Auschwitz-Birkenau

Walls of double sided electric fencing...in these walls 1,300,000 people had every ounce of dignity stolen from them.

I am not sure what I find so fascinating about the Holocaust, but I can honestly say as morbid as it is I LOVE this part of history.....like I cannot learn enough.  I can remember learning about it in I swear every year in school after like second grade and it is for sure a lesson that you have to teach all that is appropriate for that age. 

Ashes that were collected of victims killed in the gas chambers

However, there is not a teacher in the teaching system, no book, history channel, or paper that can be written on how horrible this time in history is.  When I was preparing to come to Poland I knew that I wanted to go to the camps if I had time, and Bri made sure I had time to go because its something that everyone MUST see.  Not really to believe, but to understand.  I had no idea what to expect really, I thought it was going to be a guided tour of one big building with things that some artist reenacted, drew and painted. 

Rail Car that transported victims to Auxschwitz-Birkenau

Um....sadly that was far from it.  I got off the

bus and stood on the same ground that 1,300,000 once stood and of those 1,300,000 people 1,100,000 of them were Jews, 140,000-150,000 were Poles (Polish people), 23,000 were Gypsies, 15,000 were Soviet Prisoners of War, and 25,000 were prisoners of other Ethnic groups.  Of these people 90% of people were killed.......I walked through the same dorms were these people were forced to go without food, bathrooms, showers, and where they lost all their human dignity and were forced to become a number.......





Can you imagine waking up tomorrow and being forced to leave everything behind, get split from your families, husband or wife, children, put into a line not knowing that in just a few hours you were going to come to your death by a gas chamber, or at an execution wall....not to mention only getting food three times or less a week.  Then, waking up each morning not knowing if you were going to live or die, where the rest of your family is, nor knowing what has happened to them. 



Gas Chamber and Crematory

I didn't hit me until later on in the day that I was standing on the very ground all of this happened on.  I took pictures and listened to a guide, but seeing all of this with my own eyes was an experience NO ONE will ever understand unless they have gone through it.  Sure, most of the buildings have been renovated and made safe for tourist, but the standing cells, barracks, sleeping quarters, bathrooms, the gas chambers, and the execution wall, the towers, the poles they used to hang people, and the windows all of these prisoners had to look out and watch all this stuff go on was all there.......

Execution Wall

After the tour was over I wanted to go home and pick up my son and tell him I love him, hug my parents, grandparents, siblings and friends.  However, I think what I realized the most and not just after that visit is that life is so full of uncertainties, fear, the unknown that it gets in the way of what we should be doing and that is living......waking up everyday knowing we have freedoms and the abilities to make decisions that we feel is best for us. 

Just a glimpse.....

I know this is as television show as you can get but its as real as I can get....because I didn't make a video....I only took pictures.  

I will be printing every picture I took and I have also made the album available for all to see on my Facebook....  http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10150680420098034.416697.603403033&type=3

So, that all of you reading can see what I seen.....