Auschwitz:The Jewish Trail of Tears

October 8, 2013

Warning! Wall of text follows; the topic information may be too intense for some but well worth the read. This blog was dictated by my husband.

A large part of this trip has been based on snap decisions and random luck; although almost 4 months of planning was done before we left home. While planning we made a list of “must see” locations and one of the more meaningful picks to me was visiting a concentration camp. Having an active fascination with WWII,it just so happens due to my Polish-Jewish heritage I would have been very popular with the Nazis at the time; therefore I wanted to see what my life would have been like if I were born a few generations earlier.

Going back a few post while in the Netherlands we toured the Anne Frank House. Most people read The Diary of Anne Frank in school but I have never been the book reading type; I'll take a movie over a book any day. Lucky for me my wife volunteered to read the diary aloud while I drive which made our tour of the annex much more surreal.

The street front of the business the annex is
attached to

 Throughout our travels in mainland Europe and the United Kingdom WWII has been a focus of our touring; therefore the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam caught our attention for its historic significance. Seeing the conditions that even a rich family in hiding enjoyed was astonishing. For eight people to be forced to share such a small space for nearly two years; rationing food, and forbidden to go outside is unbelievable. Walking through the secret annex, where the last months of their lives were spent in fear is haunting. Making our way through Anne's room, we saw the pasted pictures of movie stars she decorated her walls with as a way to brighten up the dull space void of any natural light. Its frightening to imagine that the Nazis grip spread so far into a non aggressive society. If the quality of life for Jews in Holland was so hopeless that citizens were persecuting their neighbors then think about the conditions of the Jews still living in Germany and Poland under the iron fist of the third Reich. After the tour we wanted to know more about the fate of Anne Frank and the lives of others like her. Sorry for limited pictures of the Anne Frank House but they were forbidden and to take them anyway felt disrespectful. 

At first we had planned on visiting a concentration camp in Germany but after doing some research we learned that the camps located in Germany were mainly forced labor camps not created for extermination purposes. Not to trivialize the pain and sorrow of those who were forced into labor camps but my interests lies in the Nazis attempted genocide of the Jewish population. So when it came to making a decision about which camp to see only one word came to my mind, Auschwitz.

My wife is amazing!Throwing such a change in plans at someone in the middle of a 9 month long journey would drive anyone crazy but not her. After experiencing the highs from Oktoberfest in Munich Germany we made a more somber appointment in Oswiecimiu, Poland to tour the first death camp built by the Nazis. By adding this destination to our itinerary we would also be adding 3 more countries we had not originally planned on visiting; Czech Republic, Poland, and Austria. Below is a photo and caption journey of our Auschwitz trip.

Prague, Czech Republic 

The vibrant Austrian foliage

Arrival at Auschwitz: 

"Work Sets You Free"

As an incoming prisoner
 you were greeted by this sign.

Processing of Prisoners:

These are some of the belongings plundered from the victims of KL Auschwitz by Nazis and found after the liberation of the camp.

Some of the cunning ways the Nazis manipulated Jews was to tell them to write there names and addresses on there luggage because they would be reunited with it once they arrived at the camp. This was used as form of social control and false hope. All luggage was sent to processing and stripped of all valuables before being sent to huge piles awaiting incineration; eerily similar to the fate of their owner. 

Living Conditions: 

Some of the prisoners sleeping accommodations
 upon arrival at the camp. 

The interior of a room used as sleeping quarters.
Prisoners slept on wooden bunks usually two people per bunk.

Food rations per meal. 

The interior of the bathroom for the prisoners between 1941-1945. Before these were
built prisoners used field latrines and washed at an outside well.

The creative mind of a child can be warped with images of death and devastation daily.
The images drawn by the children in Auschwitz illustrate this loss of innocents.

Torture:

This picture is an example of “the post.”
 Prisoners were hung from a post
 with their arms twisted behind their backs until death. 

Prisoners held in the concentration camp died from over work, starvation, sadistic punishments, exhaustion after roll calls, torture, appalling living conditions, being used for medical experiments, or arbitrary execution. Those too weak or sick to work were picked out during roll call by the Nazis or in the infirmary and sent to the gas chamber or murdered with phenol injections.

Many prisoners who had run out of hope or who could withstand any more torture took their lives intentionally, by crossing “the fire line” where they were shot with no hesitation. Each rose entangled in the barb wire bare some significance of the lives lost here. 

Block 11 aka The Death Block

This is were enemies of the camps leadership were sentenced to 

death to which almost all the Jewish men and Polish priest were sent to directly.

 The Execution Wall were many Jews and Poles lost their lives
 located in the courtyard of The Death Block.
Today this wall receives many visitors
remembering their lost loved ones.

In the basement some of the most cruel forms of execution were carried out. This is were prisoners convicted during sham trials were kept, some were starved to death, other were experimented on. The first experimental gassing was carried out here using Zykonl B. This was done in preparation for much larger plan of genocide of the Jews.

Through this door hundreds of thousands prisoners were
filed only to leave as smoke through the chimney. 

Stripped of your clothing Jews filled these rooms awaiting “a shower”
only to be gassed to death.
Then their bodies were moved to the convenient
 incinerator housed in the same building. 

This is where most prisoners of Auschwitz ended up
 within three to six months of entering the camp.

Mistaken for snow, the amount of ash produced by this incinerator covered the roofs of houses and streets in Auschwitz for fives years.

 The first commandant of Auschwitz, who was tried and sentenced to death after the war by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal was hung publicly in April 1947; ironically within feet of were he executed hundreds of thousands of Jews.

We have so many more photos and videos of this experience, too many for this blog. The feeling I got after walking under the famous Auschwitz gate stayed with me the entire visit. A feeling of loss of humanity, of sorrow, and also a feeling of hope in that if we can remember these atrocities then we can learn to never repeat them again.