by Clive Barker
Blue eyes trying to absorb it all, there was always something captivating to see in Krakow, especially the babes.
Polish girls are stunning. Drop dead gorgeous; even the average ones could pass for models—pale with high cheekbones, seductive eyes, long legs, and bouncy breasts. Judging from the looks of things Polish girls liked to drink beer and meet foreigners but other than observing, David never had the opportunity to find out. His parents never let him out of their sight. He even offered to give them some “alone time” back at the hotel but neither took the hint.
The day before flying back to God Bless America his parents booked a daytrip to Auschwitz. To David it seemed really strange that a place with such a vile history could somehow be a tourist destination but every year over a million people visited the concentration camp. For thirty euros per person, a company called Visit Auschwitz picked them up at their hotel and took them in an air-conditioned minibus to Auschwitz. Headsets and an English-speaking tour guide were included as part of the fee. Besides visiting the main camp at Auschwitz, the three-hour visit also featured a trip to the Birkenau death camp.
As they travelled along the quaint Polish countryside, a strange sensation began to slowly seep in. These roads were the same roads that the Nazis conquered. This was the exact same route that many soon-to-be exterminated Jews travelled. Dark history had been written here. Dark history inspired dark lyrics. Dark lyrics made for a fitting soundtrack. Fortunately David brought his iPod for the forty-five mile journey. Besides blocking out his parents and the other tourists, mandatory listening for the ride called for “Angel of Death” by Slayer.
When they arrived, the sky shone bright blue with plenty of billowy white clouds. Healthy trees stood in full bloom and the grass a vibrant green. Instead of some malevolent shadow hanging over the grounds, Auschwitz appeared surprisingly serene. If not for the diabolical history, this picturesque location could be where picnickers spent a relaxing afternoon.
The minibus parked in a lot with other vehicles from other tour groups like Escape2Poland and Never Forget Tours. Guides led hundreds of people from every ethnicity into the camp. The irony of being herded into a concentration camp was not lost upon David. It wasn’t too difficult to mentally substitute the tour guide’s casual attire for an SS uniform or add cloth stars to the summer clothing of the tourists. Maybe throw in a few snarling German Shepherds to keep everyone in line.
Everywhere he looked he saw men, women, and children lining up. Jews, Catholics, Slovaks, Germans, Latinos, and Asians… everyone had a different reason for visiting. Some people seemed quite affected by their surroundings. Others were posing for Facebook photos.
A dirt road cratered with rocks. A black and white gate, like a tollbooth, was raised. Steel and barbwire fences surrounded certain locations. Watchtowers with loud speakers, wooden signs with a skull and cross bones warned HALT! STOJ!
The tourists each wore transmitter radios around their necks and headphones to be able to listen to their tour guide. As David and the others entered the grounds, a Polish-accented voice in his headphones declared; “Konzentrationslager Auschwitz was a network of extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich after the invasion of Poland during World War II. These were the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I, the Stammlager or base camp; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, the Vernichtungslager or Extermination camp, and forty-five satellite camps. In the years 1940 through 1945, the Nazis deported at least 1,300,000 people to Auschwitz. 1,100,000 were Jews. Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers as part of Hitler’s Final Solution. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious disease, individual executions, and medical experiments. Everybody follow me and stay together please.”
The group did as instructed and walked toward the infamous sign that greeted all arrivals to Auschwitz.
“Arbeit Macht Frei is a German phrase, ‘labor makes you free’ meaning work sets you free,” the tour guide explained. “The expression comes from the 1873 title of a novel by Lorenz Diefenbach in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labor. The slogan was placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps including Dachau, Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and Auschwitz I. Prisoners with metalwork skills made the sign above your heads and it was erected in June 1940. The phrase Arbeit Macht Frei seems not to have been intended as a mockery, nor as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.”
Even wearing sunglasses, the bright sun forced David to squint. Clouds rolling by overhead, he stood utterly captivated by wrought iron and the power of the slogan. It was the first time he’d ever stood on a threshold.
Staring up at the sixteen-foot long sign while other visitors took photographs, he could relate to why five men tried to steal it a few years ago. According to the News, the ninety-pound sign had been half-unscrewed and half-torn off from above the death camp’s gate. The thieves carried the sign to an opening in a concrete wall. Four metal bars that blocked the opening had been cut and the sign was loaded onto a vehicle and driven to a safe house. Before the thieves could sell the infamous sign, a countrywide search led to its recovery. The sign had been cut into three pieces but soon Arbeit Macht Frei was repaired and put back where it belonged.
Dressed in a black t-shirt with the Monster Energy Drink neon green logo, baggy camouflage pants, and hi-top sneakers, David walked under the sign and entered the death camp with a mission.
He wanted to steal a piece of history.
Obviously the sign was out of the question but there had to be something else he could swipe. A keepsake… a memento of some sort. Everything about Auschwitz held some sort of sinister history. Fuck bringing home a piece of the Berlin wall! Imagine what his friends would think if he brought home a tile or a piece of wood from Hell on Earth?
Tour groups shuffled in and out of various creepy red brick buildings. Square wooden signs, black with white numbers, denoted different blocks- BLOCK 5 or BLOCK 11, etc. David’s tour group learned that prisoners who committed minor behavior infractions were sent to “The Dark Cell”, a series of small jail cells in the basement of block 11, nicknamed “The Death Block.” These small cells were entirely deprived of light and poorly ventilated. Prisoners served out the hours or days of their sentence in utter blackness, and often suffocated from lack of air. Although a trip to The Dark Cell did not mean certain death, it meant misery and possible death in the loneliest, most terrifying environment possible.
For major infractions of camp rules, the worst type of specialty cell in the basement of Block 11 was utilized. “The Starvation Cell” was very simple - prisoners were thrown into an empty cell, the door was locked, and they were left inside until they starved to death. Depending on the condition of the prisoner, this could take a day or a week; all while the captives of nearby cells heard their screams and pleas for food. Following the escape of one prisoner from Auschwitz in 1943, ten prisoners were put into starvation cells to die, as an example to others.
As if on cue, either mom’s or dad’s stomach made a gurgling sound.
Inside different buildings were different exhibits. Large signs explained what atrocities had occurred and included staggering historical facts. Encased behind glass were ceramic models of prisoners packed in trains and inside the gas chambers. David also examined train ticket stubs, record books, photographs, and a large mound of empty Zyklon B canisters.
“Judged by their physical appearance, people were selected as they exited the trains. Those to be gassed were assured that they were going to take a bath. Dummy showers were fixed to the wall. Menaced by attack dogs and beaten into formation, two thousand victims were crammed into the 210 square meter chamber. The chamber door was locked and the Zyklon B was poured. After fifteen minutes, the chamber was opened. Corpse
s were stripped of gold teeth, hair, earrings, rings, and anything else of value. Each day 10 kilos of gold were removed from the mouths of the dead. The victims’ personal documents were destroyed.”
As they moved further through the building, David couldn’t believe the mountain of human hair on display. It stood forty feet in length and taller than he. Then he observed a mountain of eyeglasses…. A mountain of prosthetic limbs and crutches…. A mountain of leather suitcases bearing the names of their previous owners… A mountain of toy dolls…. A mountain of shoes.
An entire hallway displayed framed photographs of prisoners in their striped prisoner outfits. Like mug shots, these photographs contained the prisoners’ name and their identification number. The tour guide explained that Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo numbers on prisoners. A bottle of ink that had been used to tattoo thousands of prisoners was also on display.
Several bronze statues showed emaciated Jews in various poses. Unlike the statues David had seen all over Europe that tried to immortalize beauty, these somber statues were riddled with strife. Bony limbs and sallow eyes seemed to plead for mercy while tourists snapped photos on their smart phones.
Instead of taking a picture, David stroked the statue trying to feel whatever energy it contained.
The long face with sunken eyes stared back at him.
Next the tour group was taken outside of BLOCK 21. A bullet riddled wall known as “The Death Wall” served as a somber reminder that most of the executions took place at this spot.
“For serious infractions like insubordination or refusing to work, the Nazis would shoot a bullet into the back of the head of a kneeling victim,” the tour guide said in a neutral tone. “These executions were carried out in full view of other prisoners, to set a horrifying example, but at least it was one of the quicker ways to die at Auschwitz. Okay people follow me.”
The tour group was led to the wooden frame of a hangman’s gallows. There was no rope, no noose but it wasn’t very difficult to imagine where one would go.
“After the war, the First commandant of Auschwitz, SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, was tried by the Polish Supreme National Tribune. Höss is credited for improving upon the methods used at other death camps by building his gas chambers ten times larger so that they could kill 2,000 people at once rather than 200. Found guilty of war crimes, Höss was hanged at this exact spot on April 16th, 1947.”
A slight creaking sound, like a rope swinging, quickly came and went.
A faint breeze neither confirmed nor denied anything.
After finishing the Auschwitz I tour, the tour group was given a half an hour to visit the gift shops or grab a snack. Curious, David scoped out the gift shops while mom and dad sought out sandwiches and cold beverages. Items for sale at the gift shops included books like Auschwitz- The Residence of Death, Auschwitz as seen by the SS, Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death, and Auschwitz- A History in Photographs. Plenty of tourists purchased the picture books.
Also available were post cards.
Auschwitz is a gas. Wish you were here.
And nothing livens up a room like a concentration camp poster.
When the break was over, the tour group hopped on the mini bus and drove over to the largest and most lethal of the Auschwitz camps; Birkenau. The Polish government has maintained the Birkenau death camp as a memorial for all those who perished there during World War II. Unlike the main camp at Auschwitz I, Birkenau is not a museum or research archive. It is preserved more or less in the condition it was found at liberation in January 1945. Some the wooden barracks were being restored. Brick barracks and other structures still stand including the women’s camp where Anne Frank was imprisoned.
The Visit Auschwitz bus parked next to a fleet of other tour buses. Tourists got off and walked toward the main gate rail entrance. A familiar voice inside their headsets explained:
“By July 1942 the SS were conducting the infamous selections where incoming Jews were divided. Those deemed able to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp. Those sent to the left were immediately gassed. Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. The SS forced an orchestra to play as new inmates walked towards their selection and possible extermination; the musicians had the highest suicide rate of anyone in the camps… Follow me and stay together.”
Tourists ambled along a train track that led them inside the death camp. A withered red train stood as a monument to the past. Jewish visitors placed rocks on the motionless train. Like sentinels watching over the entrants, wooden guard towers stood close by. Many of the corroded planks appeared to be rotting.
The group walked toward a massive mound of rubble. These piles looked like burned-out apartment buildings.
“When four new crematoriums went into operation in the spring of 1943, the SS in Auschwitz had virtual death factories at their disposal. For the first time in history, human beings were murdered and their corpses burned in assembly-line manner. These practices made it mathematically possible to burn as many as 2,500 corpses each in Crematoria II and III and as many as 1,500 each in Crematoria IV and V per day. In the summer of 1944, during which more than 9,000 persons were murdered daily, the incineration capacity of the ovens no longer sufficed. The SS had corpses burned in ditches as well.”
David noticed something about this area of the camp that was not noticeable at Auschwitz I.
A faint smoky scent lingered in the air.
“Before the Nazis fled from Birkenau in January 1945 they tried to destroy the evidence of their atrocious war crimes by blowing up the crematoriums. The last extermination selection took place on October 30, 1944. In November, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoriums be destroyed before the Soviet Army reached the camp. Using dynamite, the gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up. The SS command sent orders on January 17, 1945 calling for the execution of all the remaining prisoners in the camp but in the chaos of the Nazi retreat the order was never carried out. On January 17, 1945, Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility and it is estimated that only ten percent of the SS soldiers who worked at Auschwitz ever stood trial for their heinous war crimes.”
Sun beating down upon them, the group lumbered over to examine the burnt-out ruins. In certain spots some of the support structure still held so it was possible to formulate architectural angles amidst the destruction. Rocks with the names of victims written on them were left in tribute. Broken bricks, twisted steel, soot, and rubble all combined to form another strange monument.
While the rest of the group started away, David lingered behind. Something had caught his eye—a charred brick. Actually it was half a brick that could fit in his palm. If he could place his hand over the broken brick without anyone noticing, he felt certain he could make it fit into his pants pocket. Then for the rest of the trip, he would just have to keep his hand in his pocket so that the weight of the brick did not make his camouflage pants fall down.
The perfect size brick seemed to be conspiring with him.
After making sure no snoops were watching, David kneeled down as if to tie his shoelaces. Then in the blink of an eye, the half brick that felt cool to the touch was pocketed.
After four weeks of travelling through Europe and a ten-hour flight, the Bradshaw family made it back exhausted. It had been a long time since they truly appreciated their house in the quiet suburbs and the privacy of their own bedrooms.
One of the first things David did was unpack the Birkenau brick. He placed it on a shelf next to his bed. The coarse texture, the reddish and blackened tints, and all of the history imprinted upon it made it display worthy. Tomorrow he would show off his Über-creepy souvenir.
Was the Holocaust a terrible event in human history? Absolutely. Did he or any of his ancestors have anything to do with it? Not as far as he knew. To David it seemed like every great empire, from the Romans to the Mongols to the Russians, enslaved and sadistically eradicated their enemies
by the millions. The Nazis were arguably the most blatantly racist but they were not the first to impose such hateful, malevolent practices nor would they be the last. Hell, it happened in America at the Japanese-American internment camps authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
History… you can’t make this stuff up.
Wiped out, David slipped under the covers, closed his eyes, and gently gripped his circumcised cock. The head always reminded him of a Nazi helmet but before getting too involved with any sort of self-exploration, the teenager drifted off.
David awoke to a horrendous cacophony inside his head. He could not block out timbre of choking panic inside the gas chambers or the unbearable sizzling of fire consuming flesh. Shrieks twisted into dreadful groans. Yelps mutated into ghastly screeches. Squeals became mournful cries. The reverberating misery pounded and pulsated relentlessly, unsuccessfully trying to escape the confines of his throbbing skull. Like a CD skipping, sickening screams repeated over and over and over from each of Auschwitz’s 1,300,000 victims.
He heard the shrill shrieks of children being bayonetted by German soldiers.
He heard the terrified yelps of a person getting mauled by a German Shepherd.
He heard the helpless screeches of a prisoner entangled in barbwire.
He heard the delirious squeals of twins being “experimented” upon by sadists.
He heard the gut-wrenching cries of mothers watching their children die.
These non-stop shrieks echoed inside his thumping head, reminding him that “the one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”
The brick. David had to get the brick.
If he managed to get the brick, the screaming might stop.
Inside a darkened bedroom, husband and wife lay side by side, fatigued yet satisfied from their European vacation. Even though the trip had been quite a drain on their savings account, experiencing Europe with their college-bound son was well worth every penny.