Auschwitz & Birkenau

I remember growing up asking my grandfather to tell us about his WWII experiences and never understanding why he refused to talk about it. It wasn't until a couple of years before his death that he told us a little of what he had seen in Germany. He wasn't in the units that liberated the death camps there, but he was in the follow up unit and saw things that he refused to talk about for almost 70 years.

As I walked the streets of Auschwitz, I thought of him. The horror of what happened there and the terrible atrocities that were hidden from the world- what a shock it must have been to those soldiers. The average "survival" of a person in one of those camps was four months. The Nazis crammed 400-500 human beings into each horse stable(in Birkenau) that was no longer fit to house horses. Standing in those stables and looking at how they were forced to live; seeing picture after picture of emaciated faces; reading about the rotten food they survived on; thinking about the atrocious working conditions they were forced to endure; imagining what it must do your mind to know that you could be the next chosen for the gas chamber; looking at piles and piles of human hair being woven into fabric, enormous mounds of shoes, crutches, fake arms & legs, eye glasses, suitcases, toothbrushes, dolls, baby clothes, etc., etc. ,etc., I was stunned anew at the total depravity of man. This was the business of murder. It was extremely well organized, efficient and as cold blooded as any one can possibly imagine.

That evening and the next morning, I read a book that I had been recommended to buy, called, "Hope is the Last to Die." It's by a survivor, Halina Birenbaum, who was only ten when the Nazis invaded Warsaw. She lived with her family in the Jewish ghetto for three years, the last two under terrible circumstances, before the family was captured and sent to one of the death camps. She was sent to five different camps over a period of two years, before finally being freed in 1945 at the age of 15. She and her oldest brother were the only survivors out of her entire extended family. Reading that book after having just been there was really incredible. I can't even describe the thoughts that go through one's mind upon seeing and reading of such utter evil.

"Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." Gen. 6:5-6

Praise God that there is no darkness found in Him, but only Light!! How wonderful that our Creator is Perfect, Holy and Loving and the complete opposite of evil. He is everything good and everything that is good comes from Him!! Light will always overcome darkness and darkness cannot win. What a comforting thought in the face of such tragedy.

"Work Makes Free." This is what greeted the prisoners as they entered Auschwitz.

The conditions of living in Auschwitz 1 were much better than in Birkenau(Auschwitz 2). The people didn't know it, though, until they had the great misfortune of being transferred there.

Birkenau- 400-500 people were crammed in to each of these horse stables.

The enormity of Birkenau only hits you as you stand at the top of a tower and look out upon it. This is probably only 1/4 to 1/8 of it. And many of the buildings were destroyed before the Soviets came in. Just think of 400-500 people in each and every one of these buildings.