I don't even know where to start with this one. I first learned about these camps when I read the book Night by Elie Wiesel. My main intent for coming here was to see the two death machines that were Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau. I can start by saying that when I walked onto these concentration camps I felt hollow as if somebody had taken everything I had and everything that I knew and ripped it from my grasps. It was one of the times where I knew I would had to digest everything I saw over a longer period of time because trying to take it all in at once would have been the end to my mental stability. Seeing the fallacy, "Arbeit Macht Frei" was such a visible symbol of an endless hopelessness that so many of the prisoners and victims had to endure.
Disabled people were first to go
For me, it felt as if the pain that so many of the human beings that had to step foot onto this wretched space was kind of left to linger. You can feel it when the wind hits against the barracks where they once lived, in the areas that they worked, on the fences that many of them sought freedom, and in the last place that many of them would feel their heart beating. The shootings, the hangings, the evil, disgusting experimentations have all been left long after the end of the war. There aren't enough books that tell the truth and the gravity of the events that occurred in this rural area in the backdrop of the classic Krakow. There are not many of us that can understand what it's like to be rounded up from your homes, stripped of everything you have, set to endure deathly tasks, piled on top of each other at least 3 people to a cot, and to be treated less than animals.
Barracks for Police
The primary difference between the victims of the Holocaust and traditional slaves is that these people were void of value and immediately "replaceable" as in the since their purpose wasn't to work to build and create it was to work to the point of exhaustion as to eliminate entire races of people. There were Roma, prisoners of war, Jews and any other exponents of the bible in Europe like Jehovas Witnesses, citizens of the Soviet Union, common criminals, homosexuals, cripples, and anybody else who didn't fit the idea of what humans were supposed to be to a psychopath. Children were not spared either. They would be starved, beaten, forced to work, and disgustingly experimented on by "Dr." Mengle. Pressurized experiments to see how pressure it took to cause the skull to collapse, freezing people alive, and fooling many to believe they would be receiving a shower when in actuality they would be gassed to be cremated. This is the epitome of Hell. It was a factory of Hell. The size of Auschwitz II - Birkenau just showed the magnitude of how many lives had been destroyed by barracks that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Nazi bombed remnants of Birkenau
For respect to the victims, there were places that I didn't take photos especially inside the crematorium where they were discarded like garbage into the ashes. The poignant thing that we have to do is to remember. We have to remember every ounce of strife the prisoners endured because this is how we can honor their existence because no one deserves to have a life ended being valueless.
Respect, Remember, and never Repeat