Showcase Sunday - Auschwitz - Ovens Should Bake Only Bread
(Edited)
Today is Sunday... which means the Showcase Sunday challenge. Showcase Sunday is a chance to resurrect your best work, and perhaps get some new eyes on those posts that took hours/days to make.
Lets set the scene... it was November 2018 and I had been chilling in Krakow at steemfest 3! The conference days had flown by in a heady cacophony of knowledge and project presentations, networking and great food.
Saturday had arrived, and I had opted in to taking the excursion to visit Auschwitz. I had only a mild hangover after drinking in moderation at the bowling the night before and I'm so glad I showed this restraint.
Auschwitz is one hell of a sobering experience, but I don't think I was fully prepared for the emotional cluster-bomb these fields and barracks would have on me. The place is what it is; a haunting and deeply effective monument to the attempted genocide of a whole race.
This travel blog I wrote a week after I returned from Krakow says it all a million times better than I could now. The poem included in this blog is one of the best I've ever written on steem, and I feel that it captured the insane levels of casual cruelty that were a mainstay at Auschwitz & Birkenau, along with how the place made me feel on a psychological level. I'm welling up now remembering that day trip. After rereading the blog and poem, I'm reminded of the intense and odd feeling I had all the way around the site, like the ground had soaked up the soul of evil.
I can't really say it any better than at the end of the poem (see below) - ovens should bake only bread.
Auschwitz - Putting a Face to the Name
This trip was one of the hardest things I have ever experienced emotionally and to an extent, I feel a little overwhelmed blogging about it now. But it is important to explore the world through the lens of our own perception, both good and bad. This is how stories are passed on, how lessons are solidified, by the retelling through a myriad of different eyes. What one person may write, about the history, facts and figures of the holocaust might speak to a certain reader and pass the message of history along. Equally, some might read a poem and feel the deep abiding horror of what happened at Auschwitz in the depth of their stomach just as I did. All perspectives are valid, and needful, to perpetuate those lessons.
Putting a face to the name. That title speaks to something I think is at the root cause of why the human species can perpetuate such levels of genocide. How people who consider themselves compassionate can turn aside and look the other way when such extreme violence is being visited upon a whole group of people. If it is made easy for them to not put a face to the name it's possible for them to follow a twisted logic of dehumanizing people. I also think the psychology of fear has a lot to do with why the Nazi's got away with such atrocities along with the rhetoric of hate based on race, religion and stereotypes. It is a hard circumstance to analyse and I am aware that many non-Jewish people did resist and help/hide people persecuted by the Nazis, helping them to escape the holocaust.
The wall of pictures in Auschwitz had a profound effect on me psychologically. I shrugged it off at the time, but if you look closely in the picture above you can see that Aurelia Bienko is smiling. Is this a case of a learned reaction? Smile for the camera, so to speak. Or did she still have hope and belief that this wasn't a death camp that she had been brought to at the time the picture was taken. It was a strange thing to think about, but these are the questions I wanted to ask her and possibly an emotional defence mechanism for me as I walked down that hallway. Her smile was the thing that jumped out at me among the many faces on that wall because it seemed so out of place among those others so full of hopelessness and suffering. Faces of fathers bereft of family and mothers separated from their children. Or maybe hers was a smile of defiance. We will never know.
I put a name to that face in a sea of faces because something that seemed out of place caught my attention. Don't get me wrong, each and every one of those pictures hit me hard, their names, the senseless nature of their deaths, the description of their jobs and family, all made it personal. I was seeing people some of whom I undoubtedly would have got along with, some maybe had disagreements with, and perhaps our personalities would have clashed, but all people just trying to get on with life. My emotional reaction and fixation on Aurelia was simply a way to cope with the realization that over a million people, just like you or me, were exterminated over a twisted ideology.
Below, is a library of pictures of the main Auschwitz concentration camp before we move on to Birkenau. I have written a poem at the end of this post which expresses my impressions much more clearly than I find myself able to in prose.
The language used - 'special treatment' - still makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Birkenau - Poetry - An Oven Should Bake Only Bread
Mind flayed by the cattle stalls,
muscles tight, tears held in stasis,
empty chambers now collapsed.
Cold shelves lined walls,
where women were stacked.
Paint-flecked carved pain
engraved in family names.
I ate a Twix surreptitiously,
while starving eyes of the dead
counted sun-baked tourists.
All ovens should bake only bread.
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Shared on twitter for Ocd's proof of share initiative
#posh
https://twitter.com/rowanj808/status/1213880878465720326?s=20
Seems a long time since I was there with @bingbabe, shame we missed you.
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Yeah, man... it's a shame we didn't meet. It was a while back now.
I was properly inside my own head at Auschwitz, but emerged from the introvert shell on the bus back. I remember having some awesome fun conversations with jayna and nomadicsoul. It's almost like we were helping each other out of the deep sadness of that place.
I dunno, some people can distance themselves psychologically from stuff like that, which is fine. I can't keep the emotional distance when visiting somewhere like that, so I end up engulfed in the feelings of the place.
Wouldn’t have missed it for anything. It was some experience, I documented it all in black and white, it seemed more fitting.
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Thanks so much for the curation c-squared. Much appreciated 👍🙂
I believe that someone will visit old factories and think we were slaves and mistreated in the future and just the thought of it will also make them feel sick in the stomach. They will think we lived like live stock trading our most valuable asset(time) for subjective ethical values.
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I certainly hope that the world develops into a less polorized place, that's less driven by the consumers, those who take advantage, and the consumed! I don't see any indication of it right now to be honest.
The Wealth gap increases, and acquisitions of wealth is seen as the ultimate goal in so many places around the world.
I think evolution beyond our current systems is essential though if we're not to destroy the planet that sustains us. Money, and the pursuit of it, is a big driver of our consumer mentality for sure.
I can only agree! What an awesome reply mate! Appreciate that a lot. You are right! We are all or at least most of us producers and creatives and not born to work in assembly lines. With decentralized DLT some networks will have the potential to change that. So called influencers are usually rich brat alpha consumers who just have elite education or expensive equipment but most of them don't really create much value. Now that we can empower the true creatives to timestamp publications, work and patents, plagiarism, and not adding the author of a quote becomes so evident of the consumerists unoriginality. People on centralized social get credits for value they haven't even created. I think your comment and your post is very insightful, because i can see that change happening in baby steps. Once people understand money theory, subjective values as opposed to marginal utility, indirect and direct exchange as opposed to money theory, that gap could vanish quickly and that upper social class could at least funnel wealth to empower the right people. Lets hope that this information will reach people that care about community and creating wealth and basic income or a quality standards of living for everyone.
Thanks for putting this out again. I missed it before. I cannot fathom the emotional end of being there in person. I visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC a few years back, and it deeply affected me for days. Can't imagine actually being in Auschwitz/Birkenau in person. You did an incredibly strong post on showing and describing the experience. I thought your poem was extremely hard hitting, and very emotional to read, beyond well written.
So important for these horrors to stay on the forefront of everyone's mind into the future. It is so easy for humans to slip back into treating one another in unfathomable, horrendous ways, though few could compare to these times of history. And as the DC memorial emphasizes, it is not only in history, but ongoing on many scales/locales today. I'm sure this was a bit hard to write, think you mentioned that, so thanks for that.
Well, on to a happier note, hope your New Year is going well, and is a grand one. Cheers on a Sunday in January
Hi m8
Yeah, it was mentally a harsh experience, if I'm honest.
But as you say, these things must never be forgotten!
Happy new year :)
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