Fourth Day in Krakow

Auschwitz and Birkenau

Today we spent the day at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

This is the gate at Auschwitz through which the camp’s inmates marched every day to work at the camp’s factories. The inscription over the gate is in German and reads, with more than a little irony: “Work makes you free.”

This is the gate to the Birkenau complex of camps and factories. The trains would pull through this gate and the occupants of the trains would disembark on a platform. On this platform the camps’ doctors would sort the new arrivals into two groups. One group would go directly to the nearby gas chambers. The other group would go to the factories where they would be starved and worked to death.

Approximately one million three hundred thousand men, women and children were sent to the Auschwitz complex of concentration camps. Seventy-five percent of the new arrivals were immediately sent to the gas chambers. A total of approximately one million one hundred thousand people were killed at Auschwitz. For those of you from Springfield who are reading this blog post, that would be the equivalent of killing everyone in Springfield times ten.

I can’t even begin to find the words to describe the utter horror of this place.

You might ask: “Why visit a place like Auschwitz?” One reason would be to recognize and honor the men, women and children who lived and died there. I think another reason is to make sure that we never forget the Holocaust and how low into the abyss of hatred we, as human beings, are capable of sinking.

One of the barracks at Auschwitz had a plaque on the wall with this quote from George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If that is true, then I hope to God that we never forget or deny the existence of the Holocaust and always honor the victims of this horrific crime against humanity.

Tomorrow we fly to Stockholm.

Goodnight from Krakow.