Lessons from Auschwitz: A day trip to the biggest death camp in the world

This year, Standard reporters Ryan Merrifield and Callum Chaplin were invited on the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with four students from Cirencester College.

A RAINY morning in March and we are on our way to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where the Nazis exterminated 1.2 million Jews and other ‘undesirables’ during World War Two.

The coach, packed mostly full of Sixth Form students, drives along the River Sola, which flows within meters of the camp itself.

“That river is drenched with human ashes from the Jews that were killed in Auschwitz,” says Rabbi Garson.

The Polish town of Oświęcim – which had a large Jewish population before the war – was renamed Auschwitz after it was occupied by German forces in 1939, with many residents moved to the camp, formed soon after.

The town still exists today, but the name has become so synonymous with the Holocaust, and “the challenge that this town has is to try and rule out what took place,” says Rabbi Garson.

“They’re trying to move away from the shadow of the death camp.”

But how do you move away from the living embodiment of the worst example of human genocide in modern history?

There is a McDonald’s, a KFC, a shopping mall – but “you’re five minutes away from the biggest death camp in the world”.

The site consists of Auschwitz I (the original camp) with the famous ‘Arbeit macht frei’ sign above the gates – and Auschwitz II-Birkenau – the larger main site for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question: death.

There was also Auschwitz III-Monowitz and 45 satellite camps – but it is only the first two preserved as part of the museum and memorial for visitors.

Indeed, there were death camps created in several countries by the Nazis.

We were told that there was no right or wrong way to react to what we saw, but were warned by the Rabbi not to simply take photos to share on social media.

“You cannot compare experiencing something through your naked eye to the lens of your phone,” he said on the coach. “We live in a world where we need to tweet everything or put it on Instagram or Facebook or whatever.

“It’ll be much more meaningful if you don’t do that.”

Though it became something of a snap reaction.

Everyone from the students to the teachers to us two reporters, couldn’t help immediately taking out our phones to get photos of something which has been photographed a million times before.

Our Polish tour guide led us through Auschwitz I. A series of well-preserved red brick blocks housing exhibits including the mugshots of ‘prisoners’ on their arrival, having had their hair removed and been dressed in striped pyjamas.

It is difficult to put into words what it is like to be there.

“Perhaps I ought not be surprised at members of a younger generation who cannot believe it happened at all,” wrote Kitty Hart-Moxon, an Auschwitz survivor.

It is easy to understand why.

The site itself is essentially just well-preserved buildings. You expect to be overcome with a sense of the evil that went on there as soon as you step through the gates.

But it’s more complex than that.

“More than ever in 2017, the lessons that we should have learnt years ago have not been learnt,” said Rabbi Garson. “It’s indeed a stain on humanity that humanity hasn’t really raised the bar to become humanity.”

Last year 1.8 million people visited the site, yet modern history is riddled with atrocities taking place since the Holocaust. The lessons that should have been learnt from Auschwitz have not.

There is a photo of three young boys in one of the blocks in Auschwitz I that struck me the most.

When the prisoners arrived off the trains they went through ‘selection’. Pregnant women, the disabled, the physically unfit were immediately sent for extermination, as were children.

They couldn’t be used for work and some were killed within two hours of arriving, we were told.

The image shows three boys, all holding hands, presumably having just been separated from their families, at the front of a line of prisoners, presumably heading to their deaths.

One boy is slightly older, he is cautious – you can see it in his eyes. He is holding the younger boys’ hands – putting on a brave face. That photo was haunting.

Another photo in the same exhibition shows three SS officers walking away from the ‘selection’ with smirks on their faces. They might be heading for lunch, chatting about the football.

The second thing that struck me most were the collections of human hair, shoes and glasses on display. Mounds and mounds.

By the time we reached Birkenau it was pouring with rain and everyone was in waterproof ponchos.

The difference now was we couldn’t take photos because of the rain – my camera was wrapped in one of the rain macs in an attempt to keep it dry.

Birkenau is wide open. It’s huge. It’s hopeless. This is where, along a path between electrified fences, prisoners would go on death marches from the first camp.

Without the temptation to photograph everything, and battling the elements in the late afternoon, we actually had a chance to see the place.

But of course we couldn’t.

The wash hut where prisoners had five seconds each to use the toilet – a line of holes in a wooden panel.

The tiny wooden train carriage that carried 100 prisoners to the camp, on journeys which sometimes lasted as long as 11 days.

Two people could’ve fit in that carriage comfortably. Though with little ventilation. It was not much bigger than the horse boxes you see on the motorway.

The Nazis did their best to ensure these people became animals. The only consulation being they generally didn’t last very long. Looking at the dates of arrival to the dates of death, it was hours, days and weeks. It was very rarely months, never years – that I could see.

But we only spent one day, a few hours.

“It doesn’t even scratch the surface,” said one student. “You could spend a week here but you’ll never know how it felt to be them.”

We were told to look at The Book of Names and pick one out. Remember it. My eyes hit Benjamin Aandagt. He was born in 1922 in The Netherlands. I didn’t see anything else. But the name stuck in my head.

Rabbi Garson said it was important to remember the individuals, that each had a life – hopes and aspirations – that were taken in a way we can’t comprehend.

I was told that initially, the SS guards just shot the prisoners on arrival but this meant too many of them were left mentally scarred and couldn’t go on working.

So Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS, came up with the idea that each officer only has their job.

Herding prisoners, splitting them into groups, ordering them to work, sending them into the chambers, feeding in the gas from somewhere that they couldn’t see the outcome.

No one was to blame because no-one was killing anyone. They weren’t killing a person, they were killing ‘undesirables’. People with no hair, with numbers tattooed to their arms – people that were sickly thin and scared.

But despite that, their message persevered. From the little acts of rebellion to the burying of photo negatives to help show the world what was happening.

We were told to look into the eyes in the photos. To try to understand them.

It’s unfathomable how a person can do what was done to another person, but then at the same time it’s not.

We see hatred every day based on race or religion. We see it in the person on the street and the people in governments.

The Holocaust was allowed to happen, and not just by the Nazis. Everything about it was shrouded in lies, but it wasn’t a secret. And it can happen again and again.

I can’t tell you how visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau made me feel, because I don’t know.