Saturday afternoon I had the chilling privilege to visit what is perhaps the most awful place on earth- the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southwestern Poland. While I can not, in words or pictures, do justice to the horror of such a place, I would like to share my experience.

The name Auschwitz actually refers to a network of Nazi concentration camps which operated between 1940 - 1945, the most notorious of which were KL Auschwitz I just outside the town of Oswiecim and KL Auschwitz II near the village of Birkenau.
A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial sites begins at Auschwitz I, which on first impression may appear to have an almost collegiate feel, that is until you start to notice the not so subtle barbed wire fences and guard towers. After annexing Poland, the Nazis converted this Polish army base and training facility into a political prison in June 1940 and spent the next two years expanding the camp to a full capacity of 20,000 prisoners. Any glimpse of serenity is immediately and painfully destroyed upon entering barracks 11, known as "the Death Block", where the most horrific types of medical experimentation and torture imaginable were carried out on a massive scale. The brutality in incomprehensible.

In September 1941 the Nazis began the systematic annihilation of prisoners at Auschwitz I. A moment spent standing inside the original gas chamber moves nearly every visitor to tears of sadness and frustration. When the killing and incineration efficiency of 340 bodies per day at Auschwitz I was no longer sufficient for the Nazi's intentions, construction of Auschwitz II was undertaken.

The new camp, 3 km away, would be comprised of 4 killing factories with the joined capacity to execute and cremate 20,000 people per day and an adjoining camp capable of holding of 100,000 prisoners. The layout of the camp was designed to make mass-murder as efficient as possible. In fact, the railroad tracks were extended inside the camp gates allowing the unloading platforms to be immediately adjacent to the gas chambers requiring the weakest of the doomed inmates to walk only 200 meters to their immediate execution.

The statistic that really got to me was that 80% of the men, women, and children who arrived at Auschwitz II - Birkenau were deemed unfit for labor and immediately executed within the hour of their arrival. The surviving 20% would be worked to death over then next 2-3 months (the average life span in the camp) in weather as cold as -10 degrees Celsius wearing little more than what you and I wear to bed and consuming less than 1,000 calories per day.
To say it was a hard experience is a dramatic understatement and I think every visitor deals with the overwhelming feelings in different ways- some joke, some pose for pictures, and others weep uncontrollably. I spent 4 hours in a state of indescribable shock and disbelief, truly moved beyond words. I would like to think that each visitor takes away one or two feelings that will be with them for the rest of their life. Mine- standing on the unloading platform imagining the agony that the arriving prisoners must have felt as they confronted their horrifying fate and any glimmer of hope they were holding for their promised "relocation" was ripped away as the rail car doors were finally opened after a journey of up to 2 weeks; and the feeling of stepping into the 90 cm x 90 cm (approx. 35 in) standing cell which was used to incarcerate and torture 4 prisoners at one time. As fellow inmates passed away in the complete darkness, those surviving had to hold the deceased body upright until the cell was emptied and they were released for work the next morning (often after as much as 14 hours). Standing in that spot, where so many had died, I don't know how to put in words the overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness I felt.

Perhaps you wonder why I would refer to it as a "privilege" to visit such an awful place, a place where literally millions* of innocent people were murdered- I found this message particularly appropriate.

*The total Auschwitz death toll is unknown because any records that may have been kept by the Nazis were destroyed before that camp was liberated, but even the most conservative estimates place the number over 1,500,000