Traipsing Around: Travel and Psychogeography: It's not true that birds don't sing at Auschwitz

I originally thought of just putting a title and then posting some photographs with no narrative, in a ‘What can be said?' sort of way. And indeed, just what words are appropriate? However, that just seems too gimmicky really and a bit of a cop out and, somehow, a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people that were executed. As the time between then and now increases, there is the danger that the Holocaust fades from the collective memory as real events in time which happened to real people and becomes instead a sort of metaphysical abstract, an embodiment of the idea of evil, which discounts the lived reality of each of those lives systematically extinguished. Silence then and now, is dangerous. Silence was the aim of the Nazi programme – the removal of the ability to speak, to think, to proclaim the self, to object, to pray, to love, to be. On reflection, silence is not appropriate.

I leave the Tatra Mountains at 6:45am and arrive in Oswiecim, about 80 miles away, at 9am. There are two main sites: Auschwitz-Birkenau II and Auschwitz I, about 4km separating the two. By chance, I probably make the right choice, although logically, it would make sense to start at the original site first, rather than the larger, more ‘efficient’ and later extension. I head to Birkenau. As it’s early on a Sunday, it’s very quiet. The car park is almost empty. Entrance is free, through an open metal gate. I pretty much have the place to myself, apart from a few groups of Jewish school children, who have Star of David flags draped over their shoulders and who are, poignantly, walking in a single file along the railway track. It is Passover holiday, so they have taken the opportunity to travel and contemplate.

The site is vast, some 175 hectares, with discreet direction arrows guiding you gently around the site and information boards interspersed along the route. It is not touristy at all (only a bookshop and toilet at the entrance). Just quiet. The land is flat and green. The sky is a bright blue, with feathery cirrus clouds very high up. There are butterflies, birds singing, Spring flowers growing in the shade of the many wooden look out posts and in the distance, the mountains. In the far corner of the compound I’m in, I catch sight of the bobbing white tail of a brown deer. There are rows of once electrified barbed wire fences, ditches, a large number of remaining wooden barrack huts, originally designed for the German Army to house 52 horses in each, but instead used to house more than 400 prisoners. There are hundreds of chimney stacks, the remains of the now removed barracks, two chimneys per building. I follow the railway track to the disembarkation point, and I stand where survivors of the train journey to the camp (many died of suffocation or where crushed, particularly children, as their parent became too weak to protect them) were separated, women/girls in one group, men/boys in another and then within that, those fit to work and those not. Those not fit to work were sent directly to the gas chambers: the old, the young, the infirm, the pregnant. Within those fit to work, further subdivision: women from Hungary, women from the Warsaw uprising, Gypsies, men from Bohemia, from Holland, Greece, France, each to separate barracks. Others, particularly twins, cripples, the mentally ill for example were not all assigned to the gas chambers but were sent to the Infirmary, where Dr Joseph Mengele performed his experiments. There is a brick shower block, where people were stripped of their possessions, their clothes, their dignity, their identity, (names replaced with a number tattooed on their forearm) and their body hair. The removal of all body hair was so brutal and quick, that people died from their injuries. To be face to face with someone and sadistically mutilate them with a pair of scissors or electric razor. That is something else, more intimate, personal and therefore more frightening as a result. Here, on this very spot, in this beautiful countryside, only 72 years ago. There are the remains of the gas chambers and incinerators, which the Nazis destroyed as the Russian Army advanced. There is the site where, as pressure grew to kill more people than the incinerators could handle, bodies were piled up, doused with petrol and burnt in the open air. Across the two sites, 1.2 million people were slaughtered. This is killing on an industrial, inhumane, unimaginable scale. It is almost too much to comprehend in any meaningful way. In one room in the shower block, there are pictures of families and individuals before their imprisonment and murder. Photos carried by people as part of their possessions: a family on holiday at the seaside, children and parents laughing, a formal family group portrait, grandparents with grandchildren. The photos of individuals make it more graspable, more human and more terrible. People just like you and me. At various points, not prompted by any particular building or fact, but by the general, cumulative weight of this place in the light Spring sunshine, I am overwhelmed by waves of sadness and I cry, periodically, silently, tears running down my face. I’m glad it’s quiet. I’m not the first person to cry here.

Auschwitz I, the original site of the first concentration camp, couldn't be more different. Geared to mass tourism with lines of coaches from Krakow, lots of people, a queue for tickets. You can’t enter as an individual after 10am or before 3pm, so I pay some money and wait for the next English speaking group to start. I try to keep up, but give up after about 45 minutes. The group, sandwiched between a Spanish speaking group in front and a German speaking group behind, cracks on at a pace which doesn't allow time to just look and think and reflect. The site is very small by comparison to Birkenau, with about 40 buildings. Blocks of squat, three storey tenements of warm brown brick in the sunshine and internally, steps worn down into two curves, left and right, through heavy use. The contrast between the ordinariness of the buildings and the atrocities committed inside is stark. We enter some of the blocks. Block 5 – Material Proof of Crimes, where there are displays of personal belongings taken from the prisoners: a room full of children’s clothes, a room full of pots and pans and multi-coloured crockery still anticipating the next meal, a selection of shoes, piled high behind glass, leather, canvas, high heeled, flat soled, boots, children’s shoes. Some look expensive. With a minimum carry allowance, people wore their best clothes to save carrying them. There is a collection of thousands of spidery spectacles, like some macabre modern art installation and, perhaps 7 metres long, about 2 metres high and 2 metres deep, hair, which was used to stuff mattresses and pillows, make blankets and weave socks. 1,950 kilos of hair were found. People reduced to the level of commodity. Block 10 - Gynaecological Experiments, Block 11 - Heart of the Mechanism of Terror, where the very first inmates were gassed in September 1941. Outside the blocks, the wall used for executions by firing squad, in another spot, posts for hangings. I tag onto another group and walk through the gas chamber and incinerator areas, still intact, the name of the makers, Topf und Sohn, just still readable. Around 17,000 people were killed here, before ‘production’ switched to the larger camp at Birkenau. I have stopped taking photos and making notes in my pocket book a little while ago now. I need to see and experience, rather than distance myself through the camera or with a pen.

When I return to the hotel, the owner, Christophe asks in broken English what I thought. I can only sigh and touch my heart with my hand. He indicates that he has visited twice and he too, raises his eyes to the sky, sighs and touches his heart with his hand. I notice he has had his hair cut.

Entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau II

Jewish school children at the disembarkation and separation point

In the shadow of a look out post

Here people were stripped of everything before being showered

Photos taken from prisoners on their arrival

The steps down to one of the gas chambers

Camp Layout

Legend to the Camp Layout

By contrast, the entrance to Auschwitz I

Across the whole area, there were a number of camps and a factory

'Arbeit Macht Frei', translated means Work Makes you Free. The upside down B in Arbeit (not really visible in my photo, unfortunately) is interpreted as an act of defiance by the prisoners that made it.