Arbeit Macht Frei
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 7: Arbeit Macht Frei
Swinging my heavy rucksack over my shoulder, I turn
towards the door and accidentally hit Chris in the face.
‘Careful, you idiot!’ he snaps, rubbing his forehead.
‘It was an accident.’
Muttering to himself, Chris battles to close his bag that
bulges at the seams.
‘Quick, it’s ten minutes past ten. We’re supposed to be
out of the room.’
He looks over at me and sighs. ‘Hold on!’
I spin around and bump into Chris a second time.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he yells, giving me a hard shove.
I stagger backwards and lose my balance as the weight of
my rucksack pulls me to the ground. I lie helplessly on my
back with my feet in the air like an overturned turtle.
‘You bastard!’ I cry, wrestling to get my arms out of
the straps.
Jumping to my feet, Chris looks worried by the psychotic
expression on my face.
‘Don’t do anything silly,’ he mutters, edging back
towards the window. ‘We’re both very tired after last
night.’
‘Don’t you fucking push me over!’ I spit.
Chris presses a finger to his lips. ‘Shush, listen.’
I refrain from punching him in the arm. ‘What is it?’
‘I think Cliff’s in his room.’
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‘So?’
Chris grabs a plastic cup off the bedside table and places
it against the wall. ‘I can hear movement.’
‘My God, you’re a twat.’
‘Shush, he’ll hear us.’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck. Who cares about Cliff, anyway?
It was you who saw him … not me!’
‘Come on, Si, let’s get the hell out of here.’
Poking our heads around the door, we peer into the dark
deserted corridor.
‘If I see him, I’ll fucking die,’ Chris whispers.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s either hiding in his room
or exploring other dark corners of the city.’
‘OK. Well, let’s just go for it.’
Chris follows close behind as I tiptoe out into the corridor.
I pause outside Cliff’s room.
‘What you stopping for?’ he snaps.
‘I can hear movement. Yes, you’re right. Cliff is definitely
in his room.’
‘Si, keep moving, you prick!’
‘Shush…’
All of a sudden, we hear a key rattling in the lock. Chris
shoves me out of the way and sprints over to the stairs at
the far end of the corridor. I lose my balance and crash
against the wall. Cliff swings open the door to his room
and peers out.
‘Hello, Simon,’ he smiles.
‘Cliff, hey! How are ya?’
‘I’m great. Are you leaving so soon?’
I glance down at the straps on my shoulders. ‘Yep, it certainly
looks like it. It’s … uh … time to hit the road jack.
Time to motor on to pastures new.’
Cliff leans against the doorframe and folds his arms. He’s
naked apart from a small yellow towel wrapped around
his waist. Feeling extremely uncomfortable, I dart a quick
glance up and down the corridor.
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‘Is everything all right?’ he asks.
‘Uh-huh, everything is hunky-dory,’ I quickly reply.
Sorry, but I’m in a bit of a rush. Chris, the idiot, left his
credit card in the club last night, so we have to go back
and get it. That’s why he’s not with me at the moment.
He’s … uh … gone.’
‘Oh, I hope he finds it.’
‘Yeah. I hope so, too,’ I grin falsely.
Cliff frowns. ‘Simon, are you sure you’re all right? You
seem a little flustered.’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I nod enthusiastically. ‘OK, I really better
be going, have a great time in Prague.’
I turn and make my way down the corridor.
‘Simon, wait!’ Cliff shouts. ‘We haven’t swapped email
addresses!’
I close my eyes and release a deep sigh.
‘We have to exchange emails,’ he beams. ‘I want to know
how your trip is going.’
Cliff disappears inside his room and returns with a
business card.
I peer down at the card, “Cliff Barnes, Journalist – likes
his bottom being spanked.” I slide it into my back pocket.
He hands me a piece of paper and a pen. I scribble down
my email.
‘Excellent! Thank you, Simon.’
We shake hands. Suddenly, a young couple carrying
rucksacks appear at the top of the stairs. They both stare
at Cliff standing in the corridor in his towel. Embarrassed,
I acknowledge them with a smile.
‘OK, Cliff, I’m off. Mustn’t keep those gas chambers
waiting.’
‘Of course not, good luck. Oh, and say hi to Chris for
me.’
‘Sure.’
I turn on my heels and quickly head down the stairs.
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Dumping our rucksacks in the boot of the car, we decide
to grab something to eat in an attempt at sobering ourselves
up a bit. Walking towards the train station, we find
a coffee stand in the park outside. Buying a cinnamonlaced
coffee and a couple of chocolate-coated doughnuts
from a scruffy teenager, we plonk ourselves down on an
empty bench facing a water fountain. Stressed out, whitecollared
businessmen with black briefcases rush to work,
while chilled out students slowly stroll to university with
their colourful folders. Devouring the coffee and the
doughnuts, I begin to feel human again and reaching for
my cigarettes, I pause as an old homeless woman staggers
towards me. Reaching out her hand she grins a toothless
smile, and feeling in a good mood and humbled by her
cheerfulness, I offer her one. Beaming, she snatches the
entire packet out of my hand and starts to cackle as she
places a cigarette between her cracked lips. Amused by
her reaction to my generosity and despite losing all of my
cigarettes, I watch with satisfaction as she shuffles away.
With new energy, we race back to the car and crawl
through the rush hour-traffic. Heading north out of the city,
I grab the map and begin to study it with keen interest.
‘Hey, Chris! There’s a place near the Polish border where
you can see strange rock formations.’
‘Rock formations?’
‘Yeah, the Ayers-Teplice Rocks. We should check it out.’
Chris frowns. ‘But what about Auschwitz?’
‘What about it?’
‘I thought we were heading there next?’
‘We are, but what’s the rush? We have to pass by the
place anyway, so we may as well make an afternoon of it.
You’ll regret it if we don’t.’
‘Uh … no I won’t. I don’t give a shit about a bunch of
frigging rocks. Once you’ve seen one rock you’ve seen
them all.’
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* * *
In a bid to quench Si’s bizarre new thirst for geology, we
arrive at the Teplice Rocks in the early afternoon. The
main road leading to the entrance point is lined with tour
buses and turning left into the main car park, I stupidly
pull up beside a coach full of screaming school kids. A
swarm of excited brats leap off the bus and hover around
the Sierra. Their teacher, who looks flustered and
extremely disorganised, dashes off the coach after them.
She tries in vain to round them up, but fails miserably. A
little kid with curly black hair stares at us through the
window and sticks out his tongue.
‘Charming,’ Si smiles.
The kid runs off and joins his friends beside the coach,
whilst their teacher tries desperately to order them into
single file.
‘Si, are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘Of course it is, it’s supposed to be incredible! According
to this leaflet there’s a big waterfall inside a cave.’
‘Yeah, but there’s nothing worse than trying to take artistic
photographs when you’re surrounded by irritating little
squirts, how am I supposed to concentrate?’
‘Chris, don’t worry, ‘oh, great master of photography’,
we’ll jump ahead of them.’
‘OK, but I warn you now, if they get in the way of my
shot I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
Waiting in the queue at the ticket office, two kids standing
in front begin to pull faces at us. Si smiles back, but I
ignore them and peer anxiously over at their teacher.
‘Come on,’ I mutter. ‘How long does it take to buy a frigging
ticket?’
‘Chris, chill out would ya! What’s your problem?’
‘It’s these bloody kids. They’re a pain in the ass!’
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The two kids in front continue to pull faces and giggle.
One of the little rug-rats stamps on my foot, while the
other pokes me in the stomach and sticks out his tongue.
This is the last straw. I peer down at them with an evil
stare and release a low monster-like growl. They stop giggling,
and with frightened faces they quickly push their
way to the front of the queue. We finally reach the counter
and enter the park.
Studying a map of the area stuck to an information
board, we decide to follow a 5km trail looping around the
national park. Striding ahead of the school kids, we weave
through a forest and quickly reach an impressive group of
bizarre rock formations. They reach for the sky from the
forest floor, some over a hundred metres tall. I feel inspired
to take a few photographs, but just as I’m about to start
snapping away, a million excited school kids run into the
frame. They swarm around me like flies around shit. The
teacher stumbles around the corner, shouting at the kids
in Czech. They ignore her and continue to race around in
all directions. I take a disappointing picture before urging
Si to press on.
Once again, we escape the chaos and quickly make some
distance. We eventually arrive at an incredible natural
stone archway, which leads into a passageway between
the rocks. Beaming with joy, I look through the viewfinder
and just as I’m about to take a beautiful picture, a large
group of pensioners begin to file out of the archway. They
gather in a huge semi-circle at the entrance, all thirty-six
of them. A geeky tour guide babbles facts at high volume
through a crackling megaphone. Seeing there’s no way to
squeeze past, we wait impatiently for the tour guide to
end his spiel. I look over my shoulder and notice the
school kids are catching up fast.
‘We’re surrounded,’ Si grins.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I scream.
Marching over to the tour group, I take a step forward
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and squeeze through the crowd. I make it past the first
O.A.P and even manage to weave around the second, but
as I fight to push past the third, the gap suddenly closes
behind me and I find myself surrounded. Si pokes his
head in between the pensioners, who seem to have collapsed
into a state of rigor mortis.
‘Entschuldigung Sie bitte,’ he mumbles, turning sideways
and using his slim build to slip past.
Standing on tiptoe, I look over the white perms and
shiny baldheads and see the school kids racing towards
the tour group.
‘Right, that’s it! Out of my way!’ I command, moving a
sour faced old codger to one side.
Charging through the crowd to the sound of cursing and
grunting as I step on fragile toes, I eventually make it to
the other side. Standing in the entrance of the archway, I
lean against the moss covered rock face and catch my
breath. Si suddenly slides up next to me.
‘Hey, how did you get through so quickly?’ I laugh.
‘Years of practice in the mosh pit,’ he smugly replies.
‘These old dudes should hold the brats up for a while …
come on, let’s keep moving!’
We high-five and disappear through the archway.
After a few hours of walking around the trail, taking pictures
of waterfalls, dramatic views and the tops of people’s
heads, we both agree that we have severe ‘rock formation’
overload. Deciding to head back to the car, we
fight our way through the ever-increasing crowds and
eventually find ourselves hurtling down country lanes
towards southern Poland.
It isn’t long before we approach a long queue of stationary
trucks at the Polish border. A hard-faced Polish truck
driver peers down at our car as we crawl towards passport
control. I look up and grin. He doesn’t smile back; he just
continues to stare at us with a look of hostility in his eyes.
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Joining a shorter queue of cars, we crawl towards the
blockade that stretches across the width of the road and
grabbing my camera, I quickly snap a picture of the sign
for the Polish Republic and a flag that flaps proudly in the
breeze.
‘Careful,’ Si whispers, ‘we don’t want to draw any
unnecessary attention to ourselves.’
‘We’re tourists … tourists take photographs!’
‘Yeah, but they probably don’t get many young travellers
passing through this way.’
‘Si, you’re talking shit. Stop being paranoid, just act normal.’
A stern faced officer approaches the car and peers
through my open window. We smile nervously and hand
over our passports. He flicks through them and without
saying a word moves onto the red transit van behind. We
eventually reach the front of the queue and wait at a small
traffic light. It turns green, so we pull up beside two more
uniformed officers. One of the guys opens my door and
gestures for me to get out of the car. He takes my documents
and walks slowly around the Sierra. Pointing at the
boot, I assume he wants to take a look inside. I remove the
small piece of metal that we’ve been using as a rather ineffective
ariel for the radio and, much to the official’s
amusement, I use it as a tool to open the lock. As with all
used cars, our Sierra had a slight imperfection when we
purchased it. The lock on the boot had been drilled out,
possibly by some well equipped thief, and unprepared to
spend money on a new one, we had resigned ourselves to
levering it open with our handy double purpose ariel, or,
piece of metal that Si found in the garden shed. Standing
back, I wait patiently for the official to rummage through
the trash in our boot. Content in his mind that we’re not
criminals (even capable of being criminals) he waves us
through to the next stage. Without any fuss they check and
stamp our passports before raising the barrier. We pull
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over by a row of shops and cafes on the other side of the
border.
‘So this is Poland!’ Si cries.
‘It sure is, hippie boy!’
‘Hey, we need to change some Traveller’s cheques into
zlotys.’
I frown. ‘Zlotys?’
‘Yeah, it’s the Polish currency.’
‘It’s not the sexiest sounding currency in the world, is
it?’
‘As long as it buys me a few beers, Chris, they can call it
whatever they like.’
We make our way over to an exchange shop where we
change two hundred euros into zlotys, and then pop to the
shop next door where we insure the Sierra third party for
two weeks. Skipping back to the car, we feel ready to
explore the depths of southern Poland.
Si seems happy for me to drive and passing through a
number of small grey towns, we observe dozens of shaven
headed youths hanging around bus stops and drinking
cans of super strength lager at the side of the road. It
reminds me of England in the 70’s and 80’s, with the skinhead
culture that had become a fashion amongst the
unemployed and disgruntled youths of the time. Concrete
tower blocks fill the suburbs like monuments to the communist
era, and feeling unable to just pull over and grab
something to eat without our car being vandalized or
stolen, we push on into the night.
Spying a 24-hour petrol station that serves fast food, we
decide to take a break. Asking a young lad inside the shop
for directions to the town of Oswiëcim, he rather overenthusiastically
opens a huge road map out on the counter
in an honorable attempt to practice his English. Patiently
playing along with him, he gives me a long series of completely
incomprehensible directions, which I immediately
forget. I thank him anyway, in the hope of encouraging
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him to learn more, and return to the car with a couple of
giant sized hot dogs and two cups of piping hot tea.
Picking up road signs for Oswiëcim, we’re eventually
directed off a motorway and find ourselves weaving
through the countryside. Wisps of fog glide over the bonnet
of the car like spirits in the night – ghosts of the
Auschwitz victims haunting our path. We eventually
reach the suburban town of Oswiëcim, a place with little
character and we follow an old train line, which leads us
all the way to the gates of Auschwitz. Parking up at the
side of the road, we decide to sleep in the car outside the
concentration camp. Wrestling to get comfortable, I glance
out of the window at the large wall that surrounds the
camp. I find it impossible to remove the thought from my
mind of the horrors that must have been committed
inside. During Hitler’s reign of terror over 6 million Jews
were exterminated. Both Auschwitz and Birkenau are living
museums to one of the worst atrocities of humanity in
modern history. As a child, I had studied pictures in history
books of the naked twisted bodies of Auschwitz victims
piled high in mass graves. It made me realise humans
are simply flesh and bone, hair and teeth and that all of
the dignity and fear we feel in life will eventually be
stripped away.
* * *
The sound of a truck’s horn wakes me with a start.
Striking the engine, I switch on the window screen wipers
and wait for the blades to remove the film of water covering
the glass.
‘Chris, we need to move the car!’
‘What?’
‘The car! We need to move it!’
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Trucks roar past on the busy main road, the swooshing
of their tyres against the wet tarmac frightening us into
action.
‘Bad place to park, or what?’ Chris mutters.
‘It seemed quiet last night.’
Waiting for a gap in the traffic, Chris swings the car out
onto the main road and turns into the gateway of the
Auschwitz car park. An attendant dressed in jeans and
wearing a high-visibility vest waves us through the barrier,
and crossing the empty car park I pull up beneath a
giant oak tree. Taking a moment to get my head together, I
open the car door and feel drops of rain on my face. I sit
motionless, allowing the water to refresh my tired eyes.
Ruffling my hair I climb out of the car and touch my toes,
my back aches and my neck feels stiff from resting my
head at a strange angle against the window. Collecting the
empty crisp packets and sweet wrappers stuffed into
every available orifice of the car’s interior, I empty the ashtray
and begin to fill an empty Tesco’s carrier bag with
rubbish. Chris begins to fold up all of the loose items of
clothing – coats, damp socks and jumpers strewn across
the back seat. Tying up the plastic bag, I walk over to a bin
beneath the large oak tree and toss it inside. The lid closes
with a satisfying clang. Feeling the heavy droplets of
water falling into my hair from the branches of the tree, I
take a deep breath and watch in amusement as Chris
struggles to change his T-shirt in the small confines of the
car. Deciding to freshen up a bit before heading off to the
museum, I rub some toothpaste on my teeth and change
my socks and T-shirt. In an attempt at looking a bit
smarter and possibly more studious, I dig out my blue
roll-neck jumper from the bottom of my rucksack.
‘I think we must be the first ones here,’ Chris mutters,
peeling a banana.
‘Yeah, I suppose it is only eight-thirty.’
Switching on the radio, we listen to some soothing clas-
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sical music on a polish station and munch happily on
some stale crackers. Seeing the first tourist coach arrive in
the car park, we decide to go and check things out. I step
out of the car and look up at the sky. It’s stopped raining,
but thick black storm clouds hang menacingly overhead.
We walk across the car park adjacent to the high perimeter
wall, and quickly reach the main entrance to the red
brick building. Poking our heads inside, the main foyer is
empty apart from a girl wiping trays behind the counter of
a small cafeteria. Standing in the empty foyer, we study
black and white photographs hung in a line along the
walls. Suddenly, a well-groomed middle-aged woman in a
long black raincoat enters the foyer. She shakes her
umbrella and smiles over at us.
‘Hallo,’ she beams. ‘I’m sorry, but you are a little early.
Please take some time to read the information.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply.
The information on the boards has an English translation,
and we mill around the room devouring facts. A
coach party files into the building and they greet us as if
they were entering our home.
After sometime, the lady with the raincoat informs us
that we can now purchase a ticket for the museum and
also watch a short film in the cinema. Following her
instructions, we quickly find ourselves being herded into
a small cinema at the end of the hall. The place quickly
fills up with people all chaotically trying to find a seat in
the dark, and hearing the projector whir into life we watch
an emotional fifteen-minute documentary about Auschwitz
and Birkenau.
Exiting the cinema we’re led into a quad. Looking
around, I recognize it from the documentary and I feel the
hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. Nothing has
changed. It all looks exactly the same as it did in the film,
and seeing where the prisoners were executed by firing
squad on the grass adjacent to the sinister looking barbed
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wire walkway, the harsh reality of what happened here is
made immediately clear. Breaking away from the other
tourists, we pass a tall watchtower and I find myself giving
it a wide berth. The spotlight on the top follows us
around like a large eye, and I try to imagine how terrible
it must have been to be imprisoned like this – to live in
fear of being shot by a bored SS guard with a rifle who’s
watching your every move.
Chris nudges me. ‘I think that building over there is one
of the gas chambers.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I recognize the tall chimney from the film.’
Walking cautiously over to the small grey building, we
peer inside. I feel a little shaken by the thought of what
happened here. It was mostly women, children and the
infirm that were murdered … the ones who couldn’t work.
‘This is sick,’ Chris whispers, as we enter the cold, dark
building.
I walk over to the window and peer out through the
metal bars. We’re stood in the room where they had been
ordered to remove their clothing, believing they were going
to take a shower and be disinfected. I feel physically sick as
I follow Chris into the main chamber. Dim orange lights
hang from the ceiling, and a vase of flowers has been placed
in the middle of the concrete floor. I touch the damp walls
and can hear the screams of the thousands of men, women
and children who perished in this very room. I can see the
terror in their eyes as the Zyklon B pellets, a crystallized
form of hydrogen cyanide, fell around their feet from
vents in the ceiling – killing them not instantly, but after
fifteen to twenty painful minutes. I feel suddenly nauseous
and follow Chris through an open doorway into the
next room. The sight of the two furnaces is too much to
take in, and I find myself backing away. All I can think
about is how anybody could think it was right to do this.
How could they physically put it on themselves to extract
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gold teeth, collect rings, jewelry and even shave the
corpse’s heads before burning the bodies in the furnaces?
On average 8,000 people were gassed everyday at
Auschwitz and Birkenau. By the end of the Holocaust, a
horrific six million people had been murdered … six million
innocent lives taken away.
Making our way outside, the clouds burst open and the
rain thunders down on Auschwitz. We run across the
courtyard and shelter beneath a doorway opposite the firing
range.
‘This place is truly horrendous,’ I shout to Chris over the
noise of the rain.
A man stood next to us smiles. ‘Expect to see what Hitler
called ‘ethnic cleansing’,’ he bellows in a broad Yorkshire
accent.
‘We’ve just been to the gas chamber,’ I reply, shaking my
head. ‘It’s a deeply disturbing experience.’
‘Yes, that it is. I’ve been here before, you know. I’m a history
teacher at an inner city comprehensive school in
Leeds. Coming to a place like this helps me to appreciate
what I teach my students. I’m here with my wife and children,
Amy and Ben.’
The two young kids look wet and miserable. They peer
up from beneath the hoods of their orange raincoats.
‘Say hello, kids.’
They look shyly away.
The guy’s wife forces a smile, but the man either forgets
or doesn’t think to introduce her.
‘They’re all a little tired,’ he continues. ‘It’s been a busy
few days. We flew into Warsaw on Wednesday and I hired
a car. Poland is a very interesting country, but Auschwitz
was on the top of my…’ he turns to his wife, ‘sorry … our
holiday itinerary. The kids wanted to go to Spain like last
year and play on the beach for the whole holiday, but I
thought I’d introduce them to history and what better than
to start with the Auschwitz concentration camp.’
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Chris nods. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘They might not appreciate it now, but they’ll benefit
from this someday.’
He turns to his wife again. She opens her mouth to say
something, but misses her chance.
‘When they go to comprehensive school and do projects
on the Holocaust, they’ll be the best in their class. Gold
stars all round. Well, looks like the rains slowing down,’
the guy observes, peering up at the sky. ‘Come on, folks.
We’d better be going!’
We watch as he marches off across the quad with his
family trailing reluctantly behind. Turning on his heels he
calls over in our direction.
‘Make sure you stop by the medical rooms. It’s where
they used to carry out the sterilization experiments.’
‘OK … thanks, we will,’ Chris waves.
Giving it a few more minutes, we eventually walk over
to the main gates where all of the prisoners were kept.
Above the gate is the sinister motto: “Arbeit Macht Frei”
(work makes one free). We walk along the main street past
brick buildings or ‘Blocks’ where the prisoners slept. The
buildings look fairly modern and are in surprisingly good
condition, making the recentness of this atrocity seem
even more horrifying. All of the photographs I had seen in
history books had been in black and white – images from
a time before, when the world was different, but seeing
the place in 3D and in colour makes it all seem suddenly
very real. We pass the ‘Death Block’ where prisoners who
caused trouble or tried to escape died from starvation, firing
squad or lethal injection. Next we examine the actual
wooden beam where twelve Polish prisoners were hung,
in the biggest public execution in the KL Auschwitz.
Januz Pogonowski, Leon Rajzer and Tadeuz Rapacz are
just three of the twelve men who died right here on this
very spot.
Behind glass in another block, mountains of hair, false
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teeth, shoes and suitcases are on display. Their belongings
were stored in giant hangers, nothing was wasted – even
lamps were made out of skin cut from the dead. In the
next block, framed photographs of people imprisoned at
Auschwitz hang on the wall in a long line on opposite
sides off the corridor. I’m shocked by how similar they
look to people I know at home, how similar they look to
the young guys with shaved heads we saw on the way up
here. The pictures are so clear and sharp they could’ve
been taken yesterday. I stare into their eyes, they stare
back blankly at the camera in their stripy prison uniforms.
Under each photograph there is a date of how long they
lasted at the labour camp. Some died after two years, some
after only two weeks.
We leave Auschwitz and drive the 3km to the vast
Birkenau camp, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, where the
largest numbers of Jews were exterminated. With 300
prison barracks and 4 gas chambers, which were able to
hold 2,000 people, the camp could facilitate in total up to
200,000 inmates. When the trains arrived, the Jews were
separated into two lines and endured what was known as
the ‘selection process’. The chosen ones went to work,
while the others were sent immediately to the gas chambers
at the end of the line. We look around the appallingly
cramped conditions of the barracks where the prisoners
lived. It’s a large area, and we find ourselves weaving
between bunk beds and standing at cracked washbasins.
Returning along the train track to the gates, I look over
my shoulder at the camp one last time. I had never had
much faith in humanity – Auschwitz and Birkenau only
confirm this to me. As a species, it seems clear we have a
long way to travel along the evolutionary chain before
reaching anything close to what we might call perfection.
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