Auschwitz.....

[patrickcullen87]

Just wondering if anyone has been to the Auschwitz concentration camps/museums and what did yous think of it? thinking of going near the end of the year and just wanted to see peoples thoughts on it 

[Weston]

It's a worthwhile experience, in fact I think everyone should visit a concentration camp. The thing that got me was how efficient everything was designed to be and how recently it happened. And of course how it's still happening in some parts of the world 

[cmdrfire]

I went, probably close to a decade ago now. The experience has never left me. Auschwitz I is the museum, and was the former camp for political prisoners. Auschwitz II - Birkenau is the main camp, and it's a desolate place. One is kind of awed at the magnitude or enormity of what occured there, whilst being simultaneously repulsed. As Weston says, one of the shocking things is how well designed it is for its purpose. People thought, and thought hard, about the most efficient way to mass-murder and dispose of the remains.

The cremetoria were demolished by the Nazis on their way out, but still remain partially (preserved by the Soviets, no less); it's hard to imagine one million people died in them.


As I recall, it was a deathly quiet place. We went in spring - March, I think. There was no birdsong, to my memory.

[RedRobin]

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If you want to feel depressed, go to Auschwitz.

I don't buy into this idea that by preserving it etc will stop such horrors happening in the future. But I can accept it as a monument for those families who lost loved ones and relatives. I see no point in myself visiting it.

[QD MBE]

I have been to Auschwitz and Dachau, both very moving and thought provoking places.

I have also done battlefield tours in Ypres (WW1), Oradour-Sur-Glane (WW2), The Crimea (Charge of the Light Brigade), Gallipoli (WW1), Sarajevo, and when just and I mean just after the cessation of hostilities - Iraq (visited Commonwealth War graves).

It interests me, and it is not something that I take lightly.

[markymark]

I have been and can only echo what has already been said. It was a very powerful experience for me and certainly one I will never forget. I think it's somewhere people should visit and see for themselves the scale of the holocaust. As has been said the nazis were very efficient and absolutely nothing was wasted!
Now I have been it's not somewhere I would look to revisit.

[RedRobin]

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For me it has been enough to see the documentaries on TV.

What I also find shocking was what the Jews who were rescued from the camps at the end of WW2 then did in Israel to the Palestinians.

[rich83]

I cant think of anywhere I would like less to go. 

[RedRobin]

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My 20yo daughter went on a university trip to Krakow earlier this year and they were taken around Auschwitz. She was quite annoyed that she was obliged to attend the visit - It wasn't voluntary. No-one should be made to visit such places.

[Hedge]

I've not been to Auschwitz but I have been to Dachau.

Cracking Beer Festival even if I did nearly get tazered whilst taking a leak through the fence into the river. 

[cmdrfire]

No-one should be made to visit such places.

I respectfully disagree. I think everyone should be made to visit such a place (whether it's a WW2 camp, or a disused Gulag, or a battlefield of red poppies, or a football stadium used by refugees...) at least once in their life.

The world is not a nice place. People do not do nice things to each other. Maybe if we are all more aware of what we have done in the past, maybe if we are aware of what horrors men (and some women) have wrought upon other men (and more women), then maybe we will all be less likely to commit such horrors in the future.

It's far too easy to get entrapped in the cotton-wool of your own blinkers, and lose awareness of the world. Most Germans, even those living in towns right next to extermination and concentration camps, either accepted or ignored or turned a blind eye to horror a short distance away.The most common cry of the Nazi camp guards was, "We were following orders!". To some, they did nothing wrong. They looked away. They "followed orders". Nuremburg set the precedent that this was not a valid defence.

I really do fear, that were something to happen again (and it just as easily might - it is happening, or has happened, to various degrees, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Tibet, in the Balkans - right in Europe, people! - in Central and South America...) people could happily put their blinkers on and ignore everything because it was upsetting, or distressing, or depressing, or whatever.

...

It's for the same reason I think all politicians (well, all people; but politicians and generals especially) should take a trip into space. Because from up there, there are no borders or state-lines. And this is coming from me, hardly a hippy. Hell, go far enough away and the entire Earth, with all its peoples and its civilisations and achievements can be hidden behind a thumb.

[hugh jass]

I've not been to Auschwitz but I have been to Dachau.

Cracking Beer Festival even if I did nearly get tazered whilst taking a leak through the fence into the river. 

We need to hear the full story

[Hedge]

Another time Hugh.

[RedRobin]

No-one should be made to visit such places.

I respectfully disagree. I think everyone should be made to visit such a place (whether it's a WW2 camp, or a disused Gulag, or a battlefield of red poppies, or a football stadium used by refugees...) at least once in their life.

The world is not a nice place. People do not do nice things to each other. Maybe if we are all more aware of what we have done in the past, maybe if we are aware of what horrors men (and some women) have wrought upon other men (and more women), then maybe we will all be less likely to commit such horrors in the future.

It's far too easy to get entrapped in the cotton-wool of your own blinkers, and lose awareness of the world. Most Germans, even those living in towns right next to extermination and concentration camps, either accepted or ignored or turned a blind eye to horror a short distance away.The most common cry of the Nazi camp guards was, "We were following orders!". To some, they did nothing wrong. They looked away. They "followed orders". Nuremburg set the precedent that this was not a valid defence.

I really do fear, that were something to happen again (and it just as easily might - it is happening, or has happened, to various degrees, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Tibet, in the Balkans - right in Europe, people! - in Central and South America...) people could happily put their blinkers on and ignore everything because it was upsetting, or distressing, or depressing, or whatever.

....I see your point but I simply don't have enough faith in mankind (or should it be manunkind?) that compulsory visiting will exterminate such behaviour forever. In fact, those who would perpetrate such heinous crimes would probably be inspired by seeing the teutonic efficiency of Auschwitz. But neither am I saying that Auschwitz should be pulled down, but rather that we all should be given the freedom of choice whether to visit or not. Whether WW2 was politically inspired or truly a war for freedom (aren't they all? he said cynically), we should all have that freedom of choice.  As already said, I personally wouldn't visit.

It's all very well for a court in the aftermath to sit and declare that 'following orders' is no excuse but I wonder what each of them would have done if facing those same circumstances. Isn't it well known that even a few Jewish inmates murdered their own kind in order to survive? A very good friend of mine's father was 'asked' to be one of Mr Hitler's drivers during WW2 - Obviously he didn't refuse. It's a matter of survival.

[rich83]

Forcing people to go to Auschwitz??? I think that was the problem in the first place neo.