Auschwitz

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

                                                                                                        Jeremiah 17:9

The weather forecast for the coming week looked wet and much cooler, so we determined to spend our last day of sunshine walking around outdoors on this Sunday.  Our first stroll took us to the door of Krakow City Church at 11:00 where young greeters there ushered us in and made us feel right at home.  A Google search revealed several churches within walking distance from The Eyrie, and this one was the closest, but we weren’t sure if they provided English translation.  Thankfully, the back two rows were reserved for English speakers, and we joined in with the congregation singing wonderful praise songs with lyrics in Polish and English.  The worship band was tight, and the guy playing the electric guitar had some righteous licks—turns out he was the pastor of the church!  Later in the service, he preached a stirring sermon, which was translated for us by a nice young lady with strong skills in English.  

We had signed up for a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter at 2:00, so we quickly walked home after church, ate lunch, and headed back out to meet the group.  Because our apartment is located right on the edge of the Jewish Quarter, we didn’t have far to walk to the designated meeting spot, the oldest synagogue in Krakow.  Once again, we had an excellent guide and an affable group, and we spent an educational two hours walking the streets and learning about Jewish history in this area.  Our tour wrapped up on the edge of the former ghetto established by the Nazis in 1941 as they began their program of racial cleansing in Poland.  The Jewish ghetto became a place of suffering and uncertainty, and most of the occupants were eventually deported to their deaths in concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

The rains came heavy in the night as prophesied, and I cooked breakfast the next morning by the light of the range hood while the rest of the crew slept as long as they could.  Over the weekend Deena booked a tour of Auschwitz from a recommendation by our host, and the driver was due to pick us up at 10:00.  We moved about the apartment quietly, everyone contemplating the infamous place we were about to visit. We dressed in layers to combat the wind and rain and temperatures that were predicted to stay in the 50s.  Our driver was on time, and we were off to visit Auschwitz on Rosh Hashanah in a van manufactured by Mercedes Benz—I don’t use the word “surreal” often, but I think it applied today.  

My family shared the van with an older couple from Australia, and Deena and the kids exchanged travel stories with them in the back seat while I watched the Polish countryside scroll by from the passenger seat.  The sky was light grey with sweeping darker patches carrying misty rain that required the hypnotizing tempo of the intermittent windshield wipers.  The landscape rolled out from both sides of the road looking like giant furrows in a field alternating between rows of spent corn and deep green grassy spaces lined with evergreen woodlots.  There was the occasional stand of hardwoods, primarily maples with leaves already tinged with light yellow tones, surrounded by thick ground cover shot through with deep orange and reddish-purple.

I shook my head as my thoughts turned to people traveling in the same direction riding in packed boxcars seventy-three years ago, starving and frantically wondering about the location of their loved ones.  They could have cared less about the colors of the countryside or the pattern of the rain as they existed on the false hope of “something better” promised by the Nazis.  Sometimes guilt wracks me when I consider that I’ve walked the earth free from oppression for fifty years, and I struggle with feeling that I need to apologize for my station in life.  

We pulled into the main gate of Auschwitz at 11:30 AM in the steady rain, parked quickly, and walked to the ticketing area close by.  While our driver went off to secure our passes, we waited in a crush of tour groups lined up for the same purpose.  I mentioned the crowd to our driver when he returned, and he said that during the summer months, there are traffic jams caused by an armada of coaches and that huge crowds wait in long lines for hours in the heat to buy tickets and gain access to a tour.  We were placed with a group of about thirty people rather quickly, and our guide for the next three hours, Camila, introduced herself and showed us how to work our headsets and receivers.  Camila was in her mid-twenties, tall, confident, and dressed in black slacks and a stylish black leather jacket.  She carried a small pink umbrella to combat the rain, and now that I think about, I don’t remember her opening it a single time.

The skies were the color of concrete, and the steady mist continued as we set off down the main road that had been turned to thick slippery mud by twenty-four hours of rain.  We walked up to a black iron gate with the words "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" welded into the curving top of the passage—and we crossed into the horror of Auschwitz.  Standing in front of this gate during the height of the Holocaust, I am certain that if one were granted a glimpse into the spiritual realm, a great bat-winged demon would have been visible gripping the iron with black leathery claws, uttering a croaking cry of triumph.  Perhaps it’s there gloating today, still pleased with this bleak factory of death after a lifetime has passed since the camp was liberated.  

Auschwitz

Over three years during World War II, at least 1,100,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were systematically executed in the original Auschwitz camp and Birkenau, which was quickly constructed close by for killing large numbers of people more efficiently.  I am convinced that the planning, administration, and lack of conscience necessary to facilitate mass killing with this level of proficiency could have only been made possible by humans motivated by demonic custodians.  After the war ended, many Nazi officials testified that they were just following orders, but it's obvious to the rest of the world that everyone involved with running Auschwitz and all the other deaths camps knew exactly what he or she was doing.

Blocks in Auschwitz

Camila solemnly led us in and out of brick buildings as she described their purpose and the acts carried out within the confines of the walls.  We saw the buildings where women were sterilized systematically and where Josef Mengele performed his gruesome experiments.  We walked along the halls of barracks, the walls covered with thousands of pictures of inmates with admittance and death documentation taken by the Nazis until they deemed the process too cumbersome.  We walked the 80-foot length of a glassed-in corridor containing a heap of human hair the size of a sand dune harvested from gassed prisoners for the purpose of making socks for the German army.  All the while, we crossed the compound in the rain walking with measured steps on barbed wire lined causeways becoming deep with yellow brown mud.  After two hours, we finished our tour of the main compound by descending into one of the gas chambers.  It was very dark in the room, but daylight was visible from the vents where the SS guards released the Zyklon B pellets onto prisoners, who in that horrific moment realized they weren’t in there to take showers.  The end of the gas chamber opened directly into the crematorium with its original ovens still in place, the surrounding brick supports reconstructed from the original architectural drawings.  That’s right, people purposely sat down at their drafting boards and drew plans for the construction of a place to burn the bodies of those classified as inferior.

Gas Chamber in Auschwitz

We we given a short break before making the three-kilometer drive to Birkenau, and we went to a snack shop to order a couple of sandwiches—we weren’t really hungry, but the primal act of eating helped keep our minds from running away.  Joseph thought it was odd to have cafes located in a former death camp, and it did seem a bit strange, but basic services like food and beverage and clean toilet facilities are a necessity in a national museum that draws close to two million visitors every year.  

Birkenau

Our one-hour tour of Birkenau also took place under grey skies, but thankfully the rain held off as Camila led us along the entire length of the camp beside the rail line that carried boxcars full of prisoners to the selection area.  Those that were considered fit to work, mostly men,  were led to barracks while those judged to be unfit, mostly women and children under twelve, were sent directly to the gas chambers under the pretense of showering and delousing in order to prevent mass panic.  At the back of the camp in front of the ruins of the crematoriums, Camila gathered the group closely and asked us to look around at the nearby trees and the grass covered common areas.  She said that when the camp was operating during the war, there was nothing green and that it was a horrible place with mud and filth everywhere.  She asked if we had ever burned our hair by accident or singed the hair on our arms and inquired if we remembered the smell of the burning hair.  She said that Birkenau smelled constantly of burning hair, and the air was filled with thick, swirling ashes from the bodies burned in the crematoriums.

Birkenau Selection Area

Crematorium Ruins

Barracks in Birkenau

At the end of the hour, we walked through one of the remaining brick barracks and saw the original three-tiered bunks on which the prisoners slept six or seven to a platform. The building was dark, bleak, and miserable, and we were worn out in every aspect by this point in the day.  We stood with Camila on the muddy road in front of Birkenau, and she reminded us that the people killed in these camps had no opportunity to enjoy their lives and that they were cut short by evil deeds, but we have the potential to enjoy our lives free from persecution.  She wished us well and encouraged us to live purposely remembering the things we saw at Auschwitz.

After reading about Nazi death camps for years, visiting one was even more overwhelming than I thought it would be.  Over dinner we discussed the parts of the tour that left the biggest impressions on us.  I’m not going to write anymore about those things because I don’t have the stomach for it anymore.  I lay awake in bed last night wondering if we did the right thing by taking our kids to a place that will probably haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives.  I decided that if the memory of Auschwitz gives them the strength to stand up for even one person that needs help and lacks a voice in this world, then it was worth it.  Please God, let it be so.