AUSCHWITZ RELFECTIONS May 2005

from Mark Tronson

STORY

Dr. Mark Tronson Chairman of Well-Being Australia and the Australian Cricket Chaplain placed a wooden commemorative plaque at the entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau, Nazi concentration camp in Poland yesterday (5 May 2005) at the "March of the Living".

The "March of the Living" commemorated the 60th year of the liberation of the Nazi death camps with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addressing the 21,000 plus crowd from across the world.

Dr. Tronson was invited by Bridges for Peace, a Christian Mission based in Jerusalem, as part of a 48 person international delegation.

"The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem emphasized the purpose of the 'March' as affirmation of life, rather than despondency over the past.

"The Christian delegation was there to stand beside and illustrate commitment to faith, hope and love", Dr. Tronson said.

The following comments I sent to Delma and family members after "March of the Living" after having had a little time to reflect.

This is the first time I've had a chance to sit down and write an Email. Jodi Magnuson sent my press release on her lap top last night as she could attach a photograph.

It is very difficult to put into words how I'm feeling having witnessed first hand Auschwitz and Birkenau.

One surprising realization came to my heart yesterday which answered a host of questions which I had not fully understood. This was reaffirmed this evening when we had a presentation of Corrie ten Boom (Susan Sandager) who spoke of the same thing.

It was the youthful age of the SS Guards.

Have you noticed "how mature of years" our Australian WWI soldiers looked when leaving home - we've all seen such photographs on mantle pieces in homes over the years - yet for the most part they were just lads.

I recall my cousin Arthur Tronson going off to the 1st Gulf War in the Navy and he was only a pup and yet looked much older in his dress uniform.

So too the SS Guards, they looked much older in photographs than they really were.

Our Israeli guide was telling us that most of these SS Guards at these death camps came out of the Hitler Youth movement, they were totally committed to the cause and were in most cases in their early 20's - the Corrie ten Boom presentation spoke of their guards as "teenagers".

As our Israeli spoke of them as young - this was illustrated and dawned upon me when I noticed the Polish police and soldiers - who are everywhere - they too look so young.

And the young feel as though they are

- indestructible and

- have not the experience of life to think of others in less fortunate positions (empathy needs development) and

- added to this the ideology of utmost and indisputable superiority and their astonishing low view of the Jews as vermin to be totally wiped out.

Little wonder there was a total disregard for human life.

I have since discussed this with several of our international group. Most hadn't realized this either.

It was brought home again to a number of us again when the customs border guard on the Polish Ukriane border who up close, we noticed was a very young man yet with his uniform and broad brimmed "old soviet style formal hat" looked much older.

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My mate of 35 years Peter Scotland (each other's groomsmen) came with me as Delma did not want to come. I asked Peter to make some comments on the experience.

Now to Peter - We felt like Jews to the slaughter basically - as we walked very slowly from Auschwitz to Birkenau concentration camps - we were 21,000 people not really knowing what we were doing and not in control of what we were doing.

The Israelis are such bad organizers in some respects - and yet as Jewish people gathered they were happy just to be together. The sense of community is overpowering so starting on time or never didn't seem to matter and yet when the ceremony started - it was professional and Ariel Sharon PM Israel, PM of Poland and PM of Hungary among others all spoke.

The Israeli chief rabbi spoke a very powerful word from the Old Testament which fitted our days of reading of Jeremiah 30, the environment was electric. We stood in Birkenau in the ruins of prisoner buildings (the gas ovens were destroyed and made to look like bomb shelters) and the "voice" kept speaking the names of persons murdered at Auschwitz and their country of origin. (The whole old world eventually gets a mention).

At the ceremony in Krakow on Wednesday night the same list was in progress as we arrived and as we left. It just keeps on and on.

If my math is correct it would take 60 days to read the names of all those murdered only at Auschwitz (4 seconds x 1,300,000). As we filed into the Auschwitz2 / Birkenau site the submachine guns and police and helicopters buzzing was surreal. I suppose Sharon being around exacerbated the situation but the Israelis do very well with security. Walking with us every 20-50 metres or so was an Israeli plain clothes person with funny bulge along their coat arm.

We walked along the road past factories where fit Jewish men worked from the camp. Along the railway line that leads into Birkenau and then splits into two and between is the railway platform where "selection" took place after they came off the train cattle cages.

Josef Mengeler moved a finger to left or right; and right was gas chamber. Almost 100% of women and children went right. Those to the right were dead within 30 minutes depending on volume of arrivals. The chambers killed up to 3,000 human living people each day by gassing.

We walked through the living quarters for those who had to wait or those who worked,13 to a bed space and no heating and fireplaces that did not work.

At allies found 835,000 women's dresses, 35,000 pairs of men's shoes, and 1,450 kg of female hair left at the site when they arrived. Plus numerous thousands of cans of empty cyclon B gas pellets.

It is remarkable being around the Jewish people and to discover their pain (especially from Christians). We met tho survivors and chatted with them. The dust they were standing on was from cremated dead bodies - they said it was sacred ground.

Peter Scotland

To view several of Jodi Magnuson's photographs of the trip http://homepage.mac.com/jgmagnuson/PhotoAlbum14.html also Album9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15.html

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Majanek Concentration Camp

We visited Majanek near the city of Lubin two hours south east from Warsaw by road. It was overrun and liberated by the Red Army (Russian) in October 1944 and whereas the worst of Auschwitz was largely destroyed, Majanek was still functioning. These are comments sent to Delma and my family by Email

* The second concentration camp we visited was Majanek near Lubin on our way to the Ukraine. This is the most terrible place I have seen in my 53 years. My advice is not to go there. There is an evil presence. Over 800,000 Jews were murdered here. One third died of disease and sickness associated with being worked to death.

The Jews could see the city of Lubin and its lights at night - so close and yet so far away. It employed 1300 staff, and although there were SS quarters many of the staff lived in Lubin. Majanek was not a secret, it is out in the open without trees to hide it.

We saw the place where Jews had their hair cut - three swipes for the head, one swipe foe under the arm pits and private area. And men did the hair cutting. We walked into the gas chamber, we saw where gold teeth were pulled from the dead bodies, and where the bodies were cremated. And all in sight of Lubin.

The buildings are bleak and dark outside and in. We saw the racks upon racks of shoes and so on. I felt physically uncomfortable. In Auschwitz all of those type of buildings were destroyed so you don't see the graphic presence of what was there, only the SS Buildings where they were housed and in these buildings are the museums.

Auschwitz is the sanitized public exhibition of the Holocaust, whereas Majanek is the real thing, mankind gone mad, mankind lost, mankind without a soul.

I'm still having bad dreams. My advice is don't go there. It is a glimpse of hell.

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POLAND

Poland is a go-ahead country. The three cities visited - Warsaw, Krakow and Lubin experiences traffic problems just as Australian cities. Many sky scraper city office complexes and high rise city apartments, however most are in former communist rectangular construction without any architect interest.

Much of the inner suburban housing are housing apartments possibly C19th however the outer suburbs are like any Australian city suburb, individual houses, lock up garages, kerb and guttering, locals schools and shops.

The cars are all small (no Commodore or Falcon size vehicles), people moving fast, going places, huge public transport operation with buses and trams. People are well dressed, all thoroughly western, plenty of advertising. TV is like ours - news stations, sports stations and of course soap dramas.

The trains are similar to ours, we travelled from Auschwitz to Warsaw by train on the Tuesday night after the March of the Living. The carriage design was compartment, eight seats to each compartment, four facing each other. Complimentary coffee / tea was served to us - a lass with a trolley urn moved from compartment to compartment. It took four hours and ten minutes to travel from Auschwitz to Warsaw and the train ran at fast speed - electric locomotion, not diesel hauled. This surprised me, that almost all of Poland's major network rail system is via electric overhead power source rather than diesel as it is in Australia.

Hotel accommodation (we stayed at Novatels throughout - tourist traffic deal) is just the same as it is in Australia or elsewhere. Four or five coaches would leave one morning and that same day another four or five would arrive at these Novatel's - Poland's in the grip of tourism big time. Our Australian dollar was worth about double in Poland with their currency, and they are still not using Euro currency. However Australians do not need a visa to enter Poland. Their tourist coaches however on the whole did not have as comfortable seats as Australian coaches, but their driver's were remarkable as to squeezing through the tightest of margins.

In Warsaw we visited the Old City, the Warsaw Ghetto, the Gestapo Headquarters, the Military Museum, floating Palace and Botanical Gardens, and Jewish cemetery and various monuments. We discovered "ice cream" was very inexpensive in Poland.

In Krakow we visited the Old City and it's C16th synagogue and cemetery, Krakow Ghetto, Oscar Shindler's factory, the work camp, Shindler's monument, a synagogue which the Nazi's utilized as a stable and 700 year old Salt Mines which the Nazi's used as a manufacturing plant for V2 rocket components as they were 160m below ground.