The Machinery of Mass Murder

This post initially appeared in September 2019. I have updated it and am reposting it in light of the rise of anti-semitic attacks in the United States.

The thoughts expressed in this piece have their origin in an intense 12-day trip to Berlin and Oswiecim, Poland.

You say you've never heard of Oswiecim? Perhaps you know it better by its German name of Auschwitz. I went with 11 other people on a tour to learn about the origins of the so-called 'final solution to the Jewish question,' and to see and learn about the places where mass crimes against humanity took place. The trip was developed by Road Scholar and led by a German political scientist who has spent years educating people about the Holocaust and the conditions that gave rise to it. 

I have struggled to find the right words to describe this trip. As a writer, I love finding just the right words to express myself. I enjoy manipulating language to convey the proper feelings. But this is different. It's quite difficult. And I think it will continue to be impossible to find the right words to adequately describe the experience and the reality. Several of us in the group talked about struggling to find the right words. This trip was intense. It was surreal. it was impossible to understand the why and the how. 

Despite the impossibility of finding the right words, and knowing that only those who have spent time at Auschwitz will understand, here are some of my thoughts. I jotted down some thoughts each evening after dinner as I tried to retain the experiences while they were still fresh. With so much information thrown at us, and so many surreal experiences, it was difficult to process everything. So I took a few notes.

Each aspect of this trip showed us just a tiny fraction of what the more than 1 million people who were killed in Auschwitz went through. It also showed us a bit about the life of the large Jewish population in Germany and Poland before the war. 

This was a physically and emotionally exhausting trip. Days were sometimes 12 hours long. There was a lot of walking and a lot of standing. Our trip began in Berlin, where we spent 2- 1/2 days visiting a variety of sites and memorials. We visited the Brandenburg Gate and the

Reichstag, and we saw some of the many 'stumbling stones', brass squares engraved with the name, date of deportation and, if known, date of death, of Jews who lived in a given house and subsequently were sent to death by the Nazis. 
 
We saw the main Berlin synagogue that was seriously damaged during Nazi attacks in November 1938, as well as other buildings that played a prominent role in Berlin Jewish life before the war. Sadly, the synagogue must still be protected by two police officers to safeguard it from vandalism.

We visited the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, as well as memorials to homosexuals and to the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) who fell victims to the Nazis. One of the most touching places I visited was the Wannsee conference center where 15 members of the Third Reich got together one day in January 1942 on the shores of the lake to decide how to implement their so-called final solution. They put in place concrete plans to rid Europe of all Jews, as well as homosexuals, those with physical or mental disabilities, and the Roma (Gypsies). After that they enjoyed a hearty breakfast while gazing over the lake.

We spent time in private exploration of the Topography of Terror museum, built on the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. But the place that touched me most was track 17, the train track in Berlin from which Jews were shipped off to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps. The tracks are no longer used, of course, but the short section that remains is marked on both sides with metal plaques indicating the date, the number of

Jews deported that day and to which camp they were shipped from Berlin. Perhaps most unsettling of all was hearing trains at the nearby, still functioning train station. Trains leaving from track 17 carried some 50,000 German Jews to their deaths.

Leaving Berlin, we took an 8-hour bus ride to the Polish town of Oswiecim, infamous for its most well known landmark, the Auschwitz concentration camp. One morning, we toured the old city of Oswiecim on foot. This city of some 40,000 inhabitants once was home to a thriving Jewish population. Today, not one person of the Jewish faith lives there. Most were exterminated during the war. Survivors, understandably, don’t want to live there. The only remaining synagogue is used only for special occasions by Jews from nearby towns. 
 
Our lodging was a former Carmelite monastery now known as the Center for Dialogue and Prayer. The rooms were simple and small, but comfortable. Meals were served family style, and consisted of typical Polish food, usually soup, cabbage salad, potatoes and pork or chicken. It was plain and simple food, yet as I ate, I recalled the watery soup fed to the prisoners in the camp and their near-starvation diet. 

The lodgings provided a wonderful respite from the emotional stresses of our time in Oswiecim. Staying in a fancy hotel would have been so inappropriate. Even the center's name encouraged us to engage in discussions and to reflect on what we saw and experienced each day. And at the end of an emotionally and sometimes physically exhausting day, I looked forward to returning to my room, a hot shower and some solitude. Our lodging wasn't totally devoid of comfort, however, as we could get a bottle of Coke, a latte, ice cream or a candy bar.

On the first full day in Poland, I went for a walk around the monastery grounds at 6:30 a.m.

The outside temperature was 43°F, and the sky was foggy. The weather seemed to reflect the somber nature of our visit. Somehow, a bright and sunny morning just wouldn't have seemed right. As I was enjoying the early morning solitude and fresh air, I heard a train whistle, a sound that this morning gave me chills as I thought of those innocent souls who were brought to their death on trains. And as I walked in the chill and fog, dressed warmly in a long sleeve shirt, long pants and a down jacket, my thoughts turned to those who endured freezing cold winters in Auschwitz without benefit of warm clothes or shoes, and who returned from 12 hours of back-breaking work to unheated barracks.

Several mornings after breakfast, we walked to the main Auschwitz camp for a morning of work or study. The walk was less than a mile each direction, but I think it gave each of us some very tiny experience of what the prisoners must have endured as they walked and ran every where. I felt that walking made me feel more like a participant in the entire experience rather than as a mere observer. Some days, we walked back to the camp after lunch. Walking was for me a meaningful part of the experience. Rather than arriving in a bus as most visitors did, we walked across some of the railroad tracks and saw some of the many buildings that still stand as stark, cold reminders of the Nazi horrors.

The appearance of the main camp, with its tidy brick buildings, is deceiving. It looks like a small village, with streets neatly laid out. The reality, of course, is far more sinister. Auschwitz is anything but a neat Polish village. The famous sign at the main gate, with its proclamation that "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work will make you free), was a chilling introduction to the camp, marking the place where countless people walked to their deaths. We passed the spot where the prisoner orchestra played as new arrivals entered the camp, and where the bodies of those who were killed while trying to escape were displayed as a warning to others. 

We had a 4-hour, in-depth tour of the original camp, Auschwitz 1, led by a Polish guide who provided an amazing wealth of information. Auschwitz is a state museum, and it feels like a museum. It covers 49 acres. Despite the atrocities that took place there, I don't feel that I got a real sense of the horrors and reality of life and death in Auschwitz 1. Yes, I saw displays filled with eyeglasses, suitcases, shoes, brushes and even human hair. For some reason, the collection of thousands of shoes got to me, as it did the first time I visited Auschwitz a few years ago. My eyes were drawn to the two red shoes in the case among thousands of brown shoes. People -- now brutally murdered -- once wore these shoes. The human connection was very real. But I felt detached from the realities of this place whose name will always be synonymous with cruelty, torture and death on a mass scale.

I saw the basement 'standing cells' where prisoners were forced to stand up. There were four standing cells at Auschwitz in the basement of Block (Building) 11, each of which measured about 1 square yard. Four prisoners were crammed into each tiny space that forced them to stand, with only a 2-inch opening for air. I also saw the starvation cell, where prisoners were held without food until they died. Block 11, with its narrow corridors and dark cells in the basement, truly was a house of horrors. Another tidy brick building was the scene of horrific experiments on woman, most of them Jewish. I saw displays of empty cans that once held pellets of Zyklon B, the pesticide used in the mass killings in gas chambers. I saw a display of the gray pellets themselves. Auschwitz 1 also housed SS headquarters. The camp initially held Polish political prisoners and Soviet military prisoners, part of the Nazi plan to exterminate Slavs, whom they viewed as sub-human. Later it and its sister camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, held primarily Jewish prisoners.

Despite knowing about and seeing these horror chambers and exhibits, I feel that the camp on the outside seems too neat and tidy. It's hard for my mind to imagine the torture, the starvation, the cruelty and the mass murder that took place there. At the back of the camp, just beyond the electric fencing and several guard towers, stands the house once occupied by Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz who was hanged for his crimes. It is occupied to this day, complete with a satellite dish on the side of the house. I cannot imagine how anyone can bear to live there.

During the trip, I certainly was struck by the immensity of the suffering and death, but strangely, I didn't have a strong emotional response. I was very tired, yes, both physically and emotionally, and overwhelmed, but I was surprised by my muted reaction to what I saw, experienced and learned.   


Perhaps one reason for my lack of a visceral response was due to the fact that the brick barracks are not what most people envision when they think of concentration camps. The first time I visited Auschwitz, I expected to see the wooden barracks shown in many documentaries about Auschwitz. This, in part, made it difficult to imagine and comprehend the true horrors of this camp. The double electric fences and numerous guard towers, however, did give an idea of the true nature of the camp. Perhaps the human brain simply has trouble comprehending such cruelty and death on an unprecedented scale.

Seeing the rooms in the brick buildings (known as blocks) crowded with wooden bunk beds gave a pretty good idea of the awful conditions in which prisoners were kept. Some groups of tourists were noisy, chatting away and laughing. The group I was with, however, was silent and solemn as we toured the various buildings and learned of the horrors they had held.

The following day our Polish guide led us on a 4-1/2 hour tour of Auschwitz 2 Birkenau, the huge expansion camp about 2 miles away from the original. This camp covers 423 acres and has 360 barracks, 60 of them brick and the remainder made of wood. It had four crematoria and could house 92,000 prisoners.

Standing outside the main gate, looking at the tracks where the trains entered the camp, I tried to imagine how frightened and exhausted the new arrivals must have felt. They had no way of knowing what lay ahead. Perhaps that was a good thing. But of course, my imagination fell far short of their reality.

We first viewed the camp from the big guard tower at the main gate, gazing down on the massive prison. We then stood near a train car, frozen on the tracks with the doors closed. I looked at long rows of barbed wire, electric fences and countless brick buildings destroyed by the fleeing Nazis attempting to cover up their crimes. We walked the route prisoners took as they went either to the gas chambers or to barracks where they would be worked or starved to death. We walked most of the acreage and visited sites most visitors don't see, including a lush, green field of grass that holds the ashes of countless bodies cremated outside when the nearby crematorium V stopped working. This camp truly was a house of horrors on a massive scale. The overcast skies, and eventual rain and falling darkness, only added to my sense of foreboding.

One building holds displays of photographs prisoners had with them when they were 'processed' and sent to their deaths. Some show smiling couples, families, children and individuals. They were ordinary people condemned to death simply because they were deemed different, inferior, sub-human.

The final stop at Birkenau was known as the death barrack, for the two buildings housed women deemed unfit by the SS for further work. These women awaited death in the gas chambers without food, water or medical care, perhaps for several days. When the barrack was full, additional prisoners were kept outside in a locked yard. There is no electricity in these buildings, so it was nearly impossible to see the crowded barrack and stacked wooden bunks in the falling darkness. Some visitors used light from their cell phones to provide the only illumination. The building has a stove, but there was no wood with which to provide heat during the cold, cold winters.

The next day we returned to Auschwitz I. My group spent about an hour one day and 90 minutes the following day raking leaves and sweeping a small portion of Auschwitz 1. These very mundane and seemingly small tasks were our little contribution to maintaining the grounds at this very special place. It also, I think, enhanced our understanding of what it was like to live here. But we had proper clothing. We all had shoes that were appropriate and that fit. We had no concerns about being beaten or shot if we didn’t work quickly enough or hard enough. And unlike the prisoners, we were able to leave and return to our lodgings for a good lunch. Everyone in our group pitched in to help others. We took pride in our simple work. And we were happy to contribute in some very small way to the museum.

I think each of us felt this personal contribution to the museum. My back was sore after the first day of sweeping and raking, but my discomfort was nothing when compared with the suffering of the prisoners. Physical labor, something most of us weren't used to, put things into a new perspective. We also spent time on other days checking portable displays for signs of damage or wear and tear, and inspecting permanent exhibits for spelling or grammatical errors in the text that had been translated from Polish into English.

In the evenings, we had a debriefing session to ask questions, present our thoughts about what we saw that day, and respond to questions from our German leader. His questions were thought-provoking, to say the least.

We also got to hear from a member of the archive staff who showed us some of the documents (letters and Nazi forms) both original and photocopied produced during the war. The Nazis were consummate record keepers, a task carried out by slave labor under the direction of the Nazi overlords. But only those prisoners not sent directly to the gas chambers were registered, so no record remains for the vast majority of those who passed through the gates of Auschwitz and Birkenau. 

We got to see a special exhibit of art produced at great risk by prisoners and by survivors, as well as getting a tour of the facilities where work is ongoing to preserve the thousands of artifacts from the camp. Everything from baskets to some 3,500 leather suitcases

to toothbrushes and enamelware are being carefully preserved. Sitting next to a box of toothbrushes that once belonged to prisoners, and realizing the very personal nature of these items, was chilling.

We had a couple of hours of free time on the last day, to revisit exhibits, take photographs or just be present among the ghosts of  Auschwitz. I took advantage of the nice weather to wander the camp one last time, taking photographs that I hoped would capture the horrors of this evil place. This also gave me a chance to be alone with my thoughts. The people in my group are wonderful

The wall where the SS shot prisoners.

people, but sometimes I needed to be alone.

Auschwitz is so much more than just a stop on a tour of Poland, or a day trip from nearby Krakow. The first time I was there a few years ago, I visited both Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2 Birkenau in a single day. There was so much I didn’t get to see and experience. 

Auschwitz is so much more than simply a a collection of buildings, guard towers, electric fences and mass killing facilities. It deserves to be visited with enough time to truly understand its horrors. What members of my group struggled with, and that still remains unanswered, is how this could happen.

This trip was very physically tiring due to the long days, lots of walking (more than 7 miles a couple of days), as well as the emotional and intellectual toll it took. But as one member of the group noted, our feelings of hunger, our sense of feeling tired or sore or cold, are nothing. 
   
As I prepared to leave Auschwitz 1 for the last time, after spending many hours there, I paid a final visit to the crematorium. There were few people inside, so I was able to offer a final, quiet tribute to the victims of the Nazi killing machine. I wanted to say something to the ghosts of all those murdered by the supposed superior race, to let them know that they have not been forgotten. But all I could whisper was "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The crematorium and gas chamber at Auschwitz I.