Monday, July 19, 2010

July 19, 2010








It is after 11 pm and it's been a very long and emotional day, though I think we're all still digesting everything we've seen today. We took a one hour drive to Auschwitz, which consists of the brick buildings that primarily housed the political prisoners, Soviet POW's, and other ethnic non-Jews. Several of the buildings have been turned into individual museums covering different aspects of the camps, such as camp life, things they left behind, etc... There was a room just filled with hair - the hair keeps growing, and by now the hair has turned grey which is rather eerie. The hair had been shaved from prisoners after they were killed, in most cases. We saw clothing and materials made of human hair – did the people who bought and wore this, know where it came from? At Auschwitz, they began by taking pictures of prisoners and giving them a number, as the number of slave laborers increased, they used the tattoo system in order to keep track.

The camps were first set up to separate political prisoners - primarily intellectuals such as teachers, religious leaders, writers, artists, lawyers, etc… - those people who could possibly lead a resistance. Auschwitz is located about one hour west of Krakow – right along the railway lines, surrounded by rivers. There were already abandoned army barracks on the property. When the concentration camp filled with Poles and gypsies grew too large, they created a second camp nearby (Birkenau) that became a death camp for the Jews.
As you walk into Auschwitz, there is a cleared area, where a group of prisoners played marching music prisoners were forced to march – making it easier to count, so that they could be marched out into the community to work. As many as 20,000 people could be counted in this way.
The buildings at Auschwitz were two story, with windows and large rooms down long corridors. The rooms could hold 200 prisoners or more. As we walked up the stairway to the second floor, the stone steps were smoothed and imprinted from the many feet that had walked on them. I could feel their presence. Most prisoners were forced to wear the striped clothing and wooden clogs. As we walked along the wide walkways with rocks popping up all around, we wonder how they could stand upright, let alone march. Their daily calorie intake was very low, and people in Auschwitz died from starvation. In the morning they would typically have a bowl of brownish “coffee”, soup with potatoes (or essence of potatoes) for lunch, and a small hunk of bread(with added sawdust) with margarine.
Many people that the suffering began long before the camp, on the trains that people were transported on. In some cases, such as those taken from Greece, they were on trains for nine days without food, water, even clean air.
We took the bus over to Birkenau and were dropped off where prisoners were originally taken before tracks were built right into the prison. We then walked their route into the camp. Now, there are homes around the property, which gave us all chills – especially when we saw locals working in their fields, fields that had been fertilized with the ashes of Birkenau.
The buildings in Birkenau were either wooden or brick - with dirt floors and three tiered bunks along each side of the buildings. Ten to twelve prisoners could sleep in one bunk, with the upper bunks being most desirable, as you were not allowed to leave during the night and if someone was sick, those on the bottom felt it. In addition, if the top bunk was too heavy, the bunk could collapse on those below. There was a heater in each barracks, but because of the cost of heat, it was not used. There were no windows other than some small eyebrow windows near the roof. There was no electricity or light. It was filthy, smelly, and claustrophic for me, I can’t imagine how it must have been then. There were large buildings for latrines which included long troughs for cleaning and three large rows of cement toilets – prisoners would have to share the toilets. They were given 5 minutes in this latrine – once in the morning and once at night. One writer called this excremental assault – another type of dehumanization.
Our director Elaine’s mother, Dora, was a survivor from Birkenau, though her aunt was lost. She related her mother’s story about wearing several layers of clothing to the deportation, being shaved, tattooed along with her older sister. Her mother weighed 140 lbs when she was taken, and 58 lbs at liberation. She had suffered from malaria, as Birkenau is built on a swamp. She and her sister, Fania, were working in a nearby quarry, and Fania was tasked to carry the hot soup kettle. They slipped in their wooden clogs and started falling down the slope, as they fell, they were both shot by the Nazi guard. Fania had to carry her sister’s body back to the camp so that it could be counted. Dora became very despondent and thought of touching the electrified fence in order to commit suicide, but she was taken under the wings of her fellow inmates and carried on.
There is more that I could tell – facts and figures – but the enormity of the place, the systematic way separation was carried out right there at the tracks, the organization of the gas chamber and crematorium, where they changed, were told to hang their clothes on hooks and remember the numbers so they could get them back, the gassing and crematoriums - I can’t explain - those these buildings are in ruins, they have been left the way they were. The place, the experience, the weight – too huge to explain ….
There were many “visitors” at these camps, especially at Auschwitz, as compared to the other places we have been. It was hard to be reflective with so many around, though most were respectful of this hallowed ground.
We spent eight hours there today and were all drained, though the weather was cool and misty, we enjoyed the change in temperature. At dinner at our hotel, a Polish teacher joined each table. Our teacher, Krzysztof Nurkowski, did not speak English very well, but we managed to get some information out of him. He is a history teacher from about one hour away. He loves American music, so that gave us a common ground for a few minutes, anyway. That is Krzysztof in the picture. After dinner, the group met with all the Polish teachers and we discussed Holocaust Education – very different in Poland as we discovered when we inquired about the treatment of Jews after the war.
Our group is melding well – we figure out where we can get free internet, and meet there or share the cost of room internet. Last night, many of us were in the bar skyping or writing blogs - it’s many laughs after an emotional day.

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