"The Charbor Chronicles": The 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz (Oświęcim)

Growing up, the events of World War II seemed somehow both much more recent, as well as impossibly long ago.

Of course, back then, ten years felt like it was surely an eternity, back when I was a child. As you grow older, you realize that ten years really is not that long. That, in fact, it can pass by and feel almost like a blink of an eye.

Many people still remembered the events of World War II quite vividly as I was growing up. That made it feel somehow more alive, more real.

Yet, on some level, the events of World War II, and the war itself as an event, had become so magnified in time that they seemed to almost reach mythic proportions. There were names and battles and events that just seemed to echo in history, as if they were meant to be there. As if they had always been meant to take their place in history precisely as they had been made.

One of the most enduring names from World War II was, of course, Auschwitz. The name itself always sounded dark and ominous to me, somehow. Even separated from the grimness of the death camp that it has become virtually synonymous with, it just sounds like a dark, gray, cheerless place. With a name like that, you know you cannot be talking about a beautiful, seaside resort where you sit on a beach sipping your favorite drink under the shade of some palm trees with the ocean before you.

No, Auschwitz is a very grim reality. I got to visit that place in the summer of 2013, on a trip to southeastern Poland, and somehow, it was surprising to learn that Auschwitz was an actual city (a fairly prominent one, as well). In Polish, it is called Oświęcim. Auschwitz is the German name for the city. And it was there that the Germans decided to build what wound up being the biggest, and most deadly death camp, where over one million people were murdered. I am not sure why it was surprising that there was a city by the same name, but it was. How could the residents not want to have changed the name, which is obviously associated with something so unspeakably grim?

I remember some years ago watching some documentary on September 11th, and someone was describing the smoke there as the most evil thing that had ever existed. But that reminded me of the words of Elie Wiesel in his book, Night, which is about the Auschwiitz death camp, and how he had described the smoke from the infamous chimneys of Auschwitz as the only true possible escape from the unbelievable suffering of that place, and how that smoke was surely the most evil thing that humanity had ever produced. Indeed, I am inclined to agree with Wiesel that the smoke from those chimneys was, indeed, the most evil thing that humanity has ever produced Given the thousands of years of documented history of atrocities, that really is saying something!

It is well known that over six millions Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Yet, as horrific as the Holocaust was to the east, where villagers would be rounded up by the invading Germans and killed, then buried in mass graves, the death camps stand out as even worse, and Auschwitz stands out among death camps, since it was easily the largest of them, and killed the most people. So, why does Auschwitz evoke even more horror than the mas grave and crimes against humanity in the eastern war? What makes a place like Auschwitz, which was one of four death camps built by the Nazis for only one purpose, particularly chilling is that it was created and maintained with such bureaucratic efficiency. Everything was recorded, and the most modern methods and technology were employed both to build as well as to run the death camps.

When I visited the camp, even all of those decades later, you could just sense the darkness that went into building such a place. It served only one purpose: to produce misery and, ultimately, death. I remember one professor that described these camps as "factories of death" as death was the product that they produced, and they did so efficiently. But Treblinka was a death camp that only produced death and, thus, perhaps, was the reason that it did not last as long as a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, however, there was a lot more misery produced prior to death.

Some people certainly were sent off straight to the infamous showers, of course. But many were also sent to the labor camps, effectively becoming slaves. They were starved, and made to live in inhumane conditions. The Nazis wanted to make the Jews subhuman and, in a sense, they forced them to conditions that made them so. This was not living in any sense of the word. And then there were the experiments, the doctors at Auschwitz, like Joseph Menge, that conducted unspeakable crimes in trying to do all manner of experimentation with living human beings.

All of this I knew, at least in terms of book knowledge, prior to my visit to Auschwitz. Yet, it becomes all the more real when you see the actual, physical structures where all of this suffering took place. When you see the showers, and the ovens. When you see the electrified barbed wire all over the place. When you see the sleeping quarters.

One of the things that shocked me when I was there was what appeared to be a chimney within the brick walls of one of the living quarters. There was a hole in the wall that was, more or less, the size of a relatively small chimney. Only, there was no fire that burned there. Instead, four grown men would be forced to cram into such a tight space in order to spend the night there. Imagine, after enduring all of the exhausting work that they were asked to do, these men then had to go into such a tight space with absolutely no light, and then forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with others, and no room to lean on anything, let alone to lay down. It must have been even worse than the cattle cars for those hours that they were stuck there. The complete lack of empathy on the part of the sadistic bastards that would force such conditions upon living, breathing people was shocking to me! That was one thing that I had not learned about before. But seeing it in person, this was just too horrifying to contemplate!

Still, over the years, the shock of the Holocaust, and particularly of what happened at the death camps, continues to send shock waves throughout the world. Many decades later, there is still a hunt for those responsible, even when they are now approaching their nineties and beyond. Such was the extent of their crimes, that the world wants the message to be sent that these kinds of atrocities will not be permitted ever again.

Yet, some do not believe that there actually was a Holocaust, and they have come to be known as Holocaust deniers. Despite the physical structures of the death camp at Auschwitz remaining for anyone to visit, despite the images of the concentration camps, despite the photographic evidence, despite the documented speeches by Hitler discussing how the Jewish population is being eradicated, despite the tales of survivors and liberators and even perpetrators, and despite the volumes of documentation by official inquiries that includes many of those responsible, we still have no shortage of people who do not believe that the Holocaust actually took place!

This is, of course, unacceptable. Those who perish need to be remembered, and it cheapens their deaths, as well as the suffering that they were forced to endure, if we simply try to marginalize what happened to them. We would also be redefining and sanitizing history in order to deny the Holocaust took place, which is always dangerous, and has had many detrimental impacts in the past. Finally, we are taking away from the triumph of the human spirit for survivors, to survive and speak out against crimes. For the perpetrators of these crimes to have been defeated, we need to have those who were their victims now stand and testify against them, for the historical record as much as anything else. If there is a silver lining, it is that thousands of survivors have since written books and shared their stories with the rest of the world, and to speak out and condemn the barbarism of their oppressors.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wiesel

'I could have faced a bullet for kissing Mengele's boots': Survivors remember the horror of Auschwitz 70 years after its liberation by Jenny Awford, January 18, 2015:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915658/I-faced-bullet-kissing-Mengele-s-boots-Survivors-remember-horror-Auschwitz-70-years-liberation.html

70 years on, Holocaust survivors recall Auschwitz terror by AFP, January 23, 2015:

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/features/article/70-years-on-holocaust-survivors-recall-auschwitz-terror

Auschwitz: enduring testament to Nazi horrors By Martine Nouaille, January 24, 2015:

http://news.yahoo.com/auschwitz-enduring-testament-nazi-horrors-063117630.html

‘In Auschwitz, you got used to anything’ by Derek Scally, January 24, 2015:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/in-auschwitz-you-got-used-to-anything-1.2077262

Auschwitz survivors remember day of liberation 70 years ago By Sarah Farnsworth, January 25, 2015:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-25/auschwitz-survivors-remember-day-of-liberation-70-years-ago/6043688

Book of horrors: Nazi camp survivors in U.S. recall Auschwitz By Barbara Goldberg, January 24, 2015:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/01/24/us-auschwitz-anniversary-usa-idINKBN0KX0FQ20150124

The faces of the survivors: Moving portraits of people who endured life in Auschwitz taken nearly 70 years after the infamous Nazi death camp was liberated by Sara Malm, January 21, 2015:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2920524/The-faces-survivors-Moving-portraits-Jews-endured-life-Auschwitz-taken-nearly-70-years-infamous-Nazi-death-camp-liberated.html

Survivor recalls Auschwitz horror 70 years on by Aron Heller, January 24, 2015:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/survivor-recalls-auschwitz-horror-70-years-on-308775.html

Ghosts of Auschwitz Slideshow Photography by Pawel Ulatowski on January 19, 2015:

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ghosts-of-auschwitz-1422126307-slideshow/

Moving portraits of Auschwitz survivors 70 years since liberation published by New York Daily News:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/auschwitz-survivor-portraits-gallery-1.2089777

Poland uncovers new names of former Auschwitz staff by AFP, January 23, 2015:

http://news.yahoo.com/poland-uncovers-names-former-auschwitz-staff-221726677.html

Seventy years on, a 'Soviet' liberator of Auschwitz remembers by Thiebault Marchand, January 23, 2015:

http://news.yahoo.com/seventy-years-soviet-liberator-auschwitz-remembers-045649390.html

Below I reprinted the blog entry I published about my trip to Auschwitz in June of 2013:

My Trip to KL Auschwitz (Oświęcim)

Almost everyone agrees that places like Auschwitz should be preserved for history. There are very few places that can compare with Auschwitz, and none of them are quite on the scale of Auschwitz. It needs not be said that this is not a cheery place. Not a place where you go lightheartedly, to enjoy the day. This is the largest death camp that was built by the Nazis. A million people were sent here, and the majority of them were exterminated.

There were a few books that I picked up at Auschwitz. One of them has as it's title, simply, "Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp". The editors, Franciszek Piper and Teresa Swiebocka, wrote one paragraph at the very start of the book that encapsulates Auschwitz quite well:

The crimes committed at Auschwitz unmasked the darker aspects of contemporary civilization. It opened the eyes of humanity to the fact that if genocide could take place on such a mass, industrialized and bureaucratized scale in one location, then it could happen anywhere, because it lies within the capabilities of mankind. This disturbing fact alone prevents us from forgetting Auschwitz or relativizing its significance.

I took a German history course while during my old college days, and one thing that surprised me were some of the details of the history of the Holocaust. I learned that the "Final Solution" did not come automatically. That, in fact, there was some half-baked idea of moving Jews to Madagascar, the large island off the coast of eastern Africa. The Slavs, in the meantime, would be forced to Siberia leaving the better, more desirable lands to Germans. The eastern lands would become, in effect, the breadbasket of the German Reich.

This changed, of course, over time. Heinrich Himmler defined this goal quite definitively in 1942:

"Our goal is not the complete Germanization of the East in the old sense of the term -i.e., by teaching the population living there German language and law; rather, we are striving for the goal that only people of purely German race will live there."

(Quote taken from p. 12 "Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp". edited by Franciszek Piper and Teresa Swiebocka)

Thus, already extreme, the Nazis converting this thinking into official policy would assure that they would become the most extreme regime in human history, as well as the standard bearer for evil that humanity has ever seen. And that's saying something.

It was during the Wannsee Conference in 1942 that this definitively became systematic policy. Gone were any notions of moving Jews or other undesirables elsewhere. Now, the "Final Solution" was the extermination of these undesirables, particularly Jews.

There were two parts to the Holocaust. One was restricted mostly to the eastern campaign of the war, when Germans would take over territories, in pursuit of "Lebensraum", or living space. The Wehrmacht invaded the east in 1941, a year after their successes in the West. The occupying German troops would round up the Jewish population of these villages, and shoot them en masse. Sometimes, the locals participated. These began almost as soon as the Germany Army invaded in the East, particularly in the territories of the former Soviet Union.

That was one part, and it was horrific enough. But it was not something that had never been seen before. Rounding people up and shooting them has occurred many other times in history, before and since. Traces of mass graves have been found all over the globe, under different, yet also often tragically similar, circumstances. The Germans may have stood out, in terms of efficiency and numbers.

But where the German actions during the Holocaust really stood out was in the western segment of the Holocaust. This involved the infamous death camps, including Auschwitz. As horrific as the eastern campaign massacres may have been, the level of cruelty at the extermination camps took the Holocaust to another level.

What made them stand out so much? It was the bureaucratic aspect to it. It was the official endorsement of it by a relatively modern government. It was the technological aspect of it (dated as these things may seem to us now). Of course, it was also the sheer numbers of victims. And, of course, it is the fact that Germany remains the only nation in history to have actually built places specifically with the intent of killing off an entire segment of the population of Europe. All of these things combine to make what happened in the death camps truly unique in history. And of the death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau was far and away the largest, with the most extensive numbers killed. It was also the only camp to tattoo those sent their, an infamous marker for survivors of Auschwitz.

The site of the Auschwitz camp itself had formerly been an army barracks for the Austrian, and later the Polish, army. Thus, there was already a bit of infrastructure there. The Germans, after invading and then occupying Poland in 1939, soon decided that this location would be suitable for a camp. There were advantages to the place. It had the infrastructure, yet remained relatively secluded. Officially, it was the overcrowding of the prisons in Silesia that required a new site, and Auschwitz would be it.

Germany incorporated Oświęcim into the Third Reich. Thus, Oświęcim, the Polish name, became Auschwitz, which is the German name for the place. Poles were evacuated out of the surrounding areas, so as to assure maximum privacy. After all, there was something to hide in this place.

Auschwitz as a concentration camp opened in 1940. Initially, the majority of those deported were Poles. Most of the Poles sent to Auschwitz were for political reasons.

The focus changed in 1942, when the focus was shifted more towards Jews, and the goal was mostly the immediate extermination of the majority of those that arrived there. This followed Hitler's order of the Final Solution, the killing of all Jews within Germany, and the territories it occupied in Europe.

Once again from "Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp", an essay by one of the editors of the book, Franciszek Piper, entitled 'The Political and Racist Principles of the Nazi Policy of Extermination and Their Realization at KL Auschwitz" p. 16-17, there is a telling quote from Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of KL Auschwitz:

"In the summer of 1941 - I cannot remember the exact date at this point - I was hastily summoned before the Reichsführer-SS in Berlin, directly by his adjutant. Himmler, breaking with his usual custom, explained the following to me without the presence of his assistant: The Führer had ordered the final solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, were to execute the order. The existing extermination centers in the East would not suffice for any activity on such a large scale. Thus, I have designated Auschwitz for this goal, given its suitable location in terms of transportation and because the area can be easily isolated and concealed....After you speak with Eichmann, you will immediately send me the plans for the projected facilities. The Jews are the eternal enemies of the German nation and must be extirpated. All Jews that come into our hands during the war will be exterminated without exception. If we are unable to destroy the biological forces of Judaism, then the Jews will one day destroy the German nation."

Auschwitz is not the only vernichtungslager (extermination camp) that the Nazis built, but it is far and away the largest. It was estimated that well over one million Jews alone were killed there, and the overall murdered ranges between 1.5 million to 2 million. Thus, it stands out, as the most obvious symbols of the crimes against the Jews in particular, and those seen as the "others" by the Nazis, such as Gypsies, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war.

I got much of the information for this brief history of KL Auschwitz from the following two sources:

"Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp". edited by Franciszek Piper and Teresa Swiebocka

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz

I also want to note here that I used one of the official guide books of Auschwitz-Birkenau issued from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.

My Personal Thoughts

Auschwitz was one of the main things that I wanted to visit during the trip to Poland. Krakow, which was the major focal point of the first part of our trip, is not too far away. The car ride was less than an hour, and it is a pretty drive through the countryside, past hills dotted with farms, and small villages that appear charming enough.

There were signs repeatedly for Oświęcim, which is the Polish name for what most westerners know as Auschwitz. Rather naively, I assumed that this was because of it's historical significance. But that is not true. In fact, Oświęcim is a rather sizable city in it's own right. That surprised me, because for whatever the reason, I had always assumed that Auschwitz was in the middle of nowhere. That, by necessity, it had to be isolated, due to the nature of the crimes that took place there. Of course, it is a bit isolated, because Oświęcim is hardly a major metropolis. But it is a city, make no mistake about that. The Germans, however, made this city and the immediate surrounding area German, and essentially drove the Poles out, all in an effort to keep this dark secret from the world.

It is also almost surprising to me that Auschwitz remains. After all, the Nazis were fond of destroying things, including cities. Why not destroy this place, and other death camps like it, where the proof of their crimes testified against them forever? That is what they did at Treblinka, after all. So, how is it that KL Auschwitz managed to survive?

But it has survived, and it is now a museum, to make sure that people do not forget. It is a dark place, a place of mass murder, endorsed officially by a modern government. People come here perhaps to learn the lessons from the past, to see what can become of people's prejudices when they are allowed to feel comfortable with them, when they are allowed to go unchecked, and flourish. Auschwitz was the most extreme manifestation of the intolerant notion of racial superiority. Nazis considered Nordic Germans the Aryans, the super race, if you will. To that end, they intended to take over the fertile lands to the east of the Reich, to produce food to populate more Germans. Germany would expand to the East, at the expense of other people deemed inferior. The populations there would be forced into slave labor or, in the case of the Jews and others considered undesirable, they would exterminate them.

Yet, it was not just the murders that this place stands for. It is the systematic humiliation and psychological torture. Auschwitz, again more than any other of the camps, systematically humiliated those who were forced there. It was the only camp to give prisoners tattoos. There were medical experiments. There was cruelty on such a level that is likely unparalleled in human history. There have been mass killings many times before in history, but there simply has been no place like the death camps. And none of the other death camps can compare with Auschwitz. That is why this place continues to live on and, in it's own dark way, to fascinate.

The infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (translation - work will make you free" gate upon entering KL Auschwitz.

In between some of the Blocks

The Execution Wall

This sign may or may not be clear. In English, it reads the following:

"If a Polish prisoner escaped, the family members were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. They were made to stand under a sign announcing the reason for their arrest and that they would remain in the camp until the fugitive was found. So that other prisoners would be aware of this policy."