[REQ] Poland - Auschwitz

[hobbes28]

Seems kinda like a sad subject but we never made it to go and see the camp.

 

[vonnagy]

I didn't go, but a very dear friend of mine recently went and wrote this email about her experience there:

On the way to Krakow we visited Auschwitz. It's very hard to write about it by email without sounding cliched - I think it's just something that each person needs to go to for themselves. None of us managed to say a word whilst we were on the grounds. It's utterly overwhelming - seeing the worst imaginable aspects of humanity in such a tangible way. Auschwitz I is set up like a museum - You see what they found in one of the stores when they liberated the camp - the thousands of pairs of little kids shoes, the 70 tons of hair cut from the heads of women they killed in the gas chambers so that it could be sold to the German textile industry - The extermination plan was efficiency at its worst (which ironically is simultaneously at its most efficient). We walked the yard where 'death wall' was - one of the many execution sites, and into the cells bordering it where people could hear their friends and family being shot in the knowledge that they were about to undergo the same fate.We saw the plans to enlarge the camps so as to more quickly wipe out the 11 million Jews they had identified for 'extermination' in Europe. However it is not until you walk 2 km down the road to Auschwitz II that you really get a viseral comprehension (I don't know if that makes sense, but it's the best way I can explain it) of the scale of the horror. You walk up the watchtower (if you've seen Schindler's List you will know the one), and from there you have a panaoramic view (again - that is an odd construction to use, since a panoramic view is typically associated with something beautiful, and this couldn't be more different) of the train tracks that (in a heralded development in 'efficiency') dropped prisoners directly beside the gas chambers as soon as they arrived from their various homes in Europe, out to the remanants of the gas chambers themselves, and then as far as the eye can see on either side, the wooden barracks (essentially stables) where the prisoners slept - all surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers - it was the bleakest scene imaginable.

 

[hobbes28]

We went to Dachau and took some pictures. One day, I'll post some of them. It's true what your friend says. Nothing can prepare you for what is behind those gates. The gate to all camps have "Arbeit Macht Frei" written on them which roughly means "work makes freedom" That's usually where it hits you.

Thanks for sharing your friend's story.

 

[santino]

I think I'll go there by this year.
I live 12 miles away from Mauthausen (a camp which is not that big as Auschwitz but sad enough). I think I gotta share some pics.