Auschwitz, Is this true???

No worries, mate. I didn't take anything personal. Everyone's experience is unique and I realize and respect that.

I'll get the pictures up as soon as I can. Work as usual is getting in the way.

 

The first time I visited Belsen it was miserable November afternoon in the early 1980s and I left with the impression that the place was dark and devoid of all life. I have since been back on several occasions which were coincidentally warm sunny summer afternoons. Although I still felt the dark mood of the place the place was green, bright and far from lifeless.

I saw the same effect, in a single afternoon at Buchenwald when a dull and wet visit changed into a sunny afternoon. The effect each person experiences is built on many things, including preconceptions, time of year and the weather. At least that is my humble opinion.

 

The taking of photographs in itself is not a bad thing. It is the context in which they are taken and the intention of the photographer. The taking of some photos (without flash, I hasten to add) with the right attitude help the photographer later to reflect at a later stage with sombre intrespection/reflection of what they have seen. A reminder.
There are times to contemplate the extent of the human destruction. When one is back in their comfortable domain, they can look back and it will reinforce the experience. In this context I personally think this is paying sincere respect, not the focus of some macabre holiday snaps.

Personal decency should be the deciding factor in the matter. If I visited said sites I may take a few photos only or perhaps none at all. If other visitors are blatently showing a disrectful attitude, then they should be informed of their ignorance and if they wanted to carry on - be forcibly ejected from the site. Might not be good for PR, but it would give them food for thought.

 

Not to disagree out right but I myself would say the taking of photographs would be an aid to show to people who have never been to these sites a token idea of the horror. I rather imagine that,like myself,those of us who have actually been there dont need such visual reminders. It has been 5 years now and I can still smell the cold damp of the cellars in block 11 and still clearly picture the pile of childrens shoes and cans of gift gas.

 

It has been 5 years now and I can still smell the cold damp of the cellars in block 11

Block 11 was a very dreadful experience for me, quite rightly so.
I came out into the sunlight (very hot August day) but didn't really stop shivering after that.

 

I was visiting Auschwitz - Birkenau in the summer of 2005, and I can confirm that I didn't see any birds or other types of animals there. What the cause is, I don't know, but I can confirm that I didn't see any animals.

 

Well there are 2 schools of thought here: The "Humanities" group which believes that nature is affected by evil and will not go near it and the Sciences School which believes that nature is nature and that evil is not something that it notices. This massive chasm between the two schools has never been breached and will continue to rage across these boards for many, many, many years to come.

 

The Sciences people are also Eggheads who wander around in Lab coats and appear on programs like this:

YouTube - Look Around You - 1 - Maths

 

Thank you Owen D. I really think that you should visit Auschwitz some day, it's worth it!

 

The place where no birds sing? North of Caen. No birds at all, None... Only the sweet sickly stench of death. The poor little things would have perished anyway...And I am deadly serious.
Sapper

 

Well there are 2 schools of thought here: The "Humanities" group which believes that nature is affected by evil and will not go near it and the Sciences School which believes that nature is nature and that evil is not something that it notices. This massive chasm between the two schools has never been breached and will continue to rage across these boards for many, many, many years to come.


With the noted exception that those of who have been there and who have seen the birds completely discredit the theory that birds NEVER go to Auschwitz. They do.

It does not however discredit the individual exeriences of those who go there and do not see the birds. There are reasons for it, several possible ones I gave in my other post.

If an individual wants to believe that they have seen no birds because of the evil of the place and that enhances their experience, then so be it. If someone does not see birds because they choose not to or because they don't know where to look, then so be it.

But there is a bottom line here and the minute I saw that duck sitting in one of the ditches inside the fence line I found out where it was. I knew where to look to find birds. And birds there are a plenty, in SOME places within Auschwitz.

Of course, if someone wanted to argue against my credibility as a reliable witness to the presence of avian life then I guess that's another matter. After all, I didn't get any pictures of birds when I was there....


I'm done 'raging' now as I agree with Herr Heinrichi that much like the 'chicken or the egg' argument, this is perhaps an issue that will never see complete agreement, and will live on forever.

-EB, card carrying member of the Audobon Society

:p

 

For anyone who wants to go to Auschwitz but hasn't yet got round to it, I've just come across this camcorder footage of somebodys tour of the place on youtube.



YouTube - First Auschwitz trip (July 2000) Part 1

YouTube - First Auschwitz trip (July 2000) Part 2: Crematoria

 

And if you listen, there are definately birds at Auschwitz.

 

I was a Continental Coach driver for 14 yrs and I have been to Dachau many times, but I have always seen and heard birds, and seen rabbits, I think its like Croonaert said, that because you are too hyped into to what you are going to see and link it with what went on there, you fail to notice and hear birds singing, the first couple of trips I did, I was too hyped into what happened there, but after your 6th visit, I started staying by the coach on the coach park, thats when I noticed birds flying over the camp, and birdsong, I also noticed rabbits hopping around.
Regards
tankie1rtr

 

My sister visited Bergen-Belson some years ago and told me that it was eirey quiet and she could not see or hear any birds.

I travelled on a coach trip to Germany in 2000 and the coach driver diverted to Bergen-Belsen. Although it was a poor day weather wise I saw and heard several birds, but was overcome when looking around the mounds and seeing the numbers of the dead per mound!

As I now live in Berlin I have travelled to Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, North of Berlin.

This was the first concentration camp set up by the NS system and it was easy for them to take anyone not to their persuasion from the streets in Berlin and detain relatively close by.

Having visited this place, where brutality of an unimaginable extreme was handed out daily to the inmates, I cannot understand people denying that this took place.

The Camp is now a Museum, dedicated to educating people of the horrors of the NS system of extermination camps.

There is also a very large room full of computers where anyone can study from a vast amount of documented evidence.

I found it to be a truly moving experience. I plan to take my daughters there next year, as reading books about the holocaust is just not the same as visiting these monuments to those killed by the system.

Tom

 

This is all so moving, despite the fact that i have been nowhere near the place, i feel as if i have.
Spooky, kinda.
Least We Forget

 

My youngest ( now 18) was there four years and found it to be one of those sights you don't forget , at some stage I want to go back again the atmosphere is somehow unreal - especially in the birch wood adjacent to units 4 and 5 when the wind moves through those trees it sends a chill through you, is it like the voices from the past whispering to you.

 

Away from the horror of the camps is another monument to the war in the centre of Berlin, next to the Brandenburg gate. At the gate, you walk through from pleasant green modern Western Germany to a grey stone jungle on the East German side of the old wall. The buildings are pock marked by shells and bullets, there is an air of sadness and despair. Then the monument is a single story grey granite building guarded by a East German and a West German soldier. Inside it is bare with no lighting. Other than a single beam of sunlight from the glass dome in the centre of the roof, which falls onto a golden statue of a knelling woman and child. There is nothing else in the room, the walls hidden in the darkness. Emotion does not come easy to some, nor to me, but goodness I can still see the vista through damp eyes after 25 years.