Tom and I took a tour to Auschwitz. The boys didn’t come with us. We deliberated much about whether or not we should bring them. We did a lot of research. The museum recommends that children under the age of fourteen don’t visit the museum.
To help us make our decision we watched Schindler’s List with them. We asked the boys if they wanted to go to Auschwitz after they watched the movie. They didn’t. The boys thought it would be too sad. Good for them for knowing their limitations. In hindsight, I think the boys would have been okay visiting Auschwitz though Jaxon would likely be bored. After all, he is only 8.
Even though I was well prepared for what I was going to see, the concentration camp is still a chilling place to visit. Just thinking about what happened there brings tears to your eyes.
They have put exhibits into the buildings that used to be barracks for the prisoners. The exhibits display the property that was taken from Jews and the other prisoners. There were rooms full of shoes, glasses, pots, combs, and artificial limbs. Other barracks were used to display the sanitary conditions of the buildings. I have put a few photos here. See the many more photos under the photos section.
The hardest things to see were the room full of hair, the standing cells and the crematorium. We have no photos of these exhibits. It is not allowed to take photos of the first two and it just felt wrong and disrespectful to take photos in the crematorium where thousands of people were murdered. One of the more eerie sights at Auschwitz was what looked like scratches on the walls inside the crematorium.
After visiting Auschwitz, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This site is larger than Auschwitz. Here is a video showing how large it is.
The Nazis attempted to destroy much of the camp and transported many of the prisoners to Germany prior to the camp being liberated by the Soviets. There are still buildings standing and we went inside a couple of them. The bunks were three high and there were five to six people on each bunk.
This is one of the train cars that would have been used to transport people to the concentration camp.
This is one of the places on my bucket list. The emotions one feels while visiting here is very personal. The sadness and tragedy is one I will always remember.