Sombering trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp

The Auschwitz barracks. Most housed displays of how the prisoners lived, pictures, or memorials.
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Today I spent the day in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps with some people from my hostel. Wow it was a humbling experience to say the least. Words cannot describe what kind of place it is and how you feel walking around in a place where 1.1 million people were sentenced to death. 1.1 MILLION. That's more than the Edmonton Capital Region - put that into perspective!!! 1.1 Million people arrived by train to face their deaths at this one particular place. The majority of them being Jews. And, it is impossible to wrap your brain around the fact that human beings committed these awful crimes within the past 70 years to fellow members of the human race. This is in the 20th century! The discrimination, hatred, and plain disgusting acts of cruelty that took place there and in all the other concentration camps around Europe is just sick in my eyes. And, you have this feeling walking around that just doesn't allow you to  fathom all the pain, suffering, and misery that took place there.

As you can see - some people wear their Jewish pride around the concentration camp which is pretty amazing to see.
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The main 'living' museum was actually a walk through in the Auschwitz Camp (as Birkenau camp is MUCH larger and located about a 3 minute drive away). The museum is basically a living memory of life in the camp, how people arrived to the camp, and how they were basically stripped of any dignity. There were displays that included all the items that were collected off the prisoners when they arrived to camp. At the time it was liberated in January 1945 - 43,000 pairs of shoes, tonnes of hair, brushes, suitcases, crutches and artificial limbs, thousands of eye glasses, 1 million sets of clothes were found there and the list goes on. The displays encased glass windows that had piles, upon piles, upon piles of what was found at the camp. The shoes was probably the most awe dropping...you can't fathom that many shoes in one place...and it was there. And, it was eery to see as well.

A place every person should visit

The guard house where many prisoners would line up for roll calls that could last hours on end.
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We witnessed the beds and bathrooms they shared in the barracks, the disgusting living conditions, the work they completed (which included building the camp, the walls, and the barracks itself), the lack of food that was provided, the photos around the camp were painful to see, but they hit home the piles of dead bodies, the frail figurines that died of starvation, exhaustion, Nazi experimentation, arbitrary execution.

We walked to the Birkenau Camp and it was enormous. Basically as far as your eyes could see were barracks of buildings of where people were housed. We walked up to the 'Death Gate' - basically the rail way tracks that led up to the entrance to the camp and continued all the way to the back of the camp where the massive gas chambers were located. This is where 2000 people could be exterminated in a mere 15-20 minutes all in one room. Lots of the buildings at this camp were blown up by the Nazis to try and cover up the acts there - but there were still many barracks intact. And, the barbed wire fence...all around the property. Just insane to see. The land was so flat - which was even odder. And, basically treeless. And this camp is what every person should see just to comprehend this tragedy for themselves. The size alone was overwhelming. We estimated there were 500 barracks buildings on site at one point in time. Walking the train tracks all the way to the back of the concentration camp took a solid 15-20 minutes. And, this is where the current memorial to the victims is located, as the majority of their ashes are located there.

Picture of just a glimpse of the thousands of shoes found when Auschwitz-Birkenau were liberated in early 1945.
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The strange thing about the camps is that there is an urban centre located right around Auschwitz camp, while the Birkenau camp seems to be more on the edge of town and more 'wildernessy'. I can't imagine living so close to a place that has nothing but Nazi death camp associated with it. But, I have realized through my travels that Poland is a country that has not let its turbulent past prevent it from moving on.