Birkenau

A huge camp only 3 km from Auschwitz (see another post). I am blown away by the size of this place and the industrial scale of the horror. Some of these pictures may look familiar from documentaries, movies, books, etc.
The 1st picture looks up the railroad tracks to the gate into Birkenau. If you recall pictures of the doctor at the sorting point sending new arrivals one way or another, the 2nd picture is taken at the point where the doctor stood doing the sorting. It looks back toward the point where the trains entered. The 3rd picture is one if the boxcars used to transport people to the camp.
The 4th picture attempts to give a sense of the scale of the place looking out over foundations of barracks, and this is barely a quarter of the site. The 5th picture is in one of the barracks where up to 700 were assigned for as long as they could work.
The 6th picture is the end of the line. This is gas chamber #2. It was blown up by the German army just before the Soviet army liberated the camp. There were many of these, each one could kill 2,000 people at a time.
To give even more sense of the scale of the horror, there were up to 100,000 housed in the barracks who were sent on work details every day. Add to that the fact the only maybe 20% of the arrivals were selected to work. The rest were sent directly to the gas chambers: elderly, children, disabled, sick, etc. Our tour guide admitted that he gets emotional facing this and talking about it every day.
I hope this conveys the message that it cannot be allowed to happen again. While Jews took the brunt of it, they weren't alone. Add the Roma, communists, gays, anti-Nazi types and anyone that would disagree with the powers that be. I do not wish to minimize the burden carried by the Jewish community even now. But I do want to try to convey the way I felt here.
I know I can never fully understand or feel what the Shoah means to those most directly affected by it. I cannot walk in your shoes. But I can and will walk with you. I pray that's what I'm doing here, at least as one step on the way.Läs mer