Interpreting the Events at Auschwitz II-Birkenau

The railroad inside Auschwitz II-Birkenau

I did not purchase any type of phone plan or data plan for this trip so when we returned back from our excursion on Tuesday morning, we were all in disbelief when we heard of the terrorist attack on Brussels, Belgium, not too far away from Poland.

On this same morning, we visited Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where we were able to see approximately 400 acres of the Nazi camp from the watchtower at the entrance of the camp. More than 300 barracks for living, washing, and working were visible from the tower. Many of the buildings in sight were still intact, but a good number of buildings were dilapidated or destroyed over time.

One of the most striking sites in the camp begins outside the 12 km of fencing that encloses the area: the railroad. About a mile outside the camp, our tour guide gave us the opportunity to see an original cattle car that was used for the transportation of the Jewish people into Bikenau. The cattle car rests on an abandoned rail that was utilized at the time of the Nazi regime. In remembrance, visitors of the car have placed stones on the rail, in accordance with Jewish customs. 

The railway outside of the camp was extended inside the gates of the camp during the later years of the war in order to transport Jewish people of Hungarian descent inside the camp. The people on the cattle cars, unaware of the conditions that they would face once they left the stifling conditions of the cars, were forced onto the platforms. From there, people were forced to leave their clothes and belongings, the things that they carried with them in order to begin a new life (or so they thought). People were then forced into two lines: one for men and one for women and children. These lines were then evaluated by Nazi doctors who looked at each person and pointed to the one direction for a registration line, and the other direction to send that person into a line leading to the gas chambers. Walking along the railway and on that same platform in the camp, I looked around to imagine what the last moments of a person’s life would have been as they were pointed to the direction of the gas chambers.

 

A drawing by Marian Kołodziej

The next day, we had the opportunity to visit an artistic exhibition created by a holocaust survivor. The title of the exhibition was “Negative of a memory: Labyrinth” by professor Marian Kołodziej, a KL Auschwitz survivor. This artist was one of the first prisoners in Auschwitz holding identification number 432. In this exhibition, he displayed gaunt imagery of what were intended to be human figures. The reason it was difficult to ascertain that these images were human was not because he was a poor artist. The inability to recognize human features was due to the fact that the images appeared emaciated and it was difficult to understand that these were his fellow prisoners in Auschwitz, all depicted with their identification numbers.

One of his images depicted the two lines of people, paying homage to the events that occurred in Birkenau by the railway and platform. His drawing displays one line of people who look exhausted and beaten, and another side of people with expressions of pain and defeat. Visiting Birkenau and seeing the physical site of these wrongdoings was one thing, but attaching the facial expressions of people with these physical structures allowed for a deeper connection with the events that occurred in Birkenau, and the memory of the people who were murdered there.

In connection with the events that took place in Brussels the same morning we visited Birkenau and after visiting the exhibition, I became more aware of how blind we are as bystanders to certain atrocities. It made me question my own thoughts about attacks and other recent events that have taken place with the intention of killing innocent people. These two events provided me with an opportunity to engage in solidarity and change my perception of events that are distant from myself.