Auschwitz, 2015

This post is about my recent visit to the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. Reader discretion is advised.

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I'm writing from Krakow, Poland. I went here to see the historic former capital and to pay my respects at Auschwitz (which is around 45 miles from Krakow).

Auschwitz is a place that we all know of through movies, but seeing it in person was still shocking. The concentration camp was preserved essentially unchanged since it became a museum in 1947 - two years after the Red Army recaptured Poland from Nazi Germany. Some buildings that were formerly used for administration are now filled with photos, artifacts, and displays. The other buildings, and the endless electrical fences that surround each building, were left in their original condition.

I had no idea how large the facility was. The grounds are approximately 15 square miles and imprisoned more than 100,000 slave laborers at any given time. In total, approximately 1.5 million people were slaughtered at this facility alone.

You can only enter the concentration camp facilities as part of a guided tour. The tour begins in a room that is filled from floor to ceiling with footwear, primarily children's shoes, that were pulled from people who were murdered at the facility. You could not hear a single person, other than the guide, speak at the camp. Most people stared blankly or cried from this moment forward.

Walking through the gas chambers and adjacent crematoriums, that were run non-stop throughout the genocide, was heartbreaking. Subsequent aspects of the tour were no easier to manage.

It is estimated that the holocaust resulted in the extermination of over 11 million people, and the death of 2 of every 3 European Jews, within a 5 year period. Further estimates suggest that over 100,000 to 500,000 were direct participants in the planning and execution of the Holocaust.

Neither the tour guides nor the plaques editorialized or contextualized. Special efforts were taken to only refer to the perpetrators as Nazis and not by country of origin. You were led around the facility and told what happened as cold, but extremely unpleasant, facts.

North American atrocities, such as the near-eradication of native peoples and slavery, were before the advent of cameras, but actions in Auschwitz are captured by photo and film. Note that much of the film you have seen shot indoors at newly liberated concentration camps was staged several months later by former prisoners. It turns out that initial camera crews did not have the ability to film indoors because there was not enough light. Actual human conditions at the time of liberation were (unbelievably) far worse.

The only picture I'm posting from this trip is a plaque near the gas chambers pleading humanity for vigilance to avoid repeating the horrors that occurred here.

I have no profound distillation of the experience to share. Walking through such a place just left me dumbstruck and crushed.

I can not comprehend how the region and peoples moved forward after this gruesome chapter of humanity. However, at the conclusion of this trip, while wandering the ghetto near Schindler's Krakow factory, I happened across a tiny alley where a scene from the movie that bears his name was filmed. Instead of a child running for her life at the hands of a Nazi youth she knew from school, I saw a young couple deeply in love and posing for wedding photos. People around the couple were cheering, families were laughing, and a place of former horror was once again a neighborhood full of potential and love.