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www.groovekorea.com / March 2014 80 Upon admission to the camp, as was the case for more than a million murdered pris- oners, you are “welcomed” as you make your way under the infamous wrought-iron gateway cynically stating “Arbeit macht frei” (Work will make you free). From that point, you walk down the camp’s spotless dirt- paved roads all neatly laid out. You look out upon row after row of dull, redbrick buildings lining both sides of the pavement, as well as the ever-present electrified barbed-wire fences and occasional watchtower. The en- tirety of Auschwitz’s architecture exudes an eerie simplicity in its striking Spartanism. The bleakness is overwhelming. It’s as if every building, every structure had been designed with an implicit potential for murder. Nothing was to be wasted in the Nazis’ grand scheme of death. Signboards with narrative histories, maps and photos dot the landscape. You soon come to several exhibition halls. One in par- ticular is described as the General Exhibition Building by its signboard overhanging the en- trance. Inside the halls the rooms are dimly lit, almost spooky. And quiet. Deathly quiet. Even the local Polish camp guides are silent. Weird. Signs tell visitors not to take pictures with flashbulbs or tripods, or in the “hair” room. Few pay any attention. (I see one gen- tleman, camera on tripod, filming pages of a historical Nazi document almost as soon as I enter.) You snake your way through the aisles between rooms. Narratives, maps, Nazi documents and camp photos from the early 1940s hang on the walls. There is a picture of naked Jewish women on their way to the gas chambers and various panoramas. Adjacent are miniature three-dimensional replicas of prisoner cells. Upon entering the “Material Proofs (sic) of Crimes” building you bear witness to unimag- inable human horror: ghastly displays of ev- eryday artifacts of families torn asunder, the personal belongings of thousands of exter- minated men, women, children ... thousands of suitcases, shoes, eyeglasses, pots and pans, artificial limbs, combs, hair brushes, even clumps of human hair — an estimated 7.7 metric tons. Empty canisters that once contained the poisonous Cyclon B gas are stacked atop one another. Scores of them. Their pellets lay scattered inside glass dis- plays. People silently trudge on by the maca- bre scenes, too stupefied to audibly articulate their thoughts. It is time to go outdoors and into the sunlight again. They appear relieved to get outside and see the sun now starting to set, earlier than usual because we’re in the thick of Polish winter. The late-afternoon air is vibrant, or at least feels so in the lungs after the shock to the senses. An ebony-hued watchtower, not accessible to the public, looms in the dis- tance next to the “Barbed Wires of Death.” A danger sign hanging on the wires warns visitors not to touch. Except for a few grassy areas, the grounds are barren at this time of year. Auschwitz resembles a ghost town and is best described as sterile; walking the grounds is suggestive of meandering through a cemetery absent any tombstones. On the horizon behind the watchtower a chimney ap- pears; it is time to experience the crematoria. As I approach the low-level, one-sto- ry building, what stands out is the sheer dinginess of the exterior. The entrance is low-hanging. You go inside. Immediately, you are struck by the mottled concrete walls; blotches of mismatched colors stain the sur- face of the walls everywhere. In fact, in the dim light it’s hard to ascertain what the colors are. A sign greets you, telling of the horrors that occurred here and asking for your req- uisite respect in memory of the slaughtered. Some sections of rooms remain barely lit, giving off the impression of walking through a huge, ghoulish tomb. Filming is prohibit- ed. Overall, the building is not all that big; it takes only a few minutes to complete a walk- through. Then you come upon the ovens. You see two. Surprisingly, at least for me, they appear somewhat small. (The Nazis soon made much bigger and far more efficient in- frastructures of assembly-line mass murder.) A strangely shaped, black-iron mechanism sits on metal rails. It was designed to ram the bodies of the gassed prisoners into the ovens for incineration. Male prisoners labeled “sonderkommando” or “special workers” were tasked under the threat of death to lug the bodies to rail carts that carried corpses into the ovens for cremation. Hundreds of them were reduced to powder here daily. Many sonderkommando committed suicide. We walk outside. Clouds are forming over- head. It’s getting dark. I ask our tour guide, Mr. Hong Suk-hwa, a diminutive man of about 35, how he feels about leading tours here. In near-perfect English he says, “De- pressing.” Less than two hours have passed. Only when I get back to the bus and it starts rolling out of the camp complex, past the gentle-sloping, brown-tinged fields of the Polish landscape, does the experience worm its way into my core. Throughout the tour I was numb. Perhaps it was a survival reflex of DESTINATIONS Edited by Josh Foreman (joshforeman@groovekorea.com)
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