Auschwitz

It was a sobering, drizzly morning in Krakow as we drove the 90 minutes necessary to reach the Auschwitz-Birkenau World War II Nazi-run death camp, the site of the largest mass murder in human history.

When faced with overwhelming emotional turmoil, there can be a tendency to fall back on more limited observations. I was a parks planner for most of my career.  And Auschwitz has been, since 1947, a national historical park.   Arriving at the tour entrance parking lot, I found myself thinking of the organizational challenges in processing so many visitors through such a dramatic place.  I observed the parking attendants’ motions, the signage, and the security procedures.  Yes, this was psychological self-protection, but it wasn’t denial. It wasn’t yet denial.

Public demand for the nearly 4-hour tour of the camps, has led to a several month reservation lead time necessary to assure an English-speaking tour.  We hadn’t planned that far ahead. Our reservation, therefore, was for the Polish-speaking tour, with Sebastian placed in the strenuous position as translator.

We passed through the ticketing, security and tour organizational stages and then our group set off.

As it turned out, the tour contained little that I had not already heard or read.  Yet it was, of course, a soul-crushing experience, nonetheless.  Readers of this blog are warned that the rest of the entry may be very emotionally difficult to read. You are given a gracious excuse if you wish to simply take a pass and move onto my next entry.

The large-scale facts are known.  An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the two camps from 1940 to 45. 1.1 million of them Jews. The fatality rate in the camp was about 90%.  Others died on forced marches away from the camp, starvation and at other war sites. Non-Jewish fatalities included Soviet and Polish prisoners of war, the Roma, and other political and ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the Nazis.

Our camp tour guide showed us the location where the infamous sorting process took place upon entry. A thumb pointing to the left or right by a Nazi doctor determined one direction for women, children, the elderly and the enfeebled. Those souls were led directly to the gas chambers. The other direction led men, and a few women fit enough to work, to be kept alive as long as they were able to contribute to the building of more barracks, sewing of the guards clothing, and providing other practical support useful to the efficiency of the killing process. Then of course virtually all of them too were gassed or died from exertion and/or starvation.

What were perhaps the most devastating, immediate and personal emotional realizations for me, revolved around the actions of the Nazi staff, which were both sadistic and yet somehow institutionally normalized. Yes, the apparent primacy of efficiency in the killings spoke to a classic depiction of the Nazi enterprise as a highly organized operation. Yet, what happened again and again at Auschwitz was cruelty and torture just for its own sake by thousands upon thousands of military and “civilian” staff. Even with some of the torture impeding the efficient killing machine, there was a reveling in the opposite of empathy. No, much more than the lack of empathy, there was a seeming joy in hurting others. Of course, the Germans have a word for that – schadenfreude – which reached a kind of infamous apotheosis at Auschwitz.  Also infamous was the lack of consequences for the sadists.  It is estimated that only 15% of Auschwitz personnel were ever processed through the post-war legal system.

As mentioned above, the first half of the tour found us with a Polish-speaking guide. Sebastian served as our personal translator but was prohibited by the official guide from translating more broadly to the remainder of the primarily English-speaking tour group. The reasoning for that rule had a certain logic, but it failed to make sense when confronted by the reality that 90%+ of the audience didn’t understand the Polish language. The guide told us that Auschwitz would be admitting more than 2 million visitors this year. So, in accepting the language barrier, we found ourselves… ahem… just following orders.

The second half of the tour was at Birkenau, located 3 km from Auschwitz. We clambered upon a bus, sitting in numbed silence, as we were driven to a dark destination of mass murder.  Here, any elements of the “concentration” of prisoners yielded to the sole function of the site. It was a death camp, not a concentration camp. Vast fields of aligned barracks held, at their peak, up to100,000 prisoners at a time. All but a very few perished.

This Birkenau part of the tour was led by an English-speaking Polish Jew. Our tour group had been permitted to merge with another group because Birkenau was out-of-doors, so her English would not interfere with other groups in cramped quarters.  The difference at an emotional level between these two guides was profound. The first guide had been doing this for 5 years.  The second guide for 12. At the end of the tour, I asked the second guide “how can you psychologically do this work for so long?”  She said that she lost family here and elsewhere in the Holocaust and felt a moral obligation to the task. 

Before we all departed, our Polish Jewish guide had one final message to deliver. She said that Auschwitz was not the beginning of the Holocaust.  The beginning was hate. Then came increments of “otherness.”  Of separateness. Jews weren’t allowed in the same schools. So, they had to make their own schools. Jews weren’t allowed on the buses. So, they had to find their own way home. Jews could only live in specific areas. Those areas became known as ghettos.  They had to wear a Star of David. They had to and had to… and it got more and more egregious. And violent. Until the Jews (or Roma or other undesirable minorities) become Untermenschen – below human.  

Our guide said that the most important thing is to not allow this to start. To not degrade others because of their group status. She said it was important and admirable that we had come to Auschwitz to learn and experience the atrocity. But now we must go out and take these lessons, these sensitivities, and apply them to our lives.

I leave this entry with a few references.  Sebastian suggested reading “Zone of Interest” and watching a recent Netflix movie about Herman Hess’ home life at Auschwitz. Our Polish Jewish guide had recommended “Hope Is the Last to Die,” a book by Halina Birenbaum. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315703664/hope-last-die-david-welsh-halina-birenbaum

These are contributions to what has become a vast repository of expositions, known generally as “Holocaust Literature.”

At the beginning of the tour, guides lead their groups from the park’s initial visitor check-in area through a long, slightly inclined passageway into the main Auschwitz camp.  It is a powerful means of preparing the visitor for a different place and time. This same passageway, used for leaving the camp and returning to one’s daily life, is at a correspondingly very gradual decline.

Passageways.  As a person who aspires to a moral life, as a Jew, I really can’t fully leave Auschwitz. It is now a part of who I am and a motivator for making a positive difference in the world. And oddly enough, the Auschwitz entry and departure passageway, and the words inclining and declining and their multiple meanings, have struck me with an ultimate take from the entire camp experience. 

We should be INCLINED to accept the reality of Auschwitz, and we should DECLINE to forget its message and meaning. May it be so. שיהא זה כך