WWII

Two Narratives, One History

by

The German narrative presented at the German Historical Museum is detached in comparison to the German-Russian Museum which pushed a triumphant narritve. The German Historical Museum was not being deceptive but lacked a definitive narrative. The museum presented plenty of facts but failed to tie together the uniqueness of the Nazi’s. The German Historical Museum was full of new information for me, particularly in the areas of the Weimar Republic and the political atmosphere leading up to the war. The depth of information almost overwhelmed me with so much text and visual evidence. World War Two is presented as a piece of a larger conflict that began in 1914. World War One, the Interwar period and World War Two are taken as a single piece of history. The method shows how the rise of Hitler, the concentration and death camps and ultimately the extermination of millions occurs. The German narrative gets across how normal people can be twisted and manipulated into evil. In certain ways though this narrative scrutinizes the Allied moral position in regard to strategic bombing and Soviet atrocities. The museum expressed how the Nuremburg trails were a “victors justice” and if the same standards were applied fairly Allied commanders would be war criminals.

 

The Soviet narrative within Berlin portrays the magnificent victory achieved by the Soviet Union against fascism. We went to see two Soviet monuments, both of which were huge, blunt and glorious. The Soviets felt very highly of themselves, as we stood beneath a Soviet soldier, wielding a sword, holding a German child and crushing a swastika, this conquering tone became apparent.

The Soviets killed the vast majority of German soldiers and absorbed the full might of the German military. The size of the Eastern Front is from Boston to Miami in the United States. Millions upon millions of soldiers fought in single battles, waging a war of annihilation against each other. War in the west was more civilized if you could ever say that about war, yet in the east war was unhinged. The Soviets overcame the loss of 28 million people, crushed the Wehrmacht and seized Berlin. The German-Russian museum was lighter when it came to Soviet glory but showed a narrative of Nazi atrocities and Soviet victories. Unlike western museums, this museum gave the Soviets their deserved place. The museum focused on the east and mentioned a few times the western governments and their actions. The war in reality was this way, with the bulk of German forces and atrocities concentrated in the east. Western history has been blinded by political motives to revise the way World War Two was won in Europe.

Acknowledging the Past and Shouldering the Guilt

by

The Wannsee House.

Throughout the Spring semester and this three-week study tour, I have been exposed to the many Nazi atrocities committed during World War II—from pictures in museums to walking through Auschwitz itself. Arriving in the last country, Germany, I was unsure of how the losing country would portray their experience of the war. Would they shoulder their guilt in the persecution of the Jews, a topic the other countries so thoroughly discussed in their museums? Looking back, I would say that yes, the Germans did so in an extremely factual manner. However, I was particularly struck by their discussion of ghettos at the Wannsee House.

Ghettos, set up to house Jews and cut them off from society, were a devastating element of the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. The “Establishing the Ghettos” display recognized the wrongdoings of the Germans, but it was also the only display I encountered that acknowledged the role of Jewish Councils within the ghettos. It aligned well with a source we read in class in that it highlighted the role of the Councils while still placing the blame on the Germans themselves. It thoroughly reiterated that the awful choices the councilmen had to make were done under German threat of death or punishment. This display, which did not criticize these councilmen for whatever role they played in the death of their fellow Jews, seemed to me a recognition of the Nazis’ wrong-doing.

I was able to learn about a lot more at the Wannsee House than just the ghettos, however. In fact, the Wannsee House showed in-depth the anti-Semitism that was prevalent throughout Germany before Hitler took power, a topic we discussed only briefly during the semester. The first section of the house emphasized how multi-faceted this anti-Semitism was by using both a large amount of text and images of German propaganda. Its in-depth discussion of the dehumanization of Jews in pre-war Germany provides important context to the Jewish experience during the war. Overall, I think the Wannsee House did a thorough job in acknowledging the German role in Jewish persecution prior to and throughout the war.

 

View From the Top

by

As I looked down from a small green hill in Normandy, I tried to feel something, anything. Below me, small brown rectangular headstones laid flat on the ground, with a short iron cross presiding over the remains of every five or six bodies. It did not look like a graveyard. The plots were too small, the graves lacked flowers, and the people visiting did not seem to care about remaining quiet. You see, the green hill that I peered down from, as I was later informed, was a mass grave of fallen Nazi soldiers at the German cemetery in Normandy. Even though Dr. Steigerwald put the visit on the syllabus, I never fully believed we would go there; the very concept of such a place didn’t seem real to me. After all, why would the French maintain a memorial to the Nazi invaders, given the extent of their crimes both inside and outside of France?

The view from the top of Treptower Park, the Soviet memorial and cemetery in Berlin, inspired similar feelings of confusion within me. From the top of another hill, I felt this space to be almost infinite in its grandiosity and power. There were no individual graves; the designers instead built large friezes of heroic Soviet actions, replete with quotes from Joseph Stalin. Flanked by imposing, perfected statues on either side of the entrance and on top of the mound, the celebration of Soviet contributions was on full display. Yet I could not fully be swept up into the narrative the memorial tried to create. I could not stop thinking about how Dr. Breyfogle told us that people colloquially refer to the monument as the “Tomb of the Unknown Rapist,” because of the mass rapes committed by the Red Army. Again, we have a population with memories of an invading force brutalizing them. What purpose does maintaining such a memorial have?

Memorials, it seems, serve other purposes besides honoring the dead. At the German cemetery, Dr. Steigerwald explained that the memorial came to be as a result of careful negotiations with West Germany, and they meant it as a step towards healing the wounds left from the past decades of Franco-German hostilities. The Soviets, on the other hand, built their own memorial in occupied East Berlin to honor their own dead, without whom we could not have won the Second World War. As we talked about in class, the Soviet contribution of 25-27 million lives often goes unnoticed by Americans and the other Allies. In this case, the humble existence of the German cemetery and the opulence of the Soviet cemetery makes sense – both memorials have an underlying purpose beyond what can be initially seen. Yet as I stood at the tops of each and struggled with how to feel in those moments, I realized that whether or not they actually work to overcome such horrific events is another story entirely.

The Art of Division

by

Our time in Berlin was spent talking about the end of the war and retribution for the Nazis. We also discussed what happened to the city and the country after 1945. You cannot spend any time in Berlin without facing the reality that it was a divided city for almost fifty years. There are pieces of the infamous Berlin Wall looming over many areas in the city, and even the walk signs give an indication of what side of Berlin you are in.

One of the places where the East-West divide is still evident is at the East Side Gallery. This street art exhibit features large murals painted on a remaining section of the wall. This display showed many beautiful paintings, often depicting how the fall of the Berlin Wall freed the German people.

The most intriguing thing about this exhibit was the difference between the East and West sides of the wall. On the West side there are beautiful murals, skyscrapers, and a busy train station. On the East side there is graffiti, dead grass, the river and old factories. This s divide was shocking to see in the Berlin of 2019.

I think that this just goes to show the lasting effects of war on a people and a country. Even thirty years after the reunification, Germany is still fraught with a difficult national history. While they have begun to come to terms with what the war and occupation meant to them and the rest of the world, there is still a lot of work that they can do to bring the two halves of Germany together.

A mural on the West side of the Berlin Wall

Another mural on the West side depicting the opening of the wall.

The East side of the Berlin Wall, covered in graffiti.

Auschwitz: Healing the Past and Educating the Future

by

When we first got to Auschwitz, we all knew it would be an emotional day. From accounts of Comrades in previous years of the WWII trip and the disclaimers given by Professors Steigerwald and Breyfogle, we expected to be shocked. However, nothing could’ve prepared me for the trip to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau.

Upon arrival, I felt uneasy and had an uncomfortable feeling that we were not alone in this camp. It wasn’t the other schools’ groups and visitors that I had felt, but it was instead the raw emotion, trauma, and evil that was left behind by the Nazis when they fled Auschwitz in January 1945. Walking into the main tour building to receive our headsets through which we would listen to our tour guide, you see a sign before the entrance that reads, “Prepare for Inspection.” For a moment I felt uncomfortable that I was to be “inspected”, and if I am completely honest, saw it as a slight inconvenience. It was then that I realized: while I was just being inspected for a brief moment heading to the museum, the Jewish and other minority prisoners here before me were forced to endure a much harsher form of “inspection”. Those inspections stripped them of their dignity, dehumanized them, and sent most of to their almost immediate deaths.

As we moved on into the camp, this feeling of guilt washed over me. I felt as if I shouldn’t have been there. Not out of disinterest, but I felt as if I was disrespecting the victims who died here by taking a tour of the camp; walking the same roads they were forced to march down and passing the shooting blocks and hanging posts in which so many were murdered. I grappled with whether I should even take any pictures, as I didn’t want to offend the people that had passed nor their families. I decided not to enter the cellars in which prisoners were beaten by the Gestapo and the gas chambers that took the lives of so many, because of this guilt and overall sadness. I couldn’t shake this feeling as we continued onto the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp. At this camp, we could really see on such an enormous scale just how large this death camp operation was, from the rows and rows of barracks that held all of these prisoners to the many watchtowers and fences of barbed wire that line either side of the train tracks.

Overall, I agree with the use of Auschwitz as an educational site while still honoring the people who were murdered there. While it was tough to walk through the camps, keeping places like Auschwitz open is important for so many reasons. Education about horrific events of the past is pertinent to preventing them in the future. As George Santayana said it best, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

A Gathering Storm

by

“This picture is from August of 1939,” explained our tour guide at the Schindler Museum.  “This is when the last rays of sunlight were cast on Poland.”  Her country was still gaining its footing as a re-established nation after World War I, yet was knocked off its course for decades after that bright August due to a combination of German occupation and Soviet control for decades after the war.

Street signs for roads that were renamed during occupation

The national memory of war that our Polish tour guide communicated was extraordinarily interesting.  The museum used a striking combination of light and space to evoke certain emotions in its visitors, such as a cramped and dark display to represent the Krakow Jewish ghetto or an uneven rubber floor to show the feeling of uncertainty as Poland was “liberated” by the Russians.

All of these tools were a supplement to our guide’s description of the displays and the war itself, such as her account of the outbreak of war .  After describing the helpless situation in which the fledgling nation found itself, our guide emphasized that the war would have been drastically changed had Great Britain and France sent the promised troops and equipment to Poland to continue the fight.  Immediately I wondered how, even with this help, Poland they could have fended off the Germans.  I was curious how plausible this could have been, especially considering the failure of British and French troops to thwart invasion in France in 1940.

A section of the museum depicting the Krakow Jewish Ghetto, which used tight spaces and darkness to emphasize the poor conditions that Jews were forced to live in

The most interesting aspect of this museum tour, however, was what we heard about collaboration.  Our guide tried to give us a clear picture through careful language about the different sects of society in Poland at that time, saying that there were, “good Poles and bad Poles, good Germans and bad Germans, and good Jews and bad

Jews.”  What I did not know as I heard this semi-ambiguous statement was that in February of 2018, the Polish senate passed a controversial law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish state or its inhabitants of being involved with crimes committed during the Holocaust.  The president of Poland described the law as a means to prevent Poland from being insulted and if broken calls for either a fine or up to three years in prison.

Bearing this in mind, it was fascinating to hear what our guide had to say.  It was clear to me that she had to “tip-toe” around different subjects with her remark about the good and bad sides to war, but she in turn created a more non-biased look at this issue as a whole.  Overall, our tour at the Schindler Museum provided me with an interesting look at Krakow’s history within the context of the war and subsequent liberation.  Viewing the war through Poland’s eyes as an occupied country definitely offers museum guests with a unique story that is often forgotten outside of Poland, even if it may be tainted by recent laws.  This tour, and the tours of museums in other nations, has left me curious to see how World War II history is taught across Europe, what information may be lacking in the US’s narrative of the war, and to what extent that nations are willing to let these tough conversations go.

The Pride of The Soviet Union

by

The narrative of the Soviet War Memorial was one of pride and triumph, which is extremely similar to the Soviet pride held in their national war experience.  The Soviets thrust into World War Two with a Total War of the country, meaning that every citizen of the Soviet Union was devoted to the war, as well as the Soviet Economy. Everything centered around the war. Because of this, the Soviet Union was extremely proud of their contribution to ending World War Two and crushing the Nazi Regime. In the center of the memorial is a mass grave mound, containing over 700 Soviet soldiers that died during the war. Atop the mound stands a Soviet soldier, carrying a small German boy that he saved from crossfire, and standing on a swastika, crushing it to pieces. Seeing this statue, I could feel the pride of the people of the Soviet Union in terms of their war efforts. At the memorial, Dr. Breyfogle reminded us all that The Soviets were responsible for 80% of Nazi deaths during World War Two. The immense contribution of The Soviet Union during World War Two is something that has been purposely left out of American curriculum since the end of the war. This memorial was the first time I got to witness the pride of The Soviet Union in respect to defeating the Nazis. I saw how proud the country is of itself and the contributions made.

Another museum we visited for the class was the Wannsee House, which was the site of The Wannsee Conference in January of 1942. The conference is the site of a meeting called by leader of the Nazi RSHA, Heydrich, and is credited with being the birthplace of “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” I was anticipating visiting this museum throughout the whole trip, because The Wannsee Conference was my special focus topic for the past semester. The museum did a fantastic job not only giving the details of the conference, but also the build up and the aftermath of the conference and The Final Solution. Facts were given without opinions and interpretations, which allowed the museum visitor to interpret the conference themselves. The fact that Germany was not trying to diminish the importance of the conference showed me that Germany was taking responsibility for the atrocities of the conference, and wanted to focus on educating future generations so the conference and The Final Solution would not be repeated.

The Wannsee House on Wannsee Lake, Berlin. This site of the Wannsee Conference in January of 1942.

Original meeting minutes of the Wannsee conference.

Statue at the Soviet War Memorial.

Remnants of a Divided City

by

Before beginning our study tour, I was sure that Paris would be more glamorous, and that London would be more comfortable than Berlin. I thought that stereotypical German efficiency would interfere with the city’s charm. Because of its postwar reconstruction, I anticipated it would lack the historical architecture that overflows in other ancient European cities. All of these assumptions could not have been more incorrect. Ironically, it quickly became one of my favorites destinations on our tour (admittedly, after I visit anywhere, it’s typically added to my list of favorite spots), and it did not fall short on the character scale.

Up until our visit to Germany, we’d talked about and seen what happened during World War II, and Berlin was a forum for us to conceptualize what happened after the war. We even visited Cecillienhof, a mansion that hosted the Potsdam Conference after the war. At this conference, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union divided Germany into four occupied zones. As political divisions increased between the occupiers, so did tension between the West and the East German blocks. The city was once divided into East and West Berlin, occupied by Axis and Allied powers, respectively. Today, the two sides are still distinguishable from one another, although they’re integrated into one free, democratic city and country. Ruins from the Berlin Wall, which was erected in the early 1960’s, and fell in 1989, are still noticeable throughout the city and represent a shift from communism to democracy and the end of Soviet occupation.

Additionally, Berlin is full of World War II museums, exhibits, and notable sites that complimented our pre-departure curriculum. We saw the place where the July 20th assassination plot against Hitler was attempted and visited the Wannsee House, where the “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jewish people was decided. In these places and museums, I noticed a reoccurring apologetic tone. In these exhibits, Germany took full responsibility for its Nazi controlled and genocide-ridden past.

As I reflect on our study tour, Berlin represents the perfect ending place. Our time here allowed me to understand how powerful a dictator’s influence can be and how it can change a country’s fate, even decades into the future. I was wrong about Berlin. The city reminded me how important our decisions are as we decide how history will unfold. Although Berlin is no longer divided, its history represents what division can do to a nation.

I Don’t Want to Write About Auschwitz

by

I don’t want to write about Auschwitz. It is difficult to grapple with the atrocities that the Nazis committed there and in so many other places in eastern Europe. When I walked through the famous gates reading “arbeit macht frei,” I was sobered but disassociated from the place, as one is in places where unfathomable trauma has occurred. I continued on in this state as our tour progressed, past fences, photos, and then a room filled with human hair.

The objects collected at Auschwitz when the Soviets liberated it are only a small fraction of what the Nazis took, which makes seeing them all the more horrifying. The Germans made cloth out of human hair from women that they killed in Auschwitz. But it wasn’t this hair that snapped me out of my trance, but a stack of tallits, Jewish prayer shawls. Somehow, that made everything real.

I grew up Jewish. I have left wing political beliefs. I am only here because my great-grandfather immigrated from Poland to the United States. Walking through Auschwitz, seeing the faces of people that look exactly like those I grew up with, and knowing that had I been in Poland at the time I would have certainly been in that camp wearing a red triangle with a yellow one on top of it (meaning political prisoner and Jew) made Auschwitz personal.

The last stop on our tour, in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, was through a prisoner barrack preserved the way it was in 1944. It was in this barrack that those condemned to death would spend their last few nights. Already given starvation diets, prisoners at Auschwitz condemned to the gas chambers were not given any food or water. And the Nazis would not take these prisoners to the gas chambers until the barracks were filled with 1,000 people. Tired, starving, parched people stayed in these barracks awaiting their deaths. Walking through it, I felt like I was disturbing something sacred. I felt that my very presence somehow trivialized the suffering that had occurred in this room.

I don’t want to write about Auschwitz, but we all have to. I am privileged enough to have had the opportunity to study and stand in the places where genocide occurred. It is my responsibility to educate others about what I saw and felt. What gives me the most anguish, however, is that I feel that the world has not yet learned from these crimes. Mass murder and genocide continue on into the 21st century as our own country bombs others and shuts its doors to asylum seekers and refugees. We are all humans with fundamental rights. We all deserve freedom.

Remembering Catastrophe

by

Before arriving in Poland, we visited sites where most of World War II’s heroic stories unfolded.  In London, the Blitz was devastating. Nonetheless, the allies were victorious, and England’s national identity remained after the war. In France, we visited Normandy and walked the same beaches as those who liberated France. In Western Europe, we saw examples of resilience, perseverance, and triumph over evil. In Krakow, however, the sites and museums did not bear the usual Western European happy ending.

About one-third of Krakow’s pre-World War II population was Jewish. They were intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, and most importantly, people.  Jewish people in Krakow were Polish citizens and were incorporated into life throughout the city just like other citizens. The Nazis quickly occupied Poland and all of this changed. The Nazis treated Jewish people as less than human and made every effort to break the Jewish population. 70,000 Jewish people were relocated to a ghetto with space for 17,000 people; rations were less than three-hundred calories per day; and Nazi terrorized the community as part of their mission to gain living space.  Eventually, Krakow’s Jewish population was nearly exterminated. Outside of Krakow, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the largest and most brutal Nazi death camps. Over one million Jews and even Polish citizens were sent here, and most of them never left. These atrocities were unfathomable to me, especially considering that they happened in a modern society.

Amidst my shock and attempts to understand how Nazis created a system that murdered millions of Jews, political prisoners, gypsies, homosexuals, and other outcasts, I realized how important it is to study these catastrophes and visit sites where they took place. Visiting Auschwitz was hard. Gaining a sense of how many lives weren’t lived was even more challenging. The system responsible for nearly seven million Jewish people’s murder was created through a series of societal changes and motivated by hatred in an attempt to portray someone else as the enemy. Visiting these sites is gut wrenching, but if we don’t take time to pay respect to those who were victims of Nazi Germany or attempt to understand why these atrocities happened, we risk accepting a similar fate in the future.

Poland and the War in the East

by

In the months leading up to this trip, I had guessed that a few places would open my eyes in some way, but Krakow’s Schindler museum, which occupies the site of the factory at the center of Steven Spielberg’s renowned Schindler’s List, was not at the top of that list. However, after touring the museum and listening to our tour guide discuss the war from a Polish perspective, I certainly was left pondering some new thoughts.

As an American, I learned to think about World War II in a much different way growing up than Eastern Europeans, especially Poles. I always viewed the outcome of the war as an ultimate Allied victory and total liberation of Europe. Although my recent studies in this class and others have opened my eyes to the other perspectives, I did not realize the extent of the legacy the war had on the Poles. Without going in depth about the history of Poland and its highs and lows, the brutality it experienced at the hands of both the Nazis and Soviets in World War II cannot be overstated. That is not to mention the atrocities committed against Polish Jews by both invaders and, in some cases, native Polish gentiles. Numerous pogroms that resulted in the murder of thousands of Jews were carried out across the eastern front. Many Poles were complicit if not active participants in the persecution and murder of eastern European Jews. This is a reminder of the widespread antisemitism already present in Europe before the rise of Nazism. The museum portrayed all Poles as victims of the war and did not offer much explanation for antisemitism on the part of the Poles. It frankly left out a great deal regarding the role locals played in pogroms. Our tour guide really opened my mind to the impact a violent and oppressed history has had on generations of Poles.

From the museum, I gained a better understanding of the Polish experience under both Nazi and Soviet occupation. I did not realize the extent to which the Poles suffered starvation, racism, and mass murder. The museum told a different story from the ones in London, Normandy, and Paris. Those museums tended to focus on the global impact and military history or the Holocaust. I had nearly forgotten about the east when I arrived in Krakow. So much of my attention was centered around the Allied invasion from the west or the Holocaust. At Auschwitz, obviously, I was thinking about the Jews of Europe and other minorities who were persecuted and murdered.  Though the museum in Krakow doesn’t necessarily leave out or dispute those aspects of the war, it highlights the Polish experience in a specific manner and approaches remembering this time period in a different way. The Nazi march to the east left millions dead and millions more starving and oppressed. In Poland especially, it’s easy for a casual observer of history to forget that Poland was not truly liberated after its suffering during the war but incorporated in the Soviet Bloc.

This museum is about the suffering of Poles and how the major events throughout the war affected people within Poland. The events that took place in the east are easily overlooked by too many Americans, me included, and should not be dismissed when thinking about World War II. Overall, the museum fails to acknowledge some of the atrocious acts committed by Polish gentiles, but still manages to deliver a powerful story about the Polish experience during World War II. It was one of the biggest highlights of my experience and left me thinking about the eastern theatre of the war much more critically.

The Brutality of History

by

Auschwitz is a place we must visit to understand the Holocaust. Assessing this site and the new knowledge I have learned is difficult. The information on the tour was not new to me, but the delivery and setting were and as such immersed me in the information. Seeing a picture of the “Arbeit macht Frei” banner and walking under it are two very different experiences. Understanding the breadth of the Holocaust by reading and listening is difficult, but seeing thousands of kilograms of human hair puts things into perspective. Walking through a room with 100,000 adult shoes is inconceivable at first, but when you walk the 25 or so yards through the valley of shoes, history becomes tangible.

Seeing a child’s single shoe, then realizing it was only one of 10,000 made me immensely sad and angry.

The site-specific experience in Auschwitz reinforces what we have studied. Pen and paper fail to expose the tremendous brutality and extermination.

The Schindler Museum in Krakow was another example of living history. Poland was a destroyed nation, encircled and invaded from east and west. The Polish narrative was one of national victimhood. A lack of control among the Poles was the general feeling throughout the museum. Poland was at the mercy of other nations for most of the 20thCentury. Our guide showed this general discomfort and portrayed Poland as the victim of Western indecisiveness, Nazi brutality and Soviet “liberation.” Rightfully so in my opinion: Poland was utterly ruined by Axis and Allied powers. Yet as we walked though, the victimization narrative shrouded Polish complicity and subverted the book Neighbors we had discussed in class. In our discussions we talked about how some Polish people turned on their own Jewish neighbors and either killed them or reported them to the Gestapo. Our guide described this predicament as, “some people are good and some are bad.” The concept applies but comes off as overgeneralization to the point of being incorrect. History is not black and white, yet this museum actively forgot about the grey. History is complicated, messy and difficult, but it should be discussed honestly, not revised to a more flattering version.

“When we were singing, we forgot the fear”

by

Music is something that captures feelings when words fall short. Traditionally, music can be everything from uplifting to devastating. When considering music through the WWII lens, the Nazi party used music to control others. However, the Jews used music as a way of staying strong, keeping up the fight for their freedom, and surviving the holocaust. During the war, music had two main objectives; control and staying alive. 

While we were on our tour in Poland, we visited the concentration and death camps of   Auschwitz and Auschwitz II Birkenau. While we were there, our guide mentioned that the Nazis forced musician prisoners to play classical music while prisoners were marching to and from work. The prison guards marched them in orderly fashion to control the prisoners as they were counted on their way out to work. Though this was easy in the morning and quite effective for organized marching, it was a much more disorderly and painful job in the evening. As men and women returned from their long days of work, exhausted and starving, the band would play. Each prisoner would stand at attention and be counted over and over. Often, those who were weak would ultimately collapse and be taken away to be killed. This position in the camp had a high turnover rate because these musician prisoners were not released from their usual work duties and due to the nature of this position, there was a high suicide rate. Forcing musicians to share their art in a sadistic manner was both degrading and traumatic. This is yet another example of the Nazi party using art as a form of control. [Auschwitz additional band information courtesy of: http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/death-camps/auschwitz/] 

Wall of survivors’ quotes in the Schindler Museum in Krakow, Poland

On the other hand, Jews also used music to keep morale up during the ghettos, deportations, and camps. At the end of our tour in the Schindler Museum, there was a room with quotes from Holocaust survivors about their experiences. The room was circular and bright, with calm music playing in the background to make visitors stop and read all the quotations. One quote that stuck out to me was, “we were terrified. All of a sudden he began to sing. We all joined him after a while. When we were singing, we forgot the fear”. Just as the music was used as a tool by the Nazi regime, the Jews were using music to achieve solidarity and unite as a people.  

Using music as a tool is seen around our modern world. In the days of slavery in the United States, slaves used black spirituals to send messages. Lyrics were modified to keep fellow slaves out of danger and possibly find freedom. A more recent example would be the French people who gathered in front of Notre Dame as it burned. They collectively sang a French tune and remained together to mourn. [Watch here:  https://youtu.be/L0zpkFlJ95I ] Music will always be a tool used to feel deeper and understand further. Whether music is used for good or evil, it is a powerful way to control a narrative. 

Incomprehensibility in History

by

The entrance sign of Auschwitz I (Taken by Ian Mintz)

Pictured is just a small segment of the thousands of shoes left behind by victims of Auschwitz (Taken by Ian Mintz)

Stepping foot into the Auschwitz I complex, the original part of the notorious death camp, I was left chilled by the seeming inoffensiveness of the buildings in front of me. The metal sign hanging above the grounds reading “Work Sets You Free” in German rings hollow only because history has taught me the utter falsity and depravity inherent in its message. However, despite knowing that Auschwitz is the site of the single largest mass murder, I was surprised to find myself incapable of visualizing the past evils. Ahead were simply rows of brick buildings, washed of their original purpose. I realized my view was not far removed from that of the victims arriving on site. To them, these buildings appeared to be nothing but humdrum working and housing quarters. Without historical hindsight, they seem no different.

Once I actually entered the quarters, the mounds of human relics taken from the fallen victims jarred me. Baby shoes, hair, kitchenware, filled the rooms— the final and most tangible symbol of the lives lost. Such sights provoked in me emotion that was both unregulated and overwhelming. Trying to fully picture the camp 70 plus years after its use— removed of both its criminals and victims— felt impossible. The personal items provided the clearest exposure to the genocide, and yet they offered an inadequate glimpse. No relic, movie, or building replica could transport one back to the unfathomable realities of Auschwitz— a fact that left me simultaneously heartbroken and relieved.

What Do a Million People Look Like?

by

Like a hellish twin to the Louvre’s glass pyramid, the dynamited concrete roof of Crematorium II’s gas chamber slopes down into the soggy Earth. On the overcast day of our visit, the caved-in roof of the gas chamber, black and flooded as though by sorrow, seemed to be a black hole. According to conservative estimates, the SS murdered 1.1 million people in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Standing in the camp myself, looking at the remains of the crematoria, I suddenly realized that hundreds of thousands died within 50 feet of where I was standing. I wanted to run away. What do a million people even look like alive, much less dead? At Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the loss to humanity hangs heavy in the air. The American cemetery in Normandy drew tears from me, but standing where more people died per square foot than anywhere else on Earth more so evokes dumbfounded depression, incomprehension, and terror.

What do a million people look like alive? How could a nation condemn so many? FG: a pit containing the ashes of some of those killed in the chambers. BG: the dynamited remains of a gas chamber. Photo courtesy of Ian Mintz.

Though mediocre and lapdoggish bureaucrats filled the ranks of Nazi Germany’s civil service, Auschwitz embodies the terrifying efficiency by which the world knows the Nazis. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the terminus of Germany’s vast rail-deportation network. Cattle cars of starved innocents arrived daily through its gate, each one sorted by SS officers and racial doctors for either work “selection” or immediate death. In the most perverse sense, those sent to the chambers were lucky: the forced laborers were given only starvation rations, crammed six-abreast in triple bunks, and worked to death. In Auschwitz I, the original camp, guards tortured and starved (and sometimes gassed) Poles, Jews, Roma, and others. They exploited labor by terror and mass punishment.

The camp even has ghosts, of a sort: the remains of long since dismantled shelters stretch into the distance in eerily neat rows. Only the bones of the buildings, the chimneys and foundations, remain. Photos cannot fully capture the camp’s expansiveness. Even with most buildings gone, one cannot easily see from one end of the camp to the other.

Prisoner barracks at Birkenau were dismantled and shipped to Warsaw for emergency housing after the Germans, in full retreat and bloodied by an uprising, destroyed 90 percent of the city.

Auschwitz offers no great historical lessons on its own. Its memorial plaques do not preach with walls of text, but rather offer a warning to humanity. The camp speaks on its own behalf. Students talk of racialization and dehumanization in the abstract in classes, and we naturally recoil at mention of those –tions, but the praxis of those –tions is quite different and far more harrowing. The Nazis needed assembly-line-style murder facilities because their soldiers in the East could no longer stomach shooting innocents and kicking them into mass graves; perhaps that fact should give us hope for humanity, but Auschwitz itself offers no balm. Its existence should curb visitors’ enthusiasm for the dehumanization rampant in modern politics. Neither blood nor creed nor origin are sufficient to treat humans like livestock. Nothing is.

“For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazi murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe.”

Visit Auschwitz yourself. It’s our duty as human beings to bear witness, to remember, and to act to ensure no regime can enact such horrors again.