This little story demonstrates how damaged and dehumanised I was in my early thirties.
My ship had docked in Gdansk and we had several idle days in port before we could work cargo.
The seaman's club organised a trip to Auschwitz and I chose to go because I could not work out just how the nazi's had managed to hide their atrocitites.

When we arrived at the death camp I was more interested in the railway links and the traffic arrangements than I was in all the rest of that appalling place. I came away having concluded only that the locals could well have not realised what was going on because the place was surrounded by trees and it would only take one train a night to achieve their ghastly target. One train per day crammed full of victims numbering 10,000 per train crowded and dying on route. That's 3,650,000 people in one year. Auschwitz was running for over two years.

One train a day of indeterminate cargo sneaking into a forest siding could easily be mistaken for any number of secret factories of which the nazis had hundreds hidden all over Europe during the war. No, it would be very easy to miss the nature of the traffic and therefore remain ignorant. Having concluded that it would not have required Polish collaboration for Auschwitz to function I left thinking no more about it. (How dehumanised is that!!)

I write of this because when I visited the second time with my wife in my late fifties I broke down and cried.
For me those two visits and my ensuing reactions demonstrated to me how far I had come. That was as emotional for me as learning about the inhumanity of the nazis.

Perversely, this logistical 'railway argument' can be used legitimately to support the German argument that many Germans didn't know what was going on. However I've never had the courage to accept the same arguments on behalf of Germany.
That is probably because if I had been there, I could well have ended up in those ovens as a transgendered transvestite and that makes it personal!!!

We will remember them.

Beverly.

Growing old disgracefully.