I don’t intend on posting many pictures of our visit to Auschwitz. Looking through them, I’ve realized that you cannot possibly get a sense of what it was like through images. They don’t do the unimaginable tragedy justice. I’ve talked with a few other photographers on this trip, and we’ve decided to be very selective about the pictures we post from that day. Most would be from the outside of the camps.
We visited two of the three camps collectively known as Auschwitz. First was Auschwitz II Birkenau, the death camp. This is the camp that most people think of when talking about Auschwitz. Visiting it was one of the most difficult moments of my life. We walked through the iconic gates and I stood in horror looking at the rows and rows of barracks surrounding me. It was a “perfect”, hot, sunny day. Gabriel led us through the barracks and train tracks, telling us stories of a few individual victims. We ended the morning at the gas chambers and crematoriums. The Nazi’s collapsed them before they fled to cover up their crimes, but you can still clearly see what they were. Gabriel talked us through the horrific details (that I’m not going to go into) of the Nazi’s process of mass extermination. From there we walked to a small memorial with plaques in every language spoken by those murdered at Auschwitz II Birkenau.
This is the moment I completely lost it. It’s been said that the survivors of this terrible place lost their faith in God, and their faith in mankind. It was then that I understood why. It was then that i started to question my own faith in God, and my own faith in humanity. I wrote in my journal when we got on the bus for lunch: “I woke up this morning knowing in my heart that mankind is essentially good (but corruptible by Satan)… by 1pm I don’t think I can honestly believe that any more.” What I was thinking terrified me. I was questioning my faith in humanity, but I was also questioning my faith in God. I’ve worked a lot of this out in the days following Auschwitz, but it is still something that is deeply troubling me. The question that inevitably comes from visiting this place is “where was God??”
After a traditional Polish lunch, we drove to Auschwitz I. This is the concentration camp that existed long before the extermination camp was built. I didn’t think this part could be any more difficult than my morning at Birkenau, but I was wrong. We were lead around my Gabriel’s friend that only spoke German (Gabe translated). Since he is the only German speaking tour guide there, he does a lot of tours for former guards and Germans with family stories. Auschwitz I has all of the belongings that the Nazi’s took from the Jews. There were two things I saw in the course of ten minutes that I will never, ever forget. They will honestly haunt me until the day I die. The first sight was the seven tons of human hair. Just before (or sometimes just after) they exterminated the Jews, the Nazi’s would shave their heads. The hair was sold to industries in Germany to make carpet and socks… appalling. When the Nazis fled the camp in 1945, they left bags and bags of it. The hair that started off all different colors has now turned either brown or grey. Tragically, it is also quickly decaying. Within twenty years it will all be dust. The second sight that will haunt me was around 50,000 shoes (25k pairs) in one room, placed in small mountain sized piles on both sides. The real shock came when we were told that these represented only 4% of the victims of Auschwitz I and II. It hit me like a train the enormous scale of this genocide.
The day I visited Auschwitz will be a day I will never forget. 30 September 2011 will always be in my mind. It was one of the most difficult and challenging days of my life, but I have already grown from it. Visiting that place is something everybody needs to do once in their lifetimes. It’s one thing to see pictures and video, it’s completely different seeing it in person. There is so much more that I’ve gotten from that one day, it wouldn’t be possible to ever explain it all. Maybe I’ll post more after I’ve processed this over some time. I don’t think I’ll ever stop processing that place.
