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