The unforgettable lessons of Auschwitz

A photo essay.

A single red shoe. A tin cup. A suitcase with a name. A lock of hair.

For more than an estimated one million people who were forced through the gates of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, small items such as these are all that is left to remember them.

Auschwitz is synonymous with the horrors and evil of the holocaust and Second World War and is also a museum — a testimony to the execution, torture, experimentation on and starvation of its victims. It lies near Krakow, Poland and was build for prisoners by the occupying Nazi regime and SS in 1940.

Recently, I took a tour of the camp to learn and see for myself what was once hell on Earth. It was one of the most difficult places I have ever visited but I felt an important journey to take.

A large portion of the camp’s 40 square kilometres has been preserved and used as a museum to educate the massive amounts of tourists, schoolchildren and mourners who come to visit each year.

On a cloudy July afternoon, our group first entered the camp with local educator Szymon under the infamous Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free) arch. I initially felt quite strange, very uneasy. It was though I was stepping onto sacred ground or someone’s grave and the groups of tourists strolling around with earphones was quite disjointing. The first part of the tour is Auschwitz 1, which was the first camp built and the site of horrific scientific and medical experiments conducted and where gas chambers were initially devised and used for mass executions.

Each of the former barracks now houses a different museum to record and remember the series of atrocities which occurred there. What struck me the most was the horrific size of the camp. Stretching as far as could be seen were rows and rows of these buildings. It was difficult to comprehend the numbers and scale of suffering which occurred here. Having an educator was important as he could explain what we were seeing and what had happened there.

“You know, the allies said they didn’t know what was happening here. They knew. The home army told them in 1942 — and we were ignored,” he said.

In one of the buildings there are preserved sleeping areas, and Szymon explains hundreds of people were crammed into narrow rooms with straw mattresses and would be forced to try and sleep on top of each other after days of starvation and excruciating labor. This building also displayed rows of photos of victims, preserved from the chillingly clinical documentation of genocide. Much of the evidence of the SS atrocities were destroyed to cover up the scale of their crimes, so the remaining mementos are especially important. It was difficult to be confronted by the eyes of victims, some showing fear, some defiance and others utter bewilderment.

Many of the women in the photographs had their head shaved and in the next area of the camp we learnt that much of the hair was kept and used to make clothing. Still a lot of the hair remained behind glass. Piles and piles from the heads of an estimated 10,000 people. Out of respect for the human remains, visitors are asked not to take photos here. Other pieces of people’s lives are also kept vigil in remembrance and testimony.

I think everyone who visits Auschwitz has a different reaction, but I would think none are left unmoved. The most harrowing part came towards the end when visitors were able to walk through the gas extermination chamber and crematorium. To stand where thousands upon thousands were murdered and see their scratch marks on the concrete walls where they desperately clasped for escape was very disturbing and I could not stay for long.

Birkenau is 3 kilometres from Auschwitz I and was built as a death camp in 1941. Jews were bought here on cattle car trains from Ghettos in Hungary, Poland and the rest of occupied Europe along with Soviet soldiers from the Russian Front, Romani, the Polish academics and intelligentsia, dissidents, the mentally ill, homosexuals, the disabled, children, home army members, Jehovah’s Witnesses and any others which were deemed “undesirable” of the occupying fascists. Upon arrival they were moved either into lines for labor or direct to gas chambers for mass execution.

Those who were not immediately killed were forced to live in small barracks which stretch horrifyingly far to each side. A solitary train carriage remained on the tracks which end in front of the chambers. The gas chambers and crematoriums were destroyed after the war but the rubble was preserved in memoriam.

It’s a disturbingly difficult journey to make around the camps, but something which seems very important to witness. During the visit and afterwards, me and people who I have spoken to, always talk of a mix of feelings and a deep period of reflection afterwards.

While I found it incomprehensible to understand the suffering of victims or the motives of perpetrators at Auschwitz, and I left with just as many questions as answers, there were still many valuable lessons there. The consequences of xenophobia and nationalism, why we must always work towards equality and the maintenance of human rights and mostly why this must never happen again.

I found myself on further reflection feeling quite angry. I realized I had anger that somewhere like Auschwitz could happen in the first instance, but also anger and fear at current political climates — especially in Europe. As a number of governments shift towards far-right, populist and isolationist ideologies the old adage of “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” applies. We must never forget the testimony the Auschwitz victims left us.

As my tour group made its way out of the camp, exhausted and with some emotionally capped. Our educator Szymon had one last comment;

“You know the sad thing is, this camp was never actually liberated. Never Freed. Because who came in next were the communists and we suffered under them for 60 more years.”

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