School trip to Auschwitz

We’re in Poland, where Poles like Mikhail live. They all have names like Mikhail, misspelt versions of proper names.

We’re staying in a place called Krakov, which according to Jimmy is Polish for ‘bum-crack’. It’s a really wonderful city, all the buildings are bright colours. I’d love to spend an afternoon painting, but the teachers say we’ve got to go to Auschwitz instead, which sounds a lot less fun than painting.

Auschwitz is where Hitler killed all the Jews, like David. He’s a proper Jew and wears a tallit over the rest of his clothes all the time, though he‘s stopped wearing it at sports ‘cause we used to tease him. He’d have been real easy for Hitler to pick out in a crowd. If I’d been a Jew then I’d have tried to disguise myself, throw out all the religious stuff.

“Hey, David,” Jimmy said as we were leaving, “we’re going to see your grandparent’s house.” Everybody laughed. Everyone except David.

The bus we got on was really old, probably one actually used by Hitler. “God this bus is old,” I said, “did it use to be your granddad’s David?” There was more laughter, maybe it wasn’t going to be such a dull day after all.

When we reached Auschwitz we stood outside for a while and took instructions from Andy Jolly, our History teacher. “You’re not allowed to eat once you’re inside, so if you’re hungry grab a snack now.”

“Does that include sweets, Andy?”

“Yes it does, it’s disrespectful to be munching gum, chewing toffee or anything else. A million people died here, this is not a place you come to stuff your faces. And switch your mobile phones off.”

“No sweets, no phones, it’s like a prison camp,” said Jimmy. More laughter.

We had to stop and wait while Fatty Humphries ate his sandwiches and two Mars bars. “I have to eat all the food I have,” he explained, “I’ll never be able to resist food for two hours. I’ve never been that long without food.”

It’ true, he’s always stuffing his face during lessons and probably even eats in his sleep, must do to get that fat.

Then we went inside.

The most amazing thing was the sheer size of it. “It’s huge,” I said, “like a factory.”

“Yeah,” said David, “a factory of death.”

Nobody laughed, but he probably wasn’t joking. David rarely jokes.

It wasn’t at all what I expected, but then I don’t know what I expected. There was this massive glass cabinet, as big as our classroom, completely fill with hair, human hair, that had been shaved off the Jews before they were killed. The hair was used to make rugs, and they had some of the rugs on display as well. Gross!

We saw the bunk beds they slept on, about the same size as my locker at school.

“They must have been tiny,” I said.

“No, said David, just starving.”

We passed through the ovens where the dead bodies were burnt. We all thought of hundreds of gross jokes, but none of us said anything.

Several of the girls cried,, some of the boys did too, but I was brave, though it was pretty horrible. How can people do that?

At the end of the tour there was a list of names, not all of the names, just those that died in Auschwitz in one week. There were thousands, all around the walls of a huge room.

“My great grandparents died here,” said David, and we all tried to find them. There were twenty of us looking for ten minutes, but we hardly covered one wall, then it was time to go.

“They’re probably not here anyway,” said David, “a lot of people never even had their names recorded at the end, they were killing so many there wasn’t time to write all their names down.”

We finally had lunch at the snack van outside. “God, I’m starving,” said Fatty, then realised what he’d said. “Sorry David.”

“That’s okay,” said David. “We’re all hungry.”

I lent David 20p as he didn’t have enough for Coke. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” he said.”

“That’s okay,” I said, “I probably owe you.”