Living lives in honour of those who perished
WENT to Auschwitz today. When I told friends my plans I pondered the words I used. I couldn't say I was visiting Auschwitz, as you would a famous landmark and I certainly wasn't going to experience Auschwitz.
I WENT to Auschwitz today. When I told friends my plans I pondered the words I used. I couldn’t say I was visiting Auschwitz, as you would a famous landmark and I certainly wasn’t going to experience Auschwitz.
No, I simply knew I wanted to be there and needed to do this. As we approached the outskirts on our comfortable tour bus, having watched a gruelling documentary screened in preparation I stared out the window at the railway tracks whooshing by and wondered if they could possibly be the same tracks that had transported so many to their deaths.
Without much notice our guide announced that the security was strict at Auschwitz, less so at Birkenau and that we would not be permitted to carry bags bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. Since mine slightly extended beyond the piece of paper provided to check, I had to very quickly decide which items I’d place in a small, plastic doggy waste bag that had accompanied me all the way from Melbourne and happened to be in my handbag to carry some fruit.
Within seconds I grabbed my phone, wallet, a tissue and my sunglasses. That was it. My little bag was full. As I hurriedly chose my essentials my mind flashed to the thousands of suitcases I expected I’d be seeing on display. I tried to imagine the terror of being ordered by Nazis to pack one’s most treasured possessions in minutes for the ‘holiday camp’ we all know was the antithesis.
Born Jewish in the freedom of Melbourne I wasn’t typical of my generation, in that I was not the child of Holocaust survivors, or even grandchild. In fact my descendants were fortunate enough to find a safe haven in Australia long before the Holocaust. I have always been aware, though, that at another time and place we too would have been caught up in the unimaginable nightmare we call the Holocaust. In fact, as an identical twin I have always known that at that other time and place my twin and I would have likely been subjected to barbaric experiments at the hands of Joseph Mengele, just like the survivor I once knew on a kibbutz in Israel. I remember being amazed that this lady could have survived such atrocities and gone on to have a life as a member on the kibbutz, although her twin sister sadly hadn’t.
Arriving back at my hotel in Krakow after eight hours at Auschwitz and Birkenau, I struggled to get my head around where I had been and what I had seen. We all grow up with the indelible images of the prisoners, brutalised and starved, of the piles of corpses, of the gas chambers and the crematoria, but being right there and standing on the earth at Birkenau where the desperate souls would be directed to the right or left as they spilled out of the cattle wagons, I somehow felt at one with these people.
Such a memorial of peace with thousands of tourists filing through respectfully felt as it should be. Without words we knew we were asking ourselves the same question. How could this ever have happened? How could one human being inflict such indescribable savagery on another? And as I met the eyes of others on this day, many filled with tears, there was a knowing that there were no answers.
As I unpacked my little plastic bag I thought back to the exhibits of human hair, of the beautiful blonde plait that caught my eye. Who wore this plait? Was she single or perhaps a newlywed? Was she a mother? Who did she love? Did she still hold any remnants of hope as they hacked off her gorgeous, youthful locks of hair? I thought of the piles of spectacles, each pair certainly chosen as an essential possession. And who clung to these frantically packed and clearly marked suitcases? It tore my heart out to read the inscriptions such as “Hahn, Irene, geb 1929” on one. Who was Irene; barely a teenager, and what had her life and dreams been?
Being at the actual crudely erected gallows where Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz, was hanged in April 1947 brought some tiny, sense of justice. But imagining if the Nazis could have seen the thousands of people filing through their places of genocide to honour those who perished at their hands, perhaps is the ultimate vindication. They did not succeed in ridding the earth of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, the disabled and the many more who appeared on their extermination lists. The books they burned did not mean the end of literature and the music they forbade did not silence the world of such beauty.
I have ended my long day in a quiet spot at a cosy restaurant with friendly, welcoming staff over a hearty bowl of Polish soup and a glass of French rosé. In the aftermath of my journey today I feel drained and deeply sad, but also strangely uplifted. The positives are so illuminated in contrast to such incomprehensible horror. We must be thankful that Hitler did not achieve his ultimate goal. We must treasure all that life for us in the free world can offer; we must live our lives to the full in honour of those that perished in his attempt. We must soak up kindness and love, music and literature, friendship and family, beauty and justice, peace and freedom, and we must constantly remind ourselves that this must never, ever happen again.
Janine Joseph is a Melbourne writer and personal life coach.
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