Auschwitz, Is this true???

There are birds aplenty in cemeteries and on bloody battle and massacre sites world-wide, there is no reason whatsoever why there shouldn't be birds at Dachau or at any other concentration camp site.

 

I think James S post above, sums it pretty well up.

 

Lebach:
I could be wrong but I don't think anyone seriously believes that nothing lives at these sites. Nature is far to forgiving. I shouldn't get too excited because as has already been reported birds have been recorded singing and almost certainly other wild life abound, particularly where human beings are relatively rare and when the area is quite.

 

My father visited Belsen in the 70's with the Life Guards. he said there were no birds or insects there and he was told animals did not come close.
Seems the stench of death still hangs over these sites.

I was based in Bergen Hohne - Formerly the Bergen Belsen Wehrmacht camp which became the hospital after the liberation of Belsen - from 1995 to 1999. I'd heard the same thing, but on several visits to the memorial and the mass graves never experienced this phenomenon.

 

I was at Auschwitz a few days ago and the wee birds were singing their hearts out at Birkenau!!

 

Those might have been Denier birds

 

Having visited Auschwitz I honestly did not hear any birds sing. It is an eerie place with a real sense of something very catastrophic happened there - as we know it was a place of death and untold pain.

 

My father visited Belsen in the 70's with the Life Guards. he said there were no birds or insects there and he was told animals did not come close.
Seems the stench of death still hangs over these sites.
Hi Kitty I remember a visit to Belsen with the Life Guards Im sure that was in the 70`s. I was stationed at Detmold at the the time perhaps it was the same visit?.

 

Hi Bern
Kitty hasn't been on the forum since 2008.

Oh dear, thanks

 

Ivisited with RAF during cold war days on a lets be friends with the reds thing..lots of BAOR went in my days. We had been told that story..nice but not true. plenty of wildlife in the area and although no starlings putting on any shows...there were birds in fact being immature bods at time we kept saying bird...bird...another bird...sorry but unless they have culls now they were around in 80s

 

I went to Dachau in Munich and Sachsenhausen in Berlin a couple of years ago and in BOTH cases I saw wildlife in trees and feeding on the ground.
Maybe with the passing of time things have changed and the atmosphere has given way to a new beginning?

 

I had exactly the same experience when I visited Dachau in 1965. Errie .....

 

When I visited Auschwitz a few years ago I got there early, around 7am. I was greeted by the caws of numerous rooks in the trees inside the camp. Every time now I hear rooks making their noise I think of Auschwitz.

 

With regard to visiting Auschwitz, this is something I have been thinking of doing as part of a trip in a year or so, still undecided. Is there much truth in what I have read in passing that much of the structures were all leveled and a lot of the buildings are re-creations? Obviously one will expect a lot of repair and remedial work to what were supposed to be temporary structures. Is it also right that you more or less have to go on an organised tour or can you just turn up on your own and look around with your own thoughts?

 

You can go on your own , I would say that reading up on the camp before hand would be well advised.
Re constructions - not many - the few remaining wooden huts in Birkenau are rebuilt , the majority were destroyed or taken down as they represented a major health problem.
Auschwitz 1 is as it was left - the first gas chamber there has been rebuilt partly as the function of the building changed when the gassing of prisoners was relocated to Birkenau in 1942.

Organised tours - they do tend to spend too much time in Auschwitz 1 and largely ignore Birkenau which had by 42 taken over as the main centre for receiving sorting and killing those who arrived to the camp.
The hutted accommodation is gone so don't expect to see all those rows of long wooden huts , they just don't exist but beyond them at the far end of Birkenau are the remains of gas chambers 2,3,4 and 5 , the little white and the little red houses - these "little" houses being the houses converted for use as gas chambers until the purpose build killing centres came on line.
these should be seen also the birch wood at the top end of the camp.

For me Birkenau held much more in its empty landscape than did Auschwitz 1 , also think about looking at Monowitz ( Auschwitz 3) the main industrial centre supplied with slave labour.

Not saying you should ignore Auschwitz main camp it is well worth seeing as many exhibitions there help explain what once just down the road at Birkenau and Monowitz - sadly the organised tours do tend to focus on 1 at the expense of Birkenau and I would again recommend reading up on the camp before going it will make understanding it much easier.
Worth seeing the BBc series now out on DVD "Auschwitz , the Nazis and The Final Solution" it will give you a good grounding in what this massive camp and its sub camps were about.

 

I visited that place a few years ago on a bus loaded with noisy Brits.
The bus was silent all the way back. Duane.

 

I've heard that if you visit Auschwitz, you 'll never see any birds or other animals around as they never go anywhere near it. maybe they can sense the death that went on there or something.
Has anybody else heard this or is sombody pulling my leg?
Probably the latter I think.

I was there with my wife and many friends in the summer of 2006, and it´s true, almost in my personal experience, there were no birds.

Still under discussion if my surname is Jewish or adopted by Jewish converts to Christianity. It's irrelevant. A. Birkenau is always personal.

 

A couple of Polish friends and I were thinking of going to Auschwitz rather than the Berlin trip we originally planned. One has been before and she said that she heard no birds while she was there, it was apparently eriely quiet.

A couple of days ago I visited the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. Quite harrowing to be honest. I found it quite dark and sombering and the continual background sound track of Hitler's speeches seemed to impinge on your subconscious with insidiousness. I was concerned that it would either give me nightmares or have an unknown effect on my aura/thinking etc. By the time I reached the Auschwitz model, I felt almost like I was entering the ovens myself. I was extremely glad to go back outside to the bright lights of the rest of the museum.

Having seen that, I can imagine that the 'real thing' would be even more harrowing.

EDIT: It was incomprehensible to me, how people could put others through such as indescribable ordeal, just because they were 'different'. In fact words escape me really.

 

Nicola, I too have heard that Auschwitz is eerily quiet as well but I want to give you a possible explanation as to why.

A lot of people do not know this but I'm a ghost hunter of sorts. I've been ghost hunting for many many years and have read, studied and have experienced many things in a lot of haunted places. One of the reasons (and this is only a possibility) of why there are no birds singing or calling is that animals are aware of spirits around a horrible place such as Auschwitz. The animals usually flee from such places due to the activity of spiritual suffering and active emotional energies which is why you probably will not experience any or all animal activity.

Some people do not believe in ghosts which is fine however, as I stated this is one possible explanation of why you do not see or hear animals around places of human suffering and emotional trauma. When I read your post in regards to what you were feeling, I would not be surprised if you "felt" or "caught" the emotional energy of the victims that suffered horribly there.

I hope that helps you in some way.