Auschwitz: Just mention of the name is enough to send shivers down the spine of most decent-minded people. Responding to a recent Peltours Travel ad in a newspaper, Dial-a-Cab driver Brian Abrahams joined a group making a one-day visit to the infamous death camp, now a memorial and museum, to try to see for himself the horrors inflicted upon their fellow human beings by the Nazis. This is his story…
Not all Children were killed immediately. Those looking as though they were capable fo work were given a uniform. (Photo courtesy: Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, California)
The group were shown through the complex by a female guide who described in detail the history and daily routine of the camp.
"Packed Like Cattle in Freight Wagons…"
"Auschwitz was originally an army barracks until the Germans invaded Poland during
WW2 and turned it into the notorious concentration camp it is known as today" Brian
explained. He went on to relate how internees would arrive by train - the tracks still
remain - packed like cattle in freight wagons.
Brian went on to detail how prisoners alighting from the trains would be
separated by German
New arrivals would think that they were entering a labour camp, alluded to by the wrought iron sign over the entrance gateway; ‘Arbut Macht Frei’ (Work Makes Freedom). This possibly relaxed them off their guard as they innocently removed their wretched clothing prior to ‘taking a shower’ before being issued with clean clothes and then work. In fact, the buildings signposted ‘showers’ were gas-chambers and the clothing they so freely discarded went straight
Atrocities
Forced labour, deprivation and torture were routine occurrences while all the time
those mass killings, in various forms, continued on a daily basis. Some 1.3 million people
- 80 to 90 % of them being Jews - were systematically murdered by gassing, Phenol
injection to the heart, ‘exercise’ to the point of exhaustion or a range of
other atrocities quite unmentionable in a family magazine such as Call Sign.
Sombrely, Brian related how sickened he felt after seeing a small brick built
bunker about the size of the interior of a cab, into which people would have been forced
without food or water, for days on end.
