Auschwitz/ Oświęcimski

Immediately after the Nazis surrendered allied forces determined that these concentration camps had to be preserved to prove to mankind forever the horror of what a small group of determined people were capable of doing if they gained control over others.

Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp of unpaid workers to staff factories), and 45 satellite camps.

Auschwitz I was first used to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941 when the Nazis realized it was not in their best interest to keep alive millions of people who would never be freed.  Not cost effective. Not efficient.  The buildings in Auschwitz I were existing barracks that had been used by the Polish army for transient workers and so provided the Nazis with instant housing for the Polish and later, any Jews they ‘detained’.

 

The sign is, of course, a joke as it translates to: Work Will Make You Free.  Some worked, most died, but no one would ever be free

The tour takes you through these barracks and through pictures, words and artifacts shows what went on there. And the mindset of the murderers who ran the place. Murder.  That is the word used here by guides and on signage.  Murder because killed is not sufficient. To my mind murder doesn’t even seem strong enough.

Eventually, as the Nazis expanded their area of conquest the Jews sent to these camps came fro everywhere as the map shows.

The canisters held the gas.  And very effective it was.  After gagging and choking, those being murdered fell to the ground or on others in intense pain.  After about 20 minutes all were dead.

In this model unsuspecting women are herded in to take delousing ‘showers’.  They all were stripped and told they would be given fresh clothes.  Then they were murdered, often with their children if they had not been previously separated. After they were dead other Jewish prisoners, who were confined in a separate area so that  they could not tell anyone the fate that would befall friends, family members or simple other Jews, were forced to take the bodies to the crematorium.  Needless to say this work destroyed their minds and souls and after a few weeks of it, they too were murdered.  That probably came as a relief to some and the ultimate horror to others who were too intimately aware of the whole process.

The Nazis were nothing if not efficient.  Why waste valuable workers from munition making when the murdered Jews would provide, for free, so many items that could be reused by Germans?  Everyday things like eyeglasses 

Or toothbrushes and children’s shoes

Adult shoes and hairbrushes

And even prosthetics. We were not allowed to take pictures the massive pile of hair that would find its way into a number of uses including mattress stuffing as they were human remains, but by now you can envision that display. Bigger than the pile of shoes.

Initially, before the murdering, the extermination  began the Nazis took photographs and kept records.  That soon was deemed pointless so they just tattooed numbers on the prisoners arms before realizing that was also a waste of time. The walls are covered with photos of these people whose only crime was that they were Jews.  Those healthy enough to be used for workers and not murdered outright lived like animals. Sleeping on floors, washing in troughs and allowed to use the bathroom twice a day.  And considering the filthy living conditions and poor diet, diarrhea and the diseases were rampant.

Hitler was the leader but he simply asked for solutions to his problems.  One problem were the Jews and so others had to dream up this horror, get approval and carry it out as efficiently as possible. His was not one man’s mass murder.  He had 1000’s of accomplices

And we all know how this problem was resolved, by the Ultimate Solution. Some were hung from these beams, many died from sickness, beatings, starvation (doctors ram experiments to see how long people good of with out food, water and both) and others simply having given up hope. And some were stripped, brought outside in any weather stood against this wall and were shot.  Until these methods be came too expensive (save bullets for the enemy) and too slow to handle the numbers who needed to be murdered to resolve ‘the problem’. The nice house just outside the prison was where the commandant and his family lived.  What did his wife, his children think?

So eventually the final mass murder technique I have described was put into place with the burning of the dead to remove all evidence of the greatest of all crimes against humanity.

The former munitions bunker was used for that purpose. Herded naked into that small room knowing that something terrible was about to happen as they had all, including those like the commandant’s family and the families of other soldiers,  been able to smell the constant oder of the burning bodies. I’m told it is a very distinctive smell.

And here, just outside his gas chamber and crematorium, after being found guilty for his crimes against humanity, mass murder on an epic scale, the first commandant, SS-Oberstrumbannfuhrer Rudolf Hoss was hung. Minor justice for the gravity of the crime.