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EmailAuschwitz Then, Now, and in the Future
Dora A. Sorell
April 2006
Auschwitz, what happened there, what it is now, and what it will be in the future. I had the opportunity to see it again and reflect over it, and I want to share with you some of my thoughts. I will use a few important dates as a starting point.
1944, May 17. The most infamous day of my life, the day I arrived in that inferno, the day I lost all the members of my family who came with me, my mother, my father, and two brothers, and almost all the relatives. After a three days grueling trip, hungry, thirsty, dirty, sleepless and anguished, not knowing what will follow. After two weeks in our ghetto, crowded with all 12,000 Jews of my hometown.
It was night when we arrived at Auschwitz. Our nightmare began with the brutality of the SS officers on the platform, their threatening orders barked at us in guttural German, the crowding, the blows falling on us, the dogs barking, the shots heard, the flames and smoke coming from far away, our panic. Then came the first selection, the separation of those chosen to die immediately and those allowed to live, at least for now – the life or death sentence. Suddenly I was alone, with only other young girls, all crying and scared, most of them just separated from mothers or sisters. We were herded to the bathhouse, disinfected and shorn, given thin, gray uniforms, and we were ready to enter the camp.
The first image of the camp never ceases to haunt me. It was like a new world before our eyes, like another planet, a vast and desolate extent of hundreds of barracks separated by ditches, electrified fences and watch towers, and thousands of women standing in front of them for the early roll call, many crying when they saw us marching in. We heard a band play music somewhere. It was eerie. We were bewildered, we did not understand where we were, or what was happening to us or to the others whom we had left behind on the platform. Everything around was gray, the barracks, the women, the fences; even the sky was gloomy. Not a speck of green, no trees, no grass. We were lead to a barrack in the first camp, camp A, I think it was number 14. It was lined inside with 3 tiered, built-in bunk beds, and nothing on the barren planks. We were told to leave the shoes on the cement floor, but later the same day more girls arrived and even the lowest level was occupied. We were squeezed 10 to 12 girls in one bed, with no mattress, no blanket, no pillows and no sheets. This was our first impression of crowding, of cold, of being ordered around, of being hit and degraded. We ate the first meal, one bowl of coffee for 5 girls, with no spoon and no cup. We rushed to the latrine when the roll call ended, and waited in line for one of the dozens of adjacent holes in one long plank.
That day sealed my family’s fate. And it changed my life forever.
We were woken up with blows the following mornings, and driven out in the cold dawn for the roll call, shivering in our thin, short sleeved dresses, feeling the raindrops on our shaven heads, trying to hold tight to the younger among us to keep them warm. We stood for hours in the cold, hungry, unable to go tp the latrine, hit and pushed around, in a world we did not yet understand. A beehive of thousands around us and more thousands beyond the fences in the adjoining camps.
Then we learned that the place was called Birkenau, though we still did not know what it meant, or which country it was in; nor had we ever heard of Auschwitz, the name written on the station where we arrived. We started to hear rumors about the chimneys, ever spewing smoke and flames. The old-timer Polish girls, in answer to our questions, responded with scorn and malice, “those are your families going up in smoke, what do you think happened here while you were still comfortable at home all these years?” But it had been too awful to believe. In time, we also understood the sad story of these girls, who had been there for two or three years, had built Birkenau under the harshest conditions, and were among the very few who survived .
Six weeks went by, and almost half a million Hungarian Jews had been brought there. After a new selection I was separated from the girls from my hometown, and I was tattooed - A-7603, sechs und siebzig nul drei, my new identity – the number still resounds in my head. I was moved to another camp within Birkenau and sent to work.. It was heavy work, outside on roads or inside in factories, often changing work units and having to live and sleep with new, strange girls whose languages I did not understand. With constant starvation and dirt, we got infested with lice and many of us got sick. There were more selections, and we watched helplessly as weakened, emaciated girls were taken away.
In late 1944 I was in camp C, my third in Birkenau. It was the time when all the remaining ghettoes in Eastern Europe were being emptied. Packed trains arrived daily, but very few people entered the camp. All four chimneys in Birkenau worked full time, the sky was dark from the soot and smoke, and we were in constant panic and fear that we, too, would end up in ashes. The starvation, dirt, and beatings continued, and there were more selections. Winter came, it was freezing cold, and we developed frostbites. We tried to protect ourselves with layers of rags bought with our meager food rations. We were dejected and lonely, and there were more wasted, haggard-looking girls walking aimlessly around, almost waiting to be collected by the constantly moving trucks. There was relentless bombing by the Allies and no end to our misery. We had no hope of surviving the frequent selections. Then, in mid December, some relief came, though temporary, when some of us were sent to a working camp in anticipation of the advances of the Allies.
That was Auschwitz then, at the end of 1944, its most active period, soon to be liberated by the Soviet Army. The Auschwitz of destruction, of fear and dehumanization, of struggling to maintain a glimmer of dignity.
Another date, 1994 , 50 years later. I returned to Auschwitz on a pilgrimage, to say goodbye to my loved ones, which I had not done at the time, to dig my hand in that pit of ashes I had read about, perhaps to touch a speck of those sacrificed here. It was summer, the sky was clear and bright, the grass was tall, everything was green in Birkenau.
Camps A and B, the first two I had been in, were built with brick barracks, most of which were still intact. In the other camps, C, the Gypsy Camp, the Czech Camp, and all the others, the wooden barracks had been looted for their lumber by neighboring peasants. Where hundreds of barracks had been, only the rectangular outlines of foundations remained, overgrown with grass, with brick stumps sticking out where chimneys once stood. I t took time for the Polish government to realize the importance of every remnant, every little piece of evidence, and to stop the further dismantling of the camps.
The crematorium II, the last one to be built, and the closest to our camps, had been demolished by the Germans before they withdrew, to cover up the crimes committed there. The roof had collapsed, but the steps to the gas chamber were still visible. I could imagine my people descending to the basement, ignorant of what was to happen there. Of their remains, all that was left is rubble and debris! I cried as I gathered a handful of ashes to bring home and save in a jar – will this be their final resting place?
Auschwitz, our place of doom, our cemetery, has now become a museum. Everything is neat and organized. Signs direct the thousands of visitors to the exhibits of remnants, mounds of hair, shoes, brushes, eye glasses, artificial legs. One display is of luggage inscribed with their owners’ names in the same white paint, suggesting that it would be returned to them, a deception the Nazis no longer bothered with when I arrived in 1944. The Polish guides have learned our history and explain what and how in a very business-like manner. Even outside the camps Polish people take care of Jewish relics, synagogues, cemeteries, mass graves, museums, restaurants where Polish waiters sing Hebrew and Yiddish songs. Watching how everyone caters to the visitors, I feel a bit uncomfortable to realize that the tourism and much of the related industry here are based on our past suffering.
And visitors keep coming. Is it curiosity, guilt, compassion? A need for atonement? They walk around, from one exhibit to another, from one barrack to another, they talk, eat in the coffee shops, use the clean, individual toilets, and buy books and souvenirs just like in any other museum. But this is a place of destruction, where the most horrible crimes against humanity have been committed only a generation ago. It seems so strange to compare this with how and what we ate then, what kind of latrines we used. I wonder, what do these visitors think about those who once populated these places? Or those who never entered the camp? Or why the world did nothing to stop the madness?
I found barrack 14 in camp A and made a picture in front of my bunk bed. This is the picture my students find the most shocking, the one they say they will never forget.
Yes, this was another Auschwitz, of reflection, of remembrance and of mourning for my family. And of saying goodbye.
And now, 2006, sixty two years later. I return with the Shalhevet group of students, interested, informed and very dedicated, who will carry the torch forward to the next generation. I approach this task as an educational experience . I am the survivor, among the few left, who will tell them my personal experience, who will try to help them understand. I am their proof, as is my tattooed number. I feel ancient. When we are gone, will anyone doubt the facts? Does one really need eye witnesses with so much proof around?
It is winter in Auschwitz now, cold and windy, the snow is knee high. I look at the many visitors dressed warmly and I can’t help wondering, how did we manage then, without parkas and boots and scarves and gloves? And standing for hours at roll calls? I myself cannot understand how one could endure under such extreme circumstances.
Auschwitz is a very busy place now, noisy, animated. There are groups of visitors from all over, stopping at the exhibits in Auschwitz 1 and at the barracks in Auschwitz 2, as Birkenau is known today. I tell the students how the camp was when I arrived, over 60 years ago. I speak in front of my bunk bed, in front of the demolished crematorium. We look together at the pile of ashes, rubble and debris, but this time I cannot take any, for the earth is frozen and covered with icy snow. They pay attention to my narrated recollections, say Kaddish, light candles, some cry. When they hug me, their warmth and compassion make me feel that there is hope for the future. I trust that this new generation will carry on the lessons we learned from the Holocaust.
I went there feeling that I knew enough, that nothing would surprise me any more. But I was wrong. What I saw at Auschwitz, and at the other camps, where the killing industry had not been perfected yet, still shocked and overwhelmed me.
Auschwitz was the perfect, consummate death factory, its capacity staggering. At the height of its activity, in 1944, it had over 20 subcamps, housing about 200,000 inmates. Its gas chambers could kill 1,000 people in one session, and this could be repeated a few times a day. Many Auschwitz inmates did forced labor at nearby facilities and factories, like the Buna synthetic oil and rubber factory. There was a special division, Canada, which we knew as Brzezinka, just to sort the belongings that people carried with them on their final trip, luggage, clothes, food, jewelry and other valuables.
I am sickened by what I see at Majdanek, where all the buildings and remnants are still intact, and where the process of making the extermination an efficient death industry started. We read the titles of the exhibits: “how much could be charged for a ton of human hair”, or “how efficient the gas Zyklon is compared with the earlier use of carbon monoxide (10 minutes to kill instead of 40)”. We see “the autopsy table” adjoining the gas chamber, where they searched for hidden treasures in the corpses, we read about the use of showers not only for routine washing but also ”to calm those condemned” before gassing. The inhumanity behind these words is chilling. I wonder, are these the words and expressions the Nazis used?
The numbers we hear are always in the thousands, incomprehensible: 70 thousand people died of starvation and disease in Warsaw ghetto, and were buried in a mass grave in the old cemetery, along the old, imposing tombstones; 300 thousand were taken from Warsaw to Treblinka, where 1,700 stone slabs now memorialize each of the destroyed communities, a never ending forest of stone pillars; 70 thousand left the Warsaw train station, Umshlagplatze, toward their deaths; over 2,000 were dumped into the two mass graves near Tykocin, a village we also visited, where the whole Jewish population was murdered in 2 days; a never ending, staggering litany of hundreds of thousands, growing to millions; one can hardly listen to numbers any more. The enormity hits me. My heart grows heavy, and I mourn for all those who were sacrificed in these death camps, in the forests, mass graves, on the village squares. I cry for them. I cry for the fate of my people.
I think of other dates, 100 years from now, 1000 years from now. How will the Holocaust and its message be remembered? This was an event of biblical proportion, on par with the the Exodus, the Destruction of the Temple, the Expulsion from Spain. Many ancient periods are remembered and ruins are visited hundreds, even thousands of years after the demise of their empires. Think of the colossal monuments of the glorious Roman Empire at Forum Romanum or at far away places, like Petra or former Dacia, or the Egyptian pyramids honoring the powerful pharaos, or Machu Pichu and the advanced Inca civilization. They all speak about vanished societies. And the interest in them and in their history continues. Will the history of the Holocaust be remembered and the remnants visited centuries from now? And what are those remnants and where are they to be found?
Today, the reminders of the destruction of the Holocaust are most visible in Poland. Many labor camps were built there, close to the ghettoes, and close to factories which supported the war effort. All six extermination camps (Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka) were in Poland. And why in Poland? Most of the Jews who would be exterminated, over 3 million, lived there before the war. The Poles themselves, as Slavic people, were also condemned to be subjugated and made menial workers to serve the “superior German race”. And Poland is close, but outside of the “fatherland,” here the dirty work could be done far from the eyes of the German population.
The history of the Jews in Poland goes back to at least the 14 th century, when King Kazimiers invited the Jews to help develop commerce and industry, and gave them the opportunity to contribute to what became the Golden Age of their host country. Throughout the complicated history of Poland, multiple Tatar invasions, destruction, partitionings, and periods of prosperity, the Jews suffered, but also developed their own culture, language, literature, and artistic life, and produced philosophers, mathematicians, famous Rabbis, sages, and spiritual leaders. In spite of the toll of time there are enough reminders of this glorious culture: beautiful buildings, the sites of famous rabbinical seminaries, antique synagogues dating to the 16th century, the exquisite and modern Temple synagogue in Cracow, restored now to its initial splendor, sumptuous cemeteries, and art and literary works.
But the material proof of the destruction of Jewish life during the Holocaust is overwhelming and everywhere. There are villages with no Jews but plenty of vestiges of Jewish life, cities with areas where the ghettoes had stood, remnants of ghetto walls incorporated into newer structures, mass graves in forests, camps, gas chambers and crematoriums, mounds of ashes. One such mound at Majdanek is incorporated into an impressive memorial. Will people in future centuries want to come and see such ruins? These are not monuments of fame and glory, as those in antiquity. Their message is sad, somber, and very disturbing, they recall the darkest time of history, the lowest point of human behavior, and the dismal and shameful failure of the world to stop it.
We have to realize the importance of the Poles in maintaining these remnants in the absence of a significant Jewish population. They research our rich past, our culture, and the lives of the people who lived in those villages, they open new museums, they even perform Sholem Aleichem’s plays. And they are making sure that places where the evidence was destroyed , like ghettos and camps, factories for slave workers, former Jewish streets, important railroad stations, are all marked with monuments and plaques. It is ironic that after the Polish pogroms of the past, and some collaboration with the Nazis in the persecution of the Jews, there now appears to be a strange nostalgia for the times when the Jews still lived there. At the same time, there has been recognition, particularly as the war generation is dying out, that many of today’s Polish people have some Jewish ancestry, or may actually be Jewish children saved and hidden during the war. There are more people in Poland recognized for such deeds as ‘righteous gentiles’ than in any other country.
It is important for Poland that people come and learn about the atrocities committed in their country by the Nazis. It also serves the purpose of history for the truth to be told. Israel recognizes this and makes sure that every youngster has the opportunity to see these places which hold such a great piece of our history, our heritage, and the evidence of the millions killed during the Holocaust. But what happened there is not only the history of Jewish people, it is the history of humanity, its failure, its return to the most primitive barbarity. It was possible once. Will it be possible again? Against Jews or against other races? The Jewish tragedy should serve as a warning for the future of mankind. Only education of the young generations can stamp out ignorance and hatred and guarantee respect for human life. This is what we can do and this is what we must do.
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