Hell On Earth: Auschwitz

A Difficult Visit To The Largest Nazi Extermination Camp

I want to begin this newsletter with a warning.

The information and experiences I am about to share with you are extremely disturbing. There is no way around that.

Although the mission of our travels is to highlight the most positive aspects of discovering Europe, we felt compelled to visit the sight of one of the most horrible chapters in human history.

During our time in Kraków, we took a day trip to the town of Oświęcim, Poland.

This is where Nazi Germany built the extermination camp known as Auschwitz during their occupation of Poland at the height of World War II.

There are two sections of the camp that are both open for tours - Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau.

While Auschwitz I was mainly an administrative prison camp, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the largest of the 6 Nazi extermination camps.

It is estimated that 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz during the War, and around 1.1 million of them lost their lives.

Auschwitz was literally a death factory. It was murder at an industrial level, optimized for maximum efficiency.

While most of the victims were Jews from various Eastern European countries, several other ethnic groups were targeted as well.

The majority of the victims were killed almost instantly upon arrival by being herded into gas chambers under the false pretense that they were showers.

A very select few were kept alive and sentenced to a horrific existence of demanding labor and starvation.

It is hard to explain exactly why, but this awful place felt like something we had to see in person.

We had learned quite a bit about the Holocaust in school and through our own research, but visiting this haunting compound and seeing it with our own eyes was an incredibly powerful way to take in the tragic history.

Oświęcim is only about an hour west of Kraków. In fact, many Polish Jews that were confined to the ghettos in Kraków were eventually sent to Auschwitz.

Thinking about the impact that the Holocaust had on this beautiful region of Poland was extremely sobering.

The entire drive from Kraków to Oświęcim was a medley of beautiful Fall colors and picturesque farm fields. It was so hard to think that something so gruesome happened in such a peaceful-looking place.

The first part of the tour took us through Auschwitz I, which included many of the Nazi administrative buildings, as well as barracks for the prisoners.

The infamous sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” arches over the entrance to Auschwitz I.

This phrase is German for “Work Sets You Free”, which of course was not true in any way. No prisoners were ever set free, and very few survived the brutal conditions.

After Auschwitz was liberated, many artifacts were collected as evidence of the war crimes committed by the Nazis.

Most of these artifacts are displayed throughout the various exhibits throughout the Auschwitz I compound.

We saw a collection of Zyklon B canisters, which was the chemical used in the gas chambers to suffocate the victims.

Many of the prisoners’ possessions were found as well. We saw an utterly shocking amount of shoes, briefcases, luggage, pots, pans, glasses, hats, and other possessions.

Many of the victims believed that they would eventually be able to settle in to a new place to start a new life. Tragically, the majority of the owners of these various possessions were likely killed upon arrival to Auschwitz.

Seeing these displays in person was indescribably troubling. It truly illustrated the scale of the tragedy in ways we had never comprehended before.

The most haunting of these displays, which was in a room where photography was understandably forbidden, was a massive mound of human hair.

The Nazis shaved the heads of all arriving prisoners and, gruesomely, used the hair to weave into textile work.

Seeing the actual hair right in front of us sent the worst kind of tingles down our spine. A visible relic of the unspeakable evil committed at this exact place 80 years ago.

Auschwitz I was structured very much like a museum. There was a lot of information to take in which deepened our understanding of how the operation was structured.

However, the visit to Auschwitz II was very different. Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, is where the majority of the 1.1 million murders occurred.

We walked over the exact train tracks that brought in so many helpless victims to their deaths.

While Birkenau was a much larger camp, there are far fewer buildings still standing.

The Nazis attempted to destroy some of the evidence of their egregious war crimes when it was evident that Soviet forces were closing in.

Both of the gas chambers at Auschwitz II were completely leveled. However, the rubble still remains as a reminder of the awful atrocities.

At the end of the train tracks stands a truly moving memorial with a row of 23 plaques all bearing the same message.

“Forever let this place be a cry of despair, and a warning to humanity. This is where the Nazis murdered one and a half million men, women, and children from various countries of Europe.”

This message is engraved in 23 different languages, mainly focusing on the languages most likely spoken by the victims. This included Polish, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and many others.

We were once again struck by the incomprehensible scale of this atrocity. Individual people from all over Europe, coming from so many different cultural backgrounds, all meeting their end in the exact same place.

The remains of the gas chambers, clearly visible from the memorial, seemed to loom menacingly as we took in the surroundings. It was hard to process that we were standing on the very ground where it all happened.

Despite the undeniable significance and haunting history, there was a strange element of stillness within the camp.

I caught myself looking at the trees behind the back fence, and thinking how strange it was that they were just normal trees. Their proximity to one of the most terrible events in human history had absolutely no bearing on their existence. Squirrels still crawled down the trunks and scuttled into the leaves on the ground. Wind still blew through the branches.

We left Auschwitz in an extremely somber mood, but the experience was undeniably impactful. Seeing it in person brings the tragedy into perspective in a way that is just not possible in a classroom or on the internet.

Many chapters in the history of humanity have a visceral and brutal nature. As uncomfortable as it may be to revisit these horrible chapters, it is of the utmost importance so we can understand what went wrong and better ourselves.

There is a common theme among Holocaust education that “we must never forget what happened so that we never allow it to happen again”.

Unfortunately, we have already failed in that mission. Genocide has resurfaced many times since the end of the Holocaust. Here are just a few examples.

Cambodia in the 1970’s.

Uganda in the 1970’s.

East Pakistan in the 1970’s.

Rwanda in the 1990’s.

Bosnia in the 1990’s.

Even more unimaginable, there are several genocides that are still unfolding as we begin the new year of 2023.

Sudan.

Yemen.

Myanmar.

While I am an eternal optimist and truly believe that the best of humanity still lies ahead, I do feel a great sadness in knowing that human beings are still finding reasons to systematically kill each other based on nothing but prejudice.

While there is nothing that any of us can do to fix the world overnight, I do think that small acts of kindness and empathy go a long way.

We are both extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz in person. It is an experience that I believe will have a lasting impact on our perspective and worldview.

I can’t recommend it enough.