Our Trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps

Saturday was our group’s last day staying in Krakow, and though over the past week we have had quite a few incredible and eye-opening media and tech industry lectures and cultural experiences that have opened our eyes to how much Poland has to offer, there was still one important item on our list to check off: our trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. Though many of us were anxious about seeing the past’s atrocities we knew awaited us, it was time for us to see this enormous part of Poland’s recent history.

The terrifying events of World War II and the Holocaust are still quite a fresh memory in the shared cultural history for Poland, which has become increasingly more evident the over the week as we learned about the culture of the Polish people. Even today, the “coconut culture” of the Polish (meaning a culture slow to trust, but incredibly kind to those proven trustworthy – like a coconut, hard to break but filled with sweet milk) is deeply rooted in the frequently brutal mistreatment and betrayal received by neighboring countries over the past millennium, especially within the last two centuries. These wounds are still fresh in the minds of many people today, and there is no place where the reasons why are more evident than the concentration and death camps still meticulously preserved today just outside the city of Oświęcim.

As we began our tour of Auschwitz I, the smallest and most well preserved camp of the three in the area, you could tell that many of us felt the weight of the past horrors performed on the grounds right away. The tour starts with an intense dose of reality, with pictures of naked and frail bodies, ledgers filled with human trafficking records, and giant piles of artifacts from the events that transpired there a mere 60 years ago. One of the most notable of items: a picture of young children on their way to their death in the gas chambers, looking perfectly calm because they were oblivious of their imminent death, having been told they were on their way to their first meal and shower in days. This type of deception was a typical tactic of the Nazis, whose euphemisms and bold-faced lies often concealed horrific truths lying in plain sight. Other examples of this are the ironic mantra on the front gate (Arbiet Macht Frei, which means “Work will make you free”) and also the outdoor flowerbeds and false shower heads decorating the gas chambers, giving a false sense of safety to prisoners and visitors alike.

Entry gate to Auschwitz I, reading "Arbiet Macht Frei" - Work will make you free

Perhaps the most impactful moment in the beginning, according to several members of our group, was the two tons of human hair removed from the bodies of victims (and even this was a small percentage of the amount found after the war) that was planned for conversion into textiles to furnish the homes of German consumers. Seeing the remains of these poor victims lying together, representing only a small percentage of total victims at the camp and even smaller percentage of victims worldwide, made us realize just how many people were regarded only as disposable objects and taken complete advantage of. We now knew the extent of the mentality that the Nazis only saw these body parts as materials for the taking, not parts of living people.

It is difficult to choose one moment as the most sobering dose of reality, as our trip here was full of them, but if I had to choose one, it would be the moment we stepped into Crematorium I. This perfectly intact gas chamber and crematorium was used to murder thousands of victims during the later years of the war, several hundred at a time, thousands a day. Being inside, you can almost imagine how terrifying it would be to be stuffed into the tiny room with 400 other hungry, weak and naked people, then locked in and left to suffer. Rightfully so, many of these memorials of the horrible crimes committed at Auschwitz are not open for photography due to respect for the victims, so these are sights you must see to believe. It is almost impossible to describe the ominous feeling that overwhelms you once you step foot inside.

Barracks at Birkenau - Auschwitz II. These barracks were home to thousands of women and children.

About one kilometer away, the much larger camp of Birkenau is the solemn scene of many of the Holocaust movies and documentaries that many of us may recall watching in our historical educations. You arrive to the gate greeted by the railroad, which was extended into the camp expressly for the purpose of mass importation of Jewish, Polish, Romanian and gypsy prisoners (among others, such as petty criminals and POWs, to name a few). The long railroad entry with parallel paths on either end stand quite empty now, filled mostly with memories of the hundreds of thousands of people brought here to walk along the roads either sentenced and sent in every direction to either their slave imprisonment or immediate extermination. Surrounding this long path are dozens of large barracks – though, when stuffed with over 700 people at a time, these buildings quickly become completely inadequate. A step inside these buildings reveals the barest of necessities for life - wooden slats; furnaces only built for show; and bathroom troughs (which were only allowed to be used twice a day, before work and after).

Each slot this size typically held 5 people at a time.

But even in such a terrifying place, signs of the resilience of humanity exist. The children’s barracks is lined with simple paintings of happy schoolchildren marching and dancing to school, painted by adult prisoners to give hope to the children whose lives constantly were at risk. And quite a bit of eyewitness evidence now preserved in the museum was secretly penned on smuggled paper by Sonderkommandos (a group of prisoners whose forced, fatal assignment was to burn bodies) and buried underground in the crematoriums. These Sonderkommandos were also entrusted to burn evidence as Soviets approached at the end of the war, but refused to do so, preserving incriminating evidence that led to about 10% of SS participants’ convictions.

Still, much more evidence at this site, including the largest crematoriums (II and III) and much paperwork evidence, was destroyed when Hitler and the other high level commanders began attempting to cover their crimes, in case of capture and trial.  But we can still see and feel so much of the dark past that was the daily life of millions of innocent people in Eastern Europe that the missing evidence is almost not needed to imagine the full scope of what happened there over 60 years ago.

After visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, one has to wonder how any person with any human decency could ever deny that the events of the Holocaust occurred, especially when so much undeniable evidence rests in this memorial for all to see. One also must question how humanity (outside of a then very anti-Semitic Germany) could have systematically failed the millions of people persecuted in the  death camps located in Poland.

To this day, officials from all over the world, including leaders from Poland, offer formal apologies for the crimes committed at Auschwitz, and hold steadfast their commitment to prevent these events from happening in the future, with many countries forming laws to protect the memory of those who died and heavily punish Holocaust deniers. As many of us know, in the United States there is still a relatively strong Neo-Nazi following lurking in the shadows, so there is still much to be done, but keeping the memory and undeniable proof alive is the first of many steps in ridding the world of such intense xenophobic hatred for good.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember, in hopes to honor the memory of every innocent life lost across Europe’s death camps, is this:

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

-George Santayana