to become overcrowded. A total of 174 barracks were built, each 116 x 36 feet. Prisoners were allotted just one square meter for sleeping and storing all their possessions. Prisoners built the barracks, and were forced to live in them while they were building them. As a result of the cold winter, poor diet, disease, and deprivation, many died over the winter. The first gas chamber was operational by March 1942, and the second by June of the same year. Eventually there were four gas chamber/crematoria structures at the site.

Typically, prisoners would walk the 3 km (1.86 m) between the main camp and Auschwitz II-Birkenau for work assignments and other purposes.

These days, the fields in between the camps are neatly and richly cultivated. I'm sure the prisoners never saw anything like this:

Many prisoners arriving at the camp for the first time by-passed the main camp and came straight to Birkenau on the train:

As noted earlier, immediately after getting off the train, the prisoners were directed to form two lines--one that included the men, and the other that included the women and children. The "selection" took place right there in front of the train, with the strong and healthy sent to the camp and the rest, about 70-75%, sent to the gas chambers.These are photos of pictures that are posted at the Birkenau train arrival site:

Birkenau was largely destroyed by the Nazis and has not been rebuilt as has Auschwitz. Its emptiness is eerie:

Some barracks remain:

But most are in ruins:

From within the camp, looking back at the arrival station:

At the far end of the camp, we came across the ruins of several crematoria that were dynamited by the SS in January 1945 before they abandoned the camp.

Signage at the sight includes photos taken of Crematorium II by the SS and tells how several hundred thousand Jews were gassed and their bodies burned here, along with the bodies of those who died from other causes. This gas chamber and crematorium operated from March 1943 to November 1944.

Over and over again, the contrast between the horrors of history and the beautiful surroundings was incredibly jarring:

We were taken inside one of the barracks, described by the sign below:

How do the previous images survive in the same world as this sunshine yellow bicycle with its snazzy basket? 

Goodbye, Auschwitz-Birkenau. You will haunt my dreams.

At the end of the war, the Russian army made Auschwitz-Birkenau into a German prisoner-of-war camp, interning some 15,000 Germans there.

It's impossible to convey the horror of what happened here, but I recently ran across these powerful words by Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish scientist and Auschwitz survivor:

                             You who live safe

                             In your warm houses,

                             You who find warm food

                             And friendly faces when you return home.

                             Consider if this is a man

                             Who works in mud,

                             Who knows no peace,

                             Who fights for a crust of bread,

                             Who dies by a yes or no.

                             Consider if this is a woman

                             Without hair, without name,

                             Without the strength to remember,

                             Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,

                             Like a frog in winter.

                             Never forget that this has happened.

                             Remember these words.

                             Engrave them in your hears,

                             When at home or in the street,

                             When lying down, when getting up.

                             Repeat them to your children.

                             Or may your houses be destroyed,

                             May illness strike you down,

                             May your offspring turn their faces from you.