I visited Auschwitz today

[sandbender]

"...It was small number of prisoner photos lined along a corridor that affected me most, as it made me understand these were real people and not just statistics..."

I remember those, they had a similar effect on me, this one in particular.

Also worth looking through is...

The Auschwitz Album

"...The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is a unique document and was donated to Yad Vashem by Lilly Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier.

The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates (not of the Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photos show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the Berehovo Ghetto, which itself was a collecting point for Jews from several other small towns..."

 

[Madi36]

Depressing and thrilling... I have polish origins and decided to make a tour tracing Holocaust in Krakow.
Well, it's not something pleasing but informative and interesting for sure. After first day, which we spend in the city center we started with

- former Jewish ghetto ( Podgorze) and concentration camps in Plaszow ( it's one of Krakow districts)
There is Eagle's Pharmacy where the only non- Jewish Pole was helping prisoners ( nowadays this square is called ,,Ghetto Heroes' Square). There are also remains of the ghetto wall.

- another important step was Schindler's Factory Museum. You can watch the movie based on real events http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108052/ and this place is former factory, where Nazi Oskar hired Jews, whom he later saved. It's a multimedia, modern place where you can feel like entering 2WW reality.

- another day was devoted to Auschwitz Concentration Camps. No words can describe this place

- in the end, to cheer a little, we had a lovely day in Kazimierz- former Jewish city ( since medieval times). There are plenty of cafes, restaurants, artists' shops, hand made stuff, antique stores... And some pre-war places. Definitely worth visiting.

In the end I can recommend our transfer company, which offered us our custom- made trip. We took some ideas from their standard offer, added something from our self and fitted everything with our schedule. http://krakowdirect.com/
We had private luxury car and best guides, so if anyone wants to involve into the subject of Holocaust and 2 WW in central Europe I recommend hiring professionals, who can inform you and won't miss anything.
Krakow is beautiful and interesting city. There are many things we would miss if you guides wouldn't show us.

 

[Dave]

What motivates someone to visit such a terrible place?

 

[RonW]

My oldest daughter was selected to go to that place next year with a selection from her school.
At least some will be taught the horrors previous generations have faced ad future generations are most likely to face again, judging by the way things are evolving.

 

[oldtimer]

My wife was given her middle name to commemorate the wife of a friend of her father's who was killed in the Holocaust. Our new granddaughter now bears the same name despite our son not knowing of this family story. You can imagine my wife's emotions. She looks toward to telling our granddaughter the story when she is old enough.

 

[SCOMAN]

Re the lack of birds.

i haven’t been to Auchwitz but a friend and I visited Stutthof near Gdańsk. There were no bird sounds. Set in a pine forest you’d expect it to be ‘busy’. Not a sound, freakish to be honest.

 

[Janne]

Going to a camp like Bergen Belsen or Auschwitz should be on every European schools agenda.
I have taken our son to several, both work camps and extermination camps. Plus many battle fields across Europe.

Just be aware that the camps are replicas, in some cases 'beautified'. All camps were destroyed, some just after liberation in -45, some after the Soviets used them to house German war prisoners and political dissidents.

They had to be destroyed due to the diseases ( cholera, typhus) that were in all the buildings and burial places.

 

[Wayland]

What motivates someone to visit such a terrible place?

Because it is the doom of men that they forget.

We face a time where the so called "Alt Right" are on the rise across Europe and the whole World.

Places like this remind us of the railroads that their hateful ideologies lead to.

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana.

 

[CLEM]

I forget who said this now it was either Huey Long or Winny Churchill “ When fascism returns it will be called anti-fascism”

 

[MartiniDave]

Never been to one yet, but I do intend to.

I do know that human hair was mixed with resin to make a material somewhere between plywood and micarta that was used to make stocks for some types of machine gun such as the MP44.

Dave

 

[daveO]

What motivates someone to visit such a terrible place?

Gift shop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxeCUkjiMVI

 

[Janne]

Are you sure?
Was it not Baekelite they used?

Never been to one yet, but I do intend to.

I do know that human hair was mixed with resin to make a material somewhere between plywood and micarta that was used to make stocks for some types of machine gun such as the MP44.

Dave

 

[Janne]

The first KZ camp I visited with my dad was in 71 or 72, Mauthausen in Austria. It was very difficult to find, as the locals denied the existence of the site. Eventually we found it by driving and walking around the village for the best part of the day.
Absolutely nothing left, only a few mounds of stones, bricks. Some hugely overgrown monuments, most toppled.
Took my son there about 5 years ago. Barracks, paths, guard barracks, crematorium, visitors center....


My dad lost a couple of friends and some of his teachers there.

 

[Dave]

Gift shop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxeCUkjiMVI

One of my on topic M&W favorite sketches.

[video=youtube;hn1VxaMEjRU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU[/video]

 

[jimbo75]

I felt the same when I visited Hamburg, and saw the chard remains of the church that was the only thing left standing after the firestorm holocaust the allies inflicted on innocent civilians.
such a waste of life.

 

[Janne]

Oh yes. Go and visit Cologne. The center looks medieval. Build after 1945. Street plan is different. My dad is born there, a stone throw from the cathedral. Not only the house does not exist, the entire street and all houses have been designed away.

When I go to South Africa, I plan to visit a couple concentration camps there too. I usually take a flower and place on a random grave when I visit a battle field or camp..
British kept the Boer women and children of the freedom fighters there to break their fighting spirit. Tens of thousands died.

We all have to learn from history. This way we might one day become a peaceful Earth.

All countries have done shameful deeds, all... It is important we do not judge for what happened in the past.

I felt the same when I visited Hamburg, and saw the chard remains of the church that was the only thing left standing after the firestorm holocaust the allies inflicted on innocent civilians.
such a waste of life.

 

[MartiniDave]

Hi Janne,

That's what I was told by an ex REME armourer during a range day back in the 1980's when I was handling and firing an MP44. The stock texture and appearance was very like a cross between Bakelite and plywood.
Of course, he may have got it wrong.
According to google the hair was used in the arming mechanism of some types of bomb, and for making socks for U-boat crews.

Dave

 

[Janne]

I have also read it was used in the U-boot mattresses.

Hair (animal including human) apparently is mold resistant.
The Swedish bed and mattress manufacturer still uses Horse hair in their products.

 

[bigbear]

Not been to a camp, but was very affected by the Topography of terror museum in Berlin, on the site of the old Gestapo HQ, left after an hour as I was close to tears with it all. Will go to a camp one day, it seems the least one can do at at a time when the Right is once more on the rise. As said above, the lessons of history....

 

[Janne]

Nazism = National Socialism.
Not the Right per se. A common misconception.
Nazis introduced a powerful State apparatus, total control of private enterprises ( production) and so on.
Not much different between those b-stards and the other b-stards, the Commies.

Hence the very close cooperation between them up until 1941. SSSR trained most of their pilots, tank crews, artillery.
After the war, many German officers took employment with the Soviet Armed Forces, as teachers and lecturers.

People tend to forget that the start of WW2 was when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and Commie Russia ( SSSR). Operation Barbarossa was a huge success because the Russian High Command did not believe the close buddy Germany would attack.


You seem to be a 'sensitive soul', (nothing wrong with that!) and I do not recommend you visit an Extermination Camp, just a POW Camp or a "normal' Concentration Camp.

Colditz POW camp might be of extra interest to you as a Brit. Very interesting. Fabulous surroundings with the possibility of spending time in a forest bushcrafting!

I hope this post is seen as History and not Politics, as both ideologies are dead (or on the last breaths) and will never be prominent again.