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Auschwitz, Now and Then
Introduction
IN THE SUMMER of 2006 I visited Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp outside Krakow, Poland. It has become a tourist mecca and I had mixed feelings; was I trivializing the memory of the million-plus people who were systematically murdered there? And how could the experience compare to all the preconceived ideas and expectations that are associated with the mere mention of the name Auschwitz? In the end, I convinced myself it was a good idea based on a combination of morbid fascination and my interest in history of the period.
I’ve read the holocaust books – The War Against the Jews and Night – and seen The Pianist and Schindler’s List, but nothing prepared me for the emotional reaction of being there in person. I felt real apprehension; I had a lump in my throat for much of the visit; it was disconcerting and strange.
The main Auschwitz complex was an old Polish army base, with tree-lined roads and neatly arranged red brick barracks. The false serenity was broken by the double electrified barbed-wire fence that surrounds the complex. Off to the side was the gas chamber and crematorium where the Nazis perfected the technology of mass murder.
The main complex did not prepare me for Birkenau, located three miles down the road. This was the largest and most efficient of all the Nazi extermination complexes. It was built on a big, open plain, with hundreds of primitive wooden barracks (about a hundred remain today), a railroad line right down the middle, and two huge gas chamber/crematorium installations. (The Nazis blew up the gas chambers when they abandoned Birkenau in 1945.) The place exuded evil.
The questions about that place are epic: How could this happen? Why didn't someone stop it? And how can we make sure it doesn't happen again?
THE INTERNATIONAL MEMORIAL Monument at Birkenau sits on top of the gas chamber ruins. Its main features are 20 black granite slabs, each inscribed with the same message in the 20 languages of the peoples who were murdered at Auschwitz - Birkenau. The inscription on the English language slab was, for me, a concise factual and emotional description:
FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE
A CRY OF DESPAIR
AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY,
WHERE THE NAZIS MURDERED
ABOUT ONE AND A HALF
MILLION
MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN,
MAINLY JEWS
FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES
OF EUROPE.
AUSCHWITZ – BIRKENAU
1940 - 1945