'To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time'.
The above, are the words written by Elie Wiesel (in his highly acclaimed novel 'Night'), a Hungarian man born into a Jewish ghetto, and whom, as a child, was sent to Nazi concentration camps at both Auschwitz (in the suburbs of Oswiecim, Poland) and Buchenwald (north-west of Weimar, Germany).
In October, my social psychology class were told that we would be given the opportunity to visit the world's most notorious symbol of terror, genocide and the holocaust; Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau. With twenty-four hours notice, I paid the following morning for the trip, alongside Emma, both enthusiastic about the decision we had made to go.
However, the following few days it really began to sink in... where it was I would actually be going, and what that actually meant. For those of you who know me well, you will know that I am one of the most indecisive people on the face of this earth, and that I analyse e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g unconditionally. Through a life time of practice anxiety has passionately learnt how to worm it's way under my skin and invade every crook and corner of my mind, provoking a whirlwind of doubt seemingly impossible to eradicate. What am I doing? How will my little sensitive soul possibly cope in one of the worlds most emotionally intense places?
It would be an understatement to say that I was a nervous wreck. For months I was so incredibly unsure about whether I had made the right decision, and continuously experienced states of panic. Do you know the reason why I was having such a difficult time accepting my decision? Because part of me felt that it was 'wrong' to want to go to such a horrible place, a place where thousands upon thousands of victims were forced to go, and here I was; choosing to go. It just felt immensely wrong. I asked my close friends and family their opinion on the matter, and they told me to stop being silly, that I was overanalysing as usual, and that it would be a valuable 'learning opportunity' for me if I went.
However, in order for me to ever feel even the slightest bit remotely comfortable with my decision to go, I had to prove to myself that my reasons for visiting Auschwitz were genuine. I am an incredibly sentimental person, which is why every part of me had to know and truly believe that visiting a place of such darkness and death was not 'wrong' and disrespectful, but instead quite the opposite. I researched and read articles about the foundation and purpose of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, and acknowledged for myself that the museum was founded and run by the Jewish community, with the aims of educating the public of the atrocities that occurred during the Nazi regime, and to ensure the unceasing remembrance of those whom suffered. I realised that it was not 'wrong' to go, and thereafter ultimately felt a sense of duty to go, to pay my respects to those whom had unjustly endured, grieved and died there.
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We arrived in the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland in the late morning, checked into our hotel and began our ventures into the town centre for a quick bite to eat before our guided tour of Schlinder's Factory Museum (the original factory building, converted into a museum). I'm glad we went to Schlinder's factory on our first day, because although I had learnt a lot about Nazi rule for about four years in school, most of my knowledge surrounded their rule in Germany, and therefore I didn't know much about their impact on Poland. Not only was I pleased to have benefited from an educational standpoint, but our visit to the museum certainly helped to prepare us for our following emotional day at Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau.
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'Arbeit macht frei', work makes you free...
I'd read about it countless times in text books, seen photographs and films, heard other visitor's accounts, yet no amount of knowledge could fathom experiencing the emotionally intense aura of Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau for your very self.
We arrived at Auschwitz I, and I was instantly shocked by how close the camps were to the roads and nearby town. I expected them to be hidden away, in a remote place, but they weren't.
We were allocated a tour guide, and were given a headset in which to listen to her through. One of the things I was worried about before going to the camps was whether it would be disrespectfully noisy, due to the many tour groups that would be there. But the use of headphones ensured the necessary courteousness of hush.
Mindful of every step, we passed under the infamous sign 'Arbeit macht frei', through 'the gate of death', with solemn faces and held breaths.
You would think, with months of emotional 'preparation' for this very moment, with your own feet now conscientiously planted on the damaged soil, where thousands of victims were previously tortured, and with the colossal, forlorn air smothering your entire being; body and soul...you would think, you really would, that it couldn't feel any more genuine in existence, but the overwhelming reality, instead, elicited a profound sense of surrealism... how could it be, that such atrocities could have occurred, here or ever?
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As we took our first few steps, our tour guide told us of the musicians that used to play as the prisoners returned from a day of labourous work, and passed, once more, through the notorious 'gate of death'... music that was once enjoyed, became a venomous symbol of terror. The music of hell.
We spent about three hours in Auschwitz I, taking it all in... realising that the ghastly experiences of those unjustly condemned, were utterly beyond absolute comprehension.
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Block four was one of the first prison blocks we went into, it's current purpose to exhibit the living conditions in which the victims lived, where wooden bunks and washrooms were displayed. Photos of prisoners lined the walls, head shots of their shaven heads, dressed in 'striped pyjamas'. It was impossible to keep my eyes from welling, looking into those captured, vulnerable faces. Did they know that they wouldn't hold their spouses again? Or witness the innocent sound of their child's laugh? Did they know that this was the end?
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The tears continued to well when we entered a room, with it's walls lined with magnified black and white photographs of starving prisoners. Pale, gaunt faces despairingly looked through the camera, past the anonymous photographer, into the souls of the free citizens of the world, silently screaming... help.
The infamous 'striped pyjamas' coated another wall. Battered rags, heavy in literal weight and metaphorical... an enduring reminder of eternal incarceration.
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The following room was all the more heartbreaking, black and white images captured young children, siblings hand in hand, with solemn faces no child should ever wear... confused and frightened, little angels.
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We walked, each step filled with gentle consideration, from one block to another. The still, poignant air, weighty and tormented, surrounded our bodies and filled our hearts with empathy, and immeasurable regard for all those agonised spirits that were so unjustly persecuted. We stood, facing one of the most notorious symbols of evil; the death wall... a brick wall in place, for the sole purpose of shooting and murdering thousands of innocent people. Commemorative flowers lay at its base in remembrance of the lives lost against it's timeless bleeding bricks.
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Block five contained material evidence, entire rooms teeming with the stolen belongings of victims. One room, with glass walls, walls that stretched as long as those of my high school auditorium, and stood taller than six foot, enclosed human hair, piles upon piles of discoloured, deteriorating shades of grey. Amongst, lay fully formed braids, obviously sliced from the head. A little blonde hair prominent.
Another room...with which artificial limbs were gathered. Prosthetic legs ripped from victims, mobility stolen from beneath them. Crutches snatched, robbing victims of their balance. Artificial arms forcefully taken, amputating (for a second time) the ability to wholly embrace loved ones. Body braces of small children seized... inflicting endless pain.
Confiscated glasses were piled upon one another. Imagine, a world without vision. No, a hell without vision. Imagine, being unable to see your loved ones clearly, for the last time. Imagine, a blurred sight in an already blurring, tragic nightmare.
Another room contained suitcases. Tons and tons of suitcases. Names etched on their hard cases, as though, if lost, would be returned to their rightful owner... Suitcases designed to keep personal belongings safe, suitcases packed with the false knowledge that they'd be travelling someplace better, someplace their families would be better off... Miniature suitcases, that once belonged in the grasps of little chubby hands...
The glass walls in another room confined shoes, thousands piled overwhelmingly high. Their colours drained and gone. Like the little blonde hair, the red rugged leather shoes of women and children, stood out amongst the grey scales. The little shoes of infants bringing tears to everyones eyes.
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'Traces of life', block twenty seven contained a room lined with images, drawn by the child victims of the holocaust, and traced onto the pale walls, divided by theme. Innocent pictures and paintings, of their homes, families and flowers, gradually transformed into morbid, melancholic images, images that symbolised inner disturbance. The sight sent shivers down my spine, and provoked a storm of goosebumbs to erupt across my entire body. Those hair-raising images will never leave my memory. Pictures of their beloved homes being terrorised, little suitcases containing their lost belongings, dead victims being carried on stretchers, rows of innocent people being publicly hung, the train tracks bearing hundreds of oblivious victims; eaten by Birkenau, families separated; mother and child hand in hand, isolated from husband and father. I'm crying writing about this.
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Standing within a gas chamber is something that I could never forget. Apprehensively, we passed through the entrance door, into the dark, eerie chamber. The harsh reality of suffocation and murder filling every bone in your body, as the scratch marks down the concrete walls shout out to you. Horrific images race through your mind of victims scrambling upon one another, gasping for clean air, clawing frantically at the walls in an attempt to save themselves; an impossible fate. Silence... in a place that once violently trembled with shrill screams and piercing cries. We stood where thousands of victims were tortured and killed, and we saw the very furnaces that cremated their lifeless bodies, innocent people once full of life turned to ashes, smoke in the sky, to be watched filling the heavens by their companions and loved ones, in mourning and in fear.
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"Shoah", the Auschwitz museum has converted block 27 into a new exhibition, one in which is devoted to Jewish life before the holocaust. Before entering, our tour guide told us to remove our headphones. We slowly made our way into a darkened room, the only light glowing from the many home videos of Jewish friends and families projected upon all the white walls. Everywhere you turn, recordings so sweet, so merry, so lively... couples young and in love iceskating hand in hand, children dancing with high spirits and singing rosy little rhymes. Mellifluous laughing, whimsical play, cozy chatter.. the sounds of happiness, the sounds that melt your heart. These were the things we, as 'free citizens of the world' could relate to, the only things. I could relate to the loving couple iceskating, because I had experienced that myself with Logan. I could relate to the little children spinning together holding hands, because I had experienced that myself during my own blessed childhood. It is in this room that it really, really hits you, just how unforeseen their harrowing futures were to them, how they would be torn from their homes, forced from their loved ones, tortured and then massacred.
I wept and I wept and I wept, for those so unjustly taken from this world. Rest In Peace.
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We travelled by bus to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and entered by foot through the entrance. To our right, ran the train track, the dreaded route that carried over a million people into the depths of living hell. We walked along the tracks, every delicate step filled with complete sensitive regard.
We stood in the spot where the victims exited the cattle carts, where SS guards directed men to the right and women and children to the left, forcibly so if resisted. We walked alongside the rail tracks, on the path that lead to the gas chambers that once stood monstrously, daunting the prisoners day in, day out. It was a long walk. With every step, I envisioned all those innocent people, walking towards their deaths, a wave of fierce emotions; despair, heartache, grief, melancholy, confusion, and even oblivion... many people, especially the elderly and injured, women and young children, were directed straight towards the gas chambers, to be killed instantly, not knowing where their feet were carrying them. As we walked the same path, we imagined the distraught screams, the shivering cries, the panicked breaths, as well as those little children tugging on their mother's arm, looking up at them for the last time with innocent eyes, asking... 'mummy, where are we going?'
The gas chambers in Birkenau no longer tower, instead they lay as rubble, destroyed by the bombs dropped during the war. I stood at the top of the still intact stairs, looking down into the mouth of pure evil. Tears filled my eyes as images of lives being swallowed swept through my mind.
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We were all really surprised by just how large the grounds were. We stood in the guard house, the glass box above the entrance that overlooked the entire site. I watched tour groups walking the way in which we had earlier, towards the gas chambers. My heart broke, once again, upon the acknowledgement that this would have been a similar sight all those years ago, a collective body of hopeless individuals proceeding towards their grave.
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We entered a barrack containing wooden bunks, each bunk previously holding five or six people. I imagined how claustrophobic is must have been, how terrible it must have smelt, how much disease must have lingered, and how much suffering must have been shared. We also went into the barracks that held the communal toilets, mere holes lined next to one another, each leading to the same pit, disease that must have swarmed through the entire room.
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We also went into the block used to 'disinfect'. Victims were forced to remove their clothes and walk through the building to a room in which they were to be showered in disinfectant. On our way to this room, we saw the machines, worked by the prisoners, that disinfected their thousands of stolen possessions, for them to be later recycled in Germany for profit. It was sickening, the chemicals used by the prisoners themselves to clean their own belongings for German benefit, was the very poison that would later take away their lives.
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These words are not enough, to describe those six hours I experienced in Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was an experience I will never forget, one which I will always remember with tears in my eyes and a heaviness in my heart. I was so apprehensive about going, but I have no regrets in my decision, and am so glad that I was able to pay my respects in a place where so many people were unjustly killed. I really do recommend anybody thinking of going to go, it is a truly eye-opening experience, and like Elie Wiesel says: 'to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time'. We must not hide from the past, we must remember.
Rest In Peace.
