kl camping place image
Comrade My
BQ: If you have gone, what was it like?
Answer
I have been there and would urge anyone to go.
Be aware that you will see images of incredible horror. Photos of people who have been starved, beaten, worked near to death then gassed.
When you visit the original camp (Auschwitz 1) you will see rooms filled with human hair and the cloth that was made with it. Rooms filled with suitcases carrying the names of the poor unfortunates who will never collect them. Rooms full of glasses, shoes and, most poignantly, the belongings, toys and clothes of little children.
The worst of it is, this is not the true horror.At the end of the tour of Camp 1 you will be taken to the original morgue for the camp. You can skip this building if you wish but I urge you to go inside. This room, next to a small crematorium, was turned into one of the original gas chambers.
I think that it is a necessary evil to go inside to understand the place.
As you leave the crematorium you will see the gallows that was erected to hang the commandant of the camp.
I have been a researcher and historian of WW2 for 30 years and hoped to view Auschwitz with dispassionate eyes but I will admit that when I passed that gallows I fervently wished that it had hurt.
When you head for Auschwitz II (Birkenau) you enter into hell.
An area around the size of the small town I live in. Designed for the incarceration, torture and murder of human beings because they do not fit within the racial stereotype dictated by a lunatic and his cronies.
Approximately 1.1 million people died in this place. Romanies, Jehovah`s Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners of all races and, of course, in the greatest numbers, the Jews of Europe.
You will see a reconstruction of a barracks that was designed to hold 54 German army Horses. The German Authorities considered this a large enough area for, originally, 600 persons and later over a thousand.
You will walk alongside the railway track to the platform where thousands of people were unloaded by force of whip and fists to be paraded in front of qualified doctors who would decide who was fit enough to work or who should go direct to the gas chamber and crematorium.
From there you can walk to the destroyed remains of the gas chamber/crematorium complexes and walk behind them to the ash pits where the final remains were placed before being carted away for fertilising the surrounding fields.
All this time you will be walking on, wonderfully lush, black flood plain soil. This soil is flecked with what look like limestone deposits, it is not limestone. It is the small pieces of bone which went up the chimney unburnt. 65+ years on it is still there.
As we left the complex we passed the gallows again. I am afraid that, by this point, all my dispassion had gone away and, if I had seen the man standing on a stool with a rope about his neck, I would have kicked the stool away without a second thought.
I do hope I have not put you off visiting. Please go!!
Standard advice to anyone doing this trip.
Do three things.
Firstly. When you finish the day at Auschwitz go for a good meal, preferably in the Market Square in Krakow, and raise a glass of whatever you drink to the fact that the good guys won.
Secondly, When at KL Auschwitz take as many pictures as possible wherever you can. (there are signs in some places asking you not to take pictures out of respect) Use these and your own memories to tell as many people as possible about your visit to a place deserving of the name "Hell on Earth"
Lastly. (I put this in because my wife warns me to not do it as soon as she hears someone even vaguely allude to the possibility)
If you meet a Holocaust Denier, resist the urge to beat the living bejesus out of them. That war was fought to give them the right to their opinion no matter how wrong.
Arguing the facts and calling them an ******* is perfectly acceptable.
Ray
I have been there and would urge anyone to go.
Be aware that you will see images of incredible horror. Photos of people who have been starved, beaten, worked near to death then gassed.
When you visit the original camp (Auschwitz 1) you will see rooms filled with human hair and the cloth that was made with it. Rooms filled with suitcases carrying the names of the poor unfortunates who will never collect them. Rooms full of glasses, shoes and, most poignantly, the belongings, toys and clothes of little children.
The worst of it is, this is not the true horror.At the end of the tour of Camp 1 you will be taken to the original morgue for the camp. You can skip this building if you wish but I urge you to go inside. This room, next to a small crematorium, was turned into one of the original gas chambers.
I think that it is a necessary evil to go inside to understand the place.
As you leave the crematorium you will see the gallows that was erected to hang the commandant of the camp.
I have been a researcher and historian of WW2 for 30 years and hoped to view Auschwitz with dispassionate eyes but I will admit that when I passed that gallows I fervently wished that it had hurt.
When you head for Auschwitz II (Birkenau) you enter into hell.
An area around the size of the small town I live in. Designed for the incarceration, torture and murder of human beings because they do not fit within the racial stereotype dictated by a lunatic and his cronies.
Approximately 1.1 million people died in this place. Romanies, Jehovah`s Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners of all races and, of course, in the greatest numbers, the Jews of Europe.
You will see a reconstruction of a barracks that was designed to hold 54 German army Horses. The German Authorities considered this a large enough area for, originally, 600 persons and later over a thousand.
You will walk alongside the railway track to the platform where thousands of people were unloaded by force of whip and fists to be paraded in front of qualified doctors who would decide who was fit enough to work or who should go direct to the gas chamber and crematorium.
From there you can walk to the destroyed remains of the gas chamber/crematorium complexes and walk behind them to the ash pits where the final remains were placed before being carted away for fertilising the surrounding fields.
All this time you will be walking on, wonderfully lush, black flood plain soil. This soil is flecked with what look like limestone deposits, it is not limestone. It is the small pieces of bone which went up the chimney unburnt. 65+ years on it is still there.
As we left the complex we passed the gallows again. I am afraid that, by this point, all my dispassion had gone away and, if I had seen the man standing on a stool with a rope about his neck, I would have kicked the stool away without a second thought.
I do hope I have not put you off visiting. Please go!!
Standard advice to anyone doing this trip.
Do three things.
Firstly. When you finish the day at Auschwitz go for a good meal, preferably in the Market Square in Krakow, and raise a glass of whatever you drink to the fact that the good guys won.
Secondly, When at KL Auschwitz take as many pictures as possible wherever you can. (there are signs in some places asking you not to take pictures out of respect) Use these and your own memories to tell as many people as possible about your visit to a place deserving of the name "Hell on Earth"
Lastly. (I put this in because my wife warns me to not do it as soon as she hears someone even vaguely allude to the possibility)
If you meet a Holocaust Denier, resist the urge to beat the living bejesus out of them. That war was fought to give them the right to their opinion no matter how wrong.
Arguing the facts and calling them an ******* is perfectly acceptable.
Ray
Any hauntings or strange occurences in the jewish concentration camps of WW2?
thinker.
if you've visited can you tell me what happened?
Answer
When I visited KL Auschwitz I did not hear ghosts or anything similar though you can feel a sadness about the place.
One thing I will tell you. No Birds flew over and there were no signs of burrowing animals around the place. unusual for that sort of area.
Ray.
When I visited KL Auschwitz I did not hear ghosts or anything similar though you can feel a sadness about the place.
One thing I will tell you. No Birds flew over and there were no signs of burrowing animals around the place. unusual for that sort of area.
Ray.
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