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The building in this picture, and its interior, served as the first makeshift gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz before the “purposefully” built ones were installed at Birkenau. The sign at the outside of the building actually used the term “purposefully built” and put it in quotes, and I was struck with the odd reversal of that term as we so often tend to use it in positive terms. “Purpose Driven” churches are being established all over the world, are making huge strides in the health of the Church as a whole, and Purpose Driven Life and Purpose Drive Church are best-sellers on the book listing as each of us seeks some higher calling in our lives around which to rally our energies. How horrible to think that the Nazi SS considered themselves to have been similarly motivated, and that their “purpose”, the extinction of an entire group of people, was somehow able to motivate and rally them. I suppose it’s worth considering that “purpose” doesn’t always mean something good… and what an unpleasant shock to my systems to be reminded of such.

Unlike Birkenau, this structure still stands in enough repair to actually walk through it, and so I approached it with a weightiness that pressed on my shoulders before I even crossed the threshold. The building is shaped on the inside like a “donut”. As you enter, you turn to the right and into the primary disrobing room. Prisoners would have been stripped of whatever clothing or belongings they happened to have with them, and would have then been prodded, naked, into the next room. Once there, sublimated Zyclone B pellets would have been fed through the holes (pictured here) in the ceiling after the door was sealed. After several minutes, when there was no possibility that anyone was still breathing inside, camp prisoners specially selected for the task would be forced to remove the bodies and take them to the next adjoining room where the ovens waited. The ovens (also pictured here) were each large enough to cremate a single body at a time, and so mine carts on small tracks were used as a prep system beforehand. The exit to the facility followed, and was the same as the original entrance, though only SS and designated prisoners ever actually left by that route.

Honestly, I got physically dizzy and more than just a little nauseated as I walked through. There’s just no way to really describe the surreal sense of sorrow that courses through your senses as you see the careful but carelessly methodical efficiency with which human lives were extinguished by other human beings. We have such capacity for creativity and ingenuity as we bear the image of God. So often, these gifts yield such beautiful things (art, medicine, learning, technology), and things that benefit the larger scope of the world we live in. But what a terrible thought to think that we can likewise employ such wonderful gifts for purposes as dark and horrific as this.