“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayanna

Last Sunday, I was in Krakow, Poland. I visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration camps. That quote was posted on our visit. Almost 2,000,000 people visit the museum annually. During my tour, there were hundreds of visitors throughout the museum. It was silent except for the tour guide. People didn’t talk the entire time. Kids behaved. No one was running around being loud and obnoxious. I cannot ever remember being on a tour that was so sobering and somber.

We started off in a long tunnel into the facility during the roughly 3-minute walk you heard approximately 50 names read off. It would take two months to hear all of the names of people who had been exterminated in these camps. We walked through the barracks and saw actual pictures of events that transpired. I don’t have the words to fully describe or illustrate what I saw.

Our guide walked us through the selection process – people would arrive on a train and an SS would put them into groups. One to be a worker, the other to the gas chamber. Mostly children, elderly and the weak were immediately sent into the gas chamber group. We walked the path to the gas chamber. It was roughly 6 minutes from the time they disembarked the train, to selection, to entering the chamber. Roughly 6 minutes of life left and they had no idea what was going to occur. We saw the remnants of the crematorium.

We then went through the numerous barracks where people were housed. Rooms are now filled with shoes, bags, glasses, hair. The hair filled up an entire side of one of the barracks. I can’t forget the image. I couldn’t understand why the hair was saved, but the Nazis used it to make socks, ropes, mattresses, etc.

We saw the hospitals where the doctors would use people to experiment on different cures to see the effects of certain drugs or operations. We saw the rooms where people were put into and deprived of oxygen. We saw the starvation rooms. We saw the death wall where people were shot and executed. We saw a room full of empty canisters that had pellets of poison in them.

I couldn’t help thinking how any person could do these atrocities to another human. I would recommend this tour to anyone who travels to Poland.

Miklos Radnoti – Hungarian Poet and Jew

His last poem – they found in his pockets when they exhumed the grave.

I toppled beside him — his body already taut,

tight as a string just before it snaps,

shot in the back of the head.

“This is how you’ll end too; just lie quietly here,”

I whispered to myself, patience blossoming from dread.

“Der springt noch auf,” the voice above me jeered;

I could only dimly hear

through the congealing blood slowly sealing my ear.