Auschwitz

Auschwitz entry

After leaving Krakow, I continued my spring break journey onto an unforgettable and possibly the most indescribable place I have ever seen.. but I will try to capture its essence in a few words.  Leading up to Auschwitz I was very nervous.  I've spent a lot of time reading about and studying the Holocaust so I really wasn't sure how seeing the actual camp would affect me.
I've read personal accounts and detailed descriptions of the incredible number of people whose lives were affected by the Holocaust, but I really don't think I understood it until visiting Auschwitz.  Upon my arrival, I was immediately presented with row after row of bunk houses that inmates were forced to live in.  Walking inside the cabins, I could see just how bare they were.  Some were lucky enough to have bunks to sleep in, though they were often shared by 3 inmates, while others slept on straw mattresses on the floor.
Walking through the camp was a haunting experience, realizing that Holocaust victims had walked the same paths I was walking now, only with fear for their lives.  I tried to imagine how these people must have felt upon their arrival to the camp and in their day to day lives here.  Seeing the places they spent their days really helped me to envision what they must have gone through but I know that my mind cannot even fathom all of the atrocities that really took place.

Auschwitz bunk houses

I saw the courtyard where prisoners were taken outside and lined up against a wall to be shot.  The windows of the buildings on either side were boarded up so that inmates inside could only hear what was going on right outside but could not see.  I also saw the cells they were kept in before being killed as well as cells in which some of the most unfortunate were starved to death or tortured.  I could not believe that all of this was real.
Another building contained collections of possessions that were taken away from prisoners upon their arrival.  Several rooms contained mountains of shoes.  Others had collections of eye glasses, combs, or pots and pans.  One that shocked me most was a room-sized glass casing filled with human hair.  We were told that after prisoners' heads were shaved, Germans would use this hair to make rugs and other things.  These huge collections also helped put into perspective the number of people whose lives had been destroyed here and their existence made the dehumanization that these people had gone through even more real.

Birkenau

After visiting Auschwitz, we also took a tour of the adjoining camp, Birkenau.  This camp was less detailed in showing how prisoners lived but even more massive.  Much of the camp had been destroyed when the war ended and the Germans wanted to get ride of evidence of the camps, but it was obvious how many bunk houses had been there at one point.  From inside the camp, we could see the train tracks where cars loaded with prisoners would arrive to be sorted immediately between who would be put to work and who would be killed right away.  I was so taken aback by the insanity of such insensitivity to human life.
There were so many more thoughts that ran through my mind during my time at Auschwitz but so much of it cannot be expressed in words.  This was easily one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.  Though visiting the camps was definitely an emotional and difficult experience, I feel that it was such an important event in my life.