I like this shot because it just looks like a nice, peaceful residential street — but if you've ever been there you'll recognise it as a Nazi concentration camp. Auschwitz was built at the early stages of the holocaust, when the Nazis were still making some attempt to cover up what they were doing, by planting tall trees and putting up red-brick buildings: they called it a "work camp".
I went there a couple of years ago with my friend Eavan. Inside, past the gas chambers and torture rooms, one space was filled to the ceiling with human hair, another with children's shoes. You could see that some of the shoes used to be red, or had been decorated with bows. Eavan said it was strange to think that once upon a time a little kid chose those shoes, pointing at them through a shop window.
One of my nicest - if that's the right word - blogging experiences is to do with Auschwitz. I mentioned on my blog how I'd been and that I'd randomly taken a photo of one of the prisoners, whose name I mentioned, and years later, a descendant of his got in touch and asked me to send a copy of the photo, which I still had, and I did, and she was thrilled.
ReplyDeleteI visited the camp on a glorious summer's day in 1992. Yes, it was odd that the place didn't somehow look more gruesome. But that ultimately adds to the gruesomity, I suppose. The only camp near Berlin is at the end of a bog standard residential street.
^ Great story.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea what to expect there. I guess I was expecting it to look more like Birkenhau (which we also saw. It was around the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation so it was all over the news, and I felt ignorant about not knowing more about it. So we went and visited.
Yes, Birkenau is a good antidote, isn't it, at least visually. More bleak and desolate.
ReplyDeleteI always used to take visitors to Berlin to Sachsenhausen, the camp I mentioned at the end of a regular suburban street. I eventually began giving those interested instructions on how to get there alone. Too massively grim to see too often.
I didn't visit any of the camps when I was in Germany due to time constraints, but then, I never know how to feel as a tourist when I do.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's of utmost importance that places of such momentous monstrosity are preserved and remembered, since it's only when people forget that history repeats, but at the same time I struggle with the feeling that somehow it's supposed to be 'entertaining' or that some people might treat it as such.
I have never been to Auschwitz which might seem a bit strange what with me living in Krakow. I've seen only one concentration camp in the north of Poland and I'm done for a lifetime. It is a bit different with Polish people though. In high school we are literally bombarded with war literature and after a while you simply can't intake anymore of this horror.
ReplyDeleteWhy does the date on this say Nov 2008?? I don't live that far away... but I can't watch any Holocaust movies without crying and I just think I'd have a breakdown if I went there and I've been trying not to have one of those.. there's a Nazi "work camp" not far from me thats a museum now, but even that one I dont want to see.
ReplyDeleteI used to school near Belsen in Germany which was where Anne Frank died. It was a very peaceful yet strange place. I visited it several times, and never once any birds around the area. Odd how you notice things like that.
ReplyDeletePS, another great photo. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMy husband's grandfather David is an Auschwitz survivor. I don't know the full story, except on the way to Auschwitz his father jumped off the train at a stop to eat some snow, and a Nazi shot him. The rest of the family were murdered on arrival.
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of survivors David never spoke much of the experience. He made a video for Yad Vashem (the holocaust museum in Jerusalem) which he wants me to watch, but I kind of feel its too personal.
i visited there this summer and i found the piles of shoes particularly affecting; shoes to me always seem like such intimate, personal objects. i have always thought of them as inappropriate in secondhand shops, like underwear, they're something that should belong to one person and them alone. to see them as loot piled high was monstrous.
ReplyDeletei visited in summer.. so it looks totally different to me.. but yea auschitwz is a place that leaves an effect on ya
ReplyDeleteHi mate.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't til me and Arna went to Auschwitz last year, that I realised why you had gone holocaust-crazy when we lived together.
I recommend this book - Auschwitz : The Nazis & The 'Final Solution', by Laurence Rees.
And when we were there, we got caught in a lightening storm on the way back from the fields. That was nowhere near as scary as being inside those buildings though...