My Reaction to Studying at Auschwitz: Accepting Emotional Detachment

Memorial at Auschwitz II Birkenau

Reflecting on my week in Poland leaves me feeling conflicted. I’ve been told that this trip normally takes an emotional toll on those who undertake it. Yet for me, I was able to remain detached from the emotional weight of the subjects we explored as a class. This reaction is not a surprise to me; I knew going into the trip that it would not affect me in the way I was warned about. My conflicted feeling comes from the fact that some of my peers have expressed their personal struggle with working through the emotions that come from being immersed in Holocaust studies.

This does make me wonder sometimes why I do not connect to the reality of what occurred like so many other people do. I will probably always feel some undercurrent of conflict because of this. However, I don’t think experiencing emotional detachment from a historical event even as tragic and permanently affecting as the Holocaust should be assigned a negative connotation.

After speaking with a number of my peers who studied abroad with me, I came to realize that I am not alone in my reaction. A few of us processed our experience as strictly a learning endeavor and felt some type of uncomfortable expectation to be more emotional. No one actually expressed this expectation to us; I want to be clear about that. It was more of a nonexistent expectation that we formed of ourselves based on anecdotal accounts we’d heard and being repeatedly warned about the potential to be unexpectedly emotional. When traveling abroad to study at Auschwitz, you’ll find that nearly everyone you tell will express some form of this warning.

A lake at Auschwitz II Birkenau where ashes of victims were laid

 One night in Poland, our entire group got together to reflect on our first day at Auschwitz. I kept feeling from different people’s reflections that multiple people felt some level of shame for not being more emotional. I didn’t think this was right and I had to speak up just to assure people that there’s nothing wrong with processing the experience in a more analytical manner. I doubt it changed anything, but I just didn’t like that any of us should feel self-aimed feelings of negativity during a time that will be impactful and remembered for the rest of our lives.

This night was the beginning of my interest in this issue of varying reactions to Holocaust studies at Auschwitz. It’s something I’ve continued to think about since returning from Poland, prompting me to eventually write this blog post.

My hope is that any students embarking on this amazing trip in the future who read this will know that there is no shame in one’s reaction to an experience as complex as this. Whether you feel a storm of emotions that refuses to set your mind free, or simply a tame curiosity in the factual details of the Holocaust’s history, embrace your reaction as a manifestation of your own mind’s ability to process difficult confrontations with human nature and history, and learn something new about yourself.

By Michael Coppola

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Preserving Memories of Lives Lost

Arbeit Macht Frei - "Work Sets You Free"

My first visit to Auschwitz I on Monday, March 13, did not surprise me. The setting and atmosphere were very similar to my expectations. As I imagined what Auschwitz would be like, I pictured rows of brick buildings and a solemn, quiet air of respect and reflection blanketing the camp. This is exactly the scene I entered as I passed through the Arbeit Macht Frei gate.

What did surprise me, however, were the staggering remnants of murder on display in the exhibitions throughout the camp.

Very early on in our class tour, an urn of human ashes stood on a pedestal in a barrack as a symbol of the million plus murders that the Nazis perpetrated. One would be hard-pressed to think of another symbol that could more directly confront one with the horrific tragedy of Auschwitz I. Before long, however, I would view several more exhibits that offered hard visualizations of the mass murder that occurred over seven decades ago.

The first of these exhibits was a shocking display of human hair that reached from one side of the barrack room to the other. Seven tons of hair sat behind the glass barrier, according to our guide, Bart. SS men shaved the bodies of Jews murdered in the gas chambers before the bodies were taken to the crematoria. Some of the hair would be sold to parties interested in its practical use, such as organizations in the textile industry.

40,000 pairs of shoes stretched across the room

Shortly after this, Bart led us to a room with a mountain of shoes stretching its length on both sides. 80,000 individual shoes lied strewn about, creating a sight of immense loss. These two exhibits made it easy for me to visualize the millions of people whom the SS killed during the Holocaust, leaving nothing but shaved hair, tattered shoes and whatever memories surviving family and friends held onto.

The Death Wall

Eventually, our tour led us to a reconstruction of the Death Wall. In front of this stone wall, prisoners of Auschwitz who earned the ire of the SS were lined up and shot in the back of the head. Contextualized by everything else we had learned throughout the tour, it was easy to imagine the gruesome act of cruelty. As Auschwitz escapee Kazimierz Piechowski explained in the documentary film The Runaway, the bodies were then dumped in the nearby corner and involuntarily carried away by prisoners.

Crematorium exterior

Near the end of the tour, we entered a gas chamber and crematorium where about a million or more Jews took their final breaths. I learned that 340 bodies could be cremated each day. It was impossible to do anything other than reflect on the staggering amount of loss committed by the SS in those very rooms.

I thought of the 1543 anti-Semitic treatise by Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, that I studied in class. The treatise attempted to demonize Jews and promoted atrocities against them, including exile from their homes. This teaching of contempt contained in the text contributed to the mentality that fueled the Holocaust and the terrible acts of murder I saw evidence of throughout the museum.

After touring Auschwitz I and becoming a witness of the Nazi crimes, all one can do is ask questions that may never find answers and attempt to preserve the memory of the millions of lives lost by remembering and spreading the names and stories preserved at the camp.

by Michael Coppola

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Resistance in the Face of Evil

Monument to the Ghetto Heroes by Nathan Rapoport in Warsaw

Resistance movements orchestrated by victims during the Holocaust have captured my interest while studying abroad at the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland.

While studying the Holocaust, one is constantly confronted with the fact that the Nazis were relentless in their pursuit of annihilation of the Jewish people. The fact that people found the courage and strength to fight back against a force as powerful as the Nazis fascinates me because hope must have seemed out of reach for so many people. For the resisters, however, hope was not only attainable, but sustainable in the form of active opposition.

Biuletyn Informacyjny - A Polish underground publication during World War II

In Jewish ghettos during World War II, one way resisters organized was through an underground press. The approximately 1,500 underground publications that appeared in Poland between 1939 and 1945 were in direct opposition to Nazi propaganda. Clandestine publications like the Home Army General Command’s Biuletyn Informacyjny were necessary for providing information untainted by Nazi ideology to the Polish people. As a journalism major at Iona College, I am conscious of the significance of the dissemination of information from various perspectives in maintaining a free society. Of course, German-occupied Poland was never free, but the existence of an underground press was a key factor in the ability of Poles to resist.

Underground education in Poland - Łopiennik Górny 1941

Another form of resistance that existed during the German occupation of Poland was an underground schooling system. In spite of German efforts to destroy the Polish intelligentsia and minimize the education of Poles, clandestine schooling appeared at every level of education, involving about a million people. This helped shape and maintain a high level of national consciousness so that Nazi ideology could never take complete hold of the nation.

Photo taken during Warsaw Uprising - From Jürgen Stroop's report to Heinrich Himmler - May 1943

The Warsaw Uprising was an act of resistance that stands out as one of the key events in the history of Polish Jewish resistance against Nazism. According to the Auschwitz I exhibit “The Struggle and Martyrdom of the Polish Nation 1939-1945,” the Jewish National Committee rallied the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto to revolt. Alexander Donat’s memoir, The Holocaust Kingdom, detailed the author’s experience of the uprising, which broke out on April 19, 1943.

“The entire length of Niska Street was one billowing sheet of smoke and flame,” Donat writes. “The fighters put up a fierce defense and our own building had joined in the shooting. We all were suffering from lack of sleep and food, but we were at high tension, gripped by a kind of ecstasy that made any effort seem within our capabilities” (p. 155).

SS men strolling past a burning building during the Warsaw Uprising

Despite the passion of the Jews, the uprising was crushed after 63 days. The revolt was carried out with almost no assistance from the western Allies. To this day, the Warsaw Uprising is representative of the fighting spirit that Jews held onto even in the face of crushing opposition.

The resistance efforts carried out by Polish Jews during the Second World War deserve recognition as outstanding models of human perseverance. The examples in this blog post are only a few of the many ways Polish Jews fought to maintain their dignity as human beings.

By Michael Coppola

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