Seraphiel´s blog: Auschwitz Concentration Camp

The seven hour long journey across the border from Prague to Poland took its toll on all of us, as we disembarked in Oswiecim. Although fearing the worst in regards to weather, it turned out quite pleasantly warm and sunny. The main square brimmed over with many international buses and the crowds were excited to see the infamous remnants of Hitler´s past. We were separated into smaller groups at our arrival and given a tour guide and set of headphones each. As we walked through the arrival gate that used to open up to millions of Jews, making them feel ´at home´ by its profane sign „Arbeit macht frei“ (work makes you free), one could feel the odd shiver down the spine as it slowly started dawning on him. The houses made of red bricks looked meticulously perfect, fitting with the German orderliness, although you could feel the underlying despondency about the whole place, once you imagined what sort of horrors must have occurred behind all those neatly built walls and fastened windows. The small village felt more like a ghost town with its dusty roads empty and hollow, intertwining with tens of other roads that housed copies of exactly the same buildings. Only their numbers were different. Block 11, Block 15, Block 9....
We walked into several brick houses being brought to many thematically diverse rooms with exhibitions of photographs with Jews marching to their death, rooms full of shocking items like heaps of shoes, suitcases, hair, prosthetics, children´s toys and other personal items. We were taken down into the prison chambers that served for various punishments. Bare walls with scarcely any light. Dampness and fear still permeating through the pores of the cold surface. We were shown a place where the recruited band of musicians used to play happy tunes for all the incomers in the hope of presenting itself as a regular working camp, that will offer new possibilities and beginnings. Only a sick mind could have constructed such a devious plan. We walked around the gallows where Rudolph Hess hung after war, but many will agree that he didn´t deserve such an easy escape. He was the mastermind behind the means of mass murder, finding the cans with poisonous insect killer Zyklon B, which he methodically used on millions of innocent people, in order to exterminate them inside the gas chambers. That takes me to the most feared place of all; the chambers.
The houses with low ceilings and the appearance of pigpens, with darkness swallowing every ounce of light coming through the tiny main entrance. People who entered, escaped only through the chimney. They were lied about the purpose right from the start, being given a piece of soap and told to take off their clothes in the main hall, only to be showered later. They were even told to remember the number of their hooks they hung their clothes on. How immaculate, how cunning. These Nazis, they could not have been more proud of their achievement and efficiency. As we slowly moved outside the perimeters of Auschwitz territory and headed three kilometres towards the Birkenau camp, the mood shifted rapidly, as we saw the enormous sight that had a chilling resonance. The fields behind the electric wires told the story of a real hellish nightmare. There were no more splendidly built brick houses, but shabby, desolate and gloomy buildings looking like horse stalls that used to shelter waves of prisoners. Greeks, Polish, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, French, all of them mostly Jews and some political figures as well as criminals, who used to guard over the lot. The most impressive was the pathway along the railway track that runs through the middle like a river, only leading to the centre of the camp, having nowhere else to go; the final destination. Standing on the platform, where the fates of millions had been decided upon, I imagined the multiple feet that must have touched this very ground and waddled along, exhausted by their long journey, only to come for their death certificate.

Birkenau was the strictest and most brutal camp of all. Your chances of survival were almost none. If you were lucky to survive the initial journey where you were squeezed like a cattle without having eaten for days; if you survived the following selections directed by Dr Mengele, who by whim chose the ones fit for work and the ones who were older and sick sent off to their last march into gas chambers. If you miraculously survived even then, you probably didn´t make it through months of the hardest labour, food and water deprivation, or disease epidemics, not mentioning cold or extreme heat.

We walked the path of the doomed ones which is so often portrayed in many historical photographs – the path turning to the right – from where nobody returned alive. It was peculiar to retrace the steps of so many souls that lacked the slightest notion of what´s awaiting them at the furthest end. It felt like walking my last steps too. I imagined I´m one of them and whenever I looked behind me, I could see the train, the people remaining on the platform, the watch towers of Birkenau and the vast space beyond that belonged to the world. This was the entrapment of innocent souls inside the wired fields of death. This was the perimeter of a world that got cut off by the hands of the evil men only to snuff out the life for no good reason. I wanted so much to grab the imaginary souls and take them all back towards the gates, take them out of this hell and make it all disappear. If only time could go back. I felt incredible sadness over this loss. There is no replacement for those good, intelligent, inspiring people that could have lived and made a difference in their times. They left so many things behind; their families, their loved ones, their children, their youth, their never fulfilled dreams and hopes, their freedom. The injustice that has occurred was beating in my chest 70 years later, although I was just a silent witness now, who could barely comprehend the ferocity of it all. I tried to find some hope in there, some little speck of meaning, so that all these women, men and children wouldn´t lose their lives in vain. I imagined that maybe, maybe they were all around us now in the form of angels, trying to guard us and warn us against the same mistakes. Perhaps their death was the only exclamation mark on our conscience, keeping us constantly alert and saying aloud – don´t let this happen again. This wasn´t injustice perpetrated on Jews. This was injustice perpetrated on all humankind.

As we passed by the most infamous gas chambers that remained standing (as the Nazis didn´t have enough time to bring them down once the Red Army started approaching), we encircled the debris of the chambers only to reach the little remote and quiet pond. How shocking to be told its floor is still covered with tons of human ashes; the ashes that remained of the people. These were sometimes used by Nazis instead of dust, when the ground was frozen solid, so that they didn´t slip over. I stared at the water and saw the grey layers sitting down like ashes from lava. I couldn´t fathom what kind of horror must have happened here. It was too far- fetched, too barbaric to even accept as real. Thankfully, the sun was shining as if it apprehended our vulnerable journey back in time, and shone as if trying to take away disquiet from our hearts. The loneliness and the ghastly perception would have been much worse if it rained. We peeked inside the female building, which reminded me of a haunted farm, with all its claustrophobic narrowness, the three-floor cubicles for sleeping, where the bodies of eight people had to fit all at once, and its crumbled floors, dark corners and dampness penetrating the lungs like a heavy cloud.

If being here all by myself, I would freak out only by standing inside. Imagining that these women had to live here for several years, sleep on the cold floors quite unprovided for, without any medical help, this went beyond anyone´s wildest imagination.

Thinking of how good we live these days, how protected and sheltered we are, what food and medicine we have and the comfort we live in, we would not be able to deal with as much as they did. We would perish within a single day. I always think of situations like being cut off from water for one day or electricity, or even not having been able to get a hot meal once a day, and I feel deeply frustrated and a sense of trepidation comes over me. These people kept hanging on threads, losing all their human dignity, starving out and dying out like flies by the thousands. The enormity of it all made them immune to their surroundings and living conditions. They got used to sleeping next to dead bodies, or bodies twitching in agony. They were so hungry they had to eat the grass or pieces of clothes. They were so thirsty they had to drink the water containing their own excrement. They were so cold they had to huddle together, clinging to their neighbours´ skeletons to warm up. Adding the fear of whatever the Nazis decided to do to them with their rifles, beatings, kickings, public punishments... they didn´t have much more to live for.

As we walked out of the barracks and came closer to the main gates, we were taken inside the huge wooden shed that could hold thousands of horses and cattle, only this one served quite a different purpose. It used to be the only communal latrines. Thousands of holes cut out in the concrete slab underneath which were the shafts for human excrement. There were stories about Jews and inhabitants of the camp, who tried to hide inside the smelly dump, only to avoid the cruel Nazis for at least a while. The Nazis wouldn´t go near the latrines; that would be way too unimaginable a torment for them to endure. They left that in the hands of commando, the criminals, who were partially favored and partially doomed to be eliminated sooner or later as well as the Jews.

This was the last stop on our journey through human hell that once has taken a place on this very earth. A place that shouldn´t be forgotten, but left at the back of our conscience. It should be the constant reminder of what humans are capable of if the wrong person is given the power to rule the world. After all, this part of history is about all of us.