Sleepless in Auschwitz

A THIN cold drizzle marks the beginning of our tour of Auschwitz I, history’s most infamous Nazi extermination camp, just outside Krakow, Poland. It’s here, near the village of Oswiecim, (what the Germans called Auschwitz) that one of the most grisly events in human history took place. With us is a group of Jewish teenagers from Cape Town who will tour 10 Nazi Death Camps for their educational trip. I can’t help feeling this is a useful exercise for these teenagers. In India we still take students to the Taj Mahal and relate the legend of the hands of 20,000 artisans being hacked off as if it were a good thing!

		HIGHER GROUND
			• Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, now a peaceful memorial park, is a reminder of one of the most ghastly events of British rule—the brutal massacre of 400 unarmed people peacefully protesting the 1919 Rowlatt Act. • Hiroshima, Japan, was incinerated by the atomic bomb in 1945. With its monuments, museums and Atomic Bomb Dome, it’s now one of the world’s largest sites protesting nuclear warfare. • Ground Zero, New York. Though the memorial to history’s most dramatic terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001, is not yet ready, an estimated 3.6 million people visited this spot in 2002. That’s twice as many as went to the Twin Towers’ observation deck the preceding year.

After a 15-minute film about the liberation of the camp, Petra, our guide, describes what life was like in the concentration camp. During 1940-45 about 1.1 million people died here—mostly Jews, but also Poles, Gypsies, Russian POWs and other Europeans—from malnutrition, disease, brutal medical experiments and gassing. It’s impossible not to be completely appalled when you visit the exhibits in these barracks. ‘‘Everybody’s personal belongings were taken away on arrival,’’ says our guide as we move from room to room overflowing with personal belongings. I feel icy horror in the pit of my stomach. There is something particularly sinister about a huge pile of suitcases with people’s names on them, rooms full of prosthetics, tooth and hair brushes, eyeglasses and finally, for me, the most horrifying of all, a room full of human hair. Brown hair, black tufts, a blonde pony tail—7,000 kg of it lay scattered in an enormous mountain. And near the window lay a sample of the human haircloth ‘‘the Nazis made to line their winter jackets,’’ Petra explains. In another room are cans of Zyklon-B used to gas inmates ‘‘after which, gold tooth fillings, rings and hair were removed and their bodies incinerated,’’ continues our guide. There are images of shrunken inmates photographed like criminals, of numbers tattooed on their arms like branded cattle. Photographs taken when the camp was liberated by the advancing Soviet Army in 1945, show grown women tragically emaciated, less than 30 kg in weight. In the courtyard of Barrack 11, our guide points to the Wall of Death where 20,000 Polish political prisoners were executed. ‘‘Arbeit Macht Frei’’ (Work Brings Freedom) is emblazoned over the gates of Auschwitz, apparently placed there by the camp’s commandant Rudolf Höss in some sick attempt at irony. We then travel three kilometres away to Birkenau (Auschwitz II) which, unlike Auschwitz I, has been left just as it was found. The empty barracks, warehouses, and ruins of gas chambers and crematoria, are in some ways even more chilling than the museum at Auschwitz I. Climbing up to the watchtower we view the prison complex. It’s eerie to see the railway track coming into the camp, and in the distance, the electrified fence. Prisoners were offloaded at the platform, from cattle cars in which they were packed worse than sardines, without food, sanitation or knowledge of where they were headed. We walk though wooden barracks where prisoners were housed, sometimes eight to a single bunk bed. A gutter runs down the middle of the room—their toilet. Finally we see the International Memorial to the Victims of Auschwitz, a simple stone cenotaph.

The overcast sky and generally gloomy weather seem almost fitting for a day on which we seek to glimpse a very dark period of human history. While exiting the camp I pull my jacket closer, thinking of the thin, striped uniforms Auschwitz inmates wore even in winter. I’m overwhelmed with sadness and fury at the grotesque deeds that took place here. There are some who call visits like this ‘‘dark tourism’’, ‘‘morbid curiosity’’, even “unethical voyeurism”, but I disagree. Auschwitz is a story of what hate can do. It stands as a warning, a place for critical and truthful reflection on the lessons of history, genocide and war.