On the 27th March 2019, I had the great opportunity to go to Poland for the day as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s (HET) Lessons from Auschwitz project (LFA). During the actual day we visited Oświęcim, the Polish town of Auschwitz and the site of the Great Synagogue that was burnt down, Auschwitz-1 and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Before and after the visit HET held seminars to allow us to prepare for and reflect on the visit. As part of these, we had the opportunity to listen to the Holocaust survivor (Auschwitz-1 and Dachau) Zigi Shipper who’s Testimony can be found if you click on the link. Before listening to Zigi, I had also listened to the testimonies of Tomi Reichental (Bergen-Belsen survivor), Eva Schloss MBE and Mindu Hornick (Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors). As my generation will be the last to have the opportunity of hearing first-hand from Holocaust survivors, I find it imperative to do so. What astounded me about Zigi was his cheerful and cheeky personality, and his overwhelmingly positive outlook on the world. Whilst his retelling of his experiences in concentration camps was extremely harrowing ,yet crucial to listen to, it was his summarising comment that resounded most with me. He said that he would love to be able to meet Hitler (if he were still alive) not to attack or verbally abuse him but to be able to tell him all about his family – including daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – in order to show him that he did not succeed and that the Jewish population is still very much alive and prospering. Throughout my trip to Poland, I endeavoured to remember Zigi’s testimony and his outlook on the tragedy of the Holocaust.
After landing in Poland, we first visited the Polish town Oświęcim that was once the site of the Great Synogogue. The accompanying Rabbi Shaw told us of how it was destroyed by the Nazis on November 29, 1939, and its remains were demolished in their attempts to wipe out all traces of the Jewish race. Before the Nazi invasion, more than half of the towns population was Jewish and Jews had lived in Oświęcim for 400 years. It was incredibly poignant to see this before the concentration camps as it bought to life how expansive the Holocaust was and how effective it sometimes was because as of 2019 there are still no Jews living in the town they once had called home for centuries.
We visited the satellite camp Auschwitz-1 first, passing under the infamous and ironic “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work will set you free) sign. My immediate reaction was astonishment at how normal the camp looked, having been a previous cadet of the Air Training Corps the camp’s layout looked extremely similar to the various UK military bases I had visited, and it was very eerie to know that such monstrosities happened in a place so normal that had rows of orderly trees and almost constant birdsong. We were unable to see some of the most ‘famous’ exhibits of the piles of hair or gold teeth whilst we were there, however I saw many other incredibly moving displays. The hall of shoes, glass cabinets of spectacles and the swimming-pool sized container of cooking utensils helped me to almost comprehend the magnitude of the genocide. It is much easier to contemplate that each pair of shoes had an owner who was killed compared to the cold and distant statistics we are often faced with in modern dialogue about the Holocaust. These exhibits humanised and personalised the victims, which is often hard to do, and the items such as the cooking pots emphasised the extent to the tragedy as it clearly showed that the Jewish people did not know they were coming to die, they thought they would be able to cook and eat as normal at these camps.
In another block, also aimed to personalise the victims, there was a series of rooms that had a great effect on me. In one room videos of Jews laughing, praying and working were projected onto the walls to show that no matter what religious or other differences we have, we are all humans who act, think and feel the same. However, in the next rooms there were videos from Hitler’s speeches where he condemned the German Jewish population and clips of during and after Kristallnacht. This direct contrast of the victims and perpetrators clearly showed how hate can be so easily and corruptly propagated. In another room in the same block was ‘The World of the Children’ exhibit that consisted of replicated drawings (copied onto the walls of a bare room) that incarcerated children had made during the period 1939-45. At the start of the room they consisted of normal life, family meals, walks or a mother and child hugging, however further down the room they divisively changed. The drawings were now of starving people waiting in food lines, or people being herded and shot by machine gun toting soldiers. Some even showed piles of the dead waiting to be incinerated. We often forget about the experiences of young children caught up in the Holocaust as we think that they were simply killed straight away. However this exhibit changed that, it showed the extent to which children’s lives and creativity was corrupted, and it showed the events of the Holocaust through their pragmatic, unadulterated eyes. On the ground floor of this block was the book which contained the names and details of three quarters of the victims of the holocaust. Like the shoes, this was an apt way to show and try to understand the great number of those who died as the book took up an entire room, whilst only having size 8 or 9 text covering the back and front of each page.
We were fortunate enough to have an exemplary guide for our visit, who told us of stories of hope or miraculous events that occurred alongside the devastation. One of these was in relation to Block 10, where Nazi doctors conducted their experiments on men and women. She said: a Cypriot Jewish woman fell in love with a Cypriot Jewish man, and he said to her “if we survive this Hell, I want to marry you” to which the woman agreed, after saying how unlikely that was. Unfortunately soon after this promise was made she was taken to block 10 during the time when Nazis were testing to find the most effective way to administer mass female sterilisation. The woman was operated on by a Jewish doctor and when she woke up she immediately knew what had been done and asked the doctor “How could you do this to me? You’re a monster!” to which he simply replied “Remember me”. Fortunately, both the man and woman survived the Holocaust,so the man asked the woman “Will you marry me?” just as promised. However, she refused on multiple occasions because she knew she wouldn’t be able to start a family with him. Eventually she relented; they got married and a few years later she fell pregnant, and a few years after that she fell pregnant again. It turns out that the doctor did not actually perform the operation on her, as he would spare one in every few of his patients by performing a non-invasive procedure which the Nazis eventually found out about and executed him. Poignantly, this singular doctor’s sacrifice allowed that man and women to have a family, and they were blessed with multiple children, grandchildren and great-grand-children. Thus helping to preserve the Jewish race, defeating the Nazi’s aim.
Auschwitz-1 still has a rare, complete gas chamber which I visited and walked through. There is no way one can prepare for an event such as this and I had no idea what my reaction would be. As soon as I walked through the effective “cloakroom” and entered into the actual chamber, an overwhelmingly physical nauseous feeling came over me. It was as if my body couldn’t understand or cope with standing in the very spot where hundreds and hundreds of innocent people were murdered, and this wasn’t helped by the incinerators housed in the next room. Needless to say, I walked out of their literally gagging. In well-meant awkwardness, many of my friends and family asked me if I had “enjoyed my trip”, whilst enjoyment isn’t the right word, I understood the perspective that it seems alien to visit a place we know will make us upset. However, despite how horrible it was to stand in the gas chamber, I knew it was paramount that I do so. It is important to realise that we ,as visitors, are free to leave the chambers whenever we wish, whereas the victims couldn’t. No matter how many lessons, books or films there are centred around the Holocaust, actually going to a camp is the best way to learn and experience the tragedy. Often the things that are hardest to do are actually the most important and necessary.
HiSZtory 