Auschwitz and Birkenau

This morning I woke up with a very sore bum from yesterday’s bike ride. After breakfast, we waited to be picked up for our tour. As we waited, I looked over to see three different clocks telling the time all around the world. The first one was Nowy Jork, and it was about 3:45AM.


Our young and very Aryan looking tour guide (who ended up just being a coordinator) picked us up and the minibus took off. We passed a bunch of nuns carrying umbrellas in the rain. This city has zero shortage of nuns, monks, priests, etc. Many of them are very young, as well. The Jagellorian University has an important school of theology…doesn’t appear to be a priest shortage here.

On the way we saw a 1970s East German Trabant that is used to do the communist tours of Nowa Huta, one of only 2 planned communist communities in the world. Wild place...we rode through there on the way back.

Auschwitz is 70km from Krakow. Today, the city has a high of 50F and it is rainy. These conditions will only make us appreciate the experiences of those held here, I’m thinking. The ride out to Auschwitz is very green. It reminds me a bit of the GW Parkway in DC/northern VA. I thought of the Russian soldiers coming into this area during the war to “liberate” and wondered if they were prepared at all for what they were about to encounter.

 

Auschwitz is the German name of the town; Oswiecim is the Polish name for it. The national park and all the materials that reference this place, however, refer to it as Auschwitz. Makes sense. If I were Poland I wouldn’t want to take any responsibility for this either.

We arrived and were greeted by no less than 100 tour buses and a zillion people. This place was a mad house, full of disoriented visitors, and frustrated tour guides who constantly apologized, and offered very little instruction. Finally, we picked up a headset and were spit out from the throng of people into a courtyard. I wondered how this headset business would work. We had been told we had a guide, but then we had a headset. I soon realized that this was actually a genius means of touring visitors through this place. This place obviously has to cater to speakers of many different languages. It has tons of people. It also, ostensibly, should aim to control the noise level. After all, this place ought to be approached with a certain solemnity for the fact that over one million people died here. So, you put your headphones n, turn the channel and volume, and voila, you can hear your guide. This become important, bc much of what you can see on these tours take place in tight cramped and very crowded spaces. You are not always close to your guide, bc you have to wait in line on the stairwells, or wait in line in the basement while you see the cells, etc. If multiple guides raised their voices so all their peeps could hear them this place would be more of a madhouse than it already is.

Auschwitz was the first Nazi camp in Poland and was initially intended to house Polish political prisonsers. The Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two weeks after the Germans came in from the west, the Russians invaded from the east and partitioned the country according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This place had been a Polish army barracks. The Nazis liked it bc it is protected by rivers, and it is very close to a main rail intersection.

Here, if the prisoners needed to be counted for whatever reasons, they would stand at attn outside building 15, which had a guard booth close by.

In 1941, Hitler reneged on the agreement with Russia, and invaded his ally, sending Stalin into near panic. 15,000 Soviet POWS were brought to Auschwitz. In 1942, after the Wannssee Conference, in which the “final solution” became the answer to the “Jewish question,” Jews began to be brought here from all over Europe.

The guards selected able men and women to serve as kapos, prisoners who would also serve as guards. The kapos also doled out food. Nice kapos were quickly demoted. Upon arrival, the prisoners were “disinfected.” This was a humiliating experience, with German guards often messing with the prisoners by turning the water very hot or very cold.

The first group to arrive were 728 Polish men, all political prisoners. They were forced to build a 220 volt fence around this camp. We learned that the building we had just entered was original, as were all buildings we would see. We then proceeded to march towards that famous sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei," meaning “Work Sets You Free.” This, we learned, was the only way in and out of the camp. Prisoners often had jobs outside the camp, and so they would march in and out of here at the beginning and end of every day. German guards counted them row by row. If any of them attempted to escape during the day, 10 people would be selected to die, and often some of those 10 would be family members. This policy effectively kept many people from attempting escape.

 

Up to 1943, the Germans took 3 photos of each prisoner they registered. I couldn’t believe the administrative and logistical organization of all this. It proved overwhelming once the numbers shot up, and in from 1943 onwards, photographing each prisoner stopped and tattooing started. Plus, when people died, they often looked very different than they had upon arrival (loss of weight, etc.) and the photographs often proved an ineffective and inefficient means of identification.

 
 
 
The prisoners were tattooed in different places depending on their identity and status. Jews were tattooed on their arms. Soviet POWs were tattooed on their chests. Those Aryan looking young Jewish males who were selected to be Germanized to fight for Germany were tattooed in a less conspicuous place. The 20,0000 Roma, or gypsies brought here had marks different from the Jews, who had marks different from homosexuals and the anti-socials. Jews were forced to wear the star of David. Homosexuals were forced to wear a pink triangle turned upside down. Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo their prisoners.


We saw some of the prisoners uniforms, which differed according to their identity. They all wore wooden clogs made on site, and most of them had some sort of navy-grey stripe uniform with a hat. They had a coat for the winter time. I can’t imagine the winters endured under these conditions.

The various groups all lives amongst each other. This was another intentional means of keeping the prisoners from developing trust and solidarity.

We walked down a hallway with framed photographs of people’s faces. Beneath their faces were the dates that person ws registered, the date of death, and the person’s occupation. I saw advokat (lawyer), konduktor, student, and several different types of electricians. Getting a job was an important part of maintaining one’s value.

232,000 children were brought to Auschwitz, and most of them under the age of 14 were immediately killed, either by gas chamber or lethal injection into the heart. Some of them were tormented during medical experiments, many of them conducted by Dr. Joseph Mengele. Dr. Mengele had a fascination with multiple births. Evidently he took off to South American after the war and died there in the 1970s. He, like most of the Nazis, were never tried.

In another block (this is what the building were called), we learned about Father Kolba. Father Kolba offered to take the place of a man who was to die. The guards agreed. Father Kolba was placed into a cell that evidently received very little oxygen, but somehow he was able to survive the experience that killed most others. Father Kolba has been sainted by the Catholic and Anglican churches. In the cell where he died, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have placed candles.

We also saw a standing cell, in which prisoners were forced to stand during the night after working all day. This was yet another means of torture.

The guide showed us the shooting wall, with grey insulation made from grass that was supposed to muffle the sound of gunshots. Here, prisoners were systematically shot in the back of the head.

Our guide talked to us about the zandercommandos, translated into special work unit from the German. This was a group of Jewish able bodied men selected to work in the crematoria. They were the “keepers of the secret,” bc they knew all that was going on.

We saw one text panel that had some statistics on it. Auschwitz opened in 1940 and Birkenau opened 2 years later. The camps were liberated by the Russians in 1945. 1.1 million Jews were brought here, 140,000-150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet POWs, 25,000 prisoners from other countries. 1.1 million of the 1.3 million brought here died during the war. In 1944, during one two month period, 430,000 people were brought here, and 70% of them were killed on arrival.

18% of Poland’s population perished during WWII. Wow. I wondered how that compared to the numbers associated with the Lost Generation in France after WWI.

The nationalities of the prisoners here include Hungarians, Poles, French, Greece (55,000 Greek Jews), the Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Bohemia and Moravia. Half of Norway’s Jewish population (690 people) died at Auschwitz.

Upon arrival, the Jews went through “selection” and were deemed to be “fit to work” or unfit. 70-75% of the Jews brought to Auschwitz were killed on arrival.

The crematorium we saw could handle up to 4000 bodies during a 24 hour period. It took on average about 30 minute to die after 5-7 kilos of Zyclone B was drpped into the crematorium. Zyclone B is a pesticide. The Germans first experimented with it on Soviet POWs in 1941. It took the Soviet POWs 20 hours to die bc the Germans didn’t use enough Zyclone B.

We saw a huge room full of decaying human hair. The guide mentioned that these camps provided significant economic benefit to Germany. The hair from the prisoners was sent to textile factories to manufacture all kinds of materials, including car seat upholstery. When the Soviets arrived, they found 7 tons of human hair at Auschwitz; this was used in the trials against leading Nazis.

Prisoners were also forced to leave behind all their belongings upon entering the camp. Some prisoners were assigned the task of sifting through these materials to take out anything of value. The warehouse where the valuables were stored were called Canada. Much of the money, after the guards stuffed their pockets, was sent to Berlin. Many other items were sent to Germany for use by the German people, including childrens’ toys. We saw broken eyeglasses (the good ones were sent to Germany for use), pots and pans, Jewish prayer shawls that Germans used to clean their guns, combs, brushes, shoe polish, and a room full of crutches and prosthetic limbs. The museum has a HUGE room of adult shoes lining both sides of the walls from floor to ceiling.


We saw the spot where Rudolph Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, was killed after being tried.

The guide showed us where Hoess and his family, including his 5 children, lived during the war. It was so close to the main part of the camp, and separated by barbed wire. During the Nuremberg trials, Hoess was asked how many people were killed in these camps during the war. He estimated 1.5 million. The Russians (who liberated all the camps coming in from the east while the American, British, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis liberated from the west) consistently countered and argued that the number was much higher, and now we know that it was.

The crematorium here became an air raid shelter for German guards after they began to hear Allied bombs dropping close by. By that time, about 70,000 people had been killed in these ovens.

Before we left Auschwitz for Birkenau, someone asked our guide where he was from. He is an American, from Chicago (biggest Polish population outside Poland) who grandparents and mother lived in a village very close to Oswiecim. He says that growing up in Chicago his first language was Polish. He is probably in his late 20s and now lives in Poland. I was impressed with is knowledge; he was a good guide, and tried his best to make this the experience it ought to be, despite the crowds. It is unfortunate that visitors here become so distracted by the overwhelming crowds and cannot focus for long on the experiences of those who endured such misery. I have been to Dachau and to Terezin, in August nonetheless, and didn’t experience anything like the numbers of people that Auschwitz had in early May. Evidently lots of Polish schoolchildren come on fieldtrips near the end of the academic year. The people I saw, however, were definitely tourists.

It was cold.

The minibus transported us about 3 km away to Birkenau, which was built by Auschwitz prisoners. 20,000 people lived in one sector, and there was one shower for each sector. You were lucky to get one shower per month, and the same was true at Auschwitz. Birkenau is considered by some to be the world’s largest Jewish cemetery bc the ashes of those who died were spread on the grounds. When the numbers of people arriving became too overwhelming, the Germans ordered pre-fabricated horse stalls. The stalls, designed to hold 40-50 horses, housed between 400-500 people. At Birkenau, we saw the toilets, which were these concrete structures in the barns.

Sewage mixed in with the ground water, and the prisoners were forced to use the groundwater to drink and to bathe. Disease spread throughout the camp. Most people at Birkenau died from disease, starvation, and or the conditions. The beds were stacked, with 2 people on each bed and three beds stacked atop one another, same as at Auschwitz. The top bunks were the best place to be, because it was warmer up there and you didn’t have as much human waste, or as many rats and bugs to contend with. Prisoners slept on straw or sometimes on paper mattresses filled with straw.

The peak occupancy at Birkenau was 90,000. Birkenau is very different from Auschwitz. It seems much smaller, and more temporary. It is a death camp, whereas Auschwitz is considered a work and death camp. Historians argue about this terminology; weren’t they all, essentially death camps? The terms distinguish between those were prisoners were forced to work before death and those where they were simply put to death.

In December 1944, the Germans forced 65,000 prisoners to march west towards Germany. Those who couldn’t maintain the pace were shot. When the Soviets arrived they found 12,000 people at Auschwitz and 7500 at Birkenau. Evidently only 2 Soviet soldiers died liberating the camps. Most of the Germans had left.

Around 2:30, our tour ended. We were able to walk around Birkenau briefly, to check out the train tracks where some very famous photographs were taken.

Auschwitz became a museum in 1947. Although I didn’t have the experience I wanted to have in the sense of having time for reflection and contemplation, I am glad we visited. I was prepared for this, actually. Most of the guidebooks I read about this warn visitors of the harried, crowded nature of this cash cow museum. It is important to come here, and I no doubt have a greater understanding of the conditions here. Much of the history I already knew, but it was important to come here and see the beds, see the grounds, see the barbed wire… The museum definitely takes an old-school minimalist approach. There are lots of artifacts, little text, and few photographs. There is nothing interactive and nothing for children. Unlike Dachau and the Holocaust Museum in DC, there is nothing that forces visitors to stop, reflect, and contemplate. Some may disagree, but it seems this museum could be far more effective in achieving their educational goals and their purpose of honoring the memory of those who perished here if it put some effort into implementing some of the more recent museum exhibit practices. Evidently the new Jewish museum in Krakow near Oscar Schindler’s factory is supposed to reflect the most up to date museum practices.

One thing: several months ago the famous Auschwitz sign was stolen. Thankfully, it was recovered shortly thereafter. The one we saw in its place was a copy of the original that had been made in the 1970s. The original is in the conservation department of the museum at Auschwitz.

After we were dropped off in the city center, we saw this grafitti:

That evening we attended a Chopin Concert in the Renaissance Chamber at Restaurant Wierzynek. The young pianist, Pawel Motyczynski, played both Chopin and Paderewski. The concert was a relaxing contrast to what had been a pretty intense day.