Auschwitz

I just returned from Krakow, Poland. This was one trip that I have planned and looked forward to since three months ago. I will blog about Krakow later on.

My main intention of visiting Krakow was to see Auschwitz, the former Nazi German's main concentration camp during WW2.


Friends in Facebook would have read my status messages about how depressed I was after reading about and seeing Auschwitz.

Fiona and I took a train to Oswiecim (pronounced as Osh-vyen-cheem), the town of Auschwitz. Auschwitz sounded like the Polish town but spelled like a German name because of the Germanisation that took place during WW2.

The 70km ride, almost like from KL to Seremban, took us 2 hours to reach. That was how slow the train was. The train service was a stopping service, which means the train pulls over at every stop along the route. As the train was approaching a major station, my goosebumps raised for no apparent reason.

I told Fiona, "I have a feeling we've arrived into Auschwitz".

She said, "How do you know?"

I explained about the goosebumps.

As a Chinese, I grew up listening to old folks that sudden goosebumps could be a sign of the presence of spirits. As the train slowed to a halt, a signboard emerged from the right - "Oswiecim". I was right. We have arrived.

The train station looked like a deserted place, in the middle of nowhere. We stepped into a quiet station. One could never have imagined how this was once a town marked by one of the darkest histories in mankind and the world- the Holocaust.

This was the place where more than 1 million people were killed by Nazi German soldiers. Some accounted 3 million people but the atrocity was so great that the numbers became irrelevant. This wasn't the same as saying the whole of KL's population wiped out once or thrice, but half of Singapore's population being transported to KL to be exterminated. This is difficult to fathom, but that was exactly how it happened in Auschwitz where 90% of those murdered were Jews brought in from all over Europe. Two-thirds of a race wiped out in a blink. Now you know why I was so depressed even though I am not a Jew.

I was drawn to the Holocaust subject not because I felt sympathetic to the victims or that I abhorred the Nazis. Don't get me wrong, I still am, but I was more interested in how the Nazis carried out the systematic killing against one particular race with such precision and detail that resulted in millions of deaths before they were intercepted. For example, the Nazis have a sophisticated system of prisoners' record and way of identifying Jews by their facial dimensions as well as sorting out the myriad class of prisoners in the camp, a system of retribution for each type of offense even though all would result in death, a process of salvaging prisoners' uniforms and sterilising them before they were recycled for other prisoners after the death of previous owners, a comprehensive infrastructures system to run the concentration camps, a system to handle prisoners' possessions and distributing them and a system supposedly to be efficient but also dotted by the mischief of staff in the form of bribery - as told in the movie Schindler's List.

Stockpile of shoes from prisoners

There were three main camps -Auschwitz I, II, and III. I and II were the most talked about.

Auschwitz I was the original concentration camp, served as the administrative center for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people. The entrance to Auschwitz I was—and still is—marked with the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei", or "work makes (one) free". The camp's prisoners who left the camp during the day for construction or farm labor were made to march through the gate to the sounds of an orchestra.

Main entrance at Auschwitz I
(Arbeit Macht Frei - work makes you free)

Auschwitz I looked like a boarding school campus. Reminded me of Kyoto University campus

Fiona and I had a discussion about this camp. Taking away the atrocities that went on in the camp, Auschwitz I did look to us, like a proper boarding school campus. But it was through revelations of what went on in the camp that made the whole difference. The execution yard was between Blocks 10 and 11.

Wall of Death between Block 10 and 11 where prisoners were brought to be shot to death

Windows in Block 10 were closed to prevent prisoners from knowing what's happening

Crematorium I - 3 bodies are burnt at any one chamber

Auschwitz II, known as Birkenau was the largest and built as the "Final solution of the Jewish Question". It was an extermination camp where at least 960,000 Jews, 75,000 Poles, and some 19,000 Gypsies were killed.

Auschwitz II - Birkenau

700 prisoners squeezed into this barrack!

One cell sleeps three - one column sleeps nine!

People were mostly transported there by train. That explains the train track in the middle of the camp. Incoming Jews were divided into those deemed able to work, who were then admitted to the camp, and those who weren't, who were immediately gassed. 60% of those who arrived - old men and women, children and the disabled, those deemed unfit to work - were sent straight to the gas chambers. The victims were told they were being brought to shower but instead gassed. They used Zyklon B, or hydrogen cyanide. I was told 1.5kg of Zyklon B could exterminate 2000 people at one time!

Then - new prisoners are shaved and cleansed before given prisoner uniform
Now

The more I read and see Auschwitz, the more questions I asked. How can one human have so much hatred against another human? How can technologies, which were created by humans, be allowed to end the lives of humans as well? How can anyone consider spending so much time and money to wipe out a race that was defenceless?

Trench hand-dug by prisoners

High-voltage fence surrounding Auschwitz II

Accounts from the witnesses who survived the camp were particularly heart-wrenching. Some of them left me feeling disturbed and thinking that life was once so cheap. The following extracts are those that left a deep impression on me:

An account from an SS officer: The job was assigned thus: three at the heart, three at the head. I took the heart. The shots were fired and the brains flew through the air. Two in the head is too much, they almost tear it off. Almost all of them fell to the ground without a sound. Only two of them it didn't work. They screamed and whimpered for a very long time."

"An officer gave the order: Men to the left! Women to the right!..eight words spoken indifferently, without emotion; eight short simple words, yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother"

One of the survivors was asked if she can ever forget what she went through, she replied, "It is as if you stand by a lake and throw a stone into the lake, you see a large ripple at the beginning. It gets smaller and smaller and then the water is calm again. But the stone is still at the bottom of the lake."

Photo collage of Jewish victims

"For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing" by Edmund Burke

I was asked by some colleagues why I would consider spending the bank holiday in misery? My reply was simple. Auschwitz is a lesson and a reminder to us all regardless of race, creed or colour. It is a lesson about respect and tolerance. It is a grim reminder that even a nation that once produced the greatest poets, writers, scholars in the world, a nation that is now in the forefront of technology could be and was once fooled by one crazy person. This in itself reminds us only one thing: "the one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again."

Latest note:
I would highly recommend the following movies and documentary about Auschwitz and the Holocaust:
Documentary: Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution' (BBC, 2005) ...personal favourite
Movie: Life is Beautiful (1997)
Movie: Schindler's List (1993)