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Original poster

A reflection on Auschwitz

33 replies

hereidrawtheline · 09/05/2009 21:57

Seeing this news article brought back some very vivid memories to me, and I felt compelled to share them with you.

This reminded me, because of the tattoos the prisoners were given. When I was about... 9 or 10 my teacher was a much older lady who had a funny accent and the children sort of were a bit frightened of her or thought she was weird. She was very conservative, very serious. Anyway one day she showed us this tattoo of numbers on her arm, and told us about the Nazis. She had been in one of their prison camps, I think it was actually Auschwitz as that was the only name I knew for years so makes sense that was what I heard first. I remember this utter bewilderment of what she was telling me. I couldnt believe it was true. I just couldnt process it. And then I did. I just got it. I felt it all and it was so real to me. And awful. Anyway I have to say she was so kind, and after that I always tried to be extra good for her. She was very young in WWII, she told us of her and her brother trying to escape Germany. It was just amazing but not in the "good" amazing way.

Anyway she must be dead by now she was grey haired at the time.

Writing this has brought some more memories back.

Her hands were curled over quite a bit. Like fingers clenched in a fist. And she explained to us that it was because the Nazis broke her fingers when she tried to escape the camp (unsuccessfully, she was released at the end of the war with the others) and of course she wasnt given any treatment for the finger breaks so they healed in that horrible way. She said they still hurt.

I dont know how she ended up in America. And teaching as well, she clearly didnt sink down and wallow in her misery as she would have had the right to. I cant remember her name, I wish I could. But she made a huge impact on me, as you can see, I am 30 and I can still see her tattoo and fingers and hear her slow methodical voice with that strange accent.

As it happens I have always felt history in a very real, intimate way. I often sit back and look around me and just wonder that so much is happening, has happened, will happened and it feels like trying to quantify eternity. That is the feeling this woman gave me.

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PortoPandemico · 09/05/2009 22:00

What a sad story! .

Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 09/05/2009 22:02

sorry. I thought the title would be enough to put anyone off if they didnt want to get sad. It wont be about clowns, will it! (sorry very ill attempt at humour and taking mickey out of myself!)

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Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 09/05/2009 22:03

I mean, but of course, yes it is sad! My last post was a nervous induced one!

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Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 09/05/2009 22:06

Do you know what occurs to me now. Is she must have told each of her classes, every year that story. Every single year introduced 30 children to the horrors of her own childhood, and a blot on the world. And in that way we were very lucky to learn first hand, from a kind woman, exactly what happened. But imagine for her, never being able to stop talking about it. Clearly it was a choice she actively made though.

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FlappytheBat · 09/05/2009 22:09

Thanks for sharing your memories,

I visited a concentration camp several years ago and I have many images in my head that I know I will never forget, and when my children are old enough, I will share my experiences with them.

History might be in our past, but it lives on because of peoples experiences and memories.

Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 09/05/2009 22:22

yes I agree. I will one day try to get DS to understand as well and would like to visit a concentration camp. I know it will lay me down flat but it just feels like I need to at some point.

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PortoPandemico · 10/05/2009 00:05

I went on holiday to Southern Poland many years ago. One of the "excrusions" offered was a trip to Auschwitz. We discussed long and hard whether to go or not. And decided NOT.

Our argument - this is not a TOURIST destination. We should not go there as idle sight see-ers on a day out. I KNOW what happened there etc

I partly regeret this decision nowawdays. Everyone who DID go came back very moved by te experience. Obviously it wasn't a cheery day out.

FlappytheBat · 10/05/2009 00:27

We made the trip to the concentration camp by ourselves, I agree with your feelings re it not being suitable as a day trip.

I have studied the history of Europe from 1900 to 1945, so thats is why I wanted to go, to feel the history I had studied and to make it real.

I will never forget what I saw there and it made it real, more than some text in a book can ever do.

nickschick · 10/05/2009 00:34

My dh sat outside a shop waiting for me and was chatting to an elderly lady somehow they got talking about the war and she showed him her tattoo and told a sad sad story of a young girl in a concentration camp who was pregnant and due to have her baby she gave birth in a dirty sawdust filled shed to a baby so small youd think it was a dolly she hugged the baby and everyone was in awe at the beauty amid the sadness then ....she smothered the baby knowing if she didnt the soldiers would .

I have no way of knowing but me and dh both think she herself was that girl.

PortoPandemico · 10/05/2009 00:42

nick - that is SO sad.

We must be all so sensitive these days and worry about all kinds of inconsequential crap when really it is NOTHING compared to this. I cried at that story

phatcat · 10/05/2009 00:47

One of the saddest things I have read recently : in Linda Grant's memoir of her mother 'Remind Me Who I Am, Again' she refers to an old Jewish man with dementia (and no short term memory) whose long term memories of Auschwitz are still so vivid that 50 years on in his care home he has to be carried screaming for his wash every day believing that when he is being taken to the shower he is really being taken to the gas chamber.

Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 10/05/2009 12:11

oh nick that is the saddest story ever. that poor woman. nothing more painful than that surely. god the world can be insane.

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Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 10/05/2009 12:12

phatcat that is so sad too. reminds me of my Grandpa and how I would feel if it were him.

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careergirl · 10/05/2009 14:29

I have been to Auschwitz - a very sobering and distressing experience. However I do not regret going although it will always stay with me I think. Agree however that it should not be treated as a "tourist excursion"

PieceNharmoknee · 10/05/2009 14:34

That is awful nickschick. I'm in tears.

Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 10/05/2009 14:35

I always felt that about the tourism too. Just too tacky and crass. But I will go, I'll go on my own (well with DH and DS if he is old enough) I dont think I'd like to go in a group of tourists all marching to a different tune.

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Springfleurs · 10/05/2009 15:29

I have been to Bergen-Belsen. I don't think anyone who was there was treating it like a tourist excursion. People there were very respectful and quiet.

We went as a family when we lived in Germany, I was around 15. My parents thought it was something we should see and I think they were right.

I fairly often look at my children, thinking how much I love them and of all the small children and babies like them who had not even a molecule of a chance during those times.

hester · 10/05/2009 15:52

I haven't been to Auschwitz, but I have visited another concentration camp where some of my family were sent. My grandfather survived, but his brother was killed there. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for people to visit a death camp as a tourist experience, but it's not something I wish to do.

Elibean · 10/05/2009 16:44

I have been to Terezenstadt...not on a tourist excursion, but with my father and a few other people who were all in Prague teaching at the time. One man I remember in particular, a friend of my father's who was 15 when the Russians liberated the prisoners at the camp....he had been in other camps, and was 'lucky' (his word) to have gone to Terezenstadt. His little sister and his parents had already been killed in other prison camps, but he walked around that place with a smile on his face because 'it was the place I was liberated from'. Thats the part he remembered the most.

I found it horrific, but important, and I'll never forget it. It shocks me to the core to know what human beings can do to other human beings. I'll never underestimate the insanity of rigid thinking, zealots, or extremism.

EvenBetaDad · 10/05/2009 16:55

I have a friend who's father was in Auschwitz while he was a young man. He died of bowel cancer in the late 1950s mainly due to the horrific starvation he suffered in the camp.

My friend's father was wracked with 'survivor guilt' that he had not died like so many others of his family and community. Now his son (my friend) is also wracked with guilt that he can never live up to his father.

The destruction lives on across generations.

NotPlayingAnyMore · 10/05/2009 17:44

"I dont know how she ended up in America."

If I'd been in Auschwitz, I'd have done anything to get as physically far away from it as possible as well TBH

Original poster
hereidrawtheline · 10/05/2009 19:01

I wonder if its possible the like could happen again.

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edam · 10/05/2009 19:13

I had dinner the other week with a new work contact. Turns out his parents met in Terezenstadt. Each of them was the only one of their respective families to survive.

Only there's a happy twist - some complete stranger phoned my new friend out of the blue, because he has an unusual surname. Turns out complete stranger is a second cousin and his father, my friend's father's cousin, also survived. (Two people out of 130 family members)

Phatcat that's horrific. Good grief. Care home staff should have consulted specialist - possibly psycho-geriatric - doctors and nurses who could stop them torturing the poor man and work out alternatives to forcing a terrified man into the bathroom.

My sister works with people with learning disabilities and has had to step in a few times when officious carers have assumed they have the right to physically force someone to have a bath or a shower against their will. But abusing a concentration camp victim like this is a whole new level of wrong-doing.

FlappytheBat · 10/05/2009 20:25

hereidrawtheline, sadly I think to some extent, it probably already has!

hester · 10/05/2009 20:37

hereidrawtheline: I suppose every genocide is unique, but there's no shortage of other examples of human cruelty that are just as breathtakingly horrendous. Rwanda, Cambodia, the Soviet purges, the Transatlantic slave trade, Darfur...