Images to Ponder: Day Three

Rehumanizing a place of horror...

A visit to Auschwitz I 

on the eve of the 70th anniversary of liberation

I will try to choose the least triggering of photos, 

but please go ahead at your own pace, only if you choose to.

ARRIVALS

The first brick building I encountered when entering Auschwitz 1

Do these brick barracks look like what you would have imagined?

What surprises you?

In Auschwitz I there were 22 of these.

In Auschwitz II there were about 250.

The famous Arbeit Macht Frei sign, beside a birch tree.

 I include this photo just to give you perspective about the  location of the famous and cruelly ironic "Arbeit macht frei" sign.  

It was a lot smaller than I imagined it.

Arbeit: Work.  Auschwitz 1 was first a Concentration (Labor) Camp.
Later it became an Extermination (Mass Murder) Camp.

I shudder when I think what kind of WORK (Arbeit) the Nazis needed the prisoners to do.
Note: the first prisoners here were Soviet Prisoners of War, then Polish political dissidents and criminals.  Later, teachers, religious leaders, handicapped people,  Roma "Gypsies", Jews, and citizens of other countries were taken here.


Check out the sign without the railroad track blocking it to see workers' resistance.

The famous sign in the snow.  

THE COLD

Let's just talk about cold here, for a moment.

If you were lucky enough to survive the selection process

and be allowed to live (and work), 

you didn't have many clothes.  You just had a uniform.

One of the survivors I spoke about considered boots "heaven".

Today it wasn't THAT cold, but I had four layers on.

What does this photo say to you?
Does it remind you of any place you've been?

TRAPPED

Two sets of barbed wire.
380 volts running through.

Even if you don't know that "Halt" and "Stoi" mean stop,
this sign is clear.

SS Guard posts by the edge

SS sniper guard post by the barracks 

Children's reflections

Artwork by children from the walls of concentration camps (mostly Terezin).

 First, you see memories of happier days.  These make me think of the artwork my youngest niece makes...except she is usually drawing pooping birds or robot extinctions....

Next, the photos are more somber.  

These aren't children who viewed video games to learn about death.

 And then, the honest pictures drawn by children to process what they were experiencing or what they had experienced.

This exhibit had a profound effect on me.  I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

These are just some of the photos.  I tried to group them for you.

Let them know: A horrible thing happened here

The hanging blue and white striped flags represent the prisoners
at a site where many were executed.

The only remaining gas chimney

Some of the cans of Zyclon B used to end lives. 

Remember:  Z'chor

Yad Vashem, a Holocaust memorial group, has identified millions of people who died in the Holocaust.
This book-- the size of a room, from floor to over my head-- is filled with names of the deceased.
You can research about any one of them through the Yad Vashem website.

There were other Bengelsdorfs from the area of Poland which Papa left in the 1920s.
I came away soooooo horrified, numbed....and GRATEFUL that he made it to the US and that I have my life.

In Jewish faith, as long as someone is remembered, life goes on

A metaphoric urn placed by the barrack museum about "extermination"
"1940-1945"

I haven't put photos here of everything I saw. 

Just enough to make you think, I hope.

Just enough to make you look out for one another.

We are all children at heart.

We all have somebody who loves us.

Share your love.

T