The Holocaust, antisemitism, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Nazi concentration camps are all things I’d heard about, and recall studying at school, but if I’m honest I don’t think I truly understood the scale and impact of it all.
The SU President, Officers, and I were recently invited to join Lessons from Auschwitz University project - an educational initiative delivered by the Holocaust Educational Trust in partnership with the Union of Jewish students, supported by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
This includes a trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum in Poland. In preparation two orientation sessions were arranged ahead of the trip. The first session opened with:
‘The Holocaust was the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis and their collaborators – it was an episode which changed the shape of Europe, and the world, forever.’
This captivated our attention right from the start. The orientation sessions were about learning about antisemitism and Jewish life on campus. We also met a Holocaust survivor who spoke about pre-war Jewish life, how she was born in a prisoner of war camp (weighing 3lbs at birth) she never met her father as he was killed and her mother never truly recovered from her experience.
Auschwitz I
Upon arriving the atmosphere is solemn, quiet and there is a sense of respect. There was an overwhelming sense of sadness that hits as soon as you enter.
I wasn’t expecting security at Auschwitz - this is a museum and memorial. However security is very tight, and we were subject to screening as we entered, including x-ray scanning. We all wore headsets so our guide could speak to us using her normal voice via a microphone, as for her to have to shout for a large group to hear would not be respectful.
Our guide started the tour at the gates and noted the cruelly ironic sign ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, which translated means ‘Work sets you free’.
She took us through several of the brick barrack buildings. We learned about the cruel and shocking treatment of prisoners, and saw heart-breaking exhibits which included a corridor of photos of prisoners including men, women, and children, and collections of belongings such as pots and pans, glasses, shoes, and clothes. We saw the hair that guards had cut off of prisoners. We heard about medical experiments that had been conducted on children, particularly on twins, and saw where prisoners had been tortured, and the firing wall.
We entered the crematorium where the Nazis began experimenting with mass gassings. A sense of coldness hits you as you enter the building. There are marks on the walls where people tried to escape. It took approximately 20 minutes for prisoners to die.
Auschwitz II
Birkenau camp is an extension of Auschwitz, built to accommodate more prisoners on a mass scale. This is slightly different to Auschwitz I which is more of a museum. Birkenau is mostly outdoors.
Freight trains would bring new arrivals, who thought they were arriving for a new life. They would have been greeted by Nazi guards, dog barking at them, being shouted at ‘get out’ and ‘line up’ ‘women and children to the left and men to the right’. This is where ‘selection’ took place. Those men that were strong enough to work lived.
Women, children, the elderly, the disabled or those with mental health issues were sent directly to the gas chambers.
Male prisoners lived in old wooden horse stables, in three storey bunk beds lining the barracks. Between 700 to 1000 people were housed in any one stable. There weren’t enough beds so people squeezed in or slept on the floor in the mud and with the rats.
Meals were thick coffee for breakfast, rotten vegetable soup for lunch and a tiny piece of bread for supper. Prisoners were allowed to visit the toilet block once a day.
We walked down the path that the prisoners would have taken to the remains of the gas chambers and crematoria. These were blown up by the Nazis before they fled the camp, to try and hide what they had done.
The tour concluded at the end of the train track. The Nazis extended the track from the main gates so they could process prisoners quicker to the gas chambers. This is a place of remembrance now as those that were killed have no gravestones.
A remembrance service was held here. We each had a candle and I remember being stood at the end of the train track, in the dark, freezing cold and hearing dogs barking in the background from the local houses and hearing the flag poles singing. It is a feeling I’ll never forget.
What struck me most?
An incredible sense of sadness hit me at Auschwitz I. I was reduced to tears when I saw the children’s shoes piled up. It broke me. As we entered the gates, I felt the whole group pause and walk forward incredibly slowly as a sign of respect for what had occurred in that area.
Finally, the stairs. It is hard to describe. Walking into the buildings and up/down the stairs, you see they are all worn. I wondered if that is from the prisoners and how often they walked up and down, or is it from the volume of people that have visited to pay respect?
At Auschwitz II what struck me most was the scale of the camp – there were barracks for as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t comprehend such a camp being able to house that volume of people, or the selection process that decided whether you lived or died that day.
Reflections after visiting Auschwitz
I felt a sense of being emotionally drained from so much information to process. I’ve never visited a place of death before. We were there for around five hours, but the effects will linger for so much longer. A feeling of sadness and lowness has stayed with me while I still process all that I saw, heard, learnt, and felt.
Ultimately the Nazi’s failed. The ‘final solution’ didn’t work; the evil that took place at Auschwitz was defeated. Those 6 million men, women and children are all victims and deserve to be honoured and remembered.
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