The Blaus - South America and Europe

23rd of October - Aushwitz & Birkenau, Poland

Billy's dad asked us in Berlin whether we had ever thought about how the Jews sent to concentration camps must have felt...and we have been haunted by that question ever since. As a Jewish man who lost family members to the Holocaust and escaped the same fate because his father immigrated to the States, I suppose that he thinks about this more often than most people do today. Truly, we have been having nightmares since we visited Aushwitz. The whole day we spent between Aushwitz and Birkenau was horrifically overwhelming. I think we both were on the verge of crying most of the time we were there. It's difficult to even put into words. We knew all the facts and had seen some of the photos, films and documentaries that recreate the historic events of the Holocaust, but it is another thing to go to this place where millions of people suffered and were killed. 1.5 to 2 million people were murdered at these two concentration camps. They do not have an exact number of deaths, as many people didn't survive long enough to be registered in the records, but 90 percent of the victims were Jewish and were brought to Poland from countries as far as Italy and the Netherlands.

The most intense parts of the museum at Aushwitz were the films, the photos, and the rooms that they labeled "material evidence of crimes." In these rooms were displayed personal affects that were either taken from the people when they arrived at the camps or belongings that were surrendered as they disrobed just before they stepped into the gas chambers. There were thousands of pairs of shoes all piled up behind glass in these rooms, piles of combs, shaving brushes, shoe polish tins, baby clothes, tons of human hair, pots and pans. The Germans were so disgustingly clever and greedy about every detail of this genocide. They found a way to profit off of the murders in every possible way. They sold all of these valuables that were taken from the Jews...even hair that they shaved off of the women's heads was sold in the German textile industry and gold teeth were extracted after the victims were gassed and before the bodies were incinerated. We walked around in a daze wondering how Hitler and his henchmen came up with this plan and if it was all premeditated or if each step of the process just coincidentally happened to lead up to this maniacal and systematic mass murder of a people. It all seemed to work into a carefully crafted masterplan. How could people be so frighteningly cruel and inhumane?

First the Jews were branded with armbands, then they were moved into the ghettos where they were unable to work and earn money, so they started to starve and become ill because they were living in poverty and filth. Then they were so weak when they were "relocated" to the concentration camps that some didn't survive the trip there (as they were crammed into trains like animals, standing sometimes for 10 days if they were being transported far distances and without food or water). They were always given false hope, so there were rarely revolts or uprisings except on a handful of occasions in the ghettos and in the camps. They were told that if they volunteered to be relocated (by paying a fee and cooperating) that they would be given work and the means to lead normal lives again. When they arrived at these concentration camps they were separated by physicians into two groups: healthy and unfit for work. The unfit were sent directly to the gas chambers, but they were told they were going to be showering in these rooms that looked like showers and even had dummy showerheads mounted to the ceiling, so they went quietly to their deaths. Can you imagine the terror they must have felt during the last moments of their lifes when they realized that they were being poisoned?

The film we saw at Aushwitz was a post WWII Soviet film about Soviet troops liberating the Jews from Aushwitz and arriving there to find emaciated, frozen, naked bodies lying dead in the snow, sets of twins that were barely alive because they were used in biological experiments, men who were sterilized or exposed to diseases and chemicals in other experiments. Some of the women and men that survived the camps were so thin and weak that they couldn't even walk out of the gates when they were finally freed. Birkenau was so expansive that it was difficult to cover the grounds by foot in the 2 to 3 hours we spent there. Being there really made us understand the scale of the atrocity. The strangest thing about Birkenau is that its setting is so peaceful. The camp is located in a serene, natural setting and as we walked around the grounds we couldn't help but comment on the incongruousness of the physical beauty of the green grass, clusters of trees, afternoon sunlight and the quiet isolation of a place that was engineered to torture and murder people.

There was a somber feeling despite the fact that there were crowds of visitors. Many groups of young kids who must have been visiting as part of a school field trip and many other groups of tourists were crowded into the museum, which was distracting, but we felt that it was a positive sign that the site of these crimes is now used as an educational tool. There was one German guy in the museum that we felt sorry for. We could tell that he felt pained by and guilty about the crimes his country committed.

We went to the records office and asked about Nandor's wife and two children (members of the Blau family) who were most likely sent to one of these concentration camps, but we needed to have a date of birth to search the archives effectively because their names are commonly found in the records. The administrators in the records department said that in many cases the only records they have are of names, sometimes there is information about age, and sometimes country of origin. She apologetically told us that if a woman arrived at the camp with two young children, they most likely would have been sent directly to their deaths.

The worst part of it is that all of the surviving family members of these victims of the Holocaust have nowhere to grieve and because the records that the Germans kept are so poor and many of the Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers without even being registered, there is no way to know exactly what happened to many people. People brought flowers and placed them in the gas chambers and crematoria or at the wall where many of the victims were executed. There was a feeling of unresolved anger and incomprehensible sadness among the visitors at Aushwitz.

posted by The Blaus @ 4:23 PM