How does one anticipate a visit here? Conditioned by Hollywood film, history texts from school, some testimony from survivors, writers like Primo Levi. We more often see this place through an almost mythical prism of drama; heroes vs villains rather than the nuance of humanity. For me walking under that gateway with its cynical lie put me in the place of millions; Jews, Roma , intellectuals and homosexuals. 1.1 million people were murdered here. The notorious commandant Hōss oversaw much of the barbarity while Mengele performed his “medical experiments” here. Walking through this peaceful place on an autumn morning (there were few visitors today) it was hard to conceptualise the horrors perpetrated here. I didn’t take pictures of certain things: it seemed gratuitous to take photos of cloth from human hair, ovens and gas chambers. It seemed reductive. These were people, each one with a life, a family, hopes. It was a salutary experience to walk in the footsteps of those who never returned as I have today. The stories and photographs were explanation enough.
Although Auschwitz was terrible and where the first gas chamber operated it was also a labour camp Birkenau operated on an industrial level purely as an extermination camp. While much of Auschwitz remains Birkenau was almost totally destroyed but some records of inhumanity stand as witness.
Birkenau
The degradation and humiliation experienced here was unimaginable. Some pictures of the huts and their appalling conditions draw a picture.
While I was there a large group of young Jewish people were there, many draped in Israeli flags. It felt uncomfortable and performative in some way. One can understand the history and emotions engendered here but in the world as it is today it left me pondering many moral questions.
So an emotional and profoundly provocative day. I’m glad I experienced this.
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