Originally published Oct. 9, 2006.
THE GUY in the photo above is called Leonard.
He is a minister who brings groups of kids to Auschwitz a few times a year from Norway and Sweden. There were a lot of students there the day I went, and I trust that this is pretty much true most days. For some reason, most of the students I met at Auschwitz and in Krakow were from the progressive democratic countries in northern Europe, who have made the connection between dignity, freedom and keeping the world safe from another disaster like this.
Here, in a very straightforward way, he is explaining to these students that they are in front of the ruins of gas chamber/crematorium 2, and what that means. This is at Auschwitz ii – Birkenau, the extended camp, the extermination complex. About 50 teenagers are listening attentively as he speaks. Beside us is another group going on in French. I understand enough French to know that the teacher is putting it to the students a little at a time, very tactfully, but getting the basic facts across.
Here, day after day, crowds of 1,000 or more people, most of them newly arrived by train, would go downstairs to undressing rooms, remove their clothes, and go upstairs to the “showers.” They had been instructed to fold their clothes neatly and remember exactly where they left them, so they’d be able to find them when they came back. Then, together with their families and the people they had traveled with, they would be gassed to death. The chamber would be left sealed for about half an hour to make sure nobody was missed (which didn’t always work).
Bodies, alive or dead, were then taken in carts on little tracks to the crematoria and incinerated in ovens up to three at a time. The ashes would be dumped in pits that are still there, where you can still find bits of bone in the nearby topsoil — direct evidence of what happened. The reason the buildings are in ruins is because the elite Nazi SS men, who ran the camp system, dynamited them just before the camp was liberated, in order to hide the evidence of their crimes against humanity. That kind of gesture is seen more of an admission of knowing it was wrong.
From 70% to 75% of the new arrivals at Auschwitz ii – Birkenau were killed immediately. The rest, the strongest among them, were allowed to live for about a month, and do their part in the German war effort, whether it was forced labor or taking part in “scientific” experimentation. We need to pause and remember that these survivors lived out their short lives knowing that the rest of their families, with whom they arrived, had gone to the ovens.
Toward the end of the war, there was a rubber factory called Auschwitz iii – Monowitz that used prisoners in an industrial setting; a concentration camp combined with a factory. This served for the Buna-Werke factory of the IG Farben concern*. There were many of these. We need to add slave labor to the list of Nazi atrocities.
Leonard explained about a place at the camp called Canada, which was where everyone’s baggage was sent, and there, sorted through for valuables (most of which were put into to the war effort). Many of the suitcases had some food in them. So the camp inmates who worked at Canada were the well-fed ones, as opposed to those who survived their remaining month of life on bread, margarine, and broth made from rotten vegetables.
Apparently, those in Auschwitz considered the nation of Canada to be their idea of the safest haven in the world. So the part of the camp where you would actually get to eat and do reasonable work was named for their utopia.