Yesterday, at the ROM – Royal Ontario Museum – we visited an exhibit titled Auschwitz. No other word is needed. Words won’t do this exhibit justice, but let me try: stunning, poignant, tear-inducing, heartbreaking, anger, loss, depravity, courage, evil.
Many of us have read novels set during WWII. Some of those novels describe aspects of the holocaust. None of the ones I’ve read hit me with as much impact as this exhibit.
The first item, one quite close to the entrance, is a red shoe. It’s a woman’s shoe: stylish, made of leather and with a small heel. Like so many objects on display, it was taken from a woman who’d been sent to Auschwitz. And there it stands as a symbol of everything that was lost.
Not far from that shoe is a photo of an enormous pile of shoes – also from Auschwitz – and a poem.
This post isn’t about historical fiction but it is about history. As I wound my way through the exhibit, I took many other photos while grief seeped into my soul.
As you may know, Hitler was initially elected to office. He led a party called the National Socialists which came to power partly in response to German anger over what had become of their country after WWI. This 1928 poster reminded Germans of what they had lost and how they continued to suffer.
- 1933 – Boycott of Jewish businesses
- 1933 – Nazis equated modernity (something they opposed) with what they called the ‘Jewish spirit’. Public book burnings were one consequence of that sentiment.
- 1933 – A law was passed allowing for the immediate dismissal of all Jewish public servants, including teachers, and the disbarment of Jewish lawyers.
- by 1938, the Nuremberg laws came into effect forbidding the marriage of Jews with those of ‘German blood’ and, among other restrictions, forbidding Jews to employ any females of German blood in their households. These laws were taught in schools as this poster illustrates. Rassengesetze means ‘race laws’. Genebmigungspflichig means ‘subject to approval’.
Auschwitz was established after Hitler invaded Poland, initially to deal with the mass arrests of Polish people. Beginning in 1942, it also became one of the largest extermination centres for the Jewish people. The map illustrates the transport of Jews from all over Europe to Poland. The women and children in the photo below were all about to be murdered by one of Hitler’s Einsatzgruppe – mobile killing units that accompanied the German army into the Soviet Union to eliminate communists and Jews.
Hitler and his military even had diagrams to organize mass murders of Jews.
By 1942, there were several killing centres in Poland.
This is a long and difficult post. I have many more photos, although I could not bring myself to take one showing a diagram of the crematorium which included a room where Jews removed all their clothes and a room where after being gassed to death, prisoners shaved the hair off each body’s head. The “combed-out and cut-off women’s hair,” a previous order had noted, “will be used to make socks for submarine crews and to manufacture felt stockings for railroad workers.” The hair was also used to make ignition mechanisms in bombs, ropes and cords for ships, and stuffing for mattresses.
I’ll leave you with this one. Everyday items found after Auschwitz was liberated – the painted mug brings tears to my eyes even as I write.
Never again.
A few more novels to consider:
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
16 Responses
Thank you for this as I conclude my Passover observance. J Regen, author
Wishing you the blessings of Passover. Many thanks for your comment.
No words
Hugs …
Thank you for the pictures and poetry. I had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. several years ago. I was stunned by the exhibits. We were actually escorted into the small boxcars that took those destined for the camps. We must never forget. Karen Wills Cunningham.
Thank you, Karen. It truly made me weep.
The shoe is certainly poignant.
Many thanks Kathryn. Sending hugs.
I visited Auschwitz last week. The overwhelming sadness hit me the moment we walked through the infamous gate that mocked the prisoners with the words, ”Work Shall Set You Free.” I broke down when we reached the room containing the hair of thousands of Jewish women used to make the things you described, but also used to weave carpets. I was one of thousands of visitors that day, each bearing witness to the horrors. May we never forget.
Hello, Barb. Many thanks for sharing your memory of Auschwitz. I visited Dachau many years ago and will never forget it. With what’s going on in our world, the memory of the holocaust is with me every day.
I often think about my maternal Austrian great-grandmother and wonder what it was like for her when she was hidden from the Nazis by a farming family. No conceivable way I can know it. A music teacher at the high school I attended had a wrist tattoo. Today I imagine caressing it with my hands and kissing it to take away the pain and the memories. Supreme Court justice Ginsberg said “When injustice prevails, resistance becomes duty.” Indeed.
Hello Sheila … many thanks for your comment and sharing a bit about your past. “Resistance becomes duty.” A call for today just as it was in the last. Warm wishes,
Thank you, Mary. You’re approximately wonderful, give or take a little, you know that?
I avoided being sent there thanks to a man who would be a saint if Judaism had saints. He joined the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian version of the SS) in order to protect Jews, and was the supervisor of one of the Budapest ghetto houses. When the order came for young women and children to board trucks, supposedly for forced labour in Germany but, as everyone knew, to the death camps, he delayed our house’s departure. By the time we got there, the trucks were full, and we were sent home.
He did many such acts, but in 1945, as the Russians were approaching, he was found out and terribly tortured to death.
I honour his memory in my mother’s biography, “Anikó: The stranger who loved me.”
An amazing story. I wish I knew the name of the man who saved my mother-in-law, her sister and her parents. He was my mother-in-law’s father’s boss, and after Kristalnacht, he saw the writing on the wall, and decided to send them all to London on a “sales trip” and ordered them to just not come back. If he hadn’t done that, they, like most of the rest of her family, would have also ended up in Auschwitz and probably died.
An amazing story, Davida. What a clever and prescient man.
Wow, Bob! This is an incredible story. Many thanks for sharing some of your history.