Who doesn't know Auschwitz? At least in Poland everybody knows the place as well as the unimaginably horrible things which happened there.
Personally I believe that everyone, no matter what they nationality or religion is, should visit the concentration camp to learn the history of the place and of the victims. It is the best lesson we can get to make sure that something like this will never happen again. It should not have happened, but it did - "People did this to people!"
Auschwitz-Birkenau is a former German Nazi concentration camp located in Oswiecim, Poland. This is the place where German Nazis created a real hell on earth during the second World War when they deprived over 1 million of innocent people of their humanity and their lives. It is estimated that 90% of people who were killed there were Jews from different countries.
There are so many books to read (especially in Polish literature), films to watch, but they cannot tell the story of every individual who was killed there and cannot describe what really happened there.
One of the short stories by Zofia Nałkowska
Zofia Nałkowska Medallions (1946)
By the Railway Track
Yet another person now
belongs to the dead: the young woman by the railway track whose escape attempt
failed.
One can make her
acquaintance only through the tale of a man who had witnessed the incident but
is unable to understand it. She lives on only in his memory.
Those who were being
transported to extermination camps in the lead-sealed boxcars of the long trains
would sometimes escape en route. Not many dared such a feat. The courage
required was even greater than to go hopelessly, unresisting and meek, to a
certain death.
Sometimes escape would
succeed. The deafening clatter of the rushing boxcars prevented those on the
outside from hearing what went on inside.
The only means of
escape was by ripping up the floorboards. In the cramp of jammed-in, starved,
foul- smelling, filthy people, it seemed an improbable gambit. Even to move was
impossible. The beaten human mass, wriggling with the rushing rhythm of the
train, reeled and rocked in the suffocating stench and gloom. Nevertheless,
even those who, weak and fearful, would never dream of escaping, themselves
understood their obligation to help others. They’d lean bac, pressing against
one another, and liftr their shit-covered legs in order to open a way for
freedom for others.
Succesfully prying
open one end of the floorboard raised a glimmer of hope. A collective effort
was required to tear it up. It took hours. Then there remained still the second
and the third boards.
Those closest would
lean over the narrow aperture, then back away fearfully. Courage was called to
crawl hand and foot through the chink into the din and crash of iron, into the
gale of the smoking wind below, above the gliding bases, to reach the axle and,
in this catch-hold, to crawl the spot from which jumping would guarantee the
best chance at salvation. To drop somehow, some way, in between the rails or
through the wheels. Then, to recover one’s senses, roll down unseen from the
mound, and escape into the strange, temptatingly dark forest.
People would often
fall under the wheels and be killed on the spot, struck by a protruding beam,
the edge of a bar, thrown forcefully against a signal pole or roadside rock. Or
they’d break their arms and legs, and be delivered thus unto the greater
cruelty of the enemy.
Those who dared to
step into the roaring, crashing, yawning mouth were aware of what they risked.
Just as those who remained behind were, even though there was no possibility of
looking out through the sealed doors or high-set windows.
The woman lying by the
track belonged to those who dared. She was the third to step through the
opening of the floor. A few others rolled down after her. At that moment a
volley of shots rang out over the travellers’ heads – an explosion on the roof
of the boxcar. Suddenly the shots fell silent. The travellers could now regard
the dark place left by the ripped-up boards as though it were the opening to a
grave. And they could ride on calmly, ever closer to their own death, which
awaited them at the crossroads.
The smoke and rattle
of the train had long since disappeared into the darkness.
All that remained was
the world.
The man, who can
neither understand nor forget, relates his story once again.
When the new day
broke, the woman was sitting on the dew-soaked grass by the side of the track.
She was wounded in the knee. Some had succeeded in escaping. Further from the
track, another lay motionless in the forest. A few had escaped. Two had died.
She was the only one left like this, neither alive nor dead.
She was alone when he
found her. But slowly people started to appear in that empty space, emerging
from the brick kiln and village. Workers, women, and a boy stood fearful,
watching her from a distance.
Every once in a while,
a small chain of people would form. They’d cast their eyes about nervously and
quickly depart. Others would approach, but wouldn’t linger for long. They would
whisper among themselves, sigh, and walk away.
The situation was
clear. Her curly, raven hair was obviously disheveled, her too-dark eyes
overflowed the lowered lids. No one uttered a word to her. It was she who asked
if the ones in the forest were alive. She learned they weren’t.
The day was white. The
space open onto everything as far as the eye could see. People had already
learned of the incident. It was a time of terror. Those who offered assistance
or shelter were marked for death.
She begged one young
man, who was standing for a while longer, then started to walk away, only to
turn back, to bring her some Veronal from the pharmacy. She offered him money.
He refused.
She lay back for a
while, her eyes shut. Then she sat up again, shifted her leg, clasped it with
both hands, and brushed her skirt from her knee. Her hands were bloodied. Her
shattered knee a death sentence. She lay quietly for a long time, shutting her
too-black eyes against the world.
When she finally
opened them again, she noticed new faces hovering around her. The young man
still lingered. So she asked him to buy her some vodka and cigarettes. He
rendered her this service.
The gathering beside
the mound attracted attention. Someone new would latch on. She lay among people
but didn’t count on anyone for help. She lay like an animal that had been
wounded during a hunt but which the hunters had forgotten to kill off. She
proceeded to getr drunk. She dozed. The power that cut her off from all the
others by forming a ring of fear was unbeatable.
Time passed. And old
village woman, gasping for breath, returned and, drawing near, stole a tin cup
of milk and some bread from beneath her kerchief. She bent over, furtively
placed them in the wounded woman’s hand, and left immediately, only to look on from
a distance to check whether she would drink the milk. It was only when she
noticed two policemen approaching from the village that she disappeared,
drawing her scarf across her face.
The others dispersed,
too. Only the slick, small-town guy who had bought her the vodka and cigarettes
continued to keep her company. But she no longer wanted anything from him.
The police came to see
what was going on. They quickly sized up the situation and deliberated how to
handle it. She begged them to shoot her. In a low voice, she tried to negotiate
with them, provided they keep the whole thing quiet. They were undecided.
They, too, left,
conferred, stopped, and walked on further. What they would finally decide was
not certain. In the end, however, they did not care to carry out her request.
She noticed that the kind young man, who had lit her cigarettes with a lighter
that didn’t want’t to light, followed after. She had told him that one of the
two dead in the forest was her husband. That piece of news seemed to have caused
him some unpleasantness.
She tried to swallow
the milk but, preoccupied, set the cup down on the grass. A heavy, windy,
spring day rolled over. It was cool. Beyond the empty field stood a couple of
huts; at the other end, a few short, scrawny pines swept the sky with their
branches. The forest, their destination, sprang up further from the railway.
This emptiness was the whole of the world she saw.
The young man
returned. She swallowed some more vodka and he lit her cigarette. A light dusk
brushed across the sky from the east. To the west, skeins and smudges of clouds
branched up sharply.
More people, on their
way home from work, turned up and were told what happened. They spoke as though
she couldn’t hear them, as though she was no longer there.
“The dead one there’s
her husband,” a woman’s voice spoke up.
“They tried to escape
from the train into the forest. But they shot at them with a rifle. They killed
her husband, and she was left alone. Shot in the knee. She couldn’t get any
further…”
“From the forest she
could easily have been taken somewhere. But here, with everyone watching,
there’s no way.”
The old lady who
returned for her tin cup said those words. Silently she watched as the milk
soaked into the grass.
So no one would
intercede by removing her before nightfall, or by calling a doctor, or by
taking her to the station so she could get to a hospital. Nothing of the kind
would happen. She could only die, one way or another.
When she opened her
eyes at dusk, there was no one around except for the two policemen who had come
back and the one who would no longer go away. Again she pleaded with them to
kill her, but without any expectation that they would do so. She covered her
eyes with her hands so as not to see anymore.
The policemen still
hesitated about what to do. One tried to talk the other into doing it. The
latter retorted, “You do it yourself.”
Then she heard the
young man’s voice saying. “Well then give it to me.”
Again they debated,
quarreled. From beneath her lowered eyelids she watched the policeman take out
his revolver and hand it to the stranger.
A small group of
people standing further back watched as he bent over her. They heard the shot
and turned away in disgust.
“They could at least
have called in someone. Not do it like that. Like she was a dog.”
When it grew dark, two
people emerged from the forest to get her. They located the spot with a bit of
difficulty. They assumed she was sleeping. But when one of them took her by the
shoulder, he understood at once that he was dealing with a corpse.
She lay there all
night and into the morning, until just before noon, when a bailiff arrived and
ordered her buried together with the other two who had died by the railway
tracks.
“Why he shot her isn’t
clear,” the narrator said. “I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he felt sorry for
her…”
