We are walking through the 20th century concrete ramp and tunnel, listening to a haunting roll call of the known victims of the death camp known as Auschwitz over load speakers. It is both sombre and eerie and through our transit we hear only an infinitesimally tiny proportion of the names of the 1.1 million who died at this death camp alone.
Arriving at the entrance we are confronted with a wrought iron fence with the same inscription as we saw in Dachau “Arbeit Macht Frei” which translates as “work sets you free”
In January 1943 at a conference just outside Berlin the then militarily rampant Nazi leadership of Germany devised a plan to implement Butler’s long held desire to exterminate the Jews. Having labelled them an inferior race, even before WW2 German Jews were treated to harassment and abuse by German authorities. The conference devised a plan to kill over 11 million European Jews and labelled it the “Final Solution”
At the core of their plan was the development of 6 death camps in the now devastated and out of the way nation of Poland also home to 3.5 million Jews the highest Jewish population of any European country. The largest camp was the Auschwitz Birkenau complex beautifully preserved as a monument to those who suffered and died in horrific circumstances there.
The plan involved arresting and herding Jews from all over Europe onto overcrowded wooden train carriages in worse conditions than animals. They often endured many days before the train pulled up right in Birkenau.
Allowed out carriage by carriage I can imagine their short lived feelings of happiness breathing fresh air exposed to daylight and being able to stretch out again. All of their belongings were confiscated. They were rapidly assessed by a doctor and separated in a process designated “the selection”. On one side stronger able bodied men and women who were processed stripped shaved and sent to barracks to work. Most of these were dead within a couple of months from starvation. On the other side women, children, elderly and infirmed who were told to march in a different direction. If they asked they were told they were going off to have a shower. Within a couple of hours they were dead from hydrogen cyanide gas poisoning in the gas chambers.
Even after death the depravity did not cease. Anything on their body that could be taken was including women’s hair and gold fillings. The bodies were cremated and the ashes spread indiscriminately as fertiliser.
The horrific and tragic stories here once again make my eyes well up. Again and again what strikes me most is that it was ordinary people who actually carried out this evil plan. SS officers here were certainly acting on orders but at work they killed all day long and literally went offsite to the village built for them and their families who were allowed to accompany them and must have been loving husbands and fathers. How can anyone live such a dichotomy?