Auschwitz-Birkenau (4thMarch 2017)
Krakow, the last city within coach-distance from Brno that I had yet to enter. My dad was coming to visit me for the weekend and I asked him how he felt about a quick trip across the border. He said it was a great idea, but he didn't feel too keen on visiting Auschwitz, saying he wasn't looking forward to all the bad vibes. "Too bad" I said, and proceeded to book a 7 hour Auschwitz-Birkenau tour for Saturday. I believe it’s a place everybody should see once in their lifetime. For me, it was sort of like the ending to the World War 2 story; I'd stood atop Hitler's bunker and walked through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Every European capital city I'd visited had some history relating to WWII, but I'd never been to a concentration camp. That too, this was the most infamous concentration camp in the world. So I booked Lux Express coach tickets for only €7 to Krakow, and after a day and a half of lounging around in Brno, I whisked my dad away to the Polish city.
We arrived at Aparthotel Globus at midnight after the four and a half hour journey and went straight to bed. The tour started at 10 am the next morning and sleep was a little challenging because every time a tram ran past the hotel, the beds would shake as if we were experiencing a mini earthquake. However, the room was spacious and located very conveniently. We had a typical free European breakfast the next morning consisting of ham, cheese and bread. We only had to walk five minutes up the road our hotel was adjacent to, to reach one of the meeting points for Krakville Tours. A large crowd had already gathered and we waited to be organized into coaches. The tour included transport to and from Auschwitz, located an hour and a half West of Krakow. The country side was beautiful, with lonely churches standing atop rolling hills of orange fields. Suddenly we found ourselves slowing down next to some railway tracks. My dad explained to me that the Germans built these tracks specially for the purpose of transporting German Jews to these concentration camps. This was a sign that we were close. A few minutes later we disembarked the coach and stood in the queue to collect our headsets and audio guides. My dad had complained about how depressing this tour would be and this was where the emotions set in.
We stood in front of the iconic archway that translates from German into 'Work gives you freedom', a pinnacle of irony. The original archway had been stolen in the last decade and cut into three pieces, hence a replica had to be made. On our right stood the kitchen, with several chimneys protruding from the roof. I feared it was something else, but that would come later. There were three Auschwitz camps (the third no longer existed) and we had just entered Auschwitz 1. Two storey red-bricked buildings stood in rows and the area was surrounded by woodlands. Objectively, it was actually quite pretty. In other words, the horrors of the past did not reveal themselves at first glance. Our guide sombrely begun to explain what would see on the tour today. We would enter three of those buildings. In the first, we would see pictures taken inside the camp during the war and the belongings of the victims. In the second, we would see the living quarters and pictures of the victims with dates showing how long they survived. In the third, we would go the cellars where misbehaving prisoners were sent to be tortured.
The first building had wall-sized photographs of the camp during its active years of 1942- 1945 (it was originally a Polish army barrack). We saw a photo of a Hungarian Jewish family carrying suitcases, being ushered by German officials. This was when the guide told us about the beginning of the German's lies. The officials would tell these families that they were simply being relocated and would be given jobs in their new home. Hence, every Jew would pack up their belongings and board the trains, oblivious to the fate that awaited them. In further rooms, we saw mountainous piles of shoes, brushes and most disturbingly, human hair. The hair pile weighed a few tonnes, a fact that impressed just how many victims were murdered. Amongst the belongings, were a few stand out products from companies still in production today. Coca-cola, Bata and others had all profited from the war. We walked down the corridor of the second building and peered into the rooms on the sides. Large rooms covered in sacks filled with hay served as sleeping areas. Prisoners were allowed less than a minute to use the communal toilets, which they had access to only twice a day. More depressing than these rooms, however, were the photos on the walls. On the left were photos of women, their respective dates revealing they rarely survived for over 3 months. On the right were photos of men, who would normally survive between 6-8 months depending on how skilled they were. Some jobs were moreprivileged than others; people sorting through the belongings of the recently murdered were likely to find food that would help them last longer. The third building was the actual 'prison', if you can forget the idea of the whole place being a prison. The dark, cold cells in the cellar would house prisoners up to 3 days without food. Particularly horrid were the standing cells, only a couple of feet wide and tall. All the cells had tiny rectangles as breathing holes.
It was a relief to be back outside under the shining sun. The relief vanished when we reached gallows where the largest public execution took place. We then proceeded to a gas chamber. This is what I thought the kitchen was at the start of the tour. The first room is where the victims would strip for their 'disinfection'. Yes, they were even told to remember where they kept their belongings because they were going for a shower. The second room was the chamber itself. I felt chills all over me and thought about when Bruno and Shmuel innocently enter a gaschamber in 'The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas'. The poison they used was originally used to kill rats; 12 canisters were enough to kill 2000 humans. This type of poison was specifically chosen because it was developed by a Jew. Just another way that the Germans found to aggravate the situation. The gas would be poured down from small wooden squares in the roof. The bodies would then be taken to the crematorium in the next room and searched for gold teeth and other valuables. The women's hair would be cut off and incorporated into soldiers uniforms or used to make ropes. The prisoners with this job had it the worst, for obvious reasons.
Finally we were done touring Auschwitz 1, which meant we were moving on to Auschwitz-Birkinau (Auschwitz 2). Woohoo. It was a 5 minute drive away, and it immediately looked more like what you would imagine a concentration camp to look like. It was 10 times bigger and barbed wire fences stood high on both sides, surrounding ruined buildings to the right (men's quarters) and restored buildings to the left (women and children's quarters). A red brick archway over a train track separated the two sides. We had seen a photo, in the first building in Auschwitz 1,of the platform where Jews disembarked the train and stood in queue to be sorted. The guard would either point straight, towards relative safety, or down the end of the track, towards two gas chambers. This was the place families saw each other for the last time. We walked down to the end of the line and saw the memorial. There were around 20 stones, on which the same message was engraved in all the languages that the Jews brought to this camp spoke: "Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning for humanity, where the Nazi's murdered about 1 and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe". We entered one of the restored buildings that used to house children. Three levels of wood, big enough to fit three, but used as a bed for four to eight, filled the shed. Temperatures reached –25°C in the winter and many would die of the cold. A few white roses lay on the wooden shelves, a memorial to long-lost ancestors I supposed. The guide stopped my dad and I during a break to ask us where we were from. He said they don't get many Indians visiting Auschwitz. Just because it isn't a part of our history, doesn't mean we shouldn't learn about it. I hope the lack of Indian visitors was purely because of the long distance between Poland and India, because it's not like I haven't seen them visit other attractions inEuropean cities.
Our guide dropped a bombshell at the end of the tour; his great-grandfather had been imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau many years ago. That's why he did these tours, and I respect his reasoning. We boarded the coach back to Krakow and arrived close to 6 pm. It was a strange feeling to return to normal civilisation. The tour was enlightening but not lively, informative but not fun. A real anomaly of a tour, but such an important one to do. My dad admitted that he would never have done it if it wasn't for me, but he was glad I forced him along at the end of the day. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, please do. It's one thing reading about another person's experience but it's a truly different perspective when you stand in the middle of a gas chamber and see the fake shower heads and the real wooden flaps and realize this was the last thing over a million innocent people saw before being ruthlessly killed.
