Thoughts On Auschwitz

Auschwitz. The very name conjures dread and darkness. One imagines it on some godforsaken, windswept heath, in some sort of parallel universe that receives no light. Auschwitz has come to symbolize the Holocaust and the image of Birkenau's "gate of death" has come to represent the maw through which European Jewry was dragged in 1941-45. 

The majority of Jews were not killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, although it was the camp with the single most victims (around 1.1 million). More Jews were collectively killed in the camps of Operation Reinhard (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and later Majdanek) or were shot in the territories of the Soviet Union. Also, we must differentiate between "Auschwitz" and "Birkenau". Auschwitz was the name of the overall complex, but more specifically refers to the main camp. This was mainly a camp for political prisoners and was also a place of murder, although not approaching Birkenau’s toll. This is the location of the Arbeit Macht Frei gate. Birkenau is where the vast majority of Jews, and Gypsies, were murdered when we say “Auschwitz”. Birkenau was the site of two provisional gas chambers, made from the abandoned homes of Polish peasants, and then four crematoria buildings that included their own gas chambers. 

Unlike Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Birkenau still, for the most part, stands. Jews from all corners of Europe were killed there. The ruins of its crematoria are visible, as are many barracks (the bricks and wood that are missing from the crematoria and the barracks were used to rebuild the villages near the camp). It would be remiss of me not to mention that Majdanek also stands, and is in fact the most intact of all the Nazi concentration/death camps, but it is much less known and, for all its monstrosity, "only" 80,000 were killed there. Your average person has heard of Auschwitz (although perhaps not Birkenau); he or she has not heard of Majdanek. 

Upon arriving at Auschwitz, I was quite nervous. I have been reading about the place my entire life, but at times, the barbarity of what happened there is so intense that it is very difficult to accept that such a place actually existed. But my bus arrived, and there I was. Unfortunately, if you arrive at Auschwitz (the main camp - this is how I will refer to it, and I will use "Birkenau" to denote the much larger death camp) between the hours of 10-3, you have to go on a guided tour. 

There were tons of tourists, all clicking away with their cameras. High school kids stood around laughing. I went into the visitors' center to purchase my ticket; little do most tourists know, but today’s visitors' center was the reception center for Auschwitz during the war: prisoners were tattooed, given their prison uniforms and wooden clogs, and had their heads shaved, and came out the other end as an anonymous mass. Now the building holds a bookshop, a cinema, some guest rooms, a café, etc. I did not see a sign explaining the building's former purpose, although it's possible that I missed it. Much of what was actually the concentration camp is now parking lots and random buildings outside of the camp; later that night, in my hotel room, I was overtaken by a wave of horror when I realized that, for all I knew, where I was lying was once within the confines of the camp. 

We were ushered under the Arbeit Macht Frei gate and taken into various blocks, where we were greeted with the site of false limbs, mountains of human hair, spectacles, pots and pans, suitcases, etc. These piles were massive, and so incomprehensible that I was a bit numbed by the experience. It did not help that I had other tourists bumping into me to take pictures, or that the tour guide whisked us through the rooms rather quickly. This was also the case in Block 11, the punishment block, and the wall in between Blocks 10 and 11, where thousands of prisoners were shot. Even in the crematorium, where the first batches of Jews were killed, as well as others, there were just too many people clicking away and too much speeding us along. I simply did not have the time to register what I was seeing. My nausea and disgust came later, in my hotel room. (When I was in Majdanek, on the other hand, I was basically alone; being in the gas chamber building, the barracks, and the crematoria was so terrifying that I had to physically force myself to carry on). 

The guided tour also brought us to Birkenau. Seeing the "gate of death" in real life, as opposed to a book cover, was jarring. So is seeing Birkenau itself: it is vast. Our tour of it was shorter than that of Auschwitz. After the tour, I returned to my hotel, got a bite to eat, realized with utter horror what I had just seen, but then felt compelled to return. Admission to Birkenau is free, and one does not need a guide. I needed to be there by myself. I needed the space for my thoughts and feelings. 

So I returned to the camp; there it was again, the yawning gatehouse (which contains, by the way, a bookshop and bathrooms; one can climb to the top to get a full view of the camp). I walked from the gatehouse down the tracks, to the point where Jews once disembarked, were screamed at by SS guards, barked at and bitten by Alsatians, and separated from their families. Jews marked for death were marched straight ahead into the compounds of either Crematorium II or III (Crematorium I being the one in the main camp). To the right, on a path through the camp lined with barbed wires, was the path where Jews were marched to their deaths to either Crematorium IV or V.

To finally see this place was bizarre. I have been reading and studying about it so much, and I know the layout of Birkenau; it was like I knew what was around every corner, but this did not lessen the impact of the ruins of the crematoria, where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were murdered. I walked nearly the entire perimeter of the camp, trying, and failing miserably, to imagine what had happened here 70 years ago. Parts of the camp’s perimeter were serene: the camp was quite empty now. I saw a young man with a plastic bag and a soda bottle in his back pocket, walking down the road between the compounds of Crematoria II and III. He continued to walk through some woods and as I looked I saw that there was a small village, mere yards from the crematoria’s ruins. He must have been returning home and using the camp as a shortcut.

Along the camp’s back edge, there is a quiet wooded area. I saw a rabbit hopping along, and an area with picnic benches and bathrooms. For a moment I felt as though I were on a country walk, but then I turned around and saw the watchtowers and the barbed wire. I came upon the ruins of Bunker II, an abandoned cottage the Nazis had used as a provisional gas chamber. The fields beyond are filled with ashes, as are various ponds that are near the crematoria. So is the grassy area behind Crematorium V. In the summer of 1944, when more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered in Birkenau, the crematoria could not keep up with the task at hand, so the bodies were burned in the open field behind Crematorium V. A placard showed the only three photographs taken surreptitiously by Jews in Birkenau, and one of them shows Jewish prisoners standing in a pile of corpses as smoke billows. This had happened, 70 years before, more or less right where I stood. I felt a sensation in my gut, but my mind was rapidly trying to register what had happened there. It was a useless exercise, because these were crimes beyond human comprehension.

I returned to my hotel, located across the street from the visitors’ center, and was completely shaken. I felt sick to my stomach and completely horrified. Why had I not taken a day trip from Krakow? Why was I staying in this hotel right across the street from Auschwitz, and a five minute bus ride from Birkenau? I desperately wanted human companionship, or a drink to soothe my feelings, but I was alone, the sun had set, and Yom Kippur had begun. After speaking on the phone with my parents, I came to the conclusion that I could not return to the camp. I had meant to go on Yom Kippur but I decided that I couldn’t. I felt haunted, nauseated, dirty, and disturbed. I put a Polish basketball game on the TV for some background noise and somehow managed to fall asleep, and was surprised upon awakening that I hadn’t had any nightmares.

In the morning, I had changed my mind. Perhaps the fact that it was daytime, and that the sun was shining, had an impact on my thinking. Whatever the case, I decided to make a quick return trip to Birkenau. I walked again through the compounds of the crematoria; I am far from a religious person, but I did my best to pray for the lost, whose ashes lay all around my feet. I was startled to see a cat running in the compound of Crematorium III; it was just as startled to see me and ran and hid in the ruins of what had been the gas chambers. I envied the cat for its innocence and ignorance.

I visited the camp’s “sauna”, where prisoners in Birkenau were registered, bathed, and tattooed. There was a devastating exhibit focusing on the stories of individual families, with photographs from family albums. More than 1.1 million people were killed in this place, but here were some of the faces and individual stories. As I looked at the pictures of families on vacation, or at a dinner party, or ice-skating, I began to cry. The vastness of Birkenau, and of the crimes committed there, were too great for me to internalize but when faced with the photo albums of the victims, my emotions overtook me. The same occurred in the “little wood” near Crematorium V, where the Nazis made the Jews wait their turn for the gas chamber during the summer of 1944, when the chambers were working at full capacity. Photos exist of Jews sitting there among the trees, oblivious to the fate that awaited them in mere minutes. Today, placards show some of the photos at the grove. Seeing the photos of the innocent women and children waiting, and standing where they had, was overwhelming.

As I left the camp, I was glad to leave the area, which had profoundly disturbed me. I got on the bus to Krakow, put on my headphones, and felt my eyes grow misty and my tears silently fall.