A somber visit to Auschwitz

It’s hard to express what one feels visiting this area, visiting Auschwitz is emotional. Even though I know the history of it well, considering history, in particular World War II, was always one of my favourite subjects, being there makes its significance hit home property.

The trip from Bratislava was longer than expected as out checks stated it was about 3½-hours or so, but it took us almost 4 hours to get there. We managed to secure a guided tour and as we had some spare time, we grabbed something to eat in the cafeteria. We weren’t really hungry butdecided that we had to eat something before the 3-hour tour got started.

The guided tour starts of by watching a movie about liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians and the Red Army. At the end of the movie, our tour started with us arriving at the infamous entry gates of Auschwitz, bearing the phrase “Arbeit macht frei” (Work Brings Freedom) – ironic considering what happened inside. During the war, workers passed this gate twice daily, while music played, trying to hide the terrible things happening inside.

Our tour continued and took us to Block Number 4, which has an exhibition showing the two mail roles of Auschwitz, concentration camp and a mass execution site. It contains documents telling who the victims were and where they were deported from. Also has a model illustrating the arrival of the jews, the gas chambers with the Zyklon-B gas cans on display and the crematorium. It also contains something really disturbing, the human hair collected from the dead bodies that were later used to make clothes.

We continued our tour which took us part Blocks number 5, 6, 7 and 11. Block 5 contains the personal remains that were taken from the victims, including shoes, eyeglasses, suitcases with names and origins, and the most disturbing one……children’s clothing. Block number 6 and 7 showcase a presentation of some of the prisoners, including children, that were brought here and their living conditions.

The final Block we were taken to was number 11. This block was the “jail” block. Here they kept their victims before being forced to undress and be taken out to the “Death Wall” in the courtyard where they were executed. The basement contains several cells, including ones where the victims were packed so they would die of suffocation and other were they were forced to crawl in and stand all night, then work all day and back to the cell again until they died of exhaustion. This was also the location were the Nazis tried out the Zyklon-B poison gas for the first time. As subjects they used 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Polish patients from the camp hospital.

The last building we were shown inside of Auschwitz were the gas chamber and crematorium. This building stopped being used when the larger chambers were constructed in Birkenau. Towards the end of the war, it was being used as a bomb shelter.

From here we took the tourbus that took us to Birkenau, three kilometres away. This is the location that is always filmed in movies when they show “Auschwitz”. When we arrived we were running out of time so we got a short tour where they showed us the living condition, got told about their so called “meals” which contained mostly nothing, and were given some free time alone to wander by ourselves.

First impression was surreal, standing on the grounds where the atrocities and horrors took place and how are humans even capable of doing this to each other. This visit was definitely worth it, seeing and experiencing what happened here adds some comprehension of of those who suffered here.

After we finished that afternoon, we drove back to Bratislava as we still had all our luggage left at the hostel, and, the following day, continued our travels to Český Krumlov.