Majdanek
When the bus first pulled into Majdanek, I only saw Barbwire fences. Then, as either the bus or my head turned, I saw the dark buildings in the distance. I saw the giant stone monument. The sight of the dark wooden buildings and watch tower at a distance unnerved me. From a distance, one doesn’t see the parts of the complex which have deteriorated, so it seemed as though we’d arrived at something that still functioned. It was a preservation of death, and it felt wrong.
As a group, our first stop at Majdanek was the monument. It was all stone, and it was enormous. It looked like pieces of letters trying to form a word. It was a message that we couldn’t understand. We asked, “what does it mean?” “Why is it here?” We didn’t see at first that the road leaving the monument leads to the Mausoleum of ashes in the far distance. It felt very heavy. It was the weight of suffering and of remembering it, Jonty explained.
On the way to the main entrance, we passed a rather plain square shaped building. It was white, and all the windows were dark. It was the house of the commandant. Yet, there was nothing sinister about it other than its occupant. It was a blank slate of a house. No swastikas or other markings were there to show anything other than plainness. It looked as if it could belong to anyone.
Outside the main gate of Majdanek, Jonty read us a poem from a woman who, as a little girl, saw her mother going to the gas chamber of Majdanek. She went on to say how as an adult she came back and visited the spot where she last saw her mother and cried. Jonty started getting emotional along with several others of the group. I patted him on the back as we all walked into the camp.
We crossed in front of and stood to the side of one long building labeled “Bad und Desinfektion.” I had known this was the building that held the gas chambers. I started picturing all the people going into the door, not knowing their fate. The thought saddened me. The sealing of one’s fate was through this door, and there was nothing one could do. My eyes started to water, and a tear or two fell down my face. I couldn’t stop thinking of mothers and children walking into this place. The building didn’t even look sinister, but that made it worse. Just looking at it, One wouldn’t suspect the death that occurred inside. It was a trap. It was a lie. I suppose since lies were all that were given to those persecuted by the Nazis, swallowing one more must’ve felt like nothing. If it didn’t, soon enough everything would feel like nothing.
The first room in the building was for undressing and the shaving of heads. Here, the security of appearance was broken, and the complete vulnerability of each person was shown for all to see. This process was often started in the night, so as to confuse those arriving. At night, these people not only feared the natural darkness of the night, but they also feared the darkness surrounding their fate. Here, In the dark of the night, there was a concentration of darkness. It was one that was difficult to shine a light through. It was dense and had layers to it. One could easily become lost in it. And one would have no way out in sight. This darkness was the unknown, and every single person in this building was engulfed in it.
Next was the shower and disinfection room. Here, the people would be thrown into concrete tubs of a chemical disinfectant solution. People would sometimes be water boarded to see if they were still hiding valuables inside them. They would eventually vomit from the experience, and valuables were found. The showerheads then sprayed them with either icy cold or burning hot water. The next room was used to disinfect clothes using Zyklon B gas. The old concrete walls were stained blue by the gas. Just beyond this room were the gas chambers.
The first gas chamber was a plain concrete room seen through an open but glasses off doorway. One could reach their hand into the space where once stood crammed in, terrified people moments from death. Outside the gas chamber, there was a place for the SS to look inside as well as turn on the tanks of carbon monoxide to feed the gas chamber. I could see where there was a pipe that connected the tanks to the room. The hole had been filled. One of the tanks was missing a valve. After replacing that valve and reconnecting the tanks to the chamber, it could be functional again. Majdanek is the most preserved camp.
I’d known What the next gas chamber looked like. It had blue stains all over its walls. As I approached the similar open but glassed off doorway, I thought to myself, “O God, O God.” Then, I saw the blue stains. I saw the light shining through the peep hole of the door on the other end of the chamber. It was for an SS officer. It was for people to have nothing for themselves, not even their own death.
Then, several exhibits and many stories later, we arrived at the crematoria at the other end of the camp. The chimney stood higher than everything. Outside and a little walk from the crematoria was a mass grave of 18,000 people from Operation Harvest Festival when the SS murdered their Jewish workforce after revolts at Operation Reinhard camps as well as the Warsaw Ghetto.
I then walked up the steps to the mausoleum. I knew what awaited me under the massive stone dome. My teacher had shown me pictures, but seeing a picture of dead bodies and actually seeing them are two very different experiences. And this was 14 tons of human remains mixed with dirt and fertilizer. Though we could not see limbs or faces, we saw hundreds of bodies in a big gray pile. No names. Just ash. And that pile of ash is their legacy. These victims did not get to have a legacy in a career or family. Their legacy is that of death, and that is all it ever will be. A pile of genocidal success and a loss to all humanity. That’s what’s in the Mausoleum. That is the Holocaust. A mass quantity of genocidal success and a loss to all humanity. That is why we weeped.