Auschwitz: Industrial Genocide

Yesterday, I left Prague on the morning train heading for Warsaw to go from there to the Baltic Republics. I thought my planned visit to Auschwitz would have to be on the way back from Russia instead of on the way.  Then the sign on the train that announces stations said the next stop would be Katowice, Poland, just 30 miles from Auschwitz.  We were still 160 miles from Warsaw. If I got off the train, there would be no way to get to St. Petersburg by the date on my Visa.

I got off the train. In a moment like Lot's wife, I looked back at the train, but did not turn to a pillar of salt. So I changed money, got coffee, found a place to stay, then headed for Auschwitz.  The ride was south on rolling hills through beautiful forests and villages.  I crossed a railroad bridge then entered the city of Oswiecim, where the Auschwitz museum and the Birkenau camp are located.  The Holocaust sites are on the north side of town so as soon as I entered the town, I was close.

I went to Birkenau first. The site is largely preserved, still ringed with barbed wire fences and guard towers and many of the buildings are still standing. The camp is a square kilometer in a flat field with a narrow road running next to the fence.  The buses park at a museum 300 meters from the camp gate so streams of people in randomly colored tourists clothes are walking back and forth from the parking lot to camp.  It is odd to see tourists trooping in lines through a place of so much suffering and death.  It was odder still to see life being so normal around the camp.

To get the size of the place I rode the perimeter. So many hundreds of barracks meant so much suffering, but the entire place was not that big.  The Auschwitz and Birkenau camps are about a mile apart. Inmates marched between them to work and then back to suffer the tortures of the night. The two camps and the road between them brought back many images from Primo Levi's book "Survival in Auschwitz." I think most often of the World War I veteran Levi wrote about. He won an Iron Cross for gallantry under fire and probably thought decorated veterans would not be despised by the Nazis who claimed to value courage and patriotism.  But racism eclipsed nationalism and even a man who earned the nation's highest honor in war was killed for being a Jew.

Between the two camps was, for me, the saddest site.  A small sign on the road between Birkenau and Auschwitz pointed to the "Judenrampe." The tiny road through a residential neighborhood was too narrow for buses, to VW bugs could not pass on this road.  With no bus traffic there were almost no tourists.  As I rode up I saw someone pushing a wheelchair back to the road.

The site is two old boxcars on a rusty rail siding. Two signs explain the site.  This rail siding is where Jews were unloaded from the boxcars and sorted into groups for work, death, medical experiments, and whatever other horrors their captors could inflict.  As I read the signs and looked at the boxcars wondering how horrible it was to be stuffed inside them, I heard kids laughing.  Behind me was a row a fir trees and a fence that separated a gated house from the Judenrampe. Kids were playing in a pool from the sounds.

It made me think how horrible it was for the people of Oswiecim that the Nazis chose their town to inflict this stain on all of humanity.  Hotels grow up around the site and people make money providing tours and selling stuff to tourists.  And the laughing kids grow up next to those boxcars.

Just as the American form of slavery was the worst of its kind in the history of the world, Auschwitz represents the impersonal extreme of genocide. The Nazis did everything they could to take every shred of humanity from the inmates before killing them, especially extinguishing hope. American slavery, unlike slavery in the ancient world or indentured servitude, also took away hope.  Slaves could never get out except through escape or death. Nor could Auschwitz inmates until the Nazis were defeated.

My next stop, if possible, will be Lviv, Ukraine.  For me, Auschwitz and Lviv have been the extremes of the Nazi genocide horror.  Auschwitz was the most industrial,
Lviv is the most personal. The people of the city joined with the Nazis, abetted the Nazis and killed their neighbors on the streets and in their homes.

Racism can begin with words, like the horrible Birther lie that was the basis of the Donald Trump's ascent to power. But when racism goes past words into action Auschwitz, Birkenau, Lviv, Sarjevo, Rwanda, and the slave market of New Orleans is the result.

My Top Shelf Trip to Budapest

   I am on the train from Belgrade to Budapest. When I walked up to the platform the conductor gave me The Look. The universal FU look that says "Not on my train!"  

He motioned that I had to fold the bike and put it in the luggage rack. My bike is a Surly so I could. In five minutes I had the bike in pieces. Then the conductor said "Dva!"  And pointed to the next car. He let me take the bike apart before telling me I needed to go to the next car. So I carried the pieces to the next car and loaded them in the upper luggage rack. 

Ten minutes later he collected my ticket. He just said "Dobrey" and moved on. 

Nice to know I can quickly break down the bike. I will now know to break it down at the correct car. 

Trip Begins with Errors

This trip began with joy, sleep deprivation and a $500 error.  I booked the trip as if I were immune to making mistakes flying. Over decades of flying on business, I have never missed a flight, so why would I start now?

Jet lag is different at 64, at least for me.

Instead of booking a direct flight, I took the cheaper route of booking a flight to Paris, then a second flight to Belgrade. I worried that my bike would not make it, but the bike arrived in the Paris baggage claim before my bag.  All I had to do was check in, wait six hours and fly to Belgrade.

My flight had a layover in Amsterdam. There were two flights to Amsterdam at 6:30 p.m. from Terminal 2 at Charles DeGaulle Airport.  I went to the wrong gate and fell asleep. When I woke up, my bike had been removed from the correct flight.  And the cheap ticket was cancelled. I could get a flight through Frankfort for $1100 or wait and book on Air Serbia--where I should have booked anyway.

So I arrived in Belgrade at 1 p.m. a day later.  I planned to put the bike together in the airport and ride to the hotel.  But I was missing a skewer nut, so I put my partially assembled bike in a cab, went the hotel then went on a walking search for a skewer.  A previous post tells that very happy tale, but the day which was to be a ride to Romania was a walk around town.

I did get the bike put together, rode in Belgrade then succumbed to jet lag.  It turns out I cannot push myself as hard as I could 20 years ago. This should not be a surprise.  But it was.

So I was a day behind schedule and the next day would be the shorter of the trips to neighboring countries: Croatia, and maybe Bosnia.