Reflections on the Liberation of Auschwitz-75 Years Later

Let me start out by saying I meant to post this yesterday, on the actual anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but I've been agonizing for about a week about how to write this post.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to go more the historical route, focus more on my experiences or do a combination of the two.  Even as I'm writing this, I don't really have a plan.  This is especially strange for me because I always plan out my blog posts and at least bullet point what I want to talk about.  I do have a collection of photos I want to share, but I'm just going to go with the flow and let the post create itself as I write.  I also want to say that unless otherwise specified, these are all photos I took on my trip in 2015.  I hope you enjoy them.

Let's start out with the basics.  About five years ago, I was doing what every 20-something did at the time when she was bored: scrolled through Facebook.  As I did, I came across a post by someone I went to college with about a trip to Auschwitz with Eva Mozes Kor, a Holocaust survivor who, along with her twin sister, Miriam, was subjected to medical experiments at hands of Josef Mengele.  For a history buff like me, the trip seemed like a dream come true.  Not only to visit Auschwitz, but to do so with a survivor, which is a treat only a select few get to enjoy.  At the same time, it seemed so unlikely that I would be able to go that I actually selected to hide the post so it wouldn't mock me with what couldn't be.  That evening, I went out with Claire for dinner, and, being the wonderful cousin she is, she convinced me to look more into the trip.  It was a once in a lifetime experience, and I would be a fool to pass it up without looking more into it.  I knew she was right, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I know when I write about historical fiction, I spend a lot of time going into the history behind the fiction.  Like I said before, however, this time I just want to focus on my own experiences in the camps, as it is unlike anything I've ever experienced before in my life.  I will have to include a little bit of history now and then, but this is mostly going to be about me.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about Eva's personality.  She was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing and inspirational women I have ever met, although I feel like those words do not do her justice.  She was also a pistol.  She had no filter, and you never quite knew what was going to come out of her mouth.  Given what she and endured, it never bothered anyone anyway.  Our first night in Krakow, we all ate dinner together in the restaurant in the hotel.  Now, Eva was maybe five feet tall, and she wanted to be seen, so she climbed up on the chair of a booth.  The entire time, her son, Alex, who traveled with her on many of these trips, was saying, "Mom, Mom, please don't do that" while she hushed him and muttered under her breath about getting up on the seat.  Once up there, Eva explained that there were so many of us and only one of her, so when we introduced ourselves, we had to make ourselves memorable.  The example she gave was fall flat on our face.

The next night, we ate dinner together at a large, delicious restaurant near the center square of Krakow, and I was fortunate enough to sit at the same table as Eva.  I couldn't believe it!  I was so excited!  It didn't take long for Eva to set her sights on me and demand, "You!  Why haven't you made yourself memorable to me?"  Stunned, all I could stammer was, "I'm sorry?"  Thankfully, Eva forgave me.  Now, leading up to my trip, I had tried to think of questions I wanted to ask Eva.  At the risk of monopolizing her attention, I finally narrowed it down to two questions, and now was my chance.  I said, "Eva, I have two questions for you."  Unamused and without missing a beat, she immediately asked, "Only two?"  I knew that this was a force to be reckoned with.  I proceeded.  "If you could say one thing to Dr. Mengele, what would it be?"  I knew it was a risky question, and I hoped I hadn't overstepped any sort of unspoken line.  It didn't take long for Eva to come up with an answer: "You no good son of a bitch, how dare you.  Yet, I forgive you.  Not because you deserve it, but because I deserve it."  That was Eva.  Her big push was forgiveness because you as a person don't deserve to carry that hatred around with you, and that it something I have tried to live by, albeit not nearly as successfully.  If Eva could forgive Dr. Mengele for what he did to her, I could forgive anyone who wronged me over the course of my life.  Still processing through that answer, I said to Eva, "I'm a middle school teacher.  If you could send one message to my students, what would it be?"  Eva took a few moments longer than the previous question to come up with an answer.  Finally, she replied, "Tell them that this happened because people kept saying that it wouldn't happen, that they didn't believe it would happen, that they didn't speak up when they saw something wrong."  Later, Eva told us she'd rather speak up and be wrong about something than not speak up and find out something terrible happened.  Perhaps it was her way of embodying the phrase, "Never Again".  I'm forever grateful for those conversations with Eva.

Most people don't know that Auschwitz was actually a series of camps, the largest and most prominent were Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, which is mostly referred to as Birkenau.  Auschwitz I is known for the sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei", while Birkenau is known for the long, brown building with the train tracks cutting through the middle.  Since Eva spent time at both camps, so did we.

Just like most prisoners, when Eva and her family arrived in Auschwitz in March of 1944, they were taken right to Birkenau and the selection platform.  This was the last time the family was together.  Given their age, Eva and Miriam were destined for the gas chambers, but since they were twins, an SS guard took interest in them on behalf of Dr. Mengele.  The twins protested vehemently, but they were separated from their mother, never to see her again.

For me, the selection platform as a place of great discomfort and spirituality.  At times, I could feel the sorrow felt by the over one million people who went through the camp, many of whom did not survive.  It was an extremely overwhelming sensation as I attempted to grapple with where I was.  It's always been fairly easy for me to understand the historical significance of wherever I am visiting.  For example, when I saw the gate Anne Boleyn came through at the Tower of London, I immediately got a sense as wo what it would have been like for her to come through that gate on a barge and the anticipation leading up to her coronation.  While that's always helped me gain a deeper understanding of the historical locations I visit, it does come at a price when I visit somewhere like Birkenau.  The emotions were extremely overwhelming, and when we had some time to explore on our own, I just sat down on the side of the platform and tried to process through the emotions I felt.

One thing you always read about in memoirs about Auschwitz and Birkenau was the condition of the blocks.  A block is where the prisoners were kept.  Going into one of the blocks, I really got a sense of the despair and the fact that the Nazis really didn't care about the conditions; in fact, it was probably better that they were worse so people would die quicker.  This was especially true inside the blocks at Birkenau.  Even without the crowds of prisoners, the place just felt dirty.  There was no insolation, poor ventilation, and the beds were incredibly small.  It was so hard to believe how three or four people would share a single bunk.  When we walked into this block, this was definitely what I was expecting and had pictured after reading all the memoirs over the years.

On the other hand, the interior of the blocks at Auschwitz I (which I'll refer to just as "Auschwitz" from here on out") was completely different and took me by surprise.  The beds were of much higher quality (although they still slept multiple people to a single bunk), and the hallways looked like an old, abandoned basement that you might come across in an older building.  It was relatively clean, and, as odd as it may sound, I definitely got the feeling of a dormitory in a weird way.  I hate saying that, because it makes me feel like I'm trivializing what the prisoners who were there went through, because it was just as horrific as those at Birkenau, but the appearance was completely different, and it threw me for a loop.

Furthermore, the grounds looked relatively nice.  This photo to the right was taken behind the blocks at Auschwitz.  Now, I know it would have looked very different during the Holocaust, but it caused me to struggle immensely.  My brain knew I was in a place where some of the most horrible things imaginable happened, but, at the same time, it was processing some of the space as being quite pleasant.  The juxtaposition made me feel extremely uncomfortable.  At the same time, looking back, it might be nature's way of softening the edges of cruelty and providing a beautiful place for all the people who died there to rest in peace.  That's what I'm going to continue to tell myself, as it's the only way I can reconcile the beauty with the tragedy.

Unfortunately, Eva wasn't with us for the entire time we spent in both Auschwitz and Birkenau.  She was 81 at the time and in poor health from the experiments performed on her by Dr. Mengele as a young girl.  For that reason, we got two very different tours at both parks.  When Eva was with us, we saw buildings and locations unique to her story.  When Eva wasn't with her (she was sometimes resting but often at another speaking engagement), we got a tour with staff at the camp who showed us general locations of interest.  Since they knew we were with Eva, they made sure to point out anywhere that had to do with her as well, but those were often places we already saw.  Unfortunately, some of the locations, such as the block where Eva and Miriam lived in Birkenau, did not survive the war.  When the Nazis realized they were going to lose, they destroyed what they could (which was quite a bit, but they took such meticulous records that we still have plenty left to study), and even some buildings did not survive.  This was an attempt to hide what they did.  All that is left of where Eva and Miriam lived is the foundation and a sign indicating that that was where the twins all stayed.  The flowers in the photo came from Eva, she left some there and some at the memorial at the end of the train tracks.

Like I said before, the twins were brought from Birkenau to Auschwitz approximately twice a week for medical studies.  The rest of the time, they were brought to this building across from their block.  Now, this building is usually closed off to the public.  Since we were there with Eva, however, we were able to go inside.  It was completely empty and had a sand floor.  It was quite easy for me to imagine what it would have been like full of scared children, clinging to their sibling, unsure what happened to the rest of their family.  It was another overwhelming experience.  This time, however, I had others around me with whom to process the information.

If we're going to talk about emotionally draining experiences, I definitely want to take some time to talk about the crematorium.  In Birkenau, most of the crematoriums were destroyed either by prisoners when they revolted or by Nazis as Allied troops closed in.  In Auschwitz, however, there is a crematorium that remains, and visitors can go inside.  For our group, if you didn't want to, that was perfectly acceptable as well.  As uncomfortable as it made me, I knew I had to go inside; I could suffer a few minutes of discomfort to honor the countless innocent victims.  While you can take photos inside the crematorium, I elected not to.  Not only did it not feel right, but I also spent so little time in there.  Walking in, I got a small sense of what it would have been like for the victims, as I walked in with a group of people.  There was a small hallway that hooked to the right and lead back to the pretend showers.  As soon as I crossed the threshold into the actual gas chamber, I immediately felt sick to my stomach.  If anyone talked, it was in hushed whispers only heard by those standing immediately next to them.  The gas chamber was large, a few shades darker than the exterior and with a low ceiling.  Along the walls there were strange indentations; upon closer inspection, I realized they were from fingernails as victims desperately pleaded for mercy and tried to escape.  I needed air.  I immediately headed towards the next room, the actual crematorium.  In the few seconds I was in there, I noticed there were only two ovens.  Standing there was a rabbi praying in Hebrew with a group of teenagers.  Several young women held each other and cried hysterically.  I couldn't handle it anymore and ran outside.

Outside was absolutely silent.  Those from my tour group who came out just as quickly as I had were in a stunned silence.  For the few who were lucky enough to be with a loved one or friend immediately found comfort with them while I tried to process through what I just experienced.  I stood in the exact place where thousands upon thousands died a terrible death.  We were thankfully done for the day.

Eva survived Auschwitz, and she is part of some of the most famous footage from the liberation by the Soviet army.  I've started the video below at the moment Eva appears.  There is a nurse holding a young child with two little girls on her left.  Eva is the one closest to the nurse.

They actually had to shoot this footage several times.  Eva, always a character, got frustrated with this, and in one of the takes, she stuck out her tongue.  Nobody at the museum she started, CANDLES, believed her, but they found the footage and found it hilarious.

At Auschwitz, we recreated this walk together.  With a member of the tour group on either side of her, Eva lead us along the same pathway, walking in her old footsteps as she explained to us the jubilation she and Miriam felt at liberation and the hope that the rest of their family was somehow alive so they could all be together again.  In a way, it was a surprisingly uplifting and inspiring moment as we learned how Eva survived and what she and Miriam hoped would happen in the years to come.

In July 2019, Eva traveled, like she always did, to Krakow to take guests with her to Auschwitz.  She  spent time in the camps, went to give speeches nearby and acted like everything was alright.  On July 3rd, she went to bed in her hotel room, and she never woke up.  It was absolutely devastating.  I burst into my parents' room in tears, and my mom thought something was wrong with Bryan's parents.  As we talked and processed through the death, my mom had an excellent point: Eva died doing what she loved and as close to her family as she could possibly get.  In a way, she and I think it's how she would have wanted to go.

I'm forever grateful for my incredibly brief time with Eva.  She is an inspirational woman, and when I tell people I've met her, they're amazed, as many have heard about her through her documentary, Buzzfeed articles, etc.  In a way, I stand a little bit taller when people recognize her.  My experience at Auschwitz was forever changed my life, and I hope that everyone takes the time to go there one day, not only to honor those who died there but to also fully grasp the Holocaust.