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One of my most memorable experiences in Poland was visiting Auschwitz.
To be perfectly honest, I almost didn’t go, knowing how I felt after visiting The Killing Fields in Cambodia. I knew I’d have nightmares for days or even weeks afterwards. But I knew I couldn’t miss this important piece of history. After all, as horrifying as the Holocaust was, and as much as we all want to forget it, the only way we can prevent history from repeating itself is to remember it. Not going would be an insult to the memory of all those innocent victims who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
So I sucked it up, got myself mentally prepared, and bought bus tickets to Oświęcim (the Polish spelling of Auschwitz) from Krakow.
Now, here’s where I need to stop and give you my “viewers discretion is advised” shpiel, because if you don’t want to see graphic pictures and unsettling stories, please stop reading here.
Just so that you don’t feel like you wasted your click, here’s a picture of a puppy in a teacup:
You’re welcome.
For the rest of you, here’s what happened when we went to Auschwitz.
We wanted to walk around and really absorb the stories without being rushed by a guide, so we go there at 8:45am in the morning. Apparently, the only times you’re allowed to visit Auschwitz without a guide is before 10am or after 3pm since 10am-3pm is their busiest time.
My first thought when I saw Auschwitz was “this place is creepily beautiful”.
Because instead of a bleak, gray, Hellhole, we saw a serene little town, full of green foliage, under a impossibly blue sky. It was unnerving to say the least. I almost felt guilty, experiencing all this serenity. Shouldn’t it be thundering and storming? Or at least raining?
This just didn’t feel right.
Pathetic fallacy aside, after waiting in line for about 30 mins to get our tickets (Auschwitz is free to get in by the way. The government felt it was better to turn the grounds into a museum and educate as many people as possible instead profiting off the murder of millions of people. Smart.), we got in pretty quickly.
Going through the main gate with a group of people really made the terror come alive.
Can you imagine seeing this as you are herded like cattle through the gate?
The words “Arbeit Macht Frei” translates to“Work will set you free”–a lie fabricated by the Nazi’s to give their victims false hope. If the prisoners thought working harder would set them free, they would be less likely to revolt and fight back. But in reality, the Nazis had one goal and one goal only: extermination.
The most obvious sign of this was the double-layer of barbed wire fences around the camp.
If anyone even stepped on the dirt next to the fences, the guards sitting in the watch towers would immediately mow them down with machine guns.
And for any prisoners who misbehaved (as in they asked a question or walked a little too slow), they could be strung up and hung on a hook. With hands tied behind their backs and then to this pole standing 6ft high, often they’d be dangling in the air, arms and shoulders popping out of their sockets.
Walking around Auschwitz, we saw barrack after barrack, each used to house over 1000 prisoners. The prisoners are long gone, but their memories are preserved here as a historic museum, telling their sad, tragic stories.
In these barracks, we also found disturbing evidence of Nazi crimes, such as this exhibit of shoes:
Glasses:
Human hair:
Why human hair? Because the prisoners had their heads shaved as soon as they entered the camp, and the hair was then sold to German companies to make stuff like pillows and carpets. And because these things were never tracked down after the war, apparently it’s still completely possible for someone in Germany to be sleeping on a pillow made of human hair from an Auschwitz victim and not know it. That is horrifying.
The Nazi’s also used the skin of the victims to make lampshades and bind books, and their fat was used to make soap after stuffing their bodies into the ovens. It truly was an industrialized effort to not just murder, but to exploit and profit off that murder.
Which leads me to the scariest artifact of all:
At one point, they were burning as many as 340 bodies every 24 hours and gassing even more.
In the gas chambers, they piled these rooms with up to 800 people and then tossed babies in from the window—like burning a pile of trash and shoving in a cardboard box as an after thought.
The prisons were told to get naked, given a bar of soap, and told they were taking a shower. But once they were locked inside the “shower room”, pellets of potassium cyanide were dropped in through a vent in the ceiling.
Inhaling the gas was so excruciating, the victims tried to claw over one another to get to higher ground where they could get more air.
After seeing this, I have nightmares every time I step inside a sauna or a steam room. I can’t help but think about all the fear, pain, and panic all those innocent victims felt when they were caged and suffocated to death.
By the time we left Auschwitz, I was teary-eyed, shaky, and nauseous from everything I’d seen.
But as it turns out that was just the tip of the fucked-up torture and brutality iceberg.
Because what we saw next was Birkenau, the second camp they built (using slave labour from their victims) with the exclusive purpose of murder.
The place was sprawling—as wide as several football fields. Rows, upon rows of barracks stood here, so many that I lost count after walking for what felt like miles.
Even though these barracks were originally stables made to only hold 50 horses, the guards cramped as many as 400 people per barrack. Inside, it had two rows of toilets and all the prisons had to share, living amongst open sewage and no heat during the winter to keep warm.
To transport so many prisoners here, they build an entire railroad leading into it and brought the victims by cattle cars. If 20 people stood shoulder to shoulder, they could barely fit, and yet the Nazis somehow managed to squeeze 80 people inside a single cattle car. They were kept inside for an entire week without water, food, or bathrooms during transportation. Many died on the trip before even getting to the extermination camp.
Burning the bodies in the furnaces was such a horrible job, the Nazis refused to do it themselves and forced the prisoners to do it instead. These prisoners were called “Sonderkommandos,” lived separately from the rest of the prisoners, and were murdered themselves after 6 months because the Nazi’s didn’t want the prisoners to know what was going on.
And the most horrifying thing of all? Sometimes the Sonderkommandos discovered members of their OWN families as they were cremating the bodies. But if they refused to work, they would be immediately shot.
Do you see how fucked up I thought it was that the sun was shinning, the sky as blue and the area looked so serene that day?
After visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau, I can never ever look at evens, cattle cars, or steam rooms the same way.
Now, I know this is one of my most bleak and depressing post ever, but I’d like to end this on a positive note, because one cannot mention the Holocaust without mentioning Oscar Schindler. Because he is proof that in the midst of all this brutality and hopelessness, when the Holocaust threatens to destroy our faith in humanity, humanity can also restore it.
If you’ve never watched Schindler’s List (what the HELL, have you been living in a cave?), Oscar Schindler was a German factory owner who saved 1200 jews during the Holocaust by employing them to make pots in his factory. If the Nazi’s had found out he was sheltering the Jews, he would’ve been sent off to the concentration camps right along side them, but he didn’t care. He decided he had to save his workers at the risk of his own life.
While we were in Krakow, we had the privilege of visiting his actual factory, where he saved 1200 Jews:
One of my favourite take-aways from Shindler’s factory is this quote:
*phew* Okay, we got through it. If you’ve gotten this far, give yourself a pat on the back. I know it’s hard, but it’s important for us to remember this horrific events in history so we can prevent it from happening again.
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Really wild journey you just took me on. War is such a horrible thing. It is the behavioral cancer of mankind. One positive thing I thought about as I read this, was that one of the greatest psychology books was written by a man who suffered years in there. It’s titled, “Man’s Search For Meaning,” by Victor Frankl. It’s been years since I read it, but I remember one of it’s main premises is that a human being can endure terrible suffering, if they can attribute a greater meaning or purpose to their suffering. They can use meaning to make sense of the suffering. I read this book, written by a man incarcerated in these camps, while I was incarcerated in my own prison cell. It helped me attribute meaning and purpose to my own suffering. It helped me realize suffering isn’t empty if you can attribute meaning to it. This book helped me find meaning in the challenges I faces. Though the holocaust is a very difficult thing to think about, I choose to find hope that there were great people who did survive it, and the work they created after this tragedy change the world in positive ways.
“a human being can endure terrible suffering, if they can attribute a greater meaning or purpose to their suffering”
This is so true. Adding that list on my TBR pile (which is starting to topple, btw).
Shit happens and you can’t do a damn thing about it, but if you can use it for something good, the suffering won’t be for nothing.
Frightening stuff FIRECracker… and a truly horrific part of human history. Thanks for sharing your journey.
While this might not be a happy post, it’s important not to forget.
I’m glad you talked about your experience here. My husband and I are going to Poland during the summer and I was debating whether to go to Auschwitz or not. I can’t sleep for nights after watching a scary movie, so Auschwitz seems to be a perfect place to scare me for nights. Haha. We’re still thinking about it, but I feel a lot more confident after reading your posts.
Also on a side note, I’ve recently started a journey of our own FIRE and we’re on track to retire by 40, but what has truly inspired me to start writing about it is reading your posts. I found your blog through Business Insider a few months ago and since then, I’ve been on your site at least 5 times a month learning about how you guys made finances work and where you’ve been. I really appreciate all the transparency you have shown and it really showed me that even though I live in an ridiculously expensive city (San Francisco), the combination of hard work and spending on things that matter have made the difference. Splurging on travel and food is what makes a fulfilling life and you can still become a FIRE. I really appreciate everything you’ve shared and especially the investment series. I’ve started to study investment strategies on my own, but your series has helped a lot! Thank you for all that you’ve done!
Nice! Very cool that you are on track to retire by 40! I’m glad my crazy ramblings have been helpful–thanks so much for reading 🙂
Enjoy Poland! I know Auschwitz is going to be hard to get through–but it’s important to go to remember the lives that were lost. I almost didn’t go, but I’m glad I went. It really puts things into perspective.
As you mentioned, as terrible as this is, it’s important to never forget. Thank you for remembering and choosing to do that.
When I think about all of the evil and deceit in the world, I sometimes think about all of the planning and energy that goes into creating and perpetuating the evil. I wonder, how much GOOD could we do if that effort were instead directed towards good, as Schindler showed us?
I know right? It was horrifying how much effort the Nazis put into designing the camps and creating the furnaces. I mean, there were REAL engineers and scientists, who sat around discussing the most efficient ways to murder people. I can’t wrap my brain around it.
When we visited Dachau concentration camp, my engineer mind marveled at what sickly efficient fucks they were to design such a place to streamline and optimize the killing of mass quantities of those they deemed unworthy of existing in their empire. Like they had standardized drawings they circulated around to all the camps with model designs for lavatories, dormitories, gas chambers, crematoriums, etc (you can see common design elements in different camps). Big WTF moment to think some bureaucrat decided that was the smartest way to build as many death camps with as much throughput as possible.
The crematorium was what got me the most. My mind said “this can’t be real – did they really build these for their stated purpose?”. Yes. Yes they did.
WTF is the appropriate reaction. Terrifying to think of these engineers and scientists discussing how to maximize their murder efficiency. So. Fucked. Up.
My wife and I went there in October. It was so heavy and such a life changing day. I’d suggest everyone at some point in their life try to make it there to experience something that changed the course of history. May it never be forgotten.
Agree. Very important that we visit the site so that history doesn’t repeat itself.
I went to Dachau many,many years ago and still get chills thinking about my time there. Although I went with a huge group of friends, the second I walked through the gates, I found myself lost in emotion, walking the grounds by myself. Like Justin, I couldn’t bear to look at the crematoriums. Awful, just awful. I do not think I had a dry eye the entire time I was there, and even for many hours afterwards. It is one of those experiences that is hard to describe. Eery, dismal, depressing, gut-wrenching, none of these words even do it justice.
It’s tough, but I’m glad you got through it Mrs.Wow. The people who died in the camp deserve to be remembered and although we can’t change history, we can control how we remember and honour the victims.
Thanks for sharing your experience at Auschwitz. For all of us, so much of travel is about the positive and enjoyable memories that visiting new places and experiencing new cultures provides to us. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that travel can open our eyes to the darker side of life and history that is meant to never be forgotten.
My grandparents were holocaust survivors, having married during the war, and then being separated for over 18 months while they went into hiding. Although I have never been to Auschwitz, my sister went there on a school trip during high school. She was in a room where there were names on the wall and she saw my grandparent’s last name. Even though the first names didn’t match, it was a chilling and very emotional experience nonetheless for her.
Wow. Your grandparents are amazing. To have survived all that–it’s so inspirational and really puts things into perspective for the rest of us.
And for your sister to see your grandparent’s last name on the wall. So chilling.
Yes, they were very inspirational. Fortunately, they were able to write out several of their stories and even did some video recordings, so their experiences will never be forgotten.
Great post. Time to come visit Israel to experience what endurance and finding meaning in the suffering has produced. You’re going to love it!
I’m sure it would be an incredible experience. Will have to add it to my list.
I grew up in France and learn about this at a very young age (school, books, movies), my parents lived thru this horrible war. Many makeshifts camps in France too. I am sure most people don’t realize when they visit the Eiffel tower that not too far from it was the Velodrome d’Hiver (or Vel d’Hiv) you should read up about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup
Shindler is one of many examples of people who risked their lives to save others, regular people like you and I.
Great to remind us all about this, we should never forget.
Wow, I didn’t know about “Velodrome d’Hiver”. So sad and terrifying. 🙁
FireCracker, great job writing such a nice article on a delicate subject. I love the blog, keep writing and travelling the world. You are an inspiration to those on the road to FI!
Thanks for the kind words, MyjourneytoFi!