Auschwitz

(ELY: )We arrived at Auschwitz I museum at 12:00 in the Bus from Krakow. After checking in our baggage, we went on outside to tour the camp. Auschwitz I was mainly a work camp, although it did have a crematorium. We walked in through the famous metal sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”, into a plot of brick buildings in organized rows. Inside these buildings we saw the horrific living conditions the prisoners had to withstand. When the camp was first founded they slept on straw, and had to go to the lavatories out side. After a while, they received bunk beds, which they had to share two to a bed, and disgusting unsanitary restrooms and showers. They lived under conditions worse than slavery. In an adjacent building there was a large display of all the items the Germans took from the displaced prisoners. This included massive amounts of shoes and glasses, toothbrushes and food bowls, but the most disturbing display was of the prosthetic limbs confiscated by the Nazi’s. This wasn’t only the most depressing because of the fact the people needed these limbs in the first place, but also because we all know that none of these limbs’ owners survived the selections. I have seen pictures of these prosthetic limbs before, but seeing them in person is so much worse. It’s unbelievable how such an insane group of people, most of which were obviously mentally ill by the end of the war, could be so organized.
We also watched a short 15 minute film filmed by the Russians when they liberated the camp. This film instantiated the extreme hunger these people had to endure in order to survive. Just skin and bones.
However it wasn’t the hunger, or the confiscated items, or the Nazi’s terror, that moved me most. It was the cold. In every holocaust film we all ways see them shacking to death in the snow. But that really is something you can only imagine sitting in a warm living room on a comfortable sofa. I was wearing 5 layers, 2 pants, thick socks and boots, 2 gloves on each hand, a scarf and a hat, and I was freezing. I can only imagine how cold these people must have been wearing nothing but stripped pajamas. I would have never lasted more than 2 weeks of this terrible weather. And its not even January, when the weather is worst. It was very, very cold (the signs said 0 C, but with the wind it was much worse) and it snowed these very large junks of snow, which you could not walk into because they got in your eyes and you couldn’t see, and they froze your face. In this weather I’m surprised the Nazis themselves survived.

Around 2:30 we took a train to Auschwitz II (Birkenau), which was the real hell, the largest death camp in Europe. We hoped to see the IDF group perform its entrance ceremony, but we missed it. We talked to several of them and told them that we will stay to watch their final ceremony at 5:00. At the entrance was the famous train station, just like in the movies. The entire camp in general looked like a huge movie set. It was unreal. Its hard to imagine that the Nazis really did do all those terrible things in a place that besides its buildings and barbed wire fences was just a large plain of grass. Most of the camp’s buildings were destroyed, the Nazis made sure of that. All the wooden buildings, where the prisoners slept, were burned, but a few were recreated for the sake of display. Most of the brick buildings were still left standing although we do not know for sure that they are original. We walked inside a few of them, the smell was awful, and everything was dark and filled with old wooden bunk beds. We later walked over to the remains of the Crematorium. The Germans blew it up, but you could still clearly see its architecture.
Between the second and third crematoriums, There was a very large memorial, with plaques in many languages saying “Here 1.5 million people lost their lives, the majority of them Jewish. Let this be a warning to humanity”. As if to mimic our somber mood, it suddenly started to snow very hard and the cold became unbearable. The grounds, which consisted of green grass and mud, turned white literally within 60 seconds. This gave us a chance to sit there and reflect at the sought that 1,500,000 people were murdered in the very same spot we were standing on. Some of these people were our relatives, some relatives or our friends, but a very large number of them have no relatives. They all perished. Entire families now have no one to mourn at their loss, to remember them. That is why we all here, to remember these people and to make sure such terrible things never happen again. So that we won’t let them happen again.

(Ruthy:) To Ely’s description, I will only add that when we were standing in this memorial, seeing the destructed crematoriums to our sides, I thought I heard some distant singing. I followed the sounds and saw a small group of Ultra Orthodox Jews (earlier we heard their guide talk in English and a translator translated it to Yiddish) singing (not praying) by the crematorium. In this thick snow, I couldn’t understand the words or language, but the melody was prayer like, and became louder and stronger. It was hard to believe so few of them were singing. It made me reflect about hoe these people that we usually resent, kept us all Jewish through centuries in Europe, and many of them ended up in these crematoriums just as their secular “enlightened” Jewish brothers.

It was getting late but we were waiting for the ceremony of the Israeli soldiers from “Edim BeMadim” at 5. This was a very organized ceremony with speakers and light and a huge Magen David zer of flowers.
We heard them sing, pray, play the Trumpet and read. We saw them stand Dom and salute for the Izkor and the Kadish. We heard the group’s “Ed” (a survivor) and an “Av shakul”. They were from different cheilot and with different dragot. Very colorful combination of hats and uniforms. We talked to their mefaked (Tat Aluf Bemil Ron Kitry) and laughed at the order to take of the “cham zavars” which were these black collars that they were wearing (like their mefaked said, now you’ll have “kar zavar”…
We sang Hatikva with them and headed back to Krakow pretty late.