We learned how many people came through Auschwitz and from where. We learned what their daily lives were like. We saw some photos of prisoners, though not nearly as many as you see when you go to SR-1 in Phnom Penh. What had the most impact on me was the collections of things that had belonged to the prisoners. There was a pile of eyeglasses, another pile of thousands of shoes, another of suitcases. But the most horrific display was the pile of human hair. It was, they estimated, the hair shaved from the heads of 40,000 women who had come through the prison. And in the same room they displayed some of the clothing and blankets the Nazis made from human hair.
After that, we saw the gas chamber and the crematorium. They weren’t the only ones. Birkenau is a short bus drive from Auschwitz and there we saw where the Nazis had built more. We saw a train car that was used to transport Jews and other ‘undesirables’ to the camp, some from as far away as Greece, 80-100 per car. And we saw the bunkers where they slept seven or eight to a bed (though bed is a liberal term).
Still, in the midst of all this sorrow and this evidence of how shameful the human race is, there are stories of hope and perseverance. There was a group of prisoners who managed to blow up one of the crematoriums. Do you know how they did it? Women who worked in the munitions room smuggled gunpowder out under their fingernails. Imagine how much time and persistence it took for them to gather enough gunpowder to blow up a building. Even though the
conspirators were caught and executed afterward, their actions are admirable.
One last story of hope for humanity. There was a special building that was used to kill prisoners by starvation or suffocation. One room was a cell with no ventilation and the Nazis would pack people in and leave them there until they suffocated. Another room was a cell where prisoners were kept with no food until they starved. A Polish priest named Maximilian Kolbe offered to take the place of another prisoner who was sentenced to die there. After two
weeks, he was still alive, so the guards gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid. The man he saved, Francis Gajowniczek, survived the camp and lived until 1995.