Thoughts on Auschwitz

I really had a good experience at Auschwitz and I don't mean that I enjoyed it.

As I understand things, Auschwitz started as a Polish military base that was taken over, re-purposed, and expanded by the Germans during the war.  The camp was not big enough and so the Germans built Auschwitz Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and other camps.  Auschwitz Birkenau was massive, about 10 times the size of Auschwitz I.  During their years of operation over 1.3 million people entered these camps.  1.1 million died.  At one point there were over 100,000 people living at Birkenau.  The scale of this operation took enormous energy and effort.  So much more could have been done had they focused that energy and effort on something positive.  It made my heart heavy to consider the magnitude of the effort and the number of people who went along and carried it out.

We visited on a cool, breezy fall day and I found myself feeling guilty for enjoying the beauty of the day while we were in the prison camps.  The beautiful day and the camps didn't seem to go together.  Something was out of place.  I felt like the camps should have been something to experience in black and white but instead we had a bright, colorful, cool day.  There were patches of green grass and the sites and buildings were immaculately cared for.  Birkenau was so large that it felt like a big park.  The few fireplaces and chimneys that remained standing at Birkenau were a reminder that it wasn't just a park.

The displays in the buildings were, of course, powerful.  All of the photos were black and white which seemed appropriate and conveyed the feeling that this was not the documentation of a happy time and place.  Among the displays there were piles and piles of items taken from the prisoners:  prosthetic limbs, crutches and braces, pots and pans, tooth brushes, shoe polish, eye glasses, prayer blankets, shoes, suitcases, and hair.  The mountain of hair was just sickening.  The suitcases were what affected me the most.  Most of the suitcases had names and birth dates painted on them in big letters.  That made it easy to remember the people associated with the suitcases.  Maybe it affected me the way it did because we are living out of suitcases (backpacks) right now while we are traveling and I could really relate.  The suitcases/backpacks represent for me the container of all my available worldly possessions.  Having that taken away would be a big deal.  Of course, I'd rather have my life than my backpack...

I don't consider myself an enthusiastically optimistic person.  Optimistic yes, but I'm not bubbly and demonstrative about it.  Yet, during my time at the Auschwitz camps I thought again and again about the good prisoners and guards who continued to do good, who helped other people as much as they could, and who resisted where and when possible despite the terrible circumstances.  I know those good people existed.  The thought of them left me with a positive feeling of Auschwitz while the brutal reality remained ominously in the background.