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Faith FeaturesYou are in: Beds Herts and Bucks > Faith > Faith Features > Lessons from Auschwitz Lessons from AuschwitzIan Pearce joined sixth form students and teachers from Bedfordshire, on a day trip to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.  The Main Gate to Auschwitz 1. The Holocust Educational Trust is aiming to take pupils and teachers from every secondary school in the country to Poland to visit the concentration camps. The trust will then help them disseminate the information to educate their colleagues about the Holocaust. Before the trip there is a briefing including a moving testimony from Kitty Hart-Moxon from Harpenden, a survivor of Auschwitz, and the subsequent death marches to conceal the prisoners from the advancing Russian army. There were over two hundred of us on this trip, on arrival we were split into ten groups. Our first stop was at the Polish town of Oswiecjim. This name was changed by the Germans in 1939 to Auschwitz. That name applies today only to the camps.  Watchtower at Auschwitz 1. We either visited the site of a destroyed synagogue or, in my case, the Jewish cemetery. Before the war, fifty-eight percent of the town's population was Jewish: we stood in front of a memorial to the last Jew in Oswiecjim. Most of the Jews died in Auschwitz and Birkenau. The gravestones were used to repair the roads but have since been placed in this new cemetery or built into powerful obelisks. This restitution was not done by local people, and we started our day reflecting on mankind's ability to destroy or banish entire communities. I wondered about the nature of the Polish people. Was it coincidence that all of the Nazi extermination camps were in Poland ? We then visited Auschwitz. This was the first camp and was centred on a brick built former Polish Army Barracks. You enter through the infamous gates with the legend "Arbeit Macht Frei"… work makes you free. Initially, Auschwitz was a work camp and, as the prisoners trudged back though the gates, the camp orchestra bizarrely serenaded the workers. We toured the buildings, many of which are now fitted out as a museum. There are cases of personal belongings confiscated from the arriving prisoners. These represent the later stages of the war when Birkenau or Auschwitz 2 was built as a killing factory. There's a case of artificial limbs reminding us that the disabled were also extermination targets. I reflected that many of the replacement limbs were probably from injuries serving Germany in the First World War.  Inside the barracks There's a carefully arranged case of spectacles, one of clearly labelled luggage and a case containing two tons of women's hair, either shaved off on arrival or removed from the corpses before incineration. In some ways Auschwitz 1 is a little too ordered and well preserved. Our educators and our Polish guide though helped us understand what we were seeing. We saw the building in which Doctor Josef Mengele conducted his medical experiments on women and children. As we looked at the gallows on which camp commandant Rudolph Hoess was hanged, our gaze was directed on his house outside the wire and we reflected on what kind of upbringing his children must have had. There is a gas chamber at Auschwitz 1 but it is a rebuilt one and acts as a pointer for the next part of the visit: the death factory at Birkenau.  Inside the crematoria Birkenau is vast. The best vantage point is the tower over the railway tracks which remain. There are hundreds of chimneys: two per barracks. The barracks are largely demolished but there are some complete buildings. The SS calculated one thousand prisoners per hut: survivor testimonies suggest as many as two thousand locked in each night with no toilets. The degrading toilet block shows how the Germans removed all human dignity from the inmates. If you have talked to survivors, the railway platform is the most poignant part of the visit. A few weeks ago I spoke to Marlene Altman. I stood at a point half way down the siding and remembered her words. "I was sent to the left to the women's camp. My mother was sent to the right. I never saw her again." Kitty's testimony bore this out. She described a long straight road through the huts. The road then bears left straight to gas chambers 4 and 5.  The sidings and the unloading ramp at Birkenau. That road remains, as do the concrete posts, the barbed wire and the watchtowers. You stand exactly where Mengele and other SS butchers stood deciding who would die and who would be sentenced to the prolonged horror of Birkenau. Again we were reminded of responsibilities. It wasn't just the SS, although they ran the camps. The regular soldiers who cleared the ghettos, the crew who drove the train through the gates, the signalman who changed the points, the people of Oswiecijm all must have known. As Rabbi Barry Marcus told me, "Spend one night in Birkenau and you knew." Kitty spoke of how her mother wondered who could be roasting meat in the middle of the night. The gas chambers and crematoria lie in ruins, blown up by the SS before the camp was liberated. In many ways Birkenau speaks more loudly than Auschwitz 1. It speaks of death, of untold horrors and the total degradation of humanity.  Birkenau - a pair of chimneys for each barracks If I were to be critical of the visit, this is presented as a Jewish tragedy. The Holocaust saw the annihilation of gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, the mentally ill, subversive, political prisoners, in fact anybody that was different or dared to question the Nazi ideal. However one of the most powerful displays is in the newly restored shower block at Birkenau. There are hundreds of photographs that were taken from the people arriving on the trains. These are not the Nazi photos of shaven headed prisoners. These are the family photos of people with lives, pride, hopes and dreams that were wiped away in Auschwitz-Birkenau. These are photographs of happy times between the wars before hatred and prejudice condemned them to a painful death after having been stripped of their clothes, their possessions, their family, their identity and their humanity. We gathered for a short service at the site of gas chamber 2. Students from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds read poems written In Auschwitz. Rabbi Marcus recited a prayer before sounding the Shofar.  Auschwitz 1. It was now dark. We made our way by candlelight down the railway track to the main gate. We were making a journey that hundreds of thousands of people never made. We made that journey through the stark chimneys of the huts……... because we could. As we touched down at Luton, Tim the chief steward on our Thomson 757 came on the intercom. Tim tries to work on all the Holocaust Education Trust visits. I hadn't realised but while they were stopping over at Krakow, Tim had taken the crew on a tour of Auschwitz. "On behalf of the captain and the crew may we wish you, in the light of what you have seen today, something that so many people were denied: a safe journey home and the chance to sleep in your own bed." I'm meeting up with my group again soon. The Trust is giving them time to reflect on what they have seen. This is my first reaction and I'm sure that my feelings will evolve as time passes. A day trip to Poland? It wasn't that. It was a day trip to a hell that nobody can deny existed if you stand on that platform where families were wiped away for ever. You can see more photos from Ian's trip to Poland here: last updated: 27/06/07 Have Your Say
Rebecca Sear
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Hannah Gibson
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Muscleduck
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Matt from Poland
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Margaret You are in: Beds Herts and Bucks > Faith > Faith Features > Lessons from Auschwitz
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