AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU!!!

***Please note that this entry contains some details about life in the concentration camps. This content may be disturbing and upsetting for some so please be aware of this before reading!


The first thing that really struck me about Auschwitz was the fact that it is located within a small town. I expected it to be in the middle of the country with no houses about. We were given a headset where we would be able to hear our guide. This was great as it meant we could be away from her, in the next room or looking at something else and you could still hear what she was saying. Walking through the gates the first thing you really see is the sign Arbeit Macht Frei (Work means freedom). We were then shown to Block 3 to begin the tours through the museums. Each block looks at a different aspect of the camp. The first one gave you information about how many people were put in the camp and where they came from. They also had documents that had been recovered from the German Nazis which detailed the names of the people entering the camp. The Nazis were very organised in keeping records of eveyone who entered or left/died in the camp. However over 90% of these records were destroyed when they began to lose the war. It is amazing to see these documents and the long lists of names. Often the lists were divided up into men and women. In one display case there were even train tickets from the Jews who had been transported to Auschwitz. Aparently they even made some of the Jews by their own train tickets, saying that they were being relocated to another town.

The next museum we went into showed a model of the gas chambers, as all except the small one at Auschwitz I which was transformed into a bunker, were destroyed. There was also a pile of empty tins which had once contained Cyclone B which was used to kill many thousands of Jews. One tin was enough to kill 100 people. The next museum we visited was the hardest one. It had piles of shoes (almost a whole room), glasses, brushes, pots and pans, children's shoes, prayer shalls and the most disturbing one was the room where there was a huge pile of womens hair that had been shaved off and was used to mag hair cloth (some of which they had on display). There was so much hair that is was hard to comprehend and imagine just how many people they must have come from.

Then it was on to the final museum which was Block number 11, also known as the death block. There we were shown the execution wall, where prisoners accused of crimes were shot. These prisoners slept on the floors of block 11 and out of all the people to stand trial, over 90% were found guilty and sentenced to death. This bunker was also the only bunker which had been left in the exact state as they had been when the prisoners were there, with the bunks and sleeping arrangements. There were also photos on the wall of some of the prisoners. This was aparently one method of keep track of all the people admitted to Auschwitz in the early days. However, as the numbers increased, this method became too impractical and so that's when they started to tattoo all prisoners. This block was also the one where we were taken down to the basement where there were prison cells. This was where they took prisoners for punishment. There were starvation rooms, used for when prisoners tried to escape and others in the group would be punished. The most disturbing though were the standing cells. These were tiny rooms where there was only a door that you had to crawl through. Inside, 3 - 4 people would have to stand in there, as there was no room to sit down, for the whole night and then go out and work the next day. There were also small rooms where 40 or so men would have to stand and as a result, some died from suffocation because there wasn't enough air getting into the room. (They only had one small tiny window in the wall to let air and sunlight in). In these cells was also where Cyclone B was experimented on using prisoners selected at random and prisoners from the hospital. In one of the cells, there were drawings which had been made by one of the prisoners while imprisoned.

Once we had finished there, we mde out way out of the back fence towards the crematorium. This crematorium was the only one that survived, mainly due to the fact that the Germans had transformed it into a bunker towards the end of the war. Inside you could see the room where the people were gased. There were small holes in the ceiling that were large enough just to drop the contents of the Cyclone B into. Then there was a small door leading into the room where 4 large furnaces stood. These furnaces however could only fit 3 - 4 bodies at a time, which is such a tiny number compared to the larger crematoriums at Asuchwitz II.

While outside the camp we were also shown the place where Commandant Hirsch was hanged at the end of the war for the crimes he had committed. We then passed round the outside of the camp and headed back to the main building where we were to leave our headsets and board our bus. Our next stop, Auschwitz II - Birkenau.

The strange thing I found when arriving at the camp was the close proximity of many houses. I'm not sure I'd want to live so close to such a place!! Compared to Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II was huge. There were huts as far as the eye could see. We arrived at the back gate so as to see the monument and plaque errected there at the request of the survivors, so as to be a constant reminder and warning of the horrors that occured within the camps. There were also plaques reading the same message in each language that was spoken by the prisoners of the camp.

Next we walked over to the ruins of crematorium 2 where we were shown which sections of the ruins were the certain parts of the gas chamber - which section was the change rooms, the "showers" (gas chamber) and which was the crematorium. It was rather unnerving standing so close to the place where thousands of people were murdered.

After that we walked along the track that lead us to the main gate. On the way we stopped about half way, which was where the loading dock would have been. It was here that we were shown a photo of a guard during the selection process, either pointing to the right or left and deciding the fate of each person who arrived in the camp. It was eerie that looking at the photo, you could imagine it exactly as we were standing beside the buildign where in the photo, the people selected to be taken down to the crematorium were gathered.

Finally, when we reached the front of the camp we were shown into two of the wooden huts. One was the sanitary hut where the lavatory and wash troughs were. The other was a sleeping hut, where the bunk beds lined the walls. It is hard to imagine so many people sleeping in such a small about of bed space.

I have to say that I learnt a lot on this tour, and considering my previous studying of the concentration camp through novesl read in school, it was good to be able to see the camps with my own eyes. You are not able to fully comprehend or imagine just what the camp is like until you have seen it. It is a place I definitely feel everyone should see at some point in their life...if not to remember those murdered during Hitler's reign, but to help gain an deeper understanding of our history and to ensure this can never happen again.