Chełmek

This will not be a nice read folks..

"FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE A CRY OF DESPAIR AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY"

Taken from a plaque in the centre of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I could not think of better words to sum it up. It is deeply moving, haunting and harrowing. The scale of the camps themselves and the atrosities that were carried out here cannot be adequately described by me.

The camps show that we must never forget the atrocities carried out by Hitler and the Nazis with their racial doctrine. The fact that they thought that there was a part of the human race that was "superior" to any other was at the heart of the mass murder that took place on these two camps, and others around Europe. It is something that I cannot possibly begin to comprehend in the first place. That they thought themselves superior and the methods they then used to carry through their beliefs are unthinkable.

Walking into a room where the sole exhibition is a 2 ton mound of human hair that was shaved from the heads of the people arriving at the camps I felt a lump rise in my throat. I couldn't stay and the same was true with a lot of the exhibits. You can't stand and stare as it feels so utterly wrong to be looking at the piles of belongings stolen from new arrivals at the camps by the Nazis, the before and after photos of a victim who - hideously emaciated - miraculously survived, the replica of the living conditions and the "death wall" where they carried out executions.

All it left me with was questions.. How can anyone have agreed and supported the actions of Hitler? How can they have carried out the inhumane torture and murder of one and a half million fellow humans? What would modern-day Europe's jewish population be if they had been spared this massacre? How can we tackle the hatred and prejudice that still plagues our earth?

I don't have the answers and it is a horrible visit but one that I believe everyone who has the opportunity to should take.Read more