There are some events in life that, once you’ve seen them, you will never forget. They become burned into your memory, unable to be removed. Scenes of sadness, of pain and suffering, of death or of acts thought to be inconceivable by human beings give a previously inexperienced feeling to their viewer. I think everyone has at least one of these experiences in their lives, something that leaves a strange feeling in the stomach and confusion in the mind. Mine was Auschwitz.
It was quite a comical train ride from Krakow to Auschwitz, the last pleasant experience before entering the sadness of the camp. The two girls with us accidentally got off at the wrong transfer stop and tried to run down the train like bandits out of an old Western film to get back onboard. It was actually quite embarrassing but it gave us a laugh and something to talk about for the rest of the journey instead of wondering what we were going to find inside the gates of Auschwitz.
We arrived in the town of Oswiecim (the Polish name for Auschwitz) and it looked just like any other small rural town. A train station, hotels, restaurants, fields and people walking around all made it seem quite ordinary. The two-kilometre walk to the camp was almost like a walk back in time. The farther we walked the further we got away from today’s world and the closer we got to that of yesterday. It’s almost as if one can feel the years going back upon entering the desolate area of the camp’s location. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to enter but none of what my mind pictured was actually what existed. I found it to be far more tragic and far more depressing.
The most intimidating, as well as most significant, part was just entering through the gates. Seeing the old guard tower and the sign reading ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (work makes you free) was when it really hit me that this was going to be quite an experience. In addition, just the fact that I was free to enter and exit the camp, something that its prisoners didn’t have the privilege of doing, was quite monumental.
Once inside the gates I really felt in a separate world, as if time never elapsed inside the camp. All of the barracks are the same as the Nazis left them and have been turned into various exhibits. Where the prisoners once slept is now a history lesson and a living memorial. I took no pictures inside the camp so this is all coming from memory. I felt it would be disrespectful to those who suffered and died here and also I really didn’t feel like looking at these gruesome images more than once. Memory really does have more of an impact than pictures.
One of the first barracks explains the process of putting the prisoners into the camp. It dictated how they were captured and transported from their respective homes and admitted into the camp. Various showcases contain personal items seized by the Nazis when the prisoners entered the camp. One contains eyeglasses. Thousands of pairs of eyeglasses. Some are broken, some are bent, some are in perfect shape but they are all arranged into a display case. These were all once on someone’s face.
Another particularly moving case has children’s clothing. The brutality of the Nazis really hit me when I saw the clothing from innocent children who were kept here without even knowing what was going on.
The biggest and most powerful showcase contains thousands of suitcases. Most have the owner’s name, the town where he or she came from and the date of internment on the front. It was a vision of these people’s final journey from the comfort of their homes to this hell on earth. Seeing all these personal possessions brought these people to life. Until this point they were just statistics. When I really started seeing the hard evidence it put everything in a whole different perspective. I could now realise the tragedy of so many people losing entire families. The death of just one person can affect so many and millions were killed in the camps. That translates into millions of people with family members, friends and loved ones who would never return.
For the next three hours I went from barracks to barracks taking in the horror and sadness of Auschwitz. One barracks was left as it was so the living conditions of the prisoners could be seen. Some rooms held hundreds of people in bunk beds, with two or three people to a bed. Some rooms had no beds just beat up mats on the floor. The toilets and showers were separate but definitely nothing even close to sanitary.
From there I went to the underground level of another barracks and saw the solitary confinement cells. Some had no air holes and were meant as suffocation cells. At one end of the hall there were these brick enclosures, barely bigger than the size of an adult human. Prisoners were put in here for weeks at a time having to stand, as there was no room to sit down.
Among the last places I saw, was a courtyard where prisoners were executed against a wall. They were brought out two at a time, shot in the head and then other prisoners were made to dispose of the bodies. There was a picture board depicting the entire process. From this board one walks out into the courtyard exactly as the condemned had, slowly retracing their last steps. I first entered the holding area where prisoners were stripped naked and lined up. A very uneasy feeling came over me, being exactly where these people were minutes before they died. From here I walked into the courtyard to the wall. Seeing that wall and the bullet holes and fragments in its face; I could picture those people being shot against it as if there was a video screen before my eyes. This was one of the last things I saw in the camp. My mind was so full of graphic images and horrifying information that I couldn’t even feel sad anymore because my mind was so overloaded. I was still thinking of the horrible things I had seen hours earlier and my brain was taking quite awhile to catch up. At this point I knew it was time to go but the worst was yet to come.
The exit goes out through the gas chambers and crematorium and this was the single most difficult thing for me to do. I saw the entryway to the gas chambers and it was like jumping off a cliff; hesitating until the mind has been assured that it’s safe to proceed. I was already so beside myself that I couldn’t even comprehend where I was standing. This was the very spot where hundreds of people at a time were crammed in and gassed to death, sometimes taking 15 minutes to die as the gas choked the life out of them. Then about 10 metres away their bodies were put into a furnace like firewood. I left after less than five minutes. There is no way that the human mind is meant to be able to understand the reasoning in events like this and staying longer was not going to help any.
From the gas chambers I proceeded out through the gates and back into the real world, leaving behind the gruesome past and its scenes of inhumanity.
For most of the rest of the day I just felt nothing and remained quiet. At about 9 p.m. that night, the four of us who made the trip were sitting on a street corner in Krakow watching a woman play the violin accompanied by a man playing a saw. It was such beautiful music and I kept watching the woman’s face as she was smiling and feeling every note she was playing. This is when the full force of Auschwitz hit me. I was entirely overcome with sadness and the reality of the gas chambers and everything else I had seen earlier set it. Music has a way of extracting feelings that thoughts and words cannot.
This was the most depressing day of my life but I’m glad that I went because it is something that needs to be seen in order to keep the memory of those murdered in the camps alive.
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