oświęcim

The following post is depressing and disturbing, bear with me. Or, skip it entirely, I'll understand.

Today was a dark, cold day. I ache all over from mental and honest physical anguish from seeing Auschwitz. I've been to a few Holocaust museums before, even Yad Vashem in Israel didn't have as deep of an impact on me as today did. I can hear the horror stories from victims and see pictures, but actually walking through a gas chamber where thousands of people were killed and standing on grounds where millions of people (in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone) were either murdered or left to die was sobering and terrifying.

To begin with, today was not a pleasant day weather-wise. By late afternoon the sun peeked out over the ominous clouds, but for the most part it was snowy, dreary and dreadfully cold. It made seeing the camp even more frightening, as I was bundled up in a winter coat, a sweater, a scarf, gloves, and thick pants, but by the end of the 3.5 hour tour I couldn't feel my feet or hands. Prisoners and forced workers were made to stand outside in conditions like that for up to 19 hours at a time wearing nothing but thin linen cloth and wooden clogs on their feet. People lost limbs. People lost lives.

There were so many creepy and disheartening things I saw today, so many sad stories and disgusting acts of human indecency. Usually, when one visits these Holocaust memorials, the focus is on survivors' accounts and stories; you don't hear logistics of the deeds were done, how horribly precise and sick the process was, how the victims of this horror were tricked into calmly walking to their deaths, how most of the Jews actually paid their way into Auschwitz, how they waited in line and felt relief when they actually arrived. The pictures were eerie...the people look lost but calm, as if they know that whatever is in that compound ahead of them will be good. They either don't believe, can't believe, or just don't know that they are marching to their death. I saw, I stood in crematoriums where over a million Jews were burned. A million. I can't even fathom that many people being there, being killed mercilessly without even a second thought being given to their lives, their families. The Nazis wiped out an entire nation, basically, by either killing them, forcing them into hiding, or forcing them to immigrate to the US or other non-hostile areas where they largely lost touch with their heritage. It never occurred to me before today that they basically eradicated Yiddish as a language. Most of the Jews who came through those camps spoke Yiddish...but now? Find me a million fluent Yiddish speakers. Find it taught in schools, used anywhere but in the home.

Emptied canisters of Zyklon B

Yes, genocides happen today. It's not as if the Holocaust is an isolated incident. They even happen in Europe. I think though, the reason why this Holocaust is the most terrifying is that it was done so precisely, with such mass results, so systematically, and it was horrifyingly successful. The Nazis could kill thousands at once in each room of these death camps, they had it worked out to a T, they were honestly on the track to completely wiping out the Jewish race. I feel as though (this may be uninformed) but now, in more recent genocides, what happens is one side of a war will go from house to house and pillage, rape and destroy communities of the enemy based on politics, or religion, or else force them into labor camps, with detestable conditions, perhaps on the level of the work camps in Europe during WWII. This type of genocide is also unacceptable and shows the disgusting capabilities of humanity, but to me there is something far more insidious about contracting a pest control company to gas unsuspecting men, women and children in huge underground chambers disguised as showers with Zyklon B (an insecticide), while others suffer through horrific disfiguring and life threatening medical experiments (think the next time you take that Bayer...a lot of the research for their modern medicines were done in that camp) and still others are worked and starved to death. It was torture. It was cruel. 

So, basically, I took a tour of the complex. I walked on the same roads that prisoners were marched to their deaths, at times over two kilometers. The ground was frozen but in some places muddy and disgusting, in other places off the path I could see the gray from the ashes of humans piled into huge pits. The place had a smell...it still reeked of human death and destruction after 70 years. In some of the barracks, the Auschwitz museum had set up exhibits, for instance in one room there was a 7 foot high and 20 foot long (ish) pile of hair, shaved from at least 40,000 women that never made it to the textile factories at the end of the war. There was also a swatch of fabric made from this human hair, used in SS uniforms because it was cheaper than horse hair during the war. Can you imagine your clothes being made of human hair? Hair shaved from dead Jews? It's horrifying and makes me shudder every time I think about it. 

In the museum barracks, they also had mountains of pots and pans, brushes, shoe polish, jewelry, clothes, shoes and suitcases seized from victims who were under the impression that they were moving to a new Jewish settlement, most were even given a certificate of ownership of a house they purchased that in reality never existed. 

On that note, I'm sorry for being so graphic, but that whole experience was truly disturbing. It haunts me now as I'm trying to sleep, it made me lose my appetite, it makes me sick. However, it did cause me to reevaluate my stance on the ever-present 'just follow orders' argument yet again. I understand those SS officers would probably be put to death if they didn't do exactly as ordered, but had I been in their position, I would have sooner died than participated in those horrors. I would sacrifice my life and the lives of my loved ones to stand up to those heinous crimes against humanity. With every part of my being I would give my life to prevent just one innocent child from having those experiments performed on them, just one family from being shot by firing squad, just one disabled man from being tortured. I no longer feel sorry for those German officers who 'had no choice.' They did have a choice, and death, now, in my opinion is far better than participating in mass murder. Far, far better. Unfortunately to say, I probably would have ended up on the other end of the equation had I lived in that time/place...with no choice.

I'm so thankful that I went though. It was moving and educational, it will be an experience I can never forget. Tomorrow will be happier. And I start school in Bonn on Thursday (I have a German exam on Friday!) so get ready for some stressful school related posts coming up soon.