A year ago today Raleigh and I went to visit Auschwitz in Poland. It was one hell of an impactful day. Tickets to visit are free if you accompany a tour guide with a group. So we arrived at the front gates to Camp 1, where we received our tickets but were told there was not a tour available for another 3 hours. We hadn’t planned on waiting 3 hours, we had to still drive to Budapest that night to keep on schedule. It was now or never for us. I’m not sure it’s something I’m proud of, but not many people can say they have done what we did. Instead of leaving or waiting 3 hours, we snuck into Auschwitz. We decided to blend in with a group of teenagers on a school field trip and once past the gates, left the tour group to peruse on our own.
It was incredibly daunting passing under the gates that read, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which in German translates to, Work Sets You Free. The Nazi officers intended it to mean they must find the path to virtue through labor. But the prisoners saw it only as an insult, knowing once they passed the gates that held these words, their only freedom would be death.
As we continued walking the premises, reading signs, walking through the barracks, we saw many disturbing things. There were piles of glasses, bowls, and crutches taken from prisoners upon their arrival. There was also a display of how tightly packed the people were inside of the train cars that were delivering them. There was a display of dozens of prisoner outfits on mannequins lined in rows, with hundreds of photos of people’s faces along the walls. In the beginning of the war, each prisoner was documented with their information and a photograph along with a numbered tattoo. But toward the end of the war, the camps were taking in too many people and stopped recording who went where. I also saw diagrams of the multiple types of people and what badge they were assigned. For example, everyone knows Jewish people had to wear a yellow star; but political prisoners had to wear a red upside down triangle, criminals a green one, a blue one for immigrants, the Romani people had a black triangle, homosexuals a pink triangle, religious prisoners had purple, and so on.
It started to rain while I stood outside in a courtyard reading about the pointless drills they endured every day. The guards were so bored they would force the prisoners to line up multiple times a day for hours until every single person was in their correct numbered line. These drills were in between tireless days of hard labor; but if you couldn’t stand up on your own or fainted or fell in any way, they would kill you, and start the count all over again.
As it rained it grew dark and muddy, the chain wired fences seemed smaller around you than you realized. Raleigh and I talked about all the reasons we would have been taken there during the war; being queer, a religious prisoner, and a political prisoner. We also noticed a few handicapped visitors not being able to go inside the barracks to view most of the exhibits; I understand the integrity to keep the site original but to not add ramps for the handicapped in the present era felt like an offence the Nazis would have agreed with. It angered me to see them sitting outside in the rain by themselves while the rest of their tour group walked around inside the buildings, that felt more like Auschwitz than anything I saw there.
I understand why some people wish to never visit Auschwitz and witness the horrible atrocities that were committed to humans, it can be very hard to see it all. But I still recommend it to anyone able-bodied. I believe it helps to understand more fully what humans are capable of. We are capable of committing unimaginable heinous acts against each other; but some are also able to survive them. That power to survive and carry on is what we must all find in ourselves when all feels hopeless.
-June 25 2019
Allie
Allison's Adventures 