Hi everyone! Just so you know in advance, this week's blog isn't going to be as sunshiney as usual, because I'm going to discuss our trip to Krakow, Poland, Auschwitz, and Birkenau. There's my usual wrap-up paragraph at the end if you don't want to deal with the heavy stuff. Now, I don't 'want' to tell you about this. In fact, I don't want to talk about it at all. It would be easier to pretend that I never saw these places and to continue on with my happy narrative of my incredible time in Europe, but that wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair for the millions who suffered, witnessed, survived and died in these places to be forgotten through the generations because we were too scared to put our discomforts aside and talk about it.
Krakow is a beautiful city with a dark past (like many cities in Central Europe). It was home to the famous Schindler's Factory that is credited with saving over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. The owner, Oskar Schindler, who was a member of the Nazi party, employed Jews (that would otherwise be sent to concentration/extermination camps) in his enamelware and ammunitions factory. On Sunday, my class got to tour this factory-turned-museum and learned an enormous amount about the invasion of Poland, the work of Oskar Schindler, and the ghettos of Krakow. This experience was another eye-opening one that left me with a better understanding of what living in Krakow during World War II would have been like. I felt confused as to how such a thing could have happened and upset about how human beings were treated, but I focused on the good. Pictures of the people saved by Schindler were the last exhibit of the museum, and it was amazing to see how some good could come from so much evil to save countless future generation of Jewish families.
The world evil is exactly what comes to mind when I think about Auschwitz. I was naive to think that I had even a slight understanding of the horrors that occurred there before this trip, and I still can't believe that it existed in the same world that we now live in. Monday was a day that changed my perspective and understanding of the Holocaust forever, and a day that I know will be difficult to think about but important to remember for the rest of my life. Auschwitz was a network of concentration and extermination camps that were built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany. It consisted of three camps named Auschwitz I (original concentration camp), Auschwitz II- Birkenau (extermination/concentration camp), and Auschwitz III-Monowitz (labor camp) along with 45 satellite camps. The first two camps mentioned are the ruins that still exist today and the places my class visited, while the third was completely destroyed at the end of the war.
Auschwitz I is now a museum and memorial that is preserved to look virtually the same as it did during World War II. Many of the bunkers house artifacts and photographs from that time period, and we were able to walk through them. I think the vast number of things is what truly shocked me, to be completely honest. I've seen pictures of the victims' piled up suitcases, brushes, artificial limbs, shoes, and glasses before, but in person the mountains seem never ending and the number of people who died and left those piles of belongings is incomprehensible. There was one particular exhibit that still gives me chills, and it was something I didn't know about until this visit. The hair from victims was cut off and kept to be made into fabrics by the Nazis. so when the Soviet Army liberated the camp, they found around 7,000 kilograms of hair. This amount is said to only be a fraction of what was collected and is now on display in Block 4 of Auschwitz. The hair is piled higher than imaginable and of every color, texture, and length. It is clearly hair that was once on the head of an innocent victim to these atrocious crimes, and it made me sick to my stomach to see the only thing left of the millions of people who were burned so the Nazis could hide their disguising acts of horror. At every stop of this tour I thought, "It couldn't have gotten worse than this.", and I was proven wrong every time. I got to walk into one of the gas chambers used to kill 800 people at a time. I looked up into the vent where the poison Zyklon B was dropped and to say that the cement room scared me would be an understatement. All those people died in a dark, cold, scary room with no idea as to what they did wrong, and it is the saddest and most horrifying thing I've ever encountered.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau is another part of the camp located about 1.5 miles away. It was an extermination/ concentration camp and now referred to as a 'killing center', meaning that its sole purpose was to murder people (through labor, starvation, gassing, shooting, etc.). At some points during the war, Birkenau was murdering up to 6,000 Jews a day and had four functioning gas chambers. This camp features train tracks right through its middle, so people were unloaded and sorted right there on the platform. An SS doctor made the selection based on little more than a look (and sometimes a question with the answer determining that person's fate). Many were sent to the gas chambers right away and had to walk down a road to the very end of the tracks where the crematoriums stood. My class walked that road and saw the remains of two destroyed gas chambers. The end of the tracks were so tragically symbolic of where these poor people had been forced, and their feelings of despair seem to be stuck in the air just as clearly as their ashes were under every step I took.
Walking through the camp on that beautiful clear day felt wrong in every single way. I wanted it to be raining, cold, and gray so it could look as atrocious as it felt. Everything that I thought I knew about this camp was so insanely immature, and everything I thought I understood about its conditions and everyday functionings was wildly underestimated. People were stuffed in barracks so overcrowded that the bunks sometimes buckled under the weight and severely injured the people underneath. There was zero privacy in any capacity. People could use the holes in the ground that they called the latrine just two times a day, next to hundreds of other people with no toilet paper or wipe of any kind. The women sometimes went weeks without washing and had nothing to use during menstruation. Babies starved to death because their mothers could not produce enough milk to keep them alive. The hospitals in the camps were death sentences with worse conditions and treatment than the barracks. There were cells meant for prisoners sentenced to death by hunger. I saw all of these places and still cannot fathom what this hell was really like. Every time I thought I understood, more horrific details were shared and I was once again filled with disbelief.
One could go on forever about the horrors of these places without any of us truly being able to grasp this level of inhumanity. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered everyday living in a hell that you or I cannot possibly imagine. I visited this hell, and I found myself staring at the ground with tears in my eyes and a knot in my gut during its entirety. There were times I could not force myself to look up because I couldn't handled the images looking back at me. I still can't comprehend everything I've seen, and I still don't want to because it is horrifying, heartbreaking, and unreal. The level of sorrow in my heart for those poor people doesn't even feel justified because my apology does nothing for them; however, I do believe that remembering them is what I can do, and so it is what I will do. I can tell all of you about my experience and how it made me feel, and I can remind those who have never seen it that they need to. Every single one of you should visit this place or one like it, so you can begin to understand the level of pain that humans have caused other humans.
A quick wrap-up on my life for those of you who made it through. I am doing very well and have learned more than I ever thought imaginable. I visited a salt mine in Poland and bought a salt lamp (which makes no sense because it weighs like 10 lbs, and I'm getting home via airplane). We're in our last week of school, and we take our first final today so wish me luck! I missed my sister's college graduation (Congrats Lex!!), which was very hard, but I am so stinking proud of her (if you see her wish her the best for me). I'll be home in three weeks (holy buckets) and am actually getting kind of excited even though I still kind of want to stay in Europe. I celebrated my graduation last Friday with the best travel group ever. We had a dinner and got flowers, and I'm blessed to have finished my collegiate career in such a kick-butt way. I also learned that I really suck at mini golf. I am so thankful for all of the experiences I've had while abroad and can't begin to explain to you how much things like visiting Auschwitz have changed me as a person. I hope you all have a wonderful week and maybe spend a little time researching a time in history that interests you because this week taught me that we should always remember our past.
x Paige
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