Auschwitz

Auschwitz deserves a special blog page. It doesn’t seem appropriate to say “and then we went to Auswitch…”

Everyone has at least a smattering of knowledge of the Holocaust and the incinerators and the millions of innocent people who died. But to walk the grounds where so much of this has happened is a sobering and surreal  experience. Despite reading a great deal of facts and stories and looking at pictures of the faces of regular people who are simply discarded for no imaginable justification I still can’t grasp that this happened in modern day Europe.

The deniers need to be forced to visit Auschwitz and the even sadder sister camp called Birkenau which has hundreds of huts where people slept 10 to a bunk each hut holding 400 people. Auschwitz with it’s shady cobblestone streets look pleasant in comparison. Then you realize you’re in the building where Joseph Mengele carried out his experiments, many on children. 

It’s really nauseating. The sad reality is we’re not talking about one man here. 

To be honest the tourist operation was a bit chaotic. We stood in line for over an hour and a half and then they said there would be no more English tours. And the buses to go over to
 were jammed, but really, you can’t complain at Auschwitz you just can’t.

Previous unknown facts- Poland was the country that lost most people to the Holocaust, an estimated two million. That's not including the millions more who died in the war itself.

The story of the Hungarian Jewish community is particularly heart wrenching. After almost escaping the "final solution" near the end of the war, Hitler occupied Hungary and Adolph Eichmann efficiently arranged for the export to over 440,000 Jews in over-crowded railroad cars. After a miserable trip of 3 to 5 days during the summer of 1944, ninety per cent of those sent to Auschwitz went directly from the train to the crematoriums.

We heard many of the holocaust stories from Berlin, to Krakow to Budapest. Of course there were many more than Jews exterminated, the Romani (formally known as Gypsies) resistance fighters, homosexuals, handicapped people....

And what about the millions of Poles, Hungarians and other East Europeans who disappeared to the Soviet work camps after the war? Where are their stories? Too much!!!

I don't remotely claim to know any answers to the big question of "Why?" I do think people should visit if they have a chance.