Never Forget
The Second World War, beyond a history book
In Fall of 2015, I had the opportunity to live in the beautiful country of Poland for four months while on exchange. Living in the cultural, historical city of Krakow held many challenging, but wonderful, moments as well as some of the most eye-opening experiences of my life thus far.
The city of Krakow’s Second World War and Holocaust memorials and museums represent only a fraction of the damage done to Poland and other Eastern European countries. What I found most alarming was the way the country’s tragic Second World War history has been so smoothly integrated into everyday life.
DEVASTATION IMMORTALIZED
Just outside of Krakow’s city centre sits the abandoned set of Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List. What some people may not know is that, although Spielberg’s set was fake, the factory where Oskar Schindler saved the lives of over a thousand Jews really was in Krakow. The factory building is still standing and has now been transformed into the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum — one of the most jarring, moving tributes to the Holocaust that I have ever seen.
Another haunting memorial to the Holocaust in Krakow are the remains of the Podgorze Ghetto. At its height, the ghetto held approximately 18,000 people, thousands of whom were sent to concentration camps or killed by Nazi occupiers. Others died of starvation, overcrowding, and disease. In today’s Podgorze neighbourhood, two original sections of the ghetto wall still stand, their rounded tops eerily resemble rows of tombstones.
Plac Zgody — now called Plac Bohaterow Getta or the “Ghetto Heroes’ Square” in honour of its history — was the square in which Cracovian Jews awaited transportation to the death camps. In the final days of its liquidation, the ghetto’s square was littered with personal belongings and furniture. In its place now sits a tribute in the form of 70 empty metal chairs, which represent the lost belongings as well as departure and absence.
The most horrifying and unbelievable place, however, is the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where over 1.1 million men, women, and children died at the hands of the Nazis.
EUROPE’S BIGGEST DEATH CAMP
Auschwitz sits about an hour outside of Krakow. The facility, at its biggest, consisted of three camps: a prison camp, a work camp, and a death camp. By 1942, Auschwitz had become one of the largest concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Walking through the first part of the camp (the work camp) almost feels normal. There are what appear to be houses lined up along straight roads. It looks like a small village. When you discover what went on in these houses, however, it becomes frightening.
In the basement of these houses were prison cells, torture chambers, and isolation rooms.It was in one of these brick buildings that Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” conducted his horrific human experiments on men, women, and children.However, one of the most jarring things in this part of the camp is the house that now holds a sort of museum — a museum that displays piles of real human hair in glass cases alongside clothing, shoes, and suitcases that belonged to Auschwitz prisoners. The moment I walk into the room and realize just what I’m looking at is the moment that I really begin to feel sick.
The second part of the tour takes visitors to the extermination camp. The image of the guard towers and the rows of decrepit barracks is chilling. The seemingly never-ending road and railroad tracks where the cattle cars brought thousands of innocent people to their deaths, however, is the picture that is nearly impossible to forget. Even now, I find it hard to conjure up the right words to express how it felt to be standing on that road.
The tour continues on to the memorial built at the end of the road. Then, we are taken to the site of a gas chamber where thousands perished at the hands of the Nazis. Even though the structure has been burned in an attempt to destroy the evidence of what had happened there, the very size of its foundation is appalling.
The final stop on our visit was at the rows upon rows of barracks where prisoners were housed while they waited, starved, and froze. Even while standing in one of the low, cramped spaces, it is impossible to fathom the amount of suffering that took place here.
REFLECTING ON THE VISIT
It is still surreal that I walked the grounds of a place that played a decisive role in the biggest genocide in recorded history. I remember not being able to cry until hours after we’d returned home, because what I had seen was unfathomable.
To this day, I find it hard to conjure up images and memories of the visit. Perhaps that’s why it’s so important — because even though it’s difficult, we must acknowledge that we allowed something so horrifying to happen.
Today, and every day, let us remember the thousands who lost their lives and pledge: never again.
Photo by Peter Clarke