On the 3rd of November this year I was selected to visit Auschwitz with an amazing scheme called the Holocaust Educational Trust. Every year they take 2 students from most colleges in the UK to Auschwitz in order to re-humanise the victims. It wasn't to show us terrifying images of walking skeletons and pits full of bodies. No. It was to show us the people. The people the victims were before they were dehumanised by the Nazi's. Before they were tortured and stripped of their identities.
In the pre-visit seminar they showed us pictures of people who 'lived' in the camps. People who died in these camps. Class photos, families on their holidays, little children and more. We got to know the people. We related to them. They were just like you and me. We met a survivor. Her name was Kitty. She was such an inspirational women. What struck me most was that she spoke so matter-of-factly about her experience, as if it were normal. Obviously this is not how she feels but I understood that in order to tell her story she must disconnect herself from it. It was obviously traumatic for her. I felt sorry for her that she has to tell this story all the time. The story of her hellish life before, during and after Auschwitz. The story in which she lost all of her family except her mother. The story in which she probably lost part of herself. She would never be the same. This experience really upset me. She was obviously a strong woman. She spoke of it being luck not strength. Even the strongest of people were brutally murdered. You could not fight it, you just lived day to day through sheer luck.
I couldn't sleep the night before the visit. I had to get up at 3am anyway but before then I was so restless. Tossing and turning trying to imagine what the day would be like. How would I react? Did I need waterproof mascara and tissues? Or would I just still be unable to comprehend it - completley detached myself from it. I hoped not. I hoped that I would learn from it, I hoped I'd understand. Only time would tell.
The whole day was a blur. It went so fast.
Can you imagine getting off the plane to this? We were all told it would be freezing. Wrap up warm they said. It could be snowing. But no, it was boiling. Nicer than the weather in England that day. I think if it was cold and snowy the whole day would have been different for me. My thoughts would have completely changed.
We went to a synagogue in the town.It the only Jewish building standing after the Nazi's and people threatened by the Nazi's burnt down the rest. The only reason this building still survived is because the Nazi's used it for themselves. The last remaining surviving Jew in this town died 10 years ago but before this he used to come and open the door to the synagogue every day, even though their were no Jews to come. A sign that the Nazi's had failed in their mission.
I was pretty cheerful at this point. I'd seen a beautiful town, it was a lovely day and I finally had some food in my tummy. Auschwitz 1 was the next on the agenda. My smile dropped. I sat in silence.
We arrived at Auschwitz and collected out headsets. It was very very weird. I felt like a tourist. I didn't want to be a tourist. A tourist visits nice places not a place where millions were tortured and killed. I felt awful. I felt even more awful when I walked through the doors and into the camp. My first thought was how lovely everything looked. I wanted to erase this thought from my head. How could I think something like that!? But alas everything was lovely. It was Autumn. My favourite month. The skies were blue, the leaves were yellow, the grass was green. I'd only seen these places in the black and white photos of the past. It felt so wrong to see so much beauty and so much vibrant colour in a place such as this.
The notorious sign - "Work brings Freedom".
Words cannot describe what I felt as I walked under this arch. I just felt a chill although my body was warm under the midday sun. I imagined the millions of people walking under here but they would never come out. I would come out. I would be able to come home at the end of the day. They did not. They walked to their deaths. I can imagine the prisoners feeling quite positive as they walked into here for the first time. They didn't know what to expect, only that they would be housed and they would be working. They probably thought the same as me "Oh this is lovely". It must have been a nice comparison to the millions of ghettos that they were so used to. I may be completely wrong here but it is just what I think. Little did they know however, what was to come. They may have heard rumours passed along the grapevine but would you believe someone if they told you that thousands upon thousands of people are being murdered at these so called camps. You would not believe them until you saw. Like it is for us, for them too it would have been so hard to even imagine. It makes me cry to think that these poor, innocent human beings would have to realise that it was not just a rumour. They had to see it first hand, see it was real. I can't imagine how they would have felt when they realised the rumours were in fact true.
I want to share a thought I had about these blocks.
To me these blocks - were thousands of people were crammed into one room - looked like those very expensive apartment blocks you see nowadays. The type people would pay a lot of money for. It was a weird thought and I shared it with my Educator, Mike and he thought it was very interesting. Interesting that thousands of people would pay for this and live alone on one floor whereas so many millions of people would be longing to escape from the crammed rooms of thousands of people. Weird.
This was the first of the belongings section that we saw. Although these weren't belongings it was the one of the most upsetting things for me to see. These were gas cylinders. A single one of these would have killed thousands of people in one sitting. The fact they were just discarded and thrown to the side with the rest of the 'junk' that they collected. It sickens me that just one of these cannisters accounts for thousands of lives and these aren't even all of the cylinders.
:(
Hair. Human hair. I just don't have the words. Seeing this at the large scale that it was knowing that it wasn't even a fraction of how much there was just killed me. I'm a girl who loves my hair and never wants to have it cut this just ruined me inside. Girls and boys my age, younger and older would have had their beautiful hair bluntly shaven off without a thought. They were all clones. No clothes, no hair, no belongings. No individuals were left after this process just shells. Shells of what they were; stripped of their dignity.
The way it lay there, no life, no colour. Oh. I don't even want to remember it :(
Glasses just crushed and tangled. No intent of return.
Crutches and prosthetic legs of the frail. These people were no use to the Nazi's. They sent them straight to the gas chambers after stripping them of their stability. I just have horrible images of people being dragged into the gas chambers as they now cannot walk. Very sad.
More belongings that would have just been ripped from their hands. I'd hate to see the little girls face as the doll is ripped from her arms.
Shoes. Millions of shoes and this wasn't even the half of it. In fact not even a tenth probably. It looks like a sea of brown to you but when you got up close you could see lovely shoes. I spotted some pretty red high heeled sandals. I imagined the woman who might have owned these. She was very pretty and always looked after her appearance. These were her favourite shoes and she would wear them on special occasions. These were taken from her. Along with everyone else with their own shoes and their own story.
The standing chambers in the basement of Block 11. Block 11 was used to punish those who went against the Nazi's, so lots of non Jew's were also kept here for trying to do the right thing. 4 people had to crawl into this and stand up for 3 days. Other rooms were suffocation and starvation cells, completely pitch black.
Here is the area were roll call was given. People stood out here twice a day to be counted, in all weathers, for up to 2 hours. Some days if people were missing they would stand out here for several hours until that person was found. The person who counted was sat in that little tower, protected from the weather.
Gas chamber and Crematorium. Hard to imagine millions of people losing there lives inside. I didn't take any pictures inside here. We just walked around in silence. It was very strange and I just wanted to get out as soon as I could.
I really like art and would love to paint or draw a picture of this. No escape is what I'd title it.
It was starting to get colder now and we were on our way to Auschwitz Birkenau. This camp was even more chilling than the last. Auschwitz 1 was a baby in comparison to this. This was huge. When I looked out from the watch tower I could see the camp stretching as far as the horizon. To the left and the right it was also as far as my eye could see. This camp did not have the gorgeous autumnal trees or big orange bricked blocks. It was just brown huts as far as the eye could see. Survivors tell us that there was no grass in Birkenau, just mud, a sea of mud.
Here is the view from the watch tower. SS guards would look out over this every day. Prisoners would have never seen the sheer scale of the camp as they were often confined to just one area. You can see the train tracks running right up to the horizon. The sun was setting. It was only 3 o clock. I am used to it only getting dark at 4-5pm at the earliest back in the UK. This was just a realisation of the drastic seasons that Poland is known for. I was not cheery anymore. I was cold. A bitter wind encased my body and I shivered. I was so tired too. I'd been up all night and had a long day. I wanted to sit down. I said to Mike the Educator, how I've only been here for one day and I am tired, hungry and cold. I just can't imagine what life was like here.
The huts that stretched for what seemed like forever. The chimneys you see are huts that were burnt or destroyed by the Nazi's in order to try and cover up what happened here. Believe it or not just one of these huts was originally built to house 52 horses. During the Holocaust they housed up to 1000 people. We had 200 people on our trip. A plane full of people. A plane is so much bigger than one of these and yet 5 times more people would be kept in here. It was hard to visualise so they often gave us comparisons.
The watch tower and famous arch where the red train full of 500 people would come every day. People who would soon lose their lives.
Toilets. Yup. Hundreds of holes which survivors tell us they fought over and would only have a mere 20 seconds to do their business before they were beaten off the hole.
A train were hundreds were kept for a minimum of 3 days when travelling to the camp. There was one bowl for water and one bowl for the toilet but it was impossible to move inside.When it got to this point people were brought out and sorted into who is to live and who is to die.
There is a story of a woman who gave birth as the doors were opened and an SS Guard cut the cord and tossed the baby aside and sent the mother to the gas chambers.
In the children's barrack. These paintings were painted after someone was working on repairing the roof and was amazed that there were children ALIVE in Auschwitz Birkenau. So he got painters in secretly to paint these pictures so that the children could have some sort of a childhood.
Remains of a gas chamber. The Nazi's concealed all they could before the end. It was very eerie to look at. It was pitch black by this time. Only about 3:30pm
In Kanada where people first went to shower and have belongings taken from them. In here was a whole exhibition of photos that where found. Just one persons suitcase was found still full of photos. The rest were lost forever. There were 2000 photos just in this one case all from one person. These were her memories.
This was it. The end of the day. I was glad that I would be on my way home.
But first we had a memorial for all the lives that were lost. All the people that were stripped of their dignity. Rabbi Marcus did a beautiful memorial service. He sang a song but in Hebrew. It was utterly beautiful. A warmness filled my body. We lit candles for the people lost and placed them along the train track. It was a beautiful image. My camera blurs it but it was magical. A great end to a fascinating but a mentally challenging day. We were tired, aching and hungry. We could come home to the comfort of our warm homes and our loving families but they would not.
We must never forget.
L
