Sept 21, 2018 I just left Auchwitz about an hour ago. As horrid as the documentary films are, standing on the ground, walking into a gas chamber, starvation cells and suffocating cells lets you visualize what it might have felt like to be brought to those places… the fear of helplessness and despair with the realization of your impending death.
We drove the short distance from Auchwitz to Birkinau by bus. My wife and I stayed at the Birkinau snack shop while the others went ahead to enter the gates of the camp. One death camp a day is enough. Besides, my wife has a brace on her leg and it was a long walk in the sun from the parking lot to get into the camp.
In Auchwitz they display the horrors of the place as you go through the former Polish army barracks… barracks each of which held between 700 and 1000 inmates instead of a couple of platoons of soldiers.
Frankly, I’m at a loss of to describe the depravity… the psychological stench… the horror of this place. It is testimony to the inhumanity of the human species… the embrace of horror… of death as a positive exercise, one carried out with relish by Gestapo personnel
On the bus back to Kracow we just passed a playground with a young family enjoying one of the dying days of summer, alive and celebrating their own humanity, their own freedom and joy for life
The contrast could not be more stark.