16 postcards left by the hell of Auschwitz, 74 years after its release

By Damián Vallejos / [email protected]

I was in Auschwitz almost 80 years after Nazi Germany decided to invade Poland and make it hell from World War II. Today we are celebrating the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in 1945.

There is not much to add to what we have seen dozens of times in documentaries, movies, series and diaries.

Today, in this Polish country, there are no soldiers who mistreat you, nor malnourished children, nor blankets with the hair of Jewish women.

The visit of the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Bikernau is cold and serious. During the 4 hours that lasted my visit, I did not see a single smile among the visitors, as if it was forbidden.

As if all that you see that the human being could do only 80 years ago will not leave you smiling for a second.

Arbeit macht frei. The work frees, indicated entry into the first sector of all fields in which they exterminated 1,100,000 people, 90% of whom were Jews.

When it was founded in 1940, abandoned brick buildings of the Polish army were used. And this was not meant to kill Jews but to annihilate opponents and prisoners of war.

In this place, there are several spaces that are preserved as when they were released: the beds, the walls and even the dirt in the bathrooms.

The court in which prisoners were shot

A year later, the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination machine was created. It is located one kilometer and has a much larger territory.

They arrived by the thousands in trains. Most with a bit of hope, even if they walked on the ground, they literally looted them and gave them a uniform. The latter to those who have not died a few minutes or hours after their arrival.

They were told that they should take a shower to disinfect themselves.

They had them write their names in suitcases.

Leave their shoes together, fastened by the laces to be able to find them easily when they leave.

But they would not leave. It was a gas chamber and the only thing that was going out was bodies.

Inside part of the only remaining gas chamber

Many have lived several weeks there. In the Birkenau wooden barracks They slept up to 6 people in each bed. All without ventilation in summer and exposed to extreme cold in winter.

They did not have a bathroom. They had to use the latrines in other barracks. They could only use them twice a day and for a few seconds. SS officers did not enter this place, so one of the most wanted jobs by some prisoners was to control and clean them.

The most "hard" of all the trick can not be shown. They do not allow taking pictures: in a room almost without light and behind a glbad are the hair of thousands of women. And around the room dozens of stories: they made blankets for prisoners, pillows and traces of Zyclon B, so they were scammed after killing them.

The zyclon b. It is a cyanide-based pesticide that has become one of the main ingredients of the "final solution" of Adolf Hitler.

It was created years before the war by Fritz Haber, a German Jew who had to emigrate in 1934. His family had been murdered with this same gas in one of the concentration camps.

Today, Auschwitz-Birkenau is a living memory of death, the history of humanity. It's worth getting through even if it moves your body and prevents you from smiling for a moment.