Today, I visited one of the most horrifying tourist sites in the world; one of hundreds. A place where over a million men, women, and children were killed. A place where one man stood in front of a crowd and decided within seconds whether each individual would live or die. A place that, once upon a time, was literal hell on earth: Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Most of the people who died there were never even prisoners there. They were sent directly to the gas chambers because they were too sick, too old, too disabled. Many able-bodied women were sent to the gas chambers with them because the Nazis did not want to cause a panic by separating them from their children, who could not work. Our guide told us they gassed as many as 1,000 people at a time, and it took 24 hours to burn the bodies in the adjoining crematorium. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, there were five crematoria: one at the Auschwitz camp, which was renovated from a military base, and four at the Birkenau camp, which was built specifically so that the Nazis could kill as many prisoners as possible in a short span of time. Birkenau was a part of the “Final Solution.”
At Birkenau, we saw the train tracks where as many as 25 trains came in a day, each carrying a hundred thousand victims. The majority were sent to their deaths. On each side of the tracks are sectors of the camp, each containing hundreds of wooden barracks. They were originally stables, built elsewhere and reconstructed for the housing of the prisoners.
While we were at Auschwitz, we visited the cell blocks. We saw the piles and piles of clothes, shoes, and household items that were collected from the prisoners’ personal belongings. We saw the straw and mattresses the prisoners slept on when the camp was first created, and the wooden barracks that were created after more room was needed for those pouring in. Room for those who would work there for a few months, perhaps a year, before they died from disease, starvation, overwork, or even execution. In one of the barrack buildings were hung the pictures the SS took of some of the first prisoners at Auschwitz. They were meant for documentation purposes, and underneath each were listed the name, occupation, birth date, deportation date, and death date. I looked at those dates. Many of the women lasted only a few months. Three, four. I think the longest I saw was five or six months. Many of the men lasted longer: six months, a little over a year. There was one man who lasted only four days. Death does not discriminate.
At the camps, prisoners were given little food and little water. They were allowed to visit the washrooms and toilets only twice a day: once before and once after a grueling twelve hours of work. Often, they had to walk miles to the places they worked and then miles back after. Each day, they had to assemble to be counted. If even one prisoner was missing, the others had to stand there (whether there was snow, wind, or rain made no difference) and wait until the missing prisoner was found. Our guide told us the longest wait was two days. The prisoners were often forced to strip naked and run to prove their ability to continue work. Those deemed “unhealthy” were sent to their deaths. There were sometimes random selections of prisoners, in the name of clearing room for new transports, and the Nazis often did not care which prisoners were sent, only that the correct number was selected, often for death.
These were people. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, grandparents. And some of their lives were snuffed out in mere minutes, all because they were thought to be less important, less worthy of life, than others. The Jews, disabled, elderly, prisoners of war, future prisoners of war (children whose parents were enemies of the Third Reich). All were killed in the name of the “Final Solution.”
I have a request for you. Visit a concentration camp. Stand where those victims stood. Look at their washrooms, their living quarters, the “sanitation rooms” where millions were gassed to their deaths. See those places and remember. Look at the crumbled ruins of the crematoria (four of the five at Auschwitz-Birkenau were destroyed by the Nazis to cover up their crimes) or the tall chimneys now devoid of the smoke of the victims and remember. Remember those who were stripped of their freedoms, their livelihoods, their dignity, their health, their morals, and finally, their lives. Remember those who were left with only a number, a number which did not even matter. Remember those who survived, but were never the same. Remember those who died and whose names are forgotten.
Always remember. Never forget.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
-George Santayana
