Visit Auschwitz and Birkenau and Learn About the Holocaust
Excerpt from the book Single White Female Backpacker from the Teresa the Traveler Series.
Auschwitz
The following day was Independence Day in Poland and Remembrance Day in Canada so, to honor the soldiers of WWII, I decide to book a tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau, two former concentration camps about 40-minutes from Krakow. The majority of Jews who remained in Krakow ended up in one of these camps never to be seen again. They were either killed in the gas chambers or died as a result of the inhumane living conditions.
The site was bustling with visitors with the same idea; it was nice to see so many people out paying their respects. We were sent into the facility with an English speaking tour guide who shared stories of the institution’s horrific past. But despite how informative as she was, I soon fell away from the group so I could wander around alone and feel the energy of the place.
The following day was Independence Day in Poland and Remembrance Day in Canada so, to honor the soldiers of WWII, I decide to book a tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau, two former concentration camps about 40-minutes from Krakow. The majority of Jews who remained in Krakow ended up in one of these camps never to be seen again. They were either killed in the gas chambers or died as a result of the inhumane living conditions.
The site was bustling with visitors with the same idea; it was nice to see so many people out paying their respects. We were sent into the facility with an English speaking tour guide who shared stories of the institution’s horrific past. But despite how informative as she was, I soon fell away from the group so I could wander around alone and feel the energy of the place.
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Build from an old Polish Army barracks, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi Concentration Camps. It received its first prisoners, 728 Polish resistance fighters, on June 14th 1940 with Soviet prisoners of war soon to follow. They were later joined by homosexuals and criminals from Germany, and then Jews.
I walked through the infamous gate topped by the German sign that reads ARBEIT MACHT FREI which translated into English means WORK MAKES ONE FREE. Near the entrance was the area where the prisoner orchestra once played. A sign explained how every morning prisoners on their way to work to do construction or farming would march by the orchestra. The rhythm helped the prisoners march in time making it easier for the guards to count them as they passed. Nearby, a different sign told the story of the Soviet prisoners who were forced to build and expand the camp. Many died as a result of the poor and inhumane working conditions. They were tortured and abused and deprived the appropriate clothing or footwear to keep them warm during the cold season. Despite the fact that the German army had set a ration of 2,200 calories per day for working Soviet prisoners, many only received 700 causing them to starve to death within a few weeks. By January of 1942, only a few hundred of the 10,000 Soviet POW’s brought to Auschwitz were still alive. By February 1942, two million of the 3.3 million Soviet soldiers in German custody had died from starvation, exposure, disease, or were shot. Stalin had declared there were no Soviet prisoners of war only “betrayers of the motherland,” and as a result, Soviet prisoners were treated with distain by their compatriots. Red Army soldiers liberating the concentration camps raped female Soviet prisoners calling them whores. According to a BBC interview, Tatiana Nanieva, was captured by the Germans when she was a 22-year old nurse working in a Soviet military hospital. While imprisoned in a concentration camp, she lived for the day the Red Army would liberate the camp. When that day arrived she was accused of betraying the motherland and sentenced to six years hard labor and another three years in exile. The BBC film crew found her living in Kiev in a run-down flat dying of bone disease. She didn’t even have enough money to pay for her own funeral so the film crew pooled their money to pay for it. I continued down the road until I came to the gallows where prisoners were publicly hung as a way of intimidating other prisoners. Beside it stood a small wooden shack once used by the guards to keep warm on cold days during roll call. The prisoners did not get the same luxury often forced to stand at attention for hours in the rain, cold or heat waiting for the guards to complete their count. If the guards miscounted or suspected a prisoner was missing they would make the prisoners remain at attention for up to 12 hours. At least 802 prisoners attempted to escape but only 144 were successful. A common punishment for attempted escape was death by starvation. If the escape was successful, the SS would choose 10 random inmates from the escapees block and starve them to death. To further deter inmates from escaping, families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and brought to Auschwitz where they were prominently displayed. The most famous escape occurred on June 20, 1942 when Eugeniusz Bendera, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart dressed up as members of the SS and drove a car belonging to camp commandant Rudolf Hoss out the main gate. They were never recaptured. |
The infamous gate topped by the German sign that reads ARBEIT MACHT FREI which translated into English means WORK MAKES ONE FREE.
Prisoners at Auschwitz had to stand at attention by this shack for role call sometimes for hours at a time in the winter while the guards stayed warm in the shack
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Cell Block 11
I noticed people lining up to enter one of the buildings so, figuring there must be something important inside, I joined them. It was the infamous Block 11, a prison within the prison where prisoners accused of not following camps rules, trying to escape or communicating with the outside world were kept. The basement contained a series of small dark cells where prisoners starved to death. I stopped at cell No. 18 where Father Kolbe died, and my eyes welled up with tears after reading the story of this brave man. Arrested by the Gestapo on February 17, 1941, this Polish Franciscan friar was charged with hiding 2,000 Jew and broadcasting reports over the radio condemning the activities of the Nazis. In July of the same year, a man from his cell block had disappeared prompting the SS to choose ten random inmates to die. When inmate Franciszek Gajownicze’s name was called out he pleaded for his life wanting to return to his family one day. The courageous Father Kolbe volunteered to take his place. |
Also located in the basement are 4 standing cells measuring 3ft square where prisoners, sometimes up to 4 or 5 in one cell, were forced to spend the night without toilet facilities. Some were kept in these cells for up to 12 nights and were still expected to work during the day like everyone else. It was also in this building where on September 3, 1941, 600 Russian POW’s and 250 ill Polish prisoners were put to death, in cell number 27, during an experiment with poisonous Zyklon B gas. The window wells were sealed with packing dirt and the prisoners were shoved inside then Zyklon-B crystals were thrown through and the door was quickly shut. Testing had been done in previous months to determine how much of the deadly substance was required to kill a room full of people.
According to the book Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, edited by Israel Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, a report by the prisoner underground reported that 600 Soviet prisoners and 200 Poles were also gassed in Block 11 on the 5th and 6th of September, 1941.
The success of these experiments led to the construction of the gas chambers where countless people met their demise. I took a moment to wipe the tears from my eyes after leaving the building. How can people possible deny that these atrocities took place?
According to the book Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, edited by Israel Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, a report by the prisoner underground reported that 600 Soviet prisoners and 200 Poles were also gassed in Block 11 on the 5th and 6th of September, 1941.
The success of these experiments led to the construction of the gas chambers where countless people met their demise. I took a moment to wipe the tears from my eyes after leaving the building. How can people possible deny that these atrocities took place?
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The Black Wall
As I walked from Block 11 towards Block 10, I noticed some flowers and candles forming a shrine in front of a wall. Visitors were asked to remain quiet in the area around what I learned was the Black Wall. This removable wall, with its sides angled towards the center was constructed out of logs covered in cork and painted black. Its purpose was to protect the brick wall behind it from bullets holes. Mainly Polish political prisoners, after being convicted by the Gestapo Summary Court were executed here by the SS. These prisoners were not even registered as inmates. Upon arrival at camp they stayed in the dorm rooms of Block 11 while awaiting trial in a courtroom located in the same building. After inevitably being found guilty, they were taken to a washroom and ordered to strip naked then brought to the wall in groups of three and executed with one shot to the neck at close range. It is estimated that around 20,000 people, including inmates engaging in resistance activities inside the camp, were executed at the Black Wall. |
The wall on display at Auschwitz is a reconstruction of the actual Black Wall. Most leaders of the 20th century have placed wreaths of flowers in front of the wall to grieve the victims killed here by the Nazis.
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Auschwitz was protected by an electric fence so the prisoners could not escape
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The Gallows and Gas Chambers
My final stop was at the gallows where former Camp Commandant Rudolph Hoss met the Grim Reaper. Beside the gallows was the crematorium and gas chamber. By July of 1942, the SS divided all incoming Jews into two groups. Those deemed fit to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp and the rest were sent to the left and immediately brought into the gas chambers. The group selected to die consisted mainly of children, women with children, the elderly and those who, upon a superficial inspection of an SS doctor, were deemed not completely fit. The people in the left line were told they were going to have a shower and get deloused. After undressing, they were escorted into the gas chamber where the guards would lock the doors and deposit Zyklon B pellets (which produced cyanide gas) through holes in the roof or side windows. Prisoners called Sonderkommandos had the most gruesome job in the camp. They were tasked with removing the bodies from the gas chamber, cutting off hair and removing any gold teeth, then cremating the bodies. The job did however come with perks. Because the Germans needed the Sonderkommandos to remain physically strong in order to perform their tasks, they enjoyed better living conditions than the other inmates. Not only did they sleep in their own camp that resembled a normal human dwelling, they were also allowed to keep various goods such as food, medicines and cigarettes brought by those who were sent to the gas chambers. They were also not subject to the same random arbitrary killings by guards that ordinary inmates faced. However, because they knew what the Nazis were really up to, they were isolated from the other inmates and often sent to the gas chambers themselves and replaced by a new batch whose first task was to dispose of their predecessor’s corpses. Out of the several thousand Sonderkommandos it is believed that fewer than 20 survived until liberation to give testimony. However, buried and hidden accounts by those who didn’t make it, were later found at some of the camps. In his affidavit at the Nuremburg trials of 1946, Rudolf Höss wrote “We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were taking place at Auschwitz”. The former camp commandant also explained how 10,000 people were killed in one day. “Technically [it] wasn't so hard – it would not have been hard to exterminate even greater numbers... The killing itself took the least time. You could dispose of 2,000 head in half an hour, but it was the burning that took all the time. The killing was easy; you didn't even need guards to drive them into the chambers; they just went in expecting to take showers and, instead of water, we turned on poison gas. The whole thing went very quickly”. I never made it inside the crematorium and the gas chambers because my time had run out and I had to meet my tour group in the parking lot. Perhaps it was a good thing. I am not sure if I could have handled the sight of the ovens where so many innocent men, women and children were turned to ashes. I was already overcome with grief. |
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Birkenau
Everyone from our group got on the bus and we drove to Birkanau, a sub camp of Auschwitz. I had no idea that Auschwitz was actually a network of concentration and extermination camps. Auschwitz I was main camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the extermination camp, Auschwitz III-Monowitz was a labor camp and there were 40 additional satellite camps that housed several dozen to several thousand prisoners.
Construction on Birenau began in October of 1941 in an effort to ease congestion at the main camp. Larger than Auschwitz, it was originally meant to house prisoners of war but was later transformed into a facility for the extermination of Jewish prisoners, in accordance to Hitler’s Final Solution. The first gas chamber at Birkenau, called “The Little Red House”, was a brick cottage converted into a gas chamber by tearing apart the inside and bricking up the walls. A few weeks later it was joined by “The Little White House”. By 1943, the Nazi killing machine had become more sophisticated and, in an effort to increase the gassing capacity of the camp, Crematorium II was converted into a killing factory.
Everyone from our group got on the bus and we drove to Birkanau, a sub camp of Auschwitz. I had no idea that Auschwitz was actually a network of concentration and extermination camps. Auschwitz I was main camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the extermination camp, Auschwitz III-Monowitz was a labor camp and there were 40 additional satellite camps that housed several dozen to several thousand prisoners.
Construction on Birenau began in October of 1941 in an effort to ease congestion at the main camp. Larger than Auschwitz, it was originally meant to house prisoners of war but was later transformed into a facility for the extermination of Jewish prisoners, in accordance to Hitler’s Final Solution. The first gas chamber at Birkenau, called “The Little Red House”, was a brick cottage converted into a gas chamber by tearing apart the inside and bricking up the walls. A few weeks later it was joined by “The Little White House”. By 1943, the Nazi killing machine had become more sophisticated and, in an effort to increase the gassing capacity of the camp, Crematorium II was converted into a killing factory.
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A gas-tight door was added on to the morgues and vents were installed for depositing the Zyklon B along with ventilation equipment to remove the gas. Three more crematorium-gas chambers were built shortly afterwards and, during full operation, over 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day. These facilities operated at full capacity from April to July of 1944 during the massacre of the Hungarian Jews, when 475,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz.
We got off the bus and walked to the railroad tracks in front of the main building. I recognized the scene from the movie Schindler’s List and from countless pictures of the Holocaust. This was the end of the line both literally and figuratively. Cattle cars busting with Jews stopped to unload their human cargo. Those who hadn’t died in transit would most likely be exterminated shortly after their arrival. The energy was as thick as it was in cell block 11. Death and suffering seemed to linger in the air. Our guide told us the story of how the Soviet prisoners who were forced to build the camp lived in the worst conditions imaginable. They were not supplied with proper attire to survive the winter and many died as a result of the poor working and living conditions. In his memoirs, Rudolf Höss wrote, “I myself came across a Russian lying between piles of bricks, whose body had been torn open and the liver removed. They would beat each other to death for food.” Canada Knowing that I was from Canada, our guide then shared the disturbing story of what Canada meant in the Auschwitz camps. The gold teeth and possessions of those sent to the gas chambers were taken by the SS and sorted in an area called Canada. Before the war, many Polish immigrants, who had moved to Canada, sent gifts back to their friends and families. Canada became a term used when viewing a fine gift. Mostly women prisoners worked in Canada and it was a sought after job because they were allowed to grow their hair long and steel extra belongings and food as they sifted through the goods. The chance of survival was higher for these women than women in the general inmate population, not only because the work was inside and they were protected from the elements, but because they often developed relationships with the German guards and were not beaten or randomly killed. |
Birkeneau was part of Auschwitz and the place where most of the Jews were put in the gas chambers and creamated in large ovens
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Such was the case with Helena Citrónová, a Slovakian Jewish survivor. Realizing her best chance of surviving was to work in Canada, she took the uniform of a woman who worked in Canada and had just died then snuck in to sort clothes. She was caught by the Kapo who told her she would be punished when she returned to camp. That same day happened to be the birthday of the SS guard who supervised the sorting area and when asked if anyone could sing for him, it was revealed that Helena had a beautiful voice. She was asked to perform for Franz Wunsch who, upon hearing her lovely voice, became smitten requesting that she return to work in Canada the following day.At first she felt she would rather be dead than be with an SS man but as time went on Wunsch continued to treat her with kindness, leaving cookies for her and even going as far as delivering her love note – a huge risk for him since relationships between Germans and Jews were forbidden. She eventually began to relent but it wasn’t until Wunsch saved the life of Helena’s sister that she knew his love for her was real. Helena heard that her sister had arrived in Auschwitz with her two young children and they were being sent to the crematorium.
Up to four inmates slept on one bunk and up to 1000 inmates shared one barrack. The inmates at Birkenau were given a fourth of the space allotted for inmates in other German concentration camps because this camp was for originally designed for Soviet POW’s whom the Nazi’s considered sub-human.
Prisoners were forced to clean the concrete toilets out by hand.
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In an effort to save them, Helena ran to the crematorium. Wunsch learned of Helena’s actions and ran to the crematorium telling the other SS men that she was a good worker, caught up to her and beat her in front of the other guards - an act that most likely saved her life. He asked for the name of her sister then ran to the crematorium to save Rozinka claiming she also worked for him in Canada. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do for her children – it was Nazi policy to send all children to the gas chambers. Helena and her sister both survived Auschwitz but Helena and Wunsch did not continue their relationship after the camp was liberated. However, a few years later Helena testified on his behalf at his war crimes trial.
Bunkers and Bathrooms Since we were running late, due to all of the tourists descending on Auschwitz that day, we had to cut our tour short. Our last stop was at the barracks where we saw a typical bunker where prisoners slept and next to it was a typical washhouse. They were little more than a bunch of horse stables with a small fireplace in the middle and a bunch of wooden bunk beds where prisoners were forced to sleep four people to one bunk. Hundreds of prisoners lived in each bunk house with few washhouses, none of which had plumbing. Prisoners were forced to clean feces out each day by hand. Visiting Auschwitz brought the Holocaust to life for me in a way that books and movies never could. It also gave me a new appreciation for the allied soldiers who risked their lives to stop the Nazi Death machine and prevent them from the complete genocide of the Jewish people. This was one Remembrance Day I would never forget. I took a moment of silence to remember our fallen soldiers before boarding the bus and returning to Krakow. For tips on visiting Europe CLICK HERE
For general travel tips on what to pack and how to plan ahead CLICK HERE For tips on travelling on a budget CLICK HERE |
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Where I Stayed...
Hotel Jan Ul. Grodzka 11, 31-006 Krakow, Poland Tel: 012 430-19-69 Tel: 012 431-23-89 Email: [email protected] Hotel Jan is a nice 3-star hotel located right in the old city. Price includes breakfast. |
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