"The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" -Trips to Terezín, Auschwitz and Auschwitz II: Birkenau (Assignment #8, Category #9)

    A handful of our lectures have focused on Judaism and the Holocaust. The professors have presented me with a much rawer, uncensored version of antisemitism. The fact that over five million people were murdered by a single group of people following one man's ideology is incomprehensible. Hitler managed to get a large group of people behind his "Final Solution". How was it possible to brainwash an entire country into killing a group of people? Historians will never know. We can not think of the Holocaust as a thing from the past, it must be remember and serve as a warning to all. I was able to gain a new emotional awareness of the Holocaust by visiting three different concentration camps: Terezín ,in the Czech Republic, and Auschwitz I and II, in Poland. This blog post may be graphic, but it does not even come close to the real horror the victims felt while being held prisoner in the concentration camps.
     "Arbeit Macht Frei" translates to "Work makes you free" and was a common phrase among the three camps. Jews and other prisoners were forced to complete twelve hour work days in harsh conditions with malnutrition. The saying was not meant to give false hope to prisoner; rather, it means that the prisoners will die of exhaustion and achieve spiritual freedom.

"Work makes you free" signs at Auschwitz I and Terezin

     Terezín was a small fortress of a town occupied by Nazis and turned into a Jewish ghetto and concentration camp. The already existing fortresses meant that Nazis did not have to build a structure.  The main fortress served as a Jewish ghetto while the small fortress served as a prioson.The Nazis used Terezín as a "model" camp. They convinced the international Red Cross that they were doing the Jews a favor by providing them a nice little town where the could live in "freedom." Nazis forced prisoners to put on a show or be killed. Kids were allowed to be "educated" and people played sports. This show of happiness kept the Red Cross from further investigating other Nazi camps. They even canceled their visit to Auschwitz. In the camp. 1500 Jews were prisoners and over 500 of them were tortured to death. The others were transported to other camps or remained in the camp. The total number of prisoners who passed through the camp amounts to over 32,000 people.
      The group cells of the old camp each housed 100 prisoners(top right). While these cells were crammed full of prisoners, nothing compares to the cell reserved for Jewish prisoners. This cell felt crowded with our tour group of 25, but Nazis often forced 60 Jews into the tiny space(middle right). Jews were forced to sleep standing up, had no toilet, and were given a tiny hole to receive fresh air(bottom right). We took a walk through the "Execution Tunnel" to reach the other side of the camp. This tunnel was walked by prisoners facing execution. It was dark, damp, and dreary. The experience was almost too much for me to handle. I was walking the same path hundreds walked before, but while I was able to continue my day prisoners saw their last glimpse of life. After regaining my mental stability, our group walked to the new section of the camp. Nazis added on to the camp by adding new group and solitary cells. The new group cells were used to house 400-600 prisoners at a time. The 125 solitary cells were used to house 15 prisoners in one cell. Imagine 15 people in a space barely large enough for two twin beds.
     Outside of the Terezín camp, we visited a former school house for children of the ghetto. The museum showed how children lived in the ghetto and general history of the two fortresses. The walls of the first floor of the building were covered with the names of children imprisoned in Terezín and other camps. Original drawings and poems of the children were displayed. The following poem really made my heart ache. It shows that children knew all too well of their fate in the ghetto.

"A little garden

Fragrant and full of roses,

The path is narrow,

And a little boy walks along it,

A little boy, a sweet boy,

Like that growing blossom,

When the blossom comes to bloom,

The little boy will be no more."

         The records kept by Nazis claim that a total of 33, 210 lives were taken in the Terezín Ghetto between November 24, 1941 and August 20, 1944. 

Infectious diseases: 3,045

Malignant tumors: 534

Glandular and metabolism disease: 155

Respiratory diseases: 6,511

Digestive tract disease: 9.159

Blood and Heart disease: 4,720

Nervous system diseases: 1,630

Urinary Tract infections and STDs: 513

Miscellaneous: 103

Old age: 6,530

Suicide: 259

Accidents: 51

     Terezin alone shows the damage and destruction of the Nazi regime, but the most infamous symbol of the Nazi rule is Auschwitz. Throughout my schooling, I have learned again and again of the horrors of Auschwitz. I had thought that I had mentally prepared myself for what I was going to see, but honestly it was impossible. The area was full of sorrow. Nothing in my life could ever compare to the hardships these prisoners faced every day. I walked the same paths prisoners walked everyday. Except while I was learning about history, these people were fighting to survive. 

     Auschwitz I housed 20,000 prisoners. The Nazis were so "good" at deception they got people to buy their own train tickets to Auschwitz. People blindly purchased their tickets to death. Transports were done in cattle carts. 80 people with 25 kilos of luggage each were crammed into a single cart

Original cattle cart used for transport

without food or water or toilets. Transports lasted 7-10 days and few survived the trip. When transports of prisoners came, their fate was determined by one physician. He decided who had a "chance" and who should be eliminated immediately. Only 25% were seen as helpful to the Nazis and allowed into the camp. Among those who never stepped foot in the camp are the elderly, children, and the mentally ill. All belongings brought by prisoners were sorted and kept in buildings at Auschwitz II: Birkenau. Rooms were filled with the prisoners personal belongings. Displays showed tens of thousands of pans, shoes, glasses, hairbrushes, and luggage. One display showed two tons of human hair, shaved off of 40,000 dead women. (All murdered prisoners were shaved. This is what is left of the evidence.) Nazis sold this hair to textile companies for carpets and used it as filler in mattresses. This was one of the worst things to see at the camp. This hair is all that remains of 40,000 women. These women were daughters, mothers, wives, and friends. Their lives were stolen from them.

     Another block was dedicated to the living conditions of Auschwitz. Prisoners were given around 250 calories worth of food each day. This number was carefully calculated by Nazis to give prisoners 2-3 months to live. This allowed for turn over rates in the camp and kept the workers fresh. Breakfast was coffee like water, lunch was rotten vegetables and supper was a black piece of bread and a smidge of cheese or jam. The hospital at the camp existed not to help prisoners but to conduct medical experiments. Many attempts at prisoner sterilization occurred in the hospital. The most known physician of the camp was Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. He had spent much of his time performing experiments on identical twins and dwarfs.

The Execution area

     The last block we visited was the prison with in the prison. It contained three different methods of torture: suffocation, starvation, and standing. Cell 18 was the starvation cell where prisoners were housed without food until they died. One polish priest, St. Maximillian Kolbe, sacrificed himself in place of a man with a family that was still alive. The priest was placed in a starvation cell where he survived for days until the Nazis killed him. Cell 20 was a suffocation cell where forty people would be shoved into a room without a fresh air source until they died. The last cell is 22, the standing cell. Theses cells were so small the only way to enter it was through a small hole at the bottom of the wall.Prisoners would be crammed into the tiny space and forced to stand until the work day started. This process was repeated until the prisoners died of exhaustion. Outside of this block is a small courtyard used for executions. The prisoners executed here were used as examples to the other prisoners. Often, other prisoners only heard the screams because Nazis boarded the nearby windows. Everyone was subject to execution here, even small children and babies. Our guide stated that Nazi did not "waste" bullets on the children and babies, they simply smashed their heads against the wall. This was often done with the family watching.  

     Auschwitz I had a gas chamber used for executions. 1,000 prisoners were instructed to strip and remember where their clothes were. They then piled into a dark empty room where they realized no shower was going to happen. 12 cans of zyklon B were dropped in through the chimney. 20 minutes was all it took to kill 1,000 people. The weak died first and people piled on top of each other with the strongest climbing the mound of bodies for a breath of fresh air from the chimney. After another 30 minutes, prisoners were sent in to drag the bodies to the crematorium. It took 24 hours to cremate 340 people. This meant three days for Nazis to dispose of evidence. ( By the way, disposing of the evidence meant using human ashes as fertilizer and dumping them into rivers.) This gas chamber was too inefficient for the Nazi's goal and prompted the creation of Birkenau where 1,500 bodies could be cremated at once.

     Birkenau was even worse then Auschwitz. The camp was four times bigger and consisted of wooden buildings with no insulation. Birkenau was an extermination camp that housed 200,000 prisoners at a time.Three toilet rooms existed for every 8,000 prisoners giving prisoners 30 seconds to use the bathroom only twice a day. Survivors claim that being employed as a

Top right: entrance to Birkenau, Top left: memorial to victims,
Bottom right: pond with ashes Bottom Left: remnants of chamber

bathroom cleaner was the best job you could have at the camp. They scooped sewage out of the cement structures all day, but they were allowed a certain amount of freedom. They could use the bathroom whenever they wished, and Nazis rarely stepped foot in the building so they could relax. Birkenau housed multiple gas chambers much larger than the ones at Auschwitz and much more efficient. Prisoners were sent to take a shower and were never seen again. Other prisoners were sent in to dispose of the bodies by cremation. The ashes were then thrown into the pond next to the chamber. This pond still exists today and now serves as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Every 2 months this group of prisoners was changed. The previous group was murdered and the next group started by disposing of the previous groups bodies The Nazis did this as a precautionary measure. At the end of the war, all gas chambers at Birkenau were destroyed as a final attempt to destroy evidence of the Nazi's crime against humanity.

     Of all three Auschwitz camps, over a million and a half people were murdered. 90% of that 1.5 million people were Jews. A memorial was created between the two main gas chambers of Birkenau. It consists of twenty-three slabs with the same saying in twenty-three different languages. Each language is representative of all victims. I believe the memorial says it all. The slab says:

"Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity,

where the Nazis murdered about one and half million men, women, 

and children, and mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.

Auschwitz - Birkenau

1940-1945"