I’m having trouble finding the words to begin this post. I’ve written and rewritten my intro multiple times. But I now realize that I’ll never find the right words to describe what Auschwitz is and what it represents. I’ve wanted to visit Auschwitz for many years. I’ve watched many documentaries, cried over Anne Frank’s diary, and been to multiple Holocaust museums. The days leading up I had been preparing my emotions and mind for this trip. However, to my surprise, during our guided tour through Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau, I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I’d be. But our tour started off by walking through the infamous gate “Arbeit Mach Frei”.. “Work Sets You Free”, and I felt like my heart froze right there. I immediately was deprived of feeling and responsiveness as I passed through the gate where millions walked to their death. My mind knew where I was. But I just couldn’t grasp it. I started my tour that way. Emotionally slapped in the face so hard at the reality of where I was that I couldn’t make sense of it and felt emotionally “electrocuted” and left numb.
We walked through the “museum” which was set up in all of the barracks. So we moved in and out of different blocks. We walked past so many pairs of eye glasses, shoes, suitcases, pots & pans, and more that the Nazi’s had confiscated when the prisoners had arrived. There was an entire room full of human hair, from the shorn women and children. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in that room out of respect. It was so overwhelming that I literally couldn’t understand.
We walked inside double barbed wire fences, passed the execution wall where they guards would shoot people with little to no reason, and looked in the rooms where people starved to death as punishment. In Auschwitz I most everything was still intact and at the end of our tour the guides took us through the gas chambers and crematorium. It looked just like a plain building where you’d take a shower. But you could still see scratch marks on the walls from those trying to escape. Then you walk into the adjoining room, and there’s the crematorium. It was all so methodically cold and calculated. And you could feel it. There was such a heaviness that you were left unfeeling and incapable of regular emotions. The numbness continued.
After we were finished touring Auschwitz I, we took a short bus ride down the road to Auschwitz II – Birkenau, where the Nazi’s built their biggest death camp running out of space and room in Auschwitz I. It was here that the killing got even more systematic. We walked along the train tracks where prisoners would ride in on cattle trucks. As our group made our way to where the gas chambers would be, Ryan snapped a picture of the crowd walking down the road. We were a few paces behind the group, and for a brief moment I could see it. With the flip of a hand and a split decision, a random stranger decided whether you lived or died. Then you walked down this quarter mile road back behind these trees. There you would strip down to take a shower, and be shuffled into this room to your death. Just as the men, women, and children from our tour group were walking down this road, millions of others had done this exact same walk and met with a very different fate. That walk will forever be engrained in my memory. And some feeling started returning.
At the end of the road there’s a memorial. The Nazi’s had blown up the gas chambers and crematorium in an attempt to hide the evidence of their mass killings. And it was amongst all of this that the memorial sat. That’s where the heaviness and reality of it all set in – I felt the full blow of it all in these words.
“Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.”
Walking back to our bus after seeing everything we saw that day, Ryan and I didn’t even know what to say to one another. We couldn’t form words then, and are still trying to process it all. I’m so glad that we went; the word “glad” feels very improper using it in these terms. But I’ll never forget those who died there, and all over Europe. I will always remember.
Our tours were with Krakow Shuttle and they were amazing. Ryan and I were picked up near the train station (we took an overnight train in from Prague), and driven to Auschwitz I & II, given lunch, taken to our next destination – a 13th century salt mine, and then dropped off at a restaurant back in Krakow for dinner. I’d highly recommend them for anyone wanting an easy, all inclusive tour of Krakow. They made everything so simple. But anyways, after Auschwitz we headed to one of the oldest working salt mines in the world.
Over 325 meters deep, this Salt Mine was huge and had many caverns inside with salt sculptures and carvings all throughout. It was very interesting learning about its history and the stories of the miners. It’s a whole other world under the ground! And everything was made out of salt! We were encouraged to run our finger on the wall and taste it; I did, and I can attest to the fact that it’s not fake salt!
After eating traditional beef and pork dumplings for dinner at a restaurant called Raspberry Grandma (in english), Ryan and I got on another night train – yes, two in a row. We were headed to Salzburg, Austria!