Confronting Auschwitz

By Danny Alpers

When I decided to study abroad, I chose the Syracuse University Central Europe program because I knew that we would be traveling all over central and east Europe as opposed to other abroad programs that would spend the vast majority of their time in only one city. But I knew that a lot of this traveling would not involve simply touring all over Europe; I was well aware that many of the places we would eventually visit would serve as lessons and reminders of the centuries of blood-soaked history of east and central Europe, especially in the case of Poland. No site that we have visited so far has served as a more chilling and horrifying reminder of this history than the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the town of Oswiecim in south-east Poland.

Before coming to Poland, I had a decent understanding of what the Holocaust was from school and from movies or documentaries. I knew that Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most infamous of the many concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany in order to eliminate any people that they labeled as “undesirables”. However, Auschwitz-Birkenau was not the first concentration camp I had seen in person, previously our group had visited the Treblinka death camp in our travels across Poland. Unfortunately, while at Treblinka it was hard at times for me to really comprehend the horrors that had been committed at this place because all of the buildings there had been destroyed by the Nazis in order to remove evidence of their crimes against humanity. However, unlike Treblinka, most of Auschwitz-Birkenau is still standing or rebuilt to look like how it was during the Holocaust. Because most of Auschwitz-Birkenau is still standing, it was much easier to imagine what it would have really been like to be imprisoned there.

Entering Auschwitz I, you are greeted by a metal gate. Above the gate is an inscription in German that translates to ‘work sets you free’, showing the kind of barbaric logic accepted by the Nazis. Within the gates of Auschwitz I saw brick buildings that were formerly barracks for soldiers in the Polish army and then used for those imprisoned at the camp. Some of these budlings have now been converted into spaces for museum exhibits, some with photos of Auschwitz and people being deported there. Other exhibits display some of the possessions taken to Auschwitz such as suitcases and shoes brought to the camp by around 1.1 million Jews and thousands of other Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs, and members of other ethnic groups. By far the most haunting possessions taken from the victims of Auschwitz on display were massive piles of human hair that would be used for making things such as cloth and rope by German corporations along with the German military itself. After going through several of the former living quarters now converted to exhibits, we found ourselves at the complex known as Block 11 which served as a place for special holding cells for anybody that disobeyed the guards of Auschwitz. In the basement of Block 11 were cells that were specifically used to starve people to death as retribution on the population for anyone that had escaped Auschwitz, among other cells used for anyone who disobeyed the guards. Also, within Block 11, I saw a courtyard that contained the so called ‘wall of death’ were many people were executed by a single shot to the head. We ended our visit of Auschwitz I by stepping inside a gas chamber with a room next door for burning bodies. People that were killed in the gas chambers were told that they would be getting a shower, but by the time the victims were put into the chamber and could realize that there were no shower heads, it was too late.

After leaving Auschwitz I we took a short bus ride to the second part of the complex that makes up Auschwitz, which is known as Birkenau. While Auschwitz I had a gas chamber, it was still primarily a work camp, while Birkenau was specifically designed with killing people in mind, whether through hard labor, disease, starvation, etc. or by killing them directly in a gas chamber. As we walked through Birkenau, we observed the decrepit conditions that the prisoners were forced to live in. These accommodations had no heating for the winter and would become dreadfully hot in the summer. The prisoners slept on bunk beds with three levels with each level being occupied by multiple people at once. As we continued to walk, we observed a train car that was used to transport Jews and other victims to Birkenau. We were told that these carriages were originally designed to transport livestock and could carry about 15 or so cows, but when used for human beings, hundreds would be stuffed in, leading to some victims dying in the train cars before they even reached Birkenau. At the very end of the camp is where the gas chambers of Birkenau had been located. Most had been destroyed by the Nazis in an attempt to cover up their atrocities. By just looking at the ruins you could tell that all of the gas chambers were much larger than the one we observed at Auschwitz I, further reinforcing that Birkenau’s specific purpose was to murder as many people as possible.

I’d like to end this essay by talking about some of my more personal reflections on not only what I found most impactful, but also about how Auschwitz relates to me personally. The most impactful part of Auschwitz-Birkenau was found within the walls of Auschwitz I in a museum exhibit created by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance organization. In this exhibit, there is a massive book with the names of over 4 million Jews that were murdered in the Holocaust. While looking through the names of all the victims, I found my own name or at least a version of my name: Daniel Alperovich. I don’t know a lot about my family’s history, but I know that we are a historically Jewish family and that when my ancestors arrived in America, they changed their last name from Alperovich to Alpers. Finding my own name along with entire pages of people with my former last name or variations of it led me to deeply reflect on what I had seen and how it relates to my family’s history. All I could think about was how some of these people in the book of names could have potentially been one of my relatives. Seeing these names made me reflect on other relatives and their decisions to emigrate, and makes me think about how if my ancestors had been stubborn and decided not to leave their homeland, then I nor the rest of my family would exist.