Witnessing Auschwitz

The day trip to Wadowice, which was the birth place Pope John Paul the 2^nd showed the good aspects that Poland has to offer before transitioning to two concentration camps. When in Wadowice I experienced Palm Sunday mass. I noticed right away that life in Poland was filled with joy. The church is located in the city square. Within the square were local shops and education facilities which Pope John Paul attended. The interesting part of this trip was the high security prison in the center of the town. Other noticeable building was remnants of a synagogue transformed into an active preschool. This preschool is a symbol of new life replacing all the destruction the synagogue endored during the war.

When arriving to both camps, the surrounding structures and land were populated with developing villages. I don’t know how one could come back knowing the cruel behavior that toke place on their land. This just shows that all residence of Poland had to ignore and move on, which says a lot. Before I made the trip to Poland I read a ton of articles describing the culture before, during and after the war. Being able to stand on the ground where the Shoah occurred I couldn’t but now could imagine the amount of pain people were felling as I walked though the camps.

The first camp visited was Auschwitz I, comparing to Birkenau, Auschwitz I has 28 barracks versus over 300 barracks. However, that didn’t mean Auschwitz I wasn’t deadly. This camp involved deaths and destruction of Polish prisoners and later the Jewish population after 1942. Walking though the gates, knowing the original gates where stolen by someone that didn’t respect the events occurred are questioning how the world was affected by the Shoah. There were rules in place, for every prisoner who escaped, ten prisoners would be executed. To account for every prisoner each person was “tagged” and a roll call was conducted twice a day. The prisoners would stand in lines until everyone were fully accounted for. The longest roll call was 19 hours, imagine standing at attention for long periods of time and not knowing if you will be alive end of the roll call. All prisoners worked 12 hours shifts for six days out of the week, when not working they were sleeping however, the sleeping barracks held 1800 and the sleeping areas were constructed from wood. Some prisoners died from the sleeping environment others became ill.

Auschwitz II also known as Birkenau showed the reality of the conditions of every poisoner. Hearing that 50-60 thousand people lived in this camp was not comprehensible by the living quarters seen. Walking from barrack to barrack I couldn’t imagine the prisoners walking with non-existent shoes and cloths day after day. My group and I went to the camp on a gloomy day. The gloom put a day into context for a murky day. Having two coats, pants and water-resistant shoes was a luxury compared to all the prisoners. When it started sleeting on the way to the registration building until know I could feel how they felt, step after step.

Spending time at both concentration camps, I was amazed by the distinction of the barracks and how neatly they were constructed. When I heard the prisoners build all barracks were insane. Both the barracks and camps needed time to plan and heavy machinery to construct in a timely fashion. Its stunning that one could think of constructing these camps with precision. When the prisoners arrived all belongings were sent to a barrack “Canada”, the Nazi’s got this name because of the meaning of richness. When being transported the prisoners were told to bring what you could hold. When they arrived everyone were to get out of the trains, who were alive and form a line. On the way to decision of path they were instructed to drop everything. Lastly, learning the fact that Hitler never once visited any of the ordered camps raised a question: Could the camps been stopped with appropriate backing?

-Elijah Ziobron