Left Czech Republic today. Had to change currency to Florint. We visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on the way to medieval Krakow where we would be staying for the night and had my first pub-crawl.
Auschwitz
First stop to Poland is Auschwitz.
Germans back in WWII considered Russians, Romanis, Poles and Jews sub-human. Hence the way they were treated in Auschwitz.
I can’t help my tears. It wasn’t the photos that did it for me. It was when I saw those thousands, countless cups, thermos, personal belongings collected from the war… sometimes, you would have one last possession that symbolises everything you own, your tradition, your memories, your culture, the very thread that connects you to where you came from, the shared rituals… and perhaps, that was all that’s left when all others, all loved ones were taken away… the last shred of evidence that you once existed with a normalcy in life, as a decent human being — and that’s finally taken away. Even now I think about it, my tears fall.
25 Kilograms
There was so much information to take. This is the one thing that stood out the most for me.
Imagine receiving a news that now you would be removed from your home. You would be transported somewhere in Poland. Auschwitz. You don’t know what to expect. You have no idea where that is, what it’s like. It was all so sudden.
And then you are told, all you could bring is 25kg of luggage.
That’s it.
Everything, generations of memories, generations of inheritance, your whole life — all packed into one suitcase.
25 kilograms.
No cyberspace that provides an extension of our mental space and evidence of physical reality. No Facebook to keep touch and connect with displaced families and friends. No credit cards. No cloud to store our history and access anytime anywhere.
25 kilograms.
What do you put into it when that’s all you’ve got that you could bring?
I saw those suitcases. They came from all over Europe. In the display, there were elegant, pretty ladies’heeled shoes. There were those who packed what they could in a rush, not knowing where they were headed.
After hours, and days of train ride they finally reach Auschwitz. And for those who survived the long ride, they then come to a cross road. A Nazi selects amongst the queue. As they take their turn, the Nazi gives a thumb up or a thumb down. Thumb down, you go right.
Thumb up you go left. You are then led to the various “horse stable turned housing” with almost non-existent sanitation. they still had hopes to live. Most were executed or died within the first two years.
Those who went right, they are marched 500 meters further… to take a bath they said. They were led to the gas chambers. Arhitecturally designed by the Germans for maximum efficiency at minimum cost to execute mass murders. It only takes 7 kgs of the pellets that turn to gas to kill around 700 people. It takes at least 27 degrees of heat to turn that solid pellet into gas. To create that heat all the captives were packed close together. Totally naked. They die of suffocation. It takes 20 minutes. The hairdressers and dentists were designated to dispose of the dead bodies. Hair is taken out and the Germans turn them into textile. Dentists pull out any gold in the teeth, and they are collected and melted and turned into gold bars.
The Germans don’t waste anything.
Didn’t take long before communism spread and the Cold War began after WWII. Another event in the story of Poles, from Hitler to Stalin. From WWII to the Velvet Revolution and the Global Financial Crisis of recent times. A totally different war. A different generation. A different story we still grapple with.
In Vino Veritas
In wine, the truth. I suppose vodka counts. Hungarians party hard and you’d have no hope beating them in a drinking contest. Joe, our Hungarian driver, after our pub crawl and a bit drunk, couldn’t help giving his sentiments on the war and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Germans persuaded the Hungarians to join them in WWII.
In his challenged English, Joe says yes it is bad, but so are so many wars that have happened. But others never have something like Auschwitz where you go through and re-experience the process over and over again — and then they receive some compensation, get money from it. Basically what he is saying is capitalizing on the bad experience, with a magnified and biased view of the victims when you would have an equally gruesome and scale of casualties throughout human history. They just don’t get the same level of attention. I agree.
I think we should equally pay as much attention to atrocities in recent times. It is the present that needs the airtime, something we can still do something about.
