Friday was a split day; our final day in Auschwitz, but our last full day in Poland was the next day. I apologize for the delay in finishing out my blog posts, but the pace of the trip began to catch up with me and I had fun my last two nights out with new friends.
We began the day in Birkenau. I can't explain the scope... Imagine a football field and then multiply it times 70. And then fill those fields with the living corpses of those condemned to die by systematic evil.
When we walked into Birkenau today, we turned right instead of going straight to the selection platform. You can see how expansive Birkenau was in this picture... and this was half of the shorter end of the giant grid.
Szymon had returned to guide us for one last day. He pointed out the rings. "This barrack was shortly made for horses. 52 horses. But instead, they put up to 700 people."
This particular barrack was the latrines.
"I once gave a tour to a woman, and she said her friend was a Birkenau survivor. She said that even today she uses the restroom only twice a day- once in the morning, once in the evening." Another example of how their experiences followed them for the rest of their lives.
We went to a barrack with beds. Szymon described out they would sleep "top to tail, top to tail" to fit five people on each bed. The bunks were sweltering during the summer (maybe two-three months) and freezing during the winter.
The famous main gate of Birkenau, with the railroad tracks going through it, are not actually the front entrance. In actuality, people were marched down to the long end of the camp when they arrived. Only in 1944 when people began arriving from Hungary in masses, did they have people arriving on the trains like Eva did. Before that, they arrived on the Alte Judenrampe and walked to the camps. We went there, too, as you'll see later in the post.
I took this picture of a tiny fraction of the camp. The weather for the last three days has been wild. The first day was blazing hot and windy, the second day was temperate and threatened rain, and today the wind was whipping everywhere. There was a point today where the wind whipped up the gravel and it stung my legs. But, it was impossible for me to complain. Even when a barrack was stuffy, it's at the front of your mind that you've chosen to be there and nothing can be as bad as the conditions which these barracks were built for.
This section above is yet another extension which the SS planned for Birkenau which they were constructing even up to the war's end. "Don't forget" - as Szymon would say - that this was intended to be a permanant camp for prisoners of the Reich. It's amazing to me thay even when they were obviously losing the war and resources could have gone elsewhere, that they still pushed on with the construction.
I asked Szymon about the blue and white striped uniforms the prisoners wore: why that pattern with those colors? He replied that it was easy to see, so that if anyone tried to escape, you could easily see them, essentially the bright orange prison jumpsuits of today. He also said that there was a point where they didn't have enough uniforms because of the influx of people, so some prisoners wore normal clothes, which he showed me in this picture.
This point was very jarring and emotional. Before the large crematoriums which were constructed as gas chambers were opened and before the railroad which Eva came in on, this was where so many families and elderly were taken. They sat in these woods next to two crematoriums and awaited their turn to go inside.
Haunting... We don't know how much these people knew about what was to come. However, you can see people go into the crematoriums, and they don't come out. So what would you do? Let your children play for one last day?
This is the ruins of Crematorim 5. After waiting in the "Little Wood" - people would be taken to this building or Crematorium 4. These buildings were built as morgues, but converted into crematoriums when more capacity became necessary. Their layout was very inconvenient for the Sonderkommando. People walked into the center room which was the undressing area, then the gas chambers were to the left, so these Jews would have to drag the bodies of those who died across the building, through the undressing room, to the incinerators. You can see one metal part of a remains of an incinerator in the photo.
One brave Sonderkommando member took a camera from the pocket of a coat. He shot a roll of film - only three images survived. These images provide historians with incredible insight into a part of the camp. The images were enlarged and placed in the location which they would have had to be taken.
Another site of ash ponds. "This is what it means to lose everything: one man lost 178 relatives. Sometimes we don't appreciate what we have."
This is the remains of Crematorium IV. In 1944, brave members of the Sonderkommando led a rebellion here and blew up this crematorium... From the USHMM: "For months, young Jewish women, like Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from a munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex to men and women in the camp’s resistance movement, like Róza Robota, a young Jewish woman who worked in the clothing detail at Birkenau. Under constant guard, the women in the factory took small amounts of the gunpowder, wrapped it in bits of cloth or paper, hid it on their bodies, and then passed it along the smuggling chain. Once she received the gunpowder, Róza Robota then passed it to her co-conspirators in the Sonderkommando, the special squad of prisoners forced to work in the camp’s crematoria. Using this gunpowder, the leaders of the Sonderkommando planned to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria, and launch the uprising. On October 7, 1944, having learned that the SS was going to liquidate much of the squad, the members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV rose in revolt. The Germans crushed the revolt. Nearly 250 prisoners died during the fighting and guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed."
This area is the remains of an area called "Canada" because it was thought that Canada was the land of plentiful riches. Anything which families brought with them on the transports were taken to these warehouses: shoes, glasses, luggage, pictures, clothing, pans, etc.
The next building we went to was called "The Sauna" which was used for processing prisoners at Auschwitz not immediately being put to death. It's name's meaning will very soon become clear... This was the initial room for turning in belongings such as clothing and registration. It now has a raised glass floor for visitors to walk on. Szymon talked about how their goal now is not to rebuild but to conserve what is here for future generations to bear witness.
After being registered, naked prisoners would walk down the "dirty" hallway, past these huge hot air ovens. These were in the center of the building and prisoners would walk by them again on the other side. At the end of the hall, their hair would be shaved off- often with crude/blunt instruments which also took some skin with their hair- and their numbers tattooed on. They would be glanced over by a physician as well.
They would then go into this room with floor to ceiling windows and given a shower to "disinfect" them. Often, the water was either icy cold or burning hot as a future cruel treatment. Next, they would wait in a waiting room before going down the "clean" hallway to receive their new prisoner clothing- the famed striped pajamas.
Another means of disinfecting clothing from lice by using steam in an effort to prevent typhus epidemics can be seen while walking down the "clean" hallway.
In the final room of the Sauna, examples of some of the personal photos which were sorted in Canada. These were all photos taken pre-war at a time when photography and developing film was not cheap- so these were prized possessions taken by prisoners in the single piece of luggage they were allowed to bring.
All of the photos were striking for different reasons, however, I was drawn to the ones which had been taken in real time. Here are some which stood out to me: This bride, toasting on her wedding day.
Some darling little girls.
The love between this mother and daughter.
Recess during nursery school.
Beautiful classroom of children.
Right before I left for my trip, Lilia developed a helpful habit of putting one finger in her mouth right as we tried to take a picture. Luckily for us, we live in the age of digital cameras, so we'd fight away her fingers and take it again. My heart connected with the parent of this kiddo, who must have opened her recently developed photos to find that her ornery child's finger snuck in at the last second. For this parent, I wept.
One of the apparatuses that would slide in the crematoriums to help deliver bodies to the ovens was on display in the final room of the sauna.
Part of the waste treatment plant. You can see the giant fan-like structure which would turn.
Through this thicket of trees is a large field with farmhouses beyond. When digging part of a trench, prisoner escaped to a nearby farm. He dressed like a female farmhand and evaded capture when the SS came interrogating. He soon joined the resistance movement and survived the war.
Our tour for Friday ended behind the memorial which we had seen two days before. This is a view from the memorial, between the two large crematoriums, looking down the train tracks where Eva's family and so many others disembarked into Auschwitz.
When Eva began bringing others back to Auschwitz in the mid-80s, she started having candle memorials in honor of those who died. Dorothy, the director of the CANDLES museum, opened with a few words. Next, Scotty, a recent high school graduate from New Jersey headed to Purdue this fall, read the Mourner's Kaddish- a Jewish prayer for the dead.
We all received a candle and had the opportunity to share, if we wished, who we chose to light our candle in honor of. My friend Catie took a picture of me hugging Eva after lighting my candle.
Next, we left Birkenau and had lunch at a lovely little restaurant. I had a blast, I sat next to Catie, who beyond just generally being an awesome person I enjoy talking to, also works at the CANDLES Museum. After another heavy morning, it was a delightful lunch full of fun Eva stories and laughter- the perfect stress reliever going into our last afternoon in the camps.
We returned to Auschwitz I in the afternoon.
Please remember that Auschwitz I is very small compared to Birkenau. But, it was the original and it was left mostly intact at the end of the war, unlike Birkenau which was basically burned to the ground in an attempt to hide what happened. "At the beginning, 15,000 Soviets were in 9 barracks at Auschwitz I. From those who survived work for a year and a half- they started building B1 (the first area built at Birkenau) only 900 Soviets survived to do this. 200 survived the war overall. How? A lottery."
The original camp kitchen at Auschwitz I between brick barracks.
These buildings which were original to Auschwitz were much different than the wooden and brick barracks which would be built at Birkenau later. This room was for the Kapo in charge of the barrack.
Indoor plumbing- a luxury which didn't exist at Birkenau.
If you've ever read "Maus" by Art Spiegelman, you may be like me and find this eerie. But they had someone paint an image of a cat cleaning itself in the restroom.
On one side of the room with sinks, they had an image of prisoners cleaning themselves and it said, "So ist es richtig" which translates to, "That's right." And the other side showed a prisoner spilling water and script which said, "That's wrong." Ominous cartoons.
Upstairs we saw sleeping barracks. In March 1942, they adapted these barracks for the women's camp. They created a brick wall to separate men from women which took 5 months. Those women who survived the building of this wall were moved to Birkenau. When they moved the women and then went inside, the floor was black from the lice.
Next, we went into the permanent exhibit "Shoah" in Block 27. All the different countries who had victims in the Holocaust have spaces to dedicate to those who died from their country. Yad Vashem and the State of Isreal created this incredible exhibition. The word "Shoah" stands for the murder of European Jews in Hebrew. As you walked in, you heard the beautiful, haunting sound of Jewish prayers songs.
We were then in a room which was 360° home movies of Jewish families before WWII. Lovely scenes of swimming, weddings, and families during summers.
This map was an entire wall showing the geography of the camp systems, killing centers, and places of mass murder. The darkest colors were countries the Third Reich acquired, the dark gray countries were allies, and the lightest colors were either Allied Countries or Neutral during WWII.
The next room featured testimonies from survivors and documented stories of those who lost their lives which were discovered after the war. One, for example, was journal from a 14-year-old girl who lived in the Bedzin ghetto. One entry stated:"The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter. I'm turning into an animal waiting to die." She hid her journal in the basement of the house she lived in, hoping to recover it someday. She was killed in Auschwitz, and her journal was recovered after the war by the family who owned the house.
This room was heartbreaking. It reflects the 1,500,000 children killed in the Holocaust and was a white room with drawings on the walls. An artist copied authentic drawings by children during the Holocaust. The artist who copied the works, Michal Rovner, said, "I believe that no artist could produce any better work on the topic of children during the Holocaust than what the children themselves had already created. I wanted their authentic voices to be heard. Those children's families, homes, friends, belongings, landscapes and freedom had been taken away from them. Tragically, the vast majority of them left no sign behind them. Only very few were able to document the essential thing they were able to hold on to: their viewpoint. That is what is expressed in their drawings. Within a situation in which they had no choices, in front of a piece of paper they had a certain freedom to express themselves and the way they saw reality."
The view from the window of the children's room in Block 27.
One of the final two rooms of the Shoah Exhibit featured "The Book of Names" with 4.2 million names so far of the 6 million people who died. "Every name, birth date, home town and place of death is clearly printed on the meter-high pages, illuminated by a gentle strip of light that lies between each page. Thus one can search for, pinpoint and even touch the data of any individual victim, and commemorate him or her in a private, personal way. However, the monumental size of the exhibit – 58 volumes of 140 pages each, 500 names per page, measuring 2m high and 14m in circumference – also attests to the collective, immeasurable loss to the entire Jewish people, and to humanity."
The final reflection room: "'It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.' - Primo Levi"
Next, we went across to a building which had been a hospital which now housed many countries' tributes to their victims of the Holocaust. Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Lands, Roma People, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Israel (the Shoah exhibit) are all represented in this group of blocks. In the front room of this building, which was a camp "Hospital" countless victims were killed by injection of phenol to the heart.
Szymon took us to the Belgium exhibit as it was one of his favorites. There were many enlarged portraits of Belgian individuals with information about individual transports which carried them to Auschwitz. The calendar in the bottom left means it took two days to form the transport, 999 deportees left the assembly camp in Mechelen destined for Auschwitz, 824 is the number of deportees gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz, 175 is the number of deportees registered at Birkenau, and 0 is the number of people from this transport who survived the war.
This building was a post office which non-Jewish prisoners could send mail (as long as it didn't give away details which were then redacted), so that the Germans could say they were following the Geneva Convention statute of allowing mail.
As we were leaving him, Szymon said to us, "Don't forget. This - all you have seen - was just the very tip of the iceberg." We thanked him for his tours over the last three days and parted ways.
Next, we had the unique opportunity of attending a concert on the Altejudenrampe. This location from 1942 to Spring of 1944 was where over a half million people arrived at the Auschwitz camps and were selected for life or death. Those who were healthy and fit for work then walked to Auschwitz Birkenau, and those chosen for death were taken by truck to the gas chambers.
Violinist Ariel Horowitz and her boyfriend Sebastian Zinca from NYC performed a concert including an original piece which they wrote in Eva's honor. Ariel was inspired when "Eva expressed her deep desire to hear music performed at Auschwitz where the fates of over one million Jews and members of other targeted groups - including the members of her own family - were decided during World War II. “I’ve never heard a musical piece about forgiveness as healing,” she said that day."
Eva's reaction to the duo's piece "Seed for Peace" performance was unforgettable. She said to us, "This is an unbelievably written and performed piece. This is a place where more than a million people died. The gates of heaven have opened and the souls of all who have died have heard this... It is very worthwhile to remember what we are doing here, and congratulations for what you have done." Sebastian shared that their hope was to reclaim the space in the spirit of joy and forgiveness. You can learn more about their performance here: Seed For Peace
Then, we headed back to Krakow for dinner on our own. A group of friends and I headed to a pierogi place we'd heard of called "Mr. Vincent" as in van Gogh. It had the mother of all pierogi menus- every combination you could think of. So I ordered my sandard "meat" pierogi (I rationalize this as the only means of proper comparison-get the same kind every time) and for desert- their seasonal dessert pierogi-strawberry (heart-eye emoji).
Then, ya know, since we were already in the Jewish Quarter... We headed for some of that wonderful, Polish lody. Mmmmm.
And again, the place was hopping.
All these delicious options for Polish "snacks" as our guides said.
"We went to this AMAZING ice cream place. You have to go there."
"Oh really? What's it called?"
"It's called 'Lody'!"
"... You know that 'lody' means 'ice cream' in Polish, right?"
...Nope. I didn't know that. But now I do.
Delicious lody, new friends, and adventures- what could be better?
In the street there was a pretty decent sized street band. They were playing American classics and they Polish people were jamming. We ate our ice cream and enjoyed the atmosphere.
We walked back to the hotel, and while sitting in the lobby for a few minutes trying to decide on a game plan for the rest of the evening, who should roll up but Eva. She sat and talked with us for a long time, and then a group of people came in from Israel and she started talking to them and telling them their story in (forgive me for not knowing) either Yiddish or Hebrew. She wanted to give them a bookmark, and looked around to all of us, because we all carry CANDLES museum bookmarks to direct people directly to Eva's full story and mission. None of us had any so I offered to run upstairs to grab all of mine. I did- I ran quickly! And then when I got downstairs, I handed them to Eva and she said, "Wait, why are they folded in half?!" with a twinkle in her eye. "Because they're long and nothing taken into Auschwitz- like my purse- can be long!" She laughed, squeezed my arm, and thanked me.
While she talked to two of the women from our group, an Israeli man who spoke English came up to talk to us.
"Have you been to Israel?"
"No, we haven't."
"You haven't?! What religion are you?!"
"Christian."
"Christian! We've got that! Jesus was from Jerusalem. We also have the Dead Sea, but you should come soon because it's shrinking."
I loved this exchange with this man. He also asked what we thought about our president, where we were traveling to and from, etc. A wonderful way to end the evening- sitting with Eva and talking to those whom her interdenominational message resonates with.
