The day was beautiful. It was sunny and the sky was very clear. It was a bit cold; just enough to make you want to walk briskly but not enough to make you feel uncomfortable. The driver of our coach started the journey on time. In a few minutes, we were out of the city. The country roads were guarded on each side by row after row of all sorts of trees. Golden coloured leaves were fluttering in the air as a clear sign that this is autumn. Some trees had already shed most of their leaves. They looked like skeletons but still seemed sturdy and full of dignity. From time to time, a sign on the roadside warned the driver that deer could cross the road unannounced. One had to be on guard. Small clusters of houses, generally surrounding a country church, could be seen almost at regular distances. The scene looked idyllic. I feasted my eyes on the beauty that surrounded me.
The horror then began
The guide informed us that she was going to show us a fifty-minute documentary to prepare us for our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau – the Nazi death camps. Soon an old Russian cameraperson was on screen recounting his experiences when filming the death camps on their liberation by the Russian army.
The camp was set up by Germans in 1940, in the suburbs of Oswiecim, a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis. Its name was changed to Auschwitz now associated with the infamous camp which was first used to house Polish prisoners. In the beginning of 1942, it also became the largest of the death camps.
The sign over the camps’ gate ironically says, “Work will set you free.” What a preposterous lie is that slogan. The work provided there was the work given to slaves to dehumanise them. The freedom promised was, in reality, a life shacked in the worst possible and imaginable physical and psychological chains. Many inmates believed that only death would set them free!
The red brick buildings that flank the streets of the camp make it look like a decent village in the south of Poland. This is another lie. The nice exteriors are a futile attempt to hide the interior: horror, death, terror, agony and tears.
Sophie’s non-choice
Large photos of inmates arriving at the camp drape the walls. Children are among the new arrivals. Anyone under 14 was immediately sent to the gas chambers as he or she is deemed not to be productive. Humanity was reduced to productivity glorifying an extremely utilitarian view of men and women.
Imagine you are one of the parents in the photo. Imagine an SS officer forcibly taking your child away for you. Just imagine ….. I remembered a scene from Sophie’s Choice. An SS guard forced her to choose between her two children. One was to live and one was to die. Can you walk around in those halls of hell without shedding tears?
Irony of ironies; outside that particular block a five year old girl in warm and expensive clothes played in the open space with her mother. The smile on their face was denied to so many thousands of mother and children who happened to be at the wrong place and at the wrong time.
Who is to live and who is to die
We walk into a room full of suitcases. The victims were all asked to bring only one suitcase each. They crammed the best they had hoping to be using it themselves only to find that the best was to be stolen by their murderers. The victims wrote their names, date of birth and city of origin on the suitcases. This nourished the hope that those suitcases would be theirs to keep. Today an enormous heap gives witness to this deceit. The date of birth on one showed that the man who had it was 40 years old when he came to Auschwitz. Probably the doctor who glanced at him (there was no time for a proper medical investigation) signalled the guards the direction of the sleeping quarters. He was to be kept alive to work and slave. Another suitcase had the name of a girl who was just over five years old when she came to this death hole. She did not celebrate her sixth birthday. The sign given to the guards pointed towards the gas chamber.
We walked in the direction of the infamous building. On the outside, it looked like a normal building. The inmates were ordered to strip naked. They were told that once inside they were going to be disinfected inside. They were then packed like sardines. A chamber that could have taken, perhaps four hundred, had to cram in seven hundred. The doors are closed. From two openings on the roof, the SS emptied the contents of two tins full of pills. These change into gas if the temperature is high enough. That mass of bodies crammed into the chamber provides the heat needed to metamorphose the pills. In five minutes, everyone is killed. Five minutes of intense terror and desperation.
In the adjacent room the furnaces eagerly await to consume the corpses.
The “happy” families
We drive to the Birkenau camp (also known as "Auschwitz II") which was the largest part of the Auschwitz complex. Most gas chambers were built in Birkenau and the majority of the victims were murdered here. There are no brick houses here. Just wooden barracks hastily built. Infernal dwelling places.
There was an exception though. In one of the sub-camps which was totally segregated from the rest, families could live together. There were nursery schools and playing fields. The lucky ones wrote to their relatives and friends that the concentration camp was a good place to live in. They were allowed to do this for six whole months. The camp authorities thought that this was a long enough period for them to spread the “good” news to everyone they knew. Then they were sent to the gas chambers and a new crop of people was brought in to write to other friends and relatives.
Awschwitz and Birkenau are the work of diabolical people. Even Lucifer would be shocked by the horror and evil created there. The “scum of the earth” were then the Jews, and the homosexuals, and the enemies of the regime. To-day they are the Roma, and the illegal immigrants and …… The list can be never ending.
Will the horror ever be repeated?
In spite of everything, there is also hope because even in Auschwitz there was hope, courage, determination, love and resistance. One particular cell is the symbol of the hope and love shown by many inmates. It is the cell of Fr Max Kolbe. The brave religious priest gave his life in exchange for that of another prisoner. A large Cross, a symbol hated so much by the Nazis, springs hope in the middle of this cell where love triumphed over hate.
Perhaps the presence of the five-year-old girl blissfully playing with her mother is not just an inane irony. Perhaps it is a symbol of a better future, if we choose to live it.