Auschwitz a permanent reminder of the horrific evil of Nazi efficiency

Date Published: {J}

BY JUDY MURPHY

THE temperature was minus 18 and snow was thick on the ground as we walked through the gates of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in South West Poland passing under the iconic sign declaring ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work makes you free).

It was late January and we were getting a taste – a very small taste – of what life had been like for the millions of people who were incarcerated here by the Nazis during World War II, where they were either worked to death or, if deemed unfit for work or medical experimentation, sent to the camp’s gas chambers. This was a place where having no laces on your shoes meant almost certain death because it meant you weren’t able to work – especially in winter. If you couldn’t work, you died.

We had been warned that a visit to Auschwitz was not an experience for the faint hearted; the atrocities carried out here on Jews, Gypsies, Poles, communists, homosexuals and those viewed as not fitting the Nazi idea of the ideal Aryan, have come to symbolise the evil of Nazism and are, simply, beyond compare.

Wrapped under layers and layers of clothes, the bitter cold still penetrated through to our bones. Yet, during World War II this desolate camp – in reality three camps consisting of Auschwitz, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III- Monowitz – was the living hell where millions of Nazi prisoners were confined, through savagely cold Winters and unbearably hot Summers.

Great tracts of land were cleared and local Polish people displaced to create Auschwitz, the largest German concentration camp, which has become the lasting symbol of Nazi inhumanity. Although it wasn’t initially conceived of as a camp to kill Jews, this was where Hitler’s loyal henchmen carried out what they called ‘The Final Solution’ – the method by which Europe would be rid forever of Jewish people.

The estimated number of people who died here varies greatly but it’s accepted that it was between 1.1 and 1.5 million – with 200,000 of those being children. Realistically, however, nobody will ever know exactly how many people died in this death factory which began life as a former Polish army barracks. Death factory is the best term for this place. As we walked around on our guided tour learning about how Auschwitz operated, the primary emotion was one of horrified awe at the cold, clinical efficiency of the people who operated this camp.

Auschwitz I

Our first stop was Auschwitz I – the site of the original army barracks and the only part of the camp with solid brick buildings. Inside the walls, topped by electric barbed wire, and sentried watch towers, such a reign of terror operated that it’s difficult to imagine how anybody survived it.

The work carried out by prisoners in the early days of Auschwitz involved digging ditches, draining ponds and shoring up river banks to create farming land for the ‘Master Race’. Every morning – Winter or Summer – there was an open air roll call, and if one person was missing or out of line, there was hell to pay.

Sometimes people had to stand there for hours, frequently in their bare feet. Savage beatings were the norm. If the same number did not return for evening roll call – be they dead or alive – the punishment was horrific.

Our Polish guide relayed this information as we walked between the blocks in Auschwitz I. Her English was perfect and even though she obviously delivered this talk a couple of times daily, she managed to convey the depravity of the camp guards and those prisoners who were appointed as their Kapos or stewards. Many Kapos were criminals and were just as brutal as the German guards.

Block 11 in the main camp was where prisoners were tortured – methods included sleep deprivation, people being left standing for hours in confined spaces, being hung upside down with their arms pulled behind them, and worse.

Between block 10 and block 11 was the execution yard where people were hanged or shot against a wall. That original wall no longer exists – but a replica has been built there and the atmosphere in this yard was stifling, despite the cold.

Lasting reminders

Our tour brought us into several of the buildings, clean now and warm – what a modern visitor can’t get is the smell and sight of the thousands of starving prisoners in this overcrowded camp. But what you do see are individual photos of early prisoners, taken before Auschwitz became a serious death camp, and before the Germans didn’t bother taking prisoners’ photos any more. These photos, all along the walls of one block, gave the names of the prisoners, the date of their arrival and the date of their deaths.

Unsurprisingly, most people didn’t last more than a few months. These were real people whose misfortune was to be alive at a particular time in history and belonging to a particular ethnic group.

For more, read page 27 of this week’s Galway City Tribune.