I feel numb , don't know what to say . I feel compelled to meet a survivor and as soon as my children are old enough I will be taking them there.
I visited Auschwitz today
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It must be an amazingly awful place to visit, if that makes any sense. The treatment of other human beings and the clinical way death was dealt is horrendous. its good that you are going to teach you little ones about it when they are old enough.
I visited the imperial war museum a while ago and they had a Holocaust display, it is almost uncomprehendable how many lives ended in places like that.
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I visited the imperial war museum a while ago and they had a Holocaust display, it is almost uncomprehendable how many lives ended in places like that.
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I know how you feel and its hard to describe. I visited Mauthausen (large work camp in the south of Germany). Its chilling I think its an eperience we all should encounter though as I learnt a lot from it.
yeah was there in November, did you visit Birkenau Concentration camp as well, Auschwitz wasnt as id imagined it would be with the proper brick built barrack buildings and the gas chamber was smaller that i thought it would be, but Birkenau was just on a huge massive industrial scale, that one set of human beings even has the imagination to contemplate doing those things to their fellow man is a sobering and sombre thing. Maybe one day humanity will finally learn, although sadly i doubt it.
Funny how everyone says the same. I know some quite hard blokes who were dragged along by others to see it as they had no interest but still left with tears in their eyes.
In one sense it wasn't. I walked there on a bright summer morning, arriving at the gates of Birkenau first, it was sunny, the grass was long, birds sang and there were thousands of butterflies and other insects fluttering around. The scale of the place is hard to imagine without actually being there, you can enter the gatehouse building and look around, I was struck by how normal the building looked, there were mains points, light switches, the walls were painted in some depressing office color just like any old military building or barrack in the UK. The surviving sheds in the Birkenau camp would also be familiar to anyone who spent time in old army buildings, many still had the plumbing fixtures in place. A lot of logistics I thought at the time, to get all that stuff there and built, that took some planning, not planning by monsters or aliens, but by bureaucrats and civil servants.
The Auschwitz main camp already existed prior to the war, these are brick buildings and host the 'museum' proper. Different countries have a holocaust related exhibit in some of the buildings. In one room there was a chamber filled with human hair, that did it for me I think.
So there `are` birds. I hate it when people tell me dumb stuff that can be easily disproved.
An old friend told me that when he was a teen and travelling Germany by rail, (this must have been in the early 60s) he was poking at an old, damaged seat.
And found it stuffed with human hair (at least it looked like his hair, as he said, he had no way of proving it.)
An old friend told me that when he was a teen and travelling Germany by rail, (this must have been in the early 60s) he was poking at an old, damaged seat.
And found it stuffed with human hair (at least it looked like his hair, as he said, he had no way of proving it.)
I've never been but it is a place i feel i should visit..One day maybe.
The hair in the seat was probably horse hair.
The hair in the seat was probably horse hair.
I used to work with a Polish guy who was a POW at Birkenau and his job was to empty the gas chamber. It was only the fact he was a big strong farm lad and therefore a useful worker that kept him alive. He must have seen some horrific things.
Even in his eighties, he still walks 6 miles a day, saws and splits his firewood and has a great veg garden. When I worked with him he always carried a knife made out of a hacksaw blade in his boot.
Even in his eighties, he still walks 6 miles a day, saws and splits his firewood and has a great veg garden. When I worked with him he always carried a knife made out of a hacksaw blade in his boot.
I've only been to Anne Frank's, that was solemn enough.
One part of history that should never be forgotten.
One part of history that should never be forgotten.
I visited in 1994 when I was interailing. I understand the "no birds" and "numb" comments. There was a deep quietness about the place and frankly how can someone express feelings about what happened adequately without feeling numb. I can't say I enjoyed it but I'm glad I went. I saw the rooms full of shoes, hair and spectacles which must have been the tip of the iceberg. From the tiny starvation rooms to the half destroyed gas chambers it was horrific to see. 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.
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I never visited a concentrationcamp. My only experience with a place filled with horror was Ouradoer sur Glane in France. Nazis murdered an entire village by gathering men into houses and shooting them and finally gathering all the women and children into the church, locking it and setting it on fire....
The village hasn't been changed since.... after that I had my fill...
The village hasn't been changed since.... after that I had my fill...
I felt the same in Thailand when i went the the Bridge Over the River Kwai and the near by prisoner of war camp.
I travelled around Holland and Germany last lear for my summer break. Visited Bergen-Belson site. No original buildings are left and all that remains of the old camp is the mass grave mounds. There is now a massive new built museum/memorial with a very moving and informative display inside. I only stayed for a couple of hours as Swmbo and my son decided to give it a miss but me and my daughter(16 at the time) wanted to make the visit. Very sobering and found the mini cinematic display the most thought provoking.
