Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Some may remember my post from Christmas about Poland. I mentioned that I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. I didn't want to post about in until after the holidays.While the entire place is very sad I must say that it is not the most depressing place I have visited. That would be Terezinstadt. You can read my post about that ghetto again if you like. Auschwitz had a more sanitized, museum type feel to it. There was only one point where I really felt impressive sorrow, but I'll get to that later.
If you like there are day-trip bus tours that leave from Prague and go to Auschwitz and back. The price is generally reasonable and there are sometimes sales. I'm not completely sure about the language the tours will be in. I think all the ones I've ever researched were Czech, so that might not do a lot of good for some people. I will discuss getting to Auschwitz from Krakow because it's what I did.
I spent a lot of time googling how exactly to get to Auschwitz from Krakow. The best way is by bus. I went to the main bus station and asked at the information window where I could find the bus going to Auschwitz. Well, I didn't ask really. I listened while people in front of me in line asked and thought I would be polite and rescue the lady at the information window from having to answer the same question three times in a row.
At the main bus station it is not clearly marked anywhere how, or where, you can find the hourly bus that will take you to Auschwitz. You really do have to ask at the information window and they will not sell you tickets. They will however, direct you to the correct platform. After that it is pretty easy to see which bus you need as it is clearly marked by a sign in the front window. You must buy your ticket from the bus driver. It's not very expensive, I think 5 or 10 Zloty. The trip takes a little more than an hour and the bus drivers are used to tourists so everything will go smoothly.
The bus drops you very close to the entrance to the museum and it picks you up in the same place. Returning is the opposite. Be advised that there are no reserved tickets for the bus and when you line up to come back it's first-come, first-served. Because the bus makes other stops and is not a direct one it will fill up. On my return trip, which was on the penultimate bus, there were people standing.
I suggest buying a ticket to visit the museum online. A ticket is required to visit the museum, but not Birkenau, which is where the camp is. A tour of the museum includes a tour of Birkenau. I didn't buy a ticket online and there was a line at the tiny, white trailer of a ticket booth in front of the museum. The nearest English tour was all full up so I had to buy one for the tour two hours later. So I went to Birkenau on the free shuttle bus to kill time.
This is the famous entrance to Birkenau as seen from inside the camp. obviously the railroad tracks are very symbolic and I was not the only one setting my camera on them hoping for the Spielberg shot. While it is interesting to just wander Birkenau alone, I recomend a tour too. You will learn and understand a lot more.
The first thing I noticed that no movie or photograph can even come close to capturing is the size of the place. It is huge. I think it is 1km by 2km or something like that. At one point something like 100 thousand people were living there. It was a city, not a village or town but a city. It was so large that the Germans needed waste-water treatment facilities and were building a second plant when the camp was liberated.
What you see above is most of what remains of the buildings where prisoners were housed. The Nazis took off in a hurry and left the infirmed who they didn't think could travel to fend for themselves. This happened during the Polish winter. The remaining prisoners used the wood from the buildings, and presumably anything else flamable, to keep themselves alive.
There are hundreds of these chimneys standing in well-organized rows placed with German effeciency like giant, fragile toubstones. There were so many that I didn't even attempt to count them.
Some of the wooden structures have been reconstructed. Here you can see what they looked like. There were also brick houses at the camp but there is some trouble with those. Evidently there was some agreement or charter for the camp that was made in the spirit of keeping the camp in its original condition. Somehow, this equates to zero maintenance being performed at Birkenau. There are a few reconstructions and I'm not sure exactly how it works, but the guide told us that in a few years it will most likely not be safe to enter any of the existing brick buildings once used to house prisoners. Some of them are already off limits and have had wooden braces erected to keep them standing.
This is one of the brick buildings used to house mostly women and children. Not the Rtiz Carlton, but better looking than the wooden ones. I doubt either one was particularly comfortable. And as much as I hate to make comparisons between these horrible places, the conditions at Auschwitz on the whole looked more comfortable than at Terezin.
This is not a reproduction rail car. This is the real deal. I've seen the rail cars in movies etc, but I can't recall ever seeing them with the guard shack attached. That is how they were. The guide told us that there was no doubt that this rail car was used to transport prisoners to concentration camps. It is not known if this particular car transported prisoners to Birkenau and the guide wouldn't even speculate on that.
The rail lines at the camp kept getting extended until finally they lead right to the ovens at the back of the property. The idea was to just unload people straight into the ovens. The guide said the camp was liberated before that ever happened on a large scale and that it may have only occured once or twice. You can see the gatehouse in the distance a kilometer away. This place is pretty much at the very back of the camp.
As the Nazis realized that the Soviets were swiftly approaching they decided that having a functioning, large scale extermination facility might not look too good. So they destroyed the gas chambers and crematoriums at the back of the camp within sight of the railhead with the flowers above. I took this photo for the whole, from the ruins of horror springs life thing with that wildflower growing out of the rubble cliche.
For me the most striking thing about both Auschwitz and Birkenau was the amount of barbed wire. There was a lot of it. It was also something that I think they replace every so often to keep the camp looking authentic. I haven't read anything about the way they can only maintian the camp, but from the sounds of it that part needs some improvement.
This is a section of wire fencing at Birkenau. This particular area was a road of sorts to the gas chambers. New arrivals to the camp disembarked very close to where the railroad car above is, then they were assessed based on their potential for labor. Women and children generally had a diminished capacity for work and were lead down this road to the gas chambers. Even this became troublesome and that is when someone had the idea to just run the trains straight to the chambers.
In keeping with the theme of the barbed-wire fencing we travel now to the main Auschwitz camp itself. The fencing at the main Auschwitz camp was electrified. It may have been the same story at Birkenau, but I don't know. Much like Terezin, Auschwitz was a repurposed military garrison. Most of the buildings were barracks for the Polish army.
The Germans did their level best to turn the place into a city of sorts, but there are definite prison motifs throughout.
When your building is described as a "block" there aren't a lot of options as to what it could be. So many of these building have been cleared, cleaned and converted into museum spaces that the feeling is completely different from what it once was. That is why I say Terezin is so much more poignant. In Terezin it feels like the Nazis just packed up and split. They threw open the doors and fled and that is how things stayed. Being there is like walking through a tomb. Auschwitz is very much different.
There are some impressively sad displays at Auscwitz and it's something everyone should remember and see at least once in his life. Will I return? Maybe, I didn't feel much sorrow or pain here and feel a touch indifferent about Auschwitz proper.
Displays like the shoes above have been expertly curated to make us feel something about the scope of the horrors that occured in this place, or more accurately in nearby Birkenau. The way they are done, to me reduced their effect. A pile of thousands of shoes behind glass is impressive, but knowing it's only a fraction of reality made it feel sanitized for me.
A bit more effective was this display of glasses. But still, they are just things. Things which define humanity yes, but so far removed in time and strategically placed that they have a diminished impact for me.
Even this display of used Zyklon B canisters just didn't have me tearing up. Things did start to get real however when we were ushered into a room full of human hair and then told that the Nazis made a hefty profit reselling the hair from dead prisoners for industrial purposes. Firstly, I had no idea hair could be used for so many things and secondly; humans, no matter what their status, are not livestock and to treat them as fodder for industry like sheep or cattle is offensive at best.
What you see above is the only place that was truly saddening for me. The Germans took and old Polish powder magazine and used it to test just how efective Zyklon B was. There were small holes in the roof and SS troopers stood atop it, punctured the canisters and dropped them inside. This place is where the most repulsive element of the Final Solution was perfected. It is the first gas chamber. The gas was tested in the basement of one of the blocks first, but this was the first place where they really got things working right. I will not speculate about what those marks are on the wall. I will let you draw your own conclusion, but those marks are one of the few things in Auschwitz that have not been deliberately placed there to move you and that makes them some of the most horrible marks in the history of man.
Within sight of the gas chamber are the ovens used to cremate those who met their unfortunate end inside.
Now, before people were gassed, some met their end by firing squad. This happened to relatively few people though. Still there were special areas set up between barracks for the purpose. This one is a reproduction as well as memorial. I doubt you can see them, but there were a few tiny Israeli flags stuck in this one.
In the beginning the Nazis also photographed and registered everyone who came to the camp. This task became too great when thousands of people were arriving by rail each day, so the photographing didn't last too long. I imagine those who went directly from the train to the gas chambers were not registered in any way. Perhaps a mere count of people is all that was done.
This isn't to say that life at Auscwitz proper was hunky dory. The structure you see above was built so that the guards who took roll wouldn't have to stand in the weather when they counted prisoners. Talk about being wussies. I think you can read the sign in the photo. The idea of it to me was offensive.
And then of course we have the main gate. The famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign. "Work makes you free." I don't think any blog post about this place would be complete without a photo of this sign.
My trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau was informative and something I recomend to everyone. Go, see it, but have something else planned for the next day that is a little happier -- like the salt mine.
