Season 2 Episode 3: Reflections on the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

"For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.

Auschwitz-Birkenau 

1940-1945"

Being both a German major and someone who has always loved history and taken as many history classes as possible, visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau has been something I've always wanted to do. I visited the camp on March 31st, 2017 and this is a day I will never forget. 

Please note that this post could be upsetting to read. I will not go into graphic detail, however this post may not be for everyone.

I figured the best way to explain this experience would not be to explain the historical aspects, considering most know and if not could easily look it up. I thought it would be easier to understand through my experiences and reflections.

I had known the majority of the information already, but I never comprehended the full scope of it. I also, out of respect to the victims and their families, took as little pictures as possible and decided to just experience as much as I could. 

My tour started at the famous gate. "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "work sets you free". At the beginning of the tour, I felt how I always felt when seeing memorabilia of the Holocaust: disturbed. But it's hard to grasp crimes of this nature. At the sites that I toured, approximately 1.5 million people were murdered. That number is incredibly hard to conceive in its entirety, even when you have been learning about it for years. It's almost more difficult to comprehend the devastation when you're walking along paths that the victims themselves walked. The following quote on a memorial helped me to understand it better.

Walking through the sites where people were senselessly murdered can bring this into perspective. There is the famous exhibit of victim's hair that was forcefully chopped off before they were brought into the gas chambers. It is gathered into enormous glass tanks, weighing approximately 4,000 pounds. I saw hair of all kinds: loose and gathered into ponytails and braids too. My friend that I was traveling with saw a medium length blonde braid and said "...that looks like my hair." I could tell that that made the exhibit have more of an impact on her.  

Another exhibit that is relatively well known was one that had the same layout as the hair, but with shoes of the victims. Throughout my six hour long tour, I actually cried twice. This was one of those times. I was walking around the glass tanks, inspecting the shoes when I saw the tiniest pair: shoes belonging to a baby who most certainly couldn't even walk yet. 

The other experience that really made me break down included a big, empty room where home videos were projected on the wall. All were of victims of the holocaust only a few years before they died. There were videos of weddings, kids playing in pools, babies learning how to walk, and all sorts of regular activities that we participate in. That really helped me feel connected to these victims and humanized them as well.

Something that I found interesting was that there were a lot of Jewish men in groups walking around. I didn't notice it much until I walked through the only remaining gas chamber in Auschwitz. I was very upset walking through, so I almost tried to walk really fast. But I noticed a group of Jewish men sobbing and praying together and it made me stop and experience my surroundings more completely. It helped to realize how far-reaching these crimes were on families and the world itself, even to this day. These men did not even have the privilege of meeting many of their relatives.

After Auschwitz, I visited Birkenau. For those that don't know, Birkenau was a sub-camp of Auschwitz, whose purpose was more for killing than it was for hard labor. Its gates are incredibly famous and I got a few pictures of it from both the outside and inside.

Here I also learned more about the medical experiments conducted on victims and their living conditions, because the living conditions were a lot worse in Birkenau than in Auschwitz, because Auschwitz was a former military camp for Polish soldiers.

One of the most interesting things I did unknowingly, was that I walked the path of those who were unknowingly sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

The white sandy path to the left is the one I'm talking about. It was a weird feeling to walk the same path that many people who were soon after murdered did. As opposed to Auschwitz, the gas chambers here had been destroyed by the Nazis before the liberation of the camps.

As much as I wish that this was the extent of my feelings, I'd like to also bring up how some other people I was around dealt with this situation. I was on a tour that lasted about six hours. It was definitely a long day and quite hot out, but this considered, some people were a bit disrespectful.

Many people chose to take pictures. I am not against this at all, I just personally decided not to. I think it should be up to the person, but I didn't really appreciate that there were a few people who took pictures with their phones, cameras or tablets and had their shutter sounds on, but really loud. For some camera sounds it is completely normal, but with phones and tablets, it is not hard to turn that off. It was really intrusive and interrupted the experience for me personally. I even spotted one person who was playing games on his iPad while we were in a housing barrack! Technically this was allowed but I thought it was weird.

However, there were certain sites where taking pictures was specifically not allowed, such as where the hair exhibit was, the gas chambers and a couple of cells where people starved or were beaten to death. Even at those sites, some still took pictures.

Another weird thing I saw, that I personally consider to be disrespectful (or at the very least, super weird), were people who brought selfie sticks and took smiley pictures with their friends in front of buildings. I saw this a lot more than I imagined I would. I genuinely don't understand the appeal of this. To take a happy picture of yourself where people died is a bit weird to me. Especially in selfie style or "hey can you take a picture of me real quick?" type of picture.

Of course, tourism is important to this area because it helps funding and can help expand people's knowledge of the crimes and tragedies, but I don't understand why someone would be comfortable with having these pictures. 

It reminds me of the recent project by Israeli-German artist, Shahak Shapira, called "Yolocaust" where he photoshops pictures of people being goofy at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located in Berlin and photoshops them into pictures of concentration camps and pictures from the Holocaust. (This is something I saw when I was in Berlin, post to come!) Here is a link to an article about it, the pictures are very graphic so I decided to not include them in my post, but it's worth checking out. 

Even if you don't agree with me about taking pictures, I think we can all (or at least most of us, who have some semblance of a soul) can agree that graffiti on the walls in the museum is inappropriate. What I actually saw a lot of and almost could not believe, was that there were many swastikas carved on the walls recently by tourists. No, not by SS guards in the 40s, by people who visited the museum within the last couple of years. There were various attempts to cover it up but they were still visible, even pointed out to us by the tour guide. I don't understand, nor do I want to understand why anyone would do that. 

Overall, my experience at the museum was incredibly important to me. To be able to even sort of comprehend what it must have been like (there's no way I ever could entirely, of course) was very important and a very impactful day overall.

What do you think? Should pictures be allowed at this sorts of places? Should there be more restrictions? Less restrictions? Let me know what you think! Have a great week, see you next Wednesday!