Auschwitz

Auschwitz memorial site, Poland

Most people reading this will probably have heard of Auschwitz. For those who haven't, it's a former Polish army barracks which seventy-odd years ago the Nazi's took over after they invaded Poland, turned into a concentration and extermination camp, and murdered huge numbers of people, mostly Jews. It's sadly the site of the biggest mass murder in human history. 

It might sound odd but sitting in the hostel in Krakow, I had a good think about whether or not to go there. Why would I, or anyone else want to visit a site of torture and mass extermination? Is it disrespectful to visit such a place as a tourist, with no personal connection to it? I decided though that it's a memorial site, with a historic value and the only way to really comprehend the events of the Holocaust. It's not pretty reading but I feel it's worth sharing. 

I thought it was a bit sad that the swanky tour companies get rich off the back of an atrocity, so decided to get a local bus there from Krakow for the day and pay for a tour on site instead, getting there around midday. We first watched a film of archive footage, which was pretty graphic and uncompromising in it's content; some filmed by the Nazis during their rule and some by the Allied forces when they liberated the camp. 

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Our guide took us round the smaller of the three camps first, which mostly is preserved in it's original form. We were shown round many of the prison buildings which now house museum exhibits, including items that belonged to the victims - for example a huge pile of 40,000 pairs of their shoes, removed before they were killed. It was a truly chilling sight - I looked at them, and tried to comprehend that each pair belonged to an innocent person who was killed just because of their race. Believe it or not, the Nazis were so sick they even sold all such possessions in second hand stores back in Germany, though didn't make clear the origin.  

We then took a short bus journey up the road to the main site of the atrocities. Here, huge numbers were imprisoned in horrendous conditions and worked essentially as slaves in work camps. But even bigger numbers - over a million people - ninety percent of whom were Jews, were taken to the end of the train line into a building where they were told they had to all shower, before going to the sheds they thought they would be living in. Except, instead of water coming from the ceiling, the Nazis released poisonous gas. A sick tactic to get people into one room without resistance. A death factory.

In all the tour lasted about four hours, and was pretty moving. It doesn't bring you to tears, but is very sad, depressing and uncomfortable to do, but equally, is enlightening to the events and worth doing.

The guide at the end of the trip told us that his personal mission, and the reason he does his job, is to to educate people to the events, and help stop such a thing ever happening again. Good plan.

The end of the line for many, in more ways than one