On Monday, we left the kids with Klara, a confident, blithe, blonde actress/babysitter, and sped off into Poland’s lush countryside in our tiny rental car headed for Auschwitz. Spring had arrived in Krakow, so all the fields were green, all the trees in bloom, and all the red and yellow tulips were arranged in careful color bursts along fence lines and flowerbeds.
The irony was not lost on us—the contrast between our existence and what we were seeing and doing in our time here (wandering the Krakow cafes in search of our third and fourth cappuccinos of the day, chasing our kids who were chasing the pigeons on the piazzas, collapsing for late afternoon naps on the giant European king-size bed, complaining about the lukewarm water, reveling in the spectacular Polish and Italian food served up in fancy restaurants) and what all those hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned or ‘exterminated’ in Auschwitz did not, could not ever see or ever do. More disconcerting? The skies were brilliant blue, the sun shining. A day when nothing awful could happen. A day that felt oddly innocent. That contrast kept us primarily silent on our drive to the death camp.
Then: outside Auschwitz’s gate, “Snack Stands” with people buying hotdogs, enormous bags of Cheetos, Snickers bars, then walking through the gates, junk food in hand. An internet café. And an espresso bar and picnic tables. It all felt grotesque. But of course, this is the Way We Live Now.
We expected Auschwitz to be larger—an endless monolith. Instead, it was a tidy, orderly place—25 barracks, one after another, row after row. How could all those people who died here have lived here? Of course, the prisoners who came through here didn’t last long—4 months was the average life expectancy at Auschwitz in the early stages of Hitler’s Final Solution. And they slept 2 to 5 in a bed. Later, of course, there was no life expectancy at all.
Walking through the camp was exhausting, brutalizing, as it should be: the relentlessness of the violence that occurred there—and the life that was exterminated there—and knowing we were walking the same grounds, standing inside the same buildings, inside the gas chamber even, as the prisoners who died or survived the camps. But also where the Nazi soldiers and commandants once stood and opened up the cans of Cyclone B or pulled the triggers at the execution wall. The exhibits in the prisoners’ “barracks” were wretched. An entire room filled with shoes: woven sandals, wooden clogs, serviceable heels, tired slippers, wing tips. Another room filled with suitcases carefully labeled with names and addresses by the long-dead hands. Another filled with coils of women’s hair removed after they were gassed or shot—and used to make Nazi textiles. Another filled with prosthetic legs and hands and back braces. Thousands of spectacles. Thousands of cooking pots. Thousands of combs and hairbrushes. One porcelain doll, her face broken, her wedge of cheek lying beside her.
And after each exhibit: walking back into that blessed sunshine and into the jaunty trills of blackbirds and swallows. Realizing that Auschwitz, too, lived under that sun, with those birds, even then. Shouldn’t the earth have gone dark during those years? Shouldn’t the birds have flown away?
By the end of our 3 hours, we were flattened, and yet, felt absolutely certain that it was indeed important….essential that we had come—that we had walked through that place. And thankful we had not dared to bring our children here. Sophia would have been wrecked by it—as we were.
On the drive home, we stopped for lunch. Tired, heads aching, hearts aching, wiped out by the morning, we were somehow empty and thus ravenous and so we stopped at this tiny “bar”—one of the lovely kitchens that serve cheap, “Grandma” food. We had pickled herring on pickled onions, a mustardy coleslaw, beef goulash soup, and cheese and meat pierogies. We were hungry and hated our hunger after that morning, which called even the most basic human necessities into question.
When we returned back to our apartment, the kids were delirious. Klara had them running laps in the park outside, digging up worms, eating Happy Meals, playing with their plastic junk-toys that came with Happy Meals. Sophia and Alexander’s joy, their profound happiness, was wonderfully ordinary and prosaic. When they ran up to us babbling about their day, hugging our knees, showing off the new cache of “dragon nuts” they’d collected? What an innocent, necessary refuge from that morning’s horrors. What a privilege.
Kerry
The irony was not lost on us—the contrast between our existence and what we were seeing and doing in our time here (wandering the Krakow cafes in search of our third and fourth cappuccinos of the day, chasing our kids who were chasing the pigeons on the piazzas, collapsing for late afternoon naps on the giant European king-size bed, complaining about the lukewarm water, reveling in the spectacular Polish and Italian food served up in fancy restaurants) and what all those hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned or ‘exterminated’ in Auschwitz did not, could not ever see or ever do. More disconcerting? The skies were brilliant blue, the sun shining. A day when nothing awful could happen. A day that felt oddly innocent. That contrast kept us primarily silent on our drive to the death camp.
Then: outside Auschwitz’s gate, “Snack Stands” with people buying hotdogs, enormous bags of Cheetos, Snickers bars, then walking through the gates, junk food in hand. An internet café. And an espresso bar and picnic tables. It all felt grotesque. But of course, this is the Way We Live Now.
We expected Auschwitz to be larger—an endless monolith. Instead, it was a tidy, orderly place—25 barracks, one after another, row after row. How could all those people who died here have lived here? Of course, the prisoners who came through here didn’t last long—4 months was the average life expectancy at Auschwitz in the early stages of Hitler’s Final Solution. And they slept 2 to 5 in a bed. Later, of course, there was no life expectancy at all.
Walking through the camp was exhausting, brutalizing, as it should be: the relentlessness of the violence that occurred there—and the life that was exterminated there—and knowing we were walking the same grounds, standing inside the same buildings, inside the gas chamber even, as the prisoners who died or survived the camps. But also where the Nazi soldiers and commandants once stood and opened up the cans of Cyclone B or pulled the triggers at the execution wall. The exhibits in the prisoners’ “barracks” were wretched. An entire room filled with shoes: woven sandals, wooden clogs, serviceable heels, tired slippers, wing tips. Another room filled with suitcases carefully labeled with names and addresses by the long-dead hands. Another filled with coils of women’s hair removed after they were gassed or shot—and used to make Nazi textiles. Another filled with prosthetic legs and hands and back braces. Thousands of spectacles. Thousands of cooking pots. Thousands of combs and hairbrushes. One porcelain doll, her face broken, her wedge of cheek lying beside her.
And after each exhibit: walking back into that blessed sunshine and into the jaunty trills of blackbirds and swallows. Realizing that Auschwitz, too, lived under that sun, with those birds, even then. Shouldn’t the earth have gone dark during those years? Shouldn’t the birds have flown away?
By the end of our 3 hours, we were flattened, and yet, felt absolutely certain that it was indeed important….essential that we had come—that we had walked through that place. And thankful we had not dared to bring our children here. Sophia would have been wrecked by it—as we were.
On the drive home, we stopped for lunch. Tired, heads aching, hearts aching, wiped out by the morning, we were somehow empty and thus ravenous and so we stopped at this tiny “bar”—one of the lovely kitchens that serve cheap, “Grandma” food. We had pickled herring on pickled onions, a mustardy coleslaw, beef goulash soup, and cheese and meat pierogies. We were hungry and hated our hunger after that morning, which called even the most basic human necessities into question.
When we returned back to our apartment, the kids were delirious. Klara had them running laps in the park outside, digging up worms, eating Happy Meals, playing with their plastic junk-toys that came with Happy Meals. Sophia and Alexander’s joy, their profound happiness, was wonderfully ordinary and prosaic. When they ran up to us babbling about their day, hugging our knees, showing off the new cache of “dragon nuts” they’d collected? What an innocent, necessary refuge from that morning’s horrors. What a privilege.
Kerry
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