Return to Auschwitz

[CARL]

We can only keep reminding others and keeping history alive in the hope people will not forget.

VERY well said.

But it is good that 4thskorpion raised the issue, however disturbing the case may be. The issue is not only confined to Poland though, although I too saw graffiti of a similar nature around the Auschwitz camp complex. The inside of the gas chamber at Mauthausen was once marked with a swastika, Herzogenbusch had a spate of terrible acts committed at their execution site memorial including the use of tar (which couldn't be removed) on memorial stones - see attachment. Sad, sad, sad...

[Scout]

.................plus some moron paid thieves to dismantle and steal the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign for his collection.
You have to be pretty callus and mindless to want to remove what is practically the symbol (or one of them) of the complex and which serves as an important reminder.
For some reason that struck me as a particular senseless act as vandalism goes (on a par with the others mentioned above).

[CARL]

.................plus some moron paid thieves to dismantle and steal the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign for his collection.
You have to be pretty callus and mindless to want to remove what is practically the symbol (or one of them) of the complex and which serves as an important reminder.
For some reason that struck me as a particular senseless act as vandalism goes (on a par with the others mentioned above).

Yes Scout, the Swedish "former neo-Nazi" as he was referred to by the press, was later jailed for two years and eight months. Two of the Poles involved in the theft received sentences of 30 and 28 months.

[TheGoon]

There is a guy who lives around my area that was a survivor from there I got to meet him, still has the numbers on his arm. He had some gruesome stories

[Larry C]

Acts of heroism..those who were incarcerated there............and acts of Cowardice..those who were the guards there and post war graffiti artists. Although these camps were outside..they are still considered the same as museums with artifacts inside. Every brick..pillar and rusted window frame is history. The cold winter weather has not changed....which would humble anyone to stand in any area of the camp inside or out. You have done a great work here Carl...which the information and others who have contributed to this forum have brought forth more so than what could be seen in documentaries and in books. Photos of empty rooms chills the imagination and furnishes it with once was. Regards Larry

[Chopperman]

Well said Larry.

[CARL]

...another year passes...

72 years ago, the largest extermination site in modern history, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, ceased to operate. The liberators found tormented innocents left behind by the SS to rot and die...to fade away along with the horrific crimes they, the SS, had performed at this and countless other sites within the camp system of Nazi Germany. Take time to think of them today...and remember what happened...for if we forget...we fail them and ourselves.

Carl

[CARL]

As with the title of this thread, my own returns to the Auschwitz camps are frequent, have been so for many, many years now. Below, in the attached link, brief details are given regarding the somewhat more significant return visit of one former prisoner, Janina Malec, a Polish woman who lost her parents at the main camp. They, along with thousands of others, were murdered at the so called Death Wall - located in the courtyard between medical experimentation Block X and the bunker/prison Block XI. Today, she will once again make the pilgrimage to the site, along with dozens of other elderly survivors.

Take time today to also remember one critical fact...the 27th January marks the liberation of Auschwitz...but is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day for ALL camps, ghettos and related sites. At the very least, well over one million people were killed at Auschwitz...but even that figure is but a fraction of the total of lives taken throughout the greatest crime in modern history.

Elderly survivors visit Auschwitz 72 years after liberation | KSL.com