"Oswiecim-Auschwitz" a Oswiecim Travel Page by malasli

Of course it's depressing. Never mind, I knew I would be depressed anyhow on the day I went, the memorial day a of a certain catastrophy due to which I lost somebody, so I thought it would be a good idea to be in a more serious environment where my tears go with the flow, and one that doesn't leave me room to think about our own horror. Bingo, it did the job! I wouldn't bring younger kids here.

You may think you know all about the holocaust, but there are gruesome details they don't include in films and novels, which is where most people nowadays get their info. Like, the guide, who looked as bittter as another I had talked to in a different camp was because "The young people always only want to see where the people got burnt"--this Polish guide said they weren't always already dead when they burnt them. I heard the same from a survivor later.

You are asked for respect in one of the cellars that have not been blown up by the Nazis. It is not just a museum. People died there and their remains are still there, for example in the lake at the second memorrial site with just barracks.

I went to see the bigger camp with the original barracks--with sketches and painting by prisoners on the wall--and there you can only see what the Nazis left of the building where they had the notorious showers, i.e. lots of debris.

The most impressive:

I might have heard Spielberg mention that, but when I saw those kiddie shoes behind glass (it says where everything is in a brochure, like the hair, prosthetic limbs, clothes, suitcases), and there is this one little red shoe, I just pictured some little girl buying her shoes with her mom and some voice , probably from my own past--God I hated buying shoes as a kid but it was so exciting to have them--popped up in my head asking "are you sure they don't hurt your feet?" Because somebody little was probably also once very keen to have shoes in this beautiful color.

There are photos of many people on one wall--very good quality portraits taken by other prisoners, and I wondered if the Polish subtitles meant they were released or killed. I don't think they would have posted them if they had survived. You can look directly into the eyes of people--shortly after their arrival. And wonder.

If you are looking for traces of your jewish ancestors, this is not a good place to look. First of all, most Jewish people were mostly killed on the same day they arrived, no lists were kept. The Jewish memorial building was narrow and earie. I got claustrophobic which is probably intended by building it this way.

When you go to the building memorizing Sinti and Roma ( gypsies) you will find memorial items of the people who dies. Like a page from an autgraph album where a little girl had left her verse. They had more personal stories ther which spoke to me as you wonder how the people were. A young beautiful girl of 16 years who was raped in a camp by a guard and then sent to another where she died.

The people who live in Oswieciem--when I asked for directions the guys at the shop offered to drive me to my hotel right away--are very eager to show that they are not bad people, even though everyone associates their town with murder. "There is only the camp here" said my driver sadly. A lot of local Polish people--also resistance-also died here: If one person escaped they'd get the rest of the family.