Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Stephanie Principal: Birkenau

             

Infinity

       Today we went to the Birkenau museum and let me start by saying: HUGE. This place is so beautiful and too magnificent for such usage. I can imagine this place being a park or something but if you think about it, there were houses over there, it is not like the Nazis found it empty and just made something out of it. They moved the people and build Birkenau concentration camp. The place is so peaceful and I can imagine it in the summer, how warm it would feel with all the beautiful trees.
            Furthermore, we had to walk miles. I am very lazy and I can barely walk 0.1 mile so I really cannot imagine how these people walked this distance to get where they were suppose to. First of all they were hungry because they haven’t eaten in probably days during the transportation. Now when they get there, they have to walk and some of them were asked to strip naked and wait in the woods till the gas chambers were empty. I had layers let’s say 2 shirts, a sweater and a coat. I had leggings on and jeans and I was still freezing. I felt like I had absolutely nothing on but I did. They had to get rid of their clothes and get new ones. Their coat, boots were taken away and they were given stripe pajamas. They had a limited amount of pajamas so they randomly threw clothes at them, whether they were too small or too big you make the best out of it.
            And this is cruel you know to dehumanize someone like that. The Nazis took everything from the Jews and even though they knew they were wrong they made the best out of it. For instance, if you steal something from a rich man, you will probably feel bad at first but then you would say “they have money they can buy another one”. My comparison has nothing to do with the next one but it is just a way of showing you how people think. The Nazis Officers after killing or burning the Jews don’t feel bad because Jews were considered as inhumane. Therefore why would I feel bad for killing things that are meant to die?
            We also saw ashes of burned Jews in the river. I felt bad and tried not to step on them but they were all over and it was impossible to do so. There were also pieces of bones that were still visible to human eyes. The condition that these people were living in was  completely ridiculous. The bunks I mean God were hard as rocks and really dangerous because I am pretty sure that if there were too many people on that piece of wood, you could fall on someone else at the bottom. The latrines are so close to each other and people that had to work in there were happy because they had a heating system in there so it was warm. But the smell can get you really sick and no wonder why hundreds of people were dying one day after another.

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