I don’t know how to write about the experience of visiting this place, the site of the biggest Nazi Death camp during the second world war. It was a very “profound” experience. We had an excellent guide who gave a very clear, reverent and intense description of what went on there. He was also very skilled at keeping the group together.
The size of the camp surprised me. There were two parts, Auschwitz and Birkenau. We had to travel by bus the two kilometres between the two sites. I think he said Birkenau was 300 acres. At one stage in 1944 there were around 100,000 prisoners there. The Nazis knew they were losing the war so were transporting jews from ghetto’s throughout Europe to exterminate as many as possible. That means that there were as many people there as there is in the population of my home city, Dunedin, NZ. All told they exterminated 1.5 Million people at this site. As defeat loomed the Nazis evacuated the camp. The Soviets found only 7000 prisoners there too sick to evacuate.... many weighing only 25kg.
I had read books about the camps and accounts by survivors. I recall putting one book down, because it was just too horrifying and at that point in my life I did not want to cope with it. There was very little new information for me in the commentary, it all fell into place as I saw the locations. Reading about it, however, is a very different thing than being there. I leaned against a post, and then learned that the hook on the top was where they had hung prisoners by their arms until they died. I touched the wall against which some were shot. I looked into the suffocating cells where they crammed 40 people with not enough ventilation so that they would slowly suffocate. I walked into the standing cells where they were forced to stand for days on end and I looked into the starvation cells where people were simply left to starve to death. We walked through the one remaining gas chamber. To be there in that room and know that thousands of people had gone in there and been exterminated like unwanted pests is very moving. As we moved from gas chamber to crematorium in the next room where they burned the bodies, a group of young Jewish people, with star of David flags draped around them entered the gas chamber. They began to sing a jewish chant type song. It was a spine tingling experience. When I stood next to the pit where they put the ashes of human people, and looked into the ruined area of the Birckenau gas chamber realising that 2000 people at a time could be disposed of in this way, the lump in my throat and tear in my eye got bigger.
It was a rainy day and my son did not have a coat. I asked him how wet he was getting. His response was, “How can I complain about getting wet in a place like this? It is nothing compared to what these people coped with!”
I was filled with anger about the Nazis. But then I realised that in war there are none who are clean. The systematic and relentless bombing of Dresden by the allies killed many civilians and brought untold misery. The atomic bombs on two Japanese cities killed untold essentially innocent people.
My reaction was to say to myself that this was why I am a Christian minister. I want the Church to be raising its flag about the value of human life. To push and work for shalom - harmony and justice. I want present day injustices and inequalities addressed. As I was being inwardly inspired for my continuing ministry I was struck by the fact that this atrocity happened in Christian Europe! You cannot help but notice that every city is just loaded with ornate Churches, and in the 1940’s these churches were probably quite active. Probably good church-going people allowed this to happen, and maybe even religious dogma helped rationalise it!
The whole visit was moving. It was harrowing. As I moved from site to site I felt my insides being wracked by sadness. But strangely enough I wanted to continue, out of reverence for the people who suffered. I felt somehow, I should bear pain in their memory, though there was a sense of relief when we came to the last stop. I departed the camp and took one last look before boarding the bus for the journey back to Krakow. I felt like I was privileged to have been able to make this visit. I felt like that even apart from the good time we had enjoyed at the family wedding, the trip to this site, and the experience I had there was worth the thousands of dollars it is costing me to be in Europe.
2 comments:
"I was filled with anger about the Nazis. But then I realised that in war there are none who are clean. The systematic and relentless bombing of Dresden by the allies killed many civilians and brought untold misery. The atomic bombs on two Japanese cities killed untold essentially innocent people."
You will have to do better than that if you want to convince me that the Allies were on the same level as the Nazis.
I am not trying to convince that they are on the same level. .. As a kid I asked my dad who was in the artillery whether he killed anyone. His response was a very sad... "Yes we did, I would not know how many... it was easier for us, we just fired big guns from as distance and did not see the people dying." Somehow dropping bombs from a distance is a bit like that. I could not understand how humans could do what Nazi's did... or the accounts of Japanese POW camps I have read.... all I am saying is the whole thing, (First and second world wars) was a mess.. and European countries (Poland, Czech etc.) and families (we are discovering), suffered consequences for decades.
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