The Weather Fit the Mood

Thursday morning we were again up and out early. That seems to be the hallmark of this vacation.  The day dawned rainy and cold and progressed through windy and sleet and even snow!  We set out for Auschwitz and Auschwitz 2 - Birkenau. There is a definite difference between work camps and death camps.  The general term of concentration camp is used by those of us who are not really aware of the actualities of the situation.

When the Germans swarmed over a country the renamed everything to be German.  After all, it was now theirs to do with as the wished.  The remote country town of  Oświęcim was situated at a rail crossing which made the value of the now named town of Auschwitz possible as the center for the Final Solution.

I am not going to explain or even tell you much because you know the story or should read up on it yourself.  I will tell you that it amazes me that there are people who somehow think it never happened, or as we say currently it is 'fake news.'  The overwhelming evidence exists and is breathtakingly stark reality. 

 Work Will Make You Free - 

a lovely thought but total false hope as the prisoners entered the gates of the work camp.

 A photo of the band playing to welcome the new arrivals.  The Jews, and others, were made to think they were coming to a temporary place before moving to a permanent relocation.  Many had even been given train tickets and they all brought one suitcase or bag of things they needed to start a new life.  This was left on the arrival platform, sorted by other prisoners, and stored for Hitler's Museum of an Extinct Race.

 This urn and column itself contains human ashes.  How can anyone forget.

 The empty containers of Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide, used at Birkenau.

 The killing wall.  If you broke the rules you might be shot or hung or publicly tortured.  If you tried to escape 100 of your family and fellow prisoners were executed along with you.

 Auschwitz was a work camp.  It had brick barracks left from a  military base.  There were furnaces in each but they were seldom lighted to warm the prisoners.  First they slept on floors, then straw they gathered, then thin straw mattresses and finally 3 to a bunk as conditions became more overcrowded.  There were windows.  There were also punishment cells that in themselves were torturous.

 Birkenau

 They prisoners at the work camp of Auschwitz were made to walk the several miles everyday to build the camp at Birkenau.  It was wooden barracks and although there were chimneys they never really worked. Some would try to gather scraps of wood to build a warming fire. Many died because of lack of food, dysentery, and exhaustion.

 One building held the toilets.  Prisoners had three  minutes twice a day, only 200 at a time.  If they were caught going to the bathroom anywhere else they could be tortured or shot.  Cleaning the basins of the toilet was a good job because everyone including the guards left you alone because of the fact there was no way to clean the feces off of your hands and yourself.  Also you worked inside out of the winter weather.

 Stables that became barracks.

 Israeli students chanted the Kaddish by the token cattle car that delivered so many to their doom. 

 Hundreds of chimneys of barracks still stand.  As the Soviet Army approached, the Germans burned the camp and the forced 'Death March' began.  Exhausted, emaciated, mentally hollow prisoners began "the largest death march in World War II from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Loslau in January 1945. The SS killed large numbers of prisoners by starvation before the marches, and shot many more dead both during and after for not being able to keep pace."

 We saw a building that was used for the "gas showers."  I believe there were four that could hold about 1500 people at a time.  Then the crematories could incinerate about 4,000 at once.  The extra bodies were burnt in funeral pyres and all the bones were gathered and some were in mass graves and some just left to nature.  Fellow prisoners did the work.  After the gassing, which lasted for 20 minutes in order to make sure it all had taken full effect, prisoners gathered the clothes and took them to the storage which had become know as Canada.  Then the gas chambers were opened and the prisoners removed, dragged out, the bodies and stuffed them into the crematories.  Then prisoners would have to shovel out the ashes and remains.  

They did it.  They worked as best they could. They knew their fate, better than anyone, if they didn't.

Auschwitz refers to the three nearby camps but here is better information for you to read about the camps in general than I could ever share.