Auschwitz & Birkenau

Auschwitz was completely different from what I had pictured in my mind. If I didn't know anything about it, and it wasn't surrounded by electrified barbed wire, I would have just thought I had stumbled into a red-bricked, tree-lined dormitory building complex of some idyllic college campus.

Of course, the reality of the situation hit home when I entered one of the buildings which had been converted into a museum, and looked upon a giant room with over two tons of human hair piled up in it. When prisoners were taken here, their hair was shaved in order to make rope and other fabrics. Other rooms were filled with discarded shoes (thousands and thousands of them), glasses, and suitcases. The fact that an entire complex was created purely to facilitate the murder of a people, and that such evil exists in the world, should shock even the most jaded mind.

Equally shocking, however, was the fact that Auschwitz seems to have turned into a tourist spectacle. While I think that it is important that as many people are aware of the shocking atrocities that have happened in our not-so-far away past, it had a bit of a circus atmosphere to it. There were hot dog and food stands immediately outside the complex. There were three tour group operators chattering away next to the "death wall", a slab of concrete where thousands of people were executed, right next to a sign that said "Please be silent to respect the loss of life that happened here." There was a man finishing up a business deal on his cell phone. There was a man who was banging and tapping  on the metal of a human incinerator, like it was a toy. Worst of all, there were lines and crowds everywhere, which made it difficult to give the dead the respect they deserve.