Visit to Auschwitz

We took a day trip on our recent Carpathian vacation to Auschwitz and Birkenau, the notorious Nazi concentration camps. As we walked under the arch with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei", I was struck by the utter banality of the place. It could have been a set for the miniseries "Holocaust" or, but for the concertina wire, a college campus. There were rows of relatively attractive brick buildings in a grid of cobblestone roads. I do not know if there were trees during the operational years, but there are trees now, and it is hard to imagine that such an innocuous looking place could have been one of the scenes of a government murder spree. Nearby Birkenau, with its wooden barracks, more like stables really, makes Auschwitz look like a resort.

A number of these barracks contain exhibits that explain the working of the camp, and these are presented in a very matter of fact way so that the horror of what happened there becomes all too real. There is no need to sensationalize, and the exhibitors let the events speak for themselves. Entire rooms of human hair, well worn shoes, old clothing, and spectacles speak volumes about the minds of the evil bureaucrats who operated the camp and tried to profit from it.

This was an example of a state doing what states do but without the cover of mystifying rationalizations. Here the state exercised the total control that it craved and sucked the very life out of its subjects in an act of complete parasitism. Inmates arrived, and those too weak to work were sent to the gas chamber and cremated. Their hair, gold in their teeth, and all their worldly goods were taken and sorted for use by the state. Those strong enough to work were marched out and worked hard every day, and those who faltered were disposed of. Rations were inadequate to sustain life and conditions were crowded and uncomfortable, and most inmates eventually became weak and expendable. Government scientists experimented on some inmates to determine how much deprivation they could endure.

I have heard the camps touted as models of efficiency, but I cannot speak to the efficiency of the operation. One hopes that states will be at least as inefficient at murder as they are at everything else. That the government photographed and kept files on inmates that it was going to kill en masse indicated to me that there was an overlay of mindless bureaucracy that doubtless added to the torments of the place.

My having been to these camps makes the state sponsored murders of the last century more real to me. It was by no means enjoyable, but I felt that it was something that one must do if one is in the vicinity.