Amber and I got up just past 5AM this morning to catch the 6:10AM train to Oschwiem (Auschwitz) station 1 hour and 40 minutes away - we like doing things the hard way y'see. Tour companies around tour were offering Auschwitz-Birkenau tours for 90-120 Zloty's (NZ$45-60) per person, but we agreed that we'd want to miss the hordes of tourists at the museum between 10AM-3PM. Besides, how much more adventurous is it to find our own way there! At Oschwiem station we took a short bus ride to the gates of the infamous death camp just before opening time, 8AM. Perfect! Only a handful of visitors were had the same idea, but probably arrived by private car. Finally, we had arrived at the much anticipated Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps where merely 65 years ago Nazi's murdered approximately 1.5 million people they considered 'inferior', mostly jews.
The ironic 'WORK GIVES FREEDOM' sign that marks
the entrance of Auschwitz death camp.
As Amber and I sauntered upon the solemn ground of Auschwitz, we tacitly took separate directions to immerse ourselves completely with the experience. I ended up at the sole crematorium on this camp, converted from a bunker (photo on right). As I entered and walked through the dark and cold sequence of concrete rooms, I felt a waves of heaviness and prickly chilliness wash over me. Standing by a lit candle and bouquets of flowers, I became overcome with emotion thinking about the thousands who had perished around me. Bumblingly I tried to gather myself and make my way out of the cellar, flummoxed by the seriousness of my thoughts and how I should behave. An hour later, tourists begin to arrive en masse, and I was glad on the decision to come early. I would not have allowed myself to feel completely what I felt in that cellar with many people around me.
Our tour group started at 930AM after a 15 minute screening of a relative documentary. We were assigned a very articulate and phlegmatic guide (my after-tour assessment) and I observed my negative involuntary judgements of how she was too unattractive and antagonistic to be a good tour guide.
AUSCHWITZ
Taken on the outside of the double fence
that border the death camp.
The main parade square where the Nazi's would conduct daily roll call.
Prisoners would be made to stand here up to 12 hours a day whatever the weather.
Not surprisingly, many died during from exhaustion and extreme temperatures.
That small structure with the pointed roof in the middle was
for the conducting officer during inclement weather.
Execution by firing squad was replaced with a single bullet through the back
of the head because it happened so frequently, the Nazi's thought it
was a waste of bullets.
Another form of torture/punishment, as our tour guide enacts out,
is to have your hands tied behind your back and hoisted
up to the point of shoulder dislocation.
On the shuttle bus that transported us from Auschwitz to Birkenau camp, I overheard someone asking another "How are you finding it?," and following it up with "Depressing, isn't it?" I recognized that her words were intended more to proliferate social conversation, and since I wasn't the recipient of her banter, it allowed deeper reflection into my feelings. I did not feel "depressed" per se. Rather, my experience was thought provoking, paticularly my thoughts about what 'God' is. How could a 'loving and merciful' god allow such a thing to happen to ordinary people? Musicians, teachers, doctors, artists, whose only "guilt" was their ethnicity? Auschwitz was hell on earth, and I can only imagine what these casualties went through. Death seemed like liberation! Any rational mind would refute a god sitting on a throne in heaven looking down upon us, granting us prayers on certain occasions where he deems fit; allowing us to come and join him in heaven only if we accept Him and no other gods; pleased when we do good works and frowning upon when we do 'bad.' Imagine my surprise to realize that however gullible and naive this belief seems, I glimpsed in a moment that essentially, that that was to some extent what I am/was (?) operating from. Even now I still sense fear in completely denouncing this view, even though my rational mind and feelings from the depths of my soul is convinced that this is false. What if I chose not to "accept" this God, and in the result spend an eternity in hell after I die!? However embarrassingly callow, this is essentially my understanding of Christianity. The tenets of vipassana seem overwhelmingly pragmatic to my sensibilities: 'Heaven' and 'hell' are states of mind you experience in the here and now; God is Not an old guy with a long white beard judging you in from some celestial throne; and you frantically running around like a lunatic with your arms in the air proclaiming his name at the top of your voice (be it Jesus, Allah or Krishna etcetera) is not going to get your ass into heaven.
BIRKENAU
View from the main tower and entrance of the larger Auschwitz II - Birkenau.
75% of jews (those who couldn't do hard labour) who came through these gates were
sent immediately to the gas chambers on the far end of these railway tracks.
Brick quarters that housed prisoners
English memorial plaque located between the two Nazi-demolished
crematoriums in attempt to hide their war crimes.
"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."-George Santayana
