Lest we forget…

While World War II and its aftermath were horrible and there were more

Grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkeniu
State Museum

tragic occurrences than have ever been reported, the worst was the Holocaust. This came about because of bigotry and hatred, two characteristics of mankind that the winning of any war or the embracing of any religion has not obliterated from our collective consciences. One of the most interesting stories was told by Jakob, our Free Walking Tour guide, was about his grandmother. For many of the people in Poland the war didn’t end in 1945; his grandmother still overbuys when she goes to the grocery just in case they need the food to flee. When US leaders start talking about ‘registering’ people, the first thing that springs to mind is how the Jews and other minorities were ‘registered’. Let’s hope the population in this country never has to make the choices that the people in Europe had to make.



I was under the mistaken impression that Auschwitz was a single camp somewhere in Germany. It was actually a series of Nazi concentration

Kitchen chimneys and garrage

camps and extermination camps that were built and operated by the Third Reich in areas of Poland that had been annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. Auschwitz I was the original camp; Auschwitz II–Birkenau was a combination concentration and extermination camp; Auschwitz III–Monowitz was a labor camp used to staff an IG Farben factory, chemical manufacturers; and there were another 45 satellite camps.

The first people to arrive at Auschwitz I came in May 1940. These were the Polish political prisoners, many of whom were scientists, university

Left T to B: Entrance to Auschwitz, Barbed wire fences
Right: Toilets for prisoners

professors, and other well educated people. In many cases people were lured into settings where they could be arrested en masse. For instance, at Krakow University there was supposed to be a gathering of scientists to talk about their research. One in their group arrived wearing a Nazi uniform and proceeded to arrest the other members. Before these scientists could be put on the train to Auschwitz, city officials secured their release; members of other universities weren’t so lucky. Getting rid of the intelligentsia and dismissing scientific knowledge were some of the early steps the Nazis employed to control the population. In September 1941 the first murders occurred at the camp; this began the ‘Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. It was an eerie feeling to pass through the gate into Auschwitz I and look down the tracks that delivered people to their deaths. Barbed wire still stands separating the camp from the rest of the world. There are dorm-like brick buildings where thousands of people lived. Sleeping rooms could hold up to 1000 people; bunk beds, stacked three high, held as many as six or eight people per bed. Toilets were available to the people twice a day as were the wash rooms. People stood for hours both morning and night waiting for their jailers to call the roll; during the day they were expected to do hard labor with little or nothing to eat or drink.

Beginning early in 1942 Jews were crammed into box cars and transported to the camps. As they stumbled out of the cars carrying their

Top: Boxcar used to transport Jews
Bottom L to R: Household goods, Jewish prayer scarves

belongings, they were divided into two groups: those who lived and those who died. The members of the second group were young children, the elderly, pregnant women, anyone who was ill, anyone with a physical/mental impairment, and anyone who didn’t look strong enough to do physical labor. Belongings were thrown in huge piles for the Nazis to loot later while the people who were to act as slaves were sent to an intake area where they were stripped and given prison garb to wear. The dead were also looted: gold teeth were extracted and heads were shaved with the hair sent to Germany to be spun into thread for making clothing.

Zyklon B, a pesticide, was used to murder about 1.1 of the 1.3 million

Top: Model of gas chamber and body looting area
Bottom L to R: Entrance to gas chamber, Nuns praying
at the wall where prisoners were tortured and killed

people who were sent to the camp. Although research continues into the identities of these people, it is known that about 90 percent were Jews. Others sent to the camps were Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Romani and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and thousands of others of diverse nationalities who were intellectuals, ‘different’, or in some way came to the attention of the Nazis. Many of the people not exterminated in the gas chambers died as a result of forced labor, individual executions, infectious diseases, starvation, and medical experiments. Perhaps much of the death and suffering could have been avoided if the Allied Powers had believed the early reports of the atrocities at the camps; who would think that one group of people could be so horribly cruel to another? In any case, the Allies failed to act early on, leaving people suffering and dying at the hands of psychopaths.

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945; however, the

Top: Guard house at Auschwitz II
Bottom: Toilets in wooden barracks

majority of the population had already been marched west. Because of their physical condition and the terribly cold weather many died. The approximately 6,000 prisoners left at the camps were too sick to walk. As they evacuated, the Nazis tried to destroy evidence of their inhumanity, but the uses of the buildings were quite evident. Soviets also found warehouses with thousands of men’s suits and women’s dresses, tons of household and personal goods, and several tons of human hair.

Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of

Auschwitz I and II In 1947; it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. For more than 40 years it was directed by a former inmate and

Tracks and debarkation area

one of its founders, Kazimierz Smoleń. The remembrance areas are Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and the ‘debarkation-stop’ train ramp between Auschwitz and Birkenau. This museum is devoted to the memory of the murders and performs research into the Holocaust. The Polish government has decreed that: ‘The site of the former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz together with all the buildings and installations standing there is to be kept forever as a “Monument to the Martyrology of the Polish Nation and other Nations”’. Three other survivors have contributed to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust by writing books about their experiences: Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel. Their memoirs are still available to the public. Millions of people have visited the museum since its opening. In 2016 alone there were 2,053,000 visitors, and many of these tourists were from the US and from Germany. German children are taught about this period in their history and they are taught to abhor what happened; ugly facts are not hidden but used as lessons so that mistakes are not repeated. 

‘In today's world - torn by conflicts, increased feeling of insecurity and strengthening of populist tones in public discourse - it is necessary to re-listen to the darkest warnings from the past. [The] not-so-distant past of which the painful effects are still felt by witnesses living among us, their families and the next generations. In an era of such rapid changes in culture and civilization, we must again recognize the limits beyond which the madness of organized hatred and blindness may again escape out of any control’.

-- Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Memorial.

'Forever let this place be a cry of despair and warning to
humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and one-
half million men, women and children, mainly Jews from
various countries of Europe.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
1940 - 1945

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