As soon as I walked into the crematorium I could literally smell death. It permeated my clothing and clung to my hair. Four hours later that smell still lingered.
Auschwitz was located nearby the provincial Polish town of Oshwiecim in Galacia, where it is purported that as little as 1.1 million people and as much as 3.3 million people died. Lost their lives over an ideology, an idea that one race was better than another. Barbaric? Reprehensible? Justified?
It was a warm windy day. I got up early and headed out by myself. I felt like I was on a pilgrimage. I have wanting to come here to this specific camp since primary school. To try and understand what happened to these people. To understand their quality of life or lack thereof. For those that got selected to understand the choice that they had to make, to live or die? As some of these prisoner's understandably only see one way out, this was suicide.
The train ride to the camp was a somber one with a lot of trepidation and wonder about what I would find, and as the train I was first put on became so crowded they had to bring in another larger one. Obviously other people are as interested in this as I am.
Two hours later we are at the museum. I book into the 1 pm tour and go for a walk. The first thing I see is a statue of a man who appears as though he is caught in barbed wire. He is crouched over on one knee. Looking back later at the pictures and I see something completely different the man is posing in a swas sticker logo pose.
I head to where everyone is milling and see the front gate and the electrified wire and I cannot stop the involuntary shiver. On the top of the front gate is a saying in German which means "Work makes freedom" These people worked 12 hours or more a day in the middle of winter in thick snow with nothing but wooden clogs on there feet and a light covering of clothing.
Before I started the tour I watch a 15 minute show. This is real eye opener. Not only because it gives you an insight into life in the camp but also because it allows you to see the camp from the air. The sheer mass of the camp stuns me. How many people could actually live here? Why did they have to sleep on their sides as if there was no room? They where continually expanding, relocating the local Polish population who owned land near the camp to expand the existing boundaries.
The tour started with a brief history. One thing that shocked me about this history is previously I thought it was pretty much only Jewish people who where transported to this camp but there where homosexuals, criminals, gypsies, Jehovah's witnesses, Slavic’s, even Germans who disagreed with the "Arian" way of thinking.
The tour guide explains about the crematoriums, Zyklon-B which was the cheapest way of mass extermination, the twin’s experimentation and the general day to day camp life.
We made our way through the first camp. Through all the paraphernalia which was stolen from the prisoners onto the children, mothers, the twins, into block 11 which was segregated from the camp as this was the death block. Over 200 people died on an execution wall by bullets in July 42 with quotes saying that the entire block was red from the blood. They soon stopped that method of extermination due to the high cost of bullets.
We went to the crematorium near where the first Kommandant lived. About 50 metres away he was burning babies, children and their loved one's. He lived there with his family and his babies. In 1947 he died on a garrote outside the crematorium.
At the time what I didn't realise is when the people went into the crematorium part of them still came out even as ashes. The Kommandant didn't like to waste anything so the ashes where used as a type of compost which when the wind was gushing you could feel the dust hitting you in the face and arms and you just have to wonder could that be the ashes of someone who was not laid to rest?
Off to Birkenau camp two. Where we see how the selection process worked, the train tracks, latrines where they could only go twice a day, gas chambers and crematorium two and finally the monument.
Today people still have absolute faith that this atrocity did not happen. You cannot deny 7000kg of hair or a house high pile of prosthetics arms, back supports and even babies’ prosthetic legs nor can you deny the smell, it lingers in the air, the scent of death? Why not go and find out for yourself! I know it is definitely not the scent of freedom. No one who lived through it will be free. Not from the nightmare that was Auschwitz.
Some practical information - a train leaves Krakow at 9.15am or you can catch mini buses from the bus station near the train station. You can pretty much catch any bus to the museum 2, 3, 4 and so on just hop on and ask for Auschwitz it costs 2,20 Zloty for an bus ticket. The museum is free. The tour cost 26 Zloty in English and it takes 4 hours, you can ask the bus driver who is returning you to Auschwitz from Birkenau to drop you off at the turn off to the train station.
