The Birds Don't Sing There - Part Two

A memorial for all those innocents who were murdered by the Nazi's

     According to professional guide Richard, “We must remember that the first people held prisoner here at Auschwitz were not Jews, but Polish dissidents and Soviet prisoners of war.”

    Laureen and I had traveled to Poland for the purpose of visiting Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (better known as Birkenau). These former Nazi concentration/death camps were a mere 40 miles from Krakow, and since we had been in Slovakia conducting research for a book on Vlad III, we knew this may be our only chance to pay homage to the millions of innocents murdered by the soulless Nazi regime. 

    Earlier the day before, we boarded a Flixbus in Bratislava and made the seven-hour journey to Krakow. Now we stood at the front gate of Auschwitz.

    It was eerie. It was painful. It was surreal.

    One million three hundred thousand people, mostly Jewish, had trod these very same dirt paths where we found ourselves standing. The difference now was that after this tour, we would return to Krakow and our hotel. Those who came before us did not have that option.

We walked where they once walked
It was eerie and sad

    Richard was the perfect guide for this memorial. Deep, soft voice and with the correct dignified inflection when he spoke of the unfathomable tragedies that occurred here between November 22nd, 1940, and January 6, 1945.

    As our group of maybe 12 walked beneath the gates that had promised work would set you free (Arbeit Macht Frei), a heaviness seemed to descend on us. No one was speaking except for Richard, who spoke low into his microphone, explaining the horrible nuances of the camp.

    “You have to understand the Nazis were wonderful at propaganda,” he said, as we walked toward the administrative building. “They told everyone transported here that it was only temporary. Soon, they said, you and your family will be resettled into a much more pleasant camp until we find permanent homes for you. It was all a lie. The Nazis knew these people, these prisoners, would be dead within weeks, if not hours.”

Who was Sara?

    Auschwitz I is 50 acres and was once a brick barracks for the Polish army artillery. When the Nazis took over Poland, they changed the purpose and started a concentration labor camp for Polish prisoners - later mainly for Jews.

    Richard paused our group in front of the steps to the administrative building. “You must understand that Auschwitz had only three purposes.” He looked around slowly at us. “One, as a concentration camp. Two, as a forced labor camp. And three, as a mass extermination center.”

    For the next sixty minutes, we were walked through a maze of buildings, each as colorless as the last.

    Washrooms, toilet rooms, three-tiered bunk rooms, where 12 to 15 people were crammed in - perhaps more- a hospital where the sick were taken and then executed if they were found to be too ill to work. Building after building, and room after room.

The three-tiered bunks where up to 15 people had to sleep

    It was an overcast October day, but even if the sun had been shining brightly, it would still have been overcast.

    We were escorted into a punishment cell, where they first experimented with the poison gas, Zyklon B, in August of 1941 by using it against 30 Soviet POWs.

    Another larger room was next, where we were told in September of that same year that 850 people met death through inhaling Zyklon B. It was dropped through a hole in the ceiling to the unsuspecting Polish and Soviet victims below.

The cement room used to exterminate 850 people to see if the gas worked

    The rooms, in which no photographs were allowed, were overwhelming.

    One room was full of hundreds of pairs of leather shoes people took off as they prepared for a shower (gas chamber). One room had suitcases and boxes with family names penciled on them - the Nazis had told the victims to make sure to label everything so they could get them back. A room with thousands of pairs of eyeglasses. A room with metalware taken from the victims as they were unloaded from the transport trains.

Just some of the leather shoes stolen by the Nazis from the prisoners

    The room that left Laureen in tears was one that had little children's clothes and toys.

A picture tells a thousand stories

Household items confiscated by the Nazis at Auschwitz

    The one in which I dabbed my eyes was full of human hair, shaven off the heads of the victims for use in blankets, carpets, and other items the Nazis felt necessary. Two long, braided women's ponytails made me finally decide I had seen enough of this inhumanity.

    Once back in the crisp, cool air outside, I looked about the camp and the guard towers, the double rows of barbed wire, the death zone between those rows and the electrified fences surrounding all of Auschwitz. Escape had been nearly impossible. Hundreds tried, but few successfully made it.

One of the guard towers at the Auschwitz complex

     The tour of Auschwitz I lasted two hours; it seemed like days.

    Next we drove to Auschwitz II, Birkenau, two miles away.

    Upon arriving and glancing at the Gate of Death, as the entry gate to Birkenau was known, the one thing that struck us was the magnitude of the entire camp. As far as the eye could see were brick and wood barracks lined up neatly covering 450 acres.

The Gate of Death at Birkenau

    This camp had one purpose: extermination.

    “Perhaps more than one point three million people were murdered at both camps, but nine hundred thousand did not exist,” Richard said into his microphone.

    That was puzzling. I asked for clarification.

    “You see, those nine hundred thousand never went through the identification process at the administration offices at Auschwitz I,” he stated. “They were simply transported here, unloaded and walked directly into the gas chambers, and then they were cremated in six large crematoria.”

    No names. No identification. No trace of who they were.

    We walked the same long path from the Death Gate to where the remains of the crematoria lie. We stood where so many before us had breathed their last.

Ruins of a crematorium at Birkenau

    Later in the war, when the Nazis in charge knew the Allies were only weeks away, they set out to destroy all evidence of their murderous crimes against humanity. They blew up the gas chambers, the crematoria, and tried to destroy all written records of any prisoners that ever entered the gates of the Auschwitz complex.

Ruins of one of the gas chambers used at Birkenau

    They were not successful and only left behind charred and broken rubble in their haste to run away from the Soviet military.

    We wandered the grounds for an hour, looking through this barracks or that barracks, and gazing at a large pool of water near the crematoria. This was where the ashes of the victims were placed in the beginning, but soon new destinations had to be found since this amount of human killing was unheard of. Forests, rivers, and other lakes became the depositories.

    We held hands and walked out the way we came. We didn’t talk, and though there were birds flying over the fields, we didn’t hear them sing.

    Perhaps it wasn’t just an urban legend after all.

John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

The Birds Don't Sing There - Part One

    There is a long-held local lore in the town of Oswiecim, in southern Poland, that birds do not sing near or around the notorious ex-concentration camp the Nazi’s built there once they had swept through Poland in 1939.

    I found that hard to believe; we saw them overhead flying over the hundreds of empty acres, as do butterflies take to the air, fluttering wings erratically here and there in gorgeous colors.

    It was an urban legend, but one that still sends a message that this place deserves utmost respect from any creature visiting this horrific historic site.

    The name of the town was changed, after occupation by the Nazis, to Auschwitz. The infamous death camp with the same name, where over 1.3 million humans were murdered by order of the Führer of Germany, Adolf Hitler, was built next to the city.

The Jewish people were told to mark their luggage so they could collect it
It was a lie; 90% were dead before the luggage was even collected by fellow prisoners

    There were actually three separate camps at Auschwitz. The most famous from films and documentaries was Auschwitz I, with the black wrought-iron sign across the entrance to the concentration camp that reads: Arbeit Macht Frei (Work sets you free).

The entrance gate to Auschwitz I - just plain lies by the Nazi's

    Camp 1 was set up as the main administrative center and concentration camp in June of 1940. It would be used in the beginning to house Polish political prisoners, resistance fighters against the Nazis, intellectuals, and anyone that the Nazi Party was afraid of.

    It was also used for forced labor, starvation, medical experiments, and executions. In August of 1941, the gas Zyklon B was used on a small group of 30 captured Soviet prisoners in Block 11. It proved successful. Then, in September of 1941, it was used to experiment on over 600 Soviet soldiers, 250 sick Polish prisoners, and 10 penal prisoners.

Where the poison gas, Zyklon B, was first used at Auschwitz I

    

Just one of many torture devices

    Again, a great success: after only 20 minutes of these men choking, vomiting, and dying, the Nazis knew they had an effective new method of extermination.

    It was time to bring this new devilish design to Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, whose only purpose for existence was truly mass murder.

    Auschwitz 1 was nearly 50 acres in size. Birkenau would be over 450 acres when finished in March of 1942. It was built on the backs of Soviet POWs. Nearly 90% of these men died building the concentration camp from starvation, beatings, and outright murder by the Nazis in charge.

The first crematoriums used at the Aushwitz complex

    This camp, Birkenau, would be the centerpiece in Hitler’s war against the European Jewish population. It would be the model for other camps, such as Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec, and others. At the end of WWII, historians believe 11 to 17 million people were murdered within these camps set up by the Nazis, including the 6 million Jewish people who suffered the same fate.

Just some of the shoes stolen by the Nazi's before gassing the Jews

    Those, besides the Jews, who were wiped out included, but were not limited to: Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, the mentally impaired, political dissidents, intellectuals, and anyone else who did not raise their right arm straight enough in the statutory salute.

    In other words, anyone not toeing the party line correctly, according to the High Command.

    This camp was so efficient in the activity of killing that one day in June of 1944, 10,000 people were gassed and cremated. The daily average for the years the camp ran was around 2,000 per chamber per day, and it took nearly 30 hours to incinerate that many bodies of the men, women, and children.

The entire camp was surrounded by electrified barbed wire

     It was a well-run machine of death, and the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, was well pleased with himself.

    In fact, he lived in a small villa a mere 20 meters from the front gate of Auschwitz I with his wife and children. He would go to work in the morning overseeing the torture and murder of thousands of innocent people and then return home to swim in the family's pool, play games with his children, and oversee the lush gardens. His wife, Hedwig, called the place a paradise, as she paraded around in looted mink coats and jewels taken from murdered Jews from the camp.

    To try to understand how humans can live as the Hosses did is like trying to unravel the complexities of the universe. It is mind-boggling.

    “How did work go today, Dear?” Hedwig may ask.

    “Well, my little Liebling, we met our quota of Jews, nearly twenty-three hundred. Not bad for a Thursday.”

    That was not in any way to be humorous, just the opposite. How could any sane person believe a man could spend his day orchestrating the cold-blooded killing of fellow humans and then go home and live a regular life with his family? It is far beyond the pale, and scholars to this day are still trying to figure out what prompted these monsters (and I don’t want to offend monsters by putting them in the same category as people like Rudolf Hoss) to act as they did on a day-to-day basis.

    The only light at the end of the tunnel was that after WWII ended and many Nazis, including Hoss, were held accountable for their crimes against humanity, they paid for their mortal sins.

    Hoss was sentenced to death and was ironically hanged on the very same gallows that he had hung many innocent folks from at the entrance of Auschwitz I on April 16, 1947.

The gallows where mass murderer Rudolf Höss met his end

    Auschwitz III was an industrial forced labor camp to procure forced labor for the IG Farben Corporation for its rubber and fuel plant. Thousands died there, but nowhere close to the scale of what occurred at either Camp 1 or 2. In fact, there is nothing left today of Camp III, except a memorial set up in the town of Oswiecim, which changed its name back to Polish after the end of the war.

    To visit such a place as Auschwitz is to visit hell on earth for the millions of victims the Nazis so ruthlessly murdered.

    But it is also a site that most should travel to and pray this sort of madness never repeats itself, something each of us needs to keep in mind. And we do know that history has a peculiar way of repeating, unfortunately.

    And that is why Laureen and I decided to travel to Krakow, Poland.

John can be contacted at beyersbyways@gmail.com

For more information:

https://www.viator.com/

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/

 

Munich Airport - Was fur ein Chaos!

Some time ago, Laureen and I were supposed to visit Hungary for research on a novel that I have been working on for years. Sometimes they actually take a very long time to write when the content has to be as accurate as possible. This novel was something different than my previous books - it would be a historical fiction about Vlad the Impaler.

    It is still being written. As stated, it sometimes takes a long time for this sort of book to be written, especially by someone like me, who, while watching a movie on television, fact-checks everything.

    “You know,” Laureen will say while I ask The Google this or that. “It’s just a film, not a documentary.”

    “I know,” I will respond, “but they would never do that in real life.”

    “It’s a science fiction movie set a thousand years into the future.”

      “Facts are facts, even in the future,” I would answer.

    I needed to visit Hungary because that is where the story of Vlad III rolls through. Not only was he in Romania, Wallachia to be more exact, but he ended up, through trials and tribulations, traveling to Hungary and then to what would become present-day Slovakia.

Vlad III, the hero of Romania

    But when I informed Laureen that the flight plan called for a stopover in Vienna before proceeding to Budapest, that was that.

Laureen Beyer in the heart of Vienna

    The songwriter, Billy Joel, once penned a song entitled Vienna on his album The Stranger in 1977. It was a sad song about a youth trying to find success too quickly and not wanting to slow down until he had reached the pinnacle in his career. It was actually a soul-felt story about Billy Joel traveling to Europe to get in contact with his estranged father. One day he saw an elderly woman sweeping the streets. He thought it a shame that she had to do that, but was reminded by his father that she was proud of the work she was doing and no one should feel sorry for the manual labor she did. She was happy even in her aging years.

The Danube River flowing through Vienna

     One line in the song really stood out to Laureen; When will you realize Vienna waits for you.

    Well, Hungary was off that scheduled research trip, and instead we spent a wonderful two weeks touring around Austria, and of course, spending ample time in the beautiful city of Vienna along the Danube River.

This current trip from LAX would land us in Munich, Germany, for the connector flight to Budapest, another city on the Danube. 

    

Buda Castle across the Danube River

    An interesting side note: Budapest was once two separate cities, Buda and Pest, facing each other across the wide, long Danube. If we want to get extremely technical, there was also the independent city of Obuda (or Old Buda) just north of Buda with ancient roots dating back to Roman times. But let’s not digress. Buda and Pest for our purposes.

    Buda is the hilly western side of the Danube where the castles and medieval streets are located. Pest in the flat eastern side of the river that the commercial, political and cultural aspects of the city are located.

Another view of the Danube and the Buda Castle

    In 1873, the two towns decided that perhaps one is better than two, and Budapest was declared the capital of Hungary. It sounded better than Pest-Buda, after all.

    Our original plan was to stay in Hungary and research the tales and myths concerning Vlad III. We would spend a few days in Budapest, then travel to Visegrad, about 26 miles north of the capital.

    Then we started researching other things other than Vlad. Slovakia is close and home to gorgeous landscapes and wonderful restaurants, especially in Bratislava. And the little town of Cachtice was within driving distance, which was once the home of the most notorious female serial killer known, Elizabeth Báthory. Who wouldn't visit the castle where she may have murdered up to 600 young women?

    As with any trip, more and more places started to fill the agenda. And Poland showed up on this trip since we both had wanted to visit and honor the victims of the Holocaust in Krakow.

    “You know, we only have twenty-one days,” I told Laureen.

    She smiled. “And when have we ever gone on vacation? It’s moving and shaking the entire time. This trip will be no different.”

    And it wasn’t, until we flew into Franz Josef Strauss Airport in Munich, Germany, where we had to catch our connecting Lufthansa flight to Budapest.

    In November of 2025, the rollout of the EES, Entry/Exit System, began in Munich and was fully operational (more on that later) for all non-EU/non-Schengen travelers. 

    Schengen is a border-free travel zone for 29 European countries. It allows 450 million people to move freely across internal borders without a passport check. It was fully implemented with all those countries in April of 2026.

    We were not part of those 29 European countries comprising the Schengen zone. And our experience with not being one of those 29 European countries was rather trying.

    Nope, not trying, more like traumatizing.

    As with most travelers who need connecting flights, time is of the essence.  Munich Airport did not understand the sort of urgency when a passenger can not make it to the gate on time. 

    Watching your connecting flight wing into the air like a bird while you are still standing on solid earth with your carry-on clutched in white knuckles, and your checked baggage is suddenly 30,000 feet above you, can be chilling.

    We took off on time from LAX and landed in Munich at the exact moment we were supposed to. Then all hell broke loose as men and women sporting neon vests moved hundreds of passengers from this line to that line to do a pre-registration before getting into longer lines for the border control passage to the gates for connecting flights.

    One man motioned for us to get into a line that stretched nearly to Berlin before another motioned us to another nearer Stuttgart. There were no markers, signs, or Bratwurst showing travelers where to actually go to scan your passport, get a facial recognition photo taken, and have your fingerprints scanned.

    “You, you are in the wrong line, Dummkopf!”

    “I think he’s speaking to me,” I told Laureen, as I hustled from one line to another.

    The clock was ticking. Now only forty-five more minutes to catch our connector.

    “Who said this line, Dummkopf?” another vested person yelled at me.

    “See,” I said, as I hustled to another longer line.

    The crowd had easily grown to about five thousand passengers wondering which line they were supposed to be in.

    “This is German efficiency?” A man questioned next to us. 

    He was led away by a woman with really shiny pointed black shoes and pigtails.

    Finally, we were scanned, fingerprinted, and photographed and told to get into another longer line for the border control officer.

    We wouldn't make our connection unless a kindly older couple let us cut the two-mile-long line and go behind them, giving us a three-minute window to run down the gangway and make it to our plane on time.

    Laureen and I understand Pope Leo is thinking of canonizing them for their sacrifice.

Pope Leo XIV getting ready to canonize our helpers

    We made it to the plane, to Budapest as scheduled, and our driver was waiting for us to take us to our hotel.

    Things were looking up. We explained what we had gone through in Munich, and Matyas, who went by the name of Matthew, laughed and said, “You should see how bad it is in Frankfurt.”

    For some reason, all I could imagine was wild-eyed chimpanzees chasing passengers around the terminal, throwing excrement at them.

    That would have been worse than Munich, I think.

John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com