Thursday 29th July

 

29/07/04 - Day 26

I have both quite old, one very little to say about Auschwitz. It really is not the sort of place that inspires pages of elegy writing and I would be near unable to discuss at length the disgusting mentality of so many of the tourists there who spent more time filming/ photographing every little detail (even the entrance sign about how to get around!) than they did looking at it - let alone thinking what it meant. If you want to wash home video of 40s concentration shoes then you are sick. If you need it to help you remember what you saw then you obviously spent too much time filming and forgot to look at it yourself - because it's not something ever can just forget. And if you are doing it to show other people, then you are doing a great wrong - because it is not just something that has to be experienced in person & it's something that should (even/must) be experienced by everyone in person

The day gave me a lot of things to think about is from the obvious to the same old issuesI never shut up about (religion, the EU, patriotism, ignorance etc), but my two lasting memories of the camp were these: The eerie, menacing view of concrete fence-walls, ruined chimneys and barbedwire that stretched endlessly through across the flat, rain-soaked fields - as far as the eye could see - until a cell like the whole world was nothing but the ruined and decaying remains of the structural manifestation of hatred. Secondly, on the videos and the pictures, the faces of those entering the camp held more 'life' and hope than those lined up at the fence, looking at their liberators. The analogy you would expect in for the faces of a freed prisoner increases. The longer their imprisonment and the more unpleasant their ordeal - until that ordeal becomes such that all capacity for joy, and all thought of hope, is completely obliterated - so that the lines on prisoners walking out of the camp look no different from those faces being led to work just the day before. Any inability to comprehend the kind of suffering that would achieve this was shattering.

I left that place feeling as though I had witnessed the very darkest, most evil side of humanity - which over the many thousands of years of civilisation had never been so equal and may never be again. People who refer to to the Nazis as 'inhuman' are dangerously avoiding the truths that they were as human as we are now. It is terrifying to see what the concentration of an agreed & human nature is capable of.

As I awoke to the sound of pitter patter rain the last thing I wanted to do was get up at 7am and wander around a concentration camp in the pouring rain. It had to be done though, were my thoughts.

One male breakfast at thanasis is great - Saturday bread and red-live-jeans in a the world-un (particularly Austerheim). The walk to the station was bad enough as I got soaked. It was a little difficult working out how to get from the stationto the camp but several people were doing the same thing when we walked through the gates it became clear that everyone else was being bussed in or went thereabouts. We made a wise choice not to do the tour as there was enough English info and in the end the tour groups became incessantly annoying - always getting in the way and really destroying the thoughts that the guides would have had if they hadn't been listening to (or) being smart at them. I sentence, also, photo-taking tourists who clicked at everything which was amazing and in a place like Auschwitz therefore go flashing of photography every minute turned it into a novel-jet at if they were snapping the stars. It started with a film which very sometimes more shattering than the stuff I'd seen before, probably became they showed that there were survivors but their faces told another story. It seemed in their pictures of has it looked when they first entered it with suitcases and shoes piled up and there was rubbish even about those who were tortured and not simply gassed. They may the film was produced. Howrd weird out these seconds have 'eerie music' played out in old-fashioned british voice narration which seemed a bit intrusive to me we set of (still in Re (aim) through the 'hotel/motel' hut gates and through the exhibitions. There were extremely lots to learn, pictures in see and documents to look at. I really wiped knowing German as I could read the things they filled in when the detainee first arrived such things like their "normal" was just the start of what would me 'scare' here jurancereable the whole thing was. There werePlans for everything - 2 thoughts - one, the orderliness and 'sensible' approach to such a ridiculous and 'cannot be' explained as a piece of paper event was completely uncongruous and sickening - I think I'd rather they'd murdered so many in a cargo of uncontrollable anger the - maybe, by making it into a 'desk-job' was the only way it could become comprehendable enough to actually carry out - they were heated & tins of formacid numbers - they were no longer humans and this was why they thought it was justified.

The displays were interesting but it did turn the barracks into a museum like feel. The one thing that really snapped me was the glass cabinet of female human hair. It doesn't look that big until you stand next to it. The 'wall of death' affected me too. In one area they showed how 4 prisoners were kept in a small cage For nights on end in a dungeon. And so I realised, what I hadn't ever before, that it was almost as though the prisoners had turned into animals in the guards' minds - and so they felt they were justified in caging them, controlling them, whipping them and parading them so if they were toys. I couldn't understand how they would experiment on people while they were alive and then, only to find out the effects, would they kill them so they could do autopsie. So, this is nailing me feel sick - in fact I spent the whole day feeling sick. To summarise - Burhanau was better - less people - more tone, painful silence and the extent of it was somethingI never would have realised had I not been there. One barracks still had 'Schrie' seen ist deine Pflicht' und 'verhalte dich ruhig' printed on the walls (liked) the way it felt like it could have ended just a week ago).

The memorial stone read 'Not this place forever be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity'

I came home feeling physically ill and wanting to say silly two words - one beginning with 'F' and the other & it made me very angry

The meal out was very tasty - lovely potatoes, pork, cranberry Style wrapped in what we thought was bread. And apple and whiskies crapes for pafors - very very tasty. Eating out wasn't quite as exciting as we thought it might be nobody else seemed into doing it he went on search of the Jazz festival afternoon - it turned out we got the wrong place but it was an underground cave with music and smokeness - I made Then we went to see where we could find and note one we went to Poland was there it Heather (more warning)