Auschwitz

I approached our visit to Auschwitz with much trepidation as I knew it would be an emotionally draining experience.  Our guide through this sad and terrible place was fantastic.  I don’t know how she was able to talk of such horrors day in and day out with such empathy and compassion and still stay sane.  We all know of the horrors of Auschwitz – Birkenau, but to see the camps and the exhibits was heartrending and words inadequate.

Entrance to Birkenau

The gate at Auschwitz

  

Shoes of the prisoners

Barracks and fences

Guard post

We were very privileged to have an Auschwitz survivor in our group.  Itsak, as a 14 year old Hungarian Jew, was transported to the camp with his parents.  Now an old man in his 80’s he had come back with his two sons to revisit this horror scene of his youth.  In 1944,the family had spent 4 days closed up in a cattle car travelling from Budapest to Auschwitz.  When he arrived at the camp one of the others at the camp told him to say he 16 years old, not 14.  This advice saved him as all children under 16 were sent straight to the gas chambers.

 

His mother was not so fortunate.  She had picked up a small child that had been abandoned and because of this she was not sent to the women’s camp to work but sent straight to the gas chambers.  Any woman with children were killed upon arrival.  They did not want to separate the children from the women during the sorting, even though the women could be used as slave labour, because separation of mothers and children might cause panic.  Instead the Nazis killed them all.

When the guide asked Itsak to describe his time at the camp, he replied “It is impossible to put into words.  It was Hell, just Hell, Hell, Hell.  Death was everywhere.  Your whole existence was shrunk down to finding a scrap to eat, to stay alive any way you could”.  It was a great privilege to meet this remarkable gentleman.  I will never forget him or his remembrances.

Itzak talking to our guide

Outside one of the train carriages used to transport the prisoners

I would like to say ‘never again, surely humanity has learned its lesson’; but I cannot, for humanity has not.