Day 23 - "Forgive But Never Forget"

Hey everyone,

Today we are going over the Holocaust Museums that I went to in Dachau, Germany and Auschwitz, Poland.  As I hope everyone is at least vaguely aware, the Holocaust refers to the intentional attempts by the Nazis to eliminate not only the European Jewish population, but many other ethnic and social groups as well such as the Roma and people with disabilities, among others.  In total, over 6 million Jews and somewhere between 11 and 17 million people in total lost their lives due to this terrible chapter in human history.  Most of the pictures are of the structures and just some commentary, but a couple toward the end are a bit more graphic so just be aware as you go through the images.

Scott and I visited Dachau, which is about 20 or 30 minutes outside of Munich.  Dachau was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi's and served as the model for all of the one's to follow.  In total, over 200,000 people were interred here, with 2/3 being political prisoners and 1/3 being Jewish.  A little under 40,000 people lost their lives while this facility was active.

Auschwitz, arguably the most recognizable and notorious of the many concentration camp sites, was the site responsible for the deaths of over 1.1 million people, 90% of whom were Jewish.  Most of these were killed in the gas chambers using Zyklon B, a cyanide based poison.  Auschwitz was split into two separate camps, Auschwitz I, the original and smaller of the two camps, and Auschwitz II or Birkenau, the newer and many times larger site which killed and cremated 20,000 prisoners a day at one point.

Here's a comparison of both of the entryways to the prisons.  The top picture here is Dachau and the next one is Auschwitz I.  As you can see both of them have the perverse statement written in German:  "Arbeit macht frei" which means "Work brings freedom".

It's important to realize that most of the site that is seen for the tour is a small fraction of the actual facilities.  Large portions where destroyed by the Nazi's in order to cover up what they had been doing.  The hope was that the Allies would fail to see the extent of the crimes of war and against humanity that had been conducted.

It's hard to see, but these concrete outlines are all that is left of most of the Dachau facility.  In total there were 32 of these barracks, each at least 50 yards long and each filled beyond capacity with prisoners.  It took us 5-10 minutes to walk past all of the places where the building where.  The amount of people the camp could hold was immense, but as it turns out was nothing compared to the Auschwitz II which held over 100,000 people at once.  You'll see the size of the facility in a few pictures.

This is the entry gate to Auschwitz II.  If it looks familiar it's because Steven Spielberg used it in the movie Schindler's List. Looks innocent enough from the outside, but inside was beyond your worst nightmares.

Here's a shot of the barbed wire fencing that lined all of the Concentration Facilities.  While escapes occasionally happened, they were very difficult and few and far between.

For one, the prisoners were forced to work 10-12 hours of hard labor and given barely anything in the form of basic human necessities.  Food was in small supply and living conditions were beyond reprehensible, so most people were physically unable to try and leave.

Secondly, attempts at escape would often mean the punishment and possibly death of not only the person who tried to leave, but tens of others in the same bunker as a warning to everybody else.  Many choose almost certain death instead of putting others lives at immediate risk.

This is part of one side of the Auschwitz II facility.  Again, most of the facilities were destroyed by the Nazi's before the Allied liberation but we see where they once stood.  To get an idea of how much they tried to erase, we only stayed at this facility, which again held up to 100,000 prisoners at a time, for about 25 minutes.

This is Auschwitz I.  These facilities were already here before the camps began which is why they were made of brick.  In many of the camps, the prisoners were forced to build the barracks after the numbers of prisoners exceeded capacity.

This is the "Death Wall" at Auschwitz I.  Not everyone was sent to the gas chambers.  Many thousands were sent to a place just like this and shot. The gas chambers were designed to expedite the number of people who could be killed at a time.

These are the bedding conditions inside the barracks where the prisoners where forced to stay.  This one is Dachau.  They were similar looking at Auschwitz but in worse condition.  The roofs leaked, grown men and women were forced to sleep 2 to a twin bunk, and again, people were worked to the point of death so they were often unable to leave their beds to go to the bathroom, so you can imagine the living conditions.  Often there were barely any types of covers.  Furnace would not burn in the winter (remember, these are located in the Canadian latitudes) and the barracks would become greenhouses in summer.  If you were not immediately taken to the gas chambers and were forced to work, you were often just as likely to die of a disease such as Typhus, as you would be some other way.

This was a tough one to see.  These are the toilet facilities at Auschwitz II.  No privacy, no sanitation, just a hole in concrete along with 100 others right next to each other.  Prisoners were often forced to use the facilities at the same time during the work day so you can imagine what it was like in there.  Sadly, survivors said this was the best time of day, because often the German SS guards would not come in there due to the stench.  So this was really the only time you could talk freely to someone else.

This was the most difficult thing for me to see from both places.  This is a glass case about 2-3 meters wide and 20 meters long.  It's hard to fully grasp what this is, but all that you see inside is the shorn off human hair of 40,000 of the female prisoners who were forced into the camps.  I don't remember the number but I know it's at least 2 tons in weight. To see this and to see it on this scale was when you really felt the magnitude of the atrocities that were committed here.  This is only 5% of the number of prisoners who came through the Auschwitz gates. They had several other cases just like this one filled with glasses, pairs of shoes, prosthetics, suitcases with the names on them, and children's toys.    Some estimates put the number of murdered children at 1.5 million during the Holocaust.  Most of them were taken off the train and immediately sent to the gas chambers.  The rest, especially twins and triplets, were used for medical testing before being killed.

These are two of crematoriums that were actually used to burn the bodies of the murdered victims at Dachau.  To realize that at some point actual people were put in these devices is hard to believe.  To realize that the SS made other prisoners take the bodies of their former colleagues from the execution grounds and load them onto the platforms is equally as disturbing.

While not fun, I think it was important to go see these sites.  It's easy to gloss over what really happened when you're at a desk in some classroom 6,000 miles away and 50 years after the fact.  To see it up close helps to make sure you fully get what happened.  "Those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it" which is why the phrase always associated with the Holocaust is "Forgive but Never Forget".  We shouldn't live in the past but we'd be wise to heed it's lessons.

Unfortunately, the world is still experiencing mass genocide, even today.  Since this tragedy several other outbreaks have occurred all over in places like Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Darfur.  Millions more have died needlessly and unless it's stopped millions more are doomed to follow in their footsteps.  It's everybody's problem, and if nothing else, I hope this might make everyone who reads this a little more aware or maybe think what it would be like if it was you or a loved one instead some stranger from a far away land.  Hope everyone is doing ok and thanks for reading.  See you next time. . .