AUSCHWITZ - TODAY

50 years after...

A field of ruins amidst a peaceful landscape - meadows, trees, bushes, little ponds. Hardly any remains of the death-machinery are visible any more. Only the one who knows about the tragic history of this site is able to recognize it; the one who doesn't know or isn't interested will not see anything.

Because:

The crematories are destroyed, the barracks torn down or non-existent any more, the barbed wire fences corroded. This is the first impression of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The ponds look peaceful - who knows that they are full of the ashes of murdered people ?

One wanders over a green glade in the woods, with flowers and grass all around - but it was exactly that clearing where thousands were burnt on funeral piles because the crematories had become sooted..

One stands in front of a cemented basement with a destroyed ceiling which lookes like a swimming-pool - but it was a gas chamber.

Somewhere in the weed-grown grass landscape, there are red bricks, between them a rusty something wisted of steel. These are remains of crematorium V including a part of the crematory oven. The grate and the chimney was "the only way out" for many prisoners, a "way" that the SS had determined for them.

History becomes alive by the reports of survivors and by the knowledge about that history. One is already touched by the incredible site of the extermination camp, but then gets to know that the SS had planned an even larger camp.

"In memory of those who were sacrificed for the greed of power and for human stupidity, that their pain might not be useless and that we will be ready to learn out of history."
(Source: Kohl, Robert/ Siegel, Petra/ Neiß, Andreas: Auschwitz - Endstation Vernichtung.)