by Peggy Tee

Created on: October 13, 2009   Last Updated: October 22, 2009

We are bumping along a winding, rutted road, in a mini coach. We are heading to Auschwitz, Poland, the concentration camp synonymous with WWII and the Holocaust. It is a beautiful dawn that lights up over the countryside outside of Krakow. The light is soft, diffused, the day full of promise. It is this beauty that contrasts so sharply with the horrors that would await us as we got off the bus at the concentration camps.

Auschwitz is the prototype for concentration camps set up by the Nazis across Europe. They experimented with methods, perfecting the process of their Final Solution here. For that reason Auschwitz, although not the largest of concentration camps - this is Birkenau, next door - is historically significant.

The exhibits are grisly, and gruesome and all too human - shoes, Jewish prayer shawls, discarded spectacles, suitcases. But the worst was the hair. The Russians found 7,000 kgs of it when they liberated Auschwitz; packed into sacks for shipment back to Germany, where the Nazi war machine used the hair of their Final Solution victims as raw materials in making army uniforms. 2,000 kgs of it are still on display in a dimly lit, shadowy room.

We are shown the punishment cells inside Block 11, or as the prisoners called it, "Block of Death" because if you were sent there the chances were not good. They worked 12 hours, walked in heavy, wooden clogs, was given threadbare, thin clothes to wear, had their hair shaven off and were punished; methodically, severely, sadistically. One form of punishment was being stripped and having to stand outside while buckets of water were thrown on them. In winter, most prisoners froze to death from this treatment. Already weak from work, undernourished and in suffering, they really had no chance.

There are many photos on display - most of them taken by the Nazis themselves. They tried to destroy all evidence of the concentration camps, but were foiled by the prisoners, who, when instructed to burn the photos, hide some negatives wherever they could. These were found later, after the war ended. A corridor in Block 11 show headshots of prisoners - men and women - gaunt, terrified, defiant, exhausted, young. The photos have date of incarceration in Auschwitz, then date of death. The longest ones I saw survived a year, though most of them perished within 6 months of entering the camp.

We also visited Birkenau, 20 times the size of Auschwitz and never completed. It was built as the ultimate engine in the Nazi's extermination

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