Painless torture in a day. Buchenwald, Germany

 

The chimney

Concentration camp for a day

I wasn’t all too thrilled about going to a concentration camp, but it was part of the trip. I wasn’t scared or excited that I was going to learn about people dying, because I learnt that at school. I smiply had no emotions about this trip. I had been up until three laughing about nothing withEloisa (my close friend) and I was totally drained.

We walked for about 20 minutes to Weimar Central and took a bus from there to Buchenwald.  After we left the town of Weimar, we entered the country side where everything was red, yellow and orange with occasional blues and violet splashes from the wild flowers.  We turned into a rather rough road and there it was in the midst of the warmth of the country- a big, black building that loomed over the horizon.It was Buchenwald.

Gates to Hell on Earth

Maybe it was just me, but everything seemed to be painted  a tint darker even if it was sunny, and it felt like a dark cloud was looming over us all the time. We entered gates that said “Where work finds you freedom.” How ironic. This is where people worked until they died!

Cells where they kept the "mentally challenged"

We entered a room  where “mentally challenged” prisoners. We learnt about a guy named Paul (not the Paul from the Bible) was kept in there just because he couldn’t stop preaching the gospel to the SS officers. He was beat and tortured but he never gave up. It really made me wonder if I would ever stand up for my faith like he did.

Cell where they tortured the prisoners

 After we left that narrow hallway, we walked towards the chimney.   The chimney was like a giant, casting a shadow on us. I felt the evil of the entire crematorium, as if the crematorium had a sinister mind of its own. I shuddered and tried to shake that creepy feeling off, but I couldn’t. Our tour guide asked us to follow him and we followed, not knowing where we were headed to. We walked down a small set of stairs and he opened a big wooden door. The stench of dead bodies hit me like a truck. It took Eloisa and me a few moments to adjust to the yellow-stained wall andstench of sweat that was left from fifty-some years ago.

We went through the rest of the crematorium building without saying a word. What really shocked me was the operating table for scientists. The doctorsjack cut up people up to experiment with poisonous metals and gases! The photos said it all. Those horrid black and white memories were mounted on a wall for all to see! The nasty smiles of mad scientists who treated Jews like guinea pigs made me freak out. Then, we headed to the “measuring room” , a place where they shot people if they weren’t tall enough to work. (The room consisted of a measuring plank with a hole for a gun to fire through if a person wasn’t tall enough…sneaky eh?)  After walking around the measuring room, we walked past the memorial room. The photos on the wall,slightly yellow from time, still seemed so real.  The blank looks o the faces of people who had no idea why were going through all this, to the hopeless, pathetic face of a weak child, to the relieved faces of people who able to live just one day longer than some people all seemed so real even on paper. 

Memorial wall

Furnace

After period of time in that memorial room, we  headed to THE FURNACE. We walked in to the furnace room and it was like I’d stepped into an abandoned hell. We walked closer and closer toward the furnaces and as we approached them, I felt this really evil preseance. I wanted to cry right then and there because I just felt really sorry for the people, but I held it in….until we got outside. Eloisa and I stepped outside and just started cursing. It has been 50 years or so after WWII and the furnaces still haunt the crap out of people. How could people be so brutal back then?

Eloisa and I just stood there for a good long 30 minutes until Leah(our chaperone) came along to see if we were doing okay. She told us we were standing on the place where they would throw dead bodies and deport them to burial later. The instant she said that, I REFUSED to be there for another second.

Where the dead bodies were piled up

The experience of being in the concentration camp is most definitely different from just seeing pictures and reading a boring text book about it. This really taught me to take things around the world seriously. Although this happened in a place far from where I live, and in totally a different time period, it really has taught me to take note of the brutality in the world. A sea questions ran through my mind as I exited the gate that said “Where work finds you freedom.” Many people have suffered for their beliefs, but why couldn’t I take the bare minimum of being made fun of?

time they were let out of the concentration camp

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