"Breathe it in ..."

 

This entry refers to my experience of visiting Auschwitz II, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau.    To build this camp, the Nazis destroyed 7 local villages and built the brick barracks from the houses of those villages.  Following this visit, I then went to Auschwitz l, originally a Polish Army barracks, which today is a museum .   I’ll write about that experience, as well as my experience of visiting 2 barracks in this camp in other entries.

A friend, before I visited Auschwitz, told me to ‘breathe in every bit of my experience.’  I remembered his words as I walked around the camps and did just that …

On the days immediately prior to my visit, and the actual morning of the day, thinking about ‘going to Auschwitz’ felt very surreal.  A bit like a child waiting for Christmas, the day I’d wanted to happen for such a long time, was suddenly upon me.  But it wasn’t excitement that I was filled with.  How could I be excited about visiting a place where around 1.4 million people had lost their lives at the hands of fellow humans?  I struggled, in the lead up to my trip when telling people I was going, with how to describe how I felt about it.  Saying ‘I was looking forward to it’ felt wrong.  And yet, I was looking forward to it, in a way.  I guess I was filled with a sense of anticipation about whatever I was going to experience.

On the actual drive towards the camp, I began to feel really anxious.  I realised I had no real idea as to how I would feel or how I would react when I got there.  There was also something about being in a people-carrier with 5 strangers, 4 of whom would share the experience with me and my mum when we got there. Our driver was very chatty and informative about the area, which was good because listening to him, stopped me dwelling too much on the experience ahead.  He was even able to make us laugh about the irony of us visiting Auschwitz in a German manufactured Mercedes.

Seeing the road signs to ‘Oświęcim,’ the Polish version of the German-named ‘Auschwitz’ kept bringing my anxiety to the surface.  I began thinking about how the Jews must have felt on their journeys to the camp; both those who knew where they were going and what fate awaited them, and those who didn’t.  What a very different experience to my own …

As a counsellor, I always try to step into my client’s shoes and experience their world through their eyes.  And I think that’s what I was trying to do here.  As I said in my previous entry, for me to be able to fully understand something, I need to experience it for myself.  That’s what I try to do (as much as I ever can step into someone else’s experience) in the counselling room, and was also I think, how I approached my visit to Auschwitz.

Getting out of the car and walking towards the main building felt surreal.  I think I dissociated slightly, especially when seeing the train track leading through the tower, knowing what had lain at the end of the thousands of peoples’ journeys.  I felt a heaviness inside of me; sadness, helplessness, disbelief, respect and awe.

Stepping inside, two things hit me; the vastness of the site and the air of stillness.

I felt that the air held a certain heaviness, almost a sense of its holding onto the gravity of what had taken place there. There was an eerie quietness to it too; despite many visitors being there.  I guess that some of this quietness could have been due to the amount of empty space, but it somehow didn’t feel that way, because alongside it, I also experienced a powerful sense of respect and sadness.

The vastness of the site, stretching both to the right and left of the central walkway for me, began to put into perspective the huge scale of the atrocity.

 Seeing both the surviving barracks and the remains of destroyed ones helped me appreciate just how many prisoners had been held there, especially knowing how crammed they were inside their huts.

Going round the site with a guide was a mixed experience for me.  In hindsight, I think it was probably the best way for a first visit, but I’d like to go back again, on my own.  The guide was very informative and ensured that we saw the key things, but going round with her, and also as part of a group meant that there wasn’t always enough time to experience fully and process what I was seeing and experiencing.  In hindsight, I think this might have been a good thing, as I think it had to potential to be overwhelming.  I feel that from the guided visit, I’ve been able to process more of the facts and to get a sense of the camp and life there, but I’d like to go back and process more of the emotions.  To spend a little more time at the sites that held more meaning for me, to stay still and reflect on the lives of the prisoners.

Seeing the electrified barbed wire fencing around the camps was powerful.  Thinking about its use in controlling prisoners through fear, and also providing a painful means of suicide for those prisoners unable to cope. 

I think the sense of awe I mentioned earlier relates to my amazement at the resilience of human beings.  I often feel it towards my clients in the therapy room when I hear the life experiences they’ve had or are living with.  That same sense of awe was magnified countless times inside this camp.  I still can’t begin to comprehend the scale of the fear, terror, humiliation, loss, hunger, anger, etc., etc., that the prisoners must have lived with constantly.  Their sheer helplessness, powerlessness, despair …

And what makes it even more incomprehensible, is that it was at the hands of other human beings.

Looking at the watchtower in this photo helps me envisage the Officers in it, keeping watch over the camp and the prisoners.  And I just can’t even begin to put myself into their shoes.  I can get a small sense of what the prisoners must have felt, but I just can’t comprehend the other side.  Or maybe, I just don’t want to.

Another really powerful moment for me, was my first sighting of a railway carriage used to transport people to the camps.  Having previously read about the horrific conditions within these carriages, actually seeing one up close, made me appreciate more just how horrific those journeys must have been.

Another poignant point for me was the end of the railway track.  Originally, the tracks stopped outside of the camp. But once it became an extermination camp, and to speed up the process of liquidation, prisoners were made to extend the tracks right into the camp.  New arrivals were then simply taken straight to the gas chamber … very close to the end of the railway track.

The gas chamber at this camp was destroyed by the Nazis before liberation to hide the evidence of their actions.  Its ruins still remain …

And again, for me, actually seeing this helped me see in my mind’s eye the experiences of those whose lives ended here.

For some reason, and I still don’t know why, I was drawn to the trees stood to the left of the gas chamber’s remains (photograph at the top of this entry).  Whilst I was there, I was certain there were 4 trees stood there, and even the first few times I looked at my photos, I only say 4 trees.  I was really surprised, almost a week later, to realise that there were actually 5 trees.

Walking around the camp, I kept thinking about my friend’s words.  I kept closing my eyes, taking a slow, deep breath and simply breathing in both my own experience and those of the people who suffered and lost their lives here.  I think it would have been easy to just walk around, seeing the sights.  And maybe that’s what some people need to do; just to see it.  Any more than that could be overwhelming.

I wanted a little bit more than that though.  I wanted to experience it in order to help me to comprehend it and to breathe it in as part of my own connection to humanity … both the horrors experienced by the prisoners and the incomprehensibility of man’s ability to afflict such horrors on other men, women and children.