Auschwitz/Birkenau

Due to a request, I apparantly do need to say more about Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Auschwitz was actually smaller than I thought it would be. Seeing the gates for the first time was ver eerie. To me, that was the symbol of the Holocaust. Once through the gates, there were the barracks. Inside the barracks, there was an exhibit about Auschwitz. There were rooms filled with confiscated items like suitcases, brushes, shoes, prosthetic legs, and hair. The gas chamber was really creepy. Auschwitz only has one gas chamber because the camp was to small and the chamber was too close to the barracks so the other prisoners could hear them screaming. The gas chamber was unlike the others because it doesn't have the pretense of a shower. It is simply a room that they shove prisoners togethr and kill them. I lit a candle and said the Kaddish in the chamber before we left.

Birkenau was completely different. It was huge and had the railroad tracks running through the center. The barracks there were creepier than at Auschwitz because they weren't reconstructed and they were rock and concrete. Birkenau was a place people went to die so the living space didn't have to be decent at all. The gas chambers were destroyed but a memorial remains. Some of the barracks were destroyed and we found silverwear and cracked mugs in the ruins. I lit a candle and said the Kaddish by the gas chamber and crematorium ruins in Birkenau.