A Trip To Visit Auschwitz...

Last Thursday, for the second part of the 'Lessons from Auschwitz Project' run by the Holocaust Educational Trust, I and around 200 other young people went on a day trip to Poland to learn first-hand about the horrors of the Holocaust.

The week before, we had all attended a 4 hour seminar in London, where we examined pre-war Jewish life and heard a testimony from a Holocaust survivor. I found his story incredibly moving. We hear the statistics of 6 million Jews having been killed during the Holocaust, but I always found it impossible to comprehend. When I heard this first-hand, personal account of what he experienced during his time in the concentration camps, it made me remember that each person was an individual, murdered or put through hell purely because of what they believed. 

It was a very early start for us all on Thursday 10th November, as we had to be at Gatwick Airport at 5am. When we arrived in Poland at Krakow Airport we had a one hour coach journey to the town of  Oświęcim. It is located on two rivers, the Sola and Vistula, and on a major railway junction, where the lines converge from Warsaw, Berlin, Prague and Vienna. Most people will have probably never heard of this town but they will be familiar with the Germanised name of Auschwitz. For the past 60 years the inhabitants of the town have lived alongside the former camp whose name has become synonymous with the Holocaust. Despite a number of  Jewish survivors returning to Oświęcim after the war, there are no Jews living in the town today. 

Here we visited a Jewish Cemetery. The gravestones had previously been ripped up and used as paving, however locals have put it back together the best that they could. I found it sad that we didn't know which gravestone belonged to which grave, or even where exactly each grave was. We learnt about the different symbols on the gravestones, and their meaning. For example, a symbol of two hands meant that the person was a priest, or a broken tree symbolised a young life being cut short. At night the cemetery has to be locked up as vandalism is still a big problem. 

From here we went on to Auschwitz I. As we entered, we saw the sign made by the prisoners which says "Arbeit macht frei" meaning work brings freedom. The outside of all the buildings were left exactly as they had been during the war, however inside things had been changed to suit the tourists. I can't write in detail about what we saw, as it will never come close to what its actually like to be there and see it, but I will briefly outline some of the things. We went into various rooms, where some of the belongings of the prisoners were displayed, such as pots and pans, suitcases, hairbrushes, shoes, and even their hair that had been shaved off. We also saw the 'standing cells' where prisoners were crammed into small cells and made to stand for days on end. As we walked through the corridors there were pictures on the walls of some of the prisoners in their striped uniforms with shaved hair. You could just see the fear in their widened eyes. We also saw the reconstructed 'shooting wall' where flowers had been laid, and at the end we went into a gas chamber where we knew that thousands had been brutally murdered. 

After this we went on to the second camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was a much larger camp, and there were plans to double its size, but the war ended before this happened. The train tracks were extended to run right into the middle of the camp, where the selection process would take place. Most of the buildings were destroyed at the end of the war as the German's wanted to destroy the evidence of the extent of their crimes. There are no exact figures of those who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, though it is estimated to be around 1.2 million.

In the evening we attended a memorial service, where poems we read, we reflected on what we had seen during the day, and we lit candles to remember the dead. A Rabbi talked to us and he reinforced the importance of the Holocaust to us today. One quote that kept being said throughout the day was: "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again" (George Santayana). 

I felt that I had to blog about my trip to Auschwitz in memory of the millions who were so mercilessly butchered. I wanted to remind others about the horrors of the Holocaust and the prejudice that it was based on. This prejudice and racism has not disappeared, it is still a problem today. Therefore we need to remember history and learn from it, and do our part to stop this prejudice that leads to ruined lives and murder. The Rabbi pointed out that "hearing is not like seeing" and now that I have seen what I have seen, I will be sure to continue with the 'Lessons from Auschwitz Project' and do my part to help others. I will always remember how lucky I am. 

I leave you with a poem that was written by Charlotte Delbo, a non-Jewish member of the resistance in France. She was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. After the war she wrote her memoirs 'Auschwitz and After', which have been translated into English.

Extermination

Five by five the walk down the street

of arrivals. It is the street of departures 

but they don't know.

It is a one-way street.

They proceed in an orderly fashion-so

as not to be faulted for anything.

They reach a building and heave a sigh.

They have reached their destination at

last.

And when the soldiers bark their

orders, shouting for the women to

strip, they undress the children first,

cautiously not to wake them all at

once.

After days and nights of travel the little

ones are edgy and cranky

and then the women undress in front

of the children, nothing to be done

and when each is handed a towel they

worry whether the shower will be

warm because the children could catch

cold

and when the men enter the shower

room through another door, naked too,

the women hide the children against

their bodies.

And perhaps at that moment they all

understand.