Central Europe 2019

Krakow

I’m sitting in the orangery in our hotel thinking of what/how to share the experience of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau. I’m uncertain how to give words to the swirling impressions and heaviness of heart. I am appalled at what I didn’t/undoubtedly still do not know.

Work Sets You Free

The machinations of killing were perversely applied. And our guide reminded us they “constantly evolved to murder more efficiently and faster”. Even after they knew they were losing the war and were destroying the evidence of their immoral acts.

The numbers are staggering, especially when daily deaths are recounted by our guide. With the reminder that there were six death camps in Poland and Germany to amplify the horrific reality of lives exterminated.

There will be no further photos shared by me. We didn’t take but a few. It was a profound experience. Standing where prisoners guilty of being themselves (Polish dissidents or those who were future possible enemies of the German State ie Roma’s, homosexuals, 9 year old girls in the wrong place) undressed on command before walking to the gas chambers (placid dignity and misplaced hope on display), being told again of the complicit world that knew what was happening and did not find a way to stop “the final solution” sooner. Mary and I both had a visceral reaction to the display of huge piles of hair from the shorn heads of prisoners in Auschwitz that were sold back to German companies who made fabric from it – it seemed such a callous assault on their persons. The pretense and deceit until death of the promises of resettlement, telling them to put their names on the luggage for ease of getting it back when it was simply plundered. Selecting prisoners as slave laborers who were coerced into enriching the coffers of Nazi Germany or manufacturing the chemicals or munitions that supported the war and the death camps – until they could not work and were killed.

Truly crimes against humanity for which few were held accountable.