Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II- Birkenau

Yesterday was something I wasn't sure how I would handle.  We went to the Auschwitz camps.  What many people don't know, including myself before yesterday, is that Auschwitz was really two camps.  There was Auschwitz I, which was the original camp that the Nazis took over that had been used previously by the Polish army.  Then when it got too big they made an even larger camp called Auschwitz II- Birkenau.  It was a total of 440 acres and the sheer size of it was just breathtaking and I was speechless.  At the first Auschwitz camp, we saw several buildings that were the original buildins on the outside but restored on the inside to serve as space for the exhibits.  Only one building remained completely original inside and out and that was what the prisoners there called the 'Prison inside the Prison'.  This is where they had special cells that served specific purposes of torturing prisoners who misbehaved and they wanted to teach a lesson.  There were suffocation cells that had no windows or cracks for air so they would just die.  There were starvation cells and also standing cells where prisoners were made to stand with several other prisoners for days on end without food or windows and would die from exhaustion of having to stand all the time.  These cells were still in tact and visible.  There was the square where they held roll call and if even one prisoner was absent, either from escaping or from dying during work duty, the prisoners were made to stay there until the missing prisoner was found.  The longest roll call lasted 19 hours.  They even performed this in the freezing cold of winter while the SS guard had a small guard booth to sit in.  We saw the hair that was cut off of the prisoners before they were gassed, found by the Soviet Red Army, and even though it was behind a glass wall it still smelled terrible.  We saw the shoes, the glasses, the suitcases, and several other personal items of the victims taken there.  We saw the gas chamber and the crematorium, which were both enormous and enough to make you sick.  

We then took our bus over to the second Auschwitz camp- Birkenau.  As I said before, there are no words to describe the massiveness of this place.  There were only a few buildings remaining of the originals but what was very eerie was that most of the wooden barracks had collapsed over time and the only thing that remained standing were the brick chimneys used to heat the barracks.  The train tracks led from outside the camp, through the 'Gate of Death' and all the way to the end where the gas chambers and the crematoriums stood.  In their haste to leave, the Nazis tried to destroy the crematoriums and gas chambers but only did a half-ass job and so there are still enormous chunks of the buildings still in place today.  The most sickening part is the stairs that the prisoners were made to take down in to the chambers to die.  There isn't really one word to describe this experience.  But I leave you with a question... What do you think 'the Holocaust' means?  Until next time...