Auschwitz/Birkenau

Today was a day of reality. I was unsure about taking Colin on today's tour but decided history is best seen with your own eyes. I was going to be cautious and censor when I thought it needed to be but for the most part just decided to go with the flow. We visited two concentration camps: Auschwitz and Birkenau. I don't really know what to say about what we saw today . . . it just amazes me that there are still people in our world who think the whole thing is made up. Due to the massive number of daily visitors the only way to enter during the day was with a tour guide from Auschwitz . . . we had a very good guide. As we took the hour bus ride they showed a movie . . . Colin played a game and was clueless . . . it was graphic and hard for me to watch some scenes. It was the most graphic part of the day. In January I visited Dachau where the weather was cold and snowy . . . today it was cloudy, gloomy, and a little rainy . . . always makes me wonder how the people managed to survive under such horrendous living conditions. I always find the words unbelievable . . .
. . . "work will make you free" . . . of course we all know that was far from the truth. I would have never made it, NEVER been able to survive. In fact most women lasted only a few weeks if they were lucky because their 'jobs' were just too hard and they were not able to do them . . . they either died or were killed. I just don't know what else to say so here are some photos . . .

The most touching part was in Block 5 . . . no photos were allowed which I don't know why one would want to take them anyway. It had individual exhibits of things that were taken from the prisoners when they arrived . .. thousands of hairbrushes . . . 80,000 pairs of women's/men's shoes . . . who knows how many kids shoes . . . piles of suitcases . . . one guide told a story of a survivor coming back to visit and saw his actual suitcase on display because they had to put their name and town on the outside . . . the most overwhelming was the 2 tons (4,000 pounds) of hair shaved from the women . . . some had the long braids still braided. Testing showed that there were traces of drugs used during experiments and the gases used to kill them . . . very sad indeed. One of last places we visited were the gas chambers . . .

. . . and the gallows where the camp commandant was hung . . .

We then drove 3km down the road to Birkenau which is also known as Auschwitz II. Now this one will really open your eyes! Auschwitz is mainly a museum and Birkenau (Auschwitz II) is what was left with the exception of the places they burned to the ground. This is what you see when you first enter . . .

. . . if they only knew what they were about to encounter when those doors open on the cars . . . just looking at those train tracks is so sad. A few more shots of the concentration camp . . . it is 400 acres; just unbelievably massive . . . it goes from this fence to the tree line in the far back. It is estimated that 100,000 people lived there not counting those who were deemed 'unfit' for manual labor or executed on the spot. There are no exact records because the records were destroyed right before liberation and those who were executed were never in the system . . . children and mother were almost automatically met with this fate.



We went inside one of the barracks. Inside this room between 400-500 people lived . . . trust me it isn't that big! The bunks were three high and they would sleep 5-7 people in one bunk.
This is the bathroom that was shared by 16 barracks . . . 400-500 people in each barrack . . . you do the math! Oh and people were assigned the job to get inside and clean them out!

To me this site was more of an eye opener than I imagined . . . I just can't imagine living in this environment in the elements . . . those survivors were very tough! While it was a very sad part of history, I think it is important to see these places no matter how hard the reality.