Work Brings Freedom
A Student's Experience: Auschwitz-Birkeneau
By: Meghan E. Seifert
Meghan Seifert participated in the Fall European Cultural History Tour offered by Eastern Michigan University during the Fall 2000 semester.
ARBEIT MACHT FREI, WORK BRINGS FREEDOM.
My eyes fill with tears as I try to decipher the cynical phrase atop the iron-gated entrance to the death camp. All I hear as I walk through the gate and down the brick-building lined street are the sounds of human feet stumbling over gravel as our bodies try to cope with the shock. For one of the few times in my life, I can only move my body with the coercion of my entire soul. My emotions have overpowered me.
For a minute, I am able to imagine what it was like for the millions of men, women,and children that walked through this gate and past the guard's post. Their feet must have sounded just like ours.
We turn the corner. I shield my eyes to the blinding sun. It is a beautiful day, a horrible day. How could the sun shine on a day like today? I am on the blocks, as the brick-building barracks where the prisoners lived were called.
The fences that still stand surrounding Auschwitz.
It is surreal. It is reality.
I climb the wooden steps to Block Five. Once inside I dare to take my eyes away from the security of my tennis shoes. Behind the glass, 21,000 pairs of worn, torn, leather shoes look back at me. Preserved forever, they have not been forgotten. The red ones stand out.
"It's a harsh reality, isn't it?" a friend says to me.
I am numb and agree, the only words I will utter all day. The next room is filled with luggage. Lured by the fictitious promise that they would be returned, names, dates, and hometowns were written on each. Some of the birth dates belong to infants. Another room is filled, floor to ceiling with pots and pans. Another room is filled with women's hair that had been cut off. The hair was used to make clothing.
On the next block, photographed portraits of prisoners are displayed on the walls. Matter-of-factly, their names, dates of imprisonment, and the date and cause of death are listed, dysentery, pneumonia, natural causes, all lies. Hitler is not listed as a cause of death; the Nazis wrote these obituaries. I stare at the wall of pictures. The victims, in their pinstripe uniforms, look back at me with fearful, tearful eyes.
Their eyes cry to me, and their mouths, slightly ajar, seem to be pleading with me.
"Why was I shot, why did I starve, why was I persecuted?"
I gasp with fear as I see my reflection in the glass,and recoil into reality.I feel I have abandoned them.My tear-filled eyes mimic theirs.
I walk past more blocks. I walk past a target range, where humans were used as targets. Flowers and candles cover the ground. I walk past the gallows, where prisoners were forced to witness the hanging of fellow prisoners, friends, and family. I reach the gas chamber and crematorium.
The stone building is constructed under the ground. Green grass grows atop the gas chamber where poison was once poured. I walk down the stairs into the gas chamber. Where I stand, with no fear of my own death thousands fell to theirs. I cannot face the human suffering that was endured in this horrible place. I can almost hear their screams and feel their bodies. How could this have ever been a reality?
The crematorium is the next room. Once they were killed, their bodies were burned. Flowers and pray candles have been placed where bodies once were only 60 years ago.
I tell myself it is a different world today. Is it? Auschwitz is still real. The tour is over. I feel guilt and sorrow. What have I endured? I defy the sarcastic phrase above the entrance and walk out of the camp on my own freewill.
Birkeneau, the second camp of Auschwitz.
The railroad tracks continue inside the entrance, where all who were imprisoned by the Nazis were received. These tracks brought over one million people to mass extermination. It is here, with a sway of the hand, left to work, right to death, ordinary men with evil intentions decided the fate of hundreds of thousands.
The railroad tracks lead all the way to the end of the camp. Past all the wooden barracks, most of which are destroyed except for their telltale brick chimneys. It seems only fitting that the crematoriums lie at the end of the tracks. Hitler's Final Solution to the Jews. A monument, commemorating the victims of Auschwitz and Birkeneau, separates the five crematoriums. There must be well over a
The monument at Birkenau built to commemorate all those killed at Auschwitz.
million stones terracing the foundation, one for each victim, I believe. And amidst the sorrow that will never free this place, or the people that must face it, grows a strong message of new life. For between every hard gray stone, lies soft,
green moss. It is a symbol that there is life and hope amid the greatest death and deepest despair.
Jayhawks Abroad 7