May 7: Auschwitz and Birkenau

Tribute to victims in Birkenau

 Monday morning we got on the bus and headed to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. We toured Birkenau first. Our group had our own tour guide. She told us her grandfather used to live near the two camps. When her mother was a young child, her grandfather took her close to the camps and told her to smell the air. He told her the smell and smoke she saw was from burning Jews and that she should never forget that smell. I can't imagine having her job. It would be miserable to have to talk about those horrors day after day. We saw the tracks that led into the camp, the partially destroyed gas chamber and crematorium, and the brick and wooden barracks. In Birkenau, there is a stone monument that was created in the 1960s. In front of the monument are many plaques with different languages on them. They all read these words: "For ever let these words be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children mainly Jews from various counties of Europe."

Nazis attempt at destroying a gas chamber

After Birkenau we went to tour Auschwitz. Our guide took us through the brick buildings that were offices and barracks for the prisoners. The living conditions in Birkenau were worse than those in Auschwitz in my opinion. They were several displays in the buildings. The most disturbing of these was an entire room of hair. Literally a 30x6 foot room piled with hair. Human hair that the Nazis cut from all prisoners to cut down on lice and use for other things. Our tour guide reiterated the fact that this place was a very efficient factory of death. The hair was used to make cloth and stuffed into mattresses. We saw rooms full of shoes, kitchen pots and pans, hair brushes, luggage, and eye glasses. Seeing the piles and piles of thousands of belongings makes the Holocaust real. It's difficult to imagine millions of people being murdered, but seeing their belongings makes it real. Too real. 

Replicated Crematorium oven in Auschwitz

We toured the gas chamber and crematorium last. The Nazis didn't have a change to destroy these before they abandoned the camp. When you walk into the gas chamber you see a small cement room, then you walk into a larger room. In several areas there are square holes in the ceiling. The holes are where the Zyklon B poison was dropped into the gas chamber. It took less than twenty minutes for the people inside to die. From the gas chamber you walk into another room with two reconstructed crematorium ovens. This is where they burnt the bodies. The smoke and ash was expelled from chimneys and fell over the entire camp. Our guide told us people could smell the stench of burning bodies up to twelve miles away. 

The gate millions entered, but only a couple hundred departed

   

That was the end of our tour.  Please click on this link to read more about the Holocaust: http://facts.randomhistory.com/holocaust-facts.html