A heavy heart- Auschwitz

Blog #8
Field Trip #3 (9)

"The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again" - George Santayana 

As I sit here on the bus ride back to Olomouc trying to wrap my head around the place I just saw, I am in complete shock. I have learned about Auschwitz several different times throughout my academic career as well as written a research paper on this horrific event but nothing prepared me for actually being there. I am going to try and explain what I saw today in as much detail as possible but I know that no words can fully describe the events that occurred in that place.

Auschwitz is located in Oświęcim, Poland. It was originally a prison built before the war but after Nazi invasion they turned it into a concentration camp. Auschwitz I was this camp and the first one we saw. There are total of three camps, the other two were built after the war started. Auschwitz I held around 20,000 prisoners including Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and political prisoners at its highest point. (This number does not include the other two camps that were built later.) People were brought to Auschwitz from all over Europe. In the first group of people who were brought to the camp during Nazi control, 300 of them survived. They survived 4 years in the camp and a few are still alive today.

When we first walked in through the famous "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" arch I immediately got chills. When people would arrive on trains they went through a selection process right outside this gate. They were lined up and a physician would take one look at them and point left or right. He was picking out which ones he thought looked strong enough to work. Only 25% of all people survived this process. The rest were sent straight to the gas chambers. They didn't even set foot in the camp. Anyone under the age of 14, the elderly, pregnant, and mentally ill, or people seen as unfit to work were sent straight to the gas chambers.

There was so much obedience because of all the lies the Nazi's told the prisoners. They told them that they were going to a place where they could live and work in good conditions with other people like them. All the propaganda got Jews to even buy their own train tickets to get them to the camp. This was all part of the master Nazi plan. They were so good at this plan they literally got people to pay their way to their own murder.

The train cars that brought prisoners to the camps held about 80 people in each one. There were no windows in them so they couldn't see where they were going. They were not fed, had no toilet use, and were crammed with their luggage for days on end. Sometimes prisoners were in there for 5-7 days straight. Often times more than half of the people wouldn't even survive the train rides there. A train that came from Greece lasted 9 days and only 30% of those prisoners survived the train ride, then only 25% of those survivors made it through the selection process. You can see how quickly these people were killed in the most inhumane ways possible. 

A train car that held 80 people and their luggage for several days straight.

The prisoners that survived the selection were taken then to be stripped of their luggage that they brought with them. The Nazi's collected all of this and took it for their own use and stored it on site and or sent it back to Germany for use there. They took everything from them, even things like pots and pans and hair brushes. They were given a pair of pajamas that were their only clothes. They had a symbol on them which told everyone why they were in the camp. (Jew, homosexual, political prisoner, etc.) They didn't have any underwear or socks and sometimes didn't even have shoes. They were given a number that was then tattooed onto their arms, and all of their hair was shaved off. They lost their identity when they walked in. From that point on they were only referred to as a number. 

These pictures are just small fractions of the amount of items collected from people killed just from Auschwitz alone.

Each person was instructed to put their name and birthday on their luggage before it was taken from them. There was a whole hallway of luggage, many of which were babies and young children that were taken straight to the gas chambers. This hallway was only one train load of people's luggage.

A hallway of human hair. They cut it off to send to Germany to be used in factories to make carpet.
(picture from auschwitz.org because photos in this room weren't allowed)

40,000 pairs of glasses

prosthetic legs and arms and crutches

 A whole hallway of shoes on all sides. 

Hair brushes and combs

Pots and pans prisoners brought along. They were told they got to keep all their belongings when they got here.

The prisoners that were sent to the gas chambers were told that they were only going to take a shower as to not create panic. In Auschwitz I they had one gas chamber that could kill 1,000 people at a time. These people were told to undress in the room outside the chamber and then walk in where they were all killed with zyklon B poison. This suffocated them inside the chamber. The poison stops the oxygen from flowing throughout the body. It took 12 cans of the gas to kill all these people in 20 minutes. After the time was up, they let the chamber air out for a little while and then it was the job of some prisoners to carry the bodies out of the chamber and cremate them. Often times the bodies were found in a few big piles after the gassing process in the chamber. The weak (elderly and children) would die first at the bottom of the pile and the stronger men would climb on top of them to try and reach the ventilations at the top. There was no escaping though. The prisoners who carried the bodies out and cremated them also had to go through all of the clothes they took off and take out the valuables. This process also included shaving women's hair off before cremating them, taking out gold teeth, jewelry, prosthetic legs, etc.  The Auschwitz I gas chamber only had the capacity to cremate 300 people in 24 hours so it would take about 3 days before they could bring in another 1,000 more people. This was not efficient enough for the Nazi's. This was the main reason they started to build another concentration camp. They decided to build Birkenau located 3 kilometers away from Auschwitz. 

Auschwitz I gas chamber. 1,000 people were killed in this room at a time.

The vent where the Zyklon B was dropped in.

Actual cans of Zyklon B. 12 cans were needed for every 1,000 people.

Where they cremated bodies. They then used the ashes for fertilizers around the camp to get rid of the evidence. 

The living conditions in Auschwitz were completely inhumane. They were treated way worse than animals. They worked for 12 hours every day and came back to rooms that were holding sometimes 10 times more than their capacity. They were given three "meals" a day which amounted to only about 250 calories. Breakfast included a mixture of mostly water and a little bit of coffee. Lunch was almost always rotten vegetables and for supper they were given one piece of black bread and maybe a piece of cheese or a teaspoon of jam. These rations were only supposed to allow people to live for 2-3 months. The Nazi's calculated exactly the amount of calories it would take to keep them alive for a while but to eventually kill them so they could be replaced in the camp. 

A replica of what a normal living cell at Auschwitz I looked like. 

There were "hospitals" in Auschwitz that were anything but hospitals. They did many horrible experiments on prisoners including trying different ways to sterilize prisoners. They wanted to eliminate the Jews and this was one of the ways they were trying to make that happen.

Anyone that tried to escape, show resistance, or break any rules were tortured. There were three different types of torture rooms in Auschwitz I. There was suffocating, standing and starvation rooms. In the suffocating rooms they would put 40 people into a very small room and seal off the whole room and slowly one by one the people would suffocate to death. In the standing room, they would force 4-5 people to stand in them all night after their 12 hour work days. They would repeat this process every night until they died. The last form of torture was starvation. They would leave people locked up in a room with no food until they died. If a prisoner tried to escape, they would randomly pick 10 people from their living area and all 11 of them would go into a starvation room until they died. They used this tactic to try and have them rat each other out if they heard of someone planning to try and escape. Public and private executions were also carried out regularly. If they wanted to make an example of what would happen if you disobeyed they would hang you in front of everyone. There was also a wall made out of a mixture of concrete and straw to absorb the bullets where prisoners would line up for executions completely naked and a guard would go one by one and shoot them in the back of the head.

Three standing rooms in the building used for torture. The walls went all the way
     up and the prisoners were forced to crawl in a little passageway on the floor and stand
in these rooms with 4-5 other people all night. 

The wall where people were executed.

Where public hangings took place.

The camp was surrounded by double barbed wire fence with a lethal voltage. Many prisoners would run into it as fast as they can because it would kill them instantly instead of having to go through any more torture. Suicide was unfortunately a much better option.

Just when I thought that it couldn't get worse, we went to Birkenau. The camp specifically designed for extermination.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Like I said before the Nazi's did not feel like it was efficient enough to kill 1,000 people every three days. They took over some farm land near Auschwitz I and turned it into a camp. They burned down the houses of people that lived there and were farming and used their tools and anything else they wanted to to help them make the camp. 

Birkenau was over four times bigger than Auschwitz I with five gas chambers on sight and over 300 buildings. The living conditions here were worse than Auschwitz... if that is at all imaginable. For example, there were three levels of bunks in each of the buildings each having about five people in a bed about the size of a 'twin size' bed. There were only three toilets for every 8,000 prisoners and they were only allowed to use the toilet twice a day for 30 seconds. Often times when they were sleeping people on the top bunks would vomit or go to the bathroom and it would fall down on everyone else sleeping below them. The prisoners would be shot immediately if anyone saw them trying to go to the bathroom during work or any time other than their allotted time during the day. As crazy as it sounds, the people who had the job of cleaning out the toilets were said to have the best job. There wasn't a sewage system installed until almost the end of the war so people had to climb down into the toilets and clean them by hand. They would fill up a bucket and hand it to somebody above and they would dump it in the ditches surrounding the camp. These people were said to be the most safe from the Nazi's because none of the guards ever went in the bathrooms because of the smell. They also had constant access to the toilets so they could use them whenever they needed.

The outside of one of the prisoner cells.

Where the prisoners slept. The bunks were taken out but there were three levels of beds. About five men slept in each small bed. You can see the brick furnace run down the middle but it was never used. The only protection the prisoners had from the cold was the wood walls. 

There were three rows of these toilets in the building. People who had to clean the toilets as their job would lift up the ring at the front of the picture and climb down in it and dig it out by hand. 

The gas chambers were hidden in the woods at the end of the camp. They were surrounded with big trees and flowers as to not raise suspicion. When prisoners were brought here, they again were told that they were just taking a shower. They took off all their clothes and walked into the chamber where there were even fake shower heads installed to not create mass panic. Again workers were assigned to carry out the bodies and clean up the blood and vomit left behind. These gas chambers had cremators in them as well but they could burn 1,000 bodies in 24 hours- much more than Auschwitz I. Other prisoners jobs included taking the human bones and crushing them with their own hands and tools because they don't burn going through the cremation process. They would take these bones and ashes and spread them out in little ponds around the site. They used to human ashes as fertilizer as well. The Nazi's killed the prisoners who worked in the gas chambers very often because they didn't want any eye witnesses if something were to happen. They would gather all of them in there for a "meeting" and then lock them in there and kill them. Their replacement's first job was to dispose of the bodies of those workers previous to them. 

The gas chambers were all destroyed by the Nazi's 1-7 days before the Russians came and liberated the camps. They tried to destroy as much evidence as possible.

Where the prisoners would walk in to the chamber.

What is left of one of the destroyed gas chambers.

When the Nazi's knew that the Russians were coming to the camp they had all the prisoners they thought fit march to other camps. 56,000 prisoners walked to other camps during what was known as the "Death March". All the rest they thought wouldn't make it were left to die in the camp. 

There is a memorial between the two main gas chambers at the Birkenau camp. Right after the war was over the Polish government started planning a memorial for all of the victims at the site. 20% of the Polish population was killed at Auschwitz. It is a sacred place to commemorate the 1.5 million lives that were lost at Auschwitz during this horrific event 75 years ago. 

I left with such a heavy heart today and wish that everyone had the chance to see this place. There is nothing like it and the feelings of being inside there are indescribable. We need to learn from our world's history so that it never repeats itself. The 6,000,000 people that died in this camp and all the others will never be forgotten.