Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz one was powerful, but at times it didn’t feel like a former concentration camp. At times, it felt like a display. Tourist groups crowded every area that we saw, leaving not enough time to pause and contemplate what one was seeing. However, this didn’t suppress the power of what we did see in the blocks we visited. There was a room full of human hair as well as a rug made of human hair just in one room. Pictures were not allowed here, but some took photos anyway. Society of the spectacle. There were several displays of shoes and clothes. However, there was no smell of leather since all of this was behind glass. We then saw Block 11 and the adjacent execution wall. No one got close to it. People just took pictures. When it comes to taking pictures of such awful things, one needs to look at why one is taking pictures. Pictures are to be taken of these places and things to help remember and be a part of the collective memory that shall not let the holocaust be forgotten. To just take a picture without thought in taking or having it is to trivialize the subject of the photo itself. And none of the things or places we saw are to be trivialized or commodified. Unfortunately, they are. One can buy ice cream at Auschwitz one and eat at its nice restaurant as well. Whatever you do, you must have one of their tour guides if you go. I understand money is needed to keep preserving these places, but I wonder how much goes to Poland itself. So, I ask, does this place feel more like a memorial or a tourist destination?
After exiting the Auschwitz one museum, we all got lunch from one of the buses. After I got my lunch, I noticed something. In all the hustle and bustle that spread about it in front of the entrance and shops stood Howard, a man who had seen and been in the horror that grew in these crowds. There are still witnesses to what is shown in the museum that the people were so intent on touring. They were so focused on entering and seeing the museum that not one of them noticed or asked the elderly man looking around if he was a survivor. I suppose those going to Auschwitz to check it off their bucket list and nothing more wouldn’t be paying much attention.
Birkenau was different than Auschwitz one. This time, Howard was our guy, and he did not do it for a paycheck. He did not do it as a job. He did it as his duty. He did it as his mission. It was his way of educating in passing down to us all the horrors and suffering that he experienced and witnessed 74 years ago where we now roamed freely. He was in Birkenau from July to November of 1944. We started under the main watchtower at the front of the camp. As more people entered the camp, some of them noticed our group gathered around Howard and stood on the edge after realizing we were listening to a Holocaust survivor.
From there, we moved onto an empty barrack where Howard spoke of barrack life and the many struggles that went with it. We then walked outside and went along the railway track farther into the camp where we stopped and were given free time to look around the camp. People went in different directions to see different areas of the camp, but several others and I went with Howard to the memorial and the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria. All of them were piles of brick, stone, and steel collapsed in on themselves. 76 years after they began ending thousands of lives, the gas chambers sat in ruin as a survivor stood and looked over that which failed to end his life. The scene was a victory among sorrows.
We went past the gas chambers, sewage control buildings, mass graves, and the ruins of buildings used to store items stolen from new arrivals. We then entered the building where new arrivals had their clothes and items taken, shaved, showered, and tattooed their number. In one of the rooms of this building, there were walls of pictures taken from arrivals. It was as if someone had made a giant photo album of the persecuted and taken out a couple pages to put on display. Howard stood in front of the photos, looking up at the people, perhaps seeing if he could recognize anyone. After a few moments, it seemed they were all strangers to him. At this point, we heard that it was raining outside.
Once we left the building, we saw the great gray clouds that filled the sky and sent more and more rain upon us. The memorial service was cancelled, and we started our way back to the main entrance. Thunder crashed and lightning struck nearby. Regardless of this, most of us put up our umbrellas against the increasingly heavy rain. The barracks along the way were mere foundations and chimneys while the buildings that weren’t destroyed were locked. There was refuge. I suppose we were lucky, though. The loud booming we heard and felt was not the firing of guns at us or those around us. The clouds in the sky were not bigger due to smoke from four chimneys, and those chimneys were not our way out of this place. As we drew closer to the main gate, the rain intensified more than ever and was joined by sleet. I barely fit under the crowded space beneath the main brick watchtower and entrance. We all huddled there as a mass of bodies fleeing from the rain which still hit us at an angle. The space echoed with the constant sound of rain mixed with voices as we waited for the rest of our group. We didn’t know what was to happen after that. Eventually, the rest of the group joined us, and the storm calmed. Finally together, we walked to the buses as the rain came to a drizzle. On the bus, several others and I took off our soaked shoes and socks, and we all sat in our wet clothes for the next hour and a half on the bus going back to the hotel. It was not comfortable. Someone had asked Howard if he would’ve had to stand in such conditions that we had just fled. “Of course,” he said.