My day and a half in Krakow was full to the brim with sight-seeing, eating and most importantly history lessons. After meandering around Wawel hill and the old town with Dad and catching up with a dancer friend born and bred in the city, it was time for me to investigate the darker side of this city's, country's and quite frankly the majority of Europe's past. In one day I retraced the footsteps of many Polish Jews of the early twentieth century from Kazimierz (the old Jewish quarter) to the Jewish ghetto and then onto Auschwitz. I had questioned my decision to visit such a place in the knowledge that so many were forced to enter through it's gates, never to see the outside world again. But I felt it important not to ignore what happened, however sickening acknowledging it would be, and the local guides advocacy of this standpoint was the final encouragement I needed.
In Kazimierz things seemed fairly rosy, a variety of synagogues old and new, stories of pioneering Jewish business men and women and recommendations of traditional cuisines were the order of the day. Things took a sobering turn as we crossed the river into the Jewish ghetto of 1940-43. We saw the gravestone like wall that only symbolically kept them in at night - fear was the real deterrent. During the day those that were still physically able, after poor nutrition and sanitation, worked in the nearby factories, including Schindler - a nazi spy turned businessman's factory who, unlike the film portrays, was only persuaded to move his factory and employ desperate Jews that could afford to pay off the Jewish policeman who was actually in charge of 'the list'. For the majority though, the only way out of the ghetto was on a train bound for Auschwitz - if they put up a fight or were too weak to make the journey they were shot in the main square in the final days of the ghetto's existence, an act now commemorated by 64 statues of chairs on the square representing the 64000 Jews killed there and the furniture incinerated there as the Nazi's began to destroy the evidence of the ghetto's inhabitants.
My journey to Auschwitz, after a race through the city by tram, was in an air-conditioned minibus accompanied by an in-drive documentary about the camp's creation and history. It was a far cry from the overloaded wooden wagons carrying 80 or more people and their most precious possessions, sometimes journeying for days, or even weeks from Greece, to reach their final destination.
Facts and figures I learnt on my journey:
- 1940 the camp was converted from army barracks to prisoner of war camp
- it was expanded in 1941 to Birkenau or Auschwitz 2, after Hitler's 'final solution' for the extermination of European Jews
- With 5 gas chambers 2000 people could be murdered every 20minutes
- an estimated 1.3million people died here, 1.1million of which were Jewish
- in the camp's history only 196 people escaped
However, as awful as the statistics are, the true horror of the Holocaust lies in the fact that every single number represents a whole human being - a life with a unique personality, memories and emotions was lost. The old bunk houses of Auschwitz 1 now exhibit artefacts, missed by the Nazi's hasty destruction of the operation at the end of the war, to help us comprehend this; walls of photos and documents of those selected to work with name and date of birth and death, piles of books, shoes, suitcases, pots and pans and most horrifically hair snatched from the bodies of those selected for immediate execution. All these things were a reminder that these people did not live so long ago and that they believed they were going to start a new life - where cooking and reading might have been possible activities. The bunks, left as they were, allowed us a glimpse into the daily hardships of the prisoners - sleeping on straw in crowded rooms, 15seconds to visit the latrine each day, living in fear of being tortured in block 11 - where 4 people could be kept in a square meter cell overnight for not working hard enough. A priest died in the starvation cell after having volunteered to replace a young boy picked at random to pay the price for a rare escapee.
In the earlier days of Auschwitz prisoners were put to work building Birkenau - Auschwitz 2. The sheer scale of this place, row upon row of brick bunk houses or brick chimneys where the wooden houses had been set alight, sent shivers down my spine as we entered through the infamous gatehouse. The railway track passes through it onto the ramp where the unfortunate souls were selected for either death by labour or the gas chambers. Here we learnt more personal stories; of families torn apart on the ramp such as mother and son forced to stand in different lines, the son upset that his mother had pushed him back into the correct line but little did he know she was saving his life - he never got to see her again to thank her. Another son already working in the camp, with the worst job of clearing out the gas chambers, reunited with his mother as she undressed ready for her 'shower'. She was so happy to see her son and he reassured her everything would be alright as he accompanied her into the chamber so that they could die together. The last story was of a 12yr old girl: having already lost her parents in other death camps she lied about her age in order to be put to work. Miraculously she survived two years of mistreatment, malnourishment and slave labour that so many others did not and lives to tell her tale in the book 'Hope is the last to die'.
Of all the shocking things I saw and heard that day one of the most surprising was the fact that after the hasty closure and destruction of the camp, as the Nazis reign ended, the camp opened as a museum only two years later - with survivors as the first tour guides. I can't imagine the awful memories they relived in order to make others aware of the crimes committed. On one wall of the exhibition was the quote by George Santayana - 'those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. If only the Bosnian-Serb army men could have remembered I wonder, as I, now in Bosnia, am learning about the concentration camps and largest European massacre since the Holocaust that happened 50 years later.
Aside from the outrageously German efficiency that was used to organise the whole operation - maximum output with minimum effort - even getting the prisoners to guard each other rather than use more SS men, the worst realisation for me was that the outside world did know what was happening but there was no attempt to stop it. Photos taken by prisoners were smuggled out and planes flew over recording the layout and possible use of the buildings. Edmund Burke's quote 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' rings true again and again.
I had the privilege of leaving Auschwitz, having done nothing more than a few leisurely miles and some attentive listening, to continue my journey though Eastern Europe with an ever increasing sense of gratitude for the free and peaceful situation I grew up in and still enjoy today. I wish this was true around the world but sadly not...
'Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment and merging of races, and we are still far from this blissful realisation' Nikola Tesla
No comments:
Post a Comment