2 June 2019, Sunday
Today we go to Auschwitz - the most infamous German Nazi concentration camp that became the centre of the Holocaust during WW II and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
I read that if you want to go there on your own without a guided tour, you would have to buy the tickets before 10 a.m. or after 3 p.m. The journey by bus from Krakow to Auschwitz is about 1 1/2 hours, so we had to get up pretty early. Unfortunately I woke up late-ish because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I was so blur in the morning that I did a stupid thing as usual. It was about 7 a.m. I wanted to go downstairs but lost my way as usual (it doesn’t help that there are 4 doors to unlock including our room!) and I was fumbling around trying to unlock one of the thousands of outer doors (roll eyes) when suddenly someone yelled at me and banged the very door that I was trying to open, from within. In a split second I realised I was trying to unlock the wrong door so I did the only decent thing I could think of. I ran for my life. Don’t judge.
By the time we got to the bus station, we only managed to catch the 8 a.m. bus. We arrived at the camp at around 9.30 a.m. and found out that you shouldn’t always believe what you read on the internet. Apparently you had to be there before 9 to do the individual tour. So we had no choice but to buy a ticket for a guided tour (60 zloty - about RM66) to both Auschwitz and Birkenau which is about 3 km away.
The place was crowded, and I mean really full of people. That is why I think they manage the crowd by doing guided tours, otherwise there would be no place to walk really, as there are some places that were pretty narrow. Still, the guided tour felt kinda rushed and I thought that I would’ve learnt a lot more by reading the information boards on my own. Of course, I would’ve also taken more than the allocated 3 hours for the tour and I guess this is what they were trying to avoid - so that more people could see the place.
Well anyway, after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking WW II, the Germans converted Auschwitz, a former Polish army barracks, to hold Polish political prisoners. Some time in 1941, Soviet POWs were also sent here. In the beginning the camp only took in men and boys. There were about 10,000 men registered as prisoners, but most of them died of hunger, hard work and SS brutality. Many others were gassed or shot. Those who refused to work were forced naked out into the freezing winter and doused with water, as a result of which many froze to death. Within 5 months, 9,000 people had died. The remainder were sent to Birkenau.
I should pause here to explain what is SS. The SS is short for Schutzstaffel, a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during WW II. It began as a small guard unit to provide security for party meetings in Munich. Under Heinrich Himmler, it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration camp and since 1942 also a mass exterminating centre for Jews. In the years 1940-1945, the Nazis deported at least 1.3 million people to Auschwitz: 1.1 million Jews, 150,000 Poles, 23,000 gypsies, 15,000 Soviet POWs and 25,000 from other ethnic groups. 1.1 million of these people died in Auschwitz, approximately 90% of them Jews. The majority of them were murdered in the gas chambers. Some were just children and babies.
We entered Auschwitz through the gates which had the words: ‘Arbeit macht frei’ which means ‘work sets you free’. It’s a lie, of course. Many ordinary people who were brought here (i.e. not for political reasons such as POWs), mainly the Jews and the gypsies, thought they were going to some labour camp. They did not know they were going to their deaths.
From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered prisoners, mostly Jews, from all over German-occupied Europe to the camp’s gas chambers. Each prisoner was allowed to bring with them their belongings in 1 suitcase not more than 25 kgs. Basically their entire lives reduced to 1 suitcase, which in the end may not even had been used as many were immediately sent to the gas chamber upon arrival. At the unloading ramp (which we saw in Birkenau), women and children were separated from men. Then, SS doctors carried out a selection.
Those considered fit for work (about 25%) were sent to the camp, and the rest were led to the gas chambers. Imagine. Your fate decided in seconds. In order to avoid a panic spree, the people condemned to death were assured that they were going to take a shower for disinfection. Fake shower heads were fixed to the ceiling of the gas chambers. Sometimes, entire trainloads were directed straight to the gas chambers without any selections taking place.
Beaten and intimidated by SS dogs, about 2,000 victims were crammed into the chamber, an area of approximately 210 m2. At its peak in June 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau had about 130,000 people. Almost everyday 12,000 Jews were sent to be killed in the gas chamber. The chamber door was locked and Zyklon B was poured in. You only needed about 5-7 kgs of the gas to kill 1,000 - 1,500 people in minutes. Zyklon B (German for Cyclone B) is a trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid).
The bodies were then stripped of gold teeth and jewellery, their hair was cut off, and then their bodies were burnt in the crematorium. Their ashes were used as fertilisers. Cremation and destruction of ashes is not allowed in Jewish religion, so the SS really went all out in ensuring maximum humiliation and degradation to their victims. The victim’s documents were destroyed.
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