Auschwitz-Birkenau

No words can describe or do justice to the haunting, shocking and chilling evil done against the Jews, Roma, political prisioners, Soviet POWs and many others during the halocaust. The organization of it all. The unimaginable crimes and evil against humanity and methodical torture, and murder is truly disturbing. Experiments such as injecting leprosy into victims were performed. Upon arrival doctors decided the fate of millions of men and women, young and old, children - to die by work or straight to the gas chambers. Doctors that should be giving life were deciding death for at least 1 million at the Auschwitz camps alone.

On the bus ride through dense evergreen forest to Auschwitz, we watched a documentary of the sobering footage and commentary from a Soviet journalist who covered the liberation of Auschwitz. He captured the shock of exposure to skeletons, the dead and barely living, the fear and distrust in the blank eyes of victims. The recovering of evidence that the Nazis tried to destroy.

Auschwitz is located in a remote and quiet area with the intentions of hiding the horror there. The tour took us through the gate with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Work Sets You Free" overhead, giving the newly arrived a false sense of hope. Then we walked over train tracks and through the camp grounds and roll-call areas and into bunkrooms and prison cells and finally underground through the area where victims were stripped, gassed and then cremated. We also saw the Wall of Death, where thousands were lined up and shot. The most shocking exhibits tend to be ones that portay lost individual lives, such as personal photos, luggage, brushes, clothes, shoes. Probably the most horrifying exhibit was a room filled with thousands of pounds of human
hair, which were sold to make cloth and blankets. A blanket was displayed made from the women's hair still with traces of poison used to murder them. About 1.5 million people (1.1 milion Jews) were murdered in Auschwitz.

Afterwards we went to the grounds of the Birkenau camp, where most of
the mass killings took place. Its enormous size gives a sense of the
extent of the crimes, though much of it was destroyed by the Nazis
during retreat in an attempt to destroy the evidence. We were able to
tour a wooden barrack that housed some laborers, but mostly brick
chimneys dotting the landscape along with a central train track was
all that was left. As we were leaving a group of Israeli soldiers
stood at attention in silence in front of the barbed wire outside the
camp.

We will contemplate and process what we saw today for a very long time.

Later on we had a Polish lunch at a milk bar (bar mleczny). During
the communist era they were established as a cheap, self-service
cafeteria to provide wholesome meals to the poorest citizens. The
menu used to largely reflect dairy products. Now they are a more
modern cafeteria serving traditional Polish dishes cheaply. We had
tomato soup, borshe, and pierogi, a Polish ravioli with cream cheese
and potato filling.