#this post also functions as an efficient reminder of how much i switch between art styles

[brushstrokes-art]

dear everyone who followed me for kid icarus: i am so sorry that the endless cycle of fandom hopscotch carried me to the faraway land of cpu kerfuffle instead. have some more cpuk content. if you think that's dark pit you’re wrong he is but no he isn’t <3

[czechthisshitout]

Visit to Auschwitz 4.25.17.

*DISCLAIMER* These are my personal opinions and reflections on Auschwitz and thus reflects my own limited knowledge and personal biases. 

Another one of the reasons I may have fallen behind on this blog, was my reluctance to write this post. It’s not that I don’t want to share my experience at Auschwitz, I just wasn’t sure how to approach it and wanted to make sure I did so in a respectful way. This post may be a bit more fragmented and less narrative than most of my other posts.

On Tuesday morning, we all woke up early and packed up our stuff at the Hostel in Krakow, so we could meet up with Mike by the bus by 8am. I stole some cheese and bread from the hostel breakfast, because I didn’t want to buy any food on the premises of Auschwitz (we were scheduled to be there from 9:00am to 3:30pm that day). The atmosphere on the bus ride was strange, some people were silent, others were nervously cracking jokes, by the time was got a few miles away, the bus was silent. Auschwitz is on the outskirts of a rather large Polish town, with houses and shopping malls only a few minutes away, which was very rather startling. It makes sense, as there was houses close to Auschwitz which were torn down as Auschwitz was being constructed and the town was already well established by 1930s. I guess it just goes to show that American conceptualize Auschwitz, as somewhere so inhumane and unimaginable, that is must be in some isolate, desolated place. What was even more disconcerting, was the various food and coffee stands that littered the walk to the front entrance and the brightly colored advertisements for sodas and hotdogs, just like those in the more touristy parks of Prague. Again, I recognize the necessity of having food venues, especially for children and the elderly, but the prominence of the consumerism really caught me off guard. I guess, you assume the entire “Auschwitz” experience has to be solemn and devoted to the memorial, and any aspect that seems ‘normal’ or ‘capitalizing’ off the experience, is deeply uncomfortable and disconcerting. 

Anyways, we paid at the front gate and met our tour guide after a few minutes of standing right by the entrance. The weather, was decent, partly sunny and high 50s. Our tour guide was a soft spoken, middle aged Polish women, who’s grandfather worked in the Auschwitz workshops, alongside concentration camp inmates, but said never stepped out of time, as he knew him and his entire family could be killed if he did so. Her grandfather’s story really brings up the question of what is the difference between collaboration and coercion. 

Everyone in the group got a headset, so we could hear what our tour guide was saying with minimal distraction to the groups, as it was fairly crowded. She was hugely knowledgeable and did a good job of illustrating the suffering of Polish prisoners and the later shift to Jewish suffering, as well the complicity of various groups during the functioning of the camp.

We started in Auschwitz I, the original camp which originally housed Polish prisoners, and had administrative building, the Nazi officers residents, the barrack, and the more ‘museum’ part of the compound. We had an intensive three hour tour, during which I saw

-The ‘main square’ in which role call was performed twice a day on the inmates, and the inmates often had to spend hours in terrible conditions and undergoing abuse from the officers.

-A massive room filled with thousands and thousands of pounds of hair, which had been forcibly been shaved by officers as women entered the camp. It was mounds upon mounds of hair, some of it beautiful braided. 

-Rows and rows of camp inmate photos, taken in 1941 and 1942, before the volume became too vast, and the Nazi switched to tattooing numbers on the inmates arms. Its terrifying how thin and haunted looking some of them already were when they had the photos taken.

-Huge piles upon piles of luggage with the owner’s last names handwritten on them. The victims were asked to do this as they were being transported to the camp. 

-Piles and piles of tea kettles, you could tell that many of them had were worn and well loved. 

-A memorial to the children inmates, many of whom were only eight or nine years old.  

-The original crematorium and gas chamber, which had functioned until early 1944 when three larger crematoriums were built at Birkenau. It was claustrophobic and dark, and I’m glad we only spent a short amount of time there.

-Terrible terrible pictures of the inmates who survived medical experiments by the Nazis doctors, many of them children.  

-The inmate prison, where political and other non-Jewish inmates were held for punishment or before being killed by firing squad if they had rebelled or ‘misbehaved’ in any other way in the camp. 

-A memorial to/exhibit on the Romani victims of the Holocaust. It was illuminating and disturbing to learn the many ways the Romani were treated just like the Jews. You could also tell that the exhibit had a lot less funding than other exhibitions, reflecting the negative cultural attitudes to the Romani people that continue until this day. 

-A room filled with artist recreations of the few drawing from child prisoners which have survived.  That was a particularly hard room to walk through. 

In general, I was surprised by the emphasis on the non-Jewish, Polish inmates and the harsh conditions they had to endure, again its somewhat makes sense as Auschwitz is in Poland and was originally a camp for Polish prisoners, but the American narrative is that of Jewish suffering.This emphasis is also somewhat political in nature, as Auschwitz serves as an excellent way for the Polish to uphold a victimization narrative and distance themselves from any charges of complicity. I hate the fact that Auschwitz is used for political purposes and to possibly uphold over simplified narratives about the Holocaust. I know its inevitable and all memorials are in someway political, but there was so much suffering, so much death on such an unimaginable scale, I just want it to remain apolitical. I want it to honors both those who lost their life and those who suffered, and to educate future generations, I want it to retain some kind of ‘purity of purpose’ I suppose. 

We had thirty minutes for lunch, I went back the bus and eat my bread and cheese before swinging by the bookshop and purchasing a two books, one a testimonial of one of the Nazi doctor’s assistants and the other about art the prisoners managed to make in the camp. At the end of the break we piled back into the bus and headed to Birkenau, the later, larger camp, where most of the exterminations happened. We went to the entrance/guard tower and the tour guide gave us a quick history lesson before thanks us and parting ways. For the afternoon, we were freed to explore Birkenau in our own way, at our own rate. 

The first thing that struck me was just how huge Birkenau, most of the barracks are gone, the material being reused in the Post-war period, but the rows of their foundations just stretch on, row after row, there is dozens, if not hundreds of rows. What is even more sickening, is than 75% of the (predominantly Jewish) prisoners who arrived at Birkenau went died in the gas chambers within the first few days after their arrival, many never even used the barracks that splayed before me. 

At Birkenau you get this nearly suffocating sense of ‘nothingness’, its not the visceral sadness I felt from many of the personal artifacts in Auschwitz I. There is no human elements there, just the skeletons of the buildings. Many of the victims that there died, weren’t just killed, they were erased, their belonging stripped from them, their bodies destroyed, many didn’t live long enough to leave any mark or reminder of their presence. So many people died in Birkenau, in such as an efficient, clinical way, the human mind can’t comprehend it. The scope is so massive, any individual can only dip their toe into the ocean worth of suffering that was the horror of the Holocaust. 

We had about two hours to ‘experience’ Birkenau, I saw:

-A ‘children’s barrack, with a few murals made for children and which highlighted just how inhumane the conditions of the barracks were.

-The train line extension that dropped off the prisoners, and where they were sorted as being ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ by Dr. Mengele. Those who were fit to work were sent to the barracks, those ‘unfit’ sent to the gas chambers. Women, children and those over 40 were most often deemed unfit.  

-The ruins of the three gas chambers, which the Nazi blew up in the last weeks of the war, in an attempt to cover up their tracks, and where you can still see the steps the victims descended as they entered the building.  

-The building were the all incoming prisoner were processed, registered and stripped of their belonging before being forcible shaved and showered. It was one of the few buildings intact, with large pictures on the walls of Jews waiting to be processed and the Nazi offers ‘registering’ them. When I walked through the building I was the only person within the building, the rooms were freezing and it just felt incredibly suffocating and ominous. It was one place in Birkenau were you really felt a ‘reminder’ of the victims who suffered here. 

One of the weirdest things was just how ‘pretty’ it was parts of Birkenau were. The back of the camp is a wooded area with small paths between the various buildings, it was a sunny afternoon, you could hear bird song, it was *pleasant.* Not a word you would ever wanted to associate with Auschwitz. You almost feel guilty, enjoying the natural beauty where so much suffering occurred. We like to believe that beauty and suffering are two separate experiences, and its uncomfortable whenever they simultaneously occur. 

I was nearly late headed back, we were supposed to be back at the bus by 3:30pm and at 3pm, I found myself on the far side of the camp, so I quickly had to cover the 2-3 mile walk back. Part of the walk involved walking back through the barracks on a rough uneven path with a tall fence on each side. It was only as I was halfway through this portion did I remember this was one of the major paths victims look from the train platform to the gas chambers. Except I was walking in the opposite direction, from the crematorium back to the entrance, it really hits you that you have this simple freedom that hundreds of thousands of victims did not. A mixture of guilt-tinted relief and dread descended over me, and I visibly sped up when I neared the main walkway. I was able to catch up with Francesca, Maddy and Mike as they were nearing the guard tower/entrance, and we were the last people back to the bus. 

I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. No to be too hyperbolic, but I can think of few instances where I was more exhausted than the bus ride back to Prague that late afternoon and evening.