Travel: Bearing witness at Auschwitz, 12/8/21

Anti-Semitism in Poland was not a new phenomenon. It had been around long before 1939. So had Jews. It is estimated, for instance, that 33% of Warsaw’s prewar population was Jewish, the second highest concentration in the world after New York City.

Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, and the world war that followed, would change all that. First, all left-leaning politicians, then homosexuals and clergy, and finally, Jews were rounded up, imprisoned and murdered—Jews being the primary object of Hitler’s animus.

In the early 1940s, Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen marched through the villages of the Polish countryside, massacring Jews by shooting them and dumping their bodies into ditches. This method of face-to-face murder seemed “messy” to the Germans and in 1942, a pilot program of mass extermination by Zyklon B gas was begun. Proving successful, this industrialized murder process was introduced into the work camp/death camp known as

Auschwitz/Birkenau, which is located about an hour-and a-half from Krakow.

We had the opportunity to personally visit A/B this week. As anyone will tell you who’s ever been there, no book you have ever read on the Shoah or movie you have ever seen can convey the true horror of actually being there in person.

Oswieczm, the Polish town we know as Auschwitz, was selected in great part for its role as an international railway junction, which had been formerly used to transport minerals and expedite immigrants to ships bound for America. As a result, the Nazis figured, trains to Auschwitz could arrive and dispatch their “cargo” with great efficiency. This cargo would come to include millions of Jews across Greater Europe—from Norway to the Greek island of Rhodes. To walk the snow- and ice-covered rail sidings left intact at Birkenau (aka “Auschwitz 2”) in 20 degree weather this week was an experience that redefines the word “chilling.”

Walking the rutted roads inside the camp, past barrack after barrack, is equally sobering and horrific. This is matched only by the exhibits inside the barracks. They range from the stacks of suitcases marked with the names of Jews who arrived thinking they were checking their bags in before showering, to the hundreds of pairs of baby shoes infants would never wear again, to the black-and-white photographs of families arriving on trains from France, Holland, and other countries—photos often taken by the Nazis themselves.

Part of the Nazis’ genocide process was to cover their tracks. When it looked all but over in late 1944, and as the Russians approached, the Nazis began dismantling Auschwitz and forced many of the remaining prisoners to flee West on a death march. But the bastards slipped up. They left one of the gas chambers in Auschwitz intact instead of blowing it up. Which is why you are still able to walk inside a gas chamber today  and view the horror for yourself as we did.

Additionally, thousands of other Jews and Poles too sick to flee remained and eventually bore witness to the mass extermination process. Which is one of the reasons the world was to learn first-hand the Shoah was not a “hoax.”

Much can be learned from having a knowledgeable guide at Auschwitz. (We highly recommend @Tomasz Ciebulski from xxxx.) He reminded us, for instance, that the Nazis treated mass extermination just as a modern corporation would formulate its own business plan. Five-year outlooks for the so-called “thousand-year reich” were being developed as early as 1942.

However the business outlook for the Third Reich was not so rosy. As the tide turned against the Germans, the country’s economy became increasingly dependent on the slave labor provided by the prisoners in work camps like A/B’s—as well as the “recycling” of the personal belongings that were confiscated from the Jews upon arrival.

Besides being inept businessmen, the Nazis were also skilled liars. In one case, we learned, they forced arriving prisoners from Theresenstadt (a “model” camp near Prague created to fool the world into thinking Jews were being treated humanely) to write letters to yet-to-be-imprisoned Hungarian Jews in 1944 telling them everything was “fine” at Auschwitz. After the letters were written and sent, the Theresenstadt Jews were murdered.

Santayana’s “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it,” quote is displayed prominently on the walls of one of the barracks at Auschwitz. We are sadly reminded that nearly 80 years after the Shoah, humankind still hasn’t learned its lesson.

We were honored and humbled to bear witness  in person this week. And to all the innocents who perished in the Shoah and to the families and friends who survive them, alle shalom.