I have been reading and watching movies related to World War II and had always developed a sinking feeling of what went through the lives of individuals, their families and their close ones. Not resisting my instincts to see "Auschwitz"
I entered Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum.
And indeed I did with a wave of icy wind cutting my ears. There was numbness and a thought going in ..... what was a prisoner thinking "I must live whatever may happen".
SS was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
Reading Leon Uris 's - Milla 18 the word "Ghetto" had always stuck a chord in my heart. Ghetto is an area of a city, especially a very poor area, where people of a particular race or religion live closely together and apart from other people. The word mentioned above in the map would bring me those memories of the novel alive. How these families were striving to find a meaning in their lives to survive and they finally ended up in this camp where millions of men, women and children took their last breath.
Going through the different rooms gave a horrifying feeling of disgust. Did this really happen? Oh yes ... it did. The prisoners as they are mentioned were brought from their residences with their precious belongings wrapped in clothes, suitcases, baskets or whatever they could get hold of by railway coaches. On the platform itself they were segregated -women, children, healthy men. While I explored this museum, I had a feeling of nausea, but I wanted to discover more about the dark side of human nature.
What was left behind? Watching the belongings of millions of prisoners of war who were deprived of their right to live gave me a feeling of numbness.
This was, I think more than enough for my camera. I cannot exactly relate that how I felt after seeing all this, I did feel an icy sensation come on and it went through my whole body. I was unable to click the cloth made by the hair of the prisoners and also their hair preserved behind the glass chambers in the rooms where they all once prayed to live the life given to them by the Almighty. Standing on the crossroads of the camp I wondered what had happened to those who had tried to escape, after all no one wanted to end up in this place.
The offices, the sleeping beds where the prisoners were sentenced and they slept before the execution....
I walked out of the camp after witnessing a place where the most horrible deaths took place in the history of this planet and my mind was caught with this arresting quote....