Auschwitz, Is this true???

[Owen]

Dunno about Auschwitz but it's Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend and there's no birds in my garden.
As an occassional birder I can't see any reason for there to be no birds to be there .
As commented on hear it's the way the human brain works.
Until I became a birder 10 years ago I didn't "see" birds anywhere.
Now I even kept an ear out whilst watching "Come and See" amongst all the horror in that film I heard Great Snipe.
You hear what you want to hear.

[BulgarianSoldier]

Its just myths, im to old to balive in myths.

Usualy birds are moving in diferent logation due to the diferent wind, we cant see but there are something like tornados in the wind that make the birds fly without moving there wings.Usualy they arn't moving in locations with a lot of people exept the normal birds that we see all day.
Im a hunter by the way so i know somethings about the wild animles..

Cant say that any time I have been over I have noticed either way what the birds were doing. As Owen says though, you hear what you want to hear.

[Owen]

Just Googled birds auschwitz and found this interesting webpage.
The Birds of Auschwitz
Walking through Poland in the footsteps of ancestors
By Toby Saltzman

Travel Terrific



also
Auschwitz: 'It's Amazing That a Bird Can Sing Here'
by Barbara Beckwith
Auschwitz: 'It's Amazing That a Bird Can Sing Here' by Barbara Beckwith








Thought I'd start a thread on BirdForum, only a few replies but seems those that who have replied haven't seen or heard any there either.
Birds at Auschwitz ? - BirdForum

[Owen]

Had a few comments added on Birdforum about this.

Birds at Auschwitz ? - BirdForum

I was about five or six time in Auschwitz in the past time, in different seasons. And I remember that I saw different tits, chaffinches, different sp. of corvides and buntings.

Went there a couple of years ago at New Year when there was several feet of snow onthe ground. I had heard the rumours of there being no bird sound but there was birds (seen and heard) around ( Great Tit, GSW, Cormorants, Corvids) including old House Martin nests on the barracks there. Even saw a group of Roe Deer at Birkenau

Similar site also has birds.

Just outside Vilnius, there is the nearest equivalent that Lithuania has to Auschwitz. At this single spot, set in pine forests, about 100,000 Jews were shot and burned. The pits where the executions and burnings took place are still visible. However, though peaceful enough the place is, go there in the spring and it is as alive with birds as any other bit of forest. Only been there perhaps twice, but I remember Golden Oriole, Pied Flycatcher and Wood Warbler

So Marcus to answer your question.
NO!

[morse1001]

My brother visited dachau back in the eighties and he said that he heard no birds

[stevew]

I visited Dachau a few years a ago, and didn't notice the lack of birdsong, but there aren't too many trees around.

I have heard similar things about the Western Front. for example Delville Wood seems really quiet, but if you stop and listen there are birds singing.

I think it's just an urban myth - Owen summed it up you hear what you want to hear

[Ron Goldstein]

I have never visited any of the former Concentration Camps but I would think that it would be most unusual not to feel emotionally affected, both by the actual surroundings and one's own knowledge of the history of the sites.

The nearest I have come to being affected by my surroundings was when in June '44 I first visited the Colisseum in Rome. As I recorded later:

"After a short while I slipped away to visit the cells underneath the arena where the slaves and early Christians were held prior to the games and their subsequent death.
I have never considered myself to be significantly claustrophobic but the atmosphere in the dank shaded quarters felt unbearably evil and I was glad to get back out into the sun and the heat."

[KriegsmarineFreak]

Is is interesting in Holocaust accounts how inmates sometimes talk about the dull atmosphere, the beautiful lanscape around them and maybe even a nearby bird. I guess it just depends on the person who goes there, on what they'll hear or not. I, myself, have never been to any of the infamous concentration camps.

[sapper]

There is a place where no birds sing. A place that still oozes horror, and evil seems to hang on the ivy covered walls of that long deserted place.
Orador sur Glan... Where the das Reich SS Panzer Div shot every man in the town put the bodies inthe houses gathered the women and children in the church and then burned them alive, with SS Grenadiers outside ready to cut down any that escaped from the Church windows.

Then they burned the little town to the ground.

That place has been left just as it was 63 years ago. The French dont like going there, they built a new town a short distance away.

It was a revenge atrocity. Even then they got the wrong place.
Anyone been to Orador? I would like to know what they feel about the place? sadly that was not the only savage atrocity on the way North to Normandy.

It is with some pride and satisfaction to me, that Das Reich was caught in the Falaise Pocket and subjected to a slaughtering barrage over open sights.
sapper