19th Sept
2015
A day like today you will always remember
What a night
!! It rained a bit off and on ever since
we went to bed, We even heard a little
thunder in the distance. Then at 10 to 2
in the morning, when I was thankfully awake reading, there was a thunderclap
that I swear was no more than 3 feet from the car ! I have never heard thunder that was
louder. If I had been asleep when it
happened, I think I might have had a heart attack. As it was I think I hit the ceiling above my
bed (which is only 2 ft above me !!), and since Janet was another 3-4 ft below
me in her bed, I was closer to it than she was ! After that, it then rained very heavily on
and off all night long – And if you have ever lived in a house with a tin roof,
or spent a lot of time in a tent camping, you will know how noisy it was on our
fiberglass roof which, as I say, was only a couple of feet above me. I may be hard of hearing, but I am not totally
deaf, so it kept me awake most of the night !
Ho hum.
So when we woke
up in the morning, packing up was a bit long winded. Everything was very wet, indeed it was still
drizzling, but more than that the rain had been so hard during the night that
up to a height of 2-3 ft above the ground, everything was brown with mud
splashed up by the rain. So we had to sluice off the tent sides with water to
clean the mud off – Packing up wet canvas is one thing, packing up dirty wet canvas
is just a no-no ! And it didn’t help
that we were wandering around in mud while we did everything, our flip flops
being sucked off our feet, so it took some organizational to get it right. Eventually we got everything packed away, and
went for a shower before we hit the road.
There was no wifi this morning – The lightening had taken care of that
!!
Eventually we got
away, and it was only about 60 kms to our destination of Auschwitz , but as we
went down the minor roads so it was about 1 pm by the time we got to the town
of Oswiecim – The Polish name for the town that, when the Germans invaded
Poland they renamed Auschwitz. And how different it is from our visit to
Treblinka, where we were almost the only people there. There were THOUSANDS of people, coaches
everywhere, people snapping selfies left, right and centre – To be honest, I
was very close to leaving right then.
This was neither what I expected, nor the way I wanted it to be. It was almost Disneyland, with McDonalds and
KFC just down the road, ice cream stands everywhere, restaurants and coffee
shops, and people milling around with tour leaders waving flags over their
heads. We couldn’t even find out where
to go or how to get tickets. It didn’t
help that the toilets all charged 2 Zlotys (($0.65) per visit, and the normally
free tourist maps cost 5 Zl as well.
Finally we found
someone who pointed us to a queue, and when we eventually reached the front we
found out that you can ONLY get into Auschwitz with a tour until after 3 pm –
So we got a place on an English speaking tour for 2 pm, and waited our turn
with the crowd. (In hindsight the tour
was the best way to go, otherwise you would miss most details.)
Finally we found the
departure point for our tour that was speaking the correct language, and were
given headphones and a little radio so our guide could speak to us and we could
hear him (a very good way of doing tours like this), and we set off into
Auschwitz camp – And everything changed as we passed under the Arbeit macht
Frei sign. While it is still crowded in
there, with groups of about 20 people everywhere, it all worked quite well, and
we spent a couple of hours being taken through the Auschwitz camp. I should
point out that there were 3 Auschwitz’s – 1 was this camp, originally a Polish
army camp before the war, than taken over by the Germans after they invaded and
used initially for Polish political prisoners.
As the war progressed and the Germans had more people to “process”, they
opened Auschwitz 2, Birkenau, just 3 kms down the road, and finally they opened
Auschwitz 3 in Monowice. Auschwitz was chosen because it was central
to the area, and had rail connections to all outlying areas, including other
countries. It is still a major rail hub.
Walking round
Auschwitz 1, seeing the barbed wire, the guard towers, the accommodation blocks,
the execution wall, and so on was difficult enough for me – I found it very
moving. But then we went into cell
blocks and saw how they had lived, or existed is maybe a better word, 2 to a
narrow bunk, 3 bunks high, and many others slept on straw spread on the
floor. Punishment areas and
interrogation rooms. But there were then
some areas where my camera remained firmly in my pocket – I just could not take
photos as I felt like I was intruding – I did not need photos of this. A room full of human hair taken from victims
before their final “shower”, that was supposed to be shipped to Germany for use
in the textile industry, but somehow never got shipped. Another room full of hairbrushes and shaving
brushes, piled high. Another room of
pairs of spectacles, just jumbled in an enormous pile. A room of prosthetic
legs and other similar items. A couple
of rooms piled high with shoes of every size, including an area with child’s
shoes and toys and dolls. And finally an
enormous room just filled with empty suitcases, each with a name and date of
birth written on the top. I needed fresh
air……..
We then went to a
reconstructed gas chamber and crematorium. Most of Auschwitz was destroyed once
the end was in sight, but they missed the technical drawings, so much has been
able to be reconstructed. The gas
chamber and crematorium is horrific – To see this first hand, to walk where
they walked, to stand where they fell – This is something every person in this
world should experience, and comprehend, so it will hopefully never happen
again.
From Auschwitz 1
we then caught a shuttle bus over to Birkenau, and that was just as bad from a
different point of view. Birkenau covers
an area of some 175 hectares and contained over 300 buildings, with over
100,000 prisoners at some stages. 4
crematoria with gas chambers, 2 makeshift gas chambers, cremation pyres for
when the crematoria could not handle the load, and pits for human ashes. But it is the sheer size of the camp that
astounds – You cannot clearly see one end from the other, or one side from the
other. It stretches as far as you can see, with only the vague tree line in the
distance marking where the camp clearing ends.
Many of the buildings were destroyed, with only the brick hearths and
chimneys remaining, and standing like silent reminders of the atrocities
committed here.
And through the
middle of it all, the railway line that brought them here. At one stage we
could hear a modern train passing on the nearby main line, and, as we stood
beside the rail sidings inside Birkenau, I think everyone’s hair stood up on
end at the sound.
I will say no
more and let the photos tell the story.
But to see the living conditions, the wash rooms and the toilet blocks,
see the bricks outside doorways where people had scratched marks while they
lined up – My imagination ran rampant with the perceived horror.
We eventually
made our way somberly back to the big parking area where we had left the
car. We had walked non stop for 5 hours
or more, tracing the steps of the inmates, and we did not feel we could go any
further down the road in search of another camp site. So we have stayed in the Auschwitz car park
tonight, once again feeling quite unsettled by doing so, but at the same time
enabling us to absorb all we had seen and heard today. I have not enjoyed the visits to Treblinka
and Auschwitz – Birkenau, but I am so glad I have come. It can not but affect anyone who comes here
in a massive way, and it was interesting to see how many young people are here
visiting. That was probably the only
thing that I enjoyed about today – The young people are learning about it too. Good
on them.
And so to
bed.
Pics are here :- I will annotate them tonight
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