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Auschwitz--There were Four Million

What a sad history Poland has!!! What other country in the world do people travel to specifically to visit concentration and death camps? And our guests are no exceptions. All of them want to see a concentration camp. And I don't blame them. But, a wave of nausea crawls over me each time I step inside. And this time with our nephews was the same.

"Work Bring Freedoms" proclaims an iron sign at the entrance of Auschwitz in Southern Poland. How many people that were herded through this place believed this? Many Jews had been promised better farms and so had brought all their earthly possessions with them. The pile of suitcases behind glass is a grim reminder of the reality of what happened here. You can't imagine the un-Christian feelings that arise within you when you see evidence of this cruelty.

A visitor's personal feelings in our travel book tell my feelings exactly,

When you go in there's a sign in five languages that says, "There were four million."

I broke down about halfway around Auschwitz, walking away from the wall against which 20,000 people were shot. There's a shrine there now; schoolgirls were laying flowers and lighting candles.

But it wasn't that particular detail that got to me. And it wasn't the stark physical evidence in earlier blocks of the conditions in which people had lived, sleeping seven or nine together on the straw in three-high tiers the size of double beds.

It wasn't the enormous glass-fronted displays in which, on angeled boards sometimes dozens of feet long, lay great piles of wretchedly battered old boots, or children's shoes. It wasn't the bank of suitcases, their owner's names clumsily written on them in faded paint, or the heaps of broken spectacles, of shaving brushes and hairbrushes.

It wasn't the case the length of a barrack room in the block whose subject was 'Exploitation of Corpses', the case filled with a bank of human hair, or the small case to the one side of that, showing the tailor's lining that was made from it.

It wasn't the relentless documentary evidence, the methodical, systematic, compulsive bureaucracy of mass murder.

And it wasn't the block beside the yard in which the shrine now stands, in whose basement are the 'standing cells' used to punish prisoners, measuring ninety by ninety centimeters (3 feet x 3 feet). People were wedged together into these bare brick cubicles, and left to starve or suffocate pinned helplessly upright. In other cells in the same basement, the first experiments with Zyklon B as a means of mass extermination were conducted.

It was all of these things cumulatively crushing you, a seeping evil from every wall and corner of the place, from every brick of every block, until you reach your limit and it overwhelms you. For a short while I found myself crying, leaning against the wire. Like they tell you--the birds don't sing.

Pete Davies "All Played Out"

Even though you have seen holocaust museums, there is nothing like visiting the actual site of such unhuman treatment. The reality washes over you as step inside the actual rooms where all this cruelty took place.

And, yes, even though it's horribly sad, if you come to visit me I will take you to a concentration camp if that's where you want to go, but I would rather take you to historical Old Towns and beautiful palaces because there we can think happy thoughts about Poland's history.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have been to Auschwitz. I have seen the horror...and it is too awful to fully comprehend. You must be a brave person to go there repeatedly. I barely made it through one time.
Iain
Dorcas said…
You put it very well. As you recall we went to Majdanek, which still gives me bad dreams sometimes, and I'm sure it wasn't anywhere near as bad as Auschwitz. Yes, Poland has a sad history.
Anonymous said…
The brutality of mankind against its own is beyond comprehension. How does God allow this world to contine on? Dave and I sing this song..."Let me see this world, Dear Lord, as though I were looking through your eyes..." I'm not wondering, 'Do I really want to see this world the way He sees it?' Can there be any other way?
Anonymous said…
I meant "I'm NOW wondering..."
Anonymous said…
Laura,
There is a story you might like that I've put on our website. It touches me every time I read it. Thought you might enjoy
Thanks for posting that iain. After hearing about so many horrible war stories, it does my heart good to read a "happy ending" to a story from a part of the world that is becoming dear to my heart.
Dorcas, Majdanek is just as sad, in my opinion, so stark and real. Gokum, interesting that our family is just now learning the song you mention. And Esther, uhhum! Could I actually hope that you might bring your family to Poland????

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