A Visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
Birkenau – Barracks Barbwire Barbarism
What we did today is very hard to describe. For me, and my interest in history, it was something that I wanted to do and I thank Adrienne for her planning of it and being a part of it, though I know some of it was hard to take .
I’m not going to say much as most of you will know the story. It was very emotional, very shocking, extremely sad, totally heartbreaking but very worthwhile. I’ll let the facts and the pictures tell that part of the story and fill in the rest of the day further on…
Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), and 45 satellite camps.
Before WWII, the camp in the town of Oswiecim was used as a base for the Polish Army. When Hitler occupied Poland, he took over the barracks and it became known as Auschwitz. Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp’s gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed en masse with the pesticide Zyklon B. An estimate of approx 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, of whom at least 1.1 million died. Around 90 percent of those killed were Jewish; approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities, including an unknown number of homosexuals. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.
In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel (SS), approximately 12 percent of whom were later convicted of war crimes. Some, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allied Powers refused to believe early reports of the atrocities at the camp, and their failure to bomb the camp or its railways remains controversial. One hundred forty-four prisoners are known to have escaped from Auschwitz successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units—prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers—launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising.
As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population – some 50,000 – was sent west on a death march. The prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. When Auschwitz was liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army, the soldiers found 7,500 prisoners alive and over 600 corpses. Among items found by the Soviet soldiers were 370,000 men’s suits, 837,000 women’s garments, and 7.7 tonnes of human hair. The original Auschwitz camp covered an area of 20 hectares (roughly the size of 18 football fields) and the Birkenau extension a further 171 hectares (nearly 160 football fields).
In the following decades, survivors, such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979, it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
The main gate at Auschwitz – “Work Brings Freedom”
Rows of barracks in the original camp
A clear message at the edge of the camp
The ominous chimney of the first crematorium used at Auschwitz
Vast mounds of shoes take from the people – men, women and children – sent to the gas chambers
Part of the perimeter fence at Auschwitz
If there was to be any satisfaction, after the war when the camp commander Rudolf Hoss was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, the survivors of the camp requested that he be executed at Auschwitz. In 1947 he was hanged here, on the site of the former Gestapo offices in the camp
The first, and last, view for the train loads of people arriving at Birkenau
As the trains arrived, the fate of the passengers was determined here – the gas chamber, or registration and the chance to live a little longer
Scenes of the separation process
The remains of barracks as far as the eye can see
The end of the line ….
The entrance to the remains of the gas chambers and crematorium, destroyed as the Red Army approached in January 1945. These are the stairs where people would enter to undress before entering the “shower room”
Our Auschwitz visit filled in quite a bit of the day with the hour long drive each way to get there and back. After we got back to the hotel we were looking for a bit of a change in pace so we went for a short walk to the city market that operates daily in the middle of town. The Stary Kleparz market is a genuine farmers market catering to the locals with not a souvenir in sight – unless you counted the toy stall. There was a variety of beautiful fruits, veges and meats, hardware items, garden items, clothing, cakes and more !
After this we headed to the main square again to have a late lunch however the forecast thunderstorms started to roll in and we decided to head back to the hotel instead. It didn’t produce a lot of rain but we decided to have a quiet glass of bubbly then an easy dinner in the bar downstairs as we watched the crowds walk home from work in the drizzly rain.
Starting our wander in the markets
Loads of fresh produce
Thought we’d seen enough bones the other day !
We leave Krakow, and Poland, tomorrow as we head into the high mountains of Slovakia…
Today’s “Tour Trivia” – “Max Factor” cosmetics was founded by a Pole – Maksymilian Faktorowicz