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| The front gate of Auschwitz I. "Work Will Set You Free". |
Before entering the gates of Auschwitz I, I had this assumption that I would feel angry throughout the tour. My assumption was correct, though not for the reasons I originally thought.
Originally, I thought I would be angry because of the visuals the museum preserved and their explanations, but I was angry for a different reason. I was more angry with the people around me in other tour groups than I was with what I was seeing in the exhibits.
I understand that anyone who is going to Oświęcim is going to take a tour of the Auschwitz sites, but it felt like the other people were there just to say they went there, not because they actually wanted to learn or see the sites for themselves. Our group was there to learn more about the occurrences; we weren't there just because it was a tourist attraction.
I even saw a girl who looked like she was around my age taking a picture in front of one of the guard towers...of herself...smiling. Yup, you read that correctly. She stood in front of the electrically charged barb wired fence and guard tower that enclosed the camp and smiled in the photo. I cannot express how infuriated I was at this moment. It's one thing to take a photo like the one above, of you or someone else standing looking at one of the exhibits, or even one of you walking through the camp, but to stand in the camp and take a picture of you smiling is utterly disgusting and outright rude.
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| I cannot imagine what life was like in between these electrically charged barb wired fences. |
Walking through the fences pictured above to get to the final part of the tour gave me a weird feeling. I cannot, and never will be able to, understand what emotions and thoughts I would have if I were to walk through them to my death by gas. At this point, for the second time, my heart was in my throat. Just thinking about what those poor innocent people went through on those grounds every day for however long they survived through the torture is enough to make me feel sick, but what I was to see next would make me feel sick to my stomach.
After passing through the double fences, we walked through the gas chamber of Auschwitz I. Walking up to the door to the chamber made me feel sad, anxious, and angry all at once, but those feelings quickly changed to a feeling of being overwhelmed. While walking through the chamber I could picture all of the people crammed together inside the room clothes-less about to die without even knowing what was coming next. My chest began to feel tight and all I wanted was to run out of the building. The moment I exited the building my chest felt normal again and I felt relieved.
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| Deportees would eventually be freed from the cattle cars directly inside the Birkenau walls from these train tracks. From this area, the selections would be done and people would be sent either to the left or to the right. |
Walking through Auschwitz-Birtkenau was a totally different feeling than the feeling while walking through Auschwitz I. Birkenau provided a more sickening feeling since the whole area was in the open air and you could see more of the living conditions. Even just the visual from the photo above is enough to send chills down my spine; I could never imagine, nor do I ever want to experience, the feelings the deportees felt while getting off the cattle cars and walking through the camp.
Here was where I felt anger throughout the tour. Walking from barrack to barrack, the feeling of anger only increased. Seeing the destroyed gas chambers and crematoria made me feel slightly better though. Knowing that the Nazis were too coward to let others see what they were actually doing to the Jews inside the camp made me laugh of irony. One would think that the Nazis would not have had any problem with letting the outside world seeing what went on inside the fences after the war was over, but no, they were too coward so they bombed four out of the five chambers. I also felt slight triumph knowing that some of the Jewish prisoners blew up chamber #4 as an act of rebellion.
My moment of peace, however, came when we were at the rubbles of chamber #2. While we were standing there and listening to our tour guide speak about the chamber, I was taking a video of what the remnants looked like and when I got to the end of the remnants I stopped walking and saw a baby deer or some sort of woodland creature run through the grass. At that moment I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. A slight warmth engulfed me for a moment. To me, this event symbolized a victory the victims had over the Nazis. Unfortunately nearly 6 million people perished, but in the end the victims won. The Nazis not only lost the war, but they were too coward to let their horrible acts to be seen. Also, the victims won because their groups of people are thriving today and overcame what the Nazis did to them at that time.
That moment was what I was looking for for so long; I finally found my peace and I am eternally grateful for having the chance to find it.
That's all for now folks. Check back soon for more!
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