With this year’s European Championships being held (partly) in Poland, Auschwitz has been receiving a lot of renewed attention in England over the past few weeks. The England team visited, the BBC aired a radio documentary from the site, and for a few days before the tournament began, it was very difficult to escape mention of the now-museum. This is not a bad thing, of course. Keeping the atrocities of Auschwitz and other concentration camps in the minds of today’s generation is hugely important; events such as the Holocaust simply can’t be allowed to be dulled or forgotten. Personally, however, I found the near-continuous mentions of Auschwitz quite difficult because it reminded me of my own visit there, four years ago this month; a day that turned out to be one of the hardest of my life.
I’ve wanted to write about visiting Auschwitz for a while on Daily Waffle, but unsurprisingly, it’s an incredibly hard thing to put into words. I’ve managed to do it only once before, immediately after the trip, at a time when writing seemed to be the only option to help sort out my head. What I wrote then is a rambling, and terribly ineloquent, travel blog post; however, the raw emotion is there, and this is something that no matter how hard I try, I cannot replicate. I’ve decided, therefore, to post it here in the hope that you’ll forgive its many faults and appreciate it for what it is: a bad, but well-intended, attempt to convey the horrors (both historical and modern) of one of the worst places on this planet.
July 19th, 2008
As a history graduate, Auschwitz has always been an important place to me and one that I’ve always felt a strong inclination to visit. I didn’t ever believe it would actually happen, until one day my brain woke up and just said “Why not?”. Cue a two week trip across Europe, with one final destination in mind: Krakow, and within that, Auschwitz. Waking up on this morning though was not the same as waking up the morning we went to Salzburg (another big dream come true). This day felt heavy from the very start.
On waking up, we headed straight for the Krakow bus station, which was easy enough to find, connected as it is to the train station. Checking with the guy at the ticket stand, we found that there was a bus to Auschwitz leaving just fifteen minutes later, at 9:30am; we jumped straight onto what was a very busy bus (it’s a regular local route, but pretty much everyone there were also tourists heading towards Auschwitz), and then endured possibly the scariest 90 minutes of our lives. The bus driver was absolutely mental, smoking and texting for the entire journey, and driving on very narrow roads at roughly around 140 mph. I was absolutely convinced we weren’t going to survive! We did arrive eventually, though-trembling all over, but all in one piece. Immediately on our arrival, we walked to the visitor counter and bought tickets to see the Auschwitz liberation film, discovering while there that annoying tourists exist even at such a place as that (to be fair, we were to discover throughout the day that tourists at places like Auschwitz are probably even more annoying than anywhere else). An American girl was also trying to buy tickets for the film, but trying to pay in dollars. When told by the assistant that they only accept polish currency, the girl just couldn’t grasp this and kept repeating “But I only have dollars! So you have to accept that!”…real head-smacking territory, I think you’ll agree.
From there, we went on a brief walk around just to take in our surroundings. Even now looking back on it, I have butterflies at the thought of walking through the famous gate and those infamous words “Arbeit Macht Frei”. It was such a surreal, unforgettable moment. We walked amongst the blocks for a while, trying to connect together the thoughts we were having about where we were, combined with the beautiful sunny day we were experiencing. It was very hard then to really understand what had happened there. We then started exploring the interiors of the buildings, the first few of which now contain exhibits about both the camp and the background of the Second World War and its impact on Poland. For the most part, they were really interesting with amazing photos (though my husband did think that there was a slant of Polish propaganda about some of it. Possibly true, but you can’t really blame them for this), and as usual I got to fill in all the gaps for John, which I always quite enjoy! There was absolutely nothing enjoyable about the next blocks though. I think most people know what’s contained within these blocks: piles and piles of shoes, glasses, hairbrushes, suitcases etc, etc, etc. Combined with this, the hallways are covered in photos of prisoners, all with heads shaved and prison uniforms on, some with flowers stuck next to them. This, to me, is my most vivid memory. I don’t think there’s any way to describe the feeling of seeing all these faces and knowing their likely fate. Heartbreaking doesn’t really seem strong enough. In one of the rooms, a man just broke down in tears, which was also very hard to see, but in a strange way, rather than make me wonder why I had ever wanted to visit the place, it just validated my feeling that this was somewhere I had needed to experience.
We didn’t get to see all of the rooms, including the SS block, because there were so many tour groups around…which was a little annoying, I have to admit, as it’s very unlikely I will ever go back there. But I think we saw what we needed to see while we were at Auschwitz I, even if this had to include some more tasteless elements too. In one section of the camp, there is an execution wall. If I remember rightly, this wasn’t the full, original execution wall as that had been demolished, but it has been pieced together using parts of the original. And there were groups of people standing in front of this wall having their photos taken. They were smiling, waving, doing the ‘peace’ sign…just basically being completely inappropriate. I truly couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
By this point, we had been walking around for a couple of hours, and it was time to head back to the entrance to the cinema room. The film that we watched wasn’t very long, but it was excruciating to watch. The scenes were from the liberation by Soviet forces and basically showed what was left of the camp and its prisoners at that time. The whole room was silent at the end of it, and it was yet another part of the day that sticks in the brain. However, there was still worse to come. As we had seen a lot of Auschwitz I by then, we decided to move on and take a walk down to Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, which was the actual death camp. It was quite a long walk, about half an hour, and I remember being amazed at the houses we were walking past and wondering how so many people can live there knowing what sort of atrocities happened to close by. When we eventually reached Birkenau, I can only describe the way I felt as ‘haunted’. From the second I saw it in the distance, I began to feel sick. It may have been my imagination, but I could smell ash in the air and it felt very claustrophobic. I could barely breathe by the time we reached the gates. Very depressingly, people were yet again taking smiley group pictures at the gates, and I just couldn’t grasp it. How were they smiling and enjoying themselves, when I just wanted to burst into tears?! We couldn’t stay there long. We went in and walked past the rows of crematoriums and gas chambers, went briefly into the one of the ‘dormitories’, which was basically a cow shed, and then had to leave. I didn’t like it at all. The weirdest part was, from the moment we arrived, the sun disappeared, black clouds arrived and thunder started rumbling in the distance. The whole place just has an atmosphere. It’s a horrible, evil site and even now I’m shaking at the thought of it. I hated it. So we left, getting absolutely soaked on the way back to Auschwitz I as the rain started to pour down, and honestly, not even caring (and I assure you, that’s very unlike me).
When we eventually got back, the rain had stopped, we were soaking wet and there was a bus just about due. There was more of the camp that we could have seen, but after Birkenau, I was done. I didn’t want to see any more. We got on the bus, and had a very subdued journey back. I don’t think either of us really spoke the whole time…it was just about reflecting on the whole day. We got back into Krakow for 4:45pm, went back to the hotel for a quick rest and then decided to head to the Wisla River to the shopping centre on the banks, simply to try and get a grasp on normality. On the way, we had probably the deepest conversation we’ve ever had, about life, death, evil, hell etc. It just felt like we couldn’t suddenly go back to our usual discussion of football, video games etc after what we’d experienced that day. I think we both felt more clear-headed by the time we reached the shopping centre though, and if we weren’t back to our usual selves, we were slowly sneaking back towards it
Visiting Auschwitz was, to be honest, one of the hardest things I have ever done. I don’t think I could ever go back, but at the same time, I’m really happy that I did go. As I said at the start, I needed to see it, I needed to experience it, and I did that. I know I’ve done it now. And I do think everyone who gets the chance should visit it, whether they’re interested in history or not. It’s an important place and what happened there, and in other camps (not just in World War II), should be remembered.
