A wall of photos of families of prisoners who never left the camp

Fresh from her visit to the sites of concentration camps in Poland, Maryam Abbas explores the universal lessons and relevance of the Holocaust for today’s society.

Recently I was offered the opportunity to visit the holocaust sites in Poland for a day, an offer I could not refuse. The trip is a yearly activity run by the Holocaust Educational Trust. Their thought is that ‘hearing is not like seeing’, and I would agree wholeheartedly. The course explores the universal lessons of the Holocaust and its relevance for today. It truly was an experience that I shall never forget.

It started with an Orientation focusing on the victims’ lives before the war. A holocaust survivor told us many stories about how he narrowly escaped being put to death, it ‘purely was luck’ that he was alive today. It’s one thing reading stories in a textbook, but another actually hearing them first hand.  His story touched everyone in the room, not just the Jewish members, or the Christian members but everyone. For once, we all lost our labels; we were just humans, nothing more nothing less.

We set off early in the morning, around 200 of us from all around London. I met many other Muslims all interested in expanding their knowledge and removing this image put upon us youth that we are very close-minded to the history of other cultures and religions. We arrived in Krakow at 8.30am Polish time. My mind was rushing as I looked around this foreign country, my friend and I talking about how Poland is almost forgotten as a country, only remembered as ‘that place that Auschwitz is in’. It was like any other European country, but it was only recognised for its harrowing history.

It took us around 35 minutes to travel to the area of Oswiecim. At the site of the old synagogue, the only thing left was an empty space: grass with a few trees. It was one of many in the area that was demolished, people would bury the torahs and precious items deep underground knowing the place would be destroyed, only to be discovered by archaeologists later.

We walked to the Holocaust Museum; a Rabbi that was travelling with us spoke to us briefly about how life was for the Jews before the Nazi regime, they were normal people, the same as everyone else. I felt empathetic towards the  people of that time; to be totally uprooted from a normal lifestyle, being made to accept that because of who they are they will be exiled, reminds me of many people in exile. No one wants the Holocaust to be repeated today, but what  people fail to realise is that holocausts have been happening all this time and no one has done anything to prevent them.  Do people really learn from history?

At the first concentration camp, Auschwitz I, it began to sink in how real this was, what history actually meant. I wondered to myself how the tour guides could deal with week in and out telling the same story of horror that has put shame to their country; I felt sorry for her as she told us the story of the town Oswiecim (what Auschwitz was named after), how it’s now a place Polish people try to escape from.

At the end of the railway line that came into Birkenau, your fate was decided on whether you looked well enough to work or not. If you didn’t you were killed, and if you did you still had to be processed to be put to work

Every second on that road you could see on one side was a single train track. It sent shivers down my spine thinking of how many thousands of men, women and children travelled down the same route to their death.

Auschwitz I was the original concentration camp, housing up to 16,000 prisoners at one time. It was huge, with houses, each one in original condition, all fenced by barbed wire and electric fences. There was an eerie atmosphere, people felt unsettled, everyone was quiet as we passed under the famous entrance “Arbeit Macht Frei”, “work makes (one) free”. The images still haunt me: a house dedicated to the remains of the peoples hair, glasses, clothes, shoes, bags.  A house dedicated the first experiment with Zyklon B,  a small basement that could hardly fit 20 of us, crammed with 200 fully grown men, it was horrific to even imagine.

We were led to the gas chambers, with built in crematorium. It scares me to think about how anyone would be able to watch, let alone carry it out. One of the many things that disgusted me was the house that Rudolf Höß lived in, he ran the camp for over 3 years and lived on site with his family, how someone could bring their family to such a place. I saw a lifetime of history in the first camp that I know I will never forget.

Barbed wire fences enclosed the Auschwitz II/Birkenau concentration camp

Onto Auschwitz II/ Birkenau. I looked out onto the camp and was gobsmacked, it was an endless field. Behind watchtowers you could see further afield the fences kept going and going, I couldn’t see the end, and yet it was an unfinished camp! As the sky got darker and colder, I could feel the weather match the mood. We walked into the camp through an arch as the prisoners did, there were bunkers that housed thousands of prisoners.

It was said that in any one bunker (probably the size of a floor of a semidetached house) contained around 500 people at one time. They had bunk beds that were 3 tiers on which 10 people would sleep lengthways; many people died, crushed by those sleeping above them as the beds were eaten by worms. Around 5000 people had one bathhouse, a bunker lined with cold stone cesspits and showers. When they were made to take showers, many of them jumped for joy when water came out of the taps because they feared they were going to be gassed.

Deeper into the camp I noticed many groups of Jewish young adults reading and praying together. Even though they may not have had family killed, all came together to remember those who died. I envied them, Muslims are dying around the world today yet I still see such a big divide between a Muslim and his brother.

We reached the general’s workplace. This ‘house’ was the main traffic for each prisoner that was placed in Birkenau. Every prisoner had to go through this ‘house’. The officers would remove all clothes and belongings, claiming that they were safe keeping it, they were actually checking what they could sell and what they couldn’t. The people’s possessions  were reused by the SS. They then shaved the whole body of the prisoner, man or woman, washed, disinfected and clothed them in prisoner uniforms. Their clothes cleaned and shipped off to be resold. Even photographs were confiscated, to this day there is a wall covered in pictures of families of the prisoners that never left the camp.

It got emotional towards the end of the railway line. It was pitch black, hearing the faint chants of Jewish visitors and the whistling wind. The Rabbi explained to us that how we should learn from what happened here. It was moving to hear him speak about how we should eliminate all of the factors that caused the holocaust: racism, be it white, black, Asian or Arab.

It would be a dream to think that racism could ever dissolve in a world like ours. I took time to reflect, why did I come here? What have I learnt? We were all affected by this trip. In complete silence we walked down the railway line that prisoners never returned from. Knowing that the stop you get off from you won’t ever be able to return from, you reached the end of the line and there’s no return.

It taught me a valuable lesson. I, as a Muslim and a human being, cannot ignore injustices. We can’t stand by watching it happen, the brothers and sisters in Darfur, in Gaza, in Iraq and elsewhere. It’s my duty as a human being to stand up and prevent injustices.