Auschwitz

AUSCHWITZ A visit by Louise Archer

• This presentation is a photographic and written account of Lo's unforgettable visit to Auschwitz • (My name is John C Moss and I would like to share Louis's story with you all.) © December 12th 2006

Arbeit macht frei

From my starting point at Kazimierz, the drive to Auschwitz took approximately 90 minutes. Upon arrival, our driver took us into an exhibition centre to book our small party in and from there we were quickly ushered through to the cinema where we viewed a twenty minute black and white film showing, in the main, footage from the liberation. There were actually three separate sites housing prisoners in Auschwitz. KL Auschwitz consists mainly of brick buildings that housed the Polish army before the site was turned into a labour camp.

• After viewing the film, one exits the cinema through a set of side doors onto a small courtyard. From here you catch your first glimpse of the ominous looking entrance gates to the far right. Above the gates are the words Arbeit Macht Frei, which interprets vaguely as Hard work brings freedom.

• From the courtyard you pick up an English-speaking tour guide. There are both advantages and disadvantages to hooking up with a guide. Obviously the advantages speak for themselves, however there is much to see and so one is somewhat herded along without having much time to absorb one's surroundings or study the various information boards. As tours run frequently, it is not uncommon for them to overlap, making it difficult to isolate your guides commentary from that of the others. It's quite distracting at times.

Photography, you are told, is allowed only externally. It is prohibited to photograph any of the buildings interiors. About KL Auschwitz In September of 1939, Germany invaded Poland. It took them just two weeks to overthrow the Polish army. Polish Jews were ordered to leave their homes and report to various cities. Ten thousand Jews were arriving daily in Krakow alone. For them, it was the start of a very long journey which saw them gradually herded together in the ghettos and from there, to their likely deaths in the camps.

But it was not only the Jews that were persecuted. An estimated 1 million European gypsies were also sent to such death camps. They were viewed as undesirables tramps, beggars, thieves and prostitutes. The statistics for these gypsies have never been accurately determined due to the nature of their travelling lifestyles. Death camps were fast running out of space. Auschwitz seemed the perfect solution because it was a relatively small and quiet town but with an excellent railway system and an army camp that could be exploited and built upon. Once Auschwitz was ear-marked, it took just one month to adapt before the first prisoners arrived.

Contrary to popular belief, KL Auschwitz was never destined to house Jews. It wasn't just Jews that were being sent to labour camps but also Polish war criminals among others. The first intake were in fact just that - criminals. But as more camps were required to house the vast number of Jews, many ended up here and they were at the mercy not just of the SS guards but also the criminal prisoners, who were given special privileges by the German SS. Such privileges were things like extra shoes, better quality clothes and footwear. The criminals were in close collaboration with the guards and would be encouraged to beat and kill many Jewish prisoners in return for these privileges...

Correction...criminals were given extra food as well as better clothing and footwear I put this photo in Sepia effect. The tour begins just here outside the entrance gates. I think my friend took this one actually. Lo

Part Two: The Start Of The Tour.

Upon entering the camp, there is a building to the left that is purported to have been the centre of Joseph Mengeles experiments involving young children and, in particular, twins. Whether or not this was the building I am unsure but regardless of it's precise location, it existed and many unsuspecting children suffered at Mengele's hands. Mengele was fascinated by twins and how they came about in terms of a split ova where identical twins were concerned. He would seek out child twins with a particular eye colour and have their eyes removed for his warped research. But it was not only children that were at his mercy. Many adults were the victims of his macabre 'work'.

Progressing through the camp we are told that around 80 of the blocks already existed and another 20 were built, largely by the Jews themselves. More blocks were required to cater for certain purposes such as administration or indeed punishment. A proportion of these blocks have been preserved in their original state and others have been converted into exhibition rooms. All of the non-photographic exhibits are contained behind glass. For example, you can see smaller table-type exhibits of documentation relative to the Jewish prisoners and larger exhibitions behind glass walls. Nothing was ever wasted in the labour camp - everything that was removable from a person was by and large confiscated for the purpose of recycling.

Notable Exhibits. (Please bear in mind that the many thousands of articles on display are only a small proportion of what was recovered). Spectacles Shoes Clothing Baby clothing Toothbrushes Shoe polish Shaving brushes Hairbrushes Marked Suitcases Artificial Limbs. Any person with an artificial limb, even if only a hand, was deemed unfit for work and executed shortly after arrival.

Part Three I mentioned some of the items that had been recovered but nothing could have prepared us for one of the exhibitions human hair. For those who were spared execution, hair was removed quite brutally and many a prisoner incurred severe cuts to the scalp during this process. Those destined for the gas chamber would have their hair removed post-mortem.

The hair was sold on to carpet-makers and mixed with other materials to make basic carpets - an example of which was shown. There was, behind a glass wall, literally a few tonnes of hair tresses, including plaits that had been cut from the top. Due to the time span, much of this hair has taken on a grey appearance but I saw one mass of perfectly blonde hair which I can only assume had been processed with bleaching chemicals. All of the hair on display came from women - all of them executed.

The Gas Chambers We climbed yet more stairs and into a room with an exhibition of the gas chambers, made with clay and in model form. We were told of how the process took place. A queue of Jews would be stood above the chambers on ground level. They were told that there was plenty of work for everybody and that they were going to take a shower and be disinfected (I will go into more detail on another instalment). The model showed the process of the Jews being ushered in to a building, removing all of their clothes (males and females mixed together), then entering the chamber right through to the bodies being carried out to the crematorium.

We also saw some pictures in Auschwitz that depicted the activity in nearby Birkenau. There was certainly a great deal to take in.

Part Four: Elaboration of the gas chambers In Auschwitz itself, the gas chamber you enter was probably at one time underground but not below actual ground level - in other words, the ground level was built up to render the chamber quite concealed (Or so I imagine/logically conclude). I was personally quite surprised at the size of the chamber. It was no longer nor higher than say, two average garages.

As I said before, Jews were told that they had nothing whatsoever to fear - that they would all be given jobs and after they had been showered and disinfected, would be provided with clean clothes and a warming bowl of soup. Many of these Jews had been travelling in freight trains for up to 8 days without food and very little water. The prospect of a meal, however watery, was enough to set them at ease.

Entering The Gas Chamber

After undressing, Jews huddled into the building with little alarm. They had already lost their modesty when having to use the train floors as a latrine during transit. Above their heads were several cut-outs. The Jews were packed in tightly and when the chamber was at full capacity, the doors were slammed hard behind them and locked. Naturally, people were looking upwards and waiting for the water to appear. What they in fact saw were German SS guards wearing gas masks.

In order to drown out the inevitable screams of panic and hysteria, a guard would turn on a lorry engine so that the noise below would be inaudible to the rest of the Jews awaiting their 'shower' Through these holes, cans of crystallised Zyklon-B were dropped. When Zyklon-B comes into contact with oxygen it transforms into a deadly and poisonous gas. One can (about the size of a small paint tin) was sufficient to kill 100 people.

Death would take up to ten minutes. After this the doors would open and the building would evacuate all traces of the deadly substance. Specially assigned prisoners would then remove the bodies into the attached crematorium - but not before removing hair, teeth and jewellery. Bodies were then loaded onto the trolley and burnt about 3-4 at a time depending on their size. It took approximately 15-20 minutes to burn a human corpse.

The Auschwitz Gas Chamber

Birkenau A short drive from KL Auschwitz took us to nearby Birkenau. Of the 200 wooden huts that once existed, only 20 remain.

Here is the infamous entrance:

This photograph I took was taken inside of the camp looking outwards. In the film Schindler's List, the train arriving at Auschwitz that was carrying the Schindler Jews - a train that was carrying women and children that was not re-routed to Schindler's factory/camp as it was supposed to - was actually filmed coming out of the camp. No filming is permitted within Birkenau so a set was built outside of these gates to depict the camp.

To the immediate left of this photograph is a segregated area where the wooden huts are housed. These huts were originally stables and were converted in the main to house approximately 400 Jews per hut. Jews were confined to three-tiered wooden beds.

Jews were not, as it may appear from this photograph, placed three to a bed. They had to sleep along the width of the bed. There could be up to 12 people occupying one bunk

Birkenau: Part Two

Some distance from the entrance gates there is a clearing. When the Jews alighted from the trains, tired, hungry and thirsty they would be required to congregate near this clearing. Along with the SS guards, a doctor would be in attendance to assess the prisoners on their suitability for work. In most cases, this would be nothing more than a fleeting glance, after which, prisoners were sent either to the left or to the right. To the left was the work camp. To the right, the long path to the gas chamber.

This picture shows Jews to the top right going off to the gas chambers having no idea of their fate. The hut you see to the top left of the picture is where this photo board is placed. Once again, Jews were told that they had arrived at a labour camp and that there was plenty of work for all but that they first had to be showered and disinfected. There was the occasional retaliation from prisoners. On one occasion, a Jewish woman, in desperation, grappled an SS guard's pistol and shot him dead before turning it on another guard. She was executed for this of course. Incidents like this were rare but they did happen.

The crematoriums that don't quite stand today in Birkenau were detonated by the German's towards the end of the war in a vain attempt to conceal their crimes. Crematorium 111 still has a full chimney. Here is a pic of what's left of one of the crematoriums:

Conclusion

Latrine Hut/Black Market Below is an example of the basic latrines in Birkenau. There were three of these rows in this block. Often, SS guards would stand by and humiliate prisoners as they went about their business, saying such things as, hey you, sit up straight, why are you leaning forward that way?' and laughing amongst themselves. The Jews had only a few minutes to use the facilities before having to start another long and gruelling day entailing hard labour.

The latrines were emptied with a mere bucket and so after a time, the hut became obnoxious-smelling. In many ways this proved to be of great advantage to the Jews for the SS guards would avoid the latrine hut, unable or unwilling to expose themselves to the stench. It therefore became the ideal hut for black marketeers to do business of another kind - trade. An example of a trade would be a very small bottle of water - the cost of which would be two gold rings.

Although the rationing was deemed suitable, it may arguably have just about sustained a person who was physically inactive but prisoners were working 11 hour days. Typical rations were a watery bowl of soup, a few slices of bread and a quantity of coffee per day. Men tended to outlive women, many of them perished within weeks, if not days of their arrival......

I offer this account as a tribute to the thousands of Jews and Gypsies that perished here at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps, the worst of which was in fact Treblinka, Warsaw - a camp that was destroyed in it's entirety. May this sort of selective genocide never be allowed to happen again. Thank you to those who have taken time to read my account and offer your comments. Lo.