THE INHUMANITIES OF MAN

Travelling about northern Europe, especially Poland and The Baltic States, you cannot help but notice the memorials and signs everywhere to atrocities that happened in this area during the mid 20^thCentury and beyond. Yes the majority were by the Nazi Regime against the Jews but there is more to the story than that. Many individuals and groups of people were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and murdered by both the Nazi and the Russian occupiers.

Jan and I have been to several places where atrocities have happened. For example just over a year we visited Rwanda where the Genocide took place just 28 years ago. There we found it difficult to understand how neighbour could turn against neighbour. Here, what has been difficult to comprehend, is the sheer numbers of people murdered in the 1939-1945 period. 

These are some of the stories we heard which deserve to be told. 

On 6^thAugust 2018 we noticed a memorial in the forest in Lithuania just outside the town of Sabile. As we were driving past, the sun happened to shine on the large black stone, set back a little way fro the road. On reading the inscription we realised that this was a memorial to the massacre of 240 Jews on August 6^th1941, exactly 77 years ago. Having just been to Sabile and walked past the Synagogue where these people would have worshiped and where they were rounded up and executed o really brought home to us how terrified they must have been. Just past the memorial we saw the remains of a rectangular depression in the ground with a simple wooden cross that was obviously man made. A little research revealed that on August 5^th1941, German troops had rounded up 240 men, women and children from Sabile and imprisoned them in the synagogue. The next morning they took them to the forest, shot them then buried them in 2 of the graves that had been dug. The depression we had seen had been intended for the Roma Gypsies who were also going to be shot but for some reason this did not happen.

The Memorial Stone in the woods with 240 symbolic "bullet" holes

The unused Grave

The Synagogue in Sabile

Another memorial we came across by chance was just outside our campsite in Krakow.  Here a simple memorial has been built to commemorate the people murdered and buried in the area that were some old brick pits before the war. Just over 120 bodies have been found and reburied under the memorial with many others where their graves are unknown, although there are plans to investigate further. 

The very new memorial outside Krakow

Overlooking the Old Brickyard

Some memorial sites have become well known. Just outside Vilnius are a series of 7-8 burial pits known today as the Paneriai Memorial. The pits were first dug by the Russian Army as ammunition and fuel dumps in 1939. When Germany invaded Russia and occupied Lithuania it was decided that these pits would be used for mass exterminations and burials, located conveniently next to the railway line. In mid July 1941 they began rounding up the Jews in the area and transporting them to Paneriai to be shot. During 1942 and 1943 Jews, Polish Resistance fighters, Priests, Communists and Russian POWs were murdered here. It is believed that over 100,000 were killed in these pits in the forest.

One of the Killing pits at Paneriai

Memorial

Memorial by the rail line at Paneriai

Back into Poland we visited one of the big Extermination Camps. Treblinka operated until 1943 when there was an uprising and several prisoners escaped. The Germans fearing news would get out cleared the camp and obliterated everything including the gas chambers. The area was ploughed and a farm built so no sign of it existed. Today the area is a large memorial with thousands of rocks, some with inscribed towns where prisoners came from. The symbolic line of the railway has been reinstated along with the unloading ramp where the trains brought the mainly Jews.

It is a very sombre place

The Stone marking the entrance gate to Treblinka

The line of the old railway into Treblinka with symbolic rail sleepers

The memorial at the centre surrounded by 1000s stones, some marked with towns

A rare memorial to a single person

Of course the most well known Death Camp is Auschwitz. It was actually several camps covering a large area around the Polish town of Oswiecim. The original, Auschwitz I, was a Russian Military Barracks and this was turned into an extermination camp by the Nazi regime. Most of this still survives as it was left, including the gas chambers and crematoria. Auschwitz II Birkenau was constructed where some villages that had been cleared we sited. This camp was huge and covered a vast area. This was the main extermination camp where 4 sets of large gas chambers, each with its own crematorium and hundreds of mainly wooden huts was situated. Originally the trains that brought the helpless victims stopped about a mile away and the prisoners were walked to the camp. In 1944 a railway extension brought the trains through the “Gate of Death” and right up to the gas chambers. Although much of the camp was left as it was at the end of the war when the Germans left and the Russians liberated the few that were left, places such as the gas chambers and certain medical blocks were blown up and destroyed by the Nazis as they left.

The Infamous Gate at AuschwitzI

Guard Tower and fence

Auschwitz I Crematoria

The Gallows where the Camp Commandant was executed after the war

The Railway inside Aucshwitz II

Prisoners Cells

Fences and Towers

Much of the camp was destroyed

There are many pits and lakes where the ashes of those cremated were thrown

The remains of one of the gas chambers. There were 4

It was down these steps that people walked to the gas chamber

Memorial

To us this was a place we wanted to come to visit and like the majority of visitors it was done in silence. It is a sobering thought that so many people were brought here and either murdered immediately or existed for a short time in conditions that were horrendous before being killed.

As much as we would hope that the lessons had been learnt from this Genocide, sadly as we saw last year and that still goes on in the world today, Mankind still continues with these atrocities.

Thank you for reading this, it took some time to think and write as well as ensure that we had the right photos for what we are saying. If you have any comments then please let us know

Mike and Jan