Auschwitz...still a nightmare

At 8 this morning, we boarded a bus to Auschwitz/Birkenau Memorial and Museum. It was an hour by bus. During the trip, we watched a Russian made movie called the Liberation of Auschwitz. That film was unsettling, and we hadn't even stepped out of the bus yet. Auschwitz is the most well known cemetery and place of genocide in the world. The Nazis killed 1.5 million people there, mainly Jews as well as Poles, Gypsies, Russian POW's and members of other nationalities.

Getting off the bus, we noticed the red brick buildings, nicely attended to in rows with building numbers. They looked like row houses, but they were prison blocks where the Nazis contained political prisioners like intelligentia--teachers, priests and political figures collected after the invasion in 1939. These prisoners were not meant to be killed but rather to work in the German amunitions' plant in the city, Oswiesim. Auschwitz did have a crematory which was used to kill up to 700 people at once. Joseph Mengele and other doctors worked at this place performing "experiments" on prisioners. One of the doctors focused on twins for his experiments, giving one injections before injecting phenol into the heart for instant death so organs could be preserved. There was a wall where people were executed too. Parents were actually standing their kids at this wall and "shooting" pictures of them...

Then, we traveled over to Birkenau or Auschwitz II, built for killing Jews. In this facility, made even more famous by Spielberg's Schindler's List, there were over 300 barracks made of wood, originally used to stable 54 horses. Instead, the Germans stuffed over 500 Jews, ones that could be used for work. All the other Jews sent to Birkenau [70%] went right to the gas chambers where they could kill and burn over 2000 a day. Of the 1.5 million who died there, 1.3 million were Jews. The whole experience was eerie and surreal. At Auschwitz, pictures are not allowed to be taken in the buildings, where rooms of human hair, suitcases, shoes and eye glasses are piled to the ceilings. It was all too real--solemn, contemplative and sorrowful.

Getting back onto the bus made me think--how could this have ever happened? Once back in Krakow, we ate lunch Jude and Ewa prepared, walked back to the city square, shopped for some more stuff and got settled into the hostel for the night. Jude and I are baby sitting while Ewa and Marcin take a well earned night off.