Oswiecim and Auschwitz-Birkenau

This has been the most difficult post I've had to write so far. I wondered if I should write about it at all, since no words can cover the scope, the injustice, the horror of what happened to the victims of the Second World War.

I read some other bloggers to see what they had to say on this subject, and one person in particular, who was a Jewish visitor, said that he'd gone against some of the Auschwitz State Museum's "no photo" policy in certain areas of the site, and that he did not regret it, since he felt that the atrocities that happened during 1939-1945 should be remembered, and that was what photos and words did: they kept alive the memories of what had happened, to commemorate them, and to ensure that nothing else like this ever happened again. People had risked their lives to take photos and escape with them, to expose the horrors of what was happening, he said.

Nevertheless, I didn't take too many pictures. I took a few of the Auschwitz-Birkenau, the extermination camp, but that was all. I didn't have the heart to take any more. The few photos I've taken are all here.

When I was very small, probably around 7 I think, my parents bought Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank, for me. It was, and still is, one of the most powerful books I've ever read. It was so hard for me as a child, to comprehend the brutality of the Nazis, the war atrocities that occurred, and that Anne, vivacious, bubbly, achingly normal Anne, whom I thought wrote and acted a lot like me, at times - had her life so brutally cut short. I still find it impossible to comprehend.

Auschwitz is located in the town of Oswiecim, which it took its name from. I took a bus from Katowice to Oswiecim, which took about 90 minutes, and then a bus from the Dworzec to the railway station. Oswiecim is a small, grey, dismal little town, which seems to have retained all the unhappiness of its past.

Oswiecim's main train station.

Apparently it was about 20 minutes walk from the train station to Auschwitz I, but I decided to take the bus there, since I didn't want to get lost - and getting lost in Oswiecim was a rather terrifying prospect.

There are guided tours for Auschwitz I, but since I was running rather late (thanks to the hostel providing me with faulty transport information) and I had no idea how much time I would need for the second site, I walked around a bit, and didn't go in, proceeding straight to the shuttle for Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This was the first scene that greeted me, as I stepped off the shuttle.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was a huge, desolate, place. The weather was grim and grey, the air was stagnant and stifled even though it was a huge open space, and I felt my heart sink as I walked in. So many people came here, never to leave again, including Anne and her family.

The rail tracks that carried the Jews to their barracks.

One thing I noticed about Auschwitz-Birkenau, was that there was no sound of wildlife whatsoever. No birds singing or chirping, small animals rustling, or any of the sounds of nature you'd expect to hear in an open space like this. It's as if they knew what happened here.

There aren't any words that can come remotely close to describing the emptiness and horror that you feel when you walk within this space where so many people died in such misery and injustice. I'd done a lot of research before coming here, and I'd read extensively on WWII and the Holocaust, watched numerous documentaries and movies, but still. I could not comprehend what had happened here, what had driven people to act the way they did. I couldn't even think about it directly, it was so horrific. As I walked back to the entrance, where the train used to unload arrivals, I remembered what had happened to the Frank family, how Anne's father Otto Frank had been forcibly separated from his family, and how they'd never seen each other again. All these families torn apart, all these lives, ruined.



How far have we come?



***



I returned to Katowice for a quick dinner. To be honest, I was relieved to leave Oswiecim. The whole place was just so bleak.

Caught a polskibus to Wroclaw (which I couldn't pronounce until after I'd left the place, embarrassingly) which was fully booked. The journey took two hours, and it was past nine when I arrived. To my annoyance, a very fat man sat next to me. He poured himself into the seat adjoining mine (can't think of any other verb that's more suitable) and it was really very uncomfortable.

Last few in Katowice. I can safely say that I never want to come to this place again.

I really liked Wroclaw, but that'll have to come later.