Poland-Day 2
We woke up at 5:45 AM to leave for Auschwitz, about 1 1/2 hrs. drive from Krakow. I was nervous as I think everyone else was and the mood on the bus was fairly tense. We had a briefing session the night before to talk about what we were expecting and hoping to understand from Auschwitz. We first went to Auschwitz 1, and then Auschwitz 2-Birkenau, the infamous death camp. Auschwitz 1 has been made into a small museum and we had a Polish guide who was very factual and straightforward about her information. It rained for most of the time while we were t,here, which set the perfect mood. Although the displays were similar to any other Holocaust museum, the difference stood in the fact that we were standing directly where Holocaust victims and their Nazi perpetrators stood 60 years ago in cold brick barracks with barbed wire and guard towers surrounding us in. The breaking point for the whole group was definetely walking through the rooms with bins of personal items:shoes, combs and brushes, hair, suitcases with names and addresses, pots and pans, etc... It was chilling to see the suitcases, labeled with name, address and birthday by children expecting to get them back, shoes of all sizes and makes, and the matted hair of so many victims in room-length glass bins piled up to my face level. Before entering the museum area, we all sat in a small dark room with a glass sheet in the middle of the floor, containing some stars of David. We sat in silence as a man sang on a recording in a wailing tone... the type from Fiddler on the Roof, praying for something and knowing what is happening. It was spine-tingling and this is also where many people had complete break-downs. We also walked by the building where Dr. Mengele performed his sterilization experiments on women which was hard for me because I kept thinking of my cousin Chaya. We went into some underground punishment chambers, some standing punishment, others suffocation rooms. The last part of our tour at Auschwitz 1 was through a gas chamber and crematorium. Entering the dank, dark, and moldy smelling area was chilling. The emptiness of the gas chamber allows for visions and imagining of what happened there. The crematorium was much like the one at Turezin, with machines designed to burn as many bodies as possible.
For lunch, we drove to the only remaining synagogue in Auschwitz where we at lunch and had an afternoon service. It was a very meaningful service to be sitting in the town where a million or more Jews were slaughtered. I brought my tallit from my great-grandfather with me because you never know where it actually came from before and since most of his family died in the Holocaust, I thought it was an appropriate tribute.
In the afternoon, we went to Auschwitz 2, better known as Birkenau. It is not set up like a museum at all, just left in its condition, so Gabe my Jewish History teacher led us. It is a large camp, which we were able to see from the top of a guard tower. It was easy to see how the Nazis controlled the barbed wire with the ditches and ability to see along it. There, we had conversations about humanity and how the Germans were able to treat other human beings in such an inhumane manner. We went into a barracks with bunks and into a latrine area. They were a row of holes in cement with no protection around it until the Nazis decided they couldn't stand the smell anymore. Apparently, cleaning the latrines was one of the best jobs and those people had a higher survival rate because they did not have contact with the Nazis since they did not want to be anywhere near the mess. We walked the road that Hungarian Jews walked on their way to the crematorium which was moving to think that we were walking the same path but that we were easily walking out alive. We saw the remains of Crematorium 3 which a women's rebellion blew up, Crematorium 4 which was destroyed by the Sondercommando, Jews who were more in charge of burying, etc.., and Crematorium 5 which the Nazis bombed to destroy evidence. Much of the camp is destroyed from bombing at the end of the war. We also stopped at a small pond decorated with bouquets of flowers because it is where all the ashes from the crematoriums were dumped. We walked through the building where prisoners were stripped, took showers, were given uniforms, tattooed, etc... where those lucky enough to escape the crematoriums at first went. At the end there was a display of pictures taken from victims that showed their lives before: family, trips, hobbies, etc...To end our day at Auschwitz, we had a closing ceremony by a large memorial and of course sang Hatikvah. We each lit a small candle and placed it around the area. And, then easily, we walked the train tracks directly out of Auschwitz.
