Sent to Auschwitz
Traveling from Krakow to Oświęcim, the drive is breathtaking. Early mornings in early January, snow has blanketed the sparsely populated suburbs and forests with dry, thin-lipped trees making for a beautiful backdrop – the last beautiful thing one will see before reaching one’s destination.
Visiting for everyone has different symbolism: for some it is their past, maybe they have lost relatives there, many have read books or seen related films, some have wanted to visit this place for years, others are there simply out of curiosity and others just by chance because they happened to be in Poland. Be that as it may, eight decades after the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust, this place remains forever etched in the memory of anyone who visits it.
Auschwitz, the largest cemetery in the world
Starting the tour of the Auschwitz I concentration camp, tourists walk slowly, in groups, taking care not to slip in the snow. The tour guide is equipped with Bluetooth as it is not a place where anyone talks loudly – it is the largest cemetery in the world. Passing the gate with the famous inscription “Work makes you free”, the tour guide says that “at this moment we are stepping on the ashes of millions of people. The majority of prisoners who passed through this gate, left there,” he explains, pointing to the huge chimneys.
“The main goal was dehumanization”
As one moves forward, one sees buildings everywhere. Entering each one, he discovers its tragic history. “Mengele experimented in this building.” “Here in this room, 1×1, four men stood in the dark until they died.” “This brick wall was what the prisoners looked at when they were being executed. The building on the right has windows so that those who lived there could see what awaited them. Not the building on the left, so that they can only hear the shots there without knowing what is going on.” “One bed corresponded to six prisoners. A bathroom for hundreds of people. Of course there was no heating” the tour guide can be heard through the headphones. “The main goal was dehumanization.”
55,000 Jews from Greece
The tour then continues to Birkenau. The narrow streets and gravity of Auschwitz I are replaced by a vast expanse with few ruins, clear skies, and two parallel railroad tracks that come to a once ominous, and very definitive, stop. “Approximately, 55,000 Jews from Greece were transported on these trains,” informs the guide.
20 thousand deaths a day
As the Nazis managed, just before the liberation of the camp, to blow up much of the buildings, crematoria and gas chambers, it is even more shocking when one realizes that in this vast dry place, up to 20,000 people a day were killed and burned .
The last acts of desperation
In the approximately four hours that the tour lasts, one will see things that will be etched in one’s memory forever. This could be the inexperienced prisoners’ hair which has now formed a huge mass, or their personal items (shoes, suitcases, children’s toys) that they arrived at the camp with without any idea of what awaited them – or the nails on the walls of the gas chambers, the last act of desperation of the men, women and children who martyred there.
Gas chambers and forced labor
In total, more than 1.1 million people died in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, including one million Jews. Those who were not sent directly to gas chambers were sentenced to forced labor, where most died from the hardships.
Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 10,000-15,000 people from other population groups, according to official Auschwitz Museum records.
The “tourism of death”
In recent years, tourism at Auschwitz has attracted criticism (the “tourism of death”, as critics call it), since on “full” days it can receive up to 30,000 visitors. “For everyone who is here, this visit marks something different, everyone has their own reasons. But seeing what you saw here today, I believe that you will not forget them – and that is the point”, concludes the tour guide at the end of the visit. “‘Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it’ – George Santayana” reads an inscription in the museum.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 80 years ago today, in 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi regime’s largest concentration and extermination camp.
