Hard History: Visiting the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Site

You’ve learnt about it in history class, and you’ve seen it in movies, but nothing prepares you for the reality of visiting the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camp site in southern Poland. No other travel experience has affected me more – I couldn’t sleep properly for several days after my visit, and even now, several years later, looking at my photographs makes me feel anxious and sad.

I arrived in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp off a bus from Krakow, and like many visitors, I then joined a guided tour around the site, and the nearby Birkenau site. At Auschwitz, a number of brick buildings still stand and now house exhibits as showing the terrible history of the site during World War II as well as allowing us to see areas like the cells, the execution yard and a small gas chamber. The photos from Auschwitz that you won’t see here are the ones that make me too sad: inside the Auschwitz camp buildings, they display collections of belongings taken away from prisoners. Massive piles of suitcases in one room, of hairbrushes in another, all possessions of those who didn’t come back from the “showers”.

Over a million people died in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz camps, but most of these were killed in the larger extermination camp of Birkenau, a short ride away. Many of the buildings at Birkenau have been destroyed, but the vast area is indicative of just how many camp buildings used to stand there, and how many thousands of prisoners were held at any one time. At the back of the camp the gas chambers are still identifiable, despite being partially destroyed. It’s truly chilling, and the memorials now built nearby are an almost unnecessary reminder of what occurred there; but a suitable tribute.

There’s some debate around as to whether a visit to the Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps should be considered “black tourism”, that is, a kind of gawking at others’ misfortunes, a bit like going to a disaster zone after an earthquake or a terrible hurricane. But I think there’s a great deal of value in visiting Auschwitz: a very vivid reminder that we don’t want history to repeat. It’s quite scary to realise what other human beings can be capable of doing when circumstances are severe. And while I suffered some serious nightmares after my day out there, I have a much deeper sympathy for the victims and an deep conviction that such a situation should never be repeated.