smutek (sadness)

Wednesay

This day was an extremely emotional day for us all. We went to Auschwitz. I can personally say I cried twice. The whole experience was very overwhelming. 

There are no words to describe the feeling you get when you step through those gates. All the horrors that happened on those grounds definitely left an imprint forever. 

Arbeit Macht Frei - Work will set you free (not true)

We walked through barracks and saw pictures posted on the walls, statistics of those murdered and how they were persecuted. 

Some rooms held shoes, hair, suitcases, and personal articles taken from the dead. The numbers of these articles were immense and it was only a tiny portion of what the Germans weren't able to destroy before they ran at the end of the war. The tons of human hair piled up made you sick to your stomach. At one time that was on the head of an innocent. But worst of all for me was the shoes. The shoes ranged from large adult male shoes, delicate women's heels, to tiny children's clogs. I broke down walking through the endless hall piled up with them. 

suitcases

shoes

Up next we were showed the torture chambers and areas were people were lined up to be shot. To top it all off we ended that portion of the tour with the gas chambers and cremation rooms. 

Now realize this first half took around 3 hours and we still had more travesties to see. 

We then went a mile away to the second portion of the camp where the train went through. This section had many more barracks and two crematoriums. It was 3 square miles of death. 

By this point almost all if us were silently crying. Our travel tissues really came in handy this day. 

There were memorials in this section of the camp. Begging people not to forget so this never happens again. They were written in almost every written modern language available. 

We walked through the male barracks. These already seemed like horrible conditions but we were informed that the female were much worse. In that they did not have floors or walls throughout the inside, allowing for more of the winter cold to penetrate. This along with being the main focus for medical experiments is why women were more likely to die faster. 

Alright I'm done for now I can't keep writing about this. I promise the next days will be happier posts.