As you walk around the camp you will see at the side of the tracks a railway carriage. It is the same as the carriages that transported the camp inmates to Birkenau. The carriage is there thanks to Frank Lowy, a Holocaust survivor and son of Hugo Lowy — a Hungarian Jew who was beatenContinue reading “Rememberance in stones”
Category Archives: horror
Degredation and dispair
Birkenau started to be constructed in 1941. Its scale dwarfs Aushwitz 1, it is said to be around ten times bigger. Many of the original buildings were destroyed in an uprising in 1944 and as the Nazis fled in the face of the Soviet army, but you can still see where the chimney stacks were,Continue reading “Degredation and dispair”
Birkenau – the final solution
From Auschwitz 1 we took a short shuttle ride to Auschwitz 2 – Birkenau. One of the largest camps in the complex, it had one main, overarching purpose – the extermination of the Jewish nation. It was Hitler’s “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.” In total it is estimated that around 1.3 millionContinue reading “Birkenau – the final solution”
Haunting faces and abandoned cases
Once inside the imposing brick buildings that seem so innocent from the outside there are several devastatingly simple displays. One room is completely empty except for a glazed section that runs from one end to the other. Behind the glass, from floor to ceiling, is an immense mountain of human hair. Another room houses pilesContinue reading “Haunting faces and abandoned cases”
Inhumanity and revisionists.
As you pass under the infamous metal archway that serves as the hideously iconic entrance to Auschwitz 1 you begin to notice the barbed wire that winds its way around the perimeter and the watch towers that are positioned about the camp. The lines of brick buildings are neatly spaced and perfectly preserved. Taken out ofContinue reading “Inhumanity and revisionists.”
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." – The horror of man’s inhumanity to man
Cambodia is a beautiful country, with some of the most welcoming people with the widest smiles of any place I have visited before or since. But it is a country with a past so horrific, so recent, and so terrible that you wonder how people can ever move on. From 1975 to 1979 Cambodia wasContinue reading “"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." – The horror of man’s inhumanity to man”