"Aushwitz" I have heard that word but I did not know what exactly happened there. It was how much poor my knowledge was. I had an image of it that some kind of arch gate located and says something. That was about it. Actually visiting, seeing places and reading on wall were unforgettable which was impossible to be compared with just catching information from textbook or any other education system back to Japan. As you read today's my blog post, I hope you might get sort of feeling what I got there but it is not quite same until you actually see them. So I wish you will have an opportunity to be there.
I did not even know Auschwitz is located in Poland. A concentration camp was built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War. It became "Final Solution to the Jewish question" that means trains sent Jews to the camps and Nazi operated gas champers. There is not exact number but at least, 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz. If you want to have some idea how big population it was, population of Nebraska is around 1.8 million now. I was terrified how many people was killed. 90 percent of prisoners were jews. I was shocked by the fact which rest of them were homosexuals, disables and any people who helped Jews hidden. Even in prison, discrimination existed. I believed in that most of them died because they forced to be in the gas chambers but I was wrong. The truth is they were killed by forced working in extreme way and sufferd infectious disease that were caused by unclean places. They were dying with pain.
I hesitated to take pictures at many places. We were allowed to take pictures without flash at most places but I could not. I stood a point that was called selection process. All prisoners were transported by trains and lined up at that point. Simply, Nazi divided them into right side or left. One of firth prisoners were survived through this process because they looked stronger than others to be forced working. Others were killed immediately because they could not pass this process.
Our tour guide was a very good. He talked in calm,slow and dark tone of voice with seriousness. He said "Nazi did the worst thing that human could do to human but remember they were smart and super organized." How Nazi treated and moved prisoners was absolutely a lie but used their weakness. They even informed they would provide a better working condition to prisoners. Prisoners were struggling and had no hope to survive. They were looking for a way to protect their family and future. Prisoners bought tickets to Auschwitz by themselves. They did not know what they were going through until they arrived. Nazi was smart and planed well how effetely operates a killing process in a short term as much as they could. In fact, one room of gas chamber could kill one thousand people at once in twenty minutes. Nazi kept getting a process to kill prisoners faster and more people.
The most shocking thing I have ever seem was a mat which was made of women's human hair. The workers who carried prisoners out from gas chambers after process, they collected valuable from dead bodies. Women's hair was not an exception neither. They shaved their hair off and made products from it. I felt my chest got tighten with pain.
What education system did teach even a part of these facts? I thought so many times in this program when I visited historical places and also, if I will have kids in far future, I will bring my kids to those places once they get old enough to understand meaning. Knowing numbers or people names were not all about of history. It is just a surface. More likely, I have learned feelings when I saw a wall of gas chamber, a mat which made of human hair and others. Those actual things encouraged me to understand and learn more.
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