"The Residence of Death": A Trip through Auschwitz

Auschwitz was the main concentration camp—turned death camp—for Jewish prisoners during WWII, rounded up and forced to work in factories near the camp by the Nazis. We all know the stories, right? This place is horrific. I tried to take as many pictures as I could—and I don’t really consider myself squeamish—but here was a place where I could barely manage to lift my camera.

Walking through the “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” gate was gut-wrenching enough, as it’s such an iconic image of the suffering that happened here, but Marta said I needed to go on the tour to fully understand. I received a small headset that was hooked up to a receiver that hung on a lanyard around my neck, and I followed a tour guide who had a microphone attached to his collar—this way, no one in the tour group could possibly miss any gruesome detail. I told Marta later that I couldn’t understand how anyone could come to work there as a tour guide, day after day, and relive the horrors of this place.

We walked all throughout the small camp that had roughly 30 buildings, and just looking at the place made it seem like the most desolate, depressing place in all of Poland—even having heard none of the stories of what happened here. Seeing the dirt streets, the brick buildings, and the electric fence around the outside perimeter made it feel like the most hopeless place on earth—as the tour guide said, the prisoners weren’t even allowed to sing, as that would inspire hope in the other inmates.

The tour took us through rooms explaining how the gas chamber worked, but that wasn’t all that new to me—that’s the stuff you learn in history class. The issue that seems to be forgotten or looked over here is that these were people, just like you, just like me—they had lives and families and possessions, and those things were all stripped from these people as they were crammed into living quarters unwashed and unfed. The tour guide directly us through several rooms full of the murdered Jews’ possessions. One room was full of the Jews’ luggage, and many of them had written their birth dates on the outside so as to retrieve their belongings after their stay at Auschwitz; some of them had personal messages, love letters and goodbye letters, scribbled across them. Another room was full of shoes from those people. Another room still was filled with eyeglasses—and each pair of spectacles once sat on a person. It was only upon seeing a room filled with the possessions of these murdered people that the magnitude of this place really began to sink in.

The last place we toured in Auschwitz was the actual gas chamber and crematorium. In American history class and on the internet, I had seen pictures of this place, and I had seen the picture of the scratches on the walls inside the chamber; this is another powerful, iconic image from Auschwitz, scratches on the walls of the gas chamber made by human hands. I wanted to take a picture, but again, I couldn’t raise my camera. I touched the scratch marks on the wall, and that’s all I could handle in that room, and I quickly stepped out into the open air again.

From Auschwitz, the tour group was taken by bus to Birkenau, the train station for the original Auschwitz camp and the site of a new, bigger camp than Auschwitz that had the same function—to utilize Jews as a free labor force and eventually kill them all. After murdering this many people, who is it that can think, You know, Auschwitz is working pretty well, so maybe we should build a BIGGER ONE, with a clear conscience and cold blood?

Like I said before, this trip was not enjoyable—but it was very interesting, and it’s necessary. I was talking with the ACN people, and they explained that the Auschwitz/Birkenau tour was a mandatory part of the Norwegian high school experience. I can understand why it would be required, but it almost seems like a high school student wouldn’t make the same connection to this place the way someone older might, like the students wouldn’t understand the gravity, the weight, the importance of this place on a global scale. I know I wouldn’t have, and I’m glad I saw it when I did.

The People of Poland

It’s already been almost two weeks since I went to Poland, so I’d better write about it before I start losing track of the stories that I took from there.

I arrived in Poland on Thursday, November 7 quite late at night—late for me, anyway, because I’ve been going to bed at 11:00 or 12:00 at night like an old man for the last month or two. Once I reached Norway and started posting pictures and statuses on Facebook about being here, my Polish friend, Marta, invited me to come to Poland, and we planned my trip for the beginning of November. Marta and I worked together at a bible camp outside my hometown called Upper Missouri Ministries in 2007; she was the international counselor for the summer, but after the summer was finished, I figured I’d never get to see her again, what with the distance and all. Lo and behold, though, here I am on her doorstep. She was waiting there at the Krakow airport for me with her brother, Jakub, and we took her parents’ car back to her hometown of Katowice.

For years and years, I’ve thought that Katowice was this sweet little Polish town of a few thousand people, like a close-knit community where the old lady next door makes delicious baked goods and brings them over to your house. Again—Kirby was wrong. Katowice actually has a couple hundred thousand people, and the city of Katowice is quite the bustling place, as cars rush past at all hours. Poland is divided into several smaller pieces, much like the United States, but Katowice is one of the main industrial hubs in its “state.” This particular part of Poland is well known for its coal mining operations and industry, and Marta explained that her area of the country makes a good amount of money for the country as a whole.

I caught up as much as I could with Marta on Thursday night, and we said Friday would be the hard day of the vacation: the tour of Auschwitz. We had breakfast at her apartment and drove to Auschwitz, taking back-roads to see the countryside of Poland where we did, in fact, run across of those few little villages that I thought Katowice was. Friday was not an enjoyable day—interesting, but not enjoyable. I’ll do a separate post about this, I think.

After I had toured Auschwitz, we went back to Katowice and stopped at her father’s company. Her dad works in metal fabrication, it looks like, and he’s the main owner of a company that fabricates machine parts by cutting metal using high-powered water-jets. The operation is really interesting, and I’d have loved to have asked questions, but her dad didn’t speak English—I felt a little guilty about asking Marta to translate every single sentence for me, as I’m sure that got very exhausting.

It turns out, though, that Marta’s parents invited us to dinner with them for a real Polish meal. Getting to her parents’ apartment, we started playing with Bobek, Marta’s adorable, whiny cat. Everyone was rushing around the apartment—bringing plates, bringing silverware, bringing glasses—and I volunteered to help, but they kept saying, “Nie nie nie nie nie” (“No no no no no”).

The dinner was really nice, and it wasn’t outside of my comfort zone, by any means. They had skinned potatoes and boiled them, and a side of sauerkraut with bacon mixed into it; the main course, however, was the most foreign to me: a flattened pork chop rolled into a burrito shape with all sorts of fixings rolled into it. It was really very good, especially after walking through Auschwitz for the day.

To the Wagner family: Dziękuję za piękny czas w Polsce.

Nomming through Norway

So, it’s been about three months and some change since I moved to Norway, and I’ll admit that I’ve been getting a little homesick. I was talking with someone recently about it who also spent some time in Europe, and she said that the biggest things you want when you’re homesick are family, friends, and food. Instead of boring with you with sighs and dramatic monologues about missing my family and friends, I’ll instead talk about food. We’ll save the sighs for another time.

My eating habits have changed significantly since I got here, what with Norway being a whole new culture to me. Back in North Dakota, I would get food from a restaurant, either dine-in or take-out, almost once a day. I was trying to learn how to cook for myself more throughout the Spring 2013 semester to get ready for this big excursion to the frozen north, but I’d still fall back on eating at restaurants more often than I’d care to admit.

In Norway, I still get my restaurant-fix once a week, normally on Thursday nights. On a nearly-weekly basis, a few members of the ACN staff and I go to the microbrewery here in Moss; the food is good and filling, and it’s also particularly American (e.g. fish and chips, bacon cheeseburgers, nachos). This is really the only meal that I eat during the week that I don’t personally cook. This is a massive change from what I did back in Grand Forks: have something small at home for breakfast, go to school, get something in a drive-through window on the way back home, and then snarf it all down while watching Netflix (followed by subsequent food coma).

The difference in price between American and Norwegian restaurants is astronomical, almost to the point where if I continued my normal American eating habits, I would go broke. As I was leaving Williston, my grandmother asked me what I was going to eat in Norway, “because a hamburger from McDonald’s costs $17!” I figured there was no way that that could be right. I was wrong. My normal meal at the microbrewery is fish and chips with a Coca Cola or a beer, which totals out at about 250 kroner; at the current conversion rate, that translates to just over $40 USD.

Therefore, I make most of my food at home here in Norway, since eating at a restaurant every day is almost financially impossible. There isn’t much fancy that comes out of my kitchen, but I eat three meals a day. A good amount of the time, I have a bowl of cereal in the morning, a sandwich with some sort of vegetable at noon, and then something a little more labor-intensive and “down home” for supper, like baked chicken with home-fries.

Going to the grocery store isn’t really different for me, since I go in, get what I need, and I leave. I pretty much zero-in on the things that I need or want during the week, then make my way for the door. After I left the school this afternoon, I walked up to the grocery store to get groceries for the week, and tonight’s haul cost me 268 kroner—and below is what I got for nearly $44 USD.

Here we have one frozen pizza that I had for supper tonight, a loaf of (THE BEST EVER) bread, a package of cheese, a package of chicken legs, a bag of potatoes, and a six-pack of Cokes.

Now, before you jump the gun and say, “Man, this guy’s a cheap asshole, whining about being in another country and how much the food costs,” let me tell you—I have no qualms about going to the ATM anymore, withdrawing 500 kroner, and going on a shopping spree at the grocery store. (Hell, I even thought of paying $80 for a zebra steak just to say I’ve eaten it. Yes, you read correctly—zebra steak.) For the first few weeks, I was pretty sticker-shocked, seeing as my biggest vice, Coca-Cola, came in a smaller bottle (0.5 liter) for more money (20 kroner = $3.50). Nowadays, though, it’s just second nature, and it doesn’t bother me in the least.

Overall, I think it’s a really interesting cultural change, and I feel like I’m a lot healthier because I’ve been making food at home and not snarfing down a bacon cheeseburger and fries every single afternoon. The food alone has been life changing for me, and I hope this change sticks with me when I move home. (And if you’re reading this and you know this change hasn’t stuck, you have my permission to physically abuse my future-self.)