The sign is the entrance to Auschwitz and it translates to: "Work makes [you] free."
I knew this wasn't going to be an easy part of the trip, but I wanted to see Auschwitz to better understand what horrid things went on in such recent times. When I was younger, learning history never really had an impact on me. I don't know how that changed, but over the last few years everything in history seems unusually more recent than it ever did before. I guess my perspective has changed. As a product of today's communicative world, where everyone goes anywhere with a cell phone and internet is everywhere, it is hard to fathom that such a thing as Auschwitz could go on for years without the world knowing. It is scary and it is so very recent.
I think going through Auschwitz alone intensified the experience for me. There were tour groups that breezed through Auschwitz, but I took nearly 7 hours going through it all. There are many things that were disturbing in Auschwitz, the pictures of the starved, the horrible stories of the merciless nazis, the gas-chambers, the crematoriums, but one of the things that got me most was seeing a huge room full of shoes. There were tens of thousands of shoes, little kid's shoes, too. The rest of the place was just as sad. During the train ride home I still had every image fresh in my mind. Near the opening of the museum there was a sign that read, "Forgive, but never forget."
3 comments:
That must have been really sad.
I am so glad you went to see that-someday I want to also. I understand the shoe thing to a point b/c when I went to the holocaust museum in WA DC they had a room like that too. I think it was the most intense part of the whole museum.
When we were in Germany last August we left Munich for Augsburg. I see by the map we drove quite near to Dachau. But, we wanted to see sites related to the Augsburg Confession after seeing the big technical museum in Munich. There was actually a Hitler tour in Munich for those interested in seeing sites related to his activities, like the location of the Beer Hall Putsch.
Since your departure, Ben Stein has had a movie in the theaters called "Expelled: No Intelligence Necessary." Among other things, it featured people on camera from German museums, like the one that exterminated mentally retarded people. The curator of one of the museums stated very directly that Darwinism was the impetus for those atrocities. It should be out on DVD by the time you get back home.
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