I would find it very hard to believe if someone told me they had never heard of Auschwitz-Birkenau. With my high school history lessons stashed in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew I had to steel myself for the experience of visiting here, though I couldn’t have realised how much they leave out for the sanitised student version. I’d heard of the rooms of shoes, luggage, hair brushes, indeed hair itself.
It’s not until you venture between the many buildings, see the countless black and white photos of doomed people and try to wrap your head around the scale of horror here that you can even claim to come close to having a shred of an idea of what it might have felt like to arrive on a crowded train. Amazing numbers of people were diverted directly to the death chambers after barely climbing from the train to the platform in Birkenau. It is very difficult to think that would have been a better plight than to have had to survive and endure in the conditions. I’m sure it’s been said that the individual displays of human spirit and fortitude that made it to world attention are astounding, I’ll only say they would have to have been exceptional people with far more courage than I ever want to muster.
What also strikes me is the access you have around the site, while being led by a knowledgeable guide. I’ll never forget being inside the gas chamber. It’s bare, cold, dark and famous. Just as I remember the crowds of backpackers dozing in the sunshine before the Anzac Day services at Lone Pine in Gallipoli, the same vision flashed up for me seeing people willingly walk into the chamber. Did the prisoners walk to their certain death with such calm? How did the Nazi’s get away with it all, for so long, seemingly so easily…I have trouble grasping the reality of what it must have been like. I wanted to hear more about how people tried fighting back. How many stood up and tried to fight for life? How many days, weeks, months of dehumanisation does it take to break the soul of a person to render them meek and pliable? What else worse can you threaten someone with to keep them existing day by day, only to be subjected to vile experiments. How can a nation be so thoroughly brainwashed to value life so little, to participate in such a crime and still be able to sleep at night?
You can learn all the facts and information from more credible sources than myself, all I can tell you is about the profound sense of hopelessness, of emptiness – it felt like a great big gaping hole, a wound.
There is no life here.