There were two things that struck me about the camp. The first was that it was located in the middle of town with businesses just on the other side of a busy street. I guess in my mind I expected it to be in a secluded field away from everyone and everything. I certainly wouldn’t want to drive by such a place on my way to work every day. The second was the sheer size of the camp. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp during World War II, but it looked rather small from the street. It wasn’t until I started walking around that I realized how big it really was.
We started the day by touring Auschwitz I, which was the first camp built before the Nazis outgrew it and had to expand by building Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Many of the barracks, which had been divided among men, women and prisoners from different regions in Europe, had been converted into exhibits that showed pictures, letters and artifacts that had belonged to the prisoners. The tour included a trip to barrack No. 10, which was where Josef Mengele conducted his experiments on prisoners, and barrack. No. 11 where the first deaths from poison gas occurred. We also saw the shooting wall, the center square where roll call was taken each morning, as well as the gas chamber and crematorium.
I feel like I almost experienced a reverse effect at Auschwitz. On my first trip to a former concentration camp, I think I expected something very emotional and threatening, but that was certainly not the case at Auschwitz. The barracks were all well preserved in neat, orderly rows and separated by well-maintained paths. It all seemed very ordinary, which I suppose was the point. The entire camp was designed to distance officers from the psychological effects of mass killing. That’s one of the reasons why the Nazis used gas chambers instead of shooting prisoners, which would have been much too personal, especially if they had been asked to kill women and children. Thanks to industrialization and technology, all the Nazis had to do was push a button or pull a lever to release the gas. That didn’t seem so bad. That was something that could be rationalized. In addition, the crowds of tourists, although everyone was very respectful, almost disrupted the profound sadness of the place.
What struck me were the personal items found by the Soviets when the camp was liberated. One of the most meaningful exhibits was nearly 2,000 kilograms of human hair that had been cut from the heads of prisoners. The pile was nearly as tall as me and stretched the entire length of the barrack. The size of the pile helped put the 1 million Jews that were killed there into perspective. It’s probably just one of those things you have to see to comprehend.
I don’t want this to come off as sounding callous, like I wasn’t affected. It’s just sometimes hard to grasp the enormity of what happened. Talking it out with another friend on the trip this evening certainly helped me to digest the experience. It will certainly take more time to put it all in perspective, but I think - for me - visiting Auschwitz was about creating a personal connection with history and challenging my preconceived notions about the Holocaust by learning more about what happened there.
“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”
-Elie Wiesel
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Read more from Jaime at http://jaimed03.tumblr.com/
Learn more about past Model United Nations conferences at http://waltonblog.uark.edu/2015/01/26/national-model-united-nations-rome/
