Places of Great Sorrow

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

We may soon have the opportunity to take our children to visit Auschwitz.

 

While they have already visited other sites well known for the atrocities committed there, this might be a bit more intense.

 

How do you handle such situations? Does anyone have any recommendations for preparatory reading and study?

[Sebastian (a lady)]

We may soon have the opportunity to take our children to visit Auschwitz.

 

While they have already visited other sites well known for the atrocities committed there, this might be a bit more intense.

 

How do you handle such situations? Does anyone have any recommendations for preparatory reading and study?

 

When we went there, the kids were younger. The camps are quite large. Auschwitz I has a number of barracks buildings. Each has a display from a specific country or on a certain topic. We didn't make it into each one.

 

What we did was have one adult go into each building and scope it out. Then either they went in with the older kids or the other adult went in (depending on if there were things that needed to be screened).

 

However, there was very little that we didn't let the kids see (I don't think we took them up to the upper room that had the large case of shorn locks. Even I almost fled down the stairs at a glimpse of that. I stood on the landing and forced myself to go back up and honor those women with a long look.)

 

The things that affected me the most weren't photos. They were tangible items, like the report for relocation postcards in German that German Jews received and obeyed. DH used to use the train station through which most of Berlin's Jews were deported.

 

The other thing that affected me a lot was a meat grinder. Each of these families had a limit on luggage and weight. I kept trying to picture the woman who packed up this meat grinder. Assuming that it was going to allow her to care for her family in their new home. Such a tremendous burden. And for nothing.

 

Auschwitz II or Auschwitz/Birkenau has much less to see. The barracks there are being allowed to decay. You can see the famous gate and the train siding. What impresses here is just how enormous it is.

 

I don't like most of the books on the subject. Many tend to be graphic or so horribly sad that I think the reader almost develops a scab in order to deal with the storyline. The Devil's Arithmetic by Yolen is good (it is based on several camps). When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Kerr is also good. It doesn't deal directly with the camps, but your readers will be able to connect the flight of the family in this book with the consequences for those who stayed.

 

Practicalities: If you don't have your own vehicle, we used the local bus system. It worked well, but was very, very crowded on the Sunday evening return trip (we almost didn't get back to Krakow). Some friends went the route of engaging a car for the day. In hindsight, I might have bargained with one of the van drivers outside the camp for the drive back instead of waiting for a bus with room (we didn't get onto the first bus at all). I remember that there was a small shop with snacks. I think there was also a cafeteria. We were able to walk between the two camps, but it was a longish walk (probably why our stroller broke down a few months later, in Rome). The bookstores at all the camps are very well stocked.

 

And don't forget to read The Trumpeter of Krakow.

[Alessandra]

The U.S, Holocaust Museum has an excellent website with lots of educational material. The book I got there that impressed me the most was Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. This book, a first person account, is quite different from TV movies in which all the prisoners are moral and all the captors immoral. It is a harrowing book, but would be a good read for an older child. I think. Elie Wiesel's Night. For younger kids, we just read The Hidden Girl by L R Kaufman -- not about the camps, but a book on the Holocaust' hidden children.

Edited April 26, 2009 by Alessandra

[TXMomof4]

Have your kids read The Diary of Anne Frank? Or Number the Stars?

 

We went to a concentration camp at Flossenberg when we were in Germany. It was closed when we got there, so we didn't go into the museum, just looked at the gate and the officer barracks that were there. Just the idea of it was enough to give me the creepy crawlies. It completely blows my mind - the officer housing there has been updated and people actually live in it. Can you fathom? I *get* that the housing isn't evil. But I can't get living in the home of a person who participated in such evil. Just one of those mental blocks I can't get around.

 

I was also completely torn when we saw a war memorial in one of the little villages near the home my brother was living in and his landlord's family was listed on the board. Hitler, WWII, etc. seems so far removed from my reality. To know they are honoring their war heroes, who are painted with the broad brush of 'German', the same as I honor DH's grandfather is hard to wrap my mind around. I know that is silly, but true.

[Michelle in MO]

I have seen Dachau, just outside of Munich. There was a memorial there, as well as a museum, which was excellent. Quite a few photographs were fairly graphic and might be difficult for young children (or adults, for that matter) to digest. They had preserved some of the original buildings, but the buildings had been cleaned up, I'm sure, from what it was really like during that era. From an acquaintance years ago, who had visited Auschwitz, I heard that the Polish people had left Auschwitz pretty much intact as the Nazis had left it, so I've heard, second-hand, that the effect has much greater impact. But---my information is 20 years old, so bear all this in mind as you consider a visit there.

 

HTH!

[Maria from IN]

There's a lady here in Terre Haute named Eva Kor who has a museum called CANDLES-Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors. She and her twin sister were subjected to Dr. Mengele's experiments, and she regularly has schoolchildren in to tour the place.

 

http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/index.php?sid=1

 

On netflix right now, available for instant play, is the movie "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," where she goes back to Auschwitz in order to find a way to forgive what was done to her.

 

I haven't seen it, though--don't know if it's appropriate for little audiences.