Auschwitz, Is this true???

We visited Belsen in August 1992 and walked quite a distance around the site..weather was ideal.....there were no birds around as I recollect but one thing I did notice was that a number of birch trees had distorted growth.It was well known that the area was treated with quick lime when the victims were buried in mass graves.

Incidentally,a lesson from history.When we arrived at Belsen en route from Hamburg to Celle,I noticed a German army bus parked and soon found the reason why it was there.....groups of young people,all of military age and in mufti were being given a conducted tour of the site....as I have said, a lesson in history.

Incidentally Terezin (Theresienstadt) was projected by the Nazis as a humane detention camp for elderly and those Jews who were considered as privileged. In reality it was a Jewish ghetto which invariably the inmates were forwarded to the death camps such as Auschwitz.To the neutral organisation visitors,the Germans portrayed the ghetto, on the day, as being an ideal camp where the families were well fed,cared for and were allowed to work without coercion.The truth of the matter was entirely different...deportees from this camp were told of new location where they could be settled as families in a new life,wereas the destination was Auschwitz.

 

When I was there in April 2014, I saw one bird flying overhead but I never heard a single bird singing. Our guide challenged us to shout out if we heard birdsong - nobody did over a period of about four hours. I thought this totally unnatural in a rural area

 

Visited Camp Westerbork yesterday and these places do seem to be slightly different than, say a WW1 battlefield or cemetary. They are quiet though and do make me want to reflect, think, ponder and fell pretty awful really about mankind.

3 things (well - far more actually but I've not got the time for that now) struck me:
- How well (we were guided by a grand old fellow with Grand Tales of Misery) the youngsters of the group were behaved.
- The massive impact the ALL the stories made on me: (just 1) : guy (with wife & kid son) works as a chemist in Westerbork - all 3 are transported to Sobibor - he gets bored (no work) there & learns that there are no chemists in Auschwitz - volunteers to go and work there - wish is granted - they all arrive in Auschwitz - upon arrival he gets sent to the medical wing & wife and kid to the gas chamber....
- 99% of the visitors were white Europeans, mostly Dutch. No German (no surprise there though) but no "new" Europeans.

Once again one is amazed by the industrial scale of things.

Picture of our guide & the memorial ( which is a story in itself!)