Auschwitz was an eye-opener. Apparently, the name "Auschwitz" actually comes from the original Polish name I had heard the stories, but seeing it for real was trully horrific. I felt scared and sick.

It was a cold day - we were all wearing many layers but were still cold - it was hard to imagine that the people who were "living" there did not actually even benefit from proper clothing or blankets.

The purpose of the camp was to exterminate all people who were undesirable (Jews obviously, but also Poles, Russians, political prisoners, handicapped, gays, etc.)  in the future German state. However, those who were considered strong and healthy would first be forced to work to death in order to benefit Germany before they died of disease and starvation. The intent was that everybody who went there would die though - if not from the work, from the gas chambers.

The guide takes you around rooms full of human hair, shoes, prosthetic implements - all to bring home to you the horrifying practical and methodic way in which the holocaust was conducted, and to demonstrate to you that it all really happened.

The majority of prisoners in the work area lived in wooden huts - sharing 8 to a "bed".

Standing Room

Probably the most affecting thing I learnt about was the "standing room". As if working 12 hours days on a starvation diet with inadequate clothing was not bad enough, as a further punishment sometimes prisoners would be denied their beds at night. Instead, when they were finished with work for the day, they would have to crawl into a "room" 1 yard wide, 1 yard deep and standing room height only, and share it with four other prisoners. The entrance was through a small hole in the bottom - suffocation was a problem, as well as the general inability to sleep in such a confined space. We tried standing in there - four of us could fit in, but not five.

The sheer sadistic cruelty of this is... eye opening.

The one original thought that occured to me through all of this was... the "explanation" that these people were "dehumanized" does not explain their treatment sufficiently well. You would not treat animals this way -you would not go out of your way to torture and starve animals to death like this.