74 Years ago, today
Today, Jan 25th, 2023, is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz II Birkenau concentration camp by the Soviet*Army.
We have the expression "Heaven on Earth". If we had "Hell on Earth" it would be Auschwitz.
My late wife and I made our first trip to Poland three months before the Berlin Wall came down.* We were backpacking through Europe and in West Germany and saw*the East*German consulate and wandered*in just to look*around and get a free map or something.* A guard*asked*us what we wanted, and we told him a visa. He took us to a desk and introduced us to a consulate*officer who spoke English. Though I spoke German, I spoke High German and couldn't understand his East German accent. We just told the officer we would like to visit East Germany.* When he saw our US passports, I thought he would just tell us to get lost and we could get out of the consulate and back into West Germany.* Damned if he didn't tell us to wait and went off with our passports.* Ten minutes*or so later he came back and told us he would need five photographs, ten dollars each in US dollars.* We had heaps of passport size photos with us and the cash he took, stamped an entry visa into our passports and that was that.
We went to the central train station and found we could catch a train to Krakow in occupied Poland, going through East Germany, that way we could get our passport stamped*as entering East Germany and we could visit My wife's cousins in Krakow under Soviet occupation (without a Polish visa) who she had been writing to.* That's how we ended up in Krakow, Poland and later in East Germany.
My wife's cousin dropped*us at the gates*to Auschwitz. and we went into the camp.* There were only a dozen or so other tourists wandering around.* Today it is crowded, we entered by walking down the train tracks that led the poor souls to hell.
The camp was beyond belief.* There were large rooms, formally barracks, sealed by glass inside filled with thousands of shoes mens, women's and*children's*waiting to be matched up into pairs then shipped to Germany. Another with huge piles of human hair to be shipped to be used as stuffing in furniture.
The ovens and showers sent chills up my spine.
The barracks and the sleeping bunks made for six to a bunk from brick, no heat for the cold winter nights. Horrible.*
To enter the camp, you had to walk under the infamous gate sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" instantly recognized (Work makes you free).
To exit you walk across the parade ground where morning and evening roll cords*were made and the raised speaker's stage still stand, also the gallows for six.
The last thing is the gallows where the Soviets hung the camp commander.
I have quite a few German friends, there is a difference between Germans and Nazis.* The people who ran or organized these camps were Nazis and not even the Nazis that were purely political Nazis would do this sort of thing.* These were sickos.
Today, if any country called for volunteers to participate in a firing squad to execute a convicted person, do you honestly think there wouldn't be volunteers? They would be swamped with applicants. These are the types that ran and organized the camps. Look at the people today that kill people just for kicks.
Should we be blamed for the sins of your or my ancestors?* In case you weren't aware, The UK was the first country to build concentration camps, true there were not mass executions, it was in South Africa.*
Back when most of us were going*to sea as a boy, there were many countries that were part of the British Empire that didn't think much of us as Englishmen, but we were not guilty of committing the sins of our ancestors.* Thankfully, that is not so today, and neither*is it true of today's Germans.
Cheers, Rodney
Rodney David Richard Mills
R602188 Gravesend