9/18/02
Off to Lublin
Cabbed to Warszawa Wschodnia station for the morning train to Lublin. Lublin was the main head of the Generalgouvernement of the Nazi regime from 1939-45.
It might have been wiser to contact Slawek the night before, who would be my guide to Belzec and Sobibor, but I had fallen asleep and once in Lublin, with no guide, I wanted to check around a bit.
I felt like the stranger who walks into the small pub in the small British pub. EVERYONE knew I wasn’t Polish, nor from Lublin. I regretted bringing my tripod as I looked such the tourist, but screw it. Found a copy of one of my favorite books, Stephen King’s (as Richard Bachman) The Long Walk in Polish for $5. Cool beans. Had coffee across the street, got a little hungry and pointed to whatever that woman over there was eating, and ended up with the Polish version of a hamburger, which is meat like a hamburger, but with some creamy sauce and carrots and peas. Tasty, though odd. Went back to the station, called Slawek, got a recommend for a hotel, cabbed over, and found myself in the height of Lublin luxury, the Hotel Europa.
300 zlotych a night meant $75 for this American, a fair price, though I could have done better if I wasn’t so interested in getting over to Majdanek before closing time. Right outside my hotel in downtown Lublin I passed through the “Krakow Gate,” built in the 13th century and part of the original Lublin city wall and so named because it led to the 13th-century trade route to Krakow. It looks kinda like a little mini castle. This leads directly into Lublin’s Stare Miasto (Old Town), which looks a lot like Warsaw’s but theirs is real.
The Nazis didn’t screw too much with Lublin, or Krakow. These were their towns. In fact they took over Lublin Castle and made it theirs, replete with prisoners, executions, and other pasttimes of the Nazis. There’s two facing hatchets at the top, perfect for their brand of fun. I walked through the castle for a bit, up to the ancient 14th-century little chapel with 14th-century paintings on the walls, walked through some of the many exhibits including the weapons room and some paintings showing old Polish life, and noticed that I had maybe time for an hour and a half at Majdanek so jetted outside.
I caught a cab to Majdanek and BOOM! there it was! Like, right there, in the middle of a bunch of apartment buildings. There’s this GIGANTIC stone sculpture that symbolizes something or other, then the main entrance to the visitors’ center (closed by the time I showed up that Weds.), then the main gate to the camp itself. Most of the camp was destroyed after the war, and not by the Nazis. The Soviets approached too quickly for the Nazis to destroy anything and so it all was left for anyone to see. Field III is pretty much what you see now, with the original gas chambers and storehouse buildings off the side of the entrance, and of course the crematorium, still there, although with a new housing constructed around it, for preservation purposes.
I got really lucky as NO ONE was there on Weds. It was a little dark and rainy. I tried to buy a guidebook but the lone guard up front had none. I walked through the entrance, amazed that I saw apartments all around me, mere feet from the camp. I walked to the first building on my right, a long barracks, and there it was: BAD UND DISINFEKTION. Right there!
I walked into the entrance, pretty creepy. It looked odd with windows but I remember reading there was an undressing room, a haircutting room, etc. And yup, right in order. The next room had what looked like blue dye on the walls and I realized this was the experimental gassing chamber. I looked to the right and there was the mechanical blower to heat up the Zyklon B so it would work faster. The high ceilings that were improved later by making them lower for other chambers so that the gas would be more effective, and a square hole in the ceiling, where the Zyklon would be dropped in from the roof.
I’ve always thought about the guys that had that job. Opening a hole in a roof, seeing from 150-2000 people beneath your feet, depending on the chamber, and dropping that shit in, knowing they would all be dead, covered in their own feces, families gripping each other tightly, women crying along with their babies.
That was someone’s job. On a daily basis. Their job. Nothing about cruelty, power, sadism, kicks. A job.
Next to the first gas room was a storeroom for Zyklon B, followed by another small room. Then I stepped through a door and shuddered. I had seen this room many times before. An actual shower and bathing room. Two large stone baths and multiple showerheads above. This room had windows. There were two reasons for the actual real showers. One was to calm everyone down, the next was because Zyklon works faster with warm, moist bodies. Incredible to actually be in here. To look in those baths and imagine the people bathing.
Then a very small antechamber and the first of the two smaller gas chambers. I couldn’t see the holes in the ceiling for Zyklon to be dropped in, but the pipes in the walls leading to the small SS-Mans’ room where he would unvalve the carbon dioxide. The SS-Man had a little barred window so he could verify the dead were indeed dead. Only 150 could fit in the room he would look into. The chamber on the other side was twice the size, and had an exit door similar to the entrance door.
The funny thing about Majdanek is I guess they’re tired of cleaning up all the dead flowers people leave as remembrance for the victims of the camp, so they’ve put plastic flowers in each chamber, on the examination table where the innards would be searched for gold and diamonds and the like, in the crematorium, etc. So everyone’s pictures will always have the same flowers too. They also have little signs saying NO MEMORIAL CANDLES IN THE BARRACKS, but I guess people don’t care if history burns down because there were little votive candle tins around too.
This old building used to have a roof on the other side to hide the removal of the corpses, I was told, but it only went so far. Maybe ‘cause they piled up? For a long time the bodies were drug out in little carts and buried, then later burned. There is now an apartment building right on top of the old burial pits. Crazy!
The main exhibits room was closed when I got there, but the shoe room was open.
Whoa. I *guess* you could order multiple pairs of shoes in all possible sizes from every country in Europe from Poland to Slovakia to the Netherlands to Greece and some shoe stores in Bohemia and Moravia, and fake the Holocaust, but man what a lot of work! Especially in 1945 when everyone is busy fighting a war.
Holocaust deniers are total lying retards and they know they’re lying. There is just no fucking way. Sure, today, I could see a government doing some thing like this. But then… It’s just too outlandish. And with 50,000+ people all saying the same thing… Naw. Also, today they would find the paperwork easier. There wasn't an internet and multiple photocopies for the Nazi regime.
The shoe barracks. Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes. Piled up 10 feet high. Smelly. Old shoes. All sizes. Brands from all over Europe. Pretty elaborate if a hoax. Incredible to see all in one place. And outside of all the true/not-true, or even the Holocaust itself, seeing that many shoes in one place all bunched up like that… wild.
All the other barracks were locked and it was getting late so I walked past the guardhouse for Feld III (German spelling with the original sign still in place) and wandered past a couple open barracks with those wooden sleeping bunks in them, glancing to my left and seeing the water pump and well where I had heard of public drownings, saw where the gallows was for public hangings, and the three birds sculpture by Boniecki that I had seen in photographs. I knew I had little time after this field so I walked the long road up to the giant domed ash monument, but the crematorium caught my eye first. I had like 10 minutes so I did a quick run-through, and was surprised to see a stone bathtub for the crematorium worker, who was a baker before the war, ironic enough, no?
I got chased out of there by the guard and shot some video of the ash monument, this really huge giganitic dome with a glass top covering an enormous pile of ashes that had been mixed with earth by the Nazis. I saw lots of little white chunky bits in there which could be bones, or could just be rocks, but I didn’t see many white rocks around Majdanek. I walked around videotaping, some people showed up to lay flowers at the monument, and my cab driver had come back to pick me up! He explained to me in Polish/broken English that the guards there look for gold with metal detectors. I said, Dzis? (Today?) He said, Tak tak! (Yes yes!). He also pointed out which apartment buildings were on top of mass graves. Crazy! Then we drove to the little parking area by the giant stone monument at the front, shot a little video, and back to the hotel.
It was just too gray and rainy so I ate in the hotel. The menu was all fancy and stuff like in New York restaurants that no one I know goes to because water is $4 a glass, but the Polish zloty is like our quarter, so I ordered appetizer, main course, tea, beer and dessert and it was like $11 total.
I like Poland.
I went back up to my room and after a little Polish television, crashed hard, knowing I had to be up at 6am to meet Slawek and his driver Radek at 7am.
Snu… (Sleep…)
posted by Shade @ 3:34 PM
