Residents of Oświęcim, the Polish town right next to Auschwitz-Birkenau, were profiled by AFP on Thursday, the day before German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her first visit to the camp.
Oświęcim is home to 40,000 Poles, who go about their normal lives in the shadow of the most notorious Nazi concentration camp, forever associated with death, gas chambers, torture and ashes. A million Jews were murdered at the camp.
Dawid Karlik, a student at a college 650 feet away from Auchwitz’s “Arbeit macht frei” gate, told AFP: “Visitors believe that even three generations later, we should be in mourning all day, every day.”
“Yes, we know the history. The building where I study had previously served as housing for SS women. But today it’s our school,” Karlik said.
Anna Duda, also a student at the college, said that “it is the Germans who built the biggest death camp here during the war. We, the residents of Oświęcim, had nothing to do with it. But we remember and have to live a normal life here despite the difficult past.”
Half of the street names in Oświęcim are related to Auschwitz. A mass grave of 700 Auschwitz victims lies at the intersection of two streets called “Deportees” and “Camp.” Commemorative plaques are seen throughout the town.
“Those who live here keep the flame alive,” said Oświęcim resident Jerzy Tobiasz, a retired mineworker.
Before the Nazis came to power, there were about 8,000 Jews living in Oświęcim, more than half of the town’s population. In October 1939, the Nazis annexed the town to the Third Reich.
In 1940, the Nazis used forced labor to build the concentration camp and expelled nearby Polish residents from the area in 1940 and 1941. About 17,000 people from Oświęcim and surrounding villages were expelled from their homes and eight villages were completely wiped off the map. Only 7,600 residents remained in Oświęcim by April 1941.
The Jews of Oświęcim were expelled in several stages and were later deported to Auschwitz, where most of them were killed in the gas chambers right next to their former homes.
“Remembering the crimes… is a responsibility which never ends,” Merkel said during her visit to Auschwitz on Friday, adding that she feels a “deep shame in the face of the barbaric crimes committed by Germans here.”
“Nothing can bring back the people who were murdered here. Nothing can reverse the unprecedented crimes committed here. These crimes are and will remain part of German history and this history must be told over and over again. To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society.”
“I bow my head before the victims of the Shoah,” Merkel said, adding that the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany in recent years has reached an “alarming level.”
“To combat anti-Semitism, the history of extermination camps has to be shared, it has to be told.”
Merkel brought a 60-million-euro ($66-million) donation for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. Germany also donated 60 million euros when the foundation was established ten years ago, which makes them the top donor of the 38 countries that have contributed to the fund.
Merkel’s visit to the camp was only the third visit of a German chancellor to the site. Merkel has also visited other Nazi concentration camps in Germany and has visited Yad Vashem in Israel five times.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pays tribute to Holocaust victims at the "Death Wall" in the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, December 6. pic.twitter.com/gKwiozT3UH
— Voice of America (@VOANews) December 6, 2019
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Auschwitz was a polish army camp way before 1940 and the town of oswiecem is actually several miles away from auschwitz-birkenau. I know of what I speak because I’ve been there!