Auschwitz: To See or not to See

AUSCHWITZ: To See or not to See...

By: Hugo Pita Pantín, Salma Castro Primoy and Sabela Cupeiro Guzmán

Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps

To See or not to See...

Page 02

Page 1

Auschwitz has become the symbol of the Holocaust, murder, terror and the greatest violation of human rights. For these reasons, and as an example of what should not be repeated, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), a specialized agency of the United Nations that is responsible for trying to contribute to world peace and security through culture, communication, education and science, has named it a World Heritage Site.

Hello, we are Hugo, Salma and Sabela and, today, we are going to tell you about our experience in the largest concentration and extermination camp that is currently preserved from the genocide of Nazi Germany on Polish territories during World War II.

Page 04

Page 03

During our trip to Poland we were lucky we could visit both Auschwitz camps (Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau) with our colleagues from Sweden, Poland and Estonia. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they first decided to eliminate all those people they considered dangerous or undesirable. That is why during the first arrests in Poland, they were people who belonged to the political and cultural elite, people who were protesting against Germany.

The concentration camp was created in the 1940s similar to those that already existed in Germany. The reason for its creation was that there had been massive arrests in Poland. It became a concentration camp due to its good conditions as being isolated from the cities; it was outside urbanized areas and ways of communication.

Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps

To See or not to See...

Page 06

Page 05

Jews. They were made to believe that they would have new lives with work and a place to live in and, then, they were sent to Auschwitz, forcing them to leave their belongings at home. They wanted to keep their belongings in secret, but the German soldiers always used to revise in case the prisoners had kept something. So, they used to separate the wagon for the luggage from the others so that the prisoners couldn’t get their luggage back. From there, their hell began.

Thanks to the train that came to the countryside from big cities, it became a center of mass extermination of

As soon as they were separated, women, children and elderly people were taken straight to the "showers" that in fact were gas rooms that would end their lives. Here, in this image, we can see how those women who went to the gas rooms cut their hair and kept it.

Page 07

Page 08

We spent the whole trip thinking about that visit because it seemed really important and interesting to us. We liked to know everything that had happened in that place and realized that it did not happen so long ago and we cannot allow it to happen again. Auschwitz seemed to us to be just another place for tourism, well-prepared for visits, but with shop windows and impressive data such as the braids, or the shoes of small children.

Men of working age and women with good abilities entered the camp to perform forced labor, without their families and asking themselves many questions. After a while working and with terrible living conditions, they ended up in the gas rooms bringing to light THE DARK PART OF THE HUMAN BEING. Crematorium in the photograph.

Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps

To See or not to See...

Page 10

Page 09

The guide told us a very interesting story and thanks to the various images and spaces prepared for these visits, you can have a very clear idea of how everything had been.

However, Birkenau was even a more striking place to look at, since it was an immense esplanade with lots of chimneys and crematoria, where they killed and burned people.

Page 12

Page 11

In short, we enjoyed this outing very much and we learned a lot . We recommend visiting it at some point in your life. LINK WITH THE PROJECT. We relate it to the contamination of the chimneys due to deaths in the crematoria. It wasn’t sustainable. It is a UNESCO site.

In the place where the prisoners used to sleep, they had dire living conditions. They slept piled on wood or bricks, in bunk beds of 3. It was quite hard to see! People arrived at this camp in a wagon without seeing anything on a train track, this gives a very sad image of their arrival here.

ERASMUS+ KA121 "ZERO WASTE" IES Canido, Ferrol 2023-2025

FONTS: Some information was taken from the book Auschwitz Birkenau. Photogrpahs by students and teachers in our team.

The project Zero Waste is co-finaced by the EU. The opinions and points of view shown are the sole responsibility of its authors and of IES Canido and do not reflect those of the EU nor the the ones of SEPIE. Neither the EU nor the National Agency SEPIE can be made resposible for them.