Auschwitz: 80th Anniversary
After visiting, can life ever be the same?
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in late January of 1945. I don’t know if you would say we were privileged, but my wife, son, and I managed to spend a day at Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps in Poland in 2016.
Son Alex, 19, at the gates of Auschwitz.
“Work Will Set You Free” is the greeting in German (“Arbeit macht frei“) as you enter the Auschwitz concentration camp, about an hour’s drive from Krakow, Poland.
The most shocking thing I learned from a tour of Auschwitz was how profitable it was, thoughtfully designed to efficiently make money off the forced labor and mass murders of millions of people, not only from their slavery but from reselling their stolen belongings — suitcases, baskets, bowls, clothing, eyeglasses, jewelry, prosthetic legs, and arms — and then, horrifically, turning their hair and skin into sellable merchandise. Indeed, several internationally well-known companies that participated in or profited from the machinery of Auschwitz still exist, or the same people reorganized under different company names.
I could not take pictures of much of what I saw, including gas chambers and ovens. It seems trivializing to share such obscene images, almost a sacrilege, certainly an example of “the banality of evil.”
To assume basic human responsibility never to forget the horror, we felt it necessary to visit Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau, to bear witness.
As one visitor, Carmen Pi wrote on Facebook:
This is a visit every person should do. No book, film, interview, or picture can fully show or express the atrocities committed here. Being there in person made me see how bad it really was. It really made me ask “Was there any Hope left?” I had to hold myself from crying many times but when we got to where the shoes were and the belongings of the children, I burst into tears. Visiting will not only teach you history but so many other things. Let’s educate the generations to come so this will NEVER happen again. I recommend visiting and taking the guided tour.
The obscenity of Auschwitz should be above narrow or partisan political agendas in any country. And indeed, it is heartening to read about the Muslim and Palestinian leaders who have visited Auschwitz. Supporters of Israel Should Study the Nakba; Arabs Should Study the Holocaust.
It wasn’t just six million Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust; it was two million gypsies (Roma and Sinti ); 150,000 Poles; at least 15,000 homosexuals, 15,000 Russian prisoners of war, intellectuals, dissidents, and untold thousands more.
The photos I have decided to post demanded extreme adjustments in lighting, from color to black and white, and extreme adjustments in contrast, highlights, shadow, tint, sharpness, and sepia. At Auschwitz, an automated camera’s eye cannot capture the necessarily extreme emotional response. In this case, images bathed in sunlight, and filled with colorful clothing, give off a false Pollyanna optimism and do not depict the necessarily bleak and somber mood.
Our guide to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps was Tomasz Cebulski, PhD, a Catholic who grew up in Oswiecim, a small town a few miles from the concentration camp.
Oswiecim is a charming little town. We visited a synagogue and museum of Jewish life there. He said he had an idyllic, innocent childhood in the 1980s and 1990s, especially after, almost overnight, the Soviets left and free markets opened.
“Western products and chains replaced the misery and shortage-ridden economy of late Communism. Overnight I lost my pen pal from Russian Omsk, and even the “Dynasty” and “Miami Vice” series on TV were of little comfort. History was in the air bringing the wind of change,” he wrote.
As a child, he had only a vague idea of what happened at the camps. He took his first tour as a teenager and later helped clean up a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. These experiences touched him deeply, enough to spend time on a kibbutz in Israel and major in Jewish Studies. He began to assist Jews in tracing their Polish genealogy. His doctoral dissertation examined the evolving presentations in the Auschwitz museum and the use of the Holocaust as a political symbol in various countries.
“My new scholarly interest is humanity’s inability to prevent genocides,” he wrote in a brief professional biography. “As good as we are in commemorating, mourning, and educating about the history of genocides, with the Holocaust remaining the ultimate example, humanity has not yet learned the hardest lesson about its prevention. We shall not be surprised again.”
He is highly knowledgeable. His lectures and tours are fascinating and highly recommended, as fans on his Facebook page testify.
The tour included stops at the former Krakow Ghetto territory, Schindler’s Factory (made famous by the movie “Schindler’s List“), and former terrains of the Plaszow Camp.
At Auschwitz, he also pointed out the home of Rudolph Hoess, the camp’s longest-serving commandant. He was hanged after the war. His family took on an assumed name and, after some years of poverty, his daughter became a prominent socialite in Washington, DC. She revealed her true identity to the Washington Post in 2013. She wrote a memoir of her “beautiful childhood” behind the garden wall at Auschwitz. She described her father as wonderful, a testimonial to the amazing human capacity to compartmentalize life.
Home of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Hoess, just behind the wall…
At nearby Birkenau concentration camp, where prominent railroad tracks efficiently brought captives to their deaths, what was striking was the flurry of Israelis — mostly teenagers and adult Orthodox Jews — on pilgrimage, to make sure they and their fellow countrymen never, never forget what happened here.
(Photos By Jim Buie)
Before Auschwitz, my son Alex, 19, had expressed little interest in politics or history, as if such interests are not relevant to him. But the tour seemed to shock him out of his apathy and indifference. “Your first political statement is ‘I’m not interested in politics, and there will be consequences of that,” our guide Tomasz said to Alex during the tour.
Later, in discussing our trip, Alex seemed to draw a line between his happy-go-lucky days before visiting Auschwitz, and the sadly shaken but serious days afterward when he realized what humans are capable of doing to their fellow humans.
Discussion:
Bruce Johnson: “Very moving article, Jim. I read in The Economist that Poles are angry that Germany continues to resist Polish demands that it pay reparations to Poland for its war crimes, the way it has to Israel (‘Why Poland Loves to Hate Germany’; ‘Polish-Germany Relations Have Gone Sour’).
“One relatively trivial side note that might be of interest: because the Polish-German border has changed so often, there are many towns on either side of the border that have alternative German/Polish names. “Oswiecim” is the Polish name for the town, and “Auschwitz” is the German name; the pronunciations are fairly similar, as you probably noticed.”
Drill Deeper:
Summary of Tomasz Cebulski’s day-long tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau
Auschwitz.org, official museum site.
Auschwitz Memorial/Museum Facebook Page, where people who visit leave their comments.
PBS News Hour report on the 80th anniversary. Part 2: One family’s journey back after a mother’s suicide.
Related:
I also visited the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany.
In Israel and Jordan, I passed near scenes of the Nakba from which 700,000 Palestinians fled or were displaced from 1947-49.
Robin, I have been to the US Holocaust Museum. Spent about 4 hours there, which was all my wife and I could take. This was long before going to Auschwitz. What is so sad and shocking is that despite all the "lessons," humans are still dehumanizing each other.
A US-based experience, not anything close I suppose to yours at Auschwitz, available to us who might not travel there, is the US Holocaust museum in Washington DC. About as an immersive experience I've ever had at any museum. You start at the top, fourth floor, after first getting a passport you can select. What is particularly valuable is the perhaps first 50 or 75 ft of display there which explains how fascism and Nazism got a start in a supposedly advanced culturally aware country. There is a railroad car, there's an entire room of shoes and boots. Children's paintings. Be advised not to go alone.