Auschwitz-Birkenau: Hate’s Shameful Showcase
‘For
ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity…’
screams a plaque at Auschwitz-Birkenau. January 27, 1945, about 7,500
Jewish prisoners were evacuated by the Russian Red Army from the most
notorious of Nazi concentration camps. The plaque was erected by the
survivors of the Holocaust, the horrific ordeal that began in 1941 when
Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Germany’s Minister of the Interior, designated
Auschwitz-Birkenau as the destination for the “final solution of the
Jewish question in Europe.” In those three years, the Third Reich
systematically aggregated and annihilated 1.5 million Jewish internees
in the death camp. Most were gassed to death but a great number also
died of starvation and disease. Today, the camp is a memorial museum
and
a 120 Zloty (€35) daytrip from the Polish city of Krakow, 70 km away.
On the 68th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which
fell January 27, AMANDEEP SANDHU
shares memories of the seven life-changing hours that he spent there.
Sandhu is the author of two books, Sepia Leaves and Roll of Honour.
Learn more about his work at his website.
Rest
in Peace. We are yet to learn the lessons.
With
a number of preserved buildings and wide roads, the Nazi death camp of
Auschwitz-Birkenau looks like a pretty middle-class industrial
township. Industrious it was, just the industry was war. On a bright
sunny day in early June, among many people who have come to visit, what
hits one the most is how everything here is so silent.
Two
rows of electrified barbed wire make the boundary of the camp at
Auschwitz. Between 1940-45, 802 of
the over 3.5 million inmates attempted to escape. Of these only 144
were successful. The boundary was less of wires and more of the
emotional blackmail and fear of what could follow, especially of how
the
Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) would deal with the family members and friends
of those who attempted to escape. On the gate is the inscription in
wrought iron ‘Arbeit macht frei’ ("work makes free"). A few years back,
the inscription was stolen, allegedly, by a Swiss art collector or
neo-Nazi sympathizer. It was later found in a Berlin flat, cut up in
three pieces. The intent for violence has neither abated nor reduced. A
lookalike inscription has now replaced the original.
Picture
by an American surveillance plane, 1944. The Allied forces knew what
was going on, yet they did not bomb not only these camps for fear of
killing inmates but even the railroad lines that made it possible to
transport the people to
the camps. Notice the two coloured squares, red and yellow. Those were
warehouses where the inmates were asked to leave their personal
belongings. They were called Canada I and II. Upon the end of World War
II, on facing imminent defeat, the retreating Nazis burnt and destroyed
those storehouses.
Photo: Amandeep Sandhu
Jews,
Poles and Gypsies (from as
far as Romania, Hungary, Oslo) traveled in railway freight carriages to
the camp with one-way tickets. They expected to be set free. The
able-bodied among them were selected on this platform and put into
labour camps
What
was perfected was that a cheap gas Zyklon B (aka Cyclon B), a
cyanide-based pesticide, was very effective. It finished 700 to 1,000
people in about 20 minutes. The gas was invented by a Jewish
agriculture scientist.
Photo: Amandeep Sandhu
Killing
is not an easy industry. There was the matter of bodies, of what was to
be done with them. Before
the bodies were cremated, they were frisked for everything: rings, any
jewellery, gold teeth, basically robbed. One of the items stolen was
human hair, both at arrival to camps (to prevent typhus) and after
gassing. When the camps were liberated on January 27, 1945, they found
7
tonnes of human hair from approximately 40,000 victims packed in bags
(picture not allowed). Photo: Amandeep Sandhu
All
objects are behind glass panes which makes it impossible to photograph
them without reflection. These prosthetics from the victims were
ferried back so they could be fitted on wounded or amputated SS
soldiers.
Photo: Amandeep Sandhu
Food
bowls, from victims. The actual objects were very large in number and
supplied back to the Axis Army lines and hospitals and ration shops.
There is no account of exactly how much material went out from the
camp.
Photo: Amandeep Sandhu
Eight
to ten to fifteen people slept in each rack. The commonest problem was
dysentery. If one fell ill, one was pushed to the lowest bunk and lay
there dying in one’s own muck. No medicines.
The
slanting beds were meant for eight to twelve people to place their
heads on one
Pretty
neat but not for around 2,000 to 5,000 people in one building.
This
is all one needs, a hole in the ground.
The
site of the shooting range where thieves and rebels or those who
flunked the assignments were killed point blank.
Notice
the barricaded windows around the death wall. Sounds are a more potent
deterrent than seeing the killings. The two poles are from which
victims were tied before execution.
Block 10 was used as a laboratory
for medical experiments. SS doctors tested the efficacy of X-rays as a
sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners.
Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an
effort to glue them shut. Bayer, then a subsidiary of IG Farben, bought
prisoners to use as guinea pigs for testing new drugs. The most
infamous
doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death".
Particularly interested in research on identical twins, Mengele
performed experiments on them, such as inducing diseases in one twin
and
killing the other when the first died to perform comparative autopsies.
He also took a special interest in dwarfs, and he deliberately induced
gangrene in twins, dwarfs and other prisoners to "study" the effects.
(Pictures not allowed)
In Block 11 are located some of the dungeons where inmates were kept
confined and standing for long periods: even weeks. This is where Saint
Maximilian Maria Kolbe, a Conventual Franciscan friar, volunteered to
die in place of a stranger. He was canonized on October 10, 1982 by
Pope
John Paul II, and declared a martyr of charity. He is the patron saint
of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners,
and the pro-life movement. Pope John Paul II declared him "The Patron
Saint of Our Difficult Century".
The
ruins of the gas chambers at Birkenau.
The
incinerator where the dead bodies were burned. The ash was sold as
fertilizer.
The
last selection took place on October 30, 1944. The next month, Heinrich
Himmler ordered the crematoria destroyed before the Red Army reached
the camp. The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in
January 1945 in an attempt to hide the German crimes from the advancing
Soviet troops
In
one of the rare cases of justice after WW II, the camp's first
commandant, Rudolf Höss was hanged
to death here. Other cases were tried in the Nuremberg Trials. The
court awarded many officers short sentences and some got life and death
by hanging. The Cold War erupted, the short sentences became shorter,
and some officers committed suicide.
In
one of the rare cases of justice after WW II, the camp's first
commandant, Rudolf Höss was hanged
to death here. Other cases were tried in the Nuremberg Trials. The
court awarded many officers short sentences and some got life and death
by hanging. The Cold War erupted, the short sentences became shorter,
and some officers committed suicide
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