Auschwitz/Birkenau

I spent a really long time tonight trying to decide whether or not I wanted to make a blog post for today. Everything we saw at Auschwitz was so powerful and incomprehensible that I feel anything I could say about it just comes off as trivial in comparison. However, I know that there are many people that will not get to see these places so I thought I should at least say and post a few things so that those who weren't there could maybe get a small glimpse of the horror so they too can always remember the millions affected by the Holocaust.

Our tour lasted about four hours. We started at Auschwitz I and took a bus to Auschwitz Birkenau about halfway through. The first part was set up similar to a museum where you walk through different exhibits in the buildings led by a tour guide. The second part is just a walk through of what the camp had actually been like. There were many different opinions in our group on this layout. Many thought the museum nature of Auschwitz and the large number of crowds tended to mask the gravity of what we were going through. I understood there point, but I am not sure personally how much more intensity I could have handled. It was a very somber day.

There were many things I could not bring myself to take pictures of because they were just too sad or it just seemed too disrespectful to even try to photograph them.

This will definitely be a day I will always remember.

Arbeit Macht Frei

The streets of Auschwitz I

The wall that many Poles were executed against

Barbed Wire

Gas Chamber (the only one that is still standing)

Where the trains would enter Birkenau

Sleeping area for some of the prisoners

Where many more buildings used to be. Many have been destroyed or have fallen down over the years.

One of the other four gas chambers. They were destroyed by the Nazis before they left the camp in order to try to destroy some of the evidence.

Memorial at Auschwitz

"For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children mainly Jews from various countries of Europe"

Auschwitz-Birkenau (1940-1945)