Euro Winter

Unfortunately, I was late to book a personal ticket for Auschwitz-Birkenau, and so I had to complete a guided tour with a travel company on Get your Guide. Something that I detest to. I don't like having to miss out on a personal ticket to encourage you to buy through a travel company. Though admittedly, I had a great tour and understand why they do it. It does great things for tourism in the region and does add to the experience. The tour guide was great, and she provided a very immersive experience and I learnt a lot more than I would have without a guide. Some of the stories were horrific, and it was truly an experience I'll never forget for all the wrong reasons. We started by walking through Auschwitz, the original camp that was designed for labour. Mostly containing Polish intellectuals, prisons of war, and threats to the nazi regime, they worked endless hours with barely any food, brutal treatment, and the occasional bout of torture. In the early days, they preferred to complete the executions in the form of starvation or exhaustion. Not yet in full genocidal fervour. As we progressed, we made our way through history, and as the early 1940s arrived, we began to see the more extreme killings and treatment of prisoners. They soon realised Auschwitz was unsuitable for the quantity of people that they were beginning to imprison, and so began construction of Birkenau just a couple kilometres away, which we will get to. This was the result of beginning the mass transportation of millions of Jews out of the cities into their new 'safe home'. They told the Jewish people to bring their most precious belongings on their journey to their new safe and secure city built just for the Jews to live amongst themselves. They provided a horrificly false sense of security by having bands play music, having welcoming rooms, and the like to ensure that no panic set in. Of course, in reality, they were stripped of their belongings and sent very quickly into labour camps. Auschwitz was also the first place to have an extermination facility and crematorium. For those who arrived and could not work, the disabled, the old, and most saddly, the children and the pregnant, were sent straight to their death. These people were often put to death as soon as they arrived due to having no labour capacity. In another attempt to minimise panic and stress amongst the new arrivals, the nazis conducted one of the most macabre and gruesome things. Rather than separate the mothers from their children and likely cause panic, they would instead send all of them to the extermination facilities altogether. They would then tell them to remember the number in which they placed all their belongings so they could easily be found after their shower, then locked them in a huge factory, and suffocated them with Xyklon B, and stealing all their belongings to fund their war machine. Some of the installations showed the sheer quantity of belongings that had been stolen from their prisoners. Quite interestingly, many of the survivors of Auschwitz even found strength in themselves to complete tours of the now museum to teach people of the horrors and the disgusting treatment within the camps. One of which spent 60 years completing tours through Auschwitz. Toward the end of the Auschwitz tour, we began to explore the soldier quarters and the extermination facility. As we made our way through, we walked past the manor of Rudolf Hoess, who was the commander of both Auschwitz and Birkenau for most of the war. After he was sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials, he was executed within the camp as a symbol to all those who died under his command. We then walked past the soldiers' quarter that was situated right next to the extermination facility. They had to have trucks running outside the soldiers' lunch room because the screams would ruin their rest time, apparently. We then saw the remnants of the crematorium and extermination facilities, of which only remain because the Germans used them as air raid shelters at the end of the war.

When we arrived at birkenau, we learnt how many of the most incriminating buildings were destroyed to get rid of the evidence of genocide. Yet, the most daunting part of Birkenau was the sheer size of everything. They couldn't destroy it all. It was mind-blowing to walk along the train tracks and check every direction and see row after row of long thin brick buildings. We walked for 30 minutes through these buildings before arriving at a map that showed the tiny little portion that we had actually explored. The sheer size was difficult to comprehend. Even more macabre still, the nazis had become more efficient at exterminating Jews than they had been able to achieve the burning and removal of the bodies. Meaning that a facility had to be built purely to store the backlog of bodies that had not yet been burnt. Our guide then walked us through the buildings and the living conditions of the prisoners. In bunks of three, 10 people would sleep on each level. I would estimate close to a hundred bunks in each house and fucking hundreds of these houses in Birkenau. As far as the eye could see. The number to imagine is far too much to comprehend. The people on the top bunks were generally the newer, stronger prisoners because the weakest could not fight for their position. Diorhea that was prominant throughout the whole camp provides the picture as too why. You begin to understand and be able to comprehend how 6 million people died in this camp alone when you see the sheer size of it all. These were the people 'lucky' enough you have not been killed instantly upon arrival, once again determined if they could be useful to the regime. After this emotionally draining walk, we finally finished the tour. Going from the train tracks to the sorting facility, following those on the death walk, seeing the memorial and the destroyed extermination facilities, then seeing the number of concentration camps before ending with the conditions inside.

I am a bit of a history buff, and consider my knowledge of the second world war above average, and so although I thought I knew a lot about the treatment of the Jews, I really didnt. This tour portrays a picture that can not be comprehended with words and stories. Being there and seeing the size and efficiency with which the nazis were killing innocent people puts a whole different perspective on your life. 6 million is a number that the brain can not comprehend, but seeing these sites makes it slightly easier.Read more