all hail vic

Day 2 - Arbeit Macht Frei

today was an excellent day. an informative day. an awestruck, dumbstruck, dumbfounded, confounded, conscious day. i say ¨conscious¨ day because i was very alert... er... at least, once i woke up. which was not when i really woke up.

i ¨woke up¨ at 7:30. i woke up at 10:00 when we arrived at Auschwitz I.

the things we take for granted:
- food
- shelter
- relaxation
- oxygen
- sleeping
- freedom
- comfort

all of those things were deprived from the people interned and slaughtered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. it´s amazing how little details can utterly destroy you.

i slept on and off while on the on and off road to Auschwitz. the bumps. the infrastructure in Poland is much worse than the Czech Republic. or, at least, the parts of the CR that i am familiar with. at one point, we were driving on slabs (panels, really) of concrete, roughly put together to (sorta) resemble a road.

and then we were in a town. we were driving casually through another polish town. i was asleep when we entered. or, at least, attempting to sleep. and then there was a sign.

Auschwitz Museum <-

we turned in. we got out. i popped into the cafe for an espresso (it was sorely needed) while one of the drivers arranged for a guide.

i warn you, what is to come may not be easy to read.

the tour was in two parts. first part: Auschwitz I. second part: Auschwitz II - Birkenau. you see, most of us americans have heard of Auschwitz. it was a concentration camp. most of us young americans and probably some older ones don´t know that it was actually a series of concentraion camps in a 40-square-kilometer area. Auschwitz I was a former Polish Army Base. the facilities were in place. the Nazis turned them into prisoner barracks, initially for Polish Political Prisoners. and then they started bringing in POWs. and then they started to bring in Jews, Roma, disabled people and countless other people - however, the only racial prisoners were the Jews and Roma.

Auschwitz I was a testing ground. initially, the slaughter was carried out on an individual basis via a firing squad located in between buildings 10 and 11 (out of 26 or 28, i think). they used Cyclone B, initially, to kill the insects that inhabited the barracks. the guide speculated that, perhaps, they realized it could be used on humans when somebody died spraying the barracks.

and so it began.

initially, they started by gasing a few people in the basement of number 11. (i´ll come back to number 11 later.) and then they moved into the crematorium on the Auschwitz I grounds. as most of you probably know, they designed the gas chambers so that they looked like honest to goodness bathrooms, with shower heads and whatnot. they informed the prisoners upon entering that they were going to take a shower or be disinfected.

and then the gas came instead.

and now, as you walk around Auschwitz I, the first thing you will probably do is go to the museum, located in one of the barracks. in this museum, you will be presented with room after room filled with piles of belongings. it starts slowly. the first room has a small pile of glasses. after that and in no particular order, one room has a pit filled with pots and pans. another room contains nothing but shoes on two sides of you - including the wooden shoes (the stereotypical ¨dutch¨ clog) that the workers made and wore. another room contains nothing but brushes - they seperated the combs from the brushes and the toothbrushes from the hair brushes. another room has nothing but suitcases, labels with peoples names and birthdays. it´s frightening. it´s absolutely horrifying. the emotions that flood through you are incredibly intense. i saw the word ¨Praga¨ written on one and the name Petr. this hit home. i know a Petr. i know how real it was.

you also see a room filled with empty Cyclone B gas canisters. 5 of them could kill 2000 people. but there were at least 100 cannisters in the little display that actually housed them.

and then there is the worst room. 2 tons of hair. 2 TONS of hair. and those 2 represent just 1/4th of the amount they found when they liberated Auschwitz. and next to the room filled with hair is a small case. in that case is a nice roll of fabric. until you realize that that fabric is made out of human hair. your gut sinks. you want to cry. you want to vomit.

and it´s still the little things. as you move back downstairs, you realize how worn the stairs are on two sides. how many people have climbed these stairs? yes, the stairs are new/remodeled. but why should that many people have to climb the stairs? WHY should this museum have to exist?

and then you walk out into the sparkling daylight. and it´s overwhelming. the contrast. horror after horror inside. a beautiful day that those people never had the opportunity to enjoy. it´s heartbreaking.

but you continue with the tour. the next place you go is the space in between barracks 10 and 11. which have a rebuilt wall, used as a backdrop for numerous murders. they´d line the people up, naked, and shoot one. remove the body. move the next person in. shoot them.

in the same courtyard, there were some posts with rings. they would twist a prisoner´s arms behind their back and hang them by their wrists from the posts. i can´t even imagine how painful that could be.

and then you continue into barracks 11. number 11 was the experimentation building. this is where the most atrocious scientific testing went on. the sterilization tests. the gas tests. the deprivation tests. the absolute pinnacle of sadism and atrocity. in the basement are the containment rooms. one room was used for sleep and food deprivation. another had no windows and no spaces in the doors and was used for oxygen deprivation, not to mention light. and it was a sizable room. not big. not enough to starve to death before running out of oxygen.

and there is a series of four rooms, with really low doors - they had to crawl through them, that are about 2 metres by 2 metres wide. and they would squeeze 4 people into them. of course, they would have to stand. and they´d be there all night. and then they would have them work the next day. and then they would put them back in the standing rooms. many people died of exhaustion in there. many people died of sleep deprivation. many people died of oxygen deprivation.

and it´s still the little things. it´s the clang of a metal plate in the basement of building 11. how many people, how many prisoners walked over that plate and made that same noise? maybe it wasn´t loose in the early 1940´s. but it was there. how many people walked over it with barefeet and noticed it´s coldness?

and it´s still the little things. it´s the smell of wood that eminates from the officers quarters in building 11. the same smell that you associate with a log cabin and the warm fire glowing inside. the same smell you associate with wilderness and roughness and the beauty of nature. and then you reapply it to horror and your mind breaks down. and you go numb. and you can´t talk. and you can´t feel anything but terror and sadness and utter helplessness. you want water, but you take it for granted. you want food, but you feel bad because you can have food any time you want it. so then you aren´t hungry any longer.

and then you go to the only existing crematorium. the one at Auschwitz I is still there. they had to rebuild the furnaces after the war because they had been dismantled. but the gas chamber is still there. the same gas chamber which could kill only 700 people in one fell swoop. they would then spend 2 days incinerating the bodies of one gasing. it simply wasn´t efficient enough.

so they built Auschwitz II - Birkenau. designed explicitly for mass extermination.

Auschwitz II is evil. you feel it when you walk around there. it´s in the ground. it´s in the water in the contamination ponds, still gray with people´s ashes - the ashes of the people burned in the same spot (outdoors) when the furnaces just couldn´t incinerate at the rate you were producing corpses.

when we first arrived. we pulled up at the back. not the main gate, which the railroad cars came through. on the particular side where we arrived were the brick barracks. or what remained of some of the brick barracks.

and still it´s the small things. it´s the fragile little bird, perching on one of the countless rows of barbed wire that surround the camp.

and around the back, there are the crematoriums. i said ¨only 700¨ before, because these monstrosities - there were two, side by side - could kill 2000 people at once. but they´re ruins now because the SS didn´t want them to be around after they withdrew.

and there´s the monument, built in the 1960´s, enormous and black and built to honor those who struggled through or suffered ultimately at the hands of merciless, inhuman people.

and then there are the railroad tracks. four rows of railroad tracks. designed to ferry unsuspecting people to their deaths. there´s a famous photo of the selection process where an SS officer is flipping his thumb left (for ¨to the chambers¨) or right (for ¨to work¨) presented that makes you ill. and as you stand looking at the photo, you realize the barrack in the background of the photo is the one that is standing behind the photograph.

and you shiver and shake. and you remember all the photos you´ve seen of crowds of people being ushered to their deaths. and you are there. YOU ARE THERE.

and you see the wooden barracks, that were originally meant to be stables. that they converted into bunk houses. where you were forced to live in quarantine. and you were frightened into submission. and many people were dying around you from illnesses like thyphoid and diphtheria. and the toilets aren´t private. and in summer they stink and rot as the building fills up with the stench of many peoples feces which will not empty into the sewers because, lo and behold, the toilets might look like they go to the sewers, but they really don´t.

the guide tells you no one person was allowed to stay in those barracks for more than three months. it was against SS rules. after three months, it was extermination for you.

and you notice the rows and rows of demolished wooden barracks. and you think about how many people were housed there. how many people survived? 200 people escaped. successfully. from Auschwitz (the complete area) and mostly when they were out of the camps working on farms or in factories. 1.5 million people were killed.

and you talk to the Venezuelan kid (and his friends) who kept asking about ¨where sector B was¨. and he tells you, ¨my grandmother was in sector B. she´s hungarian.¨ so she survived? yes, and she moved to Venezuela after Chile didn´t work. does she have a number on her arm? no, she doesn´t. (only Auschwitz camp prisoners were tattooed with numbers. other camps didn´t have them.)

and you return to Krakow. your mind lost in the surreal thought that, actually, it was all real. you knew it was real before. but now you have seen the places. you´ve seen the pictures. and you have a connection to it. and it´s a part of you. and you think to yourself, why aren´t we doing ANYTHING about Darfur?! it´s not as organized. but in a way, it´s worse. it´s chaotic. it´s slaughter. and there´s rape, of which there wasn´t much during WWII because it was a crime to contaminate the race that way. why aren´t we stopping the genocide? the west is complacent. the west cares, but only in a superficial, unhelpful way. let´s pass some legislation calling it genocide and condemn it and blah blah blah and call it a day. i feel like coffee.

and so, i returned to Krakow and took a long walk around the central city. it´s quite beautiful. the old town square (the largest in Europe) is beautiful. i went up the tower of St. Mary´s cathedral after i saw the interior. you get a great view of the square from such a great height.

and i walked the entire length of the park that surrounds the stare miasto (old town). it rings it and makes for a lovely walk.

i stopped for some cottage cheese and cabbage pierogi and beetroot soup for dinner. they were good. but substantively lacking.

and then i walked back to my hostel. tired from an exhausting day.

tomorrow, i plan on seeing the castle (Wawel) and going to the salt mines (a cavernous cathedral carved into some salt mines some ways outside of Krakow).

Posted by iain at August 9, 2005 09:50 PM