Auschwitz...

Auschwitz was a very difficult experience. Needless to say, it was very, very sobering. It is kind of weird, because the place looks so sanitized now; you know, there is grass, the sun was shinning… it was a bit hard at first to picture all the horror that took place under my feet half a century ago. We decided to walk on our own and just buy the guidebook because we were trying to save some money. It took us 3 hours to visit the side of the museum. The museum is organized in such a way that you walk around the yard and then enter a number of the different ‘blocks’ or buildings within the compound, each of which has a different display of particular elements of the story. For instance, there were some installations with pictures that told the story of the deportation, others that showed the selection process, others that showed the every day life of prisoners, etc.

As i walked thought he concentration camp many images went through my head. I was walking among the ghosts of millions of suffering people. I saw their pictures; their names written in deportation, selection and execution documents. I saw heaps and heaps of their possessions. Baby clothes, glasses, shoes… and so much suffering. And yet, through all of that, I also saw their love for one another. I think one of the hardest things for me to take in was thinking of the separation that families had to endure. Men being separated from their wives and children, most of whom got sent straight to the gas chambers. I pictured myself as one of them… What their suffering would have been like, to be packed like cattle in the train, not knowing where you are going and paying for your own ticket to your death… Because yeah! They SOLD them their friggin’ train tickets to the camp!! So I pictured their suffering like it was my own. Like I was one of the women there, with little children. Then, when we got to the part of the museum when they talked about the separation of women and children... I just abotu broke down. I had to contain my tears. Just the thought of letting go off the hand of those I love and know I would never see them again... Gulp!! I couldn't help it. I didn't really mean to do that to myself, but that is just what my mind did. And I think it was necessary. I prayed a lot during my visit to the camp. It was very emotionally exhausting to go through all of the displays

The most haunting part of the museum, even more than the gas chambers and crematorium rooms themselves, was one of the blocks where they had on display several rooms, each of it full with different articles that belonged to the people who were exterminated there. There was a room that was decked on both sides with shoes of people. Another one had hundreds of luggage cases, each marked with the identifying information of its owner. Another room was full of prosthetic parts... Those people certainly made it to the gas chambers as soon as they got there... Then, there was a huge pile of eye glasses, all meshed up like rumbled wire. And then, a room full of... children's shoes... There was this tiny little white shoe of a little girl sitting at the front... I shed a tear. The most horrible of the displays, however, was a room that was full of... human hair. the Nazis cut the hair of inmates, particularly of women, and collected it in huge sacks to be used as raw material for textiles... There was a huge roll of 'fabric' which was made of human hair... it was confirmed by forensic research...

Another haunting are of the camp was block 11. That is where a lot of the fire squad executions of individuals took place, and also where a lot of people were tortured. There were these things called 'standing cells' in which they would imprisoned up to 4 people, but they only fitted standing up, and they would leave them there for sometimes days in a row, without food, sanitary facilities, and just a little tiny whole for breathing, so most of them died of suffocation. They also had starvation chambers. I got to see the starvation cell where St. Maximilian Kolbe died... It felt like holy ground. There was a small religious display there in his honour. In the same building took place many of the experiments on humans that the Nazi's engaged in... It was horrifying.

After that we walked into the gas chambers, which looked like nothing more than empty rooms with wholes on the ceiling, from where the Nazis threw pebbles of poison that created the deadly gas. Right outside the chambers were the crematoriums... I have no words to describe the horror of that place...

After Auschwitz, we were taken to Birkenau, which is the other near-by concentration camp where the most gas chambers and barracks were located. They were mostly in ruins as they had been destroyed in the war, as well as the left overs of train tracks. However, many of the barracks were still standing, and we got to walk inside. The barracks were nothing else than wooden planks separating small bunk cells where up to 5 people would sleep. They looked worse than chicken coups. The walls were scratched with names of inmates and with a few dates and pictures of the Star of David...

There is not much else I can say. You can imagine how terrible a place that is. However, I am really glad I went. It really made me appreciate more the past, and as I said before, it helped me identify more deeply with the suffering of the thousands of people who suffered there... It also helped me appreciate more all the sacrifice of those people who fought in the war. I do not like war. I do not appreciate it, and I don't believe that the way WWII was fought was just in terms of Catholic Just War Theory. The reasons for the war were just, but the way it was conducted wasn't (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, anyone?). However, I can appreciate more how necessary the war was, and I wish our generation could learn more from the past and stop perpetrating the horrors of war in the present...

Anyway, the day did not end up on that grim note, however. Right after Auschwitz and Birkenau, we went to the Wieliczka Salt Mines, and THAT was fantastic! I will tell you about that in my next post. Love you all, miss you all. God bless ...