After arriving in Krakow, Poland on the luxurious and expensive 6 hour train we met up the following morning bright and early with Nic and Sean in the main square and caught a bus out to Auschwitz; a place which is seared into public consciousness as the location of history’s most extensive experiment in genocide.
Established within disused army barracks in 1940, Auschwitz was initially designed to hold Polish prisoners, but was expanded into the largest centre for the extermination of European Jews. Another nearby camp was subsequently established, Birkenau (also known as Auschwitz II) 3km west of Auschwitz which I went to as well.
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the fleeing Nazis and many of the original buildings remain, including the first crematorium and gas chamber where the Nazi first tested Zyclon B. a dozen of the 30 surviving brick prison blocks house the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Museum not only contains haunting photographs and documentation but also personal belonging found when the camp was liberated; thousands of shoes, glasses, toothbrushes, suitcases and all manner of personal items seized from the Jews and stored in massive storage houses. One of the most shocking things on display was a room filled with all the human hair, 22 tonnes of it, that had been found in bales in storage as well.
Some areas, such as the starvation and standing room only cells are still intact as well, and it is incomprehensible how anyone survived under the conditions in the camp. Much of the camp is still surrounded by barbed wire and the watch towers are still in place.
Birkenau is not as well known as Auschwitz but it where the actual murder of huge numbers of Jews took place. This vast, 175 hectares, purpose-built and grimly efficient camp had more than 300 prison barracks and 4 huge gas chambers complete with crematoria. The camp could 200,000 inmates at one time. The gas chambers held 2000 people below ground level and then electric lifts raised the bodies up to the ovens.
Although much of the camp was destroyed by retreating Nazis , the sheer size of the place, fenced off with barbed wire stretching almost as far as the eye can see, provides some idea of scale of this heinous crime and makes Birkenau even more shocking than Auschwitz.
