After everyone had left and gone home, mom and I sat and recovered for the remainder of New Years Day and then we spent the rest of the week restoring our house. We found a number of items that had been left behind and actually created a tote in the garage that we have labelled “Lost & Found”. That is where things we find in our house go when we think that the owner may actually want to keep it.
By the end of the week we decided that we needed to get out. Lisa has been wanting to go to an Auschwitz museum that is being held at the Reagan library for some time and when she heard that it was being extended to the end of January we decided it was time to pay Vicky and Thomas a visit. The Reagan library is only minutes from the McCormacks.
The exhibit was very sobering. We got there shortly after noon and we hadn’t finished by 5:00 when they kicked us out. They had thousands of artifacts that they recovered when the Allieds went in and cleaned it up. Hundreds of stories were shared that I couldn’t possibly remember. I learned a lot about Auschwitz that I never knew. I will try and summarize volumes of books in a couple of paragraphs.
Hitler sincerely believed that Jews were subhuman and that by allowing them to interbreed with higher levels of humans, it degraded the human race. It was his goal to exterminate every Jew. As it became obvious that Germans may lose the war, they stepped up their efforts to kill them faster.
Every Jew they could find anywhere in Europe (along with blacks, gays and gypsys) were loaded onto cattle cars like this one and shipped to Auschwitz.
Upon arrival, they were sorted. Anyone who looked like they could work was sent in one direction and all the children, sick and elderly were sent in another direction. To prevent too much disturbance, any caregivers were sent with the children they cared for.
More than 1,100,000 people were sent to Auschwitz and 900,000 of them went straight to the gas chambers. All the stories you hear about were told by the remaining 200,000 who were subject to starving, extreme labor or “medical” experiments.
Those sent to the gas chambers were told that they had to be decontaminated and told to strip and go take a shower to get rid of the lice etc. They removed all of their clothing and neatly stacked it away for when they returned and then they were sent into the showers. Once inside, the doors were locked and the room was filled with poisonous gas that was a pesticide to exterminate bugs.
The working prisonors were then sent in to cut the hair off the women and pull any gold teeth they could find and then haul the bodies to the incinerators. The clothing, jewellery and other artifacts were then hauled of to storage rooms. The storage rooms were called Kanada because Canada had a reputation of being a place that was full of riches but difficult to get to and to survive in.
When the Germans saw the Russians coming they tried to destroy everything but they didn’t get it all. They were finding artifacts for decades afterwards. Hundreds of teeth, seven tons of hair (can you imagine how many women it would take to make seven tons of hair?), clothing, utensiles etc. All the shoes they found were collected and some of them were shown in this exhibit and they singled out a single shoe to represent the tragic end of a woman who just recently had enjoyed a happy and fulfilling life.
--------------------trivia--------------------
Hitler is responsible for the deaths of 20,000,000 people
Stalin is responsible for the deaths of 40,000,000 people
General Mao is responsible for the deaths of 65,000,000 people
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