POLAND: BOOKS ABOUT AUSCHWITZ

There are SO MANY books about Auschwitz: fiction, memoir, and historical. I think most people have probably read at least one. Here are a few that I have read within the last few years. If you have another one that you found insightful and worth reading, please leave the name of the book in the comments.

Man's Search for Meaning 
by Viktor Frankl
Perhaps the first significant book written about Auschwitz, this book was published in 1946 and is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century. I first read this book when I was in high school, and while some of the deep psychological underpinnings of the second half of the book escaped me then, I nevertheless had a profound experience as I read about Frankl's experiences as detailed in the first half of the book. The older I get, the more meaningful his discussion of choosing one's response to suffering becomes.

My favorite quote from the book is this: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

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: