Auschwitz
If asked to name a city or town in Poland, most Americans could probably come up with the name Warsaw, the capital and largest city. A few educated people might be able to dredge up the name Krakow, the city that boasts one of the oldest universities in the world. But the town name that would immediately leap into the minds of most Americans would be Auschwitz, although many people would not know that it is now called by its Polish name, Oswiecim (pronounced Osh-VEN-chim).
The town of Oswiecim, by itself, is quite unremarkable. It is a factory town in the province of Upper Silesia in an industrial area now called the Black Triangle because of the air population problem. Driving through the town, you can still see the gray factory buildings where the prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp once worked as forced laborers for the I.G. Farben company. The synthetic rubber factory at the former Auschwitz III camp is still there and still functioning.
The actual town of Oswiecim has virtually nothing to recommend it to a typical tourist. As far as I could see, there is only one hotel in the town. In the Old Town, there is a 17th century Catholic church at the end of a narrow street and the ubiquitous Duke's castle on a bluff overlooking the Sola, a small stream that passes for a river, but the castle is not at all impressive and, like the church, wouldn't make it into most tourist guidebooks.
The town is completely devoid of charm. No famous artists come here to paint. There is no house that has been preserved as the birthplace of a famous person, nor any important historical buildings. The town square is surrounded by very ordinary looking buildings and has only one building of interest, the town hall with a Gothic spire that makes it look like a church. An ugly, modern store built right in the middle of the town square has totally ruined any character that the town might have had. My taxi driver had to ask directions to the town square when I requested to see it; no other tourist had ever bothered to ask, he said.
There are many ordinary towns in Poland and it is only because Auschwitz became the most famous town in the history of the Holocaust that anyone today marvels at how ordinary it is. Yet a suburb of this ordinary town is included on every package tour of Poland or Eastern Europe: an afternoon of horror at the Auschwitz I concentration camp, sandwiched in between stops to see the salt mines and the Black Madonna, the other main tourist attractions of Poland. Huge buses rumble through the town, carrying Polish students on their mandatory trip to see the concentration camp as soon as they have reached the age of 14 and are old enough be allowed to enter it. Trains from Berlin, Prague and Krakow arrive and leave at the nearby train station every hour, carrying tourists to the camp. Seventeen-year-old students from around the world make bi-annual pilgrimages to this place, parading with flags of Israel in the March of the Living.
Through this town have passed the leaders of virtually every country in the world, including American president Gerald Ford, bearing huge funeral wreaths to lay at the famous black wall where Polish political prisoners were shot. With close to a million annual visitors, there are now more people walking the streets of the Auschwitz I concentration camp than there ever were when it was in operation.
Town of Auschwitz looks the same today as it did in this 1940 photo
I was prepared for what I was about to see at the old Auschwitz I concentration camp because I had read about it extensively and had seen many pictures of it. Even so, I was shocked at my first sight of the camp. If I had accidentally come upon this place without knowing what it was, I would have assumed that the beautiful brick buildings here were part of a college campus. Immediately upon entering the camp, you see, on the right, the administration building that is so nice that the tour guide had to offer an apology for it, saying that this beautiful brick building was built by the Nazis as a brothel for the camp guards, as well as an induction center for incoming prisoners.
The entrance to the former concentration camp is right down the street from the train station, just after you pass some dingy factory buildings and some red brick apartment buildings. The present tourist entrance was the actual entrance to the camp from 1942 to 1945 and it is the entrance through which the Russian soldiers came when they liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. You may have seen the camp liberation portrayed in a recent movie, based on one of the books of Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, with the Russian cavalry coming up over a rise, like Indians appearing on the horizon in the old Western movies, but it wasn't like that at all. Auschwitz I is on completely level ground and the entrance, even back then, faced a busy city street.
To the right, as you enter, is the parking lot for buses and the taxi cabs that have brought passengers here all the way from Krakow. Facing the parking lot is the red brick administration building that was built by the Nazis in 1943.
The picture below shows a view of the entrance gate, taken from inside the camp, with a kiosk for the parking attendant on the right. Across the street are rather run-down commercial buildings in the Zasole district of the town of Oswiecim, or Auschwitz as it was called by the Germans who originally built the town in 1270. There was a proposal a few years ago to tear down these buildings and build a modern supermarket in the location across the street, but the plan was dropped after Jewish protests.
Entrance to Auschwitz I concentration camp, as seen from inside the camp
Below is a view of the inside of the camp, looking straight ahead from the entrance gate, down a tree-lined camp street. This part of the camp was an addition, built by the Nazis when they enlarged the former Polish military garrison here. Behind the trees, to the left in the picture, is part of the addition to the camp built by the Nazis; the former camp buildings in this section, which is off limits to tourists, are now used as apartments for Polish residents and as barracks for the Polish army. The building to the left, in the foreground of the picture below, is another new building at the camp entrance. Notice the pot hole in the foreground of the picture.
View from entrance gate of Auschwitz I, looking into the camp
The picture below is a view of the camp administration building, as seen from the entrance road, which is at a right angle to the parking lot in front of this building. Buses and taxis deliver tourists to the front door of this building and then park here to wait for their return from the guided tours which take a couple of hours. Then it is on to the Birkenau camp, or Auschwitz II, which is 3 kilometers from here. Tourists at both Auschwitz I and Birkenau are not required to take a guided tour, but may walk around freely on their own. Tour guides are available, and I was told that some of them are former inmates of the camp. I was also told that there is a hotel inside the Auschwitz I camp, but I didn't see it.
Administration building at Auschwitz I where incoming prisoners were once processed
Pictured below is the entrance to the administration building, designed by architect Walther Dejaco, which now houses a restaurant, bookstore, currency exchange, post office, movie theater and museum exhibits, as well as the offices of the museum administrators. Without a guide, most visitors would never guess that this building was once where the incoming prisoners to the concentration camp were registered, bathed, deloused, tattooed, shaved and then given a blue and gray striped prison uniform to wear.
Entrance to former Nazi administration building, now a visitor's center at Auschwitz I
Auschwitz I is one of the few memorial sites at the former Nazi concentration camps that has no large monument. Here the only artwork on the grounds of the former camp is a structure which I initially mistook for children's playground equipment. Located in the median strip just behind where the buses are parked and in front of a walkway lined with park benches, it is shown in the picture below. The small building to the left in the background is another book store.
